This was a prayer I delivered at NorthHaven Church in Norman for the Christmas Day service on December 25, 2011.

Gracious Father,

We gather here in this place to celebrate the day the world changed.
On that day, one who was pure spirit became incarnate;
The eternal Word became clothed in a frail human body;
That which no human had ever touched was laid by a gentle mother’s hand into a simple manger;
The eternal and timeless now had a beginning;
The infinite became finite;
On that day, God became human.

While still in the garden, we began to build a wall;
A wall that separated ourselves from you;
A wall which we built, but could never tear down.

You tore down the wall when you brought your firstborn into the world,
and said to that babe in the manger,

“You are my son; this day I have begotten you.”

You have spoken to us in many ways, through the prophets, through the beauty of nature, and through the voice of conscience.

On that first Christmas day, though, you spoke has you had never spoken before.

Lord, here we are,
Help us to listen,
Help us to hear.

Amen

I’m trying out MathJax for displaying math formulas on the web. The formula is written using standard LaTeX. Here is an example:

Bayes’ Theorem

I have to admit, it’s much better than anything I could do with HTML. I’ll have to work on the vertical line in the conditional probabilities. It needs just a bit more space to be easily legible.

UPDATE

Davide Cervone suggested below that I use \mid instead of \vert. Here’s how it looks with \mid:

Bayes’ Theorem

For comparison, I rendered both formulas with the application LaTeXiT and saved them as png files.

Here is the formula using \mid:

Here’s the same formula using \vert:

I think I prefer \vert In LaTeX, notice that there is some space between the vertical line and the letters next to it, but not too much space. When MathJax renders the same formula, that space is removed by the extra slant to the letters. In other posts, I’ve taken out the extra slant using \textrm, but that’s not very convenient.

Using \mid for MathJax looks like a good solution. It’s easy enough to change occurences of “\vert” to “\mid” with a quick find and replace.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

Another version, equally good, that is often attributed to Chesterton is

Stop making your religion a theology and start making it a love affair.

I ocassionally happen upon a blog that pulls me in so deeply that I have to read all the prior posts. The Rebel God is the latest instance. I especially liked the recent post, “The Real War on Christmas”

Casie Trotter shared this Advent poem by Anne Porter with me recently. It has some beautiful imagery:

He who has whittled
A cabin for the snail
Has also carved our names
In the palm of his hand

May you experience the beauty of Advent, even during the stress of finals week.

Answer the following two questions, and email your answers to me at rlridenour@gmail.com by 3:00 pm Tuesday, December 13.

1. Kant and Reid represent two very different approaches to the problems presented by Hume. Briefly explain Hume’s position on our knowledge of the external world. Compare and contrast the ways in which both Kant and Reid tried to resolve the problem. Which approach do you think is best? Why?
2. Explain the major components of Kierkegaard’s thought. In what ways does Kierkegaard represent a radical shift in early modern thought?

In Aesthetics this morning, we’re discussing the intersection of philosophical aesthetics and Christian theology. If you’re interested in pursuing this further, here are three books that I recommend:

Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste: Aesthetics in Religious Life by Frank Burch Brown (Oxford University Press, 2003).

Art in Action by Nicholas Wolterstorrf (Eerdmans, 1980).

Art, Modernity and Faith, 2nd ed. by George Pattison (SCM Press, 1998).

Cultural Relativism

For many of those that hold the position, cultural relativism is motivated by a belief that we should be tolerant of the moral beliefs of other cultures. Most of the time, this is expressed in a way that is simply inconsistent, that is, given that there are no objective, universal moral truths, we ought to be tolerant of the moral beliefs of other cultures. Unfortunately, one cannot consistently assert both that there are no objective, universal, moral truths and that we have a moral obligation to be tolerant, especially since our culture is often intolerant.

Options for the Relativist

Even though relativists often are inconsistent, they need not be. Here are some ways that that one could try to assert a consistent relativism:

1. When the relativist asserts that we ought to be tolerant, the assertion should not be understood as a moral claim. Instead, it should be understood as a pragmatic claim. That is, we ought to be tolerant, not because we are morally obligated to, but because it is in our best interests as a way of minimizing conflict.
2. We shouldn’t adopt relativism because we have a moral duty to be tolerant, of course that is inconsistent. Rather, once our culture comes to realize the truth of cultural relativism, we would naturally come to adopt an ethic of tolerance. Then, it would be true that we ought to be tolerant, since it would be part of our moral code.
3. When the relativist claims that we ought to be tolerant, she means simply that tolerance is a good. There is no need to understand this as a claim that tolerance is a moral good. A good is simply something that is worth pursuing, and there are several reasons why tolerance would be something worth pursuing.

Tolerance Only to a Point?

I have argued elsewhere that tolerance is not as good as one might think, since it implies an attitude of superiority toward the one being tolerated. Even so, I think it is psychologically impossible for relativists to adopt an attitude of genuine tolerance toward the moral beliefs of cultures that are radically different from our own.

For example, an Afghan woman reported that she was raped by her cousin’s husband two years ago, and she was subsequently sentenced to twelve years in prison (see CNN’s coverage). At first, it was reported that she would be released if she were to agree to marry her attacker, but authorities later said that the marriage was not a condition for her release. Even so, the imprisonment of a rape victim, who was then forced to care for her child in prison, is an unconscionable action according to most cultural relativists. That is, there are cultural beliefs and practices that should be changed, not simply tolerated.

So, what moral beliefs should be tolerated? I suspect that the level of tolerance would be highly correlated with the degree of similarity to our own moral beliefs and practices. That is, the relativist would maintain that we ought to tolerate the beliefs and practices of other cultures so long as they are not too different from our own.

That, however, is neither tolerance nor relativism. Instead, it is simply a thinly disguised moral realism.

The Bible is very easy to understand. But we as Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined.

Out of love for mankind, and out of despair at my embarrassing situation, seeing that I had accomplished nothing and was unable to make anything easier than it had already been made, and moved by a genuine interest in those who are dedicated to making everything easy, I conceived it as my task [the task of the philosopher] to create difficulties everywhere.