The Christian Vanguard

It is pretty standard to say that love is unitive. Unity seems to require consent. It wouldn't sound right to say that you and I are united in this goal when I will the goal while you will we don't meet our goal. If we happen to reach that goal through force or by accident, our unity doesn't seem genuine.  So, what happens if you love a person but that person does not love you? Can it be said that real love is happening? You will not be united, so, what gives?  The issue came up recently when my I was expressing my, oh I don't know what to call it, my inner conflict on attending a friends wedding. Because things had been tense and our last few conversations (with the bride to be) were pretty much us arguing, I was kind of in doubt about the status of our friendship. Things weren't resolved and were up in the air. So, I was expressing all the anger and confusion to my friend, and I said to her, 'You know, if I don't go to the wedding, I don't think we (...

The following is a post I made on my Facebook when I was following and commenting on the last Republican debate.  I've never understood this, "Oh, but minorities are disproportionately affected [by this law] because they get caught breaking the law more often than non-minorities." Okay and? Look, say 100 people run a red light. Say that 50 are black and 50 are white. All fifty black people are caught and arrested. 25 white people are caught and arrested. Why would you be upset that all black people were caught? That is just. What is unjust is that 25 people were not caught, who happened to be white. That 25 white people were not caught does not mean black people suffered an injustice.

There is a popular argument in the Church of Christ against a certain instance of baptism found in the Catholic Church. The CoC believes that baptism should only be in the form of a full and complete immersion. The Catholic Church believes that while a full and complete immersion is a valid baptism (barring that they didn't already have previous valid baptism), there are other ways to have a valid baptism, such as a pouring on the head and maybe some sprinkling. So, the argument is a denotative one. Basically, they say that the word "baptism" literally means to dip or immerse, and so that must be the only way to practice baptism.  So, grant for the sake of argument that the word does mean to fully immerse or dip. Would it follow that this is the only mode of baptism? I'm not sure on what grounds that would be. If we want to insist that we should only use words and understand them because of their etymological roots, then this is a poor principle. There are many w...

Much has already been said about whether or not Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Why another drop in the ocean? Because I haven't seen anyone make this point, or at least explicitly make this point, and so that justifies me adding to the noise. That point is that the distinction between de re and de dicto is relevant here.  Take the following syllogism: 1. Mary Jane believes Spider-Man is a hero 2. Spider-Man is Peter Parker  The temptation is to conclude that  3. Mary Jane believes that Peter Parker is a hero But this would not be true if Mary Jane does not know that Spider-Man is Peter Parker. So how do we account for this? We do so by making the semantic distinction between de re and de dicto. De re means "of the thing" and de dicto  means "of what is said." (3) follows from (1) and (2) on the de re  interpretation, but not on the de dicto .  For example, take the proposition, "Adrian believes that someone is a fr...

Extra credit was offered to students in my Physical Anthropology class for attending a Spirituality Panel. This was the same panel that I was on just a few years ago , so it was a joy to be there again, even if it wasn't me up there speaking. So here is the write up I had to turn in for my class, and here is video of me posing questions to the Hindu and Atheist panelists. The event ended up in the school newspaper. 

There is this common saying that once you cease desiring a thing, you will then obtain it. A friend recently told me that I will finally have a girlfriend when I stop looking for one. This seems paradoxical. Take some other desire, like the well-being of your child. Then, some maniac who likes to see you suffer tortures your child because he will get the response desired from you. However, when he sees that once you become indifferent to your child's well-being, he stops torturing your child. So, what is the right thing here to do? In the same way, there is a sense in which pursuing marriage and pursuing a relationship is a good thing, like pursuing the well-being of your child is a good thing, and so the refusal to pursue that good is an immoral thing to do. One difference that can be appealed to here is that one has a duty to your child, but not a duty to pursuing a relationship, so the dilemma doesn't exist in not wanting to want to be in a relationship (whoa...meta). O...

There is a sense in which we wanted to share experiences with friends. It isn't so much that we want conformity, but unity. Conformity may be something like watching a TV show while you are at your house and he is at his, and then you text about it. You two are conforming to the same habits and same tasks. However, when there is unity, you are sharing a screen, you are sitting next to each other, and perhaps even sharing a meal. Unity is a perfected form of conformity. How strange would it be if I invited you over to watch a program and I told you to watch in the living room while I watched in my bedroom? You would think there was a serious disconnect there, and you would question why I invited you over in the first place.  So it is with friends in general. Friends do not desire just conformity, but unity. It makes me wonder about the quality of my friendships, or I guess the quality of friend that I am to them. While I do have this general desire to do things with friends, I ...