{"id":87151,"date":"2020-08-03T14:49:38","date_gmt":"2020-08-03T20:49:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=87151"},"modified":"2020-08-03T22:36:46","modified_gmt":"2020-08-04T04:36:46","slug":"heavy-drinking-drove-hundreds-of-thousands-of-americans-to-early-graves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/08\/heavy-drinking-drove-hundreds-of-thousands-of-americans-to-early-graves.html","title":{"rendered":"“Heavy drinking drove hundreds of thousands of Americans to early graves”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Raymond Barfield, M.D., Ph.D.
From the website of the Duke University School of Medicine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Raymond Barfield, who holds both an M.D. and a doctorate in philosophy from Emory University in Atlanta, is a pediatric oncologist at the medical school of Duke University and a professor of Christian philosophy in Duke University\u2019s Divinity School. \u00a0Here, I cite five passages that I marked while reading the text of his 2011 Veritas Forum address at the University of Oklahoma, as given in Ray Barfield, Pascal\u2019s Wager: What Is It To Be Human?<\/em> (n.pl.: \u00a0The Veritas Forum, 2013):<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I like his description of what humans are under the assumptions of extreme materialist reductionism:<\/p>\n

a transient though conscious vapor (23)<\/span><\/p>\n

life as a conscious but transient, accidental vapor on a speck in the middle of an incomprehensively massive universe (23)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

If all were darkness, with absolutely nothing suggesting the possibility that there\u2019s more \u2014 that there\u2019s a God \u2014 that would be easy.\u00a0 Or if all were light, with clear and absolute, unwavering signs of a creator God everywhere we look, that would be easy.\u00a0 (24)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pascal is not in the business of proving God\u2019s existence, and people frequently get confused about this point.\u00a0 He is in the business of attending to probabilities \u2014 the stakes in a gamble \u2014 and the answer to the biggest gamble we have, namely, now we should live our lives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pascal wants to say that if it\u2019s even possible<\/em> that there\u2019s more to the universe and myself than atoms in the void, and it if might<\/em> be the case that this possible more is God, then it approaches certainty<\/em> that I should include this in my life planning as I answer the question, What should I do?<\/em>\u00a0 (24-25)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Either there is a God or there\u2019s not.\u00a0 No matter how much you strain your reasoning abilities, he [Pascal] wants to say, you will not be able to prove with certainty the truth of the question, one way or the other.<\/span><\/p>\n

But you are in the game, and you don\u2019t have a choice about whether you\u2019re in the game because here you are, alive, spending your time with no choice on whether you spend it.\u00a0 So consider the options.\u00a0 (27)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two recent science items caught my attention:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAsk Ethan: How Old Are The Most Distant Stars We Can See?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA star orbiting the Milky Way\u2019s giant black hole confirms Einstein was right: Decades of observations revealed the rotation of the star\u2019s elliptical orbit\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And this one . . .<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are more than a few people, I expect, who can thank the Word of Wisdom and the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> for sparing them and their families this fate:\u00a0 But you can decide for yourself whether you want to add it to your Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHeavy drinking drove hundreds of thousands of Americans to early graves: From 2011 to 2015, excessive drinking ended lives 29 years sooner, on average, than expected\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

You can decide for yourself whether you want to add it to your Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>.\u00a0 Maybe, as \u201ca transient though conscious vapor,\u201d you just want to get it all over as quickly as possible while in a semi-conscious stupor.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Raymond Barfield, who holds both an M.D. and a doctorate in philosophy from Emory University in Atlanta, is a pediatric oncologist at the medical school of Duke University and a professor of Christian philosophy in Duke University\u2019s Divinity School. \u00a0Here, I cite five passages that I marked while reading the text of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14366,12304,14369,9284,2601,5568,9278,14360,14363,2454,14372,9281],"class_list":["post-87151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barfield","tag-bet","tag-duke","tag-existence","tag-god","tag-oklahoma","tag-pascal","tag-ray","tag-raymond","tag-university","tag-veritas","tag-wager"],"yoast_head":"\n"Heavy drinking drove hundreds of thousands of Americans to early 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