What makes a ‘tragedy’? Peter Singer missed a variable

The death of a teenager is a greater tragedy than the death of an 85-year-old, and this should be reflected in our priorities. — Peter Singer, in this article on health care in the New York Times Magazine

Presumably, Peter Singer said this because an 85-year-old has lived a relatively long life, while a teenager hasn’t had a chance.

Furthermore, the teenager has not yet contributed to the gene pool — well, we can hope he or she has not yet done so.

The 85-year-old has no further chance of procreation.

So there are two reasons why Singer made sense.

Oddly enough, he missed a very practical, rationalistic perspective on the value of a human being, as well as evolutionary progress.

What if the 85-year-old provides wisdom, love, and support for two younger generations? What if the wisdom provided by the 85-year-old is necessary for the improvement of the human race?

A real “tragedy” would be sending that teenager into the future without the benefit of wisdom from an older generation.

The teenager provides an open-ended future and genes for the next generation — no small things, but how much real advantage to guiding, forming, and contextualizing future generations?

Singer seems to reduce human beings to their procreative potential and their financial impact.

Making friends: How philosophers become buds

Edmund Husserl once said of his fellow philosopher Lev Shestov, “No one has ever attacked me so sharply as he. That’s why we are such close friends.”

From this article in The Jewish Week.

More than a feeling: Emotions are part of the brain’s practical problem-solving

“Not long ago people thought of emotions as old stuff, as just feelings — feelings that had little to do with rational decision making, or that got in the way of it,” said Dr. Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. “Now that position has reversed. We understand emotions as practical action programs that work to solve a problem, often before we’re conscious of it. These processes are at work continually, in pilots, leaders of expeditions, parents, all of us.”

….In a study that appeared last month, neuroscientists at Princeton University demonstrated … how a gut feeling may arise before a person becomes conscious of what the brain has registered.

They had students try to pick out figures — people or cars — in a series of photos that flashed by on a computer screen. The pictures flashed by four at a time, and the participants were told to scan only two of them, either those above and below the center point, or those to the left and right. Eye-tracking confirmed that they did just that.

But brain scans showed that the students’ brains registered the presence of people or cars even when the figures appeared in photos that they were not paying attention to. They got better at it, too, with training.

From this article in the New York Times.

Drive-by anointing: it’s easy!

A life in review: Obits for Kolakowski, philosopher & anti-Marxist

Leszek Kolakowski, an acclaimed Polish philosopher known for his anti-Marxism, died on July 17.

Here are some obituaries and reviews of his life:

The Weekly Standard

London Times

London Telegraph

New York Times

Slate

Open Democracy

The New Criterion

How Jesus responded to questions, or how faith lives with doubt

In the current draft of the book I’m writing, I quote a passage from If Only I Could Believe by Wim Rietkerk. At the time he wrote the book, Rietkerk was a Dutch Reformed pastor and head of the Dutch branch of L’Abri Fellowship. This passage has become more meaningful to me:

I think it is very important for us to open up the envelope of doubt and take out the message, knowing the good news of God’s generous offer: that we may fire all our questions at him without fear of rejection. Just look at how Jesus treated people [in the Gospels]. No one was rejected by him with, “You can’t ask that!” Jesus never said, “Believe, or I shoot!” He always entered into the real question with real arguments. I know that rationalism can be dangerous – arranging everything in near logical order – but I am concerned that we should not give up seriously examining the evidence there is for answering as basic a question as whether God exists.

New research: How traditional families help children succeed

This fascinating press release appeared in my inbox today:

ATLANTA — In a research presentation for the Centers for Disease Control of the Department of Health & Human Services Dr. William Jeynes, a Professor at California State University in Long Beach and a Non-resident Scholar at Baylor University, shared long awaited results of his research that summarizes the relationship between parenting and academic and behavioral outcomes for children.

Jeynes’ speech, part of the Parenting Series sponsored by the federal government, was based on the findings of his research which examines nationwide data sets and also includes a research synthesis of all the available studies on the influence of certain family factors on children. This research synthesis, commonly called a meta-analysis, involves statistically synthesizing all the research that has been done on a given topic.

There were several of Jeynes’ findings that were most salient. First, the farther one departs from a two biological parent family structure, the greater a negative impact this has on the children’s academic outcomes and what are commonly referred to as at-risk behaviors, including consuming various types of illegal drugs and unhealthy amounts of alcohol and becoming involved in a single parent teenage pregnancy. Jeynes noted that, “As a general rule, the more difficult family transitions a child encounters, the more likely it is that family issues will negatively affect that child’s academic achievement and behavior.”

Second, at-risk behaviors are more strongly associated with low educational outcomes than people assume. Third, there are factors that mitigate the effects of non-traditional family structures. They include parental involvement, the love of other major adults in the youth’s life, and the child being a person of faith. Regarding parental involvement, Jeynes’ meta-analyses indicated that it was generally some of the relational aspects of parental involvement that have the greatest positive influence on children. These include having high expectations of one’s children, maintaining high levels of communication, and having a balanced parental style. By balanced parental style, Jeynes asserts that, “Children learn best in a home atmosphere that provides love and a reasonable degree of structure.” Jeynes presented findings that indicate that a child’s religious faith can reduce the influence of marital dissolution and cut the socioeconomic and racial achievement gaps in half. His findings also indicated that when children are religious and come from an two biological parent family, the achievement gaps are totally eliminated.

Dr. Jeynes is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Chicago. He is one of the leading quantitative researchers on family issues and their effects on children. He is a well known public speaker, having spoken in 47 states and in every inhabited continent. He has spoken for the White House, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Education, Harvard University, and the Harvard Family Research Project. He may be interviewed or contacted at (714) 901-4274 or (714) 397-7763 or at whjharvard@post.harvard.edu.

The press release was distributed by Religion Press Release Services.

AP: Church of England offers two-for-one combo

From the Associated Press:

LONDON – The Church of England is offering couples a two-for-one service — marriage for them and baptisms for their children.

The church is recognizing the changing reality of British families, it said Thursday. Statistics show that 44 percent of children in Britain are born to unmarried women, and the church’s own research found that one in five couples seeking a church wedding already had children either together or from a previous relationship.

New guidelines sent to the Church of England’s 16,000 parish churches encourage services that combine a wedding with a christening or a service of thanksgiving for the birth of a child.

Some clergy welcomed the latest move, but others argued it undermined Anglican teaching about the sanctity of marriage.

John Broadhurst, Bishop of Fulham, told The Times newspaper that the move was an unfortunate attempt to be trendy.

“It is a pity they have not put in a funeral for grandma as well,” he said.

Read the full article here.

Twitter is spiritual, really

Frederic A. Bussat, at the eclectic religious site Spirituality & Practice, says that Twitter is spiritual.

Here begins his reasons:

1.) Twitter challenges us to pay attention to what we are doing, to stay awake and totally alert.

2.) Twitter prompts us to focus on the present moment and in doing so we realize all we need is right here, right now.

3.) Twitter provides opportunities to connect with others around the world so we can sense how self and world are linked in ever-expanding circles.

4.) Twitter inspires us to practice hospitality in a time when too often strangers are feared and the “other” is shunned.

5.) Twitter enables us to share our deepest dreams and to encourage others not to lose hope.

6.) Twitter prods us to find the divine energy of joy in our daily lives and to share it with others.

7.) Twitter invites us to be receptive and to hold an open house in our hearts for new people, ideas, and organizations.

8.) Twitter draws out our playfulness and celebrates, in a variety of ways, the holiness of savoring pleasure and the lightness of being.

9.) Twitter promotes the art of listening in which we lean toward others in love, realizing that everyone wants to be heard.

10.) Twitter allows us to probe on a daily basis the significance of what we are feeling and thinking: it makes meaning makers of us all.

Guess what? The list goes to 25! Read the rest here.

Reminder of the times, reminder of the age

The ongoing controversies in the Episcopal Church were fresh in my mind when I saw this sign on Sunday. Thinking of denominations and schisms and tradition and change, I could both understand and dislike what I saw on the side of I-77 between Rock Hill and Columbia, S.C.