Friday, April 22, 2011

Crucifixion helps make meaning of pain in church, world

Crucifixion helps make meaning of pain in church, world by Jamie L. Manson

The author is reducing his death to a political act. Don't ignore the salvic implications of it. One can still reject the scandal of an angry God who demands the blood of his own Son as an act of atonement without reducing Good Friday to just another martyrdom.

Jesus came to experience something that he could not experience in any other way. Looking at the Gospels together shows what that was.

Start with the Last Supper and the promise to not drink of the fruit of the vine until He does so in the Father's kingdom. Then move forward to John's Gospel where He said, "I thirst" and was given wine or vinegar, which he drank. He either than became an unworthy servant or what happened just prior to His thirst was salvic.

The synoptic gospels simply deny what John witnessed by saying that He was prevented from getting wine by those who wanted to wait to see if Elijah came for him - however John is fairly clear - although the meaning of the paradox has been lost.

The question becomes, why did Jesus cry out for Elijah as the suffering servant? John answers that question too.

When He said "Woman, behold your son - John, behold your mother," he was abandoning his divine origins - which Mary had told him of ("And she kept all these things in her heart") as well as his mission (He did not command John to baptize all nations, but to take care of his grandmother - John was son of Zebedee and Salome - Joseph's daughter). Picture the reaction of Mary to this. It likely broke her spirit and any emotion support she had provided to Jesus on the cross was lost in a torrent of tears and likely a turning away. Without this support, Jesus could finally be crushed as the sinner is crushed - causing him to cry out in despair to Elijah - not in a fulfillment of prophesy but as an authentic act of grief.

This clearly puts the locus of salvation not on bloody atonement, but on the atonement of the spirit - where Jesus shared the separation from God the way mankind does in a world of sin.

Of course, the implications of this for morality are profound, since it points to a humanistic rather than a theistic formulation. If morality is for man, a version of natural law where homoesexuals are "disordered" is clearly not in keeping with God's will. Just the opposite - as is the Church's prior fetish with adolescent masturbation. If one need no longer fear Hell for violating "God's rights" when a possibly fatal pregnancy presents itself, the decision to allow an indirect, or even a direct, abortion in Phoenix can be seen in a much different light.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Rep. Ryan's Budget

Rep. Ryan's Budget by Michael Sean Winters

This budget will score points for Ryan in GOP land, but it is as dead in the Senate as Obama's budget was in the House. Unless the GOP can pick up 13 Senate seats in 2012, with 26 possible, it can't dictate terms. As it is, they may lose seats due to Tea Party challenges.

It is a bit irresponsible for Ryan to hang his hat on repealing health care reform, since doing so undos valuable fixes to Medicare that put it on the road to solvency. His major objection appears to be that the funding fixes are one big step toward VAT funding, or something similar like a Business Receipts Tax as proposed by Lawrence B. Lindsey. While the entire fiscal establishment is looking at such a broad based tax as a solution, Ryan is going the other way. This is a great way to get moderate Republicans and Democrats to roll him on every issue.

It is a bit early to worry about Medicare and Medicaid in the long term, considering that Ryan is correct in the need for a major overhaul in the Affordable Care Act. This is not the case because mandates are unconstitutional or even unpopular, although the latter enters into it. It is because they are inadequate and are not likely to be raised in the face of pre-existing condition reforms which may well cause people to drop insurance coverage until they get sick. We are not sure how consumers will react, but if it becomes clear that they are economically rational, the health insurance industry's stock price will tank before most policies are cancelled, leading to a bailout by the Federal government and a defacto single-payer system funded by a broad based payroll or consumption tax. The other alternative is to enact a public option as part of deal to drop patient protections, with funding done in the same way.

When funding the next round of reform is settled, funding the shortfalls in Medicare and Medicaid will likely be settled as well.

We can't do this with budget cuts, even if they are masked in premium support schemes. The annual doc fix shows that Medicare provider rates will never be cut to the extent required by law (Ryan is right about that conclusion), so the only alternative really is enhanced funding. Bifurcating Medicare won't fly either, since it would likely be more expensive to fund parallel plans than can be saved in cutting benefits for younger retirees. Once that becomes clear, the GOP loses its base. Indeed, recent analysis shows that the only way that the Ryan Medicare plan might work is under the Exchange Ruberic of the ACA. Cut out the exchanges and seniors go without.

As for giving more power to the states on Medicaid, one need only look how they are coping with higher costs now to see that this is a bad idea. Provider cuts look good in the short term, but they will eventually put more people in the ER for primary care. While in the ACA transition period, that may get them coverage under federal health care reform, such a move is unsustainable in the long run. A more viable option for the states is to simply take a page from Reagan and federalize Medicaid entirely in exchange for dropping the deductibility of state income, sales and property taxes. As long as the feds develop a sound funding source for health care as a whole as part of comprehensive tax reform (which eliminates the requirement that most people file taxes at all), it is a win-win for everyone.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

String theory forces us to abandon small images of God

String theory forces us to abandon small images of God by Rich Heffern

My response:

It is not natural science that is the enemy of relgion, but psychology and religion itself. The deeper questions can't be answered in string theory. Indeed, they can't be answered at all. This is why they are great questions.

One can explain human conciousness with a combination of linguistics,
chaos theory and neuroscience. Whether God can exist within that formulation is an unknowable which comes down to belief, not knowledge.

Militant Atheism is actually the best proof of God. Why do militant atheists bother? At the deepest of levels, they bother because they love other people and don't want to see them abused by religion. One could explain that as a biological quirk or one can posit that it is God that gives them this concern for others.

Love is either a trick of biology, a viral idea or a driving force that we can never understand, but that we call God - and that Christians call the Holy Spirit. The more deeply one experiences the Spirit, the more deeply one believes in Her.