Dunning-Kruger Effect and the Church

What is the Dunning-Kruger Effect? While this article goes on in length and points to the original research, here's the definition:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence: because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. "Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."

In other words, people who lack a skill often don't have enough ability to recognize that they lack that skill. It happens all the time - as the above-linked interview's anecdotes suggest. But it's tragic when it happens in the church. I'm thinking of a few instances.

First, everybody knows that if you can't pass muster in the musical world, you can always get an audience at church. It seems we have even less standards for performers than we do for members.



Maybe it's not always that bad...but I'm willing to bet that most of you have sat through a painful offertory or two in your life.

And it's not just poor performance. The actual compositions these days are TERRIBLE. Theologically vapid. Poetically unsound. And intentionally unsingable. I tend to agree with C.S. Lewis, who thought that most (traditional English) hymns were "fifth-rate poetry set to sixth-rate music." However, those hymns have never made me want to burst into tears or write letters to the bishop. They have never made me worry about the children who were taught to sing them. Aesthetic quality isn't really the point, although God deserves the best -- at the very least we should not be forced to sing heresy. Our music should elevate us to assume God's perspective rather than reiterate our own. It should focus on on Christ and His Kingdom rather than moor us in our own experience. (Contrary to contemporary opinion, Latin chant is not only breathtakingly beautiful, it's pretty easy to learn. Certainly it's easier to sing than some of those showtunes that pass for praise and worship these days!)

Secondly, the article proffers education as a means of addressing the problem. I couldn't agree more. I enjoy introducing people to good church music. I'm no music expert, but I have a good ear and a wide-ranging appreciation for it. (Yes, even the modern guitar-stuff can be well done on all accounts...for some reason, most just choose not to go through the effort.)

But this isn't just about music. What about PRAYER? Have you ever been stuck in a prayer group with someone who just has to use "just" just about every other word? (just)

“Lord, just hear us tonight. We just lift up our hands to you and pray that you will just send you love down to us in ways we just can’t understand. Take us just as we are Lord. Just, just. Just, just.”

Just telling them to quit isn't going to be enough. "Lord, teach us to pray..." Okay - let's get on with this vital work. One of the things that drew me to the Anglican Church was her rich tradition of prayer. I had a real sense of the poverty of my own prayers. I felt quite privatized in my prayer life - as though I were only praying my concerns but never being taken outside of my own limited points of reference. Liturgical prayer changed that. And I know of no better source in English than the Book of Common Prayer. Look at the older ones and you'll be praying concerns out of the Scriptures that would have never crossed your own mind.

I'm not advocating doing away with private, highly-personal prayers. But I'm trying to aim for a balance. Looking at high quality public prayers will help us to improve our own private prayer life. It will lift us beyond searching for words and aim us toward seeking God's face in prayer.

Lastly, many Christians settle for a poorly trained ministry. While roughly half of active full-time clergy have at least a bachelor's degree, the other half...doesn't. I don't want to fall into the trap of credentialism, but there is plenty to be said for having had a good bit of formalized training in the texts of Scripture, the theological and historical tradition of the church, and pastoral practice. I'm not so much concerned with post-nominals that come with that formation but rather with the habits and attitudes it fosters as well as the data conveyed.

I'm really concerned for a church that's led by someone who has no real sense of church history beyond hearsay from grandparents about the good ol'days. And someone who has only read the Scriptures for themselves and then teaches that as God's word is little more than a medieval pope mistaking his opinion for God's revelation. Reading Scripture together is necessary for the people of God so that we can come to a common understanding, at least on Scripture's principle teachings. (Col. 4:16; 1 Th. 5:27; cf. Neh. 8)

Those are just a few of my thoughts on this. Where else should we be looking?

The American Dream

From Salon.com

For a generation, most Americans have been told by left, right and center that they would be failures if they ended their educations with high school, worked hard, saved cash for emergencies and bought modest homes they could afford. They have been told that to succeed in life they need to ape the lifestyles of the upper middle class that provides most of America’s politicians, pundits and scholars.

The result has been an experiment in social engineering that has gone horribly wrong: the creation of a faux mass upper middle class. Millions of Americans who by objective standards belong to the working class or lower middle class have persuaded themselves that they are part of the professional-investor elite, because they have worthless degrees from diploma mills, negligible amounts invested in stocks, and suburban trophy houses they cannot afford. For the college graduates at Starbucks working to pay off student loans for degrees that they will never use, as for the millions of Americans who are now "underwater," owing more on their mortgages than their houses are worth, the American dream has turned into a nightmare.

Read it all here...

Why we need vouchers

I'm a homeschooler. Our current tax code doesn't let me deduct a single penny for educational expenses; nor is there a penny of help. (And obviously, we don't get a child care deduction or credit because my wife is home.)

How much education could YOU buy in your area if you had even $5000 to spend per child?e

Homeschooling WINSday

Okay...I know this is supposed to be "Worship Wednesday"...but I've sorta got that covered at the parish blog.

Today I just want to briefly highlight a that a German couple has been granted political asylum in the US because...get this...they wanted to home educate their children. Homeschooling is illegal in Germany. After having their children forcibly removed and taken to school, they contacted the HSDLA who filed on their behalf.

I was glad to hear that they'll be settling in what used to be my back yard, Morristown, TN.

Reading Habits?

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Copy this into your Blog or FB NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. Tag other "Book Nerds."


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Total: 5

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

Running Total: 10

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X

running total: 15

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma-Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X

Running total: 18

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving X
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Running total: 24

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X


Running total: 27

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov X
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy X
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X


Running total: 32

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

Running total: 35

80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton


Running total: 39

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint Exeupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
x94 Watership Down - Richard Adamson X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole X
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X

TOTAL: 47

To be fair, some of these are reduplications. Shakespeare's complete works are inclusive of Hamlet, as Lewis' Chronicles are of the L,W,&W.

And if you haven't read A Confederacy of Dunces...do. A friend once introduced it in an essay as "What if Holden Caufield grew up?"

PS - It's only fair to mention that my BA is in English Lit....so some of these weren't by choice.

PPS - If Pride & Prejudice seems too much to handle, check out the zombie version!

What's on the Shelf?

Here's a picture of the Dr. N. T. Wright at his desk. (I suspect it's from before his consecration to the episcopate, and the See of Durham.) I love the ordered chaos. But I really enjoy picking over his bookshelf. Click on the picture and you should get an enlarged version. (And it's quicker than reading one of his tomes!)

What do we have in common? What should I add to my own library? Any surprises?

Always happy to see the Loeb Library set (note both Greek Green and Roman Red). Oxford Encyclopedia of Saints, New Oxford Commentary on the Scriptures, and a Sacra Pagina volume here and there. But what caught my eye was the postcard we both have of the arms of the constituent colleges of Oxford University.

Anglican Evangelicals are blessed to have such a formidable intellect on the side of orthodoxy. May this bishop always be a defensor fides.

Three Catholic Universities Give Up Catholic Ethics for Lent

Folks...you just can't make this up.

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: From February 23 to 28, Georgetown University is hosting “Sex Positive Week,” sponsored by feminist and homosexual student clubs.

On Monday, the event “Sex Positive…What’s That?” featured a speaker from Black Rose, an organization “which provides a forum for the many different expressions of power in love and play. This can include dominance & submission, bondage & discipline, fetishism, cross-dressing, to name a few.”

Yesterday’s talk, on Ash Wednesday, “Torn About Porn?” was advertised to include “discussion about arguably alternative forms of pornography that are not supposed to be exploitative, but rather radical and empowering.”

On Saturday, February 28, pornographic film director Tristan Taormino will speak on “Relationships Beyond Monogamy”—one day after speaking in downtown Washington, D.C., about “Anal Pleasure 101”. She will discuss her book Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships with Jenny Block, author of Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage. Taormino is also the author of True Lust: Adventures in Sex, Porn and Perversion.

LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: On Tuesday, the Student Diversity and Cultural Affairs Office of Loyola University Chicago presented the film Brother to Brother about a homosexual African-American who is transported in time to cavort with the allegedly homosexual writer Langston Hughes.

The film is part of a semester-long “Color of Queer Film Series” sponsored by the university. Upcoming films include Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros about a 12 year-old boy who falls in love with a male police officer, and I Exist: Voices from the Lesbian and Gay Middle Eastern Community in the U.S.

SEATTLE UNIVERSITY: This week is “Transgender Awareness Week” at Seattle University, including a session on allegedly transgender Bible heroes and heroines and “Criss-Cross Day,” where students are encouraged to “come dressed for the day in your best gender-bending outfit.” The events are sponsored by the university’s Office of Multicultural Affairs and the student Trans and Allies Club.

“That Catholic universities would permit these events on their campuses at any time of the year is unthinkable, but to do so during the holy season of Lent is unconscionable,” said Reilly.

“The saddest part of this story is that there is no indication that these universities are ashamed or embarrassed by what is taking place on their Catholic campuses. Parents and potential students might begin to wonder how these universities can in good conscience consider themselves Catholic when they allow such perverse distortions of Catholic values to take place.”

h/t Cardinal Newman Society

The 7 Deadly Sins of Theology

Mercy! But the Lord knows what His children need for their growth.

You've probably heard of the 7 Deadly Sins as propagated by Pope Gregory I (and the new and unimproved version). But the good folks at Theology Forum have drawn up a list for those of us who have been through or are engaged in theological education.

1. Pride: they have a tendency to condemn others and become impatient with their faults. They are very selective in who can teach them.
2. Avarice: they are discontent with the spirituality God gives them. They never have enough learning, are always reading many books rather than growing in poverty of spirit and their interior life.
3. Luxury: they take more pleasure in the spiritual blessings of God than God himself.
4. Wrath: they are easily irritated, lacking sweetness, and have little patience to wait on God.
5. Spiritual gluttony: they resist the cross and choose pleasures like children do.
6. Spiritual envy: they feel unhappy when other do well spiritually. They are always comparing.
7. Sloth: they run from that which is hard. Their aim is spiritual sweetness and good feelings.

May God have mercy on me, a sinner, and incline my heart to his love and his law.


h/t The Theology Forum

Crash and Learn

A 6 year old took his family's sedan and drove nearly six miles to get to school after he missed the bus. His parents - who've been charged with child endangerment and have lost custody of their son until further notice - were sleeping at the time.

[PS: Mom, thanks for getting me up in the mornings!]

WICOMICO CHURCH, VA
The boy, whose name wasn't released, missed the bus, took the keys to his family's 2005 Ford Taurus and drove nearly six miles toward school while his mother was asleep, police said.

He made at least two 90-degree turns, passed several cars and ran off the rural two-lane road several times before hitting an embankment and utility pole about a mile and a half from school.

The boy told police he learned to drive playing Grand Theft Auto and Monster Truck Jam video games.

"He was very intent on getting to school," said Northumberland County Sheriff Chuck Wilkins. "When he got out of the car, he started walking to school. He did not want to miss breakfast and PE."

What struck me about this story was the eagerness with which the child sought to get to school. I really wish him the best in his future endeavors. Hopefully he'll be insatiable enough to escape the fate of his parents.

Now, will somebody get that kid a PowerWheels or bike?

Source

Free Christian Audiobooks

I hope that someone else finds this as helpful as I have. Redeem those hours spent exercising (but not exorcising) by listening to some really great Christian authors...for FREE! John Piper, Ravi Zacharias, Alistair Begg, N. T. Wright, and many more are regular contributors of free audio versions of their books.

Stroking my cupidity

Thanks to PhDiva for Facebook-linking to a site with photos of the 20 Most Beautiful Libraries in the world.

It included one of my favorites: The Old Reading Room of the British Library.

This is where Karl Marx came up with some of his [ahem] curious economic and political theories. But don't hold that against it. The British Museum built around the room, and eventually the library collection was moved to a new (and, in my opinion, less aesthetically pleasing) building. (I mean, look at the bones of this thing! The new building in St. Pancras is just so...square.)

The museum also houses the Enlightenment Gallery (a remnant of the old Kings Library), which is still beautiful in its own right.

More pictures here!

Have Yourself a Koine Krismas

I took Greek in undergrad, so I didn't get to sit through Dr. Garrett's punny Greek songs. (I've been told that Movable Nu - to the tune of "Run Around Sue" is a pedagogical riot. Apologies to Dion - or Dio...) Still, since I love parodies and nerdy songs, I couldn't resist.

Hey Dr. Garrett...I think we might have found a new recruitment song!



Because even though I'm now a parsin' presbyter, I'm still a Greekin' DEACON.

Modern Art

I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry. Look at this:


Looks like the energetic frenzy of a toddler with a crayon, right?

Now realize that it actually was done by a toddler with a crayon.


That's what you get from all those extra college edumacated folks I spoke of this morning.

Why We Need Less College Graduates

Yes, Bluto. Suprising but true, I'm against it.

Why?

Well, I'm very much in sympathy with the basic thrust of this article.

We've created an unnecessary expectation that our children will go to college. Yet in too many cases, it is just a well-funded period of prolonged neoteny and adolescent alcoholism rather than a time for the mind and spirit to be formed.

I really wish we would follow the lead of other countries that reserve a liberal education for those who can take it with good effect, and focus on vocational training for the vast majority of people who cannot (or will not) succeed in college.

Ignorance is no excuse

Does this scare anyone else?

Our Life

And my wife thinks I keep those books for me...

I think every pastor - especially those who homeschool - can sympathize.

h/t Wondermark

BUSTED

H/T Wondermark

World's Oldest Jokes

I love it when two of my passions come together to meet. Dr. Kim Paffenroth wed zombies and religion for me (two great tastes that taste weird together). Now someone has done the same for ancient history and humor. It's not the first time, but it's good. Below is a selection from the top ten.

1. Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap (1900 BC – 1600 BC Sumerian Proverb Collection 1.12-1.13)

3. Three ox drivers from Adab were thirsty: one owned the ox, the other owned the cow and the other owned the wagon's load. The owner of the ox refused to get water because he feared his ox would be eaten by a lion; the owner of the cow refused because he thought his cow might wander off into the desert; the owner of the wagon refused because he feared his load would be stolen. So they all went. In their absence the ox made love to the cow which gave birth to a calf which ate the wagon's load. Problem: Who owns the calf?! (1200 BC)

8. Augustus was touring his Empire and noticed a man in the crowd who bore a striking resemblance to himself. Intrigued he asked: "Was your mother at one time in service at the Palace?" "No your Highness," he replied, "but my father was." (Credited to the Emperor Augustus 63 BC – 14 AD)

10. Asked by the court barber how he wanted his hair cut, the king replied: "In silence." (Collected in the Philogelos or "Laughter-Lover" the oldest extant jest book and compiled in the 4th/5th Century AD)

My favorite - which didn't make the cut - is the one found in Codex Exoniensis (as reported by the Torygraph). It runs thus:

“What hangs at a man’s thigh and wants to poke the hole that it’s often poked before?’ Answer: A key.”

I'll bet +Leofric laughed his lappets off at that one.

Pay it froward

Get it done before your dollar is worthless!

https://www.extension.iastate.edu/mfl/online.html

Histrionic Historians Hate Herbert's Heir

The History News Network has reported the findings of an "unscientific poll" of "professional historians" to conclude that George W. Bush is the worst president ever. Now I know that W isn't troubled. Unlike some presidents (or candidates) he's never taken his marching orders from opinion polls (unscientific or otherwise). Word on the street is he gets his orders from either Ole' Scratch hisself or the military industrial cabal.

Anyway, there're plenty of good reasons not to even report this "fact finding mission" not the least of which are as follows:

1. Academia is glutted with post-hippie anti-war PhDs...people who kept re-upping their matriculation to avoid working and or war. It's not that I'm for war - especially not this war. However, it's important to keep in view that the most formative years of many of these folk's lives were spent in protesting Vietnam and Bush just gets their vinegar in a tussle in ways that other presidents have. (PS, it's not about deaths of American soldiers since nearly as many died under Clinton - during "peacetime"!)
   
2. Academia has long had a left-leaning bias, especially in the humanities and social sciences. One national survey of more than 1,000 profs shows that Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least 7 to 1 in the social sciences and humanities. (Aren't these the guys that whine incessantly about underrepresentation in important sectors of life? What - it's okay to look different, so long as we all think alike?)
   
3. Most importantly: this isn't the work of historians. Historians have to have the passage of time in order to see how certain policies worked themselves out in the political and economic and social ramifications. That takes time - something that they don't have yet. Give us twenty or thirty years and then ask the question.*

If I want a prognosticator, I'll talk to a political scientist or my stock broker. If I want history, I'll have to look backwards. Unfortunately, the judgment of history isn't likely to be available to us for at least 25 years.

* I take the same issue with those who laud Reagan as the greatest president of all time. While he was truly great and enjoyed enormous bi-partisan popularity, I still don't think enough time has passed for us to see him in comparison to other universally-acknowledged "greats".

BEAT TO THE PUNCH. H/T Aric