I took a class on oil here at OSU last year, taught by a nuclear physicist and all-around energy expert, the sort of guy news agencies go to when they want to get it right on energy. Though we never discussed T. Boone Pickens in that class, our teacher’s conclusion was basically the same.

[ted id=1394]

A recent counterfeiting investigation disclosed that a man successfully passed off cheap Napa Valley wines as rare wines, and made 1.3 million dollars doing this. The bottom line: we are now a country where the stuff that average Joe can afford is top-of-the-line. And the rest of the world is by no means poor. Sure, the rest of the world is poor compared to Americans, but the rest of the world is fantastically wealthy compared to a few hundred years ago.

The third child in our family, a male high-schooler, used some of the vast sums of cash that poor high schoolers in the US have to go on a mission trip to Africa, where he then worked on an orphanage for poor Africans. Now, strictly speaking, these Africans, in Tanzania, are not really materially poor in the old-fashioned sense of the term. Everyone has enough to eat, even though their diet of rice, peppers, and scraps of beef is not all that varied. People have cell phones, even if they don’t have electricity. And everyone can afford a Coke every now and then. Poor villagers log in to their facebook accounts when they visit the big cities or when their phones are charged by the bus driver who takes everyone’s cell phone to the big city with him for charging as he makes his rounds.

Some people are of the impression that Africa is an endless hellhole of death and destruction. They are wrong. Africa is being lifted out of poverty as we are speaking, and it is being lifted out far faster than the West was, because while the West had to innovate for hundreds of years, Africa is leap-frogging through the entire process by copying the West’s most potent wealth-producers: free markets, technology, limited government, and Christianity, especially Protestant varieties. Africa today as a whole has standards of living that would seem impossibly good to Europeans three hundred years ago. Africa by 2100 will have standards of living which would amaze Americans alive today.

Like everywhere, development will continue to proceed unevenly in Africa. But in an internet-connected world, inequality will drive economic growth. I’ll give you an example. In Zimbabwe the average person nets $400 per year for all his labor. In neighboring Botswana, average income is $13,000 dollars — more by a factor of thirty. What’s the difference? It’s not race or IQ, that’s for certain. Both countries are almost entirely made up of blacks who score around 70 on IQ tests, so  prosperity isn’t genetic or the result of skill at multiple-choice logic tests. Sure, Zimbabwe has a high HIV incidence (15%), but Botswana has a whopping 25% of its population HIV-positive, so it’s not that. What is it? I’ll give you a hint: it has to do with how governments and markets work in the two countries. Zimbabweans will figure out why Botswana is doing better, copy its more successful policies, and Zimbabwe will likewise prosper.

Another example. Botswana, though economically prosperous, is in the middle of a full-blown crisis with AIDS. One quarter of its population age 15 to 49 is infected. In Senegal, on the other hand, the equivalent figure is less than 1%. Why? I don’t know. The Senegalese must be doing something different than the Botswanans. Any Botswanan with an internet connection and the ability to read in English will be able to go online and find out why in fifteen minutes. And as more and more Botswanans find out what it is that causes Senegal to have such low AIDS rates, they will decide that the high Botswanan rates are unacceptable, and they will do whatever it takes to make the necessary changes.

What I’ve described with regard to Africa will also happen everywhere else. Countries with high national debts will find out what countries with low national debts do differently, and they will imitate them. Countries with less obesity problems will becomes models for the rest. Europe, where 40% of the population has been diagnosed with some sort of mental disorder, will find out why Puerto Ricans are so happy, and then will utilize at least a little bit of what it has learned.

The internet, by making information practically free and turning everyone into a publisher, is producing a world where in every field information is easily accessible and best practices are easy to find. Julien Smith described this process in a post called “Everything is Stupid and Easy To Do.” Though not everyone has figured it out yet, we now live in a world where if you don’t know how to do something, you can simply log onto the internet, Google what you’re looking for, and then you know how to do it. All it takes to be a member of the elite is initiative.

This is the biggest economic change ever to occur in human history. We are moving toward a world of elites.

If you doubt me, here what I want you to do. Right now, find out what percentage of sub-Saharan Africans have AIDS, what their average incomes are, what their infant mortality rates are, how many Africans die each year in genocidal wars, how many have access to clean water, how many have access to internet, what the average lifespan is, literacy rates, how many people have cell phones, how many children die of malaria, what average crop yields per acre are.

Then go back in 2015 and check those stats again. Then in 2020, 2025, 2030, and 2035. Every five years there will be significant improvements in most stats for most countries. Average GDP will grow at well over 2% per annum, which means that each generation will be twice as rich as the previous one, until such time as Africa catches up.

Just wait.

Creationism and “Kinds”

One place where it is tempting to read more into the text than is there is with regard to the phrase “after (its, his their) kind(s),” which appears a number of times in the King James Version of Genesis, and therefore in the collective American consciousness:

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind . . . herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed is in itself, after his kind . . . every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind . . . the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind . . . beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind . . .

What are we to do with this phrase, “after his kind”? The New King James Version updates the language to “according to its kind,” but this only helps a little. It still doesn’t tell us what the text is talking about.

One common Young Earth Creationist (YEC) argument goes something like this. “The Bible tells us that God created each thing according to its kind. What this means is that each thing only produces more of itself. Thus, horses only produce horses, and dogs only produce dogs, and so on. Each creature is created within its particular kind, and Genesis 1 teaches these kinds are everlasting boundaries within the created order. There is change from generation to generation — kids aren’t exactly like their parents — but there is never change from category to category. The created kinds are stable.”

Finding the Baramins

Within the movement known as Creation Science, which seeks to reconstruct the study of origins on the basis of the presupposition that Genesis 1 is historically accurate, there is even a subfield known as baraminology, which seeks to study baramins, or “created kinds.”

Now, for the purposes of this post I’m not interested in whether such baramins actually do or do not exist. For purposes of this post I am not interested in whether Creation Scientists are able to discern the boundaries between these baramins. What I am interested in is whether Genesis 1 actually teaches about baramins. You might already have noticed that it is quite a leap from the English phrase “according to their kinds” to the doctrine of baramins. Let’s look at Genesis one, scanning it carefully for all instances of bara “created” and min kind:

1 In the beginning of when God bara the heavens and the earth . . .

11 God said, Let the earth be green with greenery, herb seeding forth seed, fruit tree making fruit l’mino whose seed is within it, upon the earth. And it was so.

12 The earth brought forth greenery, herb seeding seed l’minehu, and tree making seeding whose fruit is in l’minehu, and God saw that it was good. . . .

21 God blessed the massive sea-dragons, and every living animal which swarms the seas l’minehem, and every winged bird l’minehu. And God saw that it was good. . . .

24 Then God said, Let the earth bring forth the living animal l’minah, cattle and reptile and beast of the earth l’minah. And it was so.

25 God made the beast of the earth l’minah, and the cattle l’minah, and and whatever crawls on the ground l’minehu. God saw that it was good.

We may note a few things. First, we note that the word baramin occurs nowhere in the Hebrew text, which is just as well, because baramin doesn’t mean anything in Hebrew. Second, the word kind occurs after the prefix lamed and before a pronominal suffix. Thus, the formula for the expression is:

lamed + (his, her, its) + min

The preposition lamed is usually equivalent to the English, “to,” “for,” or “of.” So are these various compound words statements about the reproductive boundaries of the created kinds? It would be hard to get there just from the construction lamed + his, her, its, their + min. There is nothing in the literal construction of the words themselves that suggests a doctrine of permanent biological kinds. To say that “God created all the various kinds of mammals” is an entirely different matter from dealing with the genetic boundaries between the animals.

Parallels

So the etymology of the phrase “according to their kinds” does not suggest anything like what is commonly heard in Creation Science circles. But maybe there is something to the construction lamed + noun + pronominal suffix which suggests immutable divisions. For that, we will need to find parallel passages with similar constructions. Thankfully, we don’t have to go very far. Just as Genesis spends much of its first chapter teaching about how the various sorts of animals came to be, the next forty chapters, and especially chapters two through eleven, spend much of their time relating how the various sorts of people came to be. While the origins of animals are dealt with in a day-by-day creation narrative, the origins of the various peoples is dealt with in a generation-by-generation genealogical history. The one in Genesis ten ends like so:

<blockquote>31 These are the sons of Shem, according to their clans [l'mishpechotam], according to their langauges [lilshonotam], in their lands [b'artsotam], according to their ethnicities [l'goyeham].

32 These are the clans of the sons of Noah according to their generations (or “origin narratives”)  l’toldotam], in their ethnicities [b'goyehem]. And from these the ethnicities [haggoyim] were divided in the earth after the deluge.</blockquote>

This is basically a gold mine of parallel constructions. We see the construction lamed + noun + pronominal suffix used with the noun mishpachot “clans,” lashon “language,” goyim, “ethnicities,” and whatever the noun toldot means. The context also suggests that the construction bet + noun + pronominal suffix is synonymous in meaning to lamed + noun + pronominal suffix. This second construction is used with artsot “lands” and goyim “ethnicities.”

Let’s survey what this means. In the case of clans, our construction is used to denote the various categories of people who emerge by natural reproductive processes and are then divided by clan divisions, which are certainly not biologically permanent divisions. On the other hand, the same construction is also used for “languages,” which in the Genesis 11 account represent a division which God created from supernaturally scratch of his own volition. In short, the use of the framework lamed + noun + pronominal suffix to denote categories says nothing one way or the other about whether these categories are permanently unmixable.

Conclusion

Genesis 1 definitely teaches that God created the various kinds of creatures, that God has placed these creatures under the authority of mankind, and that the existence of these various kinds is a good thing. Genesis 1 does not, however, teach anything one way or the other about the biological fixity or variability of these kinds. Placing much stock in the notion that “according to their kinds” is a statement about the nature of genetic variability is simply a matter of wishful thinking, of reading more into the text of scripture than is there.

For those who speak English, one important cultural point of departure is the King James Version of the Bible. This is still true for people who do not use the KJV, because it has seeped so deeply into our cultural understanding and has so influenced subsequent versions that some sort of contact with it is inevitable. The KJV has a very traditional translation:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

But for all but a very few Christians, the KJV is only one of several points of reference for understanding the Bible. Another important point of reference is the Masoretic Hebrew Text, which reads (I’m transliterating):

bereshit bara elohim et hashamayim w’et ha’arets

The word bereshit is in the construct form, and, just as in Jeremiah 28:1, its basic meaning is “In [the] beginning of.” The rest of the verse is bara elohim et hashamayim w’et ha’arets which is grammatically pretty simple. You can translate it “God created the heavens and the earth,” or “God created sky and land.” But if you put these two parts of the sentence together, you get something that is truly odd:

In (the) beginning of [of what?] God created the heavens and the earth.

The translators of the King James Version, following the precedent of Jerome’s Vulgate, simply ignore the construct state (the “of”) and translate the verse simply “In the beginning God created . . .” And this is in and of itself not all that bad. The goal of biblical translation is first and foremost to get the story into the hands of the audience; capturing grammatical details is secondary.

But we can’t simply obscure an important feature of the very first word of the Bible. What are we to do. A number of commentators, starting as early as the Middle Ages, have suggested that the construct state exists in order to say something like: When God began to create . . .. Lately, studies in comparative Semitics have added additional evidence. Thus, if we were to translate the first few verses of Genesis from scratch, we would get something like this:

When God began to create sky and earth and the earth was welter and waste, with darkness upon the face of the deep and the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters — God said, “Let there be light!” And there was light.

This is not a bad translation, despite some alarmist (page 4 here) might say. But is it the best translation? That depends on what the purpose of the translation is.

If the purpose of the translation is simply to communicate how an early reader might have heard the first few verses of Genesis, then this might be the best sort of translation. But if the goal of the translation is to present the Bible as a whole to the reader, then this might not be the best translation. For Christian readers, for example, John 1:1 is an important parallel passage to Genesis 1:1. John 1:1 begins “In the beginning was the Word . . .”
re
If we eliminate “In the beginning” from Genesis 1:1, then readers of the Bible will not be able to see the relationship between the two passages. Can we be faithful to the grammar of the original text while still allowing the reader to see the intertextual connections in the biblical literature. I think we can, if we translate something like this:

In the beginning of [when] God created the heavens and the earth, when the earth was formless and void, with darkness on the face of the deep and the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters — God said, “Let there be light!”

As far as I can tell, this proposal covers all the bases, at least for Christian readers: it hews close to the original grammar, it sticks as close as possible to the traditionally received English text, it leaves the texts interconnections visible. If you know of any way to accomplish these goals more effectively, I would appreciate any suggestions in the comments below. If you want to read more on Genesis 1:1, see here.

And Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said, When Moses ascended on high, the serving angels said before the Holy One, Blessed Be He: “Master of the Universe, what does one born of woman have to do with us?”

He said to them, “He comes to receive Torah.”

They said before him, “A precious gift stored away, which was stored away by you nine hundred and seventy-four generations before the world was created — you want to give it to flesh-and-blood?” What is man that you remember him? And a human being, that you look out for him?

Hashem, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth, who has set your majesty above the heavens.

He said to him (the Holy One, Blessed Be He, to Moses): “Give them a reply!”

He said before him, “Master of the Universe, I am afraid that they will burn me up with the vapor which is in their mouths!”

He said to him, “Take hold of my glorious throne, and give them a reply, as it is said [this formula introduces a scripture quotation]:

holding back the face of his throne, spreading his cloud upon it

And Rabbi Nahum: He teaches that Shaddai spreads the radiance of his Shekhinah and gathers cloud-cover upon him.

He said before him, “Master of the Universe, the Torah which you give me, what is written in it?” I am HaShem your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt.

He said to them, “Did you descend to Egypt? Were you enslaved to Pharaoh? Why should the Torah be yours?”

Again, what is written in it? You shall have no other gods.

Are you among nations which worship a foreign worship [idolatry]?

Again, what is written in it? Remember the Sabbath day, to hallow it.

Do any of you do work, that you would need to rest?

Again, what is written in it? You shall not take . . .

Do you have business dealings among you?

Again, what is written in it? Honor your father and your mother.

Do you have mothers and fathers?

Again, what is written in it? You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal.

Is such emotional volatility known among you? Does the Yetzer Hara exist among you?

They promptly admitted to him (to the Holy One, Blessed be He) that it is said: HaShem, our Lord, how majestic is your name, and so forth, while He has set your glory upon the heavens is not written.

Immediately each and every one was made to love him, and they transmitted a saying to him.

As it is said: You have ascended on high, you have led captivity captive, you have taken gifts in man. In compensation for being called Man you take gifts.

Also the angel of death transmitted this word to him, as it is said: And he offered the incense, and he made atonement for the people. And it says: And he stood between the dead and the living. If it had not been told to him, would he have known it?

]]> http://fontwords.com/2012/05/15/the-ascension-of-moses/feed 0 http://fontwords.com/2012/05/15/500-words-on-michael-fishbanes-text-and-texture http://fontwords.com/2012/05/15/500-words-on-michael-fishbanes-text-and-texture#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 22:34:16 +0000 mitchell b powell http://fontwords.com/?p=6314 Michael Fishbane’s Text and Texture is a little book: 150 pages. It asks about biblical texts: what they teach, how they interact with culture, how we may reconstruct their intentions, what avenues for thought they open up. He wisely avoids trying to give an overview of those question in a general Bible-wide way, as Fishbane’s real talent is in his careful exegesis of individual passages. He teaches by example, limiting his book to eight locations and two motifs in the text. After a brief preface and introduction in which he helpfully meditates on the nature of textual production and its implications for reading the Bible, Fishbane dives right in with a look at “Narratives and Narrative Cycles”: four of them. He begins with a most controversial text: Genesis 1:1-2:4a, the seven days of creation. In it, he explores its major truth-claims, its implicit messages about the orderliness of God and his relation to his creatures, and what the first creation story means vis-a-vis the institution of Sabbath in ancient Israel. Next, Genesis up to the end of chapter 11, a section which moves on from the creation of the cosmos to the history and meaning of man, his destructive desires, and his ethnic divisions. Instead of covering the rest of Genesis, his third section focuses specifically on the Jacob Cycle, focusing on the careful techniques that the final editor of the text used to arrange his materials and give an underlying unity to Genesis 25:19-35:22. He closes with a discussion of Exodus 1-4 and what it says about prophetic calling, the nature of atonement, and God’s relationship to man.

Part two of the book, “Speeches and Prayers,” deals first with Deuteronomy 6:20-25, unpacking the vast significance of those six verses which deal with the difficulty and promise of intergenerational transfer of knowledge. He then moves to Psalm 19, which provides a poetic look into the relationship between “Creation, Torah, and Hope” as understood by the Psalmist. In Jeremiah 20:7-12, we see the prophetic struggle to cope with the calling that is thrust upon him. Psalm 122 tells us about how a pilgrim to Jerusalem understood his relationship to God and sacred space. The book ends with an examination of the Eden motif in scripture (it appears more than one might imagine) and the Exodus motif, which shaped the self-understanding of Israel and allowed them to reinterpret later challenges as variations, some startling, on the familiar theme of bondage and deliverance in Israel.

The goal of this whirlwind tour is not so much to teach a particular understanding or even to solve particular problems, as it is to guide the curious on a quest to understand the Bible as a literary document and as a collection of literary documents. Despite treating such an ambitious goal in a comparatively short space, Fishbane excels.

]]> http://fontwords.com/2012/05/15/500-words-on-michael-fishbanes-text-and-texture/feed 0 http://fontwords.com/2012/05/15/walk-like-an-egyptian-tax-exemptions-for-religious-organizations-are-a-trap http://fontwords.com/2012/05/15/walk-like-an-egyptian-tax-exemptions-for-religious-organizations-are-a-trap#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 05:04:17 +0000 mitchell b powell http://fontwords.com/?p=6312 If the lines of the Bible are marvelous, what can be found between the lines is truly mind-blowing. Take the example of a passage that is eerily similar to today:

20 And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, because the Egyptians, every man, sold their fields, because the famine prevailed over them. So the land became Pharaoh’s. 21 And as for the people, he removed them to cities, from one end of the borders of Egypt to the other. 22 Only the land of the priests he did not buy, because the priests had a portion from Pharaoh, and ate their portion which Pharaoh gave them. This is why they did not sell their lands.

Let’s count the similarities. First, the situation in Pharaoh is one in which a government has recently centralized, a consolidation of power made possible by lean times. (In our case, the Great Depression.) Second, the centralized state makes its power known by confiscating twenty percent of revenues and attaching taxes to land. This is the case here too, is it not? Our federal government confiscates about twenty percent of our income, once you add together direct taxes plus what it takes through the hidden inflation tax.

Further, both Pharaoh and the modern state claim to be the real landlords. In Pharaoh’s case, the state claimed ultimate sovereignty over land by officially claiming landlord status and then reducing all the Egyptians to share-croppers. In the case of the U.S. today, the state still pays lip service to land ownership. But riddle me this: what do you call the guy you have to pay rent to, who will kick you out of your house if you don’t pay up? That’s right — landlord. Thanks to property taxes, the modern state functions as a landlord. It demands rent in return for its land, and through zoning regulations it tells you what you can do with your land. Any talk about private property in land is nothing more than a cover for the fact that we are all the states renters. The person we call “landlord” is merely one of the government’s renters who is sub-letting his place. Rental laws also tell him what sort of sub-leases are and are not acceptable to the land’s ultimate master: the state.

But in both the case of Pharaoh and the case today, there is an exemption. Land owned by the state church, the Egyptian priesthood, received special exemption. Why did Pharaoh grant this exemption? Probably for two reasons. First, he probably had some level of fear of messing with the Egyptian religious system in which he’d been raised. Second, by subsidizing the priesthood he could assure that they would remain docile and adjust their religious teachings to suite him. And the ancient Egyptian priesthood was nothing if not loyal: it made the Pharaoh an honorary god and worshiped him, providing religious cover for the state’s activities. This is particularly important because religion is the most dangerous rival to the state for men’s hearts: it locates ultimate meaning in something outside realpolitik.

Today we see a similar situation. Clergy today are allowed to live in parsonages on which they do not pay taxes, are allowed to be exempt from social security, and are allowed a host of other privileges such as extra visitation rights at hospitals. In exchange, they are muzzled. When a church applies for tax exempt status, it is told that it is not permitted to speak on political topics. Churches sell their birthright as the most powerful institution for social change for tax breaks. In churches were I have attended, flags have been commonplace in the pulpit. July 4th brings with it patriotic songs sung straight from the hymn-book: the state is given its proper adoration among the spiritual songs. Attenders are exhorted to pay their taxes, but the state is never held accountable to God’s standards, with the occasional exception for a one-time sermon on abortion. They have excepted muzzles.

The church I currently attend is the only counter to this trend that I can remember. July 4th gets no special recognition. Though the church is not a political institution, scripture texts which touch on “political” matters are not censored. This is a rare exception, and probably only exists due to this church being in a long line of churches which resist state evil: Mennonites. The rest do not.

What would it take for the church to take up its prophetic mantle and hold governments accountable for doing justice in our cities? Either of two things. First, a massive awakening to the nature of God’s this-wordly demands. Second, cutting off the tax favors. The sooner the U.S. government cuts off the special favors, the better. A church which does not receive preferential treatment from the state is one which is does not give preferential treatment to the state.

Until then, we still dwell in Egypt, and our children are still being killed off, though in numbers the ancient Egyptians could not have imagined.

]]> http://fontwords.com/2012/05/15/walk-like-an-egyptian-tax-exemptions-for-religious-organizations-are-a-trap/feed 7 http://fontwords.com/2012/05/14/on-presuppositionalists-and-postcolonialists-and-where-they-both-can-go-wrong http://fontwords.com/2012/05/14/on-presuppositionalists-and-postcolonialists-and-where-they-both-can-go-wrong#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 00:12:19 +0000 mitchell b powell http://fontwords.com/?p=6308 Presuppositionalists, a varied group of people including such names as Cornelius Van Til, John Frame, Greg Bahnsen, Gordon Clark, R. J. Rushdoony, Francis Schaeffer, and Gary North, have contributed a great deal to the Christian world. In particular, they have helped Christians think about presuppositions, philosophy, politics, economics, and even art criticism from within a biblical worldview. Especially with regard to their work on the circular nature of worldviews and the inherent problems in creating a particular conceptual space called “religion,” they have been at the forefront of reexamining the relationships between faith and action, Christianity and Judaism, and epistemology and faith.

It is also true, however, that presuppositionalists are human beings rather than gods, and so they are subject to the same weaknesses of all human beings. For example, Rushdoony, everyone’s favorite punching bag, was not only an incredibly incisive cultural commentator, but he was also capable of so naively interpreting (if we may trust Richard John Neuhaus) that he believed in geocentrism. Others have listed the foibles of various Recons elsewhere. I won’t belabor the issue.

One notable characteristic of some presuppositionalists, especially the Clarkian sorts, is to make frequent reference to the laws of logic. Sometimes, as in Greg Bahnsen’s classic debate with atheist big-wig Gordon Stein, the reference to logic is spot-on. But more often — and this is true not only of presuppositionalists but of others as well — bringing laws of logic into the discussion is a signal that one person is simply going to try to bludgeon the other into a corner, often in an arbitrary fashion, instead of having a broad discussion concerning all the available sources of evidence. In short, references to logic are often a sign of a “silver-bullet” style of argumentation. (As an aside, references to logical fallacies often partake of the same shortcomings.)

The biggest failure of presuppositionalists, on those occasions when they do fail, is usually an attempt to narrowly impose a simplistic approach on issues. But this failure does not uniquely belong to presuppositionalists. It is also the sort of things that others can fall into, including those working within the framework of post-colonial analysis. To the rabid presupper, all things can be answered with a Bible verse and a few syllogisms. To the rabid post-colonialist, all things can be answered with a quick unsupported reference to power dynamics.

We have seen such a thing recently in the context of a spat because a Christian who leans hard on post-colonial theory and a Christian who leans hard on presuppositionalist theory (links here and here). In this case, the presuppositionalist writes an entire post in defense of the so-called law of non-contradiction, a law which, in my experience, is so blindingly obvious when it should be applied and so utterly unhelpful when it should not that it is generally better not named. In it, he criticizes our postcolonialist friend without naming him or linking to him, offering the following reason:

(I’m neither linking to the comments, nor naming the person, because this is not about personalities; it is about truth, logic, and reason.)

Our postcolonialist friend, schooled in the study of power relations and familiar with the ways in which the culturally dominant maintain cultural dominance, knows that criticizing someone without acknowledging their existence can amount to a fantastically condescending show of superiority, especially when coupled with such phrases as “not about personalities.” All truth, after all, is about personalities, truth, logic, and reason being attributes that the personalities involved (hopefully) have. And so our postcolonialist friend responded with a blistering post entitled “In Which I Not So Passive Agressively Talk About Truth and Rationality.”

In it, he descended to the level of penis jokes as a means of getting to truth, deriding the formalizing of logic as “THE LAWS OF PHALLUS,” and then, in a splendid show of irony, accusing his presuppositionalist debate partner of “emotional rants” and accusing his dialogue partner of latent racism. Latent racism, of course, is one of the cheapest accusations anyone can use in today’s discourse, because it is a big accusation and requires no show of evidence at all. Rod simply announced that appeals to “objectivity” are Euro-centric and considered that adequate demonstration enough. But he should provide some evidence of that. Then again, perhaps my notion of “evidence” is Euro-centric and exposes me for a latent racist . . .

The exchange concluded, on the presuppositionalist side, with a post in which our presuppositionalist friend defends his approach and points out that the postcolonialist is dealing in falsehoods and resentment. The postcolonialist concluded his treatment in a short and angry blurb in which he denounces the presuppositionalist as a worshipper of Greek philosphers, and calls his dialogue partner a “ignorant fundamentalist troll,” and declares “I won’t bother linking to the post.” This is a strange contradiction from a man who considers such speech “passive agressive,” but then again, Rod has informed us that he considers the law of non-contradiction and other attempts at rationality to be racist and Euro-centric.

Bottom line: angry narrow-minded thinking can be found in all sorts of circles, including groups not generally considered “fundamentalist,” like postcolonial theorizers.

(Nothing in this post is intended to disparage the word of genuine scholarly types, such as Daniel Boyarin, who make use of post-colonial theory further real dialogue and understanding.)

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