Working out an epistemology

Most of my apologetic encounters for the last 25 years or so have involved epistemology. So I've thought about epistemology a lot. Actually, I started thinking about epistemology long before I got interested in apologetics, and even before I had ever heard of the word, epistemology. I'm still not an expert in the sense that a professional philosopher might be an expert, but I think I have my epistemologgy worked out about as well as can be expected. I'm pretty confident in it, too, so let me lay it out in a nut shell.

I am a common sense realist, a weak foundationalist, and a particularist. There's some overlap between these terms, and maybe I'm using them incorrectly, but let me explain what I mean by them.

Common sense realism

I think I first heard this term as a description of a philosopher named Thomas Reid. I've also heard the term, "Scottish realism," and I think it's the same thing, but I'm not sure. Basically, it's just the idea that we should think the world is real because it at least seems to be real, and in the absence of any good reason to think it's not real, we should default to how things seem to be. That's the most rational position to hold--to affirm the obvious.

I'm part of a meet up group that gets together to talk about "hard questions" in culture, religion, philosophy, science, etc. There's a woman in there who sometimes describes herself as being a "meat and potatoes" persons. I like that. I told her I'm a meat and potatoes person, too. I think she's a common sense realist. When she says she's a meat and potatoes person, that just means she doesn't get all hung up on esoteric cunundrums in epistemology. She just takes the world in a common sense way, like just about all the common folk do. Of course there's an external world. Look!

I have often expressed this view as just affirming the obvious, which I think we all do most of the time. If things appear a certain way, we assume they are that way unless we have good reason to think otherwise. The most natural explanation for why it seems like there's an external world is because there is an external world.

Weak foundationalism

Here's where if any of my readers are professional philosophers, they're probably going to tell me how I've got it all wrong. But even if I'm using the wrong term, the important thing is that I accurately describe my point of view.

Foundationalism is the idea that all of our knowledge and beliefs rest on a foundation of axioms, unproven assumptions, or a priori knowledge. The foundation consists of actual items of knowlege. We know these things. We aren't just assuming them arbitrarily or for convenience. These foundational items of knowledge are our starting points. Everything else we know can be traced back to them or can be justified by them.

Aristotle once said something like, "Not knowing what requires demonstration and what does not argues want of education." He realized that there were some things we could know without proving and other things that require proof, and that an educated person ought to know the difference. It would be silly, for instance, to insist that somebody prove the laws of logic since you need the laws of logic to perform a proof in the first place. Our knowledge of logic shouldn't require proof.

But foundationalism comes in the strong and weak varieties. Strong foundationalism is the idea that all of the items of knowledge that belong in our foundation consist only of knowledge of necessary truths, analytic truths, and that sort of thing. Weak foundationalism is the idea that our foundational items of knowledge consist not only of necessary and analytic truths but also a handful of contingent and synthetic truths. An example of a necessary truth is that two plus two is four. An example of a contingent truth is that my senses are giving me true information about an external world that actually exists. While I think we can be certain about some truths--the necessary ones--we cannot be certain about the contingent truths. It's possible that there is no external world. It's possible that our senses produce perceptions that exist solely in the mind without corresponding to anything in the external world. But I nevertheless think our belief in the general reliability of our sensory perceptions is an item of knowledge. And there's a handful of other things I won't go into.

Particularism

I was introduced to particularism by J.P. Moreland in a talk I saw on the internet many years ago. He explained it by introducing me to the "problem of the criterion" and how there were two schools of thought on it. Well, actually, there are three. Let me see if I can explain this without botching it.

There are a lot of ideas that are all vying for our assent. Some of them are true, and some of them are false. We'd like to be able to sort them, but how do we begin?

One approach is called methodism. A methodist (not to be confused with the Christian denomination) thinks that we begin our quest for knowledge with a method. We sort the true from the false by using our method and applying some criteria or test to see what is true and what is not true. For example, we might adopt the method of observing with our senses. Or we might adopt the scientific method. Scientism is a version of methodism because people who subscribe to scientism think science is the only method for acquiring knowledge. But there are other methods one might use to distinguish the true from the false.

Another approach is called particularism. Instead of beginning with a method and working our way to items of knowledge, we begin with clear case examlpes of knowledge and work out a method. Having worked out a method, we can then use it to broaden our knowledge further.

I think that particularism is not only the correct approach, but it's the approach everybody actually uses whether they realize it or not. Methodism is self-refuting. It falls victim to what J.P. Moreland calls the "iteritive skeptic." An iteritive skeptic is somebody who just says, "Well, how do you know that?" every time you tell him how you know something. He's assuming that before you can know something, you first have to account for how you know it. And if you can't, then you don't know it. But this forces the methodist into an infinite regress. Since an infinite regress cannot be completed, the iteritive skeptic forces the methodist into global skepticism--that idea that we don't know anything at all.

The problem of the criterion is that before you can apply the methodist approach to knowledge, you first have to know at least two things. You have to know what criteria to use (or what method to use), and you have to know that such and such proposition either meets or doesn't meet the criteria. You have to know those two things before some proposition can become an item of knowledge. But then to know those two things, you have to have another criteria and be able to know whether or not those two things fulfill the criteria. So again, this leads to an infinite regress. Methodism makes knowledge impossible, which is why it's self-refuting.

And that brings me to global skepticism, which is the third approach. Global skeptics try to avoid the whole problem by just saying they don't know anything at all. Global skepticm is an untenable position for a couple of reasons. One reason is because it can never be rationally justified. Any reason or argument you give to try to justify global skeptism will depend on premises. But if you don't know anything, then you don't know that any of those premises are true or that your conclusion follows from those premises. So any attempt to justify global skeptism is going to end up being self-refuting as well.

Global skepticism is also untenable because there are obviously at least some things we know. At the very least, we know that we are thinking and that we exist, but if you're reasonable person, you're going to admit that you also know the earth orbits the sun, that a human can't live without water, and that murder is wrong (yeah, I said it).

If the only options are particularism, methodism, and global skepticism, and if methodism and global skepticism are untenable, process of elimination leaves us with particularism. With particularism, you just begin with a handful of what appear to be clear case examples of knowledge. For exmaple, I know that I live in Austin, Tx. I know I have a brother and a sister who both live here. I know that fire is hot. I know that if I strum my guitar, it will make a sound. But if you played a game of "How do you know that?" with me, I might eventually get stumped. There are some things I know without knowing how I know them. But if I think carefully enough about it, there's a chance I might be able to figure out how I know them. And once I do, I will have a new tool in my epistemological tool bag with which I can possibly learn new things.

As I said before, I think particularism is not only the right approach, but it's the epistemology pretty much all of us actually use in spite of whatever epsitemology we claim to use. If this were not the case, then there would be an awful lot of people in the world who don't actually know anything. Consider somebody with an IQ of 70. Even with an IQ of 70, people know who their siblings are. They know the sun is bright. They know it hurts to bump your head. There are lots of things they know. But if you asked them how they know, it probably wouldn't be difficult to stump them.

I remember when my daughter was around five years old, I asked her what colour her eyes were. She said, "Blue." I said, "How do you know they're blue?" She said, "Because I saw them in the mirror." I said, "Are you looking in the mirror right now?" "No," she said. "Then how do you know they're blue right now?" That might stump some five year old, but my daughter had an answer. She said, "Eyes don't change colour." But suppose I had stumped her. Would it follow that she didn't know what colour her eyes were? Of course not. She knew what colour her eyes were even if she couldn't fully account for how she knew.

You don't have to know how you know something before you can know it. If you did, then you'd fall victim to the iterative skeptic who could ask how you know that ad infinitum. Insisting that you must account for how you know something before it's an item of knowledge leads to global skepticism, and global skepticism cannot be rationally affirmed. If anybody really was a global skeptic, they wouldn't know it.

One criticism of particularism that's worth considering is that it allows people to just claim anything they want as an item of knowledge without having to justify it. I could claim to know that Santa Claus is an alien who lives on the moon if I wanted to, and if you asked me how I know that, I could just say, "I don't have to tell you how I know it. I just know it." While this criticism is worth considering, I don't think it ultimately goes through.

One reason it doesn't go through is because in reality, a person who said that about Santa Claus is probably just lying. An honest person isn't going to arbitrarily claim to know things he knows he doesn't know. Nevertheless, an honest person can rightly claim to know a few things even without being able to put his finger on how he knows exactly.

Another reason the objection doesn't go through is because being a particularist doesn't mean being infallible. There may be some things I think I know, but I don't really know them. And if I spend enough time trying to figure out how I know it, I may in the process learn that it's not an item of knowledge after all. That doesn't undermine particularism. I'm still going to begin with what appear to be clear case items of knowledge, even if I may be wrong about some of them.

Particularists don't claim that their "clear case items of knowledge" are beyond dispute. You can be a particularist, claim that your knowledge of the external world is a clear case item of knowledge, and be wrong about it. There is nothing inconsistent about that. But if you want to dispute a particularist's "clear case item of knowledge," it may not be enough to convince them that they can't prove it. You may have to disprove it before they'll budge.

Epistemological strategery

The epistemology people actually use is not necessarily the epistemology they claim to use. And it's not that they are being dishonest either. A lot of times, they just haven't thought it through.

A major obstacle in conversations between Christian apologists and counter-apologists is their differences in the epistemologies they explicitly and knowingly subscribe to. When a counter-apologist wants to challenge a Christian apologist, they will often do so by telling them what their standard of acceptable belief is, and it usually has to do with physical evidence, verifiable proof, or something along those lines. This is meant to nip any argument in the bud that depends on a priori information, philosophical reasoning, intuition, and a host of other things that Christian apologists appeal to.

My approach in these situations is not to try to meet their challenge but to challenge their epistemology. I think claiming to only believe what your own sensory perceptions tell you is an obstacle, not just to accepting Christianity, but to epistemology in general. Now, I know that in spite of what people say, they don't actually use this epistemology. There are lots of things they believe they know that are not known through empiracle means. So my strategy in the past has always been to point it out to them by bringing up counter-examples to their claimed epistemology. For example, I might ask them if they can think of a number and know which number they're thinking of. Or I might ask them if they believe their wife has thoughts and emotions and if they have ever seen those thoughts and emotions with their own sensory perceptions. Or I might ask them if they believe the external world is real. Or sometimes I'll force them into an infinte regress and see how they handle it.

I've had these conversations a lot, and I can't tell you how many times the person I talked to just bit the bullet and claimed they didn't know if there was an external world, or if there were other minds. Just a few days ago, a guy told me he was a skeptic and that his standard of proof was high, so my evidence for Christianity had better be impressive. It didn't take but a couple of exchanges before he told me that he was a solipsist because he was even skeptical of the external world and other minds. I simply don't believe him. I think he's blowing smoke. And I've run into a lot of people like him who are willing to embrace these kinds of absurdities rather than concede my point about epistemology.

So I came up with a new strategy for dealing with people like this. It's a little sneaky, but it'll be interesting to try. I haven't actually tried it yet. The next time somebody tells me they insist on physical proof (or whatever) before they'll believe anything, I'm going to ask them whether they believe in evolution, or whether they believe the holocaust happened, or something they will probably claim to have a lot of certainty about and that anybody who denies it is crazy or ignorant. This way, I can get them to commit to affirming something. I think evolution is a good one because this is a point where a lot of critics of Christianity think they are following the science, and a lot of Christians just have their head in the sand. So I suspect most peopel who claim to only believe in things that have physical proof will readily admit to believing in evolution.

Then I'll ask them how strong their belief is in evolution. How sure are they? Let's say, for instance, that they are 90% sure that evolution is true. It might even be higher. Well, if evolution is true, that means the external world exists, right? If there's no external world, then there can't be evolution. So by getting the person to admit that they believe very strongly in evolution, they cannot escape the force of my argument by pretneding to be unsure about the existence of the external world. If they are 90% sure that evolution is true, then they must be at least 90% sure that the external world exists.

Of course, I suppose there's an escape they could use for that, too. They might qualify their statement about evolution and say something like, "Oh, I'm working within the parameters of our 'simulation' on the assumption we're in one. Evolution is 90% certain in our perceived realty. But again, this reality may be illusory." That's the only escape I can see, but I'm going to try it anyway and see what happens.

Steel, Knives, and Bibles

Once in a blue moon a book comes along that's so good, so useful, so complete, and so definitive, that we affectionately call it a "Bible." You might recall the Bible, which isn't a book so much as it is a library. But there have been other books we might call Bibles. There's The Traditional Bowyer's Bible which comes in four volumes so is also a kind of library. The editor took a risk by putting "Bible" right in the title, but it has lived up to the name, so we can forgive any presumption that might've been involved.

Now, there is a new Bible. It is called Knife Engineering: Steel, Heat Treating, and Geometry, and it's by Larrin Thomas, son of Devin Thomas, maker of Damascus and other things. Larrin Thomas isn't just the son of a famous Damascus steel maker, either. He has a PhD in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering. Having recently read this book, I've decided this is the new knife-maker's Bible. It is a must read for anybody who is interested in knife-making. It skillfully and articulately unravels the riddle of steel, its properties, the different affects of alloying elements, heat treating methods, and even blade geometry. Up until now, I've been recommending that everybody read Steel Metallurgy for the Non-Metallurgist by John Verhoeven (which I still recommend), but Knife Engineering has earned the title of the knife maker's Bible.

Maybe that's going too far, though. I think the information in that book is invaluable besides being really interesting. But it's not actually about knife making. There's no guide for how to actually make a knife. It's about one aspect of knife making--the metallurgical aspect. But heat treating is arguably the most crucial aspect of knife making, so knife steel metallurgy is pretty fundamental, so I'm still going to call it a Bible.

If you're not interested in making knives, but you are interested in buying and using knives, but you don't know anything about different kinds of steels or how to go about choosing a knife or judging between steels, you should still read this book. It will open your mind.

Larrin Thomas also has a blog called Knife Steel Nerds that is worth checking out.

More on physicalism, idealism, dualism, and weighing the evidence

Physicalists and idealists (at least some of them) dismiss dualism because of the difficulties in solving the interaction problem. But to do so, they each have to dismiss some of the evidence from their experiences as illusory. Idealists dismiss the evidence of our sensory perceptions as illusory, and physicalists dismiss the evidence of our introspection concerning our own volition as illusory. Again, I'm speaking of some physicalists and idealists here.

But it seems to me that the best theories or models of the world are going to be theories and models that do the best job of accounting for the most evidence. If we follow one line of evidence while dismissing anything that suggests otherwise as illusory, then we aren't really following the evidence where it leads. We're being selective.

But to some degree that may be unavoidable. There are almost always anomalies that we can't explain whenever we adopt a model or view of the world. But the goal ought to be to account for as many pieces of the puzzle as you can when constructing your worldview and dismissing as few pieces of evidence as anamalies or illusions as we can.

While I fully acknowledge the difficulties with the interaction prolem in substance dualism, idealism and physicalism are both untenable for me because of the pills I'd have to swallow if I accepted them. I can't imagine an argument that would be suffient to really and honestly cause me to think the external world is all mere percpetion with nothing external. While I might be able to say the external world is an illusion, and entertain the idea in a philosophical discussion over cheese and crackers, I don't think I could bring myself to honestly believe it. Or if I could, I guess I just haven't come across an argument that's sufficient to do the trick.

I feel the same way about physicalism. While a lot of physicalists will disagree with me about this, I don't think physicalism leaves any room for real volition or moral responsibility. Given physicalism, you can't rationally praise or blame anybody for anything because nothing is anybody's fault. Nobody does anything on purpose. We are all passive objects being acted upon, like a boat riding the waves. I've probably thought more about morality than any other subject in Christian apologetics. I've seen all kinds of arguments on every side, and there hasn't been anything that has moved me to think moralty is just in our heads and that we don't really have moral obligations, and there aren't any ojectively true moral claims. I can see how that would follow from physicalism, but that is precisely part of why I reject physicalism. But even if I could bring myself to think morality is entirely subjective, it would take another monumental argument to persuade me that I don't have control over my behavior at least some of the time, that I don't act volitionally, for reasons, and out of motives and intentions, that I'm just a passive observer with the illusion of volition. But if physicalism were true, that would have to be the case, so to be consistent, I must reject physicalism.

While dualism may have its deficulties, it has the advantage of at least trying to account for all of the evidence without dismissing some of it as illusory. Dualism is a livable worldview that isn't hard to honestly believe.

Other posts on this subject:

Skepticism about theories that invoke illusion to dismiss anomalies

It's always more reasonable to affirm the obvious than to deny the obvious

Materialism, dualism, and idealism

The power of intuition

Some of my favorite books not related to religion, philosophy, apologetics, etc., at least not directly.

Bushcraft by Richard Graves

My dad gave me this book when I was around twelve years old, and it turned me into a wilderness survival/camping/primitive living fanatic. I was especially enamored with the section on trapping. I think I liked the mechanics and cleverness of the traps more than I liked the idea of actually trapping things. I used to build traps all the time, but I only caught a squirrel one time and a bird.

Leaving Cheyenne by Larry McMurtry

I read this book as a teenager and got all caught up in the love triangle because I was an emotional kid and kind of lonely.

The Motley Fool Investment Guide by Dave and Tom Gardner

I read this book in the mid-90’s or so and started investing in stocks. It became another obsession. I used to make spread sheets with various criteria and sort the various stocks so I could narrow down which stocks I’d look more closely at. I did pretty well at it, but he market as a whole was doing well at the time, so I don’t know if it was me or just the fact that it was hard to go wrong.

The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

The only reason I picked up that first book was because I was listening to Hank Hanegraff around when the fourth book had come out. Hank kept talking about how terribly unChristian it was and how we ought to be reading The Chronicles of Narnia instead. I got the impression it was really controversial because it was popular but had anti-Christian themes. So I read it mostly out of curiosity. But I fell in love with it almost immediately. The first thing that put a hook in my heart happened on the first page when she said, “Mrs. Dursley had nearly twice the usual amount of neck.” I just loved how she wrote, and I loved the story. I became a Harry Potter nut for a while there and even got a friend into it.

Cow People by J. Frank Dobie

This is a collection of stories by Dobie that are just great to read.

The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien

I completely missed out on this as a kid and didn’t even know it existed until after the first movie came out. I saw the first movie and said, “What? That’s it???” I didn’t realize it was part of a trilogy, but when I found out, I read all the books before the second movie came out, and I became a Lord of the Rings nut.

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen E. Ambrose.

This book was mainly about the Lewis and Clark expedition, and I really got into it. What an adventure! It made me want to get a boat and take a long river trip, camping along the way. I never did, though.

Crazy Horse and Custer by Stephen E. Ambrose

Oh look! Stephen Ambrose made the list twice! This is a dual biography of Crazy Horse and George Custer, alternating chapters until they finally meet on the battle field at the battle of Little Bighorn. I ended up doing my senior project in history on the battle of Little Bighorn in college.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Being somewhat socially awkward and probably having low emotional intelligence, this book was kind of an eye-opener for me. I suspect it’s mundane stuff for a lot of people, though.

TR: The Last Romantic by H.W. Brands

This is a biography of Teddy Roosevelt. Now there’s a guy who really lived. I was captivated and inspired.

The Traditional Bowyer’s Bible series by Jim Hamm, et al

I was obsessed with making traditional bows for a while there, too. These books were invaluable.

John Adams by David McCullough

Everybody liked this book, didn’t they?

Agincourt by Juliet Barker

The story of how Henry V tried to conquer parts of northern France and won a surprising victory at Agincourt.

Steel Metallurgy for the Non-metallurgist by John D. Verhoeven

I read this because I wanted to understand the riddle of steel since I made knives. I ended up finding the metallurgical aspect of heat treating to be fascinating.

The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene

Brian Green has a gift for communicating and making things interesting. I’ve read a lot of popular level books on physics and cosmology, and this is one of the most articulate, which is why I liked it so much. But I didn’t agree with his discussion on teleportation and identity.

The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins

In spite of a mostly negative sounding review I wrote a while back, I really liked this book. Dawkins may fumble his way through religious topics, but when he’s writing within his field, it’s very good.

Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne

I had this book for a long time before I read it. I didn’t realize how good it was going to be. It’s a little heart wrenching, though.

Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel

I had no interest in this book when I picked it up. I only read it because my daughter gave it to me. But it ended up being really good, and it started me on a hunt for a Gros Michel banana. I was so wrapped up in it, I even planned out how I would try to grow a Gros Michel plant myself. I gave up on the idea when I realized how difficult it would be to keep it alive through the winter.

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte

This was an excellent book I read just two or three years ago. It was very interesting and well-written. Brusatte argued in the book that T-Rex almost definitely had feathers, but that has since been disproved just in recent times.

What to do if your cat gets diabetes

First of all, I'm not a vet. I'm just a guy who loves his cat. My cat was diagnosed with diabetes two or three months ago, and since then I've learned a ton, and I thought I'd condense a lot of the most important stuff to a little post in hopes that it will help somebody.

First of all, let me share a bit of good news. Feline diabetes is reversible. You can actually fix your cat's diabetes and take them off of insulin altogether. Read on.

How do you know your cat has diabetes?

The three most obvious signs are (1) your cat starts drinking a lot of water. Sometimes they hover near their water bowl a lot. (2) Your cat pees a lot. He's peeing not only because he's drinking a lot of water but also because that's his body's way of getting rid of excess glucose which he has an excess of because he doesn't have enough insulin to process that glucose. (3) Your cat has developed neorpathy. Neorpathy is damage to the nerve fibers in your cat's legs. It causes them to be weak in the legs, to wobble when they walk, or to sit or stand on their honches. With most cats, this happens in the back legs, but with mine it was all his legs.

If your cat has any of these symptoms or if things just don't seem right, take him to the vet. The vet will diagnose your cat.

How did your cat get to be this way?

Probably because you've been feeding him dry cat food his whole life. It turns out that dry cat food is really bad for your cat. It has way too many carbohydrates, and not near enough moisture, both of which are really bad for the pancreas and the kidneys.

What should you do now

Your vet will probably prescribe insulin to your cat. My vet had me buy insulin and syringes at WalMart pharmacy because it's inexpensive. There are different kinds of insulin and different kinds of syringes. I didn't know anything when I went to Walmart. They just gave me insulin and asked me what size syringes I needed. I said, "I don't know. The smallest ones you have. It's for a cat."

But the reaity is that there are U100 syringes and U40 syringes, and they are supposed to corresponds to the insulin concentration in the insulin that you buy. If you buy U100 insulin, you need to use U100 syringes. Thankfully, even though I didn't know this at the time, Walmart gave me the right syringes to go with my insulin. There's more information about insulin and syringes here.

Your vet will likely start you off on 1 unit of insulin, then ask you to come back in a week or two to do a glucose curve. The reason they start you off on 1 unit of insulin is because it's more dangerous for a cat to have low blood sugar than it is to have high blood sugar. So you have to start off on a low dose, then do a glucose curve after a week or two to see how the cat is doing. After that, you can adjust the dose accordingly.

When you take your cat back for a glucose curve, you're suppose to feed them and give them an insulin shot, then leave them at the vet all day. The vet will take a glucose reading once every two hours or so, then draw up a curve, interpret the curve, then recommend what you should do in terms of insulin. If you have a good vet, they'll also recommend you get your cat off dry cat food.

Unless you are unable for whatever reason, I recommend doing your own glucose curves. One reason is because taking your cat to the vet and leaving him there all day is emotionally traumatic. That stress will cause your cat's glucose levels to rise giving your vet a false high reading. And you'll feel guilty. A second reason is because to get a good glucose curve, you need to feed your cat normally through the day like you normally would. That won't happen at the vet's office. The vet will just assume you feed your cat once in the morning, and that's it. You'll pick your cat up at 5 pm, and he may be starving. In my case, I don't think they gave my cat any water all day.

A third reason is because taking your cat to the vet for a glucose curve every two weeks just to make sure you're giving the right insulin dose can get expensive. It's cheaper to do it yourself. That brings me to the fourth and final reason--doing glucose curves yourself is easier on you, your cat, and your wallet.

A little about insulin and glucose

When your cat eats, some of that food gets turned to glucose. The body releases insulin, and the insluin works like a key to open the cells to accept the glucose. If your cat has too much glucose too often, the body has to work harder to produce more insulin. Eventually, it wears out, losing its ability to produce insulin or the cells become resistant to insulin. Once that happens, the cells cannot absorb the glucose, and this results in hyperglycemia (i.e. too much glucose in the blood), which leads to all the symptoms of diabetes. It can also cause kidney problems.

The kitty cat body tries to maintain a glucose level of between 80 and 130 mg/dL. But since hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) is more dangerous than hyperglycemia (high blood sugar), we want to give ourselves a margin of safety. So we want to shoot for a glucose level between 90 and 270 mg/dL. Actually, I looked at several sources and got slightly different answers. One said 100-130 mg/dL. Another said 90-270 mg/dL. Another said 80-300 mg/dL.

The most important thing is that you keep their glucose level above 60 mg/dL. Anything below that is hypoglycemia which can cause seizures and death.

Doing a glucose curve

You need to get a glucometer with some test strips and lances. I got the AlphaTRAK2 kit, which has everything you need. You can buy more strips and lances on Amazon. Unfortunatly, the strips are kind of pricey, but it's still a lot less expensive than taking yoru cat to the vet every two weeks and traumatizing him. Plus, it allows you to get a reading whenever you need to or want to.

There are a lot of YouTube videos showing how to take your cat's blood glucose with the glucometer. Basically, you stick a test strip in the glucometer. It will turn itself on. An option will come up the first time to enter a code. The code you need will be written on the tube your test strips come in. For example, for a cat it might say "37." There are two buttons on the glucometer. The one on the right makes the number go up, and the one on the left makes the number go down. So just press the buttons until you have the right code. Once that is entered, wait a couple of seconds, and it'll show a little drop on the screen. From that moment on, you have two minutes to obtain a blood sample before it shuts itself off again.

To get the blood sample, rub the outter edge of the ear with your fingers to warm it up and get the blood flowing. Then you prick it with the lance (you don't need the lance shooter, or whatever it's called to do this). Hopefully a little drop of blood will come out. If not, massage the ear on both sides of where you made the prick to kind of push the blood up and through the wound. Once you see a little drop of blood (and it only takes a tiny bit), pick the glucometer up with the test strip inserted, and put the test strip up against the blood drop. The strip will wick the blood up, and you'll hear a beep. Then all you do is wait for the number to come up on the screen.

Don't worry if you're uncertain about my instructions. The glucometer comes with detailed instructions, and there are lots of YouTube videos demonstrating how to do it.

To do a glucose curve, all you have to do is take readings for twelve hours or so, two hours apart. Here's the basic schedule I use:

7:00 am Feed Aristotle.

7:30 am Give Aristotle an insulin shot.

8:00 am Take a glucose reading.

10:00 am Take another glucose reading.

Then take one at noon, 2 pm, 4 pm, and 6 pm. You can do one at 8 pm, too, if you want.

Throughout this time, feed your cat like you normally would. A girl on YouTube insisted on only feeding your cat twice a day, but my cat won't put up with that nonsense.

Once you have all the readings you can either draw a curve yourself, or you can type it into Excel and have Excel do it for you. You really don't need to draw a curve. It just provides a visual for people who prefer visuals over raw data.

What will typically happen is that your first reading will be high. The glucose level will go down and reach its lowest point around noon. Then it will begin to rise again.

I recommend reading this web page about how to interpret a glucose curve. Again, the most important reading is that low reading. When I did my first two glucose curves, I took readings at 11 am and 12 am and got my lowest reading at 11 am one Saturday and 12 am another Saturday. That lowest reading is called the Nadir, and one web page said an ideal Nadir you want to shoot for is between 80 and 150 mg/dL. If your Nadir is below 60 or 80 mg/dL, then you definitely want to reduce the insulin you're giving your cat by at least one unit. If it's above 300 mg/dL, then you should increase the insulin dose by one unit.

You don't want to change the insulin dose too quickly. Change it by one unit at a time, then give it a week and do another glucose curve.

Don't freak out if your Nadir is near 80 mg/dL, but your highest reading is something like 411 mg/dL. Obviously, 411 mg/dL is above the normal range, but the important thing is that your cat's glucose level remain within the normal range for most of the day. If it peaks outside of that range, that isn't nearly as dangerous as dipping below the normal range.

Diet and nutrition

If your glucose curve swings wildly from way high to down low, it might be because you're still feeding your cat dry cat food. Stop that! Dry cat food is terrible for your cat, not only because it has all kinds of carbohydrates your cat doesn't need and that cause it's blood glucose to rise quickly, but because it doesn't have enough moisture. Cats naturally get a lot of their moisture from their food.

Glucose is sugar. Raw sugar is the fastest way to raise your glucose level (and your cat's). It goes straight to the blood. Carbohydrates are the second fastest. Cats need nearly no carbohydrates. A third source of glucose is protein, but since it takes longer for the body to turn protein into glucose, eating protein will not cause your glucose to spike.

Cats are "obligate carnivors," which means they have to eat meat, and they cannot live on a vegetarian diet. Dry cat food is full of filler like peas, rice, potatoes, etc., all of which are high in carbohydrates. They don't need that stuff and are much better off without it. They need meat.

If you can put your cat on wet cat food only, their glucose levels will not spike as much, and you and won't get those wild swings in their glucose curves. It'll level the curve out more.

I realize your lifestyle may inhibit your ability to feed your cat wet cat food all the time. Maybe you work a lot of hours and are away from home a lot. Well, I'm just going to tell you what you should do, not what you are necessarily able to do. I'll leave it to you to do what you can.

You should take your cat completely off of dry cat food if you can. If that's all you've been feeding your cat his whole life, he may not be willing to eat wet cat food at first. One thing you can do is buy him a can of tuna in water. My cat goes nuts over tuna. The first few times he tried it, though, he'd only lick up the water, but not eat the solid part. But after eating the solid parts, he became more receptive to wet cat food. So if your cat won't eat wet cat food, try giving him some tuna and see what happens.

Not all wet cat food is created equal. There's a web page called Feline Diabetes that is a wealth of information about feline diabetes (name checks out). It has links to charts with nutritional information about various canned cat foods (like this one and this one), and you can't necessarily find that information on the cat food itself. The important macro-nutrients they show is protein, fat, and carbohydrates. The most important thing to get is food with low carbohydrates.

I'm going to make it easy for you, though. I have done a lot of searching, and the very best canned cat food you can give your cat is Tiki. Tiki comes in a variety of flavours. In the beginning, Aristotle liked all of it. Now, he's getting a little more picky. Tiki has almost no carbohydrates, and it's high in animal protein. And it's real food. If you crack open a can of Tiki, you'll see shredded chicken and maybe even half a quail egg. You could probaly eat it yourself.

Tiki is expensive, but you love your cat. Think of it like this. Your goal is to get your cat into remission. So you may not have to feed your cat Tiki forever. Just do it long enough for him to go into remission. My cat's insulin needs dropped quickly after I started feeding him Tiki exclusively. He topped out at 4 units and is now down to 1 unit.

A less expensive alternative is Fancy Feast. Fancy Feast isn't as low in carbohydrates as Tiki, but it's less expensive, and its better than most other canned cat food. Unfortunately, you'd be best to stay away from the cream and gravy varieties since they are the highest in carbohydrates. It's unforntunate because those are Aristotle's favourites.

If you want to make your own cat food, then check out this web page. There's some important things in there you need to know, like your cat's need for taurine. What's taurine, you say? It's explained in that web page along with a recipe.

Conclusion

That's the skinny of it. There's a lot more information out there, but I wanted to condense what I thought were the most important things into one post. BTW, giving an insulin shot is not that difficult, and your cat can barely feel it. You just lift the fur on the back of the shoulders or rib cage, lifting the skin, stick the needle in, and push the plunger. Your vet will tell you how to do it, and there are demonstrations all over YouTube.

And read this.

Good luck!

The women at the tomb

Over the years, I've gone back and forth on whether I think the argument for the empty tomb from the fact that the gospels report that women were the first to discover the tomb empty is a good argument or not. The argument is that the authors of the gospels would not have included the story unless it really happened because the story would've been an embarrassment since women had no credibility among Jews, Greeks, or Romans in the first and second centuries. Today, I'm in favor of the argument, but I want to give you my thoughts on both sides of it.

The reason I sometimes don't think it's a good argument is because it's just a narrative. The gospels are not meant to serve as evidence of the empty tomb or the resurrection. The women are never offered as evidence for the empty tomb. So the fact that a first century audience wouldn't have put any confidence in the testimony of women doesn't strike me as being relevant. Why would it be embarrassing to say that women were the first to discover the empty tomb if it's just part of the story and is not being offered as evidence? The fact that women weren't to be trusted hardly seems like a good reason for the author to have left that part out since the author isn't asking the readers to believe in the empty tomb on the authority of those women.

The reason I sometimes think it is a good argument is because I can imagine an outsider in the first century reading the gospels and saying, "Now, wait a minute. You're saying this whole story of the empty tomb originated with women?" In their mind, if all the hysteria surrounding the empty tomb, which lead to belief in the resurrection, started because a bunch of silly women claimed to have found the tomb empty, then that discredits the whole story since women can't be trusted. The authors of the gospels would surely have anticipated this kind of reaction, in which case saying that women were the first to witness and report the empty tomb is kind of embarrassing. The fact that they reported it anyway serves as evidence that it actually happened. And since we in the modern world respect the testimony of women, that gives us good reason to think they actually did find the tomb empty.

Right now, I'm leaning in favor of that second argument, but just a few weeks ago, I was leaning toward the first argument. I guess it's still something I need to think through. Or maybe I should just throw up my hands and admit that I don't know whether it's a good argument or not. It surprises me sometimes how an argument can seem very persuasive to me at one time, then years later, it doesn't seem persuasive anymore. It really makes me doubt myself.

Let's suppose the story of the women finding an empty tomb is not historical. Where might it have originated? One possibility is that there were some women who dishonestly claimed to have found the tomb empty. If that were so, I would expect the first person they told to have wanted to check it out, so this is a no go for me.

Or maybe they mistakenly thought Jesus was buried in a tomb that they found empty. Would everybody else be likely to have mistakenly thought the same thing? If they were mistaken to think Jesus was buried in a tomb, it doesn't seem likely they would've honed in on a particular tomb, so I don't see how finding a random empty tomb would've made them think Jesus' tomb was empty. But even so, this seems like a mistake that would've easily been corrected for anybody who was actually curious about it.

Maybe Jesus was buried in a tomb, but they didn't know which one. Maybe they thought they did know, and they went to the wrong tomb. Again, this could've easily been corrected, especially if they knew who buried Jesus or whose tomb Jesus was buried in. They could just find out which tomb Jesus was buried in.

Another possibility is that Mark or some earlier person made it up. But why would they? What purpose does it serve? Maybe it's just to demonstrate the devotion they had to Jesus since they were going to the tomb to anoint his body. It doesn't seem like it would've been made up as a way of saying, "Look, we have all these witnesses to the empty tomb." If that were the purpose, it's more likely they would've had all the apostles find the tomb empty. Unless Mark has an ending that was lost, he didn't even say the apostles found the tomb empty, only the women. The same thing is true of Matthew. Only Luke and John have men visiting the empty tomb. In Luke, it was just Peter, and in John, it was just Peter and an unnamed disciple (presumably John).

Of course the fact that I can't come up with a good reason for the gospel authors to have included the story of the women finding the tomb empty doesn't mean there isn't one. But it does make me think it really happened. The historicity of it does a better job of explaining why it's in the gospels than anything else I can come up with.

An argument against transubstantiation

About 20 or more years ago, Stand to Reason used to have an open discussion forum. One time I had a semi-formal debate with a Catholic guy about transubstantiation. It was semi-formal in the sense that we didn't agree to any format or length restrictions, but we treated it like a debate, and we got an equal number of posts. There were also some other people who chimed in. Anyway, I printed out the discussion before STR deleted the forum, so thankfully I still have a copy of it. I'm just going to post my opening statement arguing against transubstantiation. All the terrible parts can be chalked up to the fact that I wrote this 20 or more years ago. All the good parts can be chalked up to me. :-) It's long, too, so I'm cutting out all the pleasantries and stuff.

I've been looking forward to Matt starting a thread about transubstantiation because I think it's a really interesting subject. The doctrine differs from consubstantiation in that while consubstantiation is the belief that Christ is present in, with, and under the bread and wine, transubstantiation is the belief that the bread and wine cease to be bread and wine and literally become the flesh and blood of Jesus even though it retains the properties of bread and wine such as appearance, texture, and taste. I guess the best thing to compare it to would be petrified wood. Each molecule of wood is replaced one at a time with minerals until there is no wood left--only rock--but it still looks like wood. The interest thing about this doctrine is that if it is true, then every time the priest says his incantation over the Eucharist, a divine miracle takes place. Transubstantiation isn't just something that happens in the spiritual world; it happens in the physical world. There is a miraculous physical change from the constituents of bread and wine into the constituents of human flesh and blood.

It's my belief that there are no good reasons to believe that a divine miracle happens in the physical world when the priest consecrates the Eucharist.

I'm sure we all come to the table with our preconceived ideas. Bias is something we all have to deal with when exegeting the scriptures, and I don't claim to be an exception. I do, however, believe it would be easier to convince a protestant that transubstantiation is true than it would be to convince a Catholic that it's not. The reason for that is because of why protestants and Catholics believe what they do. Protestants believe that scripture is the only infallible rule of faith and that any doctrine or teacher ought to be tested in light of what has already been revealed. In Acts 17:11, the Bereans were commended for searching the scriptures to see if what Paul said was true, and he was foundational to the church. How much more should we test traditions and modern church leaders in light of what has already been revealed! So all one need do to convince a protestant of transubstantiation is reason from the scriptures with him and demonstrate that the scriptures really do teach transubstantiation. Catholics, however, don't believe in transubstantiation because the Bible says it. They believe it because the Catholic Church says the Bible says it. Their understanding of what various passages and themes in the Bible mean is based on the authority of the church to accurately translate it for them. So it's almost impossible to convince a Catholic that transubstantiation is a false doctrine by reasoning from the scriptures with them because for them, it's a matter of authority. In the Catholic's eyes, the protestant simply doesn't have that divinely inspired light to give an infallible interpretation of the scriptures. The protestant is wrong, not because his arguments fail, but because he contradicts what the Catholic Church says, and the Catholic Church is right because they are infallible. So the only way to convince a Catholic that any of his doctrines are wrong is not to reason with them from the scriptures, but to shake their faith in the infallibility of the Catholic Church. Since Catholics understand the scriptures in light of how the Catholic Church interprets them, Catholic apologetics consists of digging up reasons to confirm what they already believe. So it's much easier for Catholics to be guilty of eisegesis than it is for protestants. Of course, there's a downside to that for protestants. Since protestants attempt to exegete the scriptures, and since they are not perfect, denominationalism is inevitable. People are going to read the scriptures and interpret them in different ways--especially where there is ambiguity. Catholics maintain doctrinal unity because they have a central governing body who interprets the scriptures for all Catholics. Catholics are then spoon fed these interpretations. Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons maintain unity the same way. They have a governing body who claims exclusive divine authority to interpret the scriptures, and the members are spoon fed. Actually, the unity among Jehovah's Witnesses is much more impressive than it is among Catholics. You can go to a Kingdom Hall anywhere in the world, and they are all exactly the same (except for the language). Most of them are probably having the same lesson on any given Sunday, too. The downside for Jehovah's Witnesses and Catholics, though, is that they have to come up with clever ways of changing their views without compromising their authority to correctly interpret the scriptures. Jehovah's Witnesses used to do it by making an analogy of a light getting brighter and brighter. They denied actually changing their views about anything and claimed that their understanding of it simply became more clear. Later, however, they had to start being more honest and apologize for changing their views. The Watchtower Society used to call itself a prophet and God's mouthpiece. In their apology for changing their views, they said they were not inspired prophets (as if there were such a thing as an uninspired prophet who wasn't a false prophet), and they attributed their failed dates to "false expectations" rather than false prophecies. I think Catholics have done a much better job of changing their views without looking like false prophets or something. The way they do it is by reinterpretation of earlier teachings. For example, in the council of Trent, there were lots and lots of anathemas and the Catholic Church taught that if you were not Catholic, you were not saved. They now teach that protestants and even Muslims can be saved. They didn't change that view by overturning Trent, but rather, they changed the view by reinterpreting Trent. Now they say that the anathemas of Trent do not actually mean that only Catholics will be saved. So now you've got interpretations of interpretations. The modern interpreters are interpreting the past interpreters who were interpreting the Bible so they can claim that they've always taught the same thing. It's a clever method for Catholics to use, but it undermines their argument for the need for an infallible interpreter. Ya see, having an infallible interpreter of the Bible doesn't help you if the interpreter himself is subject to interpretation. Who's going to interpret him? I am willing to believe in transubstantiation if Matt or anybody else can give me a convincing argument from the scriptures for it. Will Matt or anybody else be willing to stop believing in transubstantiation if I can give a convincing argument that it is not true? Will reason prevail in our effort to understand the scriptures or will the authority of the Catholic Church prevail? I look forward to you answer.

Transubstantiation causes a dilemma for Catholics. If it turns out to be true, then Catholics violate the scriptures by drinking blood. If it turns out not to be true, Catholics are guilty of idolatry because they worship inanimate objects.

The Old Testament command to abstain from eating blood (Leviticus 3:17) is repeated in the New Testament (Acts 15:29). The fact that Jesus is God does not nullify this command because (1) there is no disclaimer that says, "unless it's God's blood," and (2) Jesus came "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Romans 8:3). Jesus took on the nature of a servant, "being made in human likeness" (Philippians 2:7). He was incarnated in human flesh and was conceived in the womb of Mary, who was also human, and "as to his human nature [he] was a descendent of David," (Romans 1:3) who was also human. In his flesh, he shared a common ancestor with all humans. He was flesh as much as we are flesh, and his flesh came from the same place as ours did. If it is wrong to eat human flesh or drink human blood, then it is wrong to drink Christ's blood or to eat his flesh.

Because Catholics believe Jesus is physically present in the Eucharist, they actually do worship it. In 1378 of the Catechism, it says, "Worship of the Eucharist. In the liturgy of the Mass we express our faith in the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine by, among other ways, genuflecting or bowing deeply as a sign of adoration of the Lord." Again in 1418, it says, "Because Christ himself is present in the sacrament of the alter, he is to be honored with the worship of adoration."

If transubstantiation is true, then Catholics are guilty of consuming blood. Or if it is not true, then Catholics are guilty of idolatry.

Belief in transubstantiation is counter intuitive. It's equivalent to claiming that your computer is a Christmas tree. It may look like a computer, smell like a computer, and taste like a computer, but it's really a Christmas tree. The Eucharist retains all of the physical properties of bread and wine. If you look at it under a microscope, you will find that it is still made of wheat and grapes. If the Eucharist really is Jesus, then it would be more accurate to say that Jesus turned into bread and wine than to say bread and wine turned into Jesus. If we don't define things by their properties, then how do we define them? If we start saying a computer is a plant that grows in the forest and has to be cut down and decorated, and a Christmas tree is something with a central processing unit, a keyboard, and a monitor, then words will cease to have any meaning. Bread by any other name is still bread because it has the properties of bread. Bread is something made of wheat, water, and other things. Wine is fermented grape juice. If they retain those properties, then they are still bread and wine. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck. To claim that flesh and blood can have all the properties of bread and wine, and none of the properties of flesh and blood is just counter intuitive.

The context for understanding the Lord's supper in 1 Corinthians 11 starts at verse 17 and ends with verse 34. The problem was that the Corinthians were treating the Lord's supper like a regular meal. Paul said, "It is not the Lord's supper you eat, for each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody" (vs. 20-21). Paul was using the Lord's supper to promote unity among the Corinthians. He starts off in verse 18 mentioning the divisions, then he explains what he means, then he quotes the oral tradition, then he warns them of the consequences of the way they have been conducting the Lord's supper. Then he closes in verse 33-34 by telling them to do the opposite of what he said they were doing in verse 21. That is the context with which we must understand verse 29. "For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself" (v. 29). In another post, Joe gave the correct meaning of the Greek word, but his definition was misleading because he gave an incomplete definition of it. Like most words, the Greek word used in this passage means different things in different contexts. In this context, it means to distinguish. Since the context is making a distinction between the Lord's supper and a regular meal, the context dictates the we understand "diakrinon the body of the Lord," to mean we should make a distinction between eating the Eucharist and eating a regular meal. To argue that recognizing the body of the Lord means realizing that the bread is literally Jesus' flesh begs the question. The question is not whether, "the bread is the body of Christ," for even protestants acknowledge that, because the Bible is explicit that the bread is his body, and the wine is his blood. The question is over whether or not we should take that literally. So taking "diakrinon the body of the Lord," to mean "realize that the bread is Jesus' body," still leaves us with the question of whether or not it is literally his body. The context has everything to do with making a distinction between the Lord's supper and a regular meal. It has to do with eating the Lord's supper with reverence and not in an unworthy manner. More specifically, it has to do with treating each other as equals during the Lord's supper.

If the Bible is explicit that the bread is Jesus' body, and the wine is his blood, then it is also explicit that the bread is bread, and that the wine is wine. In 1 Corinthians 11:26, Paul writes, "For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." Paul is saying the exact opposite of what the Catholic Church says. The doctrine of transubstantiation says that it is no longer bread; it's literally Jesus' flesh. But Paul says it is still bread, so it's obvious that Paul did not take Jesus literally when he said, "This is my body" (v.24). Even Jesus showed that he was not being literal about the bread and wine. In Matthew 26:27-29, it says, "Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, 'Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom." If it literally changed from wine into blood, Jesus would not have called it the fruit of the vine. Clearly he meant it metaphorically. Furthermore, he says that it is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Are we to believe that Jesus actually poured out his blood and atoned for sins before ever going to the cross? Of course not! The broken bread was a symbol for his broken body to be eaten in remembrance of his sacrificial death (1 Cor 11:24-26). The last supper foreshadowed the actual death. In Matthew, Jesus predicts that he himself will drink it with his disciples in his Father's kingdom. Are we to believe that Jesus is going to drink his own blood? Surely not!

When Jesus said, "This is my body," and "this is my blood," he was sitting right there with them in the likeness of sinful flesh. He had not yet received his resurrection body. There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that a resurrection body can be in two places at once. The resurrection body is just as physical as the natural body, and physical objects are limited to being at once place at one time because if there was a physical object in two places at the same time, it would be two separate physical objects. Since Jesus was sitting there with his disciples, he could not have been speaking literally when he called the bread his body and the wine his blood.

If John 6 were to be taken as a prediction of Jesus instituting the Lord's supper, you would expect him to fulfill that prediction by instituting it, yet interestingly enough, in the gospel of John, Jesus does not institute the Lord's supper. John's silence on the Lord's supper begs for an explanation if we are to understand chapter 6 as having anything to do with it. The explanation is simple. John 6 has nothing to do with the Lord's supper, and therefore, it does not necessitate a narrative of the Lord's supper. If John 6 did have to do with the Lord's supper, then John would've given us a narrative of the Lord's supper in order to make sense out of John 6.

In John 6, Jesus was using a metaphor that wasn't that uncommon in the ancient world. The shock it evoked had more to do with the fact that it was being applied to a human being and was therefore misunderstood. The metaphor of eating things was more often used of teachings, words, sayings, etc. or simply ordeals. For example, when making an allusion to his passion, Jesus said, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about" (John 4:32), and when Peter tried to prevent his arrest, he said, "Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?" (John 18:11). To say that you were eating somebody's words meant that you were taking them into your thoughts, meditating on them, making them part of your life. We have a modern version of it ourselves. when people tell us what wonderful people we are we say we are, "eating it up." Likewise, the Bible tells us that "man doesn't live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord" (Deut 8:3, Matt 4:4, Luke 4:4). Jeremiah is even more explicit about it. He says, "When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart's delight, for I bear your name, O LORD God Almighty" (Jeremiah 15:16). It is appropriate that Jesus apply the metaphor to himself because John refers to Jesus as the Word of God (John 1:14, Rev 19:13). Instead of saying, "I will raise him from the dead," he says, "I am the resurrection" (John 11:25). It is appropriate, therefore, that instead of saying, "I can give you the bread of life," he says, "I am the bread of life" (John 6:35), and instead of saying, "eat my words," he says, "eat me" (John 6:51). In the context of John 6, to eat Jesus means to make him our teacher and our master. We are to be his slaves, and we are to live by every word he speaks. He asks us to have undivided loyalty to him because he is the revelation of the Father (John 14:9). To know Jesus is to know the Father (John 8:19). To believe in Jesus is to believe in the Father (John 12:44-45).

In John 6, Jesus starts off with a soft metaphor and beings to push it. First he says, "Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life" (v. 27). This begins his "eat me" conversation. If we misunderstand Jesus in the beginning of it, we will misunderstand him at the end. If we understand him at the beginning, then we have a much better chance of understanding him at the end. Now let's think about this for a minute. Jesus contrasted the food he would give them with natural food. Natural food spoils, but the food Jesus gave them would endure to eternal life. If Jesus was talking about the Eucharist, we should expect that the bread, if not eaten, would endure forever. Is that the case? No, it's not. Jesus is using bread in chapter 6 in the same way that he uses water in chapter 4. He used the same kind of language with the Samaritan woman he met at the well. He said, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (John 4:13). The girl's response makes it obvious that she misunderstood him because she thought that if Jesus gave her that water, she wouldn't have to keep going to that well to get water. Jesus didn't correct her, either. Instead, he changed the subject. It shouldn't surprise us, then, that he was also misunderstood when he started calling himself the bread of life that people should eat. Their response was the same as the woman at the well. They said, "From now on give us this bread" (v. 34). Notice the striking parallels between his bread of life conversation and his conversation with the woman at the well.

Woman: Whoever drinks the water will never thirst (John 4:14).
Others: Whoever comes to Jesus will never go hungry or thirst (John 6:35).

Woman: Give me this water (John 4:15).
Others: Give us this bread (John 6:34).

Woman: Water will give eternal life (John 4:14).
Others: Bread of God gives life to the world (John 6:33)

If this bread is metaphorical, how do we get it? Well in verse 29, it says, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." In the previous verses, Jesus was telling them to work for the bread the lasts forever, which is Jesus himself. So we acquire Jesus, and therefore eternal life, not by eating the eucharist, but by believing in Jesus. John 6 has nothing to do with the eucharist. It has to do with believing in Jesus for eternal life. Jesus reiterates that fact in verse 40 and then again in 47. If John 6 were talking about the Eucharist, then we should believe that our salvation is gained by eating the Eucharist (John 6:54), but it's not. It's gained by believing in Jesus. I just challenge anybody to read John chapter 6 carefully because if you do, you will see that it is about believing in Jesus for eternal life--not about eating the Eucharist for eternal life. The eating part is a metaphor. Jesus is the bread of life, but he's not literally a loaf of bread. Likewise, the bread of the Eucharist is the body of Christ, but it's not literally Jesus' flesh. Think about it. Transubstantiation claims that there is no bread, only Jesus' flesh. But in John 6, Jesus didn't say bread will turn into flesh. He said, "I am the bread." How can he be bread if the bread was turned to flesh? Even if taken literally, Jesus is saying the opposite of what the Catholic Church is saying in John 6. If Catholics want to continue calling the Eucharist bread after it has changed to the body of Christ, then they are just reversing the metaphor. Instead of literal bread and figurative body, they are saying it is literal body and figurative bread.

The fact that Jesus said, "I am the bread of life" (John 6:35), is no more literal than when he said, "I am the light" (John 9:5), or "I am the vine" (John 15:5). Neither one of those is in the context of a parable, so Hal's analogy still works. Saying, "This is my body," is no different than saying, "I am the vine," because in both cases, Jesus is saying what one thing is, the other is. What the bread is, the body is, and what the vine is, Jesus is. The fact that Jesus called himself the true bread and the true drink does not help Matt's case because Jesus also called himself the true vine (John 15:1). All parables contain metaphors, but not all metaphors are parables, so Matt's argument that Jesus is not telling a parable in John 6 doesn't help his case either.

The fact that Jesus didn't correct doesn't help Matt's case either because he didn't correct the woman at the well either. As a matter of fact, Jesus made a point out of cloaking his teachings in parables and metaphors. He admitted that, "I have been speaking figuratively" (John 16:25). He did this because he didn't intend for everybody to understand him. He said, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. . .This is why I speak to them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand" (Matthew 13:13). It continues with an explanation of why they don't understand. It says, "For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them" (v. 15). By not explaining the metaphor to everybody, Jesus was weeding out those who were not devoted to him wholeheartedly. Only those who confessed, "You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God" (John 6:68-69), remained loyal to Jesus. God will continue using the same methods of weeding out the loyal from the fickle. In 2 Thessalonians we find that some will be deceived by counterfeit signs and wonders. It says, "They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness" (2 Thessalonians 1:10-12).

Jesus never says anything remotely like, "I mean this literally," in John 6. He repeats himself, which is hardly cause for believing either way, but he never says that he was speaking literally. Instead, he says, "The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life" (John 6:63). If anything, Jesus was admitting to speaking figuratively.

Since the web site Joe gave was way too long to respond to, I'll just respond to what he posts. Joe says that the Eucharist held extreme significance for the early church, which I don't dispute at all. But the debate isn't over how important the Eucharist was. The debate is over transubstantiation. Joe also argues that the preservation of scripture would not have occurred had it not been for the Catholic and Orthodox churches. I don't dispute that either, but I don't see what bearing that has on whether or not the Catholic Church has correctly interpreted those scriptures throughout its history. If I had a book written in Chinese, and it was the only copy of it in the world, that wouldn't mean I understood what was written in it.

We hardly know anything at all about Clement of Rome except that he was the Bishop of Rome around 100 CE. Scholars speculate that he may have known Paul because Paul mentioned a Clement in Philippians 4:3 as one of Paul's fellow workers. We have no way to know whether or not it's the same Clement, but it's possible. Philippians was written around 55-56 CE. If Clement was 20 when Paul wrote that letter, he would've been 64 at the turn of the century. 1 Clement, which was written to the Corinthians, is the only authentic letter we have from him, and it was written around 95-100 CE, which is pretty early relatively speaking. 2 Clement was not written by Clement, as practically all scholars agree. Clement of Rome never said anything about the Eucharist, so I don't know why Joe envoked him as an authority on it.

The first quote Joe gave from Augustine merely says the the bread is the body of Christ and the chalice is the blood of Christ. To use this as an argument for transubstantiation begs the question because the issue is whether or not such terminology ought to be taken literally or figuratively.

I don't see how the second quote is even relevant. The third quote might be used in support of the Mass, but I don't see how it supports transubstantiation.

In the third quote, Augustine seems to refute Joe. Augustine says the sacrament is a sign for the invisible sacrifice, and that the daily sacrifice of the church is the sign for Jesus offering himself as the sacrifice. Augustine is making a direct allusion to Hebrews 9:11-14 where it says Jesus offered himself in the Most Holy Place once for all. I don't see what it has to do with transubstantiation.

Not all of the early church leaders believed in transubstantiation. Clement of Alexandria wrote that, "Elsewhere the Lord, in the Gospel according to John, brought this out by symbols, when he said, 'Eat my flesh and drink my blood,' describing distinctly by metaphor the drinkable properties of faith." (c. 195)

Tertullian didn't appear to take John 6 as a reference to transubstantiation. He wrote, "They thought his discourse was harsh and intolerable, for they thought that he had really and literally directed them to eat his flesh. . .His word is spirit and life. So he likewise called his flesh by the same description. Since the word has become flesh, we should desire him in order that we may have life. We should devour him with the ear and feed on him with our understanding. We should digest him by faith." (c. 210)

Lactantius wrote, "The bread signifies his body. For he himself is the food and the life of all who believe in the flesh that he bore." (c. 304-313).

Studying the writings of the early church is useful for finding out what people believed, but they were not infallible, and they diverge quite a bit on a lot of issues. I meant to discuss early church fathers a little more, but I've been writing this post for a long time, and I'm kind of tired now.

For further reading:

"Catholic vs. protestant interpretation of John 6"
"Transubstantiation"