How you play the game is for college boys. When you are playing for money, winning is the only thing that matters. I give the same halftime speech over and over. It works best when my players are better than the other coach’s players. A law or policy is sufficient just, or a least not unjust, if when we try to imagine how the ideal procedure would work out, we conclude that most persons taking part in this procedure and carrying out its stipulations would favour that law or policy. In the ideal procedure, the decision reached is not a compromise, a bargain struck between opposing parties trying to advance their ends. The legislative discussion must be conceived not as a contest between interests, but as an attempt to find the best policy as defined by the principles of justice. I suppose, then, as part of the theory of justice, that an impartial legislator’s only desire is to make the correct decision in this regard, given the general facts known to one. One is to vote solely according to one’s judgment. The outcome of the vote gives an estimate of what is most in the line with the conception of justice. If we ask how likely it is that the majority opinion will be correct, it is evident that the ideal procedure bears a certain analogy to the statistical problem of pooling the views of a group of experts to arrive at a best judgment. Here the experts are rational legislators able to take an objective perspective because they are impartial. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

The suggestion goes back to Condorcet that if the likelihood of a correct judgment on the part of the representative legislator is greater than that of an incorrect one, the probability that the majority vote is correct increases as the likelihood of a correct decision by the representative legislator increases. Thus we might be tempted to suppose that if many rational persons were to try to simulate the conditions of the ideal procedure and conducted their reasoning and discussion accordingly, a large majority anyway would be almost certainly right. This would be a mistake. We must not only be sure that there is a greater chance of a correct than of an incorrect judgment on the part of the representative legislator, but it is also clear that the votes of different persons are not independent. Since their views will be influenced by the course of the discussion, the simpler sorts of probabilistic reasoning do not apply. Nevertheless, we normally assume that an ideally conducted discussion among many persons is more likely to arrive at the correct conclusion (if necessary, by vote) than the deliberations of any of them by oneself. Why should this be so? In everyday life the exchange of opinion with others checks our partiality and widens our perspective; we are made to see things from their standpoint and the limits of our vision are brought home to us. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

However, in the ideal process the veil of ignorance means that the legislators are already impartial. The benefits from discussion lie in the fact that even representative legislators are limited in knowledge and the ability to reason. No one of them knows everything the others know, or can make all the same inferences that they can draw in concert. Discussion is a way of combining information and enlarging the range of arguments. At least in the course of time, the effects of common deliberation seem bound to improve matters. Thus we arrive at the problems of trying to formulate an ideal constitution of public deliberation in matters of justice, a set of rules well-designed to bring to bear the greater knowledge and reasoning powers of the group so as best to approximate if not to reach the correct judgment. The ideal procedure is part of the theory of justice. The more definite our conception of this procedure as it might be realized under favourable conditions, the more firm the guidance that the four-stage sequence gives our reflections. For we then have a more precise idea of how laws and policies would be assessed in the light of general facts about society. Often we can make good intuitive sense of the question how deliberations at the legislative stage, when properly conducted, would turn. The ideal procedure is further clarified by noting that it stands in contrast to the ideal market process. Thus, granting that the classical assumption for perfect competition hold, and that there are no external economies or diseconomies, and the like, an efficient economic configuration results. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

The ideal marker is a perfect procedure with respect to efficiency. A peculiarity of the deal market process, as distinct from the ideal political process conducted by rational and impartial legislators, is that the market achieves an efficient outcome even if everyone pursues one’s own advantage. Indeed, the presumption is that this is how economic agents normally behave. In buying and selling to maximize satisfaction or profits, households and firms are not giving a judgment as to what is from a social point of view and the most efficient economic configuration, given the initial distribution of assets. Rather they are advancing their ends as the rules allow, and any judgment they make is from their own point of view. It is the system as a whole, so to speak, that makes the judgment of efficiency, this judgment being derived from the many separate sources of information provided by the activities of firms and households. The system provides an answer, even though individuals have n opinion of the question, and often do not know what it means. Thus despite certain resemblances between markets and elections, the ideal market process and the ideal legislative procedure are different in crucial respects. They are designed to achieve distinct ends, the first leading to efficiency, the latter if possible to justice. And while the ideal market is a perfect process with regard to its objective, even the ideal legislature is an imperfect procedure. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

There seems to be on way to characterize a feasible procedure guaranteed to lead to just legislation. One consequence of this fact is that whereas a citizen may be bound to comply with the policies enacted, other things equal, one is not required to think that these policies are just, and it would be mistaken of one to submit one’s judgment to the vote. However, in a perfect market system, an economic agent, so far as one has any opinion at all, must suppose that the resulting outcome is indeed efficient. Although the household or firm has gotten everything that it wanted, it must concede that, given the initial distribution, an efficient situation has been attained. However, the parallel recognition of the outcome of the legislative process concerning questions of justice cannot be demanded, for although, of course, actual constitutions should be designed as far as possible to make the same determinations as the ideal legislative procedure, they are bound in practice to all short of what is just. This is not only because, as existing markets do, they fail to conform to their ideal counterpart, but also because this counterpart is that of an imperfect procedure. A just constitution may rely to some extent on the citizens and legislators adopting a wider view and exercising good judgment in applying the principles of justice. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

There seems to be no way of allowing them to take a narrow or group-interested standpoint and then regulating the process so that it leads to a just outcome. So far at least there does not exist a theory of just constitutions as procedures leading to just legislation which corresponds to the theory of competitive markets as procedures resulting in efficiency. And this would seem to imply that the application of economic theory to the actual constitutional process has grave limitations insofar as political conduct is affected by human’s sense of justice, as it must be in any viable society, and just legislation is the primary social end. Certainly economic theory does not fit the ideal procedure. In an ideal market process some weight is given to the relative intensity of desire. A person can spend a greater part of one’s income on things one wants more of and in this way, together with other buyers, one encourages the use of resources in ways one most prefers. The market allows for finely graded adjustments in answer to the overall balance of preferences and the relative dominance of certain wants. There is nothing corresponding to this in the ideal legislative procedure. Each rational legislator is to vote one’s opinion as to which laws and policies best conform to principles of justice. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

No special weight is or should be given to opinions that are held with greater confidence, or to the votes of those who let it be known that their being in the minority will cause them great displeasure. Of course, such a voting rule is conceivable, but there are no grounds for adopting it in the ideal procedure. Even among rational and impartial persons, those with greater confidence in their opinion are not, it seems, more likely to be right. Some may be more sensitive to the complexities of the case than others. In defining the criterion for just legislation one should stress the weight of considered collective judgment arrived at when each person does one’s best under ideal conditions to apply the correct principles. The intensity of desire or the strength of conviction is irrelevant when questions of justice arise. So much for several differences between the ideal legislative and the ideal market process. As we have seen, majority rule is adopted as the most feasible way to realize certain ends antecedently defined by the principles of justice. Sometimes however these principles are not clear or definite as to what they require. This is not always because the evidence is complicated and ambiguous, or difficult to survey and assess. The nature of the principles themselves may leave open a range of options rather than singling out any particular alternative. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

The rate of savings, for example, is specified only within certain limits; the main idea of the just savings principle is to exclude certain extremes. Eventually in applying the difference principle we wish to include in the prospects of the least advantaged the primary good of self-respect; and there are a variety of ways of taking account of this value consistent with the difference principle. How heavily this good and other related to it should count in the index is to be decided in view of the general features of the particular society and by what it is rational for its least favoured members to want as seen from the legislative stage. In such cases as these, then, the principles of justice set up a certain range within which the rate of savings or the emphasis given to self-respect should lie. However, they do not say where in this range the choice should fall. Now for these situations the principle of political settlement applies: if the law actually voted is, so far as one can ascertain, within the range of those that could reasonably be favoured by rational legislators conscientiously trying to follow the principles of justice, then the decision of the majority is practically authoritative, though not definitive. The situation is one of quasi-pure procedural justice. We must reply on the actual course of discussion at the legislative stage to select a policy within the allowed bounds. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

These cases are not instances of pure procedural justice because the outcome does not literally define the right result. It is simply that those who disagree with the decision made cannot convincingly establish their point within the framework of the public conception of justice. The question is one that cannot be sharply defined. In practice political parties will do doubt take different stands on these kinds of issues. The aim of constitutional design is to make sure, if possible, that the self-interest of social classes does not distort the political settlement that is made outside the permitted limits. The heart has its own reasons which Reason does not know; a thousand things declare it. I say the heart leave the universal Being naturally, and itself naturally, according to its obedience to either; and it hardens against one of the other, as it pleases. The heart has reasons which Reason can never know. The nature of the law restrains humans, and thus its very survival presupposes a stronger force behind it—God. Or consider the most readily observable physical evidence, the nature of the Universe. One cannot look at the stars, planets, and galaxies, millions of light years away, all fixed in perfect harmony, without asking who orders them. For centuries it was accepted that God was behind the Universe because otherwise the origin and purpose of life [would be] inexplicable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

This traditional supposition was unchallenged until the eighteenth century’s Age of Reason, when enlightenment thinkers announced with relief that the origins of the Universe were now scientifically explainable. What we not call the “big bang theory” rendered the God hypothesis unnecessary. Although this theory has captured the imagination of many, it leaves serious questions unanswered. Who or what made the big bang? What was there before it? And how in the big bang process—a presumably random explosion—did planet Earth achieve such a remarkable, finely developed states? The big bang thesis is not by itself antithetical to the Christian biblical view. Professor Owen Gingerich, noted Harvard astronomer, frequently lectures on the “strange convergence” between the biblical and modern scientific explanation of the Universe’s origin. He relates the scientific evidence for the so-called big bang event to the biblical affirmation that the Universe flashed instantly into existence in a great showering of light. Professor Gingerich believes, however, that science deal strictly with the question of “how,” while biblical account addresses the equally critical question of “who.” William Paley, the eighteenth-century English clergyman, told what has become a well-known parable on this point. A man walking through a field discovers first a stone, then an ornate gold watch. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

The stone, the man may reasonably conclude, has simply always been there, a sliver of mineral chipped from the Earth by chance. However, the watch, which has beauty, design, symmetry, and purpose, did not just happen. It had to have been made by an intelligent, purposeful Creator. Some have asserted that the Universe was self-generated. This violates, however, a primary law of logic: the law of noncontradiction that says the Universe cannot be itself and the thing it created at the same time. Other simply state that the Universe itself is self-existent and infinite; it has always been. Yet modern science has discovered no element in the Universe that is self-existent. (A tentative theory exists today with respect to quantum physics that may raise questions about this conclusion.) Granted, the whole can be greater than the sum of parts, but can it be of a different character altogether? Clearly not. Nonetheless this is the view widely expressed today, most popular by Carl Sagan, who proposes that “the Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” That is simply another way of saying that the Universe itself is transcendent. Though Sagan’s films and books are widely used in schools and science, his argument is, in fact, only theory. It is also no more than an acknowledgement that we do not know how the Universe began. At one point or another even the most obstinate atheist or agnostic must deal with this question of first cause. Some people believe that the scientific rationales for how the Universe began are irrational. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

Even if modern scientific theories provided satisfactory explanations for the origin of the Universe, however, the question of the origin of humans would still be unanswered. The prevailing view of Mr. Sagan and others is that a chance collision of atoms created life; subsequent mutations over thousands of years evolved into the extraordinarily complex creature we know as human. If this is true, humans are nothing more than an accident that started as slime or, as one theologian has put it, we are but grown-up germs. Our intuitive moral sense rejects such a trashing of human dignity. Interestingly enough, even modern scientific research is beginning to question some of its own theories. Given the laws of probability even allowing for the oldest possible dating of the Universe, they as, has there been enough time for life to begin by random chance and for as utterly complicated creatures as human to evolve. Some cosmologist are proposing that the Universe has been perfectly designed for life in a way that could not have happened by chance. There is an infinity of ways that the Universe could have been set up that would have been more simple, with fewer improbable coincidences. Of course in almost any of these simpler Universes, the odds for the development of anything as complicated as life—no matter how you imagined it—would be nil. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

Actually such odds may indeed be nil. The French mathematician, Lecompte de Nouy, examined the laws of probability for a single molecule of high dissymmetry to be formed by the action of chance. De Nouy found that, on average, the time needed to form one such molecule of our terrestrial globe would be about 10 to 243 power billions of years. “But,” continued de Nouy ironically, “let us admit that no matter how small the chance it could happen, one molecule could be created by such astronomical odds of chance. However, one molecule is of no use. Hundreds of millions of identical ones are necessary. Thus we either admit the miracle or doubt the absolute truth of science.” Weighing the evidence, it is not unfair to suggest that it takes as much faith, if not more, to believe in random chance as it does to believe in a Creator. One can understand why no less a scientist than Albert Einstein, though not of an orthodox faith, felt “rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that compared with it all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. Dr. Einstein’s belief in the harmony of the Universe caused him to conclude, “God does not play dice with the cosmos.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

Scientific argument also fail to take human’s basic nature into account: We are imbued with a deep longing for a god. Even an obstinate unbeliever like philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote, “One is a ghost, floating through the World without any real contact. Even when one feels nearest to other people, something in one seems obstinately to belong to Gd, and to refuse to enter into any Earthly communion—at least that is how I should express it if I thought there was a god. It is odd, isn’t it? I care passionately for this World and many things and people in it, and yet…what is it all? There must be something more important, one feels, though I do not believe there is.” When people try to suppress their essential nature, they must either admit the haunting desire for a god, as did Russell, or deal with the inner turmoil through their own means, often with disastrous consequences. Hemingway chose the latter course, as, for that matter, did Marx, Nietzsche, and Dr. Freud. Near the end of their lives, they were all bitter and lonely men. Nietzsche’s insanity, many believe, was due as much to the despair of nihilism as to venereal disease. Dr. Freud could not be comforted after his daughter’s death, as if he was grieving at the finality of life without God. In his last days Marx was consumed with hatred. All these men were simply reaping the logical consequences of their own philosophies. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

However, even should we concede that humans just happened, and that one creates one’s own need for God, how do we explain one’s need for purpose? Consistent evidence points not only to human’s deep spiritual longings, but to a purposeful nature in one’s desire for community, family, and work. The great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevski said that not to believe in God was to be condemned to a senseless Universe. In The House of the Dead he wrote that if one wanted to utterly crush a human, one need only give one work of a completely irrational character, as the writer oneself had discovered during his ten years in prison. “If he had to move a heap of Earth from one place to another and back again—I believe the convict would hang oneself…preferring rather to die than endure…such humiliation, shame and torture.” Humans will cling to life with a steadfast resolve while working meaningfully, even if that work supports their hated captors. However, purposeless labour soon snaps the mind. One might argue that our need to work was acquired over centuries of evolution. However, we must do more than work just to survive; we must do work that has a purpose. Evolution cannot explain this. More plausible is the belief that humans are a reflection of the nature of a purposeful Creator. However, for those who insist that God is created by humans, perhaps the most telling argument is to consider the nature and character of the God revealed in the Bible. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

If we were making up our own god, would we create one with such harsh demands for justice, righteousness, service, and self-sacrifice as we find in the biblical texts? (As someone has said, Moses did not come down from the mountain with Ten Suggestions!) Would Israel’s elite have concocted such declarations as “He defended the cause of the poor and needy…Is that not what it means to know me?” Would the pious New Testament religious establishment have created a God who condemned them for their own hypocrisy? Would even a zealous discipline have invented a Messiah who called His followers to sell all, give their possessions to the poor, and follow Him to their deaths? The skeptic who believes the Bible’s human authors manufactured their God out of psychological need has not read the Scriptures carefully. However, can we rely on the biblical accounts? you make ask. When I first became a Christian, I certainly raised such questions. In fact, I began to study the Bible with a lawyer’s skepticism. I suspected it was a compilation of ancient fables that had endured through the centuries because of its wisdom. I made some startling discoveries, however. The original documents from which the Scripture derive were rigorously examined for authenticity by early canonical councils. They demanded eyewitness accounts of apostolic authorship. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

Today, a growing body of historical evidence affirms the accuracy of the Scriptures. For example, the prophecy recorded in Psalm 22 explicitly details a crucifixion, with it piercing of the hands and feet, disjoining of the bones, dehydration. Crucifixion, however, was a means of execution unknown to Palestine until the Romans introduced it—several hundred years after the Palestine until the Romans introduced it—several hundred years after the Psalms were written. So modern critics concluded the Psalms were written later, such “prophecies” perhaps even recorded after the fact. Then came the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which made possible the scientific dating of portions of the Psalms to hundreds of years before Christ. Modern technology and archeological discoveries are also adding substantial support to the historical authenticity of Scripture. As historian Paul Johnson has written, “A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts.” However, sometimes personal experience offers the most convincing evidence. Ironically, the Watergate cover-up left me convinced that the biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus Christ are historically reliable. In my Watergate experience I saw the inability of humans—powerful, highly motivated professionals—to hold together a conspiracy based on a lie. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

It was less than three weeks from the time that Mr. Nixon knew all the facts to the time that John Den went to the prosecutors. Once that happened Mr. Nixon’s presidency was doomed. The actual cover-up lasted less than a month. Yet Christ’s powerless followers maintained to their grim deaths by execution that they had in fact seen Jesus Christ raised from the dead. There was no conspiracy, no Passover plot. Men and women do not give up their comfort—and certainly not their lives—for what they know to be a lie. Finally, many of the World’s greatest philosophers and scientists have gone beyond deductive assent to the confidence that God exists because they have experienced Him. Were Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Newton, and the great social reformers of the nineteenth century victims of infantile wis fulfillment? Did some psychological whim motivate St. Francis or George Fox to expend their lives in protest against economic elitism? Was Louis Pasteur, who laboured against great physical disabilities to achieve scientific breakthroughs to benefit humans, simply mistaken in his motivation to do so for the glory of God? What is it that motivated people, both Christian and nonbeliever, to do works of mercy? The goodness of the human heart? Hardly. Human’s basic nature, as we shall see in the future, suggests just the reverse. Rather, love for others, like the need for purpose, is implanted in the hearts and minds of men and women—even those who do not acknowledge it—by a loving and purposeful Creator. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

Faith requires no surrender of the intellect. It is not blind, unthinking, and irrational. Nor is it simply a psychological crutch. For me, the objective evidence for God’s existence is more convincing than any case I argued as an attorney. However, most rebellion against God is not intellectual. I have met few genuine atheists who would argue passionately that there can be no God. Instead, the preponderance of objections are moral and personal. Before one’s eventual conversion, when philosopher Mortimer Adler was pressed on one’s reluctance to become a Christian, he replied, “That’s a great gulf between the mind and the heart. I was on the edge of becoming a Christian several times, but didn’t do it. I said that if one is born a Christian, ne can be light-hearted about living up to Christianity, but if one coverts by a clear conscious act of will, one has better be prepared to live a truly Christian life. So you ask yourself, are you prepared to give up all your vices and the weaknesses of the flesh?” It is on the moral level that the most intense battle is being fought for the hearts of modern humans. If Hemingway and the twenty-first century skeptics are right—if God is dead or irrelevant—then the prospect for true harmony and justice is grim. Sometimes children understand this profound truth better than adults. Several years ago my son Leo and I were discussing the evidence for God. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

As I argued that if there were no God, it would be impossible to account for moral law, my grandson Pete, then four, interrupted. “But Grandpa,” he said, “there is a God.” I nodded, assuring him I agreed. “See, if there was not a God, Grandpa,” he continued, “people could not love each other.” Pete is right. Only the overarching presence and provision of God assures that both Christian and non-Christian enjoy human dignity and a means to escape our naturally sinful condition. Without His presence, we could not long survive together on this planet. There is That which abides in itself, sufficient to itself, unique, the Consciousness, the Finality. There is nothing beyond it. Before That one must bow in utmost reverence, humbled to the ground. This is the only thing which is able to subsist entirely by itself, which is independent of and beyond all relations with any other thing. This, considered absolute, is God. In the beginning was Being—Mind; the principle of being, living, was inseparable from the principle of Knowing, Consciousness. It was transcendental and eternal. It is only we humans who are compelled to talk of beginnings although there was no such thing. This is why the Absolute is unapproachable, ineffable. The World is not self-existent but MIND is. Because it is utterly independent of all other things and entities, it is the Absolute. It is in Sanskrit Aja, “the UNBORN,” the only thing which had no beginning in time and which can have no ending for it is BEING itself. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

There were those among the ancient Greek sages who taught with reverence about “THAT WHICH REALLY IS.” It is Self-existent, all-pervading, and boundless in every way. The huge paradox of life becomes plainer as one becomes older. Nothing stands alone, all things come in couples. But stay!—there is one which is exempt from this law. No law can hold it for it holds them all itself. Mind is the ever-free, bound by no authority, chanied to no law, not even the law of cause and effect. This is called “being-by-itself” but others called “Non-being.” These are simply two descriptions of the same thing—one positive, the other negative. Every other entity or thing cannot not be, but not the Supreme Principle, for it is Be-ing itself. That which exists through itself is MIND. This infinite being has the power to support itself—nothing else has. The Infinite Power can never become exhausted. It is self-sustaining. This is the ultimate Being beyond which there is nothing. We are dependent on and dwell in Mind but Mind on the contrary is self-sustained and dwells in itself. If we say, “God is a Mind,” we err greatly. If we say, “God is Mind,” we speak more rightly. The introduction of this shortest of short words falsifies our idea of God because it separates, personalizes, and differentiates the Absolute. Ride beneath their planes, protecting spirits, raising up their wings with your own. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

Please guide their weapons, warrior spirits, bringing them to their targets with accuracy. Be with them throughout their mission, spirits of power, that that must be done will be done, that it will be done well. May I go and return in safety. May I go and return with profit. May I go and return accomplishing my goals. May I go and return in the hands of God. May I go and return under His protection. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest loving kindness and possessest all things. Mindful of the patriarch’s love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. Please remember us unto life, O King who delightest in life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life so that we may live worthily for Thy sake, O Lord of life. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art mighty in deliverance. Thou causest the wind to blow and the rain to fall. Thou sustainest the living with loving kindness, and in great mercy callest the departed to everlasting life. Thou upholdest the falling, healest the sick, settest free those in bondage, and keeps faith with those that sleep in the dust. Who is like unto Thee, Almighty King, who decreest death and life and bringest forth salvation? Mind, alone, has the right to say, “I AM!” but then, it is forever silent. All others can only say, “I am me,” indicating a person. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

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