Why we never go off topic

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Why we never go off topic

Posted by Gareth McCaughan on 2005-02-12
"Quasin" wrote:

> Besides, it's not religious per se.  Totally off topic, mostly.  You
> guys NEVER go off topic, right?  :)

Well, of course not. I mean, going off topic would be like
taking a wrong turning on the road, like I did once and ended
up making an hour-long detour late at night on my bicycle.
That was after a concert I'd been singing in -- a Christmas
concert, whose biggest item was a rather nice piece by
Gerald Finzi called "In terra pax". It's a setting of a
poem by Robert Bridges, which quotes from Luke's nativity
narrative. Some Christians seem to regard Luke as the most
trustworthy of the evangelists, but he always gives me the
impression of being a bit too credulous, a bit too willing
to accept what any of his sources have told him. But then
I'm rather a cynic, and maybe cynicism isn't a good attribute
for a Christian to have. I suppose it all depends on your
view of human nature; though perhaps it's odd that cynicism
concerning the authors of the Bible is most strongly decried
by the same people who are most likely to talk about the
depravity of people generally, namely the Calvinists. After
all, "total depravity" is one of the famous "Five Points".
It's only just occurred to me that the mnemonic "TULIP"
for those five points must be partly the result of the
fact that the Synod of Dort took place in Holland, the
home of tulip-mania. There's a very nice short account
of the great tulip bubble in Michael Pollan's book "The
botany of desire", which describes the interesting influences
plant biology and human culture have had on one another
by looking at a few examples, such as tulips and marijuana
(hmm, another Dutch connection) and potatoes. It turns out
that McDonalds will -- or at least would, at the time of
writing -- use only one particular kind of potato to make
their french fries. Or "freedom fries", as I understand
they have to be called now in the USA. Apparently the proud
French tradition of liberty, and the close connections
between the French and American revolutions, are of no
importance compared to the ghastly treasonous behaviour
of the French in not backing Bush's illicit and immoral
war against Iraq. I think the real problem is that France
is (from Bush's perspective) terribly left-wing, and in
the USA these days relations between left and right have
degenerated almost to the point of outright hatred, at
least in some circles. For instance, a lot of right-wing
commentators in the USA are (apparently seriously) suggesting
that everyone on the left wants to destroy the USA and is
in league with Islamic terrorists to achieve that aim.
Insane. Apparently it never occurs to them that violent
conservative religious extremists might not in fact be
natural allies for lefties. It's a pity that Islam tends
to get seen only in terms of its extremists; it would be
interesting to know whether something similar is true
of Christianity in (say) Hindu or Muslim countries. Being
part of a powerless minority sometimes leads to extremism
and even violence, of course, which makes it impressive
that the earliest Christians don't seem to have gone down
that road. I suppose that's because there's so much
near- (or outright?) pacifism right at the beginning
of Christianity. I take it that when Jesus said that
he came to bring "not peace but a sword" he was speaking
figuratively and referring to the controversy that
there would inevitably be over his teaching. Interesting,
then, that the conversions recorded in Acts mostly seem
to be of whole families. This, of course, offers the
strongest argument in favour of the baptism of infants:
that arguably something similar was done in the very
earliest days. But the NT texts in question aren't
explicit about infants being baptized, so this is really
an argument from silence. Arguments from silence aren't
always as weak as is sometimes supposed, of course; it's
basically down to Bayes' theorem, just like every other
sort of inference. The key question is how unlikely it is
that the author would have been silent had there been
any grounds for not being. To establish that, you might
need to look at all sorts of apparently irrelevant things,
like the social context and the prevailing literary
conventions. Usually, though, what's apparently irrelevant
really *is* irrelevant, and should therefore be avoided.
And that's why we never go off topic.