Interesting definitions….

“When I use a word, it means exactly what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.” — Humptius Dumptius

A number of religious bloggers are upset about a post by Dean Esmay explaining why he renounced Christianity. As one of the few people I know who claims to be both a Pagan and a Christian, I think it is only fair that I pose a question: Is God a book?
If so, which book? Who wrote these books? It is one thing to believe in God, but it strikes me as the height of arrogance to demand adherence to words written by men claiming to be speaking for God (or acting as scriveners for God). It is in my opinion a cruel game to assert that God is a book, and if (for the sake of argument) it turns out that “God” happens to favor a particular book, that would make God even crueler than the men who wrote it.
God, being spiritual and infinite, must be felt. Not all men are able to feel God. (And feelings are not readily provable.)
Books consist of words written by men, and must submit to (and be judged by) the rules of logic. To assert that words of men are the words of God is to assert something without logical foundation. How many men might say they believe these words come from God is logically irrelevant.
A related issue is who decides what the words mean.
What, for example, is a conservative?
According to Jonah Goldberg, “conservative” and “gay” are mutually exclusive:

[Jonathan Rauch is] brilliant and well-respected, and he has some very conservative views. But he is also gay.

No but about it! (via InstaPundit.)
Interesting. I guess considering the source (the Corner being the last word on conservatism and sexual matters) it is now official. Political preference shall henceforth be determined by sexual preference! The left has been saying that for years, and now the right has finally agreed.
Does this mean the word “homocon” has been officially abolished?
Are homocons oxymoronic? Many liberals would agree with Mr. Goldberg that they are.
Maybe the homocons were all molested by liberal fathers! Clayton Cramer has cited a mess of a person, Michael Jackson, for the fascinating proposition that homosexuality arises from childhood sexual abuse.
Without getting into the post hoc ergo propter hoc issues, how about childhood abuse and heterosexuality? Bisexuality? Whose judgments are these? Whose words? I don’t like the word “bisexual” any more than I like the words “heterosexual” or “homosexual”, but because of the tyranny of sexual identity politics I have to deal with words laid down by others.
What makes it even tougher is when people allege words come from God. There is no real way to rebut such an assertion, because logic is not involved. If I say that an assertion — that God said something (backed only by the words of men) — is simply an unsupported assertion, that will not persuade people who want to believe that God said it. Nothing will persuade such people. And, like ideologues, the more they “know,” the more hopeless any arguments become.
I have noticed an across-the-board pattern involving the tyranny of superior “knowledge.” Whether liberal, conservative, atheist, fundamentalist, Communist, Arabist — when people commit themselves himself to a particular ideology, the true believers often so immerse themselves in a study of it that they become steeped in the material. They believe that the more they “know,” the more “right” they are — and the more “wrong” their opponents.
An extreme example would be a Muslim who has memorized the entire Koran verbatim. Such a person is very likely to believe that his “superior knowledge” — or “scholarship” (or whatever you want to call it), not only makes him right, but gives him a sort of duty to argue at length (and often in circles) with all who don’t see it his way.

“I know more about the Koran than you do; therefore I am right and you are wrong!”

The logical error, of course, is that superior knowledge of that which is incorrect or illogical does not render it correct or logical.
I have all thirteen volumes of the Works of Stalin, which I consider a marvelous sleeping aid. Even if I commited them to memory, and I wrote a long Ph.D. thesis, no amount of scholarship could possibly make Stalin’s thoughts correct. I say this because I get in long arguments with a friend working toward his Masters in International Relations. An accomplished Arabist scholar, he knows much more than I do, and can site every detail of every single Mideast war, treaty, battle, skirmish, election — ad nauseam. He thinks this makes him right, and anyone who doesn’t know the details “wrong.”

You don’t know what you’re talking about and I do!

Years ago, an ophthalmologist in China was greeted by an angry mob who stormed into her clinic, and demanded to see her hands. Lo and behold, not a callus was found on them.
“You don’t know wheat from rice!” they shrieked.
And off to the fields it was for that poor ophthalmologist. She learned about Maoism while she harvested rice on her hands and knees. The mob knew more than she did, after all.
I admire people who have the courage to dissent from conventional wisdom — or what their particular “herds” might tell them to do — and I therefore especially admire Justice Martha B. Sosman, of the Massachusetts Supreme Court — even though she might be wrong. (Whether wrong in the legal sense or in the moral sense seems largely lost, though.)
This is from a Fox News story:

….[O]ne of the judges is a lesbian. She voted against gay marriage, saying the court didn’t have the right to make such a law.

According to my research (and simple logic), the “lesbian” reference can only mean Justice Martha Sosman (assumed to be a yes vote), who filed a dissenting opinion in which she concluded:

As a matter of social history, today’s opinion may represent a great turning point that many will hail as a tremendous step toward a more just society. As a matter of constitutional jurisprudence, however, the case stands as an aberration. To reach the result it does, the court has tortured the rational basis test beyond recognition. I fully appreciate the strength of the temptation to find this particular law unconstitutional–there is much to be said for the argument that excluding gay and lesbian couples from the benefits of civil marriage is cruelly unfair and hopelessly outdated; the inability to marry has a profound impact on the personal lives of committed gay and lesbian couples (and their children) to whom we are personally close (our friends, neighbors, family members, classmates, and co-workers); and our resolution of this issue takes place under the intense glare of national and international publicity. Speaking metaphorically, these factors have combined to turn the case before us into a “perfect storm” of a constitutional question. In my view, however, such factors make it all the more imperative that we adhere precisely and scrupulously to the established guideposts of our constitutional jurisprudence, a jurisprudence that makes the rational basis test an extremely deferential one that focuses on the rationality, not the persuasiveness, of the potential justifications for the classifications in the legislative scheme. I trust that, once this particular “storm” clears, we will return to the rational basis test as it has always been understood and applied. Applying that deferential test in the manner it is customarily applied, the exclusion of gay and lesbian couples from the institution of civil marriage passes constitutional muster. I respectfully dissent.

Here’s Justice Sosman’s judicial profile.
I am sure she will face kneejerk condemnation by gay and lesbian activists for this and I wish more people thought for themselves.
It does not matter whether I agree with Justice Sosman, so I won’t cheapen my praise of her courage by getting into that. Anyway, it’s the business of Massacusetts, and I don’t live there.
But I guess the result is of more interest than the legal reasoning — or the meaning of the “rational basis test.” When I took Con Law it seemed they spent a lot of time on that and left me more confused than ever about its definition.
Maybe that’s why they call it “Con Law.” In order to understand it, you have to be a Con Law scholar — or a homocon. (All of which are oxymoronic.)
UPDATE (7-19-04): A reader emails that the quote from O’Reilly above is commentary and should not be called a “story.” Fair enough, I guess (but the URL uses the word “story.”) Either way, O’Reilly made the remark, and it speaks for itself.