"Zero Dark Thirty" and the Question of Torture

 In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks the United States and several European countries have had to wrestle with the acceptability of using torture as a means to gather information. The recently released movie "Zero Dark Thirty" has once again brought this question to the forefront as the movie depicts information being gained by means of torture, intimidation, and outright brutality. Initial reviews of the movie are careful to state that the film does not glorify torture or suggest that it is the ultimate means of winning the war on terror, but the film does raise the moral question of whether or not torture is an allowable method in pursuing victory. It should be noted that torture has been uniformly prohibited for any reason by the international community since the ratification of the United Nations Convention Against Torture in 1984.[1] However, with the advent of asymmetric warfare, in which the resources and tactics of the belligerents are widely divergent, many governments have openly debated, and often participated in, the use of “light” forms of torture in order to gain information. It is necessary in this environment for Christians to be able to answer if torture is ever a viable method in war and determine the moral ramifications if such a course of action is taken.

            Much of the debate concerning torture revolves around the need for information to prevent attacks. Theologian John Perry correctly states that “[w]hat makes this asymmetric war different is the importance of accurate information needed…Because the battlefield seems to be everywhere in general and nowhere in particular, knowing what the enemy is about to do next is crucial to saving innocent lives in buildings, on airplanes, in the sea lanes, on subways and in commuter trains.”[2] This need has led some to advocate the use of “stress and duress” tactics to gain information from possible terrorists in order to prevent an attack. Such tactics include the use of “hooding, food deprivation, sleep deprivation, bright lights and loud noise, and forced standing against a wall while leaning on one finger of each hand.”[3]

These techniques are designed to weaken the defenses of the suspect and to make them more apt to give information in order to make the treatment stop The CIA described the effects of long term mental and physical abuses such as these in the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual:

All coercive techniques are designed to induce regression…the result of external pressures of sufficient intensity is the loss of those defenses most recently acquired by civilized man… “Relatively small degrees of homeostatic derangement, fatigue, pain, sleep loss, or anxiety may impair these functions”. As a result, “most people who are exposed to coercive procedures will talk and usually reveal some information that they might not have revealed otherwise.”[4]

 Generally, this type of coercive pressure is justified by the assumptions that the information gleaned through it could be necessary to stop the next major attack. Mirko Bagaric and Julie Clarke, both of Deakin University Law School, insist that when there are a number of lives at risk, there is an immediacy to the possible harm, and there are limited other means to gather the information “all forms of harm may be inflicted on the agent – even if this results in death.”[5]

            Advocates of torture insist that “light” forms of torture should not be considered a morally reprehensible action for several reasons, most of which are based in a utilitarian philosophy. Alan Dershowitz advocates torture through the use of a federal warrant system and allows that it is not a violating the prisoner’s rights because “his right to be free from ‘cruel and unusual punishment’” has not been violated since “that provision of the Eighth Amendment has been interpreted to apply solely to punishment after conviction.”[6] And, in Dershowitz’s opinion, such governmentally sanctioned torture may be necessary to prevent the “ticking time bomb” scenario in which information must be extracted from a terrorist to prevent an impending attack.[7] Similarly, philosopher and human rights advocate Slavoj Zizek notes that supporters of torture justified the use of such techniques at Guantanamo Bay because the victims “were the target of legitimate US bombings in Afghanistan and accidentally survived, no one can complain about what happens to  them afterwards as prisoners: whatever their situation, it is better than being dead.”[8]

            Critics of justified torture note that such considerations are entirely pragmatic and fail for several reasons. However, many of the counterarguments offered are entirely pragmatic themselves. These arguments range from stating that torture only strengthens the resolve of the tortured, is a waste of resources, causes rebellion amongst native populations, and places military forces at greater risk of retaliation. Critics most often note that torture “rarely yields better information than traditional human intelligence, partly because no one has figured out a precise reliable way to break human beings or any reliable method to evaluate whether what prisoners say when they do talk is true.”[9] Additionally, for the torture to stop “the torturers [must be] persuaded the victim has kept her part of the bargain by telling them all there is to tell and also upon the torturers choosing to keep their side of the bargain.”[10] This places the torturer in the position of arbitrarily determining when these conditions have been met. It is telling that manuals, such as the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation, contain no objective method to determine when all the possible information has been gathered or for when the torturer should be satisfied enough to end the interrogation.

Justifying such actions also leads to a logical problem because to endorse the use of torture in a “ticking time bomb” scenario implicitly endorses torture whenever it may be politically or militarily useful. Perry cautions that “if a community permits a prevailing norm to be broken in one case, this will lead to an ever more extensive moral impasse. For this reason, the rule must be absolute and allow for no exceptions.”[11]

            However, while all these arguments may be true they fail to address the violation of the tortured individuals human rights and dignity as a person created in the image of God. From Genesis 1 onward the Christian is confronted with the truth that man is created in the image of God and that fundamental part of his creation is being made for relationships. The first direct indication of this is in Genesis 2 where God states that “it is not good that man should be alone”[12], but we can also gather the relational nature of man from the interrelationship of the Trinity. The first indirect indication of this comes in Genesis 1 where God, as a singular entity, is referred to with the Hebrew plural form of “god”, elohim. This convention is repeated approximately 2,500 times throughout the rest of the Old Testament and implies that “God is one, yet more than one – what some commentators have referred to as the ‘uniplurality’ of the Godhead.”[13] This is further stressed when God declares, “Let us make man in our image”[14] again implying the Trinity working together to create man.  The New Testament further elaborates on this interrelationship among the Trinity by showing that the Son is begotten and beloved[15] as well as glorified by the Father[16]; the Son reveals and glorifies the Father[17]; and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and testifies of His truth.[18] Throughout these passages it is revealed that “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are different Persons, yet remain one in nature, essence, substance, and will. [Therefore], [t]he unity of God is a relational unity.”[19]

            Man shares in this relational nature in several distinct ways. First, man and woman are both shown to be created in the image of God[20] and by nature are in need of companionship to be complete.[21] Second, the prohibition against murder and the divine institution of capital punishment are both given in the context of a violation of the image of God in man.[22] Torture, then, is an especially heinous act because it violates the shared relationships that we have with other human beings which are a direct reflection of the very nature of God. This destruction of relationship extends across several different levels of human nature:

Torture is also personally destructive to the torturers because they intend to diminish or even destroy the personhood of their victims. It is this subjective, interpersonally destructive aspect of torture that makes it different and morally worse than many other destructive aspects of war… We humans are vice-regents of God on earth and have dominion over all other life forms. The cruelty of torture is special because no animal or other creature than a man or woman would inflict it in the same way upon someone else…Thus, a torturer inflicting torments and suffering on a victim not only defaces another brother or sister, but implicitly attacks the face of God in the other, and destroys human community.[23]

            The psychological and physical destruction done to both victim and torturer cannot be overstated. Victims of torture often develop mental trauma similar to that of post-traumatic stress disorder and can undergo radical shifts in personality and mood. Such shifts occur because torture tends to destroy an individual's “Third-Order premises” which deal with “the attribution of meaning to one’s environment.”[24] The victim is left in a state of general terror and insecurity in which their world has lost meaning and there is no longer any basis on which to build trusting relationships with others. This destruction of trust tends to manifest in the victims life in several different ways including: insomnia, nightmares, night sweats, sexual dysfunction, a hostile attitude towards the world, social withdrawal, feeling of hopelessness, the feeling of being constantly threatened, estrangement, and even suicide.[25] These effects can extend not only to the victim, but also to those who are forced to watch the torture of others unwillingly. Wilhelmina Vautrin, head of the Education Department and dean of studies at Ginling Women’s Arts and Science College in Nanking, China, was witness to such torture during the Japanese invasion of Nanking in 1938. Vautrin, in attempting to protect the Chinese from the Japanese army, saw rape, beheadings, mutilations, and extreme forms of torture acted out on a daily basis. The effects shattered Vautrin who is described afterwards as “a vulnerable exhausted woman who never recovered, either emotionally or physically, from daily exposure to Japanese violence.”[26] So devastated was Vautrin that she repeatedly attempted to take her own life in 1940 as she traveled back to the United States and eventually succeeded in May of 1941.

            While the effects of torture on the victim are horrendous, we must not lose sight on the effects upon the torture as well. The torturer, in victimizing his target, “undergoes a moral violation if he conceives of his victim as being without human dignity. This moral choice and his practicing of torture strip him of his own God-given nobility.”[27] Studies done on those who inflict torture have found that they “illustrate they heavy psychological toll that participation in torture can have on perpetrators.”[28] Tortures are just as likely to have occurrences of post-traumatic stress disorder and report incidences of depression and intrusive memories which have been linked to the torture “abdicat[ing] their own personal beliefs and…assum[ing] the values of an institution or group that promotes torture and other atrocities.”[29] In taking on these beliefs, the torturer is forced to shed all empathy for the victim and find ways to dehumanize them so as to make the physical act of torture more readily acceptable. Perhaps no more graphic depiction of the dehumanization that occurs in the mind of the torturer came from the release of photos from Abu Ghraib prison. These photos showed:

…prisoners subjected to cruel and humiliating treatment…a handcuffed, terrified prisoner is shown cornered by a snarling military dog straining against its leash…naked prisoners [being] forced to lie on top of one another in a pile or…simulate sexual acts…Some photos were especially disturbing because they show soldiers (both men and women) posing next to the abused prisoners, grinning or giving “thumbs up” signs, appearing to take sadistic pleasure in the abuse.[30]

In light of the debilitating effects of torture on both tortured and torturer, it is surprising to find that there are still those who advocate its use while acknowledging its consequences. For many this acceptance comes because of a utilitarian calculus that understands the value of human dignity, but sees “life [as trumping] dignity and respect for self esteem…Torture, in this view, is the lesser evil, offset by saving many innocent lives from catastrophic harm.”[31] Political ethicist Michael L. Gross serves as an advocate for torture in this particular case, while acknowledging that such an argument can be disastrous if taken outside of certain contexts. Gross sees torture as being a “marginal phenomenon” that “neither benefits nor cost democracies greatly”[32] and for which there is no “overwhelming evidence that the costs…are intolerable.”[33]

Gross contends that torture should only be done under the auspices of a democratic nation which can effectively control its use. Torture only becomes problematic when it is used by a repressive regime that “infiltrates civil society, terrorizes civilians in war and peace, and undermines peaceful coexistence among nations.”[34] Accordingly, whether a country such as the United States participates in torture or not will have no effect on oppressive regimes. Thus, torture as a means of gathering information should only be abandoned when it is necessary to justify humanitarian intervention in such a regime.[35]

            For the Christian, and the intellectually honest, this argument must be rejected. As with previous arguments for torture, it denies the very nature of man as created in the image of God and ignores the long term effects of torture upon the victim, the torturer, and the culture that allows it. To couch the argument in terms of the safeguards that a democracy can supposedly provide is  to still ignore the deeper violation that occurs. For the Christian, this is the recognition that torture destroys the special nature of man that has been placed in him by the divine, creative act of God. From a completely pragmatic stance as well, a “modern liberal democracy that permits or encourages this practice as a strategy for survival, betrays its ultimate reality and meaning which has been connected with the absolute prohibition of torture.”[36] The belief in “inalienable rights” loses all meaning and a license is given to act against what has been condemned as a universal wrong.

            The Christian, then, is faced with an absolute and permanent prohibition against allowing or participating in torture. In the current political climate this is a difficult position to take when fear of more terrorist attacks and the desire to end two wars runs rampant. Christians also face additional pressure to condone torture when confronted with the past acts of the church, as in the Inquisition. However, the previous, wrong acts of a church body cannot serve to justify a present wrong act. This is especially when Scripture is clear that to engage in such practices is a violation of the created order. Indeed, the acts of church bodies such as the Inquisition should reveal the destructive nature of torture and the debilitating effect it has upon the witness of the Church.

            The Christian’s place in the ongoing debate about torture is to continue to denounce it as a destructive act that mars God’s image in man and to not be swayed by the apparent good that can come from it. In fact, Christians must be duly cautious of the apparent good that can come from such an act. Since at least the time of Aquinas, theologians have held that it is this desire for the apparent good that can cause men to sin. In our fallenness we can recognize the good, but we “consistently choose a lesser good that is only apparently good but lacks some crucial factor found in the ideal good”[37] which is found only in the revealed will of God. We must be, therefore, consistently dependent upon God’s grace and revelation to discern what the true and acceptable good is and not fall prey to pragmatic or utilitarian arguments that seem to provide an easier way in a time of war.

---

[1] Office of the United nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cat.htm, (Accessed January 14, 2013).

[2] John Perry, Torture: Religious Ethics and National Security (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005), 31.

[3] Ibid., 19.

[4] Central Intelligence Agency, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation, pg. 83, 1963, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/CIA%20Kubark%2061-112.pdf , (accessed Sept. 25, 2012).

[5] Mirko Bagaric and Julie Clark, “Not Enough Official Torture in the World? The Circumstances in Which Torture is Morally Justifiable”, University of San Francisco Law Review, Vol. 39, No. 3, Spring, pp. 581-616, http://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30003363/clarke-notenoughofficial-2005.pdf , (accessed Sept. 25, 2012).

[6] Alan Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 135.

[7] Alan Dershowitz, interviewed by Wolf Blitzer, CNN News, CNN, March 4, 2003, http://edition.cnn.com/2003/LAW/03/03/cnna.Dershowitz/, (accessed Oct. 4, 2012).

[8] Slavoj Zizek, “Between Two Deaths” in London Review of Books. Vol. 26, No. 11, p. 19, June 3, 2004, http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/between-two-deaths/  (accessed Oct. 4, 2012).

[9] Darius Rejali, “Tortures Dark Allure”Salon.com, June 18, 2004, http://www.salon.com/2004/06/18/torture_1/, (accessed Oct. 4, 2012).

[10] Perry, Torture: Religious Ethics and National Security, 50.

[11] Ibid, 79.

[12] Genesis 2:18, ESV.

[13] Russell Grigg, “Who Really is the God of Genesis?”, Creation Magazine, Vol. 27, Issue 3, pg. 37-39, June 2005, http://creation.com/who-really-is-the-god-of-genesis#r8, (accessed Oct. 9, 2012).

[14] Genesis 1:26, ESV.

[15] John 3:16, ESV.

[16] John 17:5, ESV.

[17] Matthew 11:27, John 1:18, ESV.

[18] John 15:26, ESV.

[19] Ethan R. Longhenry, “Made for Relationships”, The Voice, May 15, 2011, http://www.venicechurchofchrist.org/voice/maderelationships/, (accessed Oct. 4, 2012).

[20] Genesis 1:27, ESV.

[21] Genesis 2:18, ESV.

[22] Genesis 9:16, ESV.

[23] Perry, Torture: Religious Ethics and National Security, 43.

[24] Ibid, 104.

[25] Ibid, 104.

[26] Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1997), 187.

[27] Perry, Torture: Religious Ethics and National Security, 83.

[28] Mark A. Constanza, “The Effects and Effectiveness of Using Torture as an Interrogation Device: Using Research to Inform the Policy Debate”, Social Issues and Policy Review, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2009, 179-210, http://www.cgu.edu/pdffiles/sbos/costanzo_effects_of_interrogation.pdf, (accessed Oct. 9, 2012), 194.

[29] Ibid., 195.

[30] Ibid., italics mine, 180.

[31] Michael L. Gross, Moral Dilemmas of Modern War: Torture, Assassination, and Blackmail in an Age of Asymmetric Conflict, (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010), Kindle E-book, 1690.

[32] Ibid., 1849.

[33] Ibid., 1842.

[34] Ibid., 1849.

[35] Ibid., 1857.

[36] Perry, Torture: Religious Ethics and National Security, 164.

[37] Ibid., 152.

Leaving Science Behind?

I love science of all sorts.  Physics, chemistry, biology, they all just hold so much appeal to me.  But I have some major issues with the way that modern science is taught and perpetuated through research.  This came home to be roughly two years ago when I read a book called Kicking the Sacred Cow by James P. Hogan.  In it Hogan gives several case studies of how modern science has gone awry.  Everything from the misapplication of science, to the denial of valid scientific theory because it goes against the zeitgeist, to the denial of science because to it admit it would cause the loss of funding.

Most impressive of the case studies he gives, though, is that of Immanuel Velikovsky, an independent scholar who first published in the 1950s.  Velikovsky first started doing research to discover why an event as important as the Biblical Exodus could not be discovered in any Egyptian papyri from the time period.  After exhaustive study he decided that the timeline set out by the scholars of the time was out of whack.  His examinations seemed to indicate that there was plenty of evidence for the Exodus from Egyptian sources, it was just that the papyri that they were in had all been dated much earlier than they really were.  By shifting these papyri back to the time frame of the Exodus and adjusting the subsequent papyri to match, he discovered that the Exodus was described in detail and that historical events mentioned in the Bible matched up with the historical events recorded in the papyri until the time of Solomon.

Velikovsky also became a proponent of catastrophism, which is the belief that the earth is changed and affected not by slow change over eons of time, but by rapid bursts of change brought on by natural catastrophes.  This was all a blatant refusal to believe the accepted scientific thought of the time, and it earned Velikovsky the hatred of his fellow academics.  For the next two decades Velikovsky fought to have his theories expressed and accepted by mainstream science, but he met with unilateral resistance in spite of the fact that many of his theories were proven by science to be true and are currently accepted by scientists today. An example, catastrophism is still not widely accepted, but it has begun to be seen as an acceptable theory in light of evolutionary having to adopt punctuated equilibrium and the scientific study of major catastrophes rapidly changing the world around us (Mount Saint Helens eruption as an example). Or, as another example, Velikovsky predicted that Venus was a hot ball of rock covered by thick cloud cover because of it's hostile atmosphere.  Scientists at the time held that Venus was a habitable planet that was shrouded in clouds because its atmosphere produced massive amounts of rain (as an illustration of this see Ray Bradbury's book The Illustrated Man where he has a short story that deals with this theory).  Guess who's been proven right?

I said all that to get to this point - people are beginning to become distrustful of mainstream science and it's alarming the scientists, but I think it's great.  There was a video recently on a technology blog I frequent that had a scientist expressing his concern that people no longer trust scientists and that it's going to lead to a second dark age because scientific progress will cease.  I cry Bull on that statement!  Lest he forget, modern science was born of men questioning the establishment and seeking to discover the truths behind the universe on their own.  There was a time not that long ago that for a man to blindly accept what was given to him by the leading minds without questioning it would have been unacceptable. 

Fundamentally, it comes back to the fact that we are called to evaluate all doctrines, thoughts, and ideas in light of the Bible and to not blindly accept that which is given to us by the world.  To accept an idea without evaluating it to see how it will effect our worldview is paramount to spiritual suicide and must be guarded against by all means necessary.

Hombrew Results

I'm sad to say that this post is more than a month overdue.  Time and events have conspired to keep me from updating the blog for the last month or so, and so the end result of the homebrew experiment has gone unreported.

First off, I'm happy to say that it was a success.  We cracked open the first bottle in early April and noticed right off the bat that it was a mighty good beer!  It turned out a nice dark amber color and had a good full body and produces a good head when poured.  As to taste, well, I don't know how to describe it.  It's akin to Blue Moon Ale, but with a maltier flavor.  And that's the best I can do.  My palate is apparently not sensitive enough to discern if it has undertones of citrus, vanilla, and all that other fun jazz that you read on the side of commercially bought beer.  But, you can definitely taste the roasted grains and that nice malt flavor that they give.

The beer also has an incredible amount of sediment in it.  I've discovered that you have to do an incredibly slow pour to get the beer from the bottle to the glass without ending up with all the sediment being mixed in with the beer.  I'm not sure if this is just a side effect of brewing with all grain or if it just ended up this way with this particular batch because of some oddball environmental factor.  Regardless, a nice slow pour alleviates the problem and keeps the beer clear.

We only had one mishap during the drinking stage and that was having one bottle of beer explode.  And of course it had to be one of the big bottles.  I'm trying to decide upon a method to bottle future batches.  I would like to switch to a bottle that has a self sealing cap that locks into place.  It would alleviate the issue of using a butterfly capper, save money in the long run (very long run, actually) on bottle caps and save me a sterilization step during bottling.  So, to see if the bottles were worth it, I bought two 1 liter bottles with this type of lid to give it a try - individual 12 ounce bottles being too expensive to buy all at once.  Well, the bottles work great, except it was one of these that exploded.  We kept the beer in the upstairs closet to condition and my best guess is that it got too warm in the closet and caused one of the bottles to over carbonate.  Thankfully the bottle happened to explode right next to our stock of toilet paper and that managed to soak up a good amount of the beer.  Our down comforter soaked up the rest...

Lesson learned.  Next time I'll let the beer condition someplace cooler and then chill it down to hopefully kill the yeast.

As good as this batch is, though, I'm starting to prepare for my next batch for two reasons: first, I've got the itch now and I want to keep brewing and experimenting, and second, I'm down to eight bottles of the first batch.  I think with this next batch I'm going to try a flavored beer of some sort with, but I'm torn between two options.  The first being a mixture of vanilla and grains of paradise as flavoring and the second being a cherry flavoring.  I have all the necessary ingredients to do either one, it's just a matter of making a decision.

(Sorry that there's no pictures of the completed project.  As I'm writing this on a Sunday afternoon and we have church in approximately an hour and a half, I didn't think it was the most opportune time to crack one open.  I'll try to get some pics in the next couple days and post them so you can see the final product.)

Bottling Day

So, after four weeks of patience and fortitude, the day of reckoning arrived and it was time to bottle my first batch of homebrew.  This was a lot easier that I initially imagined it was going to be.  In fact, I was planning on a couple hour process and it ended up taking less than an hour once we actually got the brew flowing between fermenter and bottling bucket.  But I skip ahead.

First thing was to prep the bottles which involved much cleaning and sterilizing.  I ended up doing most of this Friday evening just to save time today and also to give everyone a nice contact high as we watched The Fellowship of the Ring.  Removing adhesive from old Bud Light bottles is not necessarily the most fun way to spend the evening, but it worked out in the long run as I had to purchase only one case of new beer bottles after getting the Bud bottles from a friend at work.  After de-labeling, the bottles went into the dishwasher for a cleaning and sterilization.  This morning I then yanked them out, filled the sink with water and bleach and resterilized them just to be on the safe side.  At the same time I also got the tubing, siphon, and bottling bucket filled with the bleach/water mixture so they could get all nice and sterile as well.

The only major snag I ran into in all this prep work was with the priming sugar.  When the beer comes out of the fermenter it's not carbonated.  All the nice gas that was created during the fermentation process went right out the airlock.  So, you have to add more sugar into the beer as you bottle it so that it will ferment as in conditions in the bottle.  I thought I had read that you could use plain sugar or a mixture of sugar and corn syrup for this priming sugar, and I thought to myself, "Cool, no need to buy priming sugar.  I've got the supplies at home already".  Wrong.

The priming sugar actually has to be finely processed corn sugar, which I don't have laying around the house and I don't think I could buy anywhere within a 30 mile radius of home.  But fortune smiles every now and again upon us and we get lucky.  Last week I purchased the ingredients for my next batch of homebrew, and I got a extract kit this time rather than an all grain kit.  And lo and behold in the box of ingredients is a bag of priming sugar.  Now I just have to remember to purchase another bag of priming sugar so this doesn't happen again with the next batch.

So, priming sugar goes into boiling water for five minutes.  Boiling water goes into the bottling bucket, and then we begin siphoning the beer from the fermenter to the bottler.  Now this is where I'm thankful that I spent the little bit extra for my brewing equipment.  Part of the package is what's called the Autosiphon.  I'm used to starting a siphon by inserting tubing into bucket, start sucking on end of tubing, get a mouthful of whatever you're trying to siphon and then rapidly shoving the tubing into your container to catch the rest.  Not with this baby.  Insert the tube into the bucket, pump once or twice on the handle, and you've got a neat, clean siphon going between buckets.

After that it was really just a matter of attaching the tubing and filling the bottles with the wand.  I went with standard beer bottles and caps this time, mostly because I'm poor.  I would like to use self capping bottles in the future.  The nice ones with the attached locking stopper that seals down tightly and can be reused over and over without a capper.  But at $20 for a box of 12, it's not happening anytime soon.  I did get two large liter bottles, though, that have the self stopper just to try them out and make sure this is the way I want to go in the future.  I jokingly refer to these at my "40s" and am seriously considering wrapping them in brown paper bags before bringing them to the table to serve from.'

After that it was the 12 oz. bottles.  I ended up with total of 38 bottles of beer plus the two large bottles.  A little short of what I expected, but the dross at the bottom of the bucket looked a little nasty and I didn't really want to have that sitting in the bottom of my homebrew.  So, we go a little short on the beer, but hopefully it's that much better.  Now I'm down to another week of waiting till I can crack one open and see how the finished product turns out.  Hopefully no bottles explode in the mean time.

Faith founded on Fact

This morning was my first class in a thirteen week series on apologetics that I'm teaching to the senior high at my church.  I have to admit that I was fairly nervous seeing as how it's been almost two years since the last time that I had a full series of lessons to teach for which I was creating my own curriculum.  However, the kids seemed to take to the subject matter, and the adult response was good as well. So, I'm hoping that bodes well for the coming weeks (and by God's grace it will).

But that's not actually what I want to post about.

As I was going through my lesson this morning I got to a section where I was describing the uses of apologetics.  One of those was that it was a tool that can be used to strengthen and encourage believers in their faith.  Yes, we can use it to try to convince others, or to refute an argument, but we, as Christians, can strengthen our own positions so that the doubt and fear that can assail us need no longer be a concern.  To prove this point to the teens I asked them, somewhat off the cuff, "How many of you have ever secretly doubted that the Bible is not really God's Word?"  I intended this as a lead in to show that we don't have to have these doubts because we can look at archeology and modern scholarship and see that it is consistent with Scripture and that it can prove that whole of Scripture is true.

The surprise for me came when everyone in the class raised their hand.  Adults, teens, me as well.  And it really hit home that the church has neglected apologetics to the point that even dedicated, adult Christians can have moments of doubt in their faith as to the veracity of Scripture.  So for my own edification, and for the edification of anyone who happens to read this that has ever had their doubts about the Bible being God's Word, lets list out some reasons to have faith in it.

• The Bible was written by a total of 40 authors over a space of approximately 1600 years in three different languages on three different continents by men that had differing levels of education and in vastly different circumstances.  In spite of this it has an internal message that is more consistent than books written by individual authors over the space of a single lifetime.  To illustrate this further lets do a little thought experiment.  Pick a subject, any subject, as long as people have been writing about it for the last, lets say, 500 years.  For our sake lets use human morality.  Now take any 40 authors on this subject and collect their writings into one work.  Now go through and see how many inconsistencies there are in message and theme.
• The Bible has more manuscript evidence to support the consistency of its message and the accuracy of our modern translations than any other ten works from antiquity combined.  For example:

1. The works of Aristotle: 7 available manuscripts with the oldest being 1400 years removed from the original composition date.
2. Plato's Tetralogies: 49 available manuscripts with the oldest being 1300 years removed from the original composition date.
3. Homer's Illiad: Approximately 2200 manuscripts with the oldest being 500 years removed from the original composition date.
4. The New Testament: 5600+ manuscripts available with the oldest being only 90 years removed from the original composition date.

• The Bible has the most accurate transcription rate of any work from antiquity.  As an example lets compare a more recent copy of Isaiah 53 to a copy that came from the Dead Sea Scrolls
1. Of 166 words, only  17 letters are in question
2. Of these: 10 are from differences in spelling and 4 are from differences in conjugation that don't affect the meaning of the passage.
3. The remaining three letters come from the addition of the word light in verse 11 which does not change the meaning of the passage.
4. The rest of the Old Testament holds up just as well in comparison with the percentage of actual changes to the manuscript that could have affected the meaning of a passage being somewhere in the range of .01%.

 That's all for know. Possible more on this next time.

A Quick Update

This isn't going to be a very long post tonight, mainly because I've been up since 4:15 this morning and I'm tired.  But I did want to get on long enough to say that beer is fermenting properly.  Yesterday we felt around the lid and you could peel definite gas pushing outward on it, and today the bubbler on top began to gurgle away as gas began to be released from the brew.

So, one definite plus in that I did not kill the yeast or make an unfermentable wort.  Now, I still have to wait five weeks and five days before I can see if it turned out, and another week after that to see if it's drinkable. 

Patience.

Homebrewing - First Trial

D-Day arrived today. At 7 AM I rolled out of bed and headed downstairs to begin brewing my first batch of homebrew. A nice, dark American style Ale. Needless to say it was a learning experience, and there were some complications along the way, but we'll get to that all in good time. First things first.

My initial plan was to get all the equipment sterilized in a mixture of bleach and water and get everything laid out. Which went pretty much according to plan. Except it didn't. Getting everything sterilized was relatively easy. As can be seen to the left, all of the necessary gear, plus a little extra, fit well inside the 5 gallon fermenting pail and then got covered with a good dose of bleach and water. I let this sit for about half an hour, the pulled it out to rinse it off and let it air dry. So, first step of initial plan was good to go and accomplished.
The second step the of initial plan is where things started to get complicated. When I ordered my ingredients I made the mistake of not reading the item description completely. I had wanted to brew my first batch of beer with a mixture of grain and extracts, which is supposed to be relatively easy. Unfortunately, I ordered an ingredient kit that was comprised of all grains - no extracts. OK, so that complicates the recipe, but I can work with it. Do a little research, adjust my time schedule, no big deal. Except the devil is in the details and I wasn't paying attention again. You see, when you brew with grains, the grain has to be milled, or crushed. Otherwise all the goodness doesn't get into the mash. Its like brewing coffee. If you don't grind the bean, you don't get any flavor. My grain had not been milled. So thus began the process of trying to figure out how to get this grain so it could be used without resorting to going out and getting to big rocks and beating the grain together between them.

I managed to figure out a relatively easy solution, and it only took me an extra 20 minutes or so to get all the grain in workable order. My solution: a coffee grinder. I was able to drop the grain in my coffee grinder, give it about a 4 second spin, and end up with a relatively coarse ground grain. The downside being that I was able to grind about a half cup of grain at a time, and I had to work through 10 pounds of the stuff. Overall all though, I was able to get it ground quick, dump it quick and reload and be grinding again in about 15 seconds.

After that, I decided I needed some breakfast. So out came the nonstick, the cutting board, and a whole host of goodness. On board for the whole family was omelets with mushroom, steak, green pepper, and cheese washed down with coffee or milk depending upon taste.
With the addition of my good friend Joe showing up to lend a hand, we were ready to start the actual brewing process. First thing was to get the grain into the water and to get it heated to about 122 degrees and keep it there for half an hour. This is called a protein rest, and the goal is to get the grain opened up and the sugars in it ready to get cooked out in the next step. This was relatively easy, but I learned the first lesson of what not do to when brewing with all grain. And that is: don't leave the pot unattended for too long. We walked out of the room and started talking and after 15 minutes or so of waiting for the mash to come to temperature I came back in to check the pot. At an approximate temperature of 110 degrees, the grain had started to burn onto the bottom of the pot. So, now that my beer is going to have an extra layer of complex flavor - slightly burnt - I decided that the best course of action was to stir the post at least every 5 minutes or so. This seemed to work out the best and burning beyond this point was kept to a minimum.

So after the initial half hour at 122, we cranked the heat on the stove and got the mash temperature up to 160 degrees. This is called the sacharification rest, and it is the point in time in which all the long stranded sugars in the grain are converted into fermentable short sugars. This is all the point where you add the first batch of hops. This set of hops isn't so much for aroma as it is for flavor. For my initial addition I used two ounces of cascade hops. These are supposed to give the ale a nice spicy/citrusy taste and, eventually with the second addition, aroma. Hops added and temperature at the right level, we let the mash cook for another hour.

After that hour it was time to boost the temperature again to 170 degrees and add our second batch of hops. This final temperature boost is to stop the chemical process that converts starches into fermentable goodness. So temperature on the oven was kicked up again, and we dropped in our second addition of hops. It was at this point that Joe noticed that the hops we were using looked like rabbit food. Sadly enough, he was correct in this assumption and deep down inside I was hoping and praying that the brew company that I bought this kit from wasn't trying to pull a fast one on me. However, the nice aroma that greeted us upon dropping in the hops allayed any suspicions and on we went with the process.

Fifteen minutes at 170 and we were ready to separate out the mast and get the liquid into the fermenter bucket and let the yeast start doing its job. So first priority became how to get the grain out of the wort. We had to improvise a little at this step because I don't have a basket strainer large enough to fit a colander into. So we took a large piece of cheesecloth and folded it over itself several times and then laid this down inside a large colander that fit across the lid of the fermenter. Into this we began to slowly pour the mash. Separation went well, but I learned lesson number two of brewing with all grain. Trying to separate your mash is like trying to squeeze the liquid out of hot oatmeal. It can be done, but it not a fun task. I ended up taking a plastic freezer bag and laying it over the grain mixture. I then wrapped a towel around my hand and pressed down on the mash to separate out the wort. I had initially tried just squeezing it out using my hands, and that didn't work out so well. Namely, it burned a little.

Next came lesson three of the whole brewing process. Several websites I had read and a noteworthy TV chef had made the suggestion that when you add your wort into the fermenter and add the remaining 2 1/2 gallons of water, that the water be chilled and that some of the the water be replaced with ice. This cools the wort quickly which helps prevent cross contamination by nasty bacteria and germs and it also allows you to pitch the yeast into the wort much quicker. The only problem with this was that it worked too well. I ended up with my wort being about 6 degrees cooler than it was supposed to be to pitch the yeast. So, improvised solution number 2 for the day was created. We hadn't been able to get all the liquid out of the mash and so we were about 3/4 of a gallon short of the amount of liquid that is normal in the fermenter. Add 3/4 of a gallon of piping hot water from the spigot and the temperature came up enough that we felt safe enough to drop in the yeast. So, lesson three became: always make sure you have an extra gallon of drinking water available. We had to use water from the tap, which bothers me a little bit. Considering that we live in the city, our water tastes somewhat like the city pool. Chlorinated. I don't think that this will have any adverse effect on the beer seeing as how we didn't add that much to the whole batch. But still, you never know.

After that the only step left was put the lid on and attach the bubbler so all the gases can escape from the fermenting beer without letting in a bunch of nasty bacteria and germs. With that being done, I hauled the fermenter upstairs and stashed it in a cool dark closet. Now it comes down to waiting. I've got 5 weeks before I know if this batch was a success or not, and another week after that before I even get to taste it.

Next time, I'm definitely going to make some changes. First off, I'm brewing with extracts rather than all grain. Second, I'm stashing extra drinking water in the kitchen and I'm making sure to keep some of it at room temperature rather than chilled.

I'll keep you posted as the process comes along. Hopefully in six weeks I'll be able to announce that the experiment was a success and we can get started on batch number two.