By saying this, I do not mean that Dr. Hanson is dishonest, nor do I mean to impugn the honesty of his scholarship. What I mean is that the rationale for it was always dishonest, and his rationale for reviving it is mistaken. I like everyone else my age, learned this stuff in high school. It was part of the curriculum until the 1970s.

Classical studies were always about dividing history in a fundamentally anti-Christian way. There was Classical, Greco-Roman society. We were to admire the ‘steady’ Romans with their virtues and the Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. Science, art, and everything good happened with the Greeks, we were told.

Then there was the Middle Ages. Medieval was (and still is) a term of scorn, just as Classical was a term of approval. We were invited to contemplate an ‘Age of Faith’ and ‘Age of Ignorance’. The inescapable conclusion was that Christianity is bad, bad, bad.

At the end of the Middle Ages was the Renaissance, when civilization revived. After that came the ‘Age of Reason’ and the ‘Enlightenment’ and so on.

Medieval studies proved that this was so much bunk. The modern era started when Christ rose from the grave. If that had not happened, then the modern world, including freedom, democracy, and the cell phone, would never have happened. The fundamental break in History came between Christianity and Ancient World. The first industrial revolution came in Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries. Our world is a continuation of that Medieval world.

If you really want to know what the ancient world was like, it is easy enough to find out. Read accounts of the native people of the world by 16th and 17th-century explorers and colonists. The Indians, the Chinese, the Aztecs, and the Incas hadn’t changed much in 1500 years. Because Europe had advanced so much, these areas were seen as backward and primitive. The ancient world changed very little and very slowly. It persists today as the third world. Third world dirt, poverty, oppression, and smells were all part of the Classical world, too. Classical scholars, understandably, don’t dwell on them.

Classical studies were mainly promoted by atheists for their agenda. Students could not study Christianity (separation of Church and State!), but they were forced to study the religion of the Greeks and Romans. They were also expected to approve it and look down on Christians. Classical studies were little more than dressed-up atheism. I never understood what was so great about a slave society. Greco-Roman societies were all about slaves, but they didn’t count.

Dr. Hanson thinks of himself as a conservative and writes for National Review. He knows that in the Classical view of the world, some people count and some don’t. The ones who do not count became Hillary Clinton’s ‘basket of deplorables’. Clinton, and everyone else her age, were immersed in the Classical world. These studies provided no bulwark against Communism, Nazism, Fascism, genocide, eugenics and a host of other ills. At the root of all of these movements is the conviction that some people count and some people don’t. Christianity teaches that everyone counts; Classical Studies teach that only the ruling class counts.

Classical studies was really about training the future rich and powerful how to disdain the lowly and weak. This is something that (surprisingly) requires years of training. St. Augustine, in his book City of God, wrote that the Romans, before they invaded someone, had first to be convinced that what they were doing was right. They required the most elaborate proofs. This required training, and the orators were well rewarded for their eloquence.

The result of that eloquence was war, plunder and ruin for a defeated city. The unfortunate inhabitants were sold into slavery. Like a disobedient wife (or a deplorable), they deserved a beating. The orator said so.

Classical studies existed to ease the conscience of the rich and powerful. Communists and other left-wing types, bent on enslaving others, were prominent in Classical studies. That was never a bug; it was always the main feature. That is why there is no loss if Classical studies and the entire Liberal Arts dies off. They never enriched anyone’s life in the first place.

Hypatia (born 350-370, died 415 AD) was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. She is best known for the fact that she was murdered by a Christian mob in 415. Her body was hacked to pieces and burned outside the city.

Hypatia ran a Neoplatonist school in Alexandria, which had an excellent reputation. All of the students that we have a record of were Christians. This was a boon to the Christian community, since other pagans had endeavored to block Christians from higher education. Then as now, a college education was the ticket to success, especially at the Byzantine royal court in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey).

Neoplatonism was not irreconcilable with Christianity. An early Christian theologian, Origen, melded Neoplatonism with Christianity. Neoplatonism features ‘essences’ and ‘ideals’, which exist in Heaven but do not exist on earth except in corrupted form. An example might be stones. There are big stones, like boulders, and little stones, like pebbles. Some stones are smooth, and some are jagged, but they all share an essential ‘stoneness’. We recognize that a stone is different from metal or wood. In an era before science, it seemed to explain many things.

Hypatia seems to have been, by all accounts, a nice and learned person. She was a virgin and lived an ascetic life devoted to learning. She taught two bishops that we know of, and they both spoke highly of her. Her way of life made her a person of influence and a leading light of Alexandria. After her death, there were efforts to make her a saint, even though she was not a Christian. Nothing in her life seems to justify her violent death, especially at the hands of Christians. To understand her death, we need to examine what was happening to Christianity in that era.

The end of the early church

In 313, Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, granting Christians tolerance and legalizing Christianity. This signaled the end of the persecutions that had wracked the Christian world for the past decade. The Diocletian persecutions (302-313) were designed to destroy the church, but instead the church emerged stronger than ever. In 381, Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion, and in 394 withdrew all state funds for pagan rituals. There were battles between pagans and Christians, particularly in Alexandria. Pagans tried to claim temples that had actually been paid for by the state and occupied choice real estate in the city. They used the Serapeum as a fortress and after their eviction it was demolished so it could no longer be used in that fashion. They demanded all of the things that they had denied Christians for three centuries.

This marked the end of the early church and the beginning of a new era. It was a turbulent time in the life of the church, and not all of it was positive. In the days of its persecution, Christianity attracted mostly true believers, and was only 10-15% of the population. Now it was the path to power, and a majority of the population became Christian.  St. Augustine (354-430) writes of some new members:

“One has a business on hand, he seeks the intercession of the clergy; another is oppressed by one more powerful than himself, he flies to the church… One in this way, one in that, the church is daily filled with such people. Jesus is scarcely sought after for Jesus’ sake.”

The end of the early church and the advent of the worldly in the church heightened a new danger, which Jesus had already spoken of,

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits…” (RSV)                       Matthew 7:15-16

In I Corinthians 4:6, Paul lays out one of those fruits:

“…that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another.” (RSV)

Puffing up, i.e. flattery, is a favorite technique of the worldly leader, and it leads to false pride and division. This is what Paul warns us of, and it is precisely what the worldly leader wants, because then he has his congregation to himself. It grieves the Holy Spirit that the Body of Christ is no longer whole, but worldly leaders figure they can buy off the Holy Spirit later. After all, they buy everything else.

Alexandria

In Alexandria in 415, two rulers were vying for power in Alexandria. One was the Prefect Orestes, sent by the emperor to rule over Alexandria, and the other was Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria. Cyril (375-444) was a Christian with some unchristian techniques and aims. For example, under his authority the parabolani, whose business was to aid the sick and bury the dead, served as a kind of ecclesiastical militia.

At this time, there was considerable violence in Alexandria. Jews were harassing Christians, and Cyril threatened the Jews. In response, the Jews attacked and slew about 100 Christians in an unprovoked attack. Cyril ordered the Jews banished from the city. His followers pillaged through their possessions. Cyril did not have the authority to banish the Jews; this was Orestes job. Their dispute was about who would rule Alexandria.

Orestes represented the moderate faction of Christianity and in his role as ruler of Alexandria, maintained good relations with all parties, including the pagans. Hypatia was a pagan leader and friend to Orestes. Possibly she helped hold together an anti-Cyril coalition. Some historians believe that Cyril ordered her murder. It sent shock waves throughout Alexandria and the Empire.

Did Cyril order her death? We’ll never know, and Cyril was the kind of wily politician who makes sure he has plausible deniability. In my opinion, mobs do not form spontaneously and murder innocents without at least tacit approval from higher-ups, and it is the job of Christian bishops to stop violence. What we do know is that the Monophysite heresy flourished in the Coptic (Egyptian) Church. The nationalist Egyptians chafed under Byzantine rule. Alexandria was the ‘2^nd city’ of the empire. Egypt was a rich agricultural land and somewhat isolated from the rest of the empire. The Monophysite heresy was more a semantic definition or word game than a substantive theological dispute. Cyril was completely intransigent with regard to any compromise with the rest of Christianity. There were overtures to the Coptic Church from other Christian churches, and there were political overtures to Cyril from Constantinople, but the Copts remained intransigent.

In 451, the first great schism in Christianity occurred. The Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches accepted the Council of Chalcedon, whereas a number of Eastern churches did not. They formed the Oriental Orthodox branch of Christianity and fell out of union with the others. I think that it is futile to try to describe teaching of the Council of Chalcedon and the various heresies involved. All sides in the dispute, called (in the West) the Monophysite heresy, in my opinion, go far beyond Paul’s ‘… what is written …’, piling up endless and largely futile conjectures and semantics. It was mostly power politics, with a small leaven of Jesus to give it legitimacy. It was one leader or faction puffing himself up against another. The ravenous wolves had come, and they had borne bitter fruit. They shattered, irrevocably, the unity of the Body of Christ.

What we can learn

We’ve all seen the Cyrils of this world. They wear their robes and conduct wonderful services. A few years later, after one of them has become your leader, you find out that he has pressured young women in the church to have sex and stolen from the collection plate to buy a Rolex. Cyril was a great theologian and prolific writer, when he wasn’t behaving like a thug ruler in Alexandria. Whatever its validity in the political sphere, I have no patience with the argument church leaders should indulge in these worldly practices, if the good they do compensates in other areas. That is not what Jesus preached.

If the average Christian hears of any person from Alexandria during this time, he is most likely to hear about Hypatia. She was a deservedly obscure person thrust into prominence solely by her death. Her lynching and dismemberment at the hands of a Christian mob is appalling, and that is likely the only thing anyone knows about Alexandria of that time. All of Cyril’s works and good deeds remain unknown to all but a few scholars. They remain interred with his bones; Hypatia’s death lives on.

People display a unity in their actions, and that includes ravenous wolves. Like other worldly leaders, they cannot resist divide and conquer. The late Billy Graham was the most notable Evangelical leader of his generation. Graham resisted segregation; in his crusades blacks and whites could sit anywhere. This was still the segregated South when he did this. He reached out to other denominations. For example, he was well regarded by Roman Catholics. He never became rich from his ministry, and there was never a hint of sexual misconduct.

Graham was a healer of divisions between people. Your ravenous wolf is a divider. He gains adherents by claiming that his church is saved, and most others are damned. He becomes your champion, and then he becomes your betrayer. As he gains in popularity he will show the tell-tale signs of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. When you realize it, run, for he threatens you with far more than just dismemberment. He threatens your soul.

In the Bible, there are several references to a fuller’s field, indicating that there is a profession of fuller.  Fulling is a special wash given to woolen cloth before it is worn. Typically, wool has oils such as lanolin, which must be removed before use. Fulling cleans and thickens the cloth, making it more usable and giving it insulating properties. Today special washing machines and detergents do the job.

Fulling was one of the essential industrial tasks of the ancient world. In Ezekiel chapter 9 and 10, there are 6 references to linen, which was the alternative cloth to wool. In each case, the use of linen is presented as something unusual. Linen was used more extensively farther south, in Egypt. Cotton, indigenous to India, had not been developed and silk was far too expensive to use for ordinary people. Most people wore wool. In the winter it was needed for protection against the cold. Fulling increased the insulating value of wool, as well as making it clean for use. It was an important step in clothmaking.

It is typical of ancient practice to use slaves as machines, more valued for their muscle than for their minds. One Roman writer famously compared the work of four men with one horse and recommended using the men whenever their purchase price was low and feed for horses was high. Fulling was typical slave labor. There might be craftsman-slaves, but they did not constitute more than a small slave aristocracy. Fulling slaves were much more typical of how slaves were treated in ancient times. Fulling proceeded in the following way. The woolen cloth was placed in a trough, and stale urine (urine in ancient times was used as a cleaning agent) was poured into the trough until it covered the cloth. Several slaves got into the trough and began marching in place. They marched all day long in place in the trough, with the stench of urine in their nostrils. Occasionally, a whip was used to encourage their efforts. At the end of the day, they received a ration of bread. This was repeated every day (including Sundays) until they died and were replaced with other unfortunates, purchased in a Roman slave market.

No one should need to be told that this is no way to treat other humans, and yet this was common in the ancient world. Ancient paganism didn’t care about the poor and unfortunate. The gods had given them into the hands of the victorious armies of Rome (or Greece or another ‘glorious’ conqueror), and the losers suffered their fate. When you read history, remember that you are reading about the upper crust of society: kings, rulers, priests and generals. This is what life was really like at the bottom of society. No one cared, because the ancient religions made no mention of it. Mention of it was, of course, a feature of Judaism, but its priests cared more for their sacramental roles. The prophets were sent to protest this situation but were mostly exiled or imprisoned. No one in power listened to them. The people running the society did not care about the ‘little people’, and they did not want to care about them.

Christianity changed all of that. Jesus said,

“…the last shall be first…”  (Matthew 19:30, KJV)

which was a shocking sentiment in the ancient world. God favored WHO? The fulling slave?

By Medieval times, fulling mills had replaced slaves. They were powered by water and they were common throughout the Medieval world. The Medieval industrial revolution replaced human power with wind, water and tidal power. The degrading spectacle of men marching in place in a trough of urine had ended. It was part of a larger drive by Medieval Christians to improve the lot of the poor and powerless.

The way history is written, only the top of society is mentioned. There is little about the bottom of society, yet these are the people God loves. We read about the glory of conquest or of a splendid palace. We never read about the losers: the slaves sold in a market or the women forced into sexual servitude. The young Christian should not let the way history is written blind him to the reality of injustice and inhumanity. God is just. When you read a history, remember these words:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24, KJV)

Once you understand what the rich and powerful were doing to the poor and weak in ancient society, those words of Lord Jesus make perfect sense. History might gloss over the fate of the fulling slave, but you should remember him. The ancient slave, like the emperor and the mighty empire he ruled, is dust, gone forever. We, like them, all have one fate. We will all be judged by Lord Jesus. Let us not be found wanting when He weighs up our deeds.

We hear it all the time. We should be ‘rational’. We should ‘reason’. We should throw away the Bible and use our brains to solve problems. You’ve heard it and so have I, but as Christians we must ask What is the truth?

This post will be written from a secular viewpoint. We will not rely on the Bible, but we will show what not relying on the Bible leads to.

Everyone is a sinner, and everyone can be tempted. The worldly temptations are just as common in the scientific arena as anywhere else. Science, which should alleviate suffering, has proven itself the handmaiden of suffering and oppression. Whenever ‘science’ steps out of the lab into the political or moral arena, it should be viewed, given its past misuse, with deep suspicion.

Two Kinds of Problems

If you think about it, logically the world contains into two kinds of problems: ill-posed and well-posed. We will define these as follows:

A well-posed problem is one that has a solution. 1+1=2. A characteristic of well-posed problems is that everyone agrees with the solution. If you add 1+1 is always equals 2.

An ill-posed problem does not have a solution. These are far more numerous than well-posed problems. Mathematically, an ill-posed problem can never be solved uniquely because it has multiple solutions.

STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) are becoming more valued because they deal mostly with well-posed problems. Generally speaking, a problem involving engineering design only becomes well-posed if there is some outside criterion, such as lowest cost, to guide design selection. Most engineering design problems can be solved with multiple designs. Sometimes there are an infinite number of them. The engineer picks the lowest-cost design that solves his problem.

Science works the same way. In a new field, not everything is known so a variety of conclusions and explanations are possible, i.e. it is ill-posed. If everything else is equal, the scientist concludes based on honesty and integrity. Money, political power and media propaganda can tilt the field to whatever conclusion the powerful people want. Most scientists will go along because that is in their best interest, and that is what most people are interested in. If he has an ill-posed problem, he can plausibly do it and claim objectivity.

The major use of the theory of evolution in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries was racism. The biologists ‘proved’ that non-white races were ‘inferior’. The proofs were bogus, but the suffering was real. Neither the scientists nor the theory were ever called to account for the suffering they caused.

What Science is

Science is organized observations. That is all that it is. Sometimes, as in the example above, the observations cannot by themselves tell us what we want to know. As with the example of the seismic data, sometimes we have an ill-posed problem.

Science is never universal. Any claim to a kind of theology of science is bogus, including a so-called belief in ‘science’. In textbooks, ‘laws’ are given, and equations are written down. The reader should understand that all of the ‘laws’ and equations are limited in scope. They are better described as curve fits. Some data is taken, and a line is drawn through the data. The line is the curve fit. The mathematical equation for the line is the equation.

There is not and can never be any assurance that the line so drawn is true everywhere. Scientists can take date and confirm that the line is a good approximation to the data, but experiments always have errors, so the experiment is uncertain. Moreover, there are an infinite number of functions that will match the data as well as the line. Trying to find a universal law is an ill posed problem for that reason. We can never truly decide which line is the correct one, since they all match the data within its uncertainty band. We can use a rule like Occam’s razor (named for Christian thinker William of Occam), which states that one should use the simplest line, or you can use statistical analysis to come up with a refinement to that approach. Neither of these yields universal results.

Moreover, as in the example above, all scientists are restrained by economics. If a scientist cannot afford an experiment, then he cannot run it. If he cannot instrument it, he cannot run it. You cannot probe the sun because the probe will melt before it reaches the sun. For all scientists, the data set is limited, and it does not always lead to a well-posed problem.

Therefore, belief in science is the wrong approach, because belief is a religious term. Saying ‘I believe in science’ is always wrong unless you are very gullible. It is correct to say, ‘I use science’, or ‘I think science is useful’. Usefulness connotes practicality. Science has usefulness, but it has no spiritual side to it, no matter what scientists say.

Bait-and-Switch

One of the most common kinds of fraud is bait-and-switch. A seller promises something enticing (bait) and delivers something else (switch), of lesser value. Belief in ‘science’ is the ultimate bait-and-switch. Advocates for a belief in ‘science’ tell us that science, which has made great progress in well-posed problems, such as physics, can also show us the way in ill-posed problems, such as law and philosophy. It cannot solve these problems because they both have multiple solutions and different members of society do not agree on how to choose a solution, assuming that one exists. You cannot empirically determine a choice of action without outside assumptions.

However well-meaning, the advocate of ‘science’ must make extra assumptions about the problem or the data. He claims these assumptions are ‘scientific’, but they are actually arbitrary. They comport with his feelings and emotions.

Hate

The emotion most likely to affect the ‘scientific’ thinker is hate. Hate is a nasty emotion and the wellspring of bigotry. The ‘scientific’ thinker claims he is objective, but he is really just puffing himself up.

Jesus told us to “love your neighbor as yourself”, but the most people do not like that advice. They wish to have high self-esteem, which is synonym for pride and vanity.

Christianity preaches humility, whereas the world preaches pride. Humility doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself. Instead it means thinking more of others. One cannot love someone else without humility. Humility leads to love and peace, whereas pride leads to hate and bigotry. The proud egoist thinks he can solve the world’s problems by thinking about them. He believes that he is ‘scientific’ and does not let emotion and tradition cloud his judgement. He is a blind guide, because the problems he is tackling cannot be solved through thinking. You cannot solve problems of justice and mercy using science.

“When a man ceases to worship God, he does worship nothing but worships everything.” This quote from Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton, aptly sums up the atheist. What the atheist is most likely to worship, of course, is himself. He will claim he is ‘scientific’, but without God all roads lead back to the self. Belief in science is really just worshipping yourself, because your corrupt thought processes will always lead to the same place: self-glorification.

Science is useful, but it is no substitute for belief in Lord Jesus. Christians should remember it, practice it and preach it.

Theory of Evolution

The theory of evolution should hold a special place for Humanist dishonesty. It’s a false attack on Christianity from two angles.

• From 1859 to 1945, biologists, especially evolutionary biologists, were advocating genocide and the destruction of all non-white races. This extreme racism, pushed in universities, was said to be ‘proven’ by the theory of evolution. The first thing any Christian should say to any Humanist who asks about evolution is to cite this fact and ask whether Humanists intend to bring back race genocide, eugenics and the other 20^th century horrors we are still trying to fix. Is that why they cling to evolution?
• Every word that is written, is written for a readership. God’s intention in writing the Bible was to encourage His worship and instruct His followers on how to live correctly and treat their fellow humans. Genesis was written in 1200 BC. In 1200 BC, no one would have understood the theory of evolution. I can’t imagine what the creation story would look like if God had written it scientifically. The 1^st few pages of Genesis would balloon into 1000 pages of incomprehensible symbols. Evolution is an anachronism, something of the future that did not belong in 1200 BC and would not have been understood.

Evolution led to the most sickening excesses of the 20^th century: The Holocaust, Eugenics and the KKK. All were supported by evolutionary biologists. Christians opposed this new view of man as a collection of genes to be culled from the gene pool. Christians, before they even talk about evolution, should ask Humanists if they have given up their insane desire to remold the world. If they have not, then you know why they cling to evolution.

We are called as Christians: first to worship Him, and then to help the poor and suffering. A blind belief in ‘science’ can easily mislead, causing suffering and injustice. For this reason, the proper attitude of anyone toward science should be skepticism, not belief.

I’m standing in the candy aisle of Walmart (confession: I’m on a diet and cannot actually eat any candy. I just want to look at it.).  Chocolate candies have changed. At one time, candy was for kids, and milk chocolate was the candy to buy.  Now, adults have gotten into the act. Chocolate, we are told, is good for you. You should eat some every night. Hooray for science! I’m all for it. Unfortunately, accompanying this new trend are chocolate candies aimed at adults with ‘sophisticated’ tastes. They cost 3 times as much as milk chocolate. They boast names like ‘supremely dark’. They are up to 90% cocoa, and they taste awful.

Why would anyone eat something that tastes awful? There might be a few readers who actually like the new, dark chocolates, but I can’t stand them. Even the special dark ones, the ones that are edible, are not really good. These used to be called ‘bittersweet’ or ‘semisweet’. They never did much for me. They are not sweet enough, and they are about 50% cocoa. Cocoa has an intensely bitter flavor; it must be balanced with other ingredients to make a smooth candy that tastes delicious. For chocolate candy, more cocoa is not better.

Why pay more for a lower quality product? It makes no sense. The adults who claim they that this stuff tastes better are fooling themselves. If you ask a kid which tastes better, milk chocolate or dark, bitter chocolate, he will choose, without hesitation, the milk chocolate. He would need training to choose one of the ‘dark’, bitter stuff. Why would you train someone to pick a bad-tasting candy?

The all-purpose excuse is health and the sugar bugaboo. I have given up on taking health advice from pop culture. Too much of it is dangerous. Talk to a hospital worker and he will tell you about admissions to the hospital caused by someone going on an extreme diet and virtually destroying one of their organs. I did not, for example, know that a low carb, high protein diet can make your kidneys grow, to handle all of that protein, until I tried it and watched the urea in my blood work shoot up. Then I found out that it makes your kidneys grow. No thank you. I cut back on the protein.

One of the substances that your body does know how to handle is sugar. The small amount of extra sugar in milk chocolate vs. a dark chocolate will have a miniscule effect on your health. That is not a reason to eat bitter candy.

Many people believe that bad tasting medicine is good for you. To be cured, one must suffer. This is really a variant of pagan beliefs. For most of human history, people have turned to religion for cures. Think of it this way. Suppose you wanted to make a deal with God, and offer him something special, in return for curing a close relative. Would you offer to eat chocolates every day and enjoy life, or would you offer to eat broccoli and liver every night and be miserable?

Most people would opt for broccoli, liver and misery, because most people believe that God loves misery. They think being miserable pleases Him. There is nothing in the Bible to substantiate that. The sacrifice Lord Jesus asks of you, is for you to love your neighbor as yourself. That’s a bigger sacrifice than eating bitter candy.

In Galatians 4:3, Paul talks about being slaves to:

            “.. elemental spirits of the universe ..”

which, according to my Bible’s annotations, might be better translated as “rudimentary notions of religion”. Part of Christianity should be that Christ freed us from these notions, including the one that He wants us to be miserable. What He wants is for us to treat each other with kindness, respect and mercy. That is a difficult task; why make it harder by eating bad candy?

The notion that God loves a hair shirt can be combined with another preoccupation of adults – one-upmanship. This combination animates every killjoy on the planet. The eternal game of ‘I’m better than you’ is played out constantly. These killjoys verbally assault anyone who does not follow their proscriptions. The killjoys say ‘it’s for our own good’, but it’s really for their ego.

On the Walmart candy aisle, the killjoys are winning. The section containing low-calorie, sugar-free candies is shrinking, whereas the section containing bitter chocolate candies is increasing. The sugar-free stuff does not give your blood a sugar jolt like the other candies. For dieters, the quantities in each bag are small, so that a bag only contains candies with 360 or so calories – not enough to destroy your diet. It also has the same health-giving properties as regular (or bitter) chocolate candy. There are probably no truly healthy choices on a candy aisle, but these come closest to being healthy.

As I say, that section of the aisle is dwindling. People cannot resist the appeal of smugness, so that even the simplest pleasure is sullied. The killjoys are winning – and sinning. The primary virtue, the virtue from which all other virtues spring, is humility. True humility does not mean thinking less of yourself; instead it means thinking more of others. It means loving your neighbor as yourself. Enjoy the small, innocent pleasures of life, and do not try to take them from others, pretending to virtue. If you do, you might just roast in Hell.

The Rise of Christianity was written in 1996 and originally published by Princeton University Press, and later by HarperCollins. Stark is that rarest of academics, one who is not prejudiced against Christians and Christianity. He has no strong religious convictions of his own. He is a sociologist who studies religion.

The Rise of Christianity is devoted to explaining, in secular terms, how and why Christianity grew in the Roman Empire. It gives some of the nuts and bolts of how our religion spread, including the heavy involvement of women in supporting the early church as well as the differing reaction of pagans and Christians to events such as the two plagues, one in 165 AD. and one in 251 AD. In both cases, Christians bravely cared for the sick, whereas pagans shoved the sick members of their households out onto the street to die in ditches on the side of the road or migrated from the city leaving their sick behind to starve and die helplessly.

The pagans knew that the disease was spread by contact with infected victims, and there was no effective medical treatment. According to their religion, once they had appealed to their gods (really carved figured of wood and stone) and sacrificed to them, there was nothing more that they could do.

Christians, on the other hand, believe in an afterlife and that Heaven is waiting for Believers. Jesus commanded us to care for the sick (Matthew 25:36) and so Christians did just that. Many patients, both Christian and pagan, recovered after Christians said prayers over them, fed them and nursed them. Some died, and some Christian nurses died, but the death rate was much lower for those under Christian care. It was a Christian miracle.

Atheists believe that religious beliefs have no effect on society, so it makes no difference what (if any) religion you believe in. In fact, Christian beliefs have had a major impact on society, as exemplified by the two responses to epidemics.

Stark believes that Christianity increased at a rate of 40% per decade for centuries, and that furthermore the plagues helped convince pagans of the value of Christianity, further adding to the increase. By 350 AD., Christianity had achieved dominance over paganism. This was a time of tension, as pagans began to leave the public square, and lose the state funding that had made a career as a pagan priest so lucrative. Battles broke out between Christians and lawless pagans in cities like Alexandria, as pagans sought to retain valuable public real estate for their unused and unwanted temples.

In 361 AD. Julian the Apostate became Emperor. He was a pagan and wanted to bring back paganism. By now, Christians were in a clear majority in the Empire. Julian was convinced that Christian charity was behind the rise of Christianity. Stark quotes one of the greatest backhanded compliments that Christians have ever gotten about our charity:

“I think that when the poor happened to be neglected and overlooked by the [pagan] priests, Galileans [Christians] observed this and devoted themselves to benevolence.”

and:

“The impious Galileans [Christians] support not only their poor, but ours as well, everyone can see that our people lack aid from us.”

Has there every been a better summary of the pagan view of Christian charity? Could any pagan have penned a better compliment? Next Christmas, when the humanists start railing about the Christian desire to make sure that every child has a nice Christmas present, quote Julian to them. The more things change, the more they stay the same!

The Rise of Christianity has numerous quotes and observations like that. It’s one reason I like the book so much. Unlike other secular writers, Stark has not hesitated to include items that reflected favorably on Christianity. For that reason alone, it is a good book to read.

A Christian still might ask, “Why read this book?”  The usual non-fiction reading for a Christian is a devotional or a Bible study book. Here is why, in two verses from the Bible:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

Matthew 28:19-20.

This is the great commission. It is the last command of Lord Jesus in the Book of Matthew. It was given to the 11 disciples after he had been resurrected from the grave. It is a command to all of us. Here is the second verse you should know.

“Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. So, he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the market place every day with those who chanced to be there.”

Acts 17:16,17

Some of you are in college, and it is your job evangelize the atheists, just as Paul did. This is part of the great commission. Some of that involves meeting atheists and arguing the case for Christianity. Just as Paul did, you must argue on secular grounds, because those are the grounds that atheists accept. Paul was not ashamed of Christianity and he wasn’t afraid of the philosophers; he went boldly forth into the marketplace. You should do likewise.

There is no better starting place, in my opinion, to learn the secular case for Christianity than The Rise of Christianity. It has example after example of Christians in action. There is much nonsense and dishonesty in academia about Christianity. For example, the feminist case against Christianity is nonsense; women, given a choice between paganism and the early Church, flocked to the Church and were a mainstay in its rise. The young Christian must arm himself (or herself) against the misinformation and outright lies of academia about Christianity. The Rise of Christianity is a good place to start, which is why I am recommending it.

Proverbs 1:7

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

I have worked in academia for much of my life, and I have never heard a professor use that expression, nor did anyone tell me he ‘feared the Lord’ before he told be the results of his thinking. Should a thinker fear the Lord, or is that term just Biblical nonsense?

People don’t talk much about thinking. Sometimes someone will say they are an ‘independent thinker’ or a ‘critical thinker’, but what is really meant by these terms?  I believe that bad ideas come from bad thinking.

Clear thinking is a requirement for a Christian. Christians should strive to be good thinkers, because Satan is the father of lies. If you tell a lie, even if you think you are helping, you aren’t helping. Christ needs the truth.

Thinking is more like a hunt or search than it is a deduction ala Sherlock Holmes. Holmes was a fictional character and a poor thinker in my opinion.

Some people, who wish to convince others of their superiority, might say something like this:

I state facts and draw logical conclusions.

Let’s break that statement down examine it in more detail, in light of Proverbs 1:7.

I state facts …

The problem is, which facts did you state, and which did you leave out? Let’s list some thinking fallacies of this type.

• The lost keys fallacy.

Let’s say you are a drunk, and you lose your keys. Where would you look first?  The answer is, of course, under a street lamp, because the light is better. It never occurs to the drunk that better lighting has nothing to do with where the keys are.

A lot of people fall for the lost keys fallacy when they think. Just because you know something does not mean that it is necessarily relevant to the problem at hand. Thinkers tend not to believe that something outside their knowledge might have a bearing on a problem.

This is extremely common in academia and industry, where a person decides that a problem can be solved using his ideas or knowledge. For example, an engineer might decide that a safety problem at a manufacturing plant requires an extra layer of protection, and orders up a new widget. In fact, worker training is often more effective than another widget. Another way of saying this is that

“To the man with a hammer, everything becomes a nail.”

Sometimes this can have tragic consequences. When a political decision is made, often there is a faulty background, leading to a wrong conclusion. There is a saying,

“Correlation is not causation.”

Something might appear to be the cause of a problem, but if it is not the cause, then the solution might make the problem worse.

The root of these problems is a lack of humility, or pride. Pride goeth before a fall. We all know it but we do not humbly beseech the Lord for guidance. The engineer understood the widget and did not look anywhere else for a solution; the academic found a correlation that looked reasonable but was not the actual cause. In both cases they made mistakes.

Going along with this is the sin of vanity. Smart people tend to be vain and they also tend to be unaware that they are vain. They think they know everything important, so how could they have possibly missed something?

You should always keep an open mind, and be ready to learn things outside your comfort zone. The broader your education, the less susceptible you are to the lost keys fallacy. Strive for humility in your life. It is your best ally if you want to think clearly.

• I’ll make it fit.

Suppose you have a hypothesis, an idea about why something happened. Let’s say you have 10 facts and it explains 9 of them. The temptation is to make it fit, to ignore an inconvenient fact.

An example would be a scientist who, to make his theory fit, ignores a fact. I know of an example of an ice age theory that required a mountain range to move. The thinker was sure it was correct except for this minor detail.

An idea should fit all of the facts before you accept it. If you watch cable TV news, you can see people arguing their positions, which means you have to ignore a fact or two. Generally speaking, the most vehement arguer, often augmented by the host, usually wins. This is for entertainment purposes only, although some people actually believe they learn something from it.

A hypothesis where most of the facts fit, but which is contradicted by one fact, should be rejected. In mathematics, this is called a counterexample, and it disproves the hypothesis.

• It’s all about me (or us).

Thinkers cannot help glorifying themselves. A high number of male, middle-aged writers, for example, write themselves into their plots as the middle-aged protagonist, and almost invariably he’s a stud bedding women half his age who swoon over him. A number of authors of non-fiction will tell you, in the middle of the book, how great they are and how under-appreciated they are.

Would someone this conceited brush off criticism as being irrelevant?  Of course, and moreover he’ll constantly quote his earlier books. Inconvenient facts are left out.

The desire to reach for a conclusion that makes you or your group look good is nearly universal and nearly irresistible. It is not confined to middle-aged authors, although the phenomenon is quite amusing, particularly their appeal to young ladies. Everyone’s a star in their own mind, and the desire to show off your knowledge is universal. Like the lost keys fallacy, it has no relevance to solving a problem. It’s just ego-pumping.

• Pointing

No matter what the problem is, it is always possible to point to someone else and claim he is worse so you are not responsible. This is especially true in politics. Pointing is always wrong, because your sins are never forgiven just because you find a greater sinner. Sins are only forgiven through sincere repentance.

Pointing is a substitute for thinking, since it places the burden elsewhere and shields you from unpleasant thoughts. It’s not your fault.

• Stopthink

Stopthink is from George Orwell’s 1984. Orwell was an atheist and socialist, but he despised the old lefties who covered for Stalin. It was written in 1948 (he got the name by switching the ‘4’ and the ‘8’), and the Ministry of Truth, where history is rewritten every day, was the BBC, where he worked. American readers can get the equivalent truthfulness by watching CNN or PBS. Rewrites happen at the ‘major’ liberal universities, who pass on their conclusions to the lowly folk out in the boondocks, where lesser universities exist. 1984 was satire, not some future prediction of calamity. Stopthink and Doublethink were his description of liberal thought patterns.

While Orwell was talking about liberals, no one should think he is immune to stopthink, nor should he practice it. Orwell was probably thinking about the Holodomor, where 5 million Ukrainian Christians were killed by Stalin from starvation. Liberals stopped thinking about it, because it was so horrible and did not fit with their concept of what they stood for. They wished for a communist government, and 5 million dead Christians wasn’t part of The Narrative the old commies believed in.

Stopthink comes about because you identify so closely with a cause that you cannot process any information contrary to the cause. It is extremely dangerous, and it is a mistake to think that if you are not a liberal you are immune. When you think of yourself, do not call yourself a liberal or a conservative. Just call yourself a Christian. As Jesus said:

“No one can serve two masters. He will either love the one and hate the other or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

Matthew 6:24

For ‘mammon’, you can substitute ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’, or anything you like. You cannot serve both. If you serve Jesus, that must come first and always. Think of yourself as a human being, not a political being

Stopthink makes you susceptible to propaganda and lies, because you have no defense against falsehood. If you think your leaders never lie, or at least shade the truth a bit, you have not been paying attention.

Even if you get all of the relevant facts in hand, you can still make an error.

“… and draw logical conclusions

• Ill conditioned problems.

Basically, an ill conditioned problem is a problem where, even if all of the relevant facts are at hand, there are not enough of them to draw a firm conclusion. It might be better to give an example of an ill-conditioned problem.

Scientists working on a fossil dinosaur family tree have recently done a study of all known fossil dinosaurs. They attempted to put them into a family tree, and to test a new, proposed dinosaur tree against the current one. The results were inconclusive. Both trees had about the same explanatory power, meaning there was no reason to pick one over the other. You can read about it in the following link:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-fossils-are-redefining-what-makes-dinosaur

This is a much more common problem that people think. The only way of resolving it is to gather more fossils from more species. In fiction, Sherlock Holmes would look at a piece of data, a walking stick, for example, and determine everything about the owner of the stick. His guesses were not really logical; his real name should have been Sheerluck. That is no way to go through life.

Needless to say, the prideful, self-important man never tells his audience that this result has a low probability. Like Sherlock Holmes, he boasts that since he did it and it is logical, it must be right.

• Paradoxes

Usually, in logic something is either one thing or another. Something is either white or it is not white. Notice that I did not say white or black; if it is gray or speckled it is not white.

When a proposition is neither true nor false (or both true and false) then it is called a paradox. Here is an example.

I’m humbler than you.

Unfortunately, by boasting you have just proven that you are not humbler than me. However, if I think that, then maybe you are  humbler than me, because now I’m boasting (in my head).

Unfortunately, spiritual problems and theology are laced with paradoxes. In addition, you have a limited data set to draw upon (the Bible plus any prophecies and revelations you think are true). Your paradox is ill-conditioned and there is no way of finding more facts.  I believe that a huge number of theological disputes between Churches fall into this category.

Notice that in all of these examples, the virtue of humility helped the thinker avoid errors.  As the Preacher says, “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  I would put it a different way:

Humility is the price we pay to live in a sane world.

I thought that the following would be of interest.  Here are two characters – one is  a sinner and one is a saint.  The sinner is a character in a novel written during the Roman Empire and is very believable. The saint is a real person who lived near the start of the Dark Ages. Her story is, to modern ears, nearly unbelievable.

Trimalchio is a character in the 1st century AD Roman work of fiction Satyricon by Petronius.  He is a vulgar and very rich freedman who love to display his wealth and throw lavish dinner parties.  He is a crafty, devious man who made his money through shady practices.

Trimalchio seems to have little or no scruples or dignity.  He says “he was his master’s favorite for fourteen years, and it isn’t wrong if the master makes you do it.”  The master made him his heir and when he died Trimalchio inherited.  He is surrounded by slaves and the men are attracted to both women and boys, but mostly boys.  The narrator, Encolpius, has a companion, Giton, who is a handsome young man, 16 years of age.  They are lovers and Giton is frequently attracted to other men.

Trimalchio has risen from slavery to great wealth, and sees little purpose in his life other than the pursuit of wealth and pleasure.  Few in the novel have any sexual inhibitions, although the women sometimes complain that the men pay more attention to boys than to them.  Both sexes are unfaithful to their spouses without any sense of moral wrongdoing.

The rules of Trimalchio are simple.  The only need is to climb the ladder of success.  He was degraded and humiliated by his master, and in turn he degrades and humiliates his slaves.  Slaves carry him around; when he wants to wipe his hands a slave offers his hair.  He might be nice to his slaves in manumitting them, but they had better obey him and cater to his every whim.

In this society, there is nothing but money, power games and ostentation.  Life in the Roman Empire has always appealed to a certain kind of person, who also dislikes Christianity for saying that everyone has dignity and worth.  Trimalchio believes that only the rich and powerful have worth: a man is the sum of his bank account.

When you read a classical scholar describing Ancient Rome, you are apt to think more of an upper middle class lifestyle, because you have grown up in a Christian culture and there are numerous rules governing how you treat each other.  The Satyricon should be must reading for Christians because it tells you what society would be like if there were no rules, just power.  This is where we are headed.  Trimalchio would be infuriated if someone walked up to him and told him that the rules were changed and he could no longer satisfy his unrestrained lusts.  He would chafe under the new rules and yearn for his freedom.

We are finding via #metoo, that there are a number people who like playing power games.  94% of the women in Hollywood report some kind of sexual harassment.  Remember, some people, like Trimalchio, like these rules.  Golddiggers (male and female) have always been much more abundant than gold mines.  In 60s London, actresses applying for jobs wrote DRR at the bottom of their application – director’s rights respected. Like Trimalchio, they were just playing the game.

When golddiggers get to the top they like their gross desires met, and they do not want any opposition.  They do not mind prostituting themselves as long as they can play their games.  For them, it’s all part of the system, and they hate anyone wagging a disapproving finger at them. They would find the life of our saint incomprehensible.

The Satyricon was written during the 1^st century AD, around the time of Nero, who ruled from 54-68 AD.  This is the world in which Jesus and his disciples lived.  It is the world of the early Church.

St. Melania (The Younger) (383-439) was born into a life that Trimalchio can only dream of.  She was born of extremely wealthy parents of the famous Valerii family. She is called ‘The Younger’ to distinguish her from her paternal grandmother, St. Melania (The Elder).

St. Melania was married when she was 12 years old.  Roman law fixed that as the age of consent.  As a teenager, she bore two children, both of whom died.  When she was 20, she convinced her husband to cease marital relations.  Thereafter they lived as brother and sister.

She had unimaginable wealth.  In Sicily alone she had 60 estates with 400 agriculatural slaves on each estate – 24,000 slaves in all.  That was only one of her holdings.  She also had estates in Spain, Africa, Italy, Numidia and Mauritania, as well as land in Britain.

“… You lack one thing; go, sell what you have and give it to the poor and you will have treasure in Heaven”  Mark 10:22

St. Melania took Jesus’ teaching to heart.  She manumitted any of her slaves who wanted to be manumitted; 8000 accepted her offer.  She gradually sold all of her lands and slaves and devoted the money to the Church and to the poor.  She followed a contemplative life and brought many to Jesus.  She was a desert mother and lived the life of a hermit for 12 years.  She became Mother Superior of a convent she founded. Similarly, her husband founded and led a cloister.

Women like St. Melania played a prominent role in the early Church.  The pagan writer Celsus writes about Christians:

… “they manifestly show that they desire and are able to gain over only the silly, and the mean, and the stupid, with women and children.”…

Where have we heard that before? The charge that Christians are ignorant has a long pedigree; Celsus wrote this between 175 and 177 AD.  Women played an enormous role in the expansion of the early Church. No doubt Trimalchio and his fellows were appalled that so many women followed Jesus, but the women had their hearts set on Heavenly treasure, not earthly pleasure.  We should do likewise.

Links

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/celsus2.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_the_Younger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyricon

http://sites.middlebury.edu/feastsandfestivals/files/2015/09/petronius-satyricon.pdf

Here is the first commandment:

“You shall have no other gods before me.” Deuteronomy 5:7

Lord Jesus explained it this way:

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” Matthew 6:24

When in church, I often hear people describe themselves as ‘liberal Christians’, or ‘conservative Christians’. Should we really talk like this?

If you are a liberal Christian, would you go against Christ’s teachings to conform to liberalism? What about conservatives? Would you do something wrong, something against your conscience, in order to be considered a good conservative?

When we attach ourselves to a group, we take on that group’s beliefs. If those beliefs or actions conflict with the teachings of our Lord, who do you choose to follow? All of our attachments are fraught with problems. Did Jesus teach ‘my country right or wrong’? Did he teach free market economics or communism? Man is a sinner, and groups are composed of men. They all make mistakes.

It can get worse. Sometimes we self-censor our thoughts, thinking something is not in line with our groupthink. If you are in that situation, you have given other people the right to censor your thoughts and shut out new ideas. It’s ridiculous to maintain that one group or another has a lock on the truth. No one is right all the time. If the group you belong to does something wrong and you go along with it, that is your sin. If you do not go along with it and speak up, perhaps you will persuade others and prevent them from sinning.

Of course, for speaking up you might be ostracized from the group. Lord Jesus had an answer for that.

“He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;” Matthew 10:37

There you have it. You must put Lord Jesus ahead of your group.

That is why, when you think of yourself, you should not think of yourself as a ‘something Christian’. Just plain Christian should suffice for describing yourself.