Commentary

Christian men, be selective when giving attention to women

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Here is a thought-provoking post from agnostic libertarian economist Captain Capitalism.

Excerpt:

Of the many lies men will be told from the ages of 12 to…umm….death, one of the more misleading ones (that can trip you up for years unless you learn the deceit behind it) is,

“I don’t do X for you!  I do it for myself!”

“X” being

dressing up
make up
working out
lingerie
etc. etc.

[…][T]he reason this lie is so tricky is because when a woman says this, it is a half-truth.

While she is NOT dressing up for you, she IS dressing up for somebody else.  And that somebody else certainly is NOT her (at least in a direct sense).

Again, we revisit the realm where economics and sexuality meet.  Women are (primarily) driven by attention.  Attention from who?  Attention from anybody.

Oh, go ahead and threaten me with your Adria Richard’s hallow threats, I’m sorry dearies, I have nothing left to lose.  Besides, this is a fact and is truth.  And if you don’t like that…well, then maybe you really don’t like being treated as an equal and perhaps like every other guy I could continue lying to your face to spare your precious little feelings.  But I’m sorry, I’m not a sexist.  I believe in the equality of the sexes so you’ll APPRECIATE me treating you as a GENUINE equal and never daring to lie to you as that would be degrading.

Anyway, women crave attention.  And the primary way (before social media) they can get that is by simply dressing the part.  This is why in large part you can be at a bar/club, see a group of girls LITERALLY dressed as ladies of the evening, approach them and get your butt shot down.  They REALLY weren’t dressing that way for you, just as they technically weren’t dressing that way for themselves.  They were merely dressing that way to get your attention and the attention of others.  And should a supreme specimen of man (professional athlete, celebrity, obvious rich man) approach them, that is also why they dressed that way or went to the gym.

In other words, don’t be a fool on either end of this half-lie, half truth.  She really isn’t doing it for you.  And, yes, in a roundabout way she is doing it for herself.  But she is ultimately doing it to garner the attention of other people, both men and women.

So this caused me to think a little, because it echoes what Dina explained to me just a few months back, and Mariangela verified it as well. (My knowledge of women is mostly theoretical, so some of these obvious things have escaped me). Anyway, they basically agreed with the Captain’s assessment, that many of the things that women do are to get attention. This is fine. The point of this post is not to pick on women, but to warn men. And so here’s the warning for Christian men.

Christian Men: Like everything in life, God asserts sovereignty over your choices with women. One of those choices is who you pay attention to, and why. Whenever you pay attention to a woman, you are in some way validating her choices, beliefs and lifestyle. Therefore, you need to be careful to choose women who deserve attention for the right reasons. You need to pass on women who show a lot of skin to people they hardly know. You need to pass on women who are known to use sex to get attention from men easily, without having to listen to his values. You need to pass on women who won’t read things that men care about, like apologetics, economics, etc.

Whenever I get distracted by a woman who is trying to get attention from me without wanting to listen or be led by me, I ask myself questions about her and her motives.

I ask:

  • Has this women ever borrowed a lecture or a debate form me?
  • Has this woman ever read a book that I asked her to read?
  • Does this woman let me talk if I bring up religion or politics?
  • Is this woman pro-life, and pro-marriage?
  • Is this woman grieved by big government socialism?
  • Is this woman pro-child, and anti-feminism?

And so on. Now if you are a woman reading this, you might think “why do you have to do that? Obviously they haven’t, so why pay attention to them? I’ve done all that good stuff, so pay attention to me!”. But it’s not that simple for a man, not even a virgin like me. About 99% of the time, I don’t have to go through this process. But there are some days…. you could call it my time of the month… where suddenly blubbering out how great this woman looks to her seems *rational*. And I don’t want to do that. I would rather get on my e-mail or Facebook and encourage a Christian woman who is actually doing the right things. I don’t want to be encouraging other women who are trying to cheat their way to attention without letting me express my faith, talk about politics, and so on. If I can’t lead you to learn about God so that you can serve God, then you shouldn’t get attention from me. One of the most helpful things I ever learned was from a young lady who had a sexual past, who flat out told me that she used sex in order to pacify and control men so that they would continue to give her attention no matter how much of a witch she was to them. That helped me to understand why I have to be selective with who I am going to endorse with my attention.

I think that men need to recognize that just as women who embrace feminism are responsible for wrecking men with all of this hooking-up, high tax rates, gun control, no-fault divorce, etc., that men are wrecking women by rewarding them with attention for the wrong reasons. If you want to fix women, the easiest thing to start with is to favor the good ones – the ones who listen to you, the ones who study hard things, the ones who want to serve God. Avert your eyes from the flirty ones. Don’t talk to them. Consciously prefer the best, most moral, most hard-working, women. That’s going to communicate the right message to women, and give them an incentive to value the right feminine qualities.

Christian men, if you are single, why not just take a minute now to go to the book store and buy a good apologetics or economics book and some white flowers for the Christian woman you know who does the most good for God? That would be a start. I recommend “Is God Just a Human Invention?” and three white carnations, some baby’s breath and some greenery. They are not too expensive and they last a long time. If you get her that book, tell her about Brian Auten’s read-along, which just started again. We all have to do the best we can to fix male-female relations. Women, and men. The solution to the problem of women being bad is not for men to be bad, too. It’s for men to be selective.

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Commentary

William Lane Craig: churches should focus on apologetics to attract more men

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I saw that Triablogue quoted this passage from William Lane Craig’s April newsletter, which made me very excited and happy.

Here it is:

One overwhelming impression of these engagements is the way in which the intellectual defense of Christian faith attracts men. Both at Texas A&M and again at Miami every single student who got up to ask a question was a guy! I wondered if the girls are just shy. But then I remembered a lengthy clip Jan and I watched of cast members of Downton Abbey doing a Q&A with an audience in New York. Almost every person who came to the microphone at that event was a woman! It wasn’t until late into the evening that a man finally asked a question, which was remarked by all the cast members. Why the difference between that session and the ones I experienced?—simply because the Downton Abbey program is highly relational, which is more appealing to women, whereas my talks were principally intellectually oriented, which is more appealing to men.

Churches have difficulty attracting men, and the church is becoming increasingly feminized. I believe that apologetics is a key to attracting large numbers of men (as well as women) to church and to Christ. By presenting rational arguments and historical evidences for the truth of the Gospel, by appealing to the mind as well as the heart, we can bring a great influx of men into the Kingdom. I’m so pleased that the church in Canada seems to be awakening to this challenge! I’m convinced that we have the opportunity to revolutionize Western Christianity by reclaiming our intellectual heritage.

I could tell you many, many stories of what it was like for me being shut down by churches who were overly sensitive to the desires of women. In college, I and the other male students had every attempt to bring in scholars to lecture or debate shut down by female leadership. Every single week it was prayer walks, testimonies, hymn sings… over and over. Eventually, the more manly Christians just quit going. Later on, I witnessed apologetics being shut down in the church from the top down and from the bottom up, as well.

I remember one week an excited male friend invited me to his church because his male pastor was giving sermons using Hugh Ross and Gerald Shroeder books. He was trying to tie in the existence of God to cosmology. Well, I showed up the next Sunday to hear, and was disappointed. I could tell that the pastor wanted to go back to that subject, but he never really did. Later on, we found out that a female parishioner had complained that too much science and evidence had ruined her experience of feeling good and being comforted.

I could go on and on and on telling stories like this. To this day, I cannot stand being in a church unless that church has organized things like apologetic training classes, public lectures, public debates or public conferences. But that’s the minority of churches. The fact is that churches are attended far more by women than by men, and pastors are catering to women more than men. Not only will apologetics not be mentioned, but elements of feminism will creep into doctrine (egalitarianism) and all political issues will be avoided. Church has become a place to have good feelings, and it is far divorced from anything like evidence or politics which might be viewed as judgmental and divisive.

On Saturday night, ECM (a male deist) and I were talking about the Gosnell scandal, and he was asking me why churches don’t mention things like this. And I told him that the feminization of the church means that Christianity can only be cashed out in subjective terms. I told him about the church-attending women I know who are 100% Democrat because it’s more “tolerant”. And I told him about my difficulties getting the church and campus groups to take up apologetics. Is it any wonder that non-Christian men view Christianity as weak, because we can’t even talk about politics and current events in church?

Commenters on Triablogue think that Dr. Craig will draw flak for his comment, but he’s not going to draw flak from mature Christians. What he said is correct. Mature Christians are right behind him on this point. Christian men who have tried to act to defend God’s reputation in public know that there is something wrong in the churches. And eventually, men just tune out of church because we know that there is nothing there for us. If women want men to come back to church, then they have to change the church away from what it is now.

UPDATE: Lydia read this post and reminded me that pre-suppositionalism is very popular with men and is a kind of fideist approach to Christianity that’s nowhere found in the Bible. I totally forgot to mention that. Presuppositionalism, in my experience, is very popular with men. I take a strong view on it, that it’s basically fideism, but I have been disagreed with on that by many people. In my mind, the only right way to do apologetics is by addressing presuppositions like naturalism, universalism, pluralism, etc. and using scientific and historical evidence as well. So there is an area where men are working against effective apologetics by embracing an unBiblical approach to apologetics that tries to minimize the use of evidence.

Polemics

Why would a good God allow people to suffer?

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I just wanted to draw your attention to this 4 page essay by Joe Manzari, which is the best darn summary of the state of the art on the problems of evil and suffering I have seen. The problem of evil is an objection to the existence of God based on the presence of evil or suffering in the world. The arguments basically infer that if God is all-good and all-powerful, then there should not be any evil or suffering.

There are two kinds of problem of evil.

The Logical/Deductive Problem of Evil:

The first kind is called “the deductive problem of evil” or “the logical problem of evil”. An example of evil would be Saddam Hussein murdering some journalist who told the truth about him. This version of the problem of evil tries to introduce a logical contradiction between the attributes of God and the presence of evil, like this:

(1) God exists.
(2) God is omnipotent.
(3) God is omniscient.
(4) God is omni-benevolent.
(5) Evil exists.
(6) A good being always eliminates evil as far as it can.
(7) There are no limits to what an omnipotent being can do.

In order to avoid a contradiction, we need to explain how there could still be evil, since the conclusion of this argument is that there should not be any evil!So how are we going to get out of this mess? The solution is to attack premises 6 and 7.

Premise 6 is false because in order to eliminate human evil, you would have to eliminate free will. But eliminating free will is worse than allowing it, because good things like love are impossible without free will.

It is in response to this proposition that the Free Will Theodicy of G. W. Leibniz applies. God, valuing man’s freedom, decided to provide him with a will that was free to choose good over evil, rather than constraining his will, allowing him to choose only good.

Premise 7 is false because there are limits on what an omnipotent being can do. God cannot perform contradictory things, because contradictory things are impossible. God cannot make a married bachelor. Similarly, God cannot force free creatures to do his will.

In the same manner that God cannot create a square circle, he cannot make someone freely choose to do something. Thus, if God grants people genuine freedom, then it is impossible for him to determine what they will do. All that God can do is create the circumstances in which a person can make free choices and then stand back and let them make the choices.

One last point. In order to solve the problem of natural evil for this argument, you can point out that free will requires predictable and regular natural laws in order to make free will meaningful. Natural laws mean that individuals can predict what will happen when they act, allowing for moral responsibility. More on that next time.

Inductive/Probabilistic Problem of Evil

There is a second version of the problem of evil, though, which is more dangerous than the first. This is the one you see being argued in debates, whereas the first version is not used because it has been defused as seen above. Here is the second one:

(1) If God exists, gratuitous evil does not exist.
(2) Gratuitous evil exists.
(3) Therefore, God does not exist.

This argument tries to argue that while God may have some reason for allowing free will, there are other evils in the world that are not the result of human action that God has no reason for permitting. Theists usually like to argue that God has morally-sufficient reasons for allowing some evil in the world, in order for the character of humans to develop through suffering and endurance. But what about gratuitous evil, which doesn’t have any point?

Consider the case of a fawn running in the forest, who falls and breaks his leg. Ouch! Then a forest fire starts and the poor fawn suffocates to death in the smoke. Why would God allow this poor small animal suffer like that? And notice that there is no morally sufficient reason for allowing it, because no human knows about this and so no human’s character or relationship with God is impacted by it.

The solution to this problem is to deny premise 2. (You can also deny 1 if you want). The problem with premise 2 is that the atheist is claiming to know that some instance of evil really is gratuitous. But since they are making the claim to know, they have to be able to show that God’s permission of that evil achieves nothing. But how do they know 2 is true?

The problem with 2 is that the atheist is not in a position to know that the permission of some evil X really doesn’t achieve anything. This is because the atheist cannot look forward into the future, or see into other places, in order to know for certain that there is no morally sufficient reason for allowing God’s allowing evil X to occur. But since the atheist argues based on premise 2, he must be able to show that premise 2 is more probable than not.

Manzari’s article also argues why apparently gratuitous evil is less problematic for Christians in particular, because of certain Christian doctrines. He lists four doctrines that make the apparently gratuitous evil that we observe more compatible with an all-good, all-powerful God.

  1. The chief purpose of life is not happiness, but the knowledge of God.
    Some of the things that we experience may wreck our feelings of contentment, but we need to remember that God may be permitting those troubles in order to remind us not to get too comfortable with life on earth, and to think ahead to the after-life. And remember, even Jesus learned endurance through suffering. His suffering was not pointless and neither is ours.
  2. Mankind is in a state of rebellion against God and God’s purposes.
    We humans seem to be on a dead run away from God, trying to keep our autonomy by knowing as little about him as possible. Part of knowing God is knowing what he designed us to do – to love him and to love others. And so, the less we know about God, the more we stray from his design for our lives.
  3. God’s purpose is not restricted to this life but spills over beyond the grave into eternity.
    Sometimes it seems as if our sufferings really are catastrophic, but when you realize that you are offered eternal life without any suffering after you die, the sufferings of this life are a lot less upsetting than they would be if this life was all we had.
  4. The knowledge of God is an incommensurable good.
    This one is the biggest for me. Knowing God and knowing his actual character by studying the historical Jesus is a wonderful counterbalance for all the problems and sufferings of this life. A little bit of historical study reveals that Jesus was not spared the worst kind of suffering in his life, making it is a lot easier for us to bear with whatever God allows us to face.

In section 3, Manzari shows how you can also argue against this version of the problem by supplying evidence for God, such as from the big bang, the fine-tuning, the origin of life, the origin of free will, the origin of the first living organism, the origin of the mind, the sudden emergence of phyla in the fossil record, molecular machines, irreducible complexity, the resurrection miracle, and the objective morality argument.

The argument goes like this:

(1) If God exists, gratuitous evil does not exist.
(2) God exists.
(3) Therefore, gratuitous evil does not exist.

Just support 2 with some evidence, and you win, especially when they can’t support their claim to know that gratuitous evil exists.

The Argument for God from Evil

In the paper, Manzari actually makes an argument for God from evil. That’s right. Far from disproving God, the presence of evil (a departure from the way things out to be), actually affirms God’s existence. How?

(1) If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.
(2) Evil exists.
(3) Therefore, objective moral values do exist.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

That’s right. If evil exists in any sense such that it is not a personal or cultural preference, then objective morality exists. If objective morality exists, then there is an objective moral lawgiver. Game over. If the atheist backtracks and says that the existence of evil is just his opinion or his cultural preference, then this standard does not apply to God, and you win again. Game over again. More on this argument for God’s existence from evil here.

So, although the problems of evil look pretty tough, they are actually easy. The toughest part of evil and suffering is the emotional problem. I could tell you stories about what I’ve been through… but then, that’s why the arguments matter. You can hold your position under tremendous fire when you have the arguments and evidence to ground you.

For more on the problem of evil, listen to this lecture by Douglas Geivett, professor of philosophy at Biola University. Then you must listen to this debate between William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (with summary by me). Another debate transcript is here, with William Lane Craig and Kai Nielsen. Here’s a book debate between William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, published by Oxford University Press, 2004.