Let's talk about...

A friend recently wrote a blog about his simultaneous belief in free will and divine predeterminism. I think he is very lucid and I agree. I don't understand why so many people insist that causality does not apply to human choices, especially when humans are quite demonstrably predictable.

Among other things that seem to be contradictory on the surface, but aren't:

I think that homosexual orientation is probably not a choice. And I still think that homosexual activity is sin. I also suspect that there are probably biological contributing factors in murderers. And I still think that murder is sin. The fact that we are predisposed from conception to do evil should not be surprising to Christians; on the contrary, it should be expected! It also means we should recognize that homosexuality is not a sin so horrible we could never commit it... on the contrary, there but for the grace of God go I. Albert Mohler offers some great thoughts on the issue here, and an beneficial addition here. If you follow the links, please read the entries in their entirety.

I think much of the evidence for global warming sounds spurious. But I believe we should take significant measures to protect the environment. From what I've been told about the data gathering techniques, we only have really good data for the last 20 years or so (satellite data), ok data for the last century (a few thousand thermometers around the globe), and highly suspect data before that (ice cores from antarctica are representative of the whole planet? If I based US income figures on a IRS records entirely from New Mexico I'd be laughed out of economics!). It could be that humans are increasing the planet's temperature, but what they have now isn't going to convince people to stop driving SUV's and fund more windmills. Thousands of children developing asthma, or even dying, in the slums outside San Diego because the winds over the city cause smokestack fumes to settle over homes might just get people thinking. If we would stop wasting time, resources, and public attention on global warming debates and spend them on local warming and pollution issues, where we have no debate at all and the sick people to prove it, environmental stewardship might be a bit better served. Oh, yeah: overfishing is bad.

I think wealth redistributive school vouchers are something ethical and responsible governance demands of the government. However, it might be in the best interest of some private Christian schools to not accept them. Ponder that one for a while.

I am against subsidizing American grain (and cotton, I've recently discovered) farms, because I think it doesn't help the "family farm," it doesn't serve national security, it causes waste, and it is unbelievably cruel and heartless toward the poor farmers of the world. But I am in favor of letting multinational businesses hire foreign labor and sub-American wages. We don't need to impose a poorly thought out "fair wage" on firms to protect the welfare of poor countries, we need to stop protecting our riches and essentially hogging all the toys we aren't playing with.

I would prefer a pure monarchy over a pure democracy.

I think people like Walmart because they prefer low prices over "personal service" (I've never been able to figure out what that is, anyway. Local grocers are as likely to be grumpy as anyone else). I wish they would build a medium sized parking garage rather than a 40 acre parking lot, though.

I don't understand why the best schools try to develop children's minds, but assume they don't need well developed bodies to do it. Aristotle, Confucius, Quintillian and all the ancients understood this, so why don't we?

I was going to add something about Federal Vision, but that's a bit too controversial. Probably this would be a sign to stop.