McCain vs. Obama, Round 1

Here are my thoughts after watching the first presidential debate last night. First, a few bullet points.

• The zinger of the night goes to McCain. “I’m not going to set the White House visitor’s schedule before I’m President of the United States. I don’t even have a seal yet.”

• McCain consistently called out Obama, but wasn’t exactly accurate in doing so. There were a number of times when Obama had to say, “John, that simply isn’t true.” It may not be good for a debate, but Obama has some nuance to his positions that a quick pass, like McCain was doing, simply won’t do them justice.

• McCain clearly has more experience. He played that up well. In response Obama tried to showcase his own experience and achievements, but he just can’t play that game and win.

• Obama didn’t go for the throat on the issue of Iraq. He needed to say “it’s the frontlines of the war on terror now because we started the fight there and the terrorists simply came to us” as well as harping more on the “I’ve always said to leave Iraq responsibly” and could have bolstered his position by mentioning that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has endorsed Obama’s own timetable!

• In his closing argument, McCain again attacked Obama using a subtle “he’s not ready” attack. Obama needed to respond with his “change we can believe in” to contrast the two options. So McCain ended on a strong note, Obama not so much.

Verdict: Pretty much a tie. Both candidates were cordial, in control, did a good enough job of presenting their message and their ideas. But neither of them was terribly aggressive and the attacks were lukewarm at best. I suppose if you pinned me down and forced me to declare a winner I would say it was Obama for 2 reasons. First, he held his own against McCain. For a candidate whose perceived weakness is foreign policy, holding his own against an opponent like McCain is a victory. Second, though McCain had a few good moments (like the zinger mentioned above) I feel that Obama more consistently ahead by not leaving attacks hanging, calling McCain out on false assertions enough, and getting the specifics of his policies and points across. McCain comes across as a serious guy, but isn’t as polished, appears less commanding, and seems less presidential than Obama. So on the issue of appearance I also have to give a slight edge to Obama, though I recognize that what is “presidential” to me may not be to others.

What I hope to see in the future debates: More fire. More attacks. They both need to be less polite. Obama had some opportunities to land a few blows that he squandered tonight. It felt like a gentleman’s debate. Let’s spice it up for next time. You can get passionate, loud, excited, and bombastic and still have an intelligent conversation. Or at least I hope so since most of my conversations are passionate, loud, excited, and bombastic.

Next up: Joe Biden wipes the floor with Sarah “I’m-a-pitbull-with-lipstick-and-can-see-Russia-from-my-front-porch” Palin? (If you can’t tell, I don’t exactly have a lot of respect for her at the moment. But I’m open to the possibility that she could surprise me on Thursday, which is why I punctuated the last sentence with a question mark.)

Creepiest Cat Ever!

Book Review: Does God Suffer? by Dr. Thomas G. Weinandy.

Recently I’ve finished reading two books, and this will be the first time I’ve done a book review on this blog. (Hopefully not the last.) I find I don’t read as much as I used to, largely I think because I’ve discovered some great TV shows (see my entry on June 13 for the ones I’ve watched this last year alone, and I’m currently finishing The West Wing) and can get my story fix that way and also because I read quite a bit for school . . . when I come home and want to relax I don’t want to do more reading. Still, I hope these are the first of many book reviews, most of which, due to my studies, will probably of a scholarly tone. In this case I’ll start with the scholarly book and give a (severely brief) critique of the arguments.

Dr. Weinandy is a Franciscan monk and this book is a defense of divine impassibility. Obviously I will not be able to do an adequate review/critique of the book in a short blog entry, so I want to focus on one point in particular.
“God,” says Dr. Weinandy, “is immutable not because he is static, inert, or inactive, but precisely because he, as pure act, is supremely active and dynamic and cannot ontologically become more in act [. . .] God then is supremely immutable because he is supremely in act (p. 123).”

These quotes are pretty accurate for summing up the reasons Dr. Weinandy believes that God is immutable. God is not, as Clark Pinnock put it, a “metaphysical iceberg.” Instead He is always acting—never a dull moment since God is eternally in motion with regard to His purposes. So God is immutable, but not because he is eternally static, because God is eternally vibrant.

So, I’m going to half-agree with my Franciscan friend here. God, as Weinandy has outlined Him at least, isn’t immutable because he’s an eternally static metaphysical iceberg. God is immutable because he’s an omnibenevolent computer program. Sure, there are always calculations going on, and so in that sense a computer program is active, but it also by definition cannot deviate from its original programming.

In this view God knows what to do in response to any given situation, knows what situations are going to arise, and so knows exactly how the history of the universe from beginning to end will unfold. God is, in essence, playing a very complicated game. But like Tic Tac Toe, there is a logically perfect way to play the game. Hence, nothing will change from what God knows, and nothing can ever deviate from the original plan.

So while Weinandy has adequately, I think, fended off the charge that God is immutable on account of being static, he has walked right into the charge of God being immutable in another way—that of a computer program. Vibrant, but eternally bound to the original rules of His omnibenevolent programming. You still cannot have an actual personal relationship with Him—you can just do your thing and then He consults His programming and responds appropriately. (I might be making too much of this computer metaphor, but I can’t think of a better one.)

I’m glad that, in the LDS view, we do have a God that suffers. Too much of this book was intellectual gymnastics trying to show that God empathizes, but doesn’t suffer, how God is vibrant, but unchanging, and other such fun hoops to jump through necessitated by the merging of a God described in the bible as changing, emotional, and involved in the world with the metaphysics of the Greeks (mostly Aristotle, at least in this book) where the First Cause is unchanging, apathetic, and uninvolved in the world. Life as a theologian is significantly easier when there aren’t as many hoops to jump through—most of them headed in opposite directions.

I'll review the other book, The Gypsy Morph by Terry Brooks, later on this week.