Conservative Theology

Interesting things Around the Web

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:10:00 +0000

Sometimes I get lots of stuff to write about, but no time. So here's some theology stuff I wish I had time to comment on:

Richard Wiekart has his papers on the history of social Darwinism posted on his site
Harry Frankfurt on B.S.
A Kristof column about evangelicals doing social and gospel ministry
A book about one person who left Hamas and his new vision for the middle east centered around Jesus' command to love your enemies
Christian Carnival CCCXV
Doug Groothius comments on an attempt to bring Jesus into a pantheistic monism
A good discussion of the issue of gender equality and differences, and the difference between functional authority and equality
An interesting conversation on healthcare. Read the last two paragraphs by Malcolm Gladwell especially: "that's why I favor a system that is, for all its faults, incredibly dynamic; and you favor a system that, for all its faults, is incredibly good at delivering the status quo"
A lecture by Huxley on evolution and ethics
Salvador has an interesting post on quantum cosmologies

Why Food is NOT a Basic Human Right

JB — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 05:47:00 +0000

One thing that is problematic in modern public policy debates has been the expansion of what are considered "basic human rights". There are several reasons why unwarranted expansions in this area are problematic:

It muddies the water as to what is a basic human right and why they should be basic rights.
Most expansions of rights have put the government in the position of granting or removing rights, thus leading to a public perception that the government is the source of these rights.
If rights come into conflict with each other too often, then the whole notion of rights itself breaks down, leading to the loss of all of them.

The third one is the one I want to concentrate on. While it would have been more appropriate to our current concerns to say "why healthcare is not a basic human right", I thought that it would show how basic the case is if in stead I made the case why food is not a basic human right - some humans can live without health care, but no human can live without food.

So why is food not a basic human right? Because a human right cannot be something that can be produced. It must be something that is innately possible within an individual person. More to the point, for something to be a right it cannot rely on someone else for its invocation.

For example, lets look at the freedom of religion and the rights of conscience. Neither of these require anything from anybody in order for someone to express them. Now, there may be some things that must be done to ensure that other people don't abridge them, but their normal operation does not entail any other party.

Take a look at the bill of rights. These are all things that fall into one of two categories:

Tell what CANNOT be done
Tell WHAT ELSE must be done to do something

Neither of these require anything from the people for their normal function. Congress "not making any law" means that congress should get out of the business, not into the business. The right to a speedy trial, in fact, only applies if there is a trial at all. If the citizens do not wish to give a speedy trial, they can simply let them go free. Thus, in no case does congress require that any item or service be rendered to any other person. It merely restricts what restrictions can be placed, or identifies what must be done in the event that a government decides to pursue an end. But never is the government requred to pursue that end. In fact, if there were no government at all, the Bill of Rights would be followed exactly.

Nowhere in the Bill of Rights, for instance, is there a guarantee that criminals will be prosecuted. Nowhere is there a guarantee that someone will be given food. Nowhere is there a guarantee that a militia will be active.

Why not?

It's a basic feature of reality - that of limited resources.

Let's say, for instance, that we decide that having Widget X is a basic human right. Therefore, in a new amendment to the bill of rights, each human being receives at least one Widget X is a basic human right. However, let's say that, in this hypothetical example, that we have a population of 4 billion people. Then, after manufacturing 3 billion Widget X's, we run out of some resource essential for producing Widget X's. Therefore, in this scenario, 1 billion people are not being given their "basic human rights".

How, then, can it be a basic human right if there is a potential that it can't be delivered? Does that mean that we must tear heaven and earth apart looking for the missing component to ensure basic human rights? We might start that way, but soon, the economic burden of doing so will cause us to rethink this policy, and, instead one of two things will happen.

First, we might decide that it isn't a basic human right. The problem, here, is not just that there is a disagreement on what the basic human rights are, but that a right is bound up with the practical problem of delivering it. That is, rights become rights when we can deliver them, and cease being rights when we can't. Thus, no right is "basic", but rather they are all derived from our economic circumstances. Therefore, someone may argue, for any right, that our economic circumstances are different, and we should have a different set of rights. As you can see, our "rights" in this case are quickly shifting from being "basic" to being "arbitrary". And thus, even if we retain the terminology, we lose the whole concept.

Second, we might conclude that it is a basic right, but that, since there is not enough to go around, we must decide who gets the right and who doesn't. Thus, the source of the right moves from God to the government. These are no longer basic human rights, they are government-granted rights. We then have a classed system - those with rights and those without.

Thus, the rights granted in the Bill of Rights, and, I would contend, anything properly called a "right", does not depend on an economic product to deliver. That is, the right must, at least in theory, be deliverable without cost. And, as such, you can read the Bill of Rights and see that it is consistent with a situation in which no government at all exists.

Thus, food cannot be a basic human right, because there is no way for the government to guarantee that there will be enough to go around. Many countries survive on imports. If their trade relations went south, then there simply would not be enough food to go around. And declaring food a "basic right" wouldn't change that economic fact - it would simply de-value the idea of rights as a whole.

That doesn't mean that needs such as food and shelter and healthcare should never be touched by the government, it just means that the "rights" language needs to go. This is an economic decision, not a rights decision. It is a decision about allocating resources. There is always an economic end to the amount of resources which can be put to something, and, if something should count as a "basic right", it should be impervious to that resource wall.

Since that is the case in the case of food, it is even more the case in the case of healthcare. In any situation, there can always be more money applied at a problem. At some point, the money runs out. I have been the recipient of generous amounts of money, both from friends and from insurance, for the healthcare of my children. But, even with the amount spent, more could have been spent. The question is, where does it end? If it does have an end, then the decision is an economic one, not a rights one. If it did not have an end, then we would need to open up a new research department for every unknown illness encountered the moment it was encountered, and not wait for pesky things such as foundations and research grants.

Therefore, it is important for the preservation of the idea of rights, that rights not be bound up in any way with economic goods. As soon as they do, the whole notion of rights will be swept away with a giant whooshing sound.

The problem with left-wing politics is that it falls apart as soon as you assume that the world's resources are finite. The advantages of conservative politics is that the finite-ness of the world's resources are at its basic core. This is why conservatives are often considered "heartless" - what we can do in reality is more important than we might want to do if we had infinite resources. Conservatives focus on the "can" and "likely" to be done, while the liberals focus on the "wish" could be done. Conservatives aren't any less likely to help others, they are just less likely to believe that there is an endless pool of resources from which the generosity comes. And, I think, in the end, that makes us all the more thankful for the help we do receive, because we realize all of the other economic goods that the money could have alternatively been spent on. I think about this almost every day.

Steve Fuller on Theological Anthropology and Science

JB — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 06:23:00 +0000

A very interesting video by Steve Fuller on human nature. I think the Q&A session is better than the main talk, but you have to listen to the talk to understand the Q&A session.

Summary:

The liberal and conservative views of human nature have swapped over the last century. Marx viewed humans as being beyond nature, and being able to refashion the world according to our image. The conservatives in Marx's time emphasized the constancy of human nature and the inability for improvement for humanity. The modern left wants to downgrade the human's nature, making us more of a part of nature, while the conservatives endorse a view of humanity that is beyond nature. He then shows how this interplays with science, and that science is based on humanity's being beyond nature, and that downgrading humanity also downgrades the role and scope of science.

My View:

Conservatives view humans as being both physical and spiritual. The left is waffling between extremes because they are reductionistic, and, failing one reduction, they move to another. Christians, on the other hand, only find a reduction in God, and therefore resist either extreme.

Note:

The video is much more interesting than my summary would suggest. Especially the Q&A. The Q&A pushes on the discrepancy between western intellectual traditions and the evolutionary view of the human, and how many people hold to both even if they aren't compatible.

Christians and Environmentalism

JB — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:03:00 +0000

The thing that annoys me most about the environmental debate, is that the "effect" of being pro-environment is not open for debate. That is, if someone is to think of themselves as being pro-environment, then they must automatically be, for example, for lower energy consumption. Or protecting the wild african spelling bee. Or whatever the current cause is.

Now, let me make something clear - I am for lower energy consumption, but it has nothing to do with the environment. If we want to lower energy consumption, I think we should first start by talking to God about all of the stars He put in the sky, especially the innumerable ones which are nowhere near life-inhabited planets, and tell Him that He needs to be conserving energy. There is an uncountable amount of energy being consumed in the sky, for what? Making the sky pretty?

The fact is, no matter how fast we consume energy, we can't outpace God. I think having a giant fusion furnace 9 million miles away pumping energy through space is excessive. I'm not complaining - I think the excess is wonderful. God is extravagant! And if you don't believe that God is extravagant, you should cut open a bell pepper and count the seeds. Most of those seeds will go to waste.

My point is that honoring the environment as a work of God doesn't necessarily mean lowering energy consumption or being less extravagant. Both of those things might be good, but not because of the environment!

Therefore, I hereby protest the idea that the environment comes with one, prepackaged way for us to respond to it, and especially that environmentalists have any idea what that way is.

Science Without its Magisterium

JB — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:36:00 +0000

Steve Fuller has a new book coming out called Science in Acum Publishing's "The Art of Living" series. Here a snippet from the book's description (bold mine):

...Fuller argues that science is undergoing its own version of secularisation. It is not that people are coming to lose their faith in science per se but rather they are losing the compulsion to conform to a specific orthodoxy that is upheld by a specially anointed class of “science priests”. We are, in a sense, all scientists now, says Fuller. Taking science into our own hands, we have become emboldened to affirm ideas and claims that conform to our own or our community’s experiences even if they go against the authorised experience of the laboratory.

Religious Knowledge and the So-Called "War" Between Science and Faith

JB — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 05:03:00 +0000

I have had it with people talking about the war between science and faith. It is simply the most absurd concept I've ever heard of in my life. If there is such a war, it certainly isn't being engaged on the theological side of the aisle. The only reason for the claim of a war is to remove any real integration of theology into academic conversations.

Let me explain my problems with the idea of a "conflict" between science and religion. Has anyone met anyone in the entire U.S. who disagrees with the entirety of the scientific enterprise? The only way that this could be true is if someone viewed science as a series of facts to be memorized. If that is their view of science, it is a decidedly anti-scientific view of science. Science is a process, not a result. Anyone who calls the results science instead of the process, is not promoting science, but something else.

Now, science is just one part of human knowledge. I think that even the most ardent reductionist materialist would agree that, at least in our present state, in the absence of complete scientific knowledge, there are other non-scientific avenues of inquiry which yield real knowledge. The materialist would hopefully at least allow for such avenues to yield "stand-in" knowledge, while we wait for knowledge. In addition, in absence of complete knowledge, these other avenues might actually deliver better knowledge on some avenues than current science does, even if one believes that in the end science will produce the better knowledge. In any case, I think we can safely say that there are a multitude of ways of obtaining knowledge other than science, even if someone believes that in the long run science is the ultimate form of knowledge.

Therefore, the question is, what happens when religion and science come to different conclusions? Should science give in? Should religion? Should they each continue independently? Should they find common ground? My contention is simply this - no matter what they do, it would be improper to consider it a "war". If a mathematician criticizes an engineer, we wouldn't talk about a "war between math and engineering". Nor should we consider many of the criticisms of evolutionary psychology by evolutionists as a "war between science and science".

The fact is, if a discipline can yield real knowledge, then, in our finite and imperfect state of knowledge of all fields, it is likely that some of that knowledge will in fact be contrary to a few or many parts of other fields. There is nothing wrong with this. The part that is problematic is interpeting these conversations as a war. The only reason why some people see this as a war is not because there is a conflict between disciplines, but rather that some people don't see theology as a proper discipline that yields any real knowledge. That is the only way in which a "conflict" status between science and religion could emerge. Everyone believes that science can at least yield some real knowledge. But many materialists think that it is plainly improper for theology to yield real knowledge.

Therefore, the "war" between religion and science, if it is being waged at all, cannot be thought of as being waged by the religionists! If there is merely disagreements, then the only person who would see that as a war, as opposed to merely the common result of multiple disciplines with incomplete knowledge, is someone who saw religion as having no proper role to play within the development of knowledge.

That is why the proposed "solutions" to the "war between science and religion" are so infuriating... they all involve simply ceding all knowledge claims to science! Either that, or, even worse in my opinion, is to gloss over "science" with a meaningless ex post facto theological brush. The only thing that does is tell everyone that yes, theology is adding nothing of consequence to the conversation.

The true solution to the "war" between science and religion is for theologians to understand science better - not so as to merely capitulate to someone else's claims, but rather to be able to more effectively engage in constructive dialogue. I believe absolutely in the claim that "all truth is God's truth". I disagree, however, that this necessitates us to think that everything a scientist says represents truth.

If religion contains true knowledge, then, if all truth is God's truth, that truth should be instructive in fields beyond our just theology.

I think the biggest fear that is preventing this is the fear of, "what if theology makes a claim that turns out to be wrong?" Well, so what? Isn't it amazing that science can overturn itself every few decades without a loss of confidence, but we are scared to death that even a single statement we make might turn out to be wrong. I think, perhaps, that we are holding ourselves to too high of a standard. Instead, we need to engage, and engage with the knowledge that we might be wrong. But if we use the possibility of being wrong as a reason to not engage, then we might as well just quit altogether, and tell everyone to just listen to the materialists since they are the only ones with real knowledge.

The Abuse of "Story"

JB — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 06:00:00 +0000

Postmodernism has greatly increased the relevance of "story" in both the interpretation of the Bible and in interpersonal interactions (for those of you who are unaware of what this is, here is a really good short summary by a friend of mine). On the whole, this is a good thing. However, recently I have been reading books which abuse the notion of story as to become propoganda. This is a phenomena which I believe we will see more of, and is an unintended effect of our culture's shift towards "story" as a way of understanding.

The problem is that "story" can easily become a substitute for "rational argument". When we overemphasize story, we fail to be able to analyze a situation critically. The book I'm currently reading is about the "story of the universe," and, actually, it is much worse than previous books I've read on this subject.

With story, one need not give an argument. One simply presents heroes and villains and victims. It is not possible to ask of a story if the heroes were heroic or evil, or if the victims were actually villains in someone else's story. Story prevents you from asking many questions which are essential for discerning truth.

That isn't to say that story can't be used to communicate truth. I certainly believe that the Bible does that. The problem is that "story" only communicates truth when the teller of the story is a trusted source. The only difference between story and propoganda is the trustworthiness of the teller.

Therefore, the postmodern shift towards story, while it may be good for both Biblical studies and interpersonal relationships, could really damage us in the realm of public knowledge, because to rely on story for this critical aspect of life will mean that it is inevitably susceptible for anyone to create a good enough story, with beautiful looking heroes and mean, nasty villains, and, since "story" instead of "argument" is the key phrase, public villainizing can be substituted for public debate.

"Story" is not impartial, and it's usefulness depends on the trustworthiness - and shared ideals - of the teller.

John Hobbins on Inerrancy and Haiti

JB — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:52:00 +0000

Going back through my RSS reader, I found a few excellent pieces by John Hobbins:

Here is John responding to the atheists' criticism of religious answers to Haiti
Here is an excellent set of thoughts on inerrancy
Here is a nice commentary on canon criticism

I have no idea how John manages to put out so much thoughtful content so often.

As for inerrancy, I don't entirely agree or disagree with John. I agree with his basic points, but think that the history and the art are much more intertwined than John's post implies. My belief is that, for God, the history is the art.

Update

I also found this (slightly older) post of John's: Why believers must complain about and criticize biblical texts

What matters is the context in which complaints and criticism occur. Do I make the criticism because I expect God or scripture to answer my questions and I will not rest until I find my rest in God and his Word? Or because I've decided that God and his Word are something I need to protect myself against, because I've found a higher standard of truth by which to judge them both?...

Quoted in the Christian Century on LifeChurch.tv

JB — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:55:00 +0000

I was recently quoted in an article on LifeChurch.tv in the latest issue of Christian Century. Jason Byassee was doing an introduction to the church for a mainline audience, who might not understand what LifeChurch is or why it is important. It was a really good article.

My quote is toward the end, which, admittedly, borrows a lot from a friend who I will not name because he may wish to remain nameless:

Jonathan Bartlett, a seminary student with a background in the Vineyard movement, says he sees little place in LifeChurch for strong lay leaders. "Their whole pitch for leaders of LifeGroups is 'It's easy.' LifeChurch is made up of people who liked youth group in high school, but then grew up and found nothing like it—until this."

While I was at LifeChurch, that is what I found - there simply isn't much of a place for a strong lay leadership. It is antithetical to the way they operate. I think they like the idea of a strong lay leadership in theory, but they simply don't provide any meaningful mode of expression. Their LifeGroups, which presumably might feed that purpose, are promoted to leaders, not with the idea that this is something that requires something of you, but rather that all that is required is for you to insert a DVD and press play.

And, not suprisingly, most LifeGroups conform to the low expectations that the Church puts on them.

Family - From Naivete to Reality

JB — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:44:00 +0000

Mark Riddle hits a home run with his saga about breastfeeding, and the changed perspective one gets after actually having a family, rather than just imagining what it might be like.

Libertarianism vs. Conservatism, Pt. 2

JB — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 12:47:00 +0000

My good friend Rick did me the great service of making excellent criticisms of my essay on libertarianisms. I started to post a response in the comments, but it quickly got too long. In any case, here is my response:

"I disagree with your premise that giving a social norm the weight of (sovereign) law is distinguishable from governmental intervention. Sovereign law, for better or worse, IS government intervention."

The point was not that it was or wasn't governmental "intervention" - sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't, but rather, a law doesn't require a government. See for example this post about the powers of text.

In fact, you find throughout history many laws that have no explicit punishments. That is because, often, none is needed. By intermarrying society and law, you can have laws that don't require governments. When you separate them, the only thing that enforces law is a government.

"Rather than allowing individuals to define the terms of their relationships (or to choose NOT to define them, a possibility you've overlooked)"

I am unclear how an undefined terms of relationship would work in a legal context, except, perhaps, by ceding authority to social norms!

"A market would exist (in fact, already does exist) for ready-made contractual arrangements, especially for relationships as common as marriages"

But this is only part of the point. The fact is that, (1) that there are always unexpected parts of a relationship which the law must handle. These are handled according to societal norms and goals, precisely because that is what is left when a contract breaks down, and (2) marriage impacts much more than just the people getting married. I pointed this out here. If marriage communication is, in fact, privileged, then who receives this privilege is a societal issue, and not one of the contractants of marriage. The possibility of children introduces players into the contract which were not a party to it. This means that either (a) the children are treated as simple property, or (b) that society establishes norms regarding their handling, which would have priority above the contractural relationship. In fact, even though there are many other places where society and law have a necessary interaction, the existence of children alone bring together societal norms and law in a very powerful way.

The fundamental problem of libertarianism is that it presumes that we can be, for the most part, disconnected from each other, and even elevates that to a societal goal - to be connected to only those people you choose.

In reality, though, this is neither possible nor desirable. Libertarianism, similar to liberalism, places extremely high value on the degrees of freedom that an individual can do. While I agree that there shouldn't be any unwarranted restriction on degrees of freedom, I find this highly suspicious as an end-goal. Is the ability to pick my nose in public really the purpose for which liberty aspires? I should hope not, for if so it makes it a goal not worth persuing. I agree that liberty is important. I also agree that the nature of liberty requires that society allow things that it normally doesn't agree with, and that society and law, while overlapping in many areas, are not coextensive.

Liberty is the combination of self-mastery, faith, and humility. It is self-mastery in that none of us are free unless we can get control of ourselves - the biggest source of bondage is actually the lack of personal control over ourselves, not other people. In addition, liberty is about the faith that others' may be persuing societal good by means which are radically different, and not necessarily completely understood. Also faith in the fact that most errors in this direction are not fatal. Finally, it is about the humility to accept that there is room for disagreement in everything.

From this perspective, while individual degrees of freedom are important, they are not the only consideration. Freedom to err is vitally important for the freedom to be correct, but this doesn't mean that liberty implies that I should be able to just do anything I want. That is the attitude of my children, I should hope that by the time they are adults they will have sufficient self-mastery to be beyond that.

"In addition, government recognition (aka regulation) of marriage also allows the government a guise of legitimacy under which to confer benefits on one group at the expense of another. Tax and other benefits are provided to married people but denied to gays, polygamists, and unattractive singles."

Just to point out, most of the "benefits" are actually to unmarried cohabitators. We found this out this summer. The state social workers were encouraging us to divorce so that we would have more access to benefits. They determined that we were going to need $89,000 in assistance each year, but that my salary (which is less than that figure) disqualified me from receiving anything. However, if we divorced, then Christa would be able to get the full benefits package.

"Your conclusions about contracts for burgers and lawyers attending weddings are nothing more than unsupported hyperbole."

I disagree. The fact is that law is actually moving more towards your view with regards to basic human interactions. And, with that, we are receiving a constant increase in the number of things we have to sign. We have crazy lawsuits because we no longer have a societal expectation for self-responsibility. Therefore, in nearly every interaction, we have contract which disclaim problems that occur from a lack of self-responsibility. We have idiotic privacy forms we have to fill out at the doctor's office. We have stupid EULAs we have to click through to install software. Why do we just click through them? Because we know what they say. However, if, instead of everyone lawyering up, we instead had a means of social expectations interacting with the law, we could do away with (a) the lawyers to draft them, (b) the lawyers to fight with them, and (c) having to read them all.

The problem with the libertarian position is that it assumes a lot of the societal interaction that it rails against. Most libertarians agree that lawsuits about stupid things are stupid. But that is just because they are assuming conservative, not libertarian, values. In libertarianism, society doesn't affect legal expectations, so why should self-responsibility be assumed?

The nanny-state of liberalism is simply the byproduct of the libertinism of libertarianism. When an ethical self-mastery is no longer part and parcel of what it means to be free, the only valid social response is the nanny state.

So, to sum up, I would say:

Liberty is about more than individual degrees of freedom. Increasing individual degrees of freedom is an important part of liberty, but other parts (such as self-mastery) are more important
We are interwoven with each other. A legal system (or a definition of freedom) that ignores this is simply anti-realist. Marriage and children are interesting precisely because the point of them transcends the two people involved.
Removing social norms from legal expectations does in fact mean that we will have to lawyer-up for the smallest detail. The other option would be that those who don't have lawyers are at mercy of those who do (which removes their liberty more than just about anything else I can think of)
When you intermix societal and legal norms, you get the advantages of law without having to have a large institution of government for enforcement. It is their separation which causes us to have a large, coercive government which only has power due to its coercive abilities

Libertarianism vs Conservatism

JB — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:24:00 +0000

While I often assail the left-wing on this blog, I don't always find the time to do equal justice to the not-wing -- the libertarians. Conservatives and Libertarians are often lumped together because of two things (and really they are both the same thing):

We both dislike the direction of the left-wing, and the attitudes with which they approach public policy
Many of the first steps that either position would take when in office would be the same -- removal of the massive governmental beurocracy which has developed

However, I think that because of these broad-stroke similarities, many people miss the issues with libertarians.

I think there are a lot of ways in which you could separate libertarians from conservatives. This post is going to concentrate on one of them:

Conservatives want to dismantle the governmental infrastructure in this country. Libertarians want to dismantle the legal infrastructure as well.

Libertarians tend to be reductionists in their thinking. They want all legal structures to follow contract law, and reduce everything else to that.

This is why many libertarians view marriage as an improper role of government. According to much libertarian thought, marriage doesn't have any role in law, except as two parties wish to establish a contract with each other. Only then should the law step in.

Conservative thought, on the other hand, views a number of different relationships as being governmentally important, and thinks that law should be engaged in dealing with those.

Here's are several reasons why I'm a conservative:

I think that enabling people to live simply and peaceably with each other without undue interference should be a primary governmental goal
I do think that society needs rules and boundaries to operate in a variety of circumstances
I do not think that society needs a large government to accomplish #2, and that a large government is in direct opposition to #1

The thing that libertarians don't seem to understand is that it is precisely the fact that many of our social mores get encoded into law that allow us to operate with a small government, and with that government having minimal interference in our lives.

By giving norms the weight of law, it allows people to live simply by following common and respected patterns, without requiring governmental intervention. It is precisely these social forms and customs which make governmental intervention redundant.

Take marriage, for instance. It is true that in many societies marriages do not need approval from the state (like a marriage license). But that does not mean that marriage is any less within the bounds of law. Precisely because a society has norms and customs surrounding marriage (which are utilized directly within the law) means that two people can be married without any need for permission or approval from the government.

Can you imagine a society in which, in order to get married, you needed to lawyer-up and make an airtight contract defining the terms of your relationship? That would be ludicrous! It is precisely because we have social norms that are reflected in legal norms that two people who are in love can get married with minimal intereference with the government.

In fact, in absence of social norms reflected in legal norms, you wind up having to make a contract for everything you do. So, instead of dealing with governmental red tape every time you interact with them, you have to deal with red tape in every single interaction you make with any person at all! Our society is already moving this way, with all of the disclaimers, End-User-License-Agreements, privacy statements, and other idiocy we have to deal with every day. All of these stem from the fact that our social norms are being segregated from our legal norms in the name of "neutrality" (whether religious neutrality or some other form of multiculturalism).

You might object that it is not the libertarians who are doing this but the liberals. But in this aspect the liberals and libertarians are in complete agreement. Both agree that social norms are mere contrivances, and therefore do not merit the coverage of law.

Conservatives, on the other hand, view social norms as a vital part of an integrated society, which cannot be cleanly separated into "legal", "cultural", and "religious" aspects. Our law is meaningless if it is separated from cultural norms, and cultural norms are derived from religious ideals.

The fact is that the liberals are right about one thing - if you want to treat social norms as mere cultural artifacts, it takes a big beaurocracy to do so. The liberals want one big beaurocracy in the government, while the libertarians would like a signed contract completely stating all terms and assumptions when I go to purchase a hamburger, and for a team of lawyers to sit in the front row of the wedding ceremony.

Social norms, however, allow you to live peaceably in society with each other without the hassle. In a conservative culture, you can focus on loving each other, and not on the legal hassles which will result from loving each other.

Deontological Ethics and Emergence

JB — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:48:00 +0000

NOTE - Don't get lost in the opening sentence, I will explain myself as I go on

I have been studying emergent behaviors of systems for a variety of inquiries, and think I have found an interesting connection between emergence and ethical systems.

Emergence is the idea that there are global properties of systems that are not present in any of the details of the system. For example, if you look at the function of a car, it is for locomotion. However, none of the _parts_ of the car themselves are capable of indepedent motion. Gasoline is not, spark plugs are not, the drive shaft is not, etc. However, when all of the parts of the car are correctly assembled, the car can move. Therefore, independent motion is an emergent property of the car - it is something the car does that none of its individual components can do.

A subset of emergent systems are rule-based emergent systems. That is, given a set of players, and a set of rules, one can get global behavior to emerge that is not apparent in the rules themselves. For instance, it has been found that honeycombs have a very characteristic, global pattern. That pattern is stable even if it is perterbed by experimenters, or no matter what the initial state is. However, the honeybees do not have to have the global pattern in mind in order to implement it. It seems, instead, that bees only apply a few, simple rules for what to put in each cell. Those rules, when applied consistently and repeatedly, always result in a global pattern of honeycomb organization. As I mentioned earlier, this pattern is stable even in the face of adverse interventions, such as experimenters modifying the organization while the bees are away.

Now, when it comes to ethics, there are two main systems of ethical thought - deontological, or rule-based ethics, and teleological, or goal-oriented ethics. I tend to do both, depending on how clear the scriptural teaching is. If there is a clear rule in scripture, I try to follow it, but use the goals outlined in scripture to fill in the details.

Deontological ethics has come under a lot of fire in postmodernity. While people can understand a person who holds on to their ideals in spite of adversity, the idea of following rules seems old-fashioned. Whose rules are you following anyway? It is thought that deontological ethics is outmoded because the rules themselves require justification, and that justification could only be provided by a teleological framework. Therefore, any apparently deontological system that was worthwhile would actually have a teleological system hiding underneath, giving purpose to the rules that were being followed.

I think that deontological ethics has been unduly frowned upon, however. There are many aspects of deontological ethics which are worthwhile, even in absence of an underlying teleology.

Or, I should clarify, even in absence of a personal teleology.

If God has a purpose, or a vision, for what society should look like, what is the best way to implement it? Most teleologists would assume that God would give us the goals, and that we would use the goals to implement God's plan. But what if it wasn't so simple? What if the path to the destination wasn't directly visible to us? What if there were too many variables? What if God did not want to rely on our intellectual capacity to implement His visiion for our social order?

Perhaps He used, like He appears to have used on the honeybees, a rule-based approach for our living. That is, perhaps God's end-goal for society is an emergent property of His people following His rules. It is not something that is visible from the rules themselves, but rather something that will emerge when we are obedient to His instruction, having enduring properties not available to us if we were to try to implement it on our own.

And so, I think a re-evaluation of deontological ethics is in order, focusing on the relationship between rules and emergence and God's goal for humanity.

While I'm thinking of it, Thomas Sowell gave another good reason for deontological ethics (actually he's given several - this one is from Basic Economics if I recall). His point was that social classes can do well even in a society that discriminates against them. However, it can do this only if its rules are well-specified, relatively static, and consistently applied. I don't remember the specific example, but Sowell points out that in one society, although the minority class had very few rights, those rights were well-specified and very consistently applied. Therefore, they could be leveraged, and used for social advancement. In a teleological system, the goal is, well, the goal, and the rules can be bent in service to the goals. This does not lend well to social advancement, as whatever ideological errors exist in the society are actually encoded into the laws. In a deontological system, only the accidents of the ideological errors are encoded into the laws, and can be overcome through social leverage. This cannot be done in a teleological system.

Therefore, a deontological system actually allows for better resilience to ideological error than a teleological system.

A Friend's Journey to YEC

JB — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 03:40:00 +0000

A friend of mine wrote about his change from theistic evolution to young-earth Creationism here.

Academics vs. Laity

JB — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:44:00 +0000

I am often appalled at the way in which many academics treat laity. Whether it is the way in which academic theologians think about the faithful Bible-believer in the pew who knows only how to read the Bible devotionally or it is the way in which evolutionists think that no other discipline (or especially someone just making use of common sense) might have something to add to biology.

If I've ever treated someone this way, I'm sorry. It is a bad habit, and it is bred into you in the post-graduate level. Basically, any thinking like a lay person should be thought of as stupid, and talked down to, rather than addressed seriously. That is the way nearly every academic professor I've run into has behaved when teaching classes, and so that academic elitism gets transferred to the students by osmosis.

What academics don't realize is that there is a perspective that lay people can offer that is simply unavailable to them in an academic setting. This isn't to say that lay people are more knowledgeable than the experts. On the contrary, the perspective that lay people offer is important precisely because they do not know all of the details.

Think about the view of earth as a fly, a person, an airplane, and a satellite. Each of them might be looking at the same spot, but each one is seeing very different things. The satellite will never see the details that a fly does. However, the satellite may in fact have data, or even a perspective, that would be useful to the fly.

I often challenge evolutionists to try to find something of value in the way in which creationists (not me, but the lay creationists that annoy them so much) are thinking. They often respond that while they can value the person, there is no way in which they can value such idiotic ideas. Really? Nothing? Can you value the way in which they rest solidly on their faith, even though you might disagree with its content? Can you value some aspect of the way their worldview works? I have trouble thinking of any thought pattern which is completely valueless.

But this looking-down-your-nose attitude continues to prevail throughout culture. And it's not just evolution. If you hear the way in which theologians talk so condescendingly about people who read the Bible who have no idea of the synoptic problem, but just want to know God better, it is truly disgusting.

The fact is that lay people have, among other things, the following attributes in which academics simply cannot have:

A fresh perspective on the issue that is not clouded with the discipline's own history of investigation
A view of the discipline only from the perspective of how it interacts with other disciplines
A view of the data using alternate rubrics of interpretation and reliability
A habit of sorting through the data so as to ignore the unimportant and grasp only the essentails (let me tell you - academics are habitually trained to focus, in a razor-sharp manner - on the unimportant)

Any particular lay person will have additional perspectives which are valuable. This doesn't mean that academics should abandon their post for a lay-only view of their subject. But it does mean that people who aren't part of a discipline might have valuable insight that is simply unavailable to the unaided academic community. If a layperson is incorrect, belittling them is not the answer - but rather a process of both finding out where they are coming from and explaining where you are coming from is the answer. I've often found that, even when someone is completely wrong, there is a kernel of truth to what they say, and if you find it this kernel will be greatly valuable.

For you lay people, be encouraged. Just because an academic treats you like mud doesn't mean your ideas are worthless. It just means that you having gone through the right hazing rituals to be respected by their community. For you academics - lighten up! A two-way dialogue is the best way to interact with the lay public, not a one-way lecture.

Critique: Harvey Cox's The Future of Faith

JB — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:15:00 +0000

I have been reading Cox's The Future of Faith. There seems to be a rash of reinterpreting what Christianity means. I don't know if there is a direct-causal relationship, or which way the causality goes, but I will say that the rise of "reinterpreting Christianity" seems to match, almost step-for-step, the rise in theistic evolution among evangelicals. I think that what is happening is that they stem from a common theological sea change - the move from an emphasis on special revelation to an emphasis on general revelation.

Cox describes what he views as the direction that Christianity is headed in as "the age of the spirit". He says that we have been in the "age of belief", where Christianity was identified by adherence to specific doctrines, and are moving into a period where Christianity will be defined by people who are empowered by the awe they see in the universe, however they define it, to live it out in their lives by doing good.

Cox tried to make a connection to this view of the world to the early days of Christianity, but really it doesn't stack up. The Bible - the book produced and used by the early Church - makes it clear both that (a) there is doctrine, and (b) that it is important. It is true that sometimes Christians go overboard with doctrine and forget our calling in the world. Nevertheless, scripture (and likewise the early Church) makes it clear that doctrine is, in fact, important. Of course it is wildly popular today to talk about other types of Christianity in the early period (Paul had some interesting things to say about these other types of Christianity himself). However, this was not mainstream Christianity, nor was it an extension of the apostle's teaching.

The fundamental flaw with the move to general revelation over special revelation is that Christianity is a historical religion. It's very foundation is the fact that God has indeed done special things throughout history. God is Himself involved in history. Christianity cannot be replaced with a sense of awe that invokes a desire to do good. It is about God doing specific things with specific meanings.

Did God do these things? If so, then they matter - both their historical reality and their implications. If not, then we need to not improve Christianity, but rather simply switch religions.

Cox on several occasions tries to convince the reader that the old way of believing is invalid, but his arguments are excessively weak. He argues against end-times notions on the basis that it doesn't help environmentalism. He argues against Biblical Christianity on the basis that Catholics and Jews have different Bibles. He argues against fundamentalism on the basis that people get carried away with it (has he never read any of the liberation theologians he espouses?).

It is true that Christianity is often suffocated by creeds. But the fix is not to abandon them, but to rather, (a) be more cautious about our own ability to fully rationally understand and articulate the faith, and (b) put them in their right place within Christianity. Creeds are important, but God calls us to be united. Cox, like others (see Spong, for instance), call for a "shift" in Christianity, which is actually an abandonment. What you believe is important, because these are God's acts in history. If Jesus did in fact come down to be a sacrifice for us all, then what you believe about that event matters.

The God that Christians worship is a God who has been active in the world from the beginning - not in some nebulous manner - but a real, active, and detectable presence throughout history. Christians live in continuity with God's message, believing in His works, and trusting Him about what the future will hold.

But that is not the future of faith that Harvey Cox sees.

Clayton and Cox Book Blog Tour

JB — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 06:15:00 +0000

Philip Clayton and Harvey Cox both have new books out and they are taking them out on a blog tour. One of the blog tour stops will be here, and as you can see below they will be making their rounds over the next month.

They will wrap things up in Montreal at the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting where they will be joined by a top notch panel including Eric Gregory, Bruce Sanguin, Serene Jones, Frank Tupper, and Andrew Sung Park to share a 'Big Idea' for the future of the Church. These 'Big Ideas' will be video tapped and shared, and I'll post a link when they are ready.

Clayton's new book is Transforming Christian Theology for Church & Society and Cox's is The Future of Faith. Both are worth checking out at one of the many tour stops. If you can't wait you can listen to them interview each other. I am currently working through Cox's The Future of Faith, and hope to have several posts on it in the near future.

Here's the blog tour list if you want to follow what's going on:

Joseph Weethee , Jonathan Bartlett, The Church Geek, Jacob’s Cafe, Reverend Mommy, Steve Knight, Todd Littleton, Christina Accornero, John David Ryan, LeAnn Gunter Johns, Chase Andre, Matt Moorman, Gideon Addington, Ryan Dueck, Rachel Marszalek, Amy Moffitt, Josh Wallace, Jonathan Dodson, Stephen Barkley, Monty Galloway, Colin McEnroe, Tad DeLay, David Mullens, Kimberly Roth, Tripp Hudgins, Tripp Fuller, Greg Horton, Andrew Tatum, Drew Tatusko, Sam Andress, Susan Barnes, Jared Enyart, Jake Bouma, Eliacin Rosario-Cruz, Blake Huggins, Lance Green, Scott Lenger, Dan Rose, Thomas Turner, Les Chatwin, Joseph Carson, Brian Brandsmeier, J. D. Allen, Greg Bolt, Tim Snyder, Matthew L. Kelley, Carl McLendon, Carter McNeese, David R. Gillespie, Arthur Stewart, Tim Thompson, Joe Bumbulis, Bob Cornwall

This Tour is Sponsored by Transforming Theology DOT org!

[Note that while I did edit this to my own satisfaction, this was a suggested announcement post for the blog tour, and may look strangely like other announcements for the tour at other sites]

Is there evidence for evolution?

JB — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:59:00 +0000

A few days ago, Todd Wood (one of the leading creation biologists today) made a medium-sized splash in the blogosphere with this post. In it, among other things, he said:

Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well.

This was followed by another post which clarified some of his statements. The whole post is interesting, and I'll include a snippet here:

I think you've already figured out an important corollary to this line of thinking, that squabbling over low level theories has very little to do with the acceptance of the high level model. Scientists can argue over the effectiveness of natural selection without ever questioning the high level concept of common ancestry. Likewise, new fossils can be heralded as "changing our understanding of evoluion" in the sense that low level theories have to be modified. The strength of the high level model is relatively impervious to these changes.

Understandably, this post generated quite a bit of reaction among Creationists and non-Creationists.

So, is there evidence for evolution? Certainly if you read most anything from Answers in Genesis or CMI, it certainly seems the answer is "no". So what's up? Why is Todd thinking there is lots of evidence and AiG and CMI saying there isn't any?

I think that, ultimately, the reason is that they are speaking to two different questions.

The question that Todd probably often faces as a researcher is this - "is evolution a useful and helpful heuristic for my scientific research?" Or perhaps something like "is there a lot of corroborating evidence for evolution?" Or maybe even "are there legitimate reasons for a person to accept evolution as a fact?" The answer to all of these have in fact been a resounding "yes" for a lot of people - a lot of smart, educated people who are familiar with the data.

But that's not the end of the story.

There is a difference between something being a rational choice, and something being the only rational choice.

The problem is that many people not only use evolutionary theory as a valid framework for their own lives, research, and work, but that they require others to follow along or shut up. That is, they don't allow for other people to have come to different conclusions, and say that doing so is simply irrational.

I hope you can see that having valid evidence for yourself is different than having compelling evidence for others. Most people who are evolutionists believe that not only are they right, but that the evidence is compelling enough that you should think the same way, too.

And that, I think, is what AiG and CMI and the like are responding to. When someone says "there's no evidence for evolution," I think most people who say that are really saying, "there's no evidence for evolution that is publicly compelling." By "public" I don't mean the quantity of people who believe it, but rather that the nature of it is not universally compelling.

In the case of evolution, I would agree 100% with those people who say there is no evidence for evolution that is publicly compelling.

Now, of course, the question is, "what do you mean by evolution." If, by evolution, you simply mean "things change", well, that is obvious. If, instead, you mean "evolution by natural selection", then not only do I think that there's no evidence, I think it is logically unsound. If, though, you mean "universal common ancestry", then I think that while there is plenty of corroborating data, there is no piece of data that is externally compelling.

Todd, in fact, does us the favor of listing the basic reasoning for evolution:

Take for example the idea that species evolved from a common ancestor. This is a very simple high level idea that lots of people thought of before Darwin. There are several observations that support this model: (1) the "progress" recorded in the fossil record, (2) comparative biology (e.g., comparative anatomy, comparative embryology, etc.), and (3) the biogeography of species of high affinity. If you like, you could add the philosophical "consilience of induction" of common ancestry to explain many types of data. In my estimation, and I think most evolutionary biologists would agree, these evidences are sufficient to support the common ancestry of all species.

I would agree, especially having read some of the papers from the 1900s time frame. The main evidence for evolution is basically that (a) homologies exist, and (b) different fossils are found in different layers. While I can certainly see why these facts might lead people to believe in evolution, there is nothing in them that would be publicly compelling.

Without even getting into young-earth Creationism, changes in the fossil record are also consistent with multiple acts of creation, multiple origins of life, and probably a number of other possibilities. In fact, if you look at the major phyla of life, there is really nothing that would make someone think that there was a common ancestor to them.

In his post, Todd separates out neo-Darwinism from common ancestry, pointing out that even if neo-Darwinism fails, it would do nothing to detract from common ancestry. I agree with him if he is talking about personal reasons to believe in common ancestry. However, the key point of neo-Darwinism is that this was the idea which is used to cover the ground between personally-valid beliefs about the nature of evidence, and publicly-valid conclusions which we should all reach.

Before neo-Darwinism, there was no mechanism to link the different stages of fossils. Generally, if we know of a mechanistic method A of producing B from C, we tend to use A as the explanation for B when it occurs. When we find bullets in someone's body, we do not presume of an unorthodox way for the bullet to have gotten in there - we generally assume, unless there is specific evidence to the contrary - that the bullet was fired from a gun.

Thus, by this common mode of reasoning, many people used neo-Darwinism as the link to make personal views about evolution publicly compelling. Because, as the logic goes, we now have an experimentally-verified mechanism (so they said) of how evolution works, we now can say that it is publicly compelling that the way in which the fossils in layer A gave rise to the fossils in layer B was neo-Darwinism.

Now, of course, the neo-Darwinian mechanism never showed any such thing. Finally in the last few decades it has been realized that there is a fundamental difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. People in evolution say that macro-evolution is no less proven. However, I think that this confuses the boundary between personal validity and public validity. The evidence for macro-evolution is the fossil record, but without a clear mechanism demonstrably capable of performing that task, the evidence is not more publicly compelling than any other explanation.

Now, of course, some people may say that nothing is publicly compelling. I disagree, because there is a difference between being publicly compelling and being true. The fact is, if we have schools, we have to teach something in them. If we have a government, we need to have laws. So the point of a point of fact being publicly compelling is that, as far as the public goes, it is taken as a likely truth. This doesn't mean that it must be true or that you can't have a private disagreement, but that it doesn't carry much weight publicly.

And this leads us to why anyone cares in the first place. Most YECs, OECs, and IDists don't really care that scientists work using neo-Darwinism as a foundational truth. You don't generally find right-wing Christians picketing evolutionary biology labs. I've met a lot of creationists, but I've never met one who wanted to prevent a biologist from using evolution in their own work.

However, the fact is that science is currently a publicly-funded enterprise. It is taught in publicly-funded schools. It is used as an assumed truth in courts. So in these and other areas, what happens with science turns public.

Therefore, if evolution is to be used to the exclusion of other ideas in these areas, then it must be publicly-compelling, and not just personally so, or personally useful. It's one thing to teach evolution (which I think that there are publicly-compelling reasons to teach evolution. It's another thing to teach that it is true. It's one thing to allow evolutionary research. it's another thing to only allow evolutionary research.

So, in the case of Todd's blog post, he says this:

I'm motivated this morning by reading yet another clueless, well-meaning person pompously declaring that evolution is a failure. People who say that are either unacquainted with the inner workings of science or unacquainted with the evidence for evolution.

I don't know who Todd is speaking of, but I'm tempted to agree with both Todd and his clueless, well-meaning friend. Evolution has been very successful at producing a framework which has been useful to a number of people. Evolution (either as neo-Darwinism or universal common ancestry) has also been an utter failure in providing publicly-compelling evidence for its operation.

One concession I will make, though, is that, even as a Young-Earth Creationist, I think that the arguments for an old earth are publicly compelling. I disagree with them, and think that the evidence from history and scripture (as well as many interesting parts of the geologic column) points to a global flood. However, radiometric dating provides just the kind of evidence I pointed to above that makes something publicly-compelling. There are hints that radiometric dating is not the whole story, and it is my personal opinion that in the future we will find additional mechanisms by which radioactive rates can be dramatically altered, along with an understanding of how this fits in geology. The RATE group has made important progress, but they have not yet achieved a result that I think is publicly compelling. I find this information to be personally compelling, but I think that so far radiometric dating puts the question of the age of the earth as being publicly-compelling for an old earth.

Interestingly, that's also why I like academic freedom. As I pointed out, publicly-compelling is not the same thing as true. The freedom of conscience is always vital because even our most precious and seemingly self-evident assumptions about life are not guaranteed to be true. But the public sphere must be operated on some basis, and that is why it is important to distinguish things from being personally or publicly compelling, and why both Todd and the person he was frustrated with are probably both right.

Laps for Little Ones

JB — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:28:00 +0000

Support the Little Light House by sponsoring us in Laps for Little Ones

The Little Light House is one of the best ministries I've ever been involved with. They are a Christian, private, tuition-free school for special-needs kids. That's right, the kids who go there don't have to pay anything at all.

This isn't day-care - it's an intensive, customized program for each child. The school day lets out at 1PM, and the staff spends the rest of the day planning each child's next day. When a child gets to school, they have a card of things that they are going to work on that day. It's both extremely fun and extremely helpful for the children -- and the parents.

While our oldest son, Danny, was alive, he attended the Little Light House. His world expanded so much while he was there. His ability to play with others and interact and do new things hinged upon the teachers at the Little Light House and their love and their help. Danny had to be fed through a tube, received many, many, many medications at specially-timed intervals, and, if everyone was lucky, he only threw up three times a day. Yet the Little Light House had no problems seeing to his every need while he was there, and providing every manner of therapy. At the Little Light House, they have physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, and probably a lot of other therapies I'm not so familiar with. And everything is done in a specifically Christian way.

Isaac had the same genetic defect that Danny had, and, had he lived long enough, would have enjoyed the services of the Little Light House as well. As soon as we discovered his condition, we reserved him a spot there, because we knew that their help was the difference between night and day for us.

Below are pictures of Danny learning at the Little Light House. Also, for those of you who didn't get to know Danny or Isaac, I pasted their memorial videos below. In any case, please consider helping out the Little Light House - they have been a huge blessing to us, and to many, many, many other children.

You can donate now by going here.

Here is Danny's Memorial Video:

Isaac's Memorial Video:

A few pictures of Danny at the Little Light House if you don't have time for the video:

The picture below might look like playtime to you, but this was actually crucial for Danny. He had problems touching a variety of surfaces - many different textures made him cry and gag and puke (yes, really). The Little Light House worked with him to help him adjust his senses to be able to touch and play with a huge variety of textures.

Gay Marriage, Pt. 3

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 04:25:00 +0000

In the last post, we talked about why gay marriage is an inappropriate Christian option. Now I want to focus on gay marriage as part of a society, and whether or not it has an appropriate place.

So, first off, why does the government say anything about marriage at all?

There are many reasons. Modern social thinking tries to view humans as discrete individuals whose actions, in general, affect no one but themselves. In fact, if your actions happen to affect someone else, this is often considered a bad thing.

But in reality, humans live in relation to each other. Therefore, if the law is to treat people like humans, it has a stake in certain relationships.

The worst argument I have ever heard of for gay marriage is that "if you disagree with same-sex marriage, don't marry someone of the same sex" (warning, explicit language!). The argument is that gay marriage only affects the people getting married. Unfortunately, our society's view of marriage has degenerated so low that people actually buy this argument.

The fact is, in marriage, one of the MAIN POINTS of getting married is precisely so that SOCIETY will treat you DIFFERENTLY. Note that it is society that is the one who is now bound to do something when someone gets married. Primarily, when someone is married, it is encumbant on the society to treat them as a unit, rather than as individuals.

Here are a few examples of the ways in which society's rules change for people who are married. Note that this is just scratching the surface:

Presumption of partnership in business dealings - we don't get people to sign things separately - one signature works for the two of them.
Presumption of parenthood - no one has to perform a paternity check to see if someone's children are theirs. Note that this works even if a partner is unfaithful - if someone sleeps with your wife, their kids are actually yours, because she is your partner, not theirs.
Privileged conversations - being married REMOVES the right of society to require testimony in a court of law against each other. You cannot be compelled to testify against your spouse.

In addition, marriage law sets a norm of practice in many areas. Many policies stem from marriage law, including:

Education - the way that marriage is presented in education is primarily dependent on the way in which it is described legally
Standard policies - as the government regulates more and more businesses, the way that businesses are expected to deal with their employees is based on the statuses assigned to them by the state. If the state treats them as married, then before long businesses will be forced to do so as well.
This can even get into churches. Churches have been stripped of their tax-exempt status for not promoting the public good - and this is often based on whether or not their beliefs match up with the norms established by law.

So, as you can see, marriage law has VERY LITTLE TO DO with what people do as individuals, and VERY MUCH TO DO with how society is expected to respond to those who are married. Therefore, the argument that "whether or not gay people get married doesn't affect you" is simply false. Marriage is an important societal institution, and as such it very much affects all of us. The decision of how we decide who gets recognized as married is a decision that affects all of us.

If two people want to take part in a religious ceremony that DOESN'T implicate the rest of society, there has never been anything stopping them. I am not aware of any law that prevents a marriage ceremony. However, marriage itself is not like that. It not only requires things from the people getting married to each other, it also requires things from society at large as well.