http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/44302/title/The-6-000-Calorie-Diet/. Particularly the praise of it. There are no lessons to be learned from it except don’t eat a lot of crap. Calories are totally irrelevant, but it seems to be the focus of the study.
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Junk food . . . what about junk religion?
What is the deal with Ed Morrissey over at the Hot Air site? He has this Sunday Reflection feature over there where as a lay person he gives his version of a Roman Catholic Sunday sermon on what is ostensibly a political blog.
His blog post is about the Biblical account of the prophet Elijah demanding of food and drink from a widow on the edge of starvation on account of a regional drought and resulting crop failure and famine. Elijah speaks on prophetic authority that the widow’s meager supply of flour and oil won’t run out, the widow, a non-Jewish pagan person, trusts Elijah and feeds him, and the widow’s supply of four and oil then lasts for an entire year in fulfillment of Elijah’s prophetic utterance.
Not everyone in the Conservative/Libertarian/Right Blogosphere is a believer let alone a Roman Catholic Christian. But a substantial portion of Conservative thought is influenced by religious faith, and such faith has a foundation in accounts of miracles such as this. We can discuss whether being a Conservative requires faith or whether having religious faith would necessarily make one Conservative. We can also discuss whether the miracles in the Bible are “for real” or whether they are mythological allegory for moral instruction.
But there is a mode of faith that reasons that the Biblical miracles are indeed real but quite exceptional (as in blessed are they who have not seen and believe) and reserved as a mode of revelation of religious truth by being exceptional. This goes against the teaching of faith healers and other who regard divine intervention to be the normal state of affairs for the believer. If miracles were not exceptions, for example, that would excuse believers of the moral imperative to care for the sick and the needy in a material sense.
So what is the deal with Ed, who starts off with the “widow being lost” (i.e., not saved/not in a state of grace/in peril for her immortal soul) for despairing for her precarious situation of having herself and a son to feed and being down to her last handful of flour and measure of oil? Ed seems to have a lot more insight into the moral situation of the unnamed widow in the account than I do.
If there is a famine in the land and you are down to your last handful of flour and measure of oil, that you are saving this for your son and after that is gone you both are going to die of starvation is a very reasonable assumption; this has been the fate of untold millions faced with this situation throughout history and even in the modern world. As to the despair-is-a-sin and hope-is-a-sign-of-grace expression of Catholicism that Ed is sharing, a way out of such a situation in the form of a miracle is not the normal state of affairs and to expect a miracle could be regarded as a heresy regarding the purpose of miracles.
Faced with starvation, the widow seems to be entirely calm about the whole thing. First of all, there is a Near Eastern culture of hospitality to strangers — you see this in the Greek legends along with Abraham being host to the angelic visitors in the form of men along to where Peter O’Toole first meets the Omar Sharif character in that Lawrence of Arabia movie. In initially refusing hospitality of a stranger, Elijah, the widow doesn’t curse Elijah or curse the faith he represents but instead calmly lays out “the facts on the ground.” I see the widow as facing her grim death rather bravely.
But faced with this situation, the widow is prepared to meet Elijah’s demands (honoring cultural traditions of hospitality and realistically thinking “what difference does it make” if my son and I live a day longer by not feeding this holy man). For her moral courage, she is rewarded with her food supply miraculously lasting an entire year, but this is properly regarded as an exceptional outcome. Christ said as much to people expressing entitlement to a miracle, mentioning this specific Bible passage where many other widows in that famine were not offered the same deal of feed a holy man and not starve (and according to Christian belief, Christ was in a position to know what happened to the other widows, but that most of them died is a reasonable inference, even without prophetic insight).
Whereas there is a link between Conservatism and religious faith, the tent of Conservatism/Libertarianism encompasses believers of many traditions along with atheists and agnostics. There are, however, certain simplistic expressions of faith and political belief, however, that could give both religion and Conservatism a bad rep.
Is Ed being Ed and as a brother Catholic Christian I should “give him some space”, or do others share my belief that he could engage in more serious scholarship before sharing his take on that Sunday’s sermon on a Conservative blog? Or is this a Render unto Caeser situation where Ed shouldn’t mix preaching with Conservative politics?
And how does a person live for a year on just carb and fats? This account must describe a miracle.
Since it’s his blog, I figure he can do what he wants. If he loses readers, he may stop. However, he may gain readers.
It would be nice to see Catholics leaving that 60s hippy-dippy social justice nonsense, so maybe this is a good idea.
You are telling me that I don’t have to read Ed Morrissey or Rand Simberg either if I don’t like what they have to say.
On the other hand, if I disagree with a Conservative blogger, I can express my opinion that what they are saying is not helping the Conservative cause or maybe not helping the religion they are bringing in to the discussion.
My fer instance is 9-11, where Pat Robertson, I believe, blamed the attack on America being sinful for tolerating gay people. In the immediate aftermath on the darkest day in America since Pearl Harbor. Those remarks . . . did . . . not . . . go . . . over . . . well . . . at . . . all.
It was William F Buckley, a Conservative and a Catholic, although I am not sure how strictly conservative he was as a Catholic (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) who immediately pushed back against the Reverend by invoke Christ’s response to “who sinned” when a tower fell down and killed people and when the Romans killed a large number of people in a civil disturbance. 9-11 was a combination of a tower falling down and “Romans” killing people.
The Pharisees seemed to think that anytime anyone died violently that they had done something wrong to bring on that fate, and Christ tried to straighten them out. Buckley’s comment quoting Christ was that not only was the Reverend Robertson’s comments not helpful, they went contrary to Scripture that informs us that bad things happen — and these bad things are not necessarily punishment for anything the victims did wrong.
First Amendment, and Pat Robertson was free to say what what was on his mind, but given his public celibrity and as a conservative-leaning preacher, his remarks were damaging to Conservatism as a movement, but what Buckley said, quickly and incisively, helped undo the damage and reversed the perception that some Christians and especially conservatives who were Christians were just as serious of head cases as the 9-11 attackers.
Our esteemed host Rand, on this thread and other places, is focused on integrating pushback against the Food Pyramid as a Conservative/Libertarian/Right Blogosphere cause. Climate Change Skepticism is integrated into the Movement as 1) the science is dodgy, and 2) the dodgy science is being used to impose Collectivist schemes on the people. I don’t know if the Food Pyramid rises to that level (yet), and Rand is entitled to his beliefs, but should we make Food Pyramid skepticism a litmus test?
I agree with everything you said. But is religion so heinous we have to apologize for it or say it isn’t helpful in order to swing voters to our side?
Also, as I mentioned, it would be nice to make more Catholics conservative and by having a weekly piece on religion, those readers may look further into other blog posts and learn a thing or two about conservative ideas.
You’re taking the miracle at face value.
The real lesson in the story is that you always stockpile for a famine and if some stranger comes during hard times asking how much food you have, you lie your ass off and don’t tell them about your hidden hoard. Elijah obviously figured it was a miracle that she didn’t run out of food when he ate her last bowl, because like many true believers, he was naïve.
The Bible is full of stories like that, such as the lamp that never ran out of oil in a building full of servants whose entire job is to refill lamps without ever being seen. They built an entire holiday out of that one.
And in some shallow areas the best way to fish is have a guy high up on the bank tell the people in the boats where the fish are, because from the bank you can see down into the water.
So you are saying there is a market for fishing drones.
I read your post several times, and it took a long while for it to sink in, because I have spent much of life listening to what Ed Morrissey and others have to say. It never even occurred to think of it that way, but we are talking about the Ancient Middle East that was much like the current Middle East.
On the other hand, “widow” is a code word for a person who is genuinely vulnerable and exploitable and not someone with enough power to manipulate people through deceptions. What do I know, maybe there are cultures where widow exploits . . . you! Someone needs to tell Ed . . .