Three Christmas Symbols

Some people get a little miffed during the Christmas season over the use of Xmas rather than Christmas, because it seems like an attempt by non-Christians to have the celebration without having to acknowledge the historical reason for it.

Every year there are signs and bumper stickers saying, “Put Christ back into Christmas” as a response to the substitution of the letter X for the name of Christ, but historically it's not the letter X that's being substituted for Christ. The X is actually a shorthand for the Greek name for Christ (Christos).

The first letter of the Greek word Christos is Chi which looks like our letter X. There’s a long history in the church of the use of X (Chi) to symbolize the name of Christ, and from the time of its origin it has signified the opposite of an attempt to avoid naming Christ.

Gr: Christos

The irony is that probably a lot of people do use Xmas to exclude Christ from Christmas and have no idea what the origin of the word really is.

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A popular Christmas tradition is to decorate one's home with a "Christmas" tree.

Painting by Marcel Reider (1898)

Modern Christmas trees originated during the Renaissance of early modern Germany. Its 16th-century origins are sometimes associated with protestant reformer Martin Luther, who is said to have first added lighted candles to an evergreen tree to represent the stars on the night Jesus was born. The practice is believed to have spread among Luther's followers in Germany and eventually throughout Europe.

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No doubt the most popular Christmas myth is that of Santa Claus. There's a rich ancient heritage behind the Santa Claus story. The secularized, sanitized, contemporary version has its origin in Christian history, and specifically in a man named Nicholas.

Much exaggerated legendary material is connected with his life and ministry, but if nothing else the legends tell us what values and beliefs the church held to be important as they were projected onto Nicholas. To the bare minimum of facts legend has supplied intriguing details through such writers as St. Methodius (patriarch of Constantinople in the 850s) and the Greek writer Metaphrastes in the 10th century.

The story goes that Nicholas was born in Lycia in southern Turkey in A.D. 280 to pious and wealthy parents who raised him to love God and taught him the Christian faith from the age of five.

However, his parents died suddenly when he was still young and Nicholas was forced to grow up quickly.

Inheriting his family's wealth, he was left rich and lonely, but he desired to use his wealth for good. The first opportunity to do this happened when he heard about a father of three daughters who, through an unfortunate turn of events, was left destitute.

Without marriage dowry money, the daughters could be condemned to a life of singleness and prostitution, so Nicholas threw some small bags of gold coins into the window of the home (some traditions say down the chimney) thereby saving the children from a life of misery.

Later, Nicholas made a pilgrimage to Egypt and the Holy Land and upon returning home felt called to ministry. He was subsequently ordained and spent time at the Monastery of Holy Zion near Myra in Turkey until an old priest had a vision that he was to be the new bishop.

The congregation overwhelmingly approved him, and he became known for his holiness and passion for the Gospel, becoming a staunch defender of Christian monotheism against the paganism that prevailed at the temple to the goddess Artemis in his district.

Nicholas was imprisoned during the persecution of Christians under the Roman emperor Diocletian, savagely beaten, and later released under Constantine's Edict of Milan (313 A.D.). Those who survived Diocletian's purges were called "confessors" because they wouldn't renege on their confession of Jesus as Lord.

When Bishop Nicholas walked out of the prison, the crowds called to him: "Nicholas! Confessor!" He had been repeatedly beaten until he was raw, and his body was covered with deep bruises.

Bishop Nicholas was said to have intervened on behalf of unjustly charged prisoners and actively sought to help his people survive when they had experienced two successive bad harvests.

There was a widespread belief in those days, promoted by a theologian named Arias, that Jesus was actually a created being, like angels, and not divine. The Council of Nicea was convened by Constantine in 325 A.D to settle this dispute, and the Nicene creed, recited today in many Christian worship services, was formulated to affirm the traditional teaching about Jesus' deity and preexistence.

Nicholas and Arias both attended the council and the story goes that the two got into such a heated dispute over the true nature of Christ that punches were actually thrown. This may be a legendary embellishment, but whether it is or not, it certainly seems inconsistent with our normal image of jolly old St. Nick.

In any case, the actual story of St. Nicholas (The name "Santa Claus" is from the Dutch for Saint Nicholas) is a lot different, and much more interesting, than the popular modern "fairy tales" surrounding him.

The Christmas Guest

To help put you in the proper frame of mind for Christmas here's a lovely poem by Helen Steiner Rice (1900-1981) titled "The Christmas Guest," recited by the late, great Johnny Cash (1932-2003):

What Are the Odds?

What are the odds that all the parts that comprise an automobile could be manufactured out of their raw materials and assembled to form a fully functional automobile solely by exposing the parts to the forces of nature like sun, wind, lightning, etc.? You might expect that it would never happen but according to scientists working in what's called Origin of Life research something like that must've happened to form the first living thing.

This life form was a cell with a cell membrane and which could metabolize and replicate itself. This cell would've been at least as complex as a 1940s automobile, so what are the odds that something like that cell could've formed by pure chance and the laws of chemistry and physics?

An article by Otangelo Grasso at Evolution News explores the probabilities. I'll skip the math, but you can check it out at the link. Grasso's calculations show that the odds of a cell containing just 438 proteins, which is probably the minimum for a functioning cell, are the equivalent of winning the Powerball Jackpot 12,996 times in a row.

And that's just the probability of coming up with the proteins that make up the cell. There's much, much more to a viable cell than just the proteins.

Grasso goes on to remark that,

This estimate does not include the fact that multiple copies of proteins would likely be required. It also leaves out the DNA required to manage the production and maintenance of proteins, and the need to interconnect proteins properly.

This astronomically large number illustrates the extreme improbability of such a complex system arising by chance alone. It highlights the challenges in explaining the origin of life through purely random processes.

We can express the argument this way: A minimal functional cell requires a specific set of integrated proteins. The probability of this specific set of proteins forming spontaneously is astronomically low (equivalent to winning the Powerball lottery 12,996 times in a row). Therefore, the spontaneous formation of a minimal functional cell through random processes is virtually impossible.

The astronomical improbability of the spontaneous formation of even a minimal set of functional proteins necessary for life presents a significant problem for purely naturalistic explanations for the origin of life. We can see, then, why researchers in the field are, as Rice University chemist James Tour has put it, “clueless” about how life’s origin came about.

When we are faced with such daunting improbability, it is reasonable to consider alternative explanations. Most scientists seeking a resolution of the puzzle don’t want to go there, whether for reasons of philosophical outlook, peer pressure, or personal preference. However, when examining highly specified and complex systems that appear to be fine-tuned for function, especially when the probability of their chance occurrence is vanishingly small, the inference to design becomes a logical possibility, at the very least.

The argument for design is strengthened by the observation that living systems exhibit characteristics often associated with designed objects — such as information content, goal-directed processes, and interdependent parts functioning as a whole. The minimal cell, with its precisely coordinated set of proteins and genetic instructions, bears hallmarks of purposeful arrangement rather than random assembly.

And, of course, purposeful arrangement requires an intelligent arranger. So, at the beginning of life there was a mind designing it for a purpose. Some seek to answer the question as to who or what such a designer would be by suggesting that life was engineered by some denizen of another world and was somehow seeded on earth, but that just puts the question back a step. How did life in this other world begin?

Since the universe had a beginning the regression of designers can't go on forever, it has to stop at some point with a mind that did not emerge as the creation of any other being, a mind not contingent upon any other mind, a mind very much like what people think of as God.

C.S. Lewis On the Three Versions of Christmas

C.S. Lewis once wrote an amusing piece on the three types of Christmas. For your enjoyment I've posted it here:

Three things go by the name of Christmas. One is a religious festival. This is important and obligatory for Christians; but as it can be of no interest to anyone else, I shall naturally say no more about it here. The second (it has complex historical connections with the first, but we needn’t go into them) is a popular holiday, an occasion for merry-making and hospitality.

If it were my business to have a ‘view’ on this, I should say that I much approve of merry-making. But what I approve of much more is everybody minding his own business. I see no reason why I should volunteer views as to how other people should spend their own money in their own leisure among their own friends. It is highly probable that they want my advice on such matters as little as I want theirs.

But the third thing called Christmas is unfortunately everyone’s business. I mean of course the commercial racket. The interchange of presents was a very small ingredient in the older English festivity. Mr. Pickwick took a cod with him to Dingley Dell; the reformed Scrooge ordered a turkey for his clerk; lovers sent love gifts; toys and fruit were given to children. But the idea that not only all friends but even all acquaintances should give one another presents, or at least send one another cards, is quite modern and has been forced upon us by the shopkeepers.

Neither of these circumstances is in itself a reason for condemning it. I condemn it on the following grounds.

1. It gives on the whole much more pain than pleasure. You have only to stay over Christmas with a family who seriously try to ‘keep’ it (in its third, or commercial, aspect) in order to see that the thing is a nightmare. Long before December 25th everyone is worn out — physically worn out by weeks of daily struggle in overcrowded shops, mentally worn out by the effort to remember all the right recipients and to think out suitable gifts for them.

They are in no trim for merry-making; much less (if they should want to) to take part in a religious act. They look far more as if there had been a long illness in the house.

2. Most of it is involuntary. The modern rule is that anyone can force you to give him a present by sending you a quite unprovoked present of his own. It is almost a blackmail. Who has not heard the wail of despair, and indeed of resentment, when, at the last moment, just as everyone hoped that the nuisance was over for one more year, the unwanted gift from Mrs. Busy (whom we hardly remember) flops unwelcomed through the letter-box, and back to the dreadful shops one of us has to go?

3. Things are given as presents which no mortal every bought for himself — gaudy and useless gadgets, ‘novelties’ because no one was ever fool enough to make their like before. Have we really no better use for materials and for human skill and time than to spend them on all this rubbish?

4. The nuisance. For after all, during the racket we still have all our ordinary and necessary shopping to do, and the racket trebles the labour of it.

We are told that the whole dreary business must go on because it is good for trade. It is in fact merely one annual symptom of that lunatic condition of our country, and indeed of the world, in which everyone lives by persuading everyone else to buy things.

I don’t know the way out. But can it really be my duty to buy and receive masses of junk every winter just to help the shopkeepers? If the worst comes to the worst I’d sooner give them money for nothing and write if off as a charity. For nothing? Why, better for nothing than for a nuisance.

How Many Galaxies Are There?

Our sun and the planets it holds in thrall, including our earth, reside in a small corner of a vast galaxy called the Milky Way, a swirling mass of dust, gas and billions of stars. The Milky Way is so huge that it takes light, traveling at 186,000 miles per second, 100,000 years to get from one end of the galaxy to the other.

Yet, as huge as it is, our galaxy is just one of billions of galaxies strewn across an incomprehensibly big universe. This short video explains how we know this:

Relative to all this our planet is an infinitesimally tiny speck and the inhabitants of our planet - us - are even tinier. It's no wonder that some philosophers have concluded that human beings and the quotidian pursuits in which we engage have no more significance than motes of dust bouncing around in a shaft of light.

Those philosophers are right - unless the universe was intentionally created and we were purposefully put here for a reason.

Intolerant Tolerance

There's lots of talk nowadays about "tolerance," although the conversation has morphed quite a bit from what it was just a couple of years ago. It used to be that we were enjoined by progressives to be tolerant of those who disagreed with us, who held political or religious opinions at variance with our own or who adopted a lifestyle that others may have thought immoral.

Now the talk in progressive circles is all about what Herbert Marcuse back in the 60s was promoting as "repressive tolerance." Marcuse argued that tolerance and freedom of speech should not extend to those who hold retrograde political views, views that other groups find offensive or harmful. He insisted that freedom of speech was a subterfuge that elites employed to enable them to maintain power and as such should not be accorded the cherished status that has traditionally been conferred upon it.

In the educational sphere, in particular, Marcuse wrote that measures of repressive tolerance,

...would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc.

In other words, if you believe in maintaining a strong military defense, if you believe that America is the greatest country ever to grace the planet, or if you disagree that social security should be increased or perpetuated, you should be denied the ability to voice your views.

This, in good Orwellian fashion, Marcuse labels genuine freedom of thought. He goes on to write that,

When tolerance mainly serves the protection and preservation of a repressive society, when it serves to neutralize opposition and to render men immune against other and better forms of life, then tolerance has been perverted. And when this perversion starts in the mind of the individual...the efforts to counteract his dehumanization must begin...with stopping the words and images which feed his consciousness.

To be sure, this is censorship, even precensorship, but openly directed against the more or less hidden censorship that permeates the free media.

So, if tolerance means that people should be allowed to argue against what Marcuse thought to be a better form of life, in his case Marxism coupled with sexual freedom, then those arguments should be repressed. People must not be exposed to well-reasoned arguments if those arguments may be so cogent as to persuade the hearer to reject the ideology of the left.

Marcuse made this case in 1965 in an essay titled Repressive Tolerance, but it's bearing fruit today in social media, the academy, and news organizations like the New York Times where any opinion that wanders beyond the bounds of acceptable progressive orthodoxy is quashed.

One of the arguments that the progressive left makes in support of "repressive tolerance" - which is, ironically, a fascist notion - is based on a misuse of a footnote in philosopher Karl Popper's famous 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies. John Sexton at HotAir.com explains that the footnote, which some leftists have seized upon to promote repression of deviant ideas and street violence, is being abused:

[Popper's] idea was pretty simple: If society is completely tolerant, then the intolerant will rule society because there will be no one willing to stand up to their intolerance. Therefore, it is sometimes necessary for a tolerant society to be intolerant toward those who are themselves intolerant.... You can probably see how this plays into certain Antifa arguments about “punching Nazis” and using street violence against the intolerant.

Popper called this the paradox of tolerance: "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."

Popper added, however, that,

In this formulation, I do not imply...that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.

In other words, as long as people are willing to debate and discuss and have conversations about their disagreements, as long as they don't seek to impose their views by violent means, we must insist on tolerance and the free and unfettered exchange of ideas. It's only when people opt for violent coercion that tolerance comes to an end.

Here's Popper:

But we should claim the right to suppress them [those who eschew dialogue and resort instead to force] if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

The fascist left, including Antifa, seizes on this as a justification not only for suppressing contrary ideas but also for violence, yet it's pretty clear that Popper was claiming that resort to violence is justified only when the other side refuses to engage in fair debate and chooses instead to substitute "fists and pistols" for reason and logic. It's also pretty clear that it's the extremists on both left and right in our current social landscape who fit the profile of those of whom Popper was speaking.

The extremist rejects argument because at some level he knows that neither facts nor reason are on his side. He senses the rational inadequacy of his position so he rejects reason and rationality rather than give up his position or subject it to rational scrutiny.

The only truth he recognizes is whatever he feels most strongly to be true, and since his feelings are self-authenticating and self-validating there's no point in debating them. He needs only to force you to accept his "truth," and if you refuse then you must be compelled, with violence, if necessary, to submit.

After all, if you disagree with the progressive left then you must be a racist bigot, and you should be silenced or have your face smashed. If you disagree with the extremist right then you must be part of the conspiracy to undermine America and you deserve to get stomped on.

That's unfortunately where we are today in America.

Rodion and Luigi

Richard Fernandez, at PJ Media, writes an interesting essay on Luigi Mangione while only mentioning Mangione once and that in a quote from another piece.

Instead, Fernandez treats us to an overview of the 1866 novel

Crime and Punishment

by Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He focuses on the main character of the novel, a young man named Rodion Raskolnikov who believes himself superior to the bourgeois moral values of society and whose conviction of his own moral superiority leads him to murder an old hag of a woman whom he thought detestable. In the course of committing the crime, though, he also finds it necessary to murder the old woman's sister.

In any case, Raskolnikov's rationale seems not too unlike that of Luigi Mangione who murdered health care CEO Brian Thompson last week.

Here's Fernandez:

When Feodor Dostoevsky wrote the novel "Crime and Punishment" in 1866 to describe a world made possible by Russian nihilism, he was describing not only a literary character, Rodion Raskolnikov, but a whole future philosophical point of view. Raskolnikov, who regards himself as a well-educated and superior but powerless person, asks himself: “Why not kill a wretched and ‘useless’ old moneylender to alleviate human misery?”

What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? … One death, and a hundred lives in exchange--it’s simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence! No more than the life of a louse, of a black-beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing harm.

He convinces himself the answer is "nothing" prevents such an act. It surely cannot be God (who does not exist) nor conventional morality (which is humbug) that forbids killing the moneylender. The only problem is how to escape detection for the "crime." As Dostoevsky formulated the situation in another novel, "Brothers Karamazov," those of great will and intellect can do whatever they can get away with....

A world where you can enact your own morality is one in which superior people are all-powerful. Getting caught is all you have to worry about. One only has to fear the mindless wrath of the cops. But the superior men, the men like you, will understand that killing the moneylender was a cool thing and give you their tacit, coded approval.

Dostoyevsky could've been writing about the events in the wake of Thompson's murder. The last paragraph included. One of the sickening aspects of this crime has been the reaction of some on the left who have actually applauded and laughed about Thompson's murder. These people's behavior is beneath contempt, but it's not surprising that a secular society produces such soulless individuals.

Fernandez mentions Piers Morgan's interview of Taylor Lorenz, a former Washington Post and Daily Beast reporter, who was on the show to defend controversial social media posts that appeared to celebrate the killing of Thompson. Lorenz, now a podcaster for Vox Media, admitted on the panel that her reaction to the killing was “joy.”

It's astonishing that the New York Times had to bring in an ethicist to write a column declaring that killing Thompson, who left behind a wife and two small children, was wrong. Why do we need a philosopher to tell us that? The crux of his argument is that murder is wrong, therefore, if killing Thompson was murder then it was wrong.

Have we sunk so far into moral illiteracy that we need to be told this? Apparently the NYT thinks we have and they're probably right.

After all, as has been argued on this site for over twenty years, a society that has abandoned God no longer has any basis for distinguishing between right and wrong. Indeed, the ethicist might well be asked why anyone in our relativistic society should accept the first premise of his argument. Why is murder wrong? The ethicist simply assumes we all agree that it is, but as Fernandez notes, in another novel by Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov - the atheist Ivan Karamazov declares that if there is no God, everything is permitted. There's no objective moral wrong.

Ivan Karamazov was right. If there is no God then what Mangione did was legally wrong but not morally wrong. If there is no God there just is no moral wrong. There are just behaviors of which some people approve and others disapprove.