It's a Hard Life for the Humanities

A few links for those pursuing (or having previously pursued) the difficult road of a terminal degree in any field of the humanities, and I know a few of you read this blog.

Stanley Fish discusses the future of "humanist educators." The punchline:

It looks like the only way humanist educators and their students are going to get to the top is by hanging on to the coattails of their scientist and engineering friends as they go racing by.

Reasons to avoid grad school, mostly oriented toward humanities degrees. I like that "your office is gonna suck" is on the list.

If you do go, though, here are some blogs you might want to check out.

Speculative Fiction?

WANTED: Interdisciplinary Starship Pilot

Robin Hanson wonders about what kids are learning. In particular, are students focusing too much on their own disciplines, consequently losing the ability to think in an interdisciplinary fashion? Are students losing their ability to deal with deeper, meta- questions?  And, as Hanson brings up, if they are is this necessarily a bad thing?

I’d like to believe that we are in fact doing our students and the nation a disservice by marginalizing such skills. Unfortunately, I simply have little evidence with which to support such a judgment. [...] Just how many people should be thinking about what problems are important and why?

Bryan Caplan wonders where new jobs are really going to come from (he originally mused on this topic back in July). This time he considers Scott Sumner's answers:

Here's what I think most people still want:
1.  A bigger and nicer house, with granite counter-tops.
2.  More restaurant meals.
3.  More fun vacations.
That means we need more construction workers, and granite miners (quarriers?)  We need more cooks and waiters.  We need more hotel receptionists and maids.  More people to work on Carnival cruise ships.  I think our workforce is skilled enough to fill those jobs. 

I'd love to hear some reader thoughts and predictions on these topics. What will the jobs of the future be? And what sort of schooling will students need to do them? Should we be devoting more of our wealth to interdisciplinary schooling and liberal arts, and if so is the reason for business or pleasure?

News Bulletin: C.S. Lewis Not an Evangelical, Therefore Dangerous

Use caution when reading this man's works.

My friend Gabe pointed me (via a tweet by John Piper: "Kevin DeYoung is more reliable than C.S. Lewis. Yes he is. Not an overstatement.") to this this article by Pastor Kevin DeYoung. DeYoung argues that Lewis' Mere Christianity is a bit *too* mere:

Later Lewis says that “Christ was killed for us” and “His death has washed out our sins” but “any theories we build up as to how Christ’s death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary” (59). This impatience of careful thinking about the atonement is bad enough, but then Lewis goes on to make clear that he rejects the understanding of the atonement evangelicals (and the Bible I would say) find most central and most glorious. [...]

He does believe in a substitutionary theory of the atonement, but he rejects penal substitution. He admits that penal substitution is not quite as silly as it once sounded, but he still does not accept it. Instead, he argues that Christ pays a debt (which is true), but not as a punishment for our sakes.

DeYoung's extra-biblical terminology strongly influences his worldview (a pretty good sign that he is a mechanic, and thus thinks rather differently than a mystic like Lewis), so much that it gives him tunnel vision as to what Lewis could actually be saying. A careful reading of Lewis' statements about penal substitution makes clear that he is not at all familiar with the idea of a covenantal representative, and without covenant headship penal substitution *is* is silly idea. 

DeYoung's second complaint is about Lewis' inclusivism:

Lewis, by contrast, believed in what we might roughly call “anonymous Christians.” That is, people may be saved through Christ without putting explicit faith in Christ.

There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For example, a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain other points. (178)

No matter how much we may like Lewis, this is simply a profound misunderstanding of the Spirit’s mission (and a rejection of John 14:6). 

DeYoung could use as prooftexts references like "no man comes to the Father except through me," and then logically argue that it must have certain implications for those who have never heard of Jesus. Lewis, on the other hand, might cite as prooftexts statements like "just as condemnation for all people came through one transgression, so too through the one righteous act came righteousness leading to life for all people," and then make his case from there.

The point is that they are both prooftexting, a use of Scripture that looks like something Christ and the apostles did but is actually quite wrong, and they are both extrapolating from Scripture, meaning neither position is unambiguously supported. They're treating their personal conclusions as if they were premises, which any logic teacher should cringe at. And Lewis would argue, I think rightly, that the salvation of a person does not depend on which logical thread a believer finds more convincing. (And just in case you are wondering, I tend to disagree with Lewis on this point. But what DeYoung presents is a poor argument against it.)

So I'd say they're on equally reliable intellectual footing, but where Lewis interprets those he considers wrong with charity, DeYoung sees errors (and is harsh with the one making it) both when they are present and when they aren't. I'll stick with Lewis.

Heaven and Hell, Not So Much?

Turns out it's paved with crappy asphalt like every other road.

Slacktivist is not convinced that Hell works the way we think it does (if it exists at all?).

These three passages aren't the only basis for the belief in Hell as eternal fiery torment, but they provide the strongest evidence to support the idea. And as you can see, this evidence is not really that strong. These passages certainly don't provide any sort of basis for the idea that Hell ought to be a central or essential core belief that shapes our faith, or our concept of God, or our concept of one another or of the meaning of our lives. That's not what these stories are about.

On the other hand, heaven doesn't sound all that heavenly:

Take away every sinful attitude, every capacity for contempt, disdain and disregard and everything that might mute or muzzle conscience. Then take away every physiological or psychological impediment to memory and empathy. Do you see what I mean by terrifying? [...]

And this is Heaven we're talking about -- not Hell, not purgatory. This is our common notion of reward, not of judgement, and yet it seems as though it might be judgement enough -- an almost unbearable judgement, survivable only if accompanied by an overwhelming and overflowing mercy.

Speculation, only speculation. A guess and a wild guess at that.

 If you're looking for more anti-fundamentalist thinking (and not just Christian, for that matter), you might consider watching The Man from Earth.

Looks Like

Just a quick bit that I'd never really noticed before. For those of you of a Reformed and Presbyterian background, hopefully this will make you laugh.

Have you ever noticed that Tedd and Paul Tripp (pictured below)

Look an awful lot like Mario and Luigi?

 Spooky.

Monologue

Here are a few links on communicating from the podium.

First, a speech without a slide show. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., did not need a PowerPoint presentation to make his audience see what he wanted them to see.

We all know MLK, Jr., was an expert at using words as a paintbrush. Seeing it in graphic form, though, shows just how frequently he resorted to visual language to hammer home his point. So next time you have to give a PowerPoint presentation or an address on the state of the country, remember: Think pink. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

When it comes to using PowerPoint, then, do it right or not at all.

The organisation makes . . . again, shall we just say the sort of consumer goods you and I use every day. We had already LEARNT, as evidenced by an eye-straining array of coloured graphics, that the MARGINS in the grommets division had been LEVERAGED by a FULL THREE PERCENTAGE POINTS, while TURNOVER in bent widgets . . .

Enough. The whole bloody thing took up 55 minutes of my life, as I can testify, because my watch was easily the most fascinating object in the room.

Interested in examples of good speeches? Here you go.