The Crowhill Journal

Mrs. C and I have been watching Vikings Valhalla, which is a pretty interesting show on Netflix. It takes place during a very fraught time for the west, as Christian and pagan forces were vying for control of the lands around the North Sea.

One character, Olaf Haraldsson, is a convert to Christianity, and a pretty evil fellow. The writers (not unexpectedly) seem to rejoice in any opportunity to make the pagans look good and the Christians look bad, and Olaf provides a lot of material.

In the episode we watched last night, Olaf was in Russia, and an Orthodox bishop met him at the docks, blessed him, and told him to continue his important work (trying to bring Christianity to the pagan lands).

[While the show does have some actual historical characters, it’s not meant to be historically accurate.]

The viewer doesn’t know if the bishop is aware of Olaf’s bad deeds, but it got me wondering whether the bishop would bless Olaf even if he did.

Think about it. Christians are being slaughtered by Vikings. Western civilization is in peril. There are some blood-curdling quotes from these times where people spoke of dead bodies filling the cities, the roads, and the countryside, and wondered if Christianity was going to survive.

In that situation, maybe you want to promote the “Christian” guy even if he’s a cruel bastard.

This brings up a long-standing debate among Christians. Some would say that it’s precisely through suffering that Christians conquer and that supporting some rascal like Olaf to stop the slaughter is the wrong way to go. It’s better to die as honest men.

That’s easier to say when you’re living a peaceful, affluent life, and not watching people you love getting slaughtered.

I’m not taking sides in that argument, just pointing out that the show brings the question into sharp focus.

I’ve been doing a fair amount with ChatGPT recently, and I do say please and thank you. Not because I think it has feelings, but because I think it’s important to be the kind of person who says please and thank you.

It seems analogous to the objection Puritan preachers had against bear baiting and dog fights and such. It wasn’t so much that they were concerned for the animals. They were concerned for the people who were watching.

This post isn’t going to make me any friends, but I suspect some of you have wondered the same thing.

Mrs. C and I dance a lot, and at one of our regular dances, the DJ plays videos of the song along with the music.

One thing is startlingly clear. There were a fair number of famous singers in the 60s and 70s who were not all that attractive.

The internet makes it fairly obvious that there are a lot of beautiful, talented people in the world. So why were relatively unattractive people the big stars in the past? (At least in disproportionate numbers. Some of them were quite beautiful.)

1. They didn’t care that the stars weren’t all that attractive. (Damned unlikely.)
2. There really were fewer beautiful, talented people back them. (Maybe, but hard to believe.)
3. Most people thought of chasing stardom as an illegitimate or immoral pursuit, so the pool of people who were willing to become stars was limited.

What do you think?

This is an old and tiresome topic that came up in a conversation yesterday, and it led me in a strange mental direction.

The question comes in various forms.

• Is religion necessary for people to be good?
• Can you have a system of ethics without assuming the existence of God?
• Do atheist ethical systems make sense? Etc.

There’s an old saying to the effect that when a question doesn’t admit of a ready answer, maybe there’s something wrong with the question. I think there’s some of that here.

For example, “is religion necessary?” might be akin to asking “are emotions necessary?” That is, man is an essentially religious animal, just as he is an emotional animal, so asking about “man without religion” is somewhat of a broken question. You could argue that there’s no such thing as “man without religion.”

Experience seems to show that as traditional religions fade, other things become more religious — as if we’re going to have our religion one way or another. It’s either going to be considered and thoughtful and organized, or it’s going to seep out in strange and ugly ways, but it’ll be there whether you like it or not.

This is not to say that every individual is religious. That would simply make the word “religion” too loose to have any real meaning. So the question has to be more precise. E.g., the question “can a non-religious culture be good?” might boil down to “is a non-religious culture stable?” You could also ask, “can a non-religious person be good?”

In either event, a broad form of the question isn’t very useful.

When it comes to God, it gets even more difficult.

I used to be very frustrated with Jordan Peterson’s waffling over whether he believes in God. It seems like a simple enough question, but the more I’ve listened to his on-going struggle, the more I’ve understood where he’s coming from.

What does “belief” mean?

For example, a person might claim that he doesn’t believe other minds exist, but does he really believe that? That’s a developmental stage that every human goes through (about age 2, I think). It’s hard-wired into our brains. Just because a person has watched a silly YouTube video and thinks he believes other minds don’t exist doesn’t necessarily mean he actually believes it in any meaningful sense. In other words, there is an element of belief that’s more than what you choose to say to yourself and others.

A person can say all sorts of things about what he believes, and he can mean them when he says them, but that doesn’t make them true. A person might believe he has no fear of death, but biology takes over at some point. You fear death whether you think you do or not.

Could something similar be true with God?

Also, “God” is a complicated concept. Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that “God” means 100 things, including spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable, the source of being, all-powerful, etc. If you say “does a person need to believe in God to be good,” how many of those 100 things are we talking about?

And what does “good” mean? At a minimum, it means that the person has a value system and follows it. But a value system has a hierarchy, and something has to be at the top of that hierarchy. What if one of those 100 things that define God is “the top of the value hierarchy”? It would be impossible to be “good” and not believe in a value hierarchy, so it would be impossible to be “good” and not believe in at least one of the things that defines God.

I know that sounds like a trite observation. Many of the things that define God (order, wisdom, logic, purpose) are necessary in any sensible system of any kind, so what’s the point?

The point is that I believe you’re still faced with an important question. What are all those things that are assumed in the word “good”? Make a list, then compare that list with what defines God. There will be some common elements. So in order to be “good” you have to believe in some of the things that define God.

Well … how many? At what point does that constitute “believing in God”?

Or look at it from the other direction. If someone believes that God is changeable, does that mean he doesn’t believe in God? How many of the 100 things that define God does a person have to believe in order to “believe in God”?

It’s not a simple question.

So when Jordan Peterson irritatingly asks “what do you mean by ‘good’? What do you mean by ‘believe’? What do you mean by ‘God’?” … he has a point.

I just read that Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested in Birmingham for praying silently outside an abortion clinic. That sounds like a hideous violation of her rights, but it reminds me of a conversation with a friend, years ago.

He said (in a somewhat similar context) that Christians shouldn’t be praying in public anyway, based on Mt. 6:6.

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

So what’s the fuss about?

Context is everything.

Jesus was reacting to people who were praying in public in order to get attention in a culture where prayer was considered to be a good thing. E.g., “See how holy I am?” The Pharisees weren’t praying to God. They were looking for public acclamation.

In a very different context, when it was illegal to pray to anyone other than King Darius, here’s what the prophet Daniel did.

Now when Daniel knew that the document was signed, he entered his house (now in his roof chamber he had windows open toward Jerusalem); and he continued kneeling on his knees three times a day, praying and giving thanks before his God, as he had been doing previously. (Dan. 6:10)

He prayed openly, for all to see.

I don’t think the Birmingham authorities will throw Isabel in a pit with lions, but if they do, I hope the lions behave.