This evening the United Methodist Church voted on three major pieces of legislation and I watched almost all of it through live-streaming.  We voted to change the Social Principles on Human Sexuality (which I’ve already linked once) to strengthen the language that says homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.  We voted down a minority report that would have strengthened pastoral authority in admitting new members to the church but we also voted down the majority report so the language stays the same.  And finally we voted, by a 70% majority to keep the disciplinary language the way it is regarding the ordination of homosexuals which means that we will not ordain them.

I don’t know if anyone cares all that much but I thought I would share it for those interested

I’m taking bets and odds on Mark becoming a Lutheran within the next year.

Mark: LTC was a hugely influential book for me as well.

Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place
I can feel His mighty power and His grace
I can hear the brush of angels wings
I see glory on each face
Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place

...song from when I was a child in a pentecostal church.

I was taught that this was one of the aims of Christianty, to ‘usher’ in the presence of the Lord. It fits quite nicely with pre-millenialist, dispy view that we are helping to usher in the second coming. I really have no starting point to work from on a discussion of ‘Real Presence’ as most of you understand it. In my home church, there was never any discussion in Jesus being present in the Eucharist…its just something that we did on the first Sunday of every month. It was a solemn time, but the elements were merely symbolic of Jesus work, not his person. To really be in the ‘real presence’, you had to have some authentic charismatic experience: anointed preaching, speaking in tongues, prophecy, or some such.

John: I love the evolutionary psychologists. Nobody is more interesting to read. You have to be very creative to come up with adaptive functions for every conceivable human phenomenon. Of course, their theories are usually completely irrefutable.

...I’m finally working up the courage to pose this question:

With all the hoopla about “the Shack”, I wanna know: what “non-christian” book had the biggest positive impact on your spiritual life. For me, unequivocally, it was ‘The Last Temptation of Jesus Christ”.

No book I had ever read depicted Jesus as a real, live human being. Suddenly, I felt that he could share in my humanity. God became Immanuel to me, finally. That’s a succinct version. If anyone is interested in picking up the discussion, I can share more.

Here’s where we are in these matters:

Nonetheless, the climactic passage of Lillback’s own essay poses the possibilities as an either/or crossroads for WTS that forces a stark choice: either sola scriptura or Enns, either “the evangelical doctrine of scripture” or Enns, either “Luther” or Enns, either “standing on God’s word” or Enns.

Words fail.

WTS released some of the key documents dealing with the Enns suspension. Analyses from Myers and Garver.

I listened to Thabiti’s address at the T4G conference.  I thought it was excellent.  But I also think this critique points out some areas for evaluation and discussion. 

The General Conference of the United Methodist Church strengthened it’s language concerning homosexuality this evening.  I’ve got a comparison of the new language and the current paragraph at my blog.

If I’m honest, I have to say that this surprised me.

Frank Turk disallowed a mention of Internet Monk.com in his comments today, and indicated he would do so in the future.

One can only hope that this indicates a decision that won’t be changed. The whole blogosphere will benefit.

In a week in which we’ve read a commentor write “There is no unity without purity” we get this comment gem from another blog on “The Shack”:

Driscoll’s website describes one of the things he does is “research the culture.” Which culture? His comments regarding The Shack are merely his own, speaking from his own cultural research. And apparently, hundreds, if not thousands, agree with him and give him millions of dollars a year to unleash his cultural critique. Who are you to criticize him?

Hahahahahahahaha

That’s a page right out of Benny Hinn’s playbook, no? Do not touch the Lord’s anointed, right? If I’ve learned one thing from the TR universe it is this: EVERYONE is open to criticism.

Becky Garrison interviews John Marks, and has an interesting Q/A about distant megachurch pastors.

Keep ‘em coming Van Til. By this evening we’ll get to talk about the UMC decisions on homosexuality at General Conference.

Maybe.

With the length of discussions they are having I’ll be surprised if they get everything done.

John, you can’t really lump quantum mechanics with planetary orbits. The former are random, and the latter are not. So regarding the random example, I don’t believe God is specifically ordaining or guiding random events, yet carefully causing them to have all the statistical properties of randomness so that the guidance is undetectable. The weather is chaotic, not random. There’s a huge difference, and yes, it’s statistically detectable if you look at the right properties. Randomness, when it occurs, is not an illusion any more than distant galaxies are.

I do believe that God has set up the laws of the universe to work as they do. They don’t even look random. I also disagree that materialism has been “stunningly” successful. It has been rather effective at describing how things work, but rather ineffective at asserting why they are a certain way rather than another way. I also think the Darwinist model is flawed, and its biggest flaw shows up in that it continually predicts uselessness where we eventually find usefulness.

More »« Less

The Big Change in the Spencer family took a major leap forward today. Hopefully, I’ll be able to talk about this openly soon.

John: I don’t want a brawl because I’m sure neither one of us is in “learning mode” on this one. I don’t consider it to be word games to say we all believe Jesus is really present. We aren’t talking about my grandmother here. (“I just feel like grandma is with us.”) We’re talking about ascended, available by the power of the HS to all, completely mediating, not holding back, not localized, not partial, not only hanging around with correct theology Jesus. I TOTALLY get that some believe he’s present in body and blood in the elements. I also get that his promise to be “with us” can’t be subdivided in any way that’s reasonable to me. I get the sacramental mediation of Jesus, but I’ll never see how union with Christ- his work- has an element of “real presence” with some Christians that should concern me as a non-Lutheran/Catholic.

After we don’t brawl about this, we can not brawl about why I can’t commune where Jesus is really present. ducks runs

Mark Nikirk: I hate to interrupt this scintillating ID discussion with something as mundane as basic morality, but I have to in order to answer your question.

Although the problems in our financial system are myriad, the BIG one is this:

Congress alone possesses the authority to appropriate taxpayer funds, (US Constitution, Article 1, Section 7, * & 9). The Treasury Department doesn’t have the authority, and the Fed certainly doesn’t have the authority. Essentially what happened is that on March 16th, Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke agreed together to guarantee $29 billion of Bear Stearns debt if JPMorgan would buy Bear Stearns – for literally 1/10th of its market price on March 14th. In other words, if JPMorgan makes money off the Bear purchase, they keep the profits. On the other hand, losses incurred as a result of the purchase will be insured – up to $29 billion – using taxpayer money – and Congress never even got a chance to debate it, let alone vote on it. This is a blatant power grab by the bankers, and anyone who is not an executive or board member of JPMorgan is going to get screwed,

I know getting involved in actual action is a non-starter here in the bar, and I know finance and economics bores everyone else as much as theology bores me, but this is an issue that affects every single one of us right now. Our gas costs more, our food costs more and third world countries are having food riots all because of what these bastards on Wall Street are doing – and no one is calling them to account for it.

This is my attempt to call them to account.

Mark N, you’re right on the money here: The “antropomorphic dilemma” is definitely at work, and we need to tread carefully. I do agree with Josh’s insistence on defining the terms, but we can easily fall into the trap that an (creationist) information scientist like Werner Gitt seems to have fallen into: After taking Shannon’s information laws & definitions, he applied them to the evolutionary process, and hey presto! it proves evolution wrong and creationism true. Neither actually – all that it proves is that if Shannon’s laws are taken as the ruling paradigm within an evolution-based system, that system is self-contradictory. As you can see, I tend to be sympathetic towards Popper in these matters…

(With regard yeserday’s race discussion – mine was merely an added observation, not an attempt at engagement)

Josh:

By the way, random processes are incompatible with any idea of them being “guided.” When you start controlling or guiding them, they lose their randomness. If an intelligence has been guiding evolution, you’d see statistical evidence of it.

Is there any reason why you couldn’t replace the word “evolution” in that sentence with “the weather”, “quantum mechanics”, “animal behaviour”, “the position of the stars”, “the orbits of the planets” and so on? Does that leave us with any science left at all? My point is that these are all (well, nearly all) matters which the Bible tells us are determined and guided by God, but which materialistic, naturalistic science is able to describe with considerable accuracy.

As far as we can see or make out, God does play dice. For the rest of the story, we have to go to his Word – not statistical evidence of non-random guidance.

Mark W:

I think as a Christian, you have to believe this. Not that you have to accept ID methodology, but you have to believe that God had us in mind. He wasn’t surprised one day and said “Hey, look! Humans! And they’re in my image! Cool!” Even if he used random processes as secondary causes, we were the intended result.

I agree. My point was that this understanding – that behind the combination of random processes and non-random natural selection there is a God who “had us in mind” – is one which can only come by faith in the Word that God has revealed to us, not through any understanding of the scientifically-described process of evolution. And what I meant by a “teleological” understanding of theistic evolution was one in which we expect to see God’s fingerprints on the process of evolution – whether in terms of fortuitous developments, or an overall “direction” to evolution (such as a general preference towards complexity or intelligence).

Mark N:

When we begin to say that detecting design must be verifiable, quantifiable, and repeatable, aren’t we beginning to apply an anthropomorphic standard to God?

Yes! Absolutely! That’s precisely my point: the whole problem with ID is that it insists that design must be verifiable and quantifiable, rather than accepting that God is able to work in ways that are far more subtle than we can begin to imagine, to achieve his ends through created processes without leaving any detectable evidence within his creation – no reflections of the cameraman in the window, no microphone booms hanging in the top of the shot.

Similarly, I agree that “detecting the intervention of God in key places of theistic evolution seems unlikely”, because I don’t believe in a quasi-Deistic notion of a universe that is left to mind its own business unless and until God “intervenes” every now and then to change how things are running. I believe God is at work at all times “in, with and under” the natural, created processes which we can observe scientifically.

And the point is not that “God plays by the scientific method”, but that the scientific method has proved remarkably – no, make that stunningly – successful in describing the world which God has created and which he upholds at every moment and at every point. That is no less true in relation to the development of life than it is in many, many other areas of science – but that does not take away from God’s revelation of his purposes in that seemingly-purposeless development, any more than those other areas take away from God’s revelation of his purposes in the seemingly-purposeless processes of meteorology, astronomy, zoology and so on.

Ever try to post one good thought, and by the time you compose it other people have posted 5 other thoughts that supersede and improve on whatever it was you were talking about…I just had one of those moments.

Well, John, we already have that with the eye. The “design flaw” that somewhat reduces the efficiency in photoreceptivity is actually there to maximize energy consumption. It appears that the big contribution of naturalism is that we should assume that biological processes and structures are useless until we can prove otherwise. But why should this be our default assumption? Why is this any more logical than assuming that something arose by special creation until we can prove otherwise? Given how many “vestigial,” “useless,” or “disorganized” things have been shown to be functional, useful, and structured, it appears that we actually should assume that things have a purpose unless we can show otherwise.  And in some sense, the revolution has already occurred.  There are a few materialists that Dembski quotes over and over because they’ve admitted that some kind of design assumption is actually quite useful for answering questions about cellular machinery…they just add the caveat that the design is an illusion produced by natural selection.

By the way, random processes are incompatible with any idea of them being “guided.” When you start controlling or guiding them, they lose their randomness. If an intelligence has been guiding evolution, you’d see statistical evidence of it, just like with dishonest dice. Not that biologists tend to be good mathematicians or anything.

When we begin to say that detecting design must be verifiable, quantifiable, and repeatable, aren’t we beginning to apply an anthropomorphic standard to God?  If God created man (I think we’re all in agreement with that statement), by ‘created’ we mean at least, ‘He set forth the catalyst, precursors, and preconditions for our creation.’  If I’m not mistaken, this is the ‘bottom line’ of theistic evolution.  So in addition to accepting that bottom line, now I have to accept that God plays by the scientific method?

Detecting the intervention of God in key places of theistic evolution seems unlikely to me.  Does the supernatural always leave the fingerprints of intervention on the natural?  That’s what we talking about…building a theory that can be falsified or not.  How often has God provided this for something He has done? 

Make a note of the date: I think I agree with every word of this Pyro post. (Well, the bit from “I came across this post…” onwards – the rest isn’t exactly applicable to me (sw).)

John:  I’m not being confrontational with these questions, and I realize that design has a specific meaning, which I tried to take into account in my last post. More »« Less

Mark: I do believe that God created heaven and earth, and people in his image. However, in the context of this debate “design” has a specific meaning as to the methodology by which God did this: namely, in such a way that evidence of his work is scientifically observable.

To say, “but we all believe in ‘design’” is reminiscent of the earlier discussion about “we all believe Jesus is ‘really present’” – we can’t avoid the disagreement over the specific meaning under consideration by taking refuge in the broader semantic range of the word/phrase.

Similarly, in my experience “materialists” (a word which is not synonymous with “believer in Darwinian evolution”, despite what Richard Dawkins, Ken Ham and Philip E Johnston will unite to tell us) will only lump theistic evolution in with design where theistic evolution is presented as having a “teleological” aspect – in other words, where God is seen as having manipulated/directed the process of evolution for a particular purpose, again in a way which is (in principle) observable. Christians who (like Ken Miller or Francis Collins) accept the mainstream theory of evolution “without strings” are not generally seen as introducing design by the back door, even if materialists find themselves baffled by how those Christians can continue to believe in God’s purposes working through purposeless scientific processes.

And as I’ve said on various occasions and in various places, I think there are good biblical grounds for taking an approach in which phenomena can be described both in impersonal, undirected scientific terms and as an expression of the loving purposes of God, without expecting the latter to influence what we see in terms of the former. See for example Psalm 104 or Psalm 148 (where, for example, the reference to “fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command!” does not exclude modern, naturalistic meteorology).

This is accepted by most Christians without question in most areas of scientific investigation. Evolution is an exception to this general rule, and I don’t think there is any compelling theological or scientific reason why this should be the case.

But there is rather more to evolutionary theory than everyone just shrugging and saying, “Can’t be a designer, so I guess it must be natural selection”.

Agreed, but my point is about how any input whatsoever from a designer is disallowed. I said before how I think that materialist Darwinists and YEC’ers are the two sides of the same scientific coin. YEC believes the earth is a few thousand years old and won’t consider otherwise. The materialists say there is no intelligence guiding things and won’t consider otherwise.

If you believe in God who created heaven and earth, and people in his image, then you believe in design. Maybe not the ID methodology, but at the very least you believe that God created the universe in a way that we would eventually arrive. That may be called theistic evolution, but materialists will lump it together with design.

Josh: helpful list, thank you. Now all you need to do is identify an alleged flaw (perhaps one of Miller’s examples), assess which of those categories of “designed flaws” it might fall under, carry out some experiments and gather data to support that hypothesis, write up a paper, get it peer-reviewed and published, and you can gain the distinction of actually kick-starting intelligent design as a scientific discipline rather than a political campaign.

John, we need some kind of criteria of design because otherwise, natural selection is unfalsifiable, making it unscientific.

You’re right that we need some kind of criteria of design, but it’s not true that natural selection depends on having one. Natural selection is a description of a process that doesn’t eliminate the possibility that the process has been designed or exploited by some extrinsic agent. The absence of an extrinsic agent is an axiom of biological theory.

In any case, I don’t see the ID folks coming out with rigorous definitions of “design”, either. This would seem to be rather important, since their theory depends on the definition of design in a way that the accepted theory does not. And if “irreducible complexity” is their argument, then I’m afraid that it’s been pretty thoroughly debunked.

“Incompetent designer” and “absence of designer” are not the only possible explanations for flaws. Here some other possibilities, most of which are excluded by an overt materialist bias against design:

More »« Less

Mark N: as I said in my previous post, the question is not whether the design is flawed. The question is the nature of the flaws. Some flaws are best explained by incompetence. Some are best explained by ingenuity. And others are best explained by having originated by means of an unguided, incremental series of steps.

Mark W: yes, “natural selection of the gaps” is indeed a flawed argument. That’s why “evolutionary psychologists” provide such rich entertainment for us all with their “Just-So” stories about our propensity for TV dinners resulting from our having “evolved” to sit round campfires on the African savannah. But there is rather more to evolutionary theory than everyone just shrugging and saying, “Can’t be a designer, so I guess it must be natural selection”.

I worked as a lab tech in a ceramic fuel cell lab for several years.  I perfomred countless experiments on materials that were designed, but didn’t work.  Just because something isn’t successful, doesn’t mean it wasn’t designed.  How can something, produced in a world of entropy, and imperfect people,  be flawless?  I’m not convinced that flawless = evidence of a designer either.

Josh: I agree with your post, but can you please explain “uselessness of the gaps?”

More generally: If “God of the gaps” or “design of the gaps” are not legitimate, then why is “natural selection of the gaps?”  In other words, “we don’t know how this developed by natural selection, but we know natural selection is responsible for everything, so it had to develop by natural selection,  and you can’t bring any designer into the conversation, because that’s not science”

Josh: interesting point about the eye.

However, the argument is not simply “flawed design = no designer”, but the nature of the flaws themselves. Is this a flaw that is best explained by an incompetent designer (or, for that matter, an ingenious designer making the most of an awkward set of materials), or is it a flaw that is best explained by the absence of a designer?

And way to go on suggesting that Ken Miller is “too muddled” to make a useful contribution to the discussion of intelligent design. What with that and being dismissed by the producer of “Expelled” as not a real Roman Catholic, it’s been a bad few weeks for him. (jn)

John, we need some kind of criteria of design because otherwise, natural selection is unfalsifiable, making it unscientific. This actually has scientific applications, as we are already at the point where we can design things on the nano scale. For example, carbon nanotubes spelling “Hello” are designed, where as the raw nanotubes created at early stages of hydrocarbon combustion are simply the outcome of an unguided process. But how do we know? How could we tell the difference between, say, a killer bacteria designed for use as a bio-weapon and another killer bacteria that is simply the product of random mutation?

I don’t know why design proponents argue that flaws are evidence of design, when we ourselves frequently produce flawed designs. Was Windows 95 designed? Was the Ford Pinto designed? I can point you directly to a jury-rigged design in a nearby factory and the engineer who cobbled it together. Someone arguing “flawed design = no designer” is clearly far too muddled and illogical to make useful contributions to the design discussions. Your photoreceptor example, by the way, is an example of a “uselessness of the gaps” fallacy. It turns out that our particular photoreceptors have such a high metabolism that, were they on the other side of of the nerves, we’d go blind because they couldn’t get nutrients fast enough. This is why the design hypothesis is important—materialism has for over a century frequently produced hypotheses based on a “uselessness of the gaps” fallacy, which are often falsified later. Assuming that things we don’t understand are by-products of random perturbation of existing things is just as much a fallacy as assuming that steps we don’t understand can’t be found.

they seem more consistent with a process of “tinkering” with existing materials, going with what works now, even if it’s a bit of a bodge, rather than being able to jump to “optimal” solutions or plan ahead for what might be needed in the future.

Surely you know some engineers well enough to see that this is nothing other than a description of how intelligent beings design things. This is another problem with materialist arguments against design—they all seem woefully ignorant of how designs actually happen! If this were proof of natural selection, then “natural selection” includes everything that humans have ever designed, meaning that “natural selection” is a broad (or poorly defined?) enough idea to include intelligent design.

Adam: I agree that those who wish to argue for design will need to put forward criteria by which that proposal can be assessed. But in many cases that will come down to examining a number of different criteria, some of which may be useful in some circumstances and some in others. I’m not sure that the process by which you’d determine that Paley’s watch was designed is necessarily the same by which you’d conclude that, say, the gardens at Stourhead were designed.

Following Miller’s examples, in the case of the eye one criterion by which we might conclude the eye was not designed is the presence of basic design flaws which a designer might reasonably be expected to avoid. In the case of the human egg, we might dismiss design due to the presence of redundant features which are best explained by descent from an earlier form of egg which possessed those features. Different criteria in each case. And so on.

In any event, even if a single test is possible or desirable, “irreducible complexity” isn’t it, because even if a system is irreducibly complex now, that doesn’t mean it can’t have got to that state by a process of evolutionary steps. For example, it may be a simplification of a “reducibly complex” system that duly “reduced”. Or it may be that the function the system performs now – a function for which it is “irreducibly complex” – is not the same as the function that system (or its constituent parts) played in the past.

John wrote:

do we need a single, clear criterion for establishing “design”?

Yes. If people are going to claim something is designed it is necessary to have a criterion that helps define what observable data constitutes as evidence for design. This is so that the “design of the gaps” fallacy will be avoided. It’s a scientifically interesting question anyway you look at it.

John,  the Lord’s Supper/ real presence issue just doesn’t work for me as a brawl…. but it does seem a bit too congenial in here… and I’ve been trying to think of how I might stir up something to no avail….. 

I was going to write something to praise Jeremiah Wright’s leadership and how it puts evangelical leaders to shame in one respect.  Wright clearly believes his agenda is distinct from who becomes president, and more important than whoever becomes president.  This would be a breath of fresh air, except it seems to be an expression of personal arrogance and using his parishioner’s fame, hijacking it for his own.  

Jim, I’m interested in hearing more about your travel to NYC and the protest.  You’ve got to have some good stories, and I do hope you behaved yourself…. whatever that means…. jn…

Michael: I agree that the concept of the “real presence” must never be expressed in a way which denies “the universal presence of Jesus in his church and in the universe that he rules over”.

However, to answer the question, “Do you believe in the real presence?” by saying, “Well, we all believe that Jesus is really present, don’t we?” is playing with words. Without wishing to start this year’s first real-presence bar-brawl, can we just agree to the following:

• All of us believe that Jesus is “really present” in his church and in the whole of creation.
• Most (all?) of us believe that Jesus is “really present” with us in some special way in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.
• Some of us believe that Jesus’ body is “really present” in the bread and Jesus’ blood is “really present” in the wine at the Lord’s Supper, but others of us don’t think that.

That third statement is what is normally meant by the “real presence”. I don’t think we need to get too worked up over the full potential semantic range of that phrase: the fact that those of us who believe #3 call that belief the “real presence” doesn’t mean we don’t think Jesus is “really present” elsewhere or in other ways, and in particular it doesn’t mean we don’t think Jesus is “really present” in other Christians’ celebrations of the Lord’s Supper.

I still believe this. Actually more than ever.

Yes, someone is sending me mail over the “real” presence. And I’m happy he finds it. But I don’t know any Christians who don’t believe Christ is “really” present.

JackAz

Nicely done!  I’m confused here though…Do I, as an American taxpayer, now own stock in Behr Stearns?  If I don’t, why not?  Seems like we all could have gotten a better deal if congress would have said:

“OK, US.  Here’s the deal…Either we can take $300.00 per person from your taxes and bail out Stearns, or you can cough up 300.00 to buy up the stock at ‘x’ price.”

I know this is a simplistic reading of the situation, but Big Government solutions gives this Texas boy the hives.

Listening to Tim Staples clips at [name deleted]’s site. I wish RCs wouldn’t suggest that people like myself can be saved. It’s very annoying. Staples is answering a non-denom guy and makes it clear that the RC CHURCH = CHRIST and those who knowingly reject that (which I do) can’t be saved. I’m not invincibly ignorant. The claim of the RCC to be the church founded by Jesus in a way that the church I am part of is NOT is a claim I completely reject.

So I’m doomed. I would have better chances as a Muslim or an Atheist.

Josh: I’m neither a philosopher of science nor the son of a philosopher of science, but do we need a single, clear criterion for establishing “design”? ISTM that Occam’s trusty old Razor does the job in most cases: Behe has asserted that it is necessary to posit a designer in order to explain certain biochemical processes or physiological features; others have demonstrated that it is in fact possible to put forward explanations for the development of those processes/features without invoking a designer.

As for criteria for establishing design, we might expect a designer to exhibit certain characteristics as seen in the results of his/her/its handiwork. Examples include competence, efficiency and foresight. But as Ken Miller points out in his essay Life’s Grand Design, our own bodies contain many examples of flawed design (e.g. eyes with the photoreceptors located behind the neural wiring and blood vessels of the retina), redundant features (such as the empty yolk sac in our eggs) and nonfunctional legacy code in our DNA (e.g. pseudogenes).

Now, it is of course possible that a designer would include all these things for his/her/its own mysterious purposes – presumably while taking a break from planting dinosaur bones in rock formations to test our faith (jn) – but they seem more consistent with a process of “tinkering” with existing materials, going with what works now, even if it’s a bit of a bodge, rather than being able to jump to “optimal” solutions or plan ahead for what might be needed in the future. In other words, natural selection rather than design.

Well, I haven’t been around for the last week cuz – like I said I was gonna do – I went to NYC to protest. Here’s the proof. (I’m the tall goofy guy in the white shirt and goatee.)

For those who have never protested, I highly recommend it, especially in NYC. We had our own security detail and met lots of interesting people.

Sometime during your day tomorrow, if you could all utter a small prayer for the Scousers, I would appreciate it.  An ‘own’ goal in the 95th minute is a terrible way to lose a championship…

Teen wants to kill Jesus. Must be reading the last book of His Dark Materials.

John, one of those links you gave had the predictable “mousetrap deconstruction.”  I find such deconstructions odd, since they usually miss the central claim (that a random combination of the parts, or a combination missing one of the parts, would be non-functional) especially when they conclude in the following manner:

The mousetrap example provides, unintentionally, a perfect analogy for the way in which natural selection builds complex structures.

This is why, despite being by no means someone who rejects science to support exegetical claims, I don’t think most biologists are anywhere near philosophically qualified to talk about things like design, making them really incapable of self-critique.  Something that is not-A cannot be a “perfect analogy” for A.  If something explicitly intelligently designed provides a “perfect analogy” for something produced by natural selection, then the idea of “natural selection” is meaningless, since those things produced by random processes are indistinguishable from those that have been designed.  “Natural selection” becomes an existential commitment rather than a scientific hypothesis if indeed a mousetrap can serve as even an analogous example of natural selection.

Similarly sloppy thinking shows up in so-called “genetic algorithms,” in which evolution is “demonstrated” by intelligently designing selection criteria to force random data to converge to a result specified by some intelligent being.  The fact that naturalists absolutely cannot see how such experiments completely fail to refute notions of intelligent design truly boggles my mind.  It’s a basic intellectual failure.

Behe has repeatedly responded to his critics by saying, “So you don’t like my idea of ‘irreducible complexity.’  So what’s your criteria for detecting design?”  I think that’s the basic problem.  Perhaps irreducible complexity as a concept is fundamentally, philosophically flawed, i.e. nothing can be “irreducibly complex.”  So how then do we detect design?  Materialists are wholly unwilling to provide an answer.  But the fact is, I have some things that I know were designed.  How do I know that?  Materialists assert that neither purpose nor functional complexity are evidence of design.  So what is?  How do I know my car is designed without needing to be accused of the “mechanical engineer of the gaps” fallacy?

“My other thought is this: How stupid is it that this retreat features the promise and value of physical health and luster all under the sponsorship of a church led by the fattest preacher on television?” -Jared Wilson

Thanks for commiserating, PWinn. A nice lurker, Shauna, directed me to some Science curriculum that I think I can live with.  My experience with other home schoolers has been positive (except for the marathon board meetings).  However, dealing with the rolling eyes and probing questions becomes a pain when you tell people that you’re homeschooling.

Mark: Amen! That’s one of my biggest beefs with homeschooling. The mental midgets I encounter in many homeschooling circles continue to surprise me with horrific idiocy.

Our chosen curriculum does present a bit of each view in the science curriculum, but then we’re only up to 4th grade. I think high school becomes a touch more one-sided. I know Behe is on the schedule.

That said, one of my daughters is heavily interested in science, and it’s one of the favorite subjects of all three of my kids, so they get a lot of “extra” from me and some friends of mine. We chat up topics, dig into Wikipedia, National Geographic, and Seed in order to discuss them, and generally make no apologies for presenting the universe as billions of years old – and God as the author of every bit of it. Fortunately, that’s also the position of my church, so it’s not like they’re going to run into conflict there.

We don’t associate much with other homeschoolers. :-)

P.S. Readers who haven’t been around long enough may be surprised by the outburst of vitriol that leads this post. I think it has been pent-up ever since I attended a campout bonfire put on by a homeschooling Cub Scout pack, and nearly every single skit was offensively racist. I wanted to go to the folks there whose skin color didn’t match my own and apologize, but my own son’s skit was completely inoffensive, so I bit my tongue. I’m still irked.

Little Portion Monastery in Arkansas (John Michael Talbot and friends) has burned. Post and photo here.

Amy Welborn on the post B16 visit lessons.

Matthew: The second comment on that thread is everything that has shown me the door to all of this. And here’s the thing: most of the folks in that discussion agree with that second commenter. They won’t be that brash, but they will agree. No unity with TR Calvinism, then no unity.

I’m studying St. Francis with my students this week. A welcome respite from the blogosphere. All posts telling the world what’s wrong with St. Francis should be sent to Van Til for editing.

Ever notice how much of this freelance theological posturing is purely COMPETITIVE? That’s all that’s going on. Mine is ….better than yours.

I saw Expelled. It preaches to the (Christian-Right, pro-ID) choir. It will not likely convince anyone else to change their minds, though it might get people to think about it a little more. I agree with Adam that the Darwin-Nazi bit was an off-topic wandering that could have been dealt with briefly, if it needed to be dealt with at all. I tend to have more fun comparing “the academic elite” with the Inquisition or the Magisterium. It’s as inflammatory as the Nazi comparison, and it doesn’t violate Godwin’s Law.

I do agree with Ben Stein’s premise that questions need to be asked about academic freedom, but it could have been handled better.

‘Expelled’ and Homeschooling…

One of the odd things about homeschooling is that there are certain assumptions that go along with instructing your children at home.  One of them is that you are a white, Republican, young earth creationist, who thinks that history should be 75% famous missionary stories. 

I tried to teach me girls science this year.  I researched curriculum, ordered it, and got ready to teach.  I have not taught one science lesson this year.  Why?...because the textbook sets up science as a tool to ratify the Bible rather than to stand as a study of natural phenomenon. 

Expelled reminds me of the textbook.  It hopes that if it yells loudly enough, you won’t see the trick it pulled with the mirrors and smoke. 

“Expelled”.

Sigh.

I could spend the next half-hour ranting about this one, as I’ve been reading around the subject of this film quite extensively over the past week or so. SciAm’s recent podcast on the subject and this round-up at Panda’s Thumb are good starting points, as is John Derbyshire’s smack-down at National Review Online (which accuses the film of “a blood libel on Western Civilization”).

But I think the most eloquent critique of the film can be found here. (jn)

I’m grateful though to Adam for criticising the film from a pro-ID position. Most of the ID sites on the web seem prepared to overlook the film’s blatant flaws and endemic dishonesty – like Michael Moore without the painstaking attention to balance and factual accuracy (jn) – for the sake of getting “their” point of view onto the cinema screen.

I really don’t think “Expelled” does the ID movement any favours at all. On the contrary: to go from “Darwin’s Black Box” (in many ways a very interesting book, even if its argument has been exposed as fatally flawed) to “Expelled” in barely twelve years shows how far ID has declined in credibility and ambition.

Adam, see Matheson, Lynch and Heard.

Anyone see this movie? As someone who is sympathetic to ID I have to say it was sub par for several reasons:

More »« Less

Scylding,

I’m not exactly sure what you’re looking for in engaging me on this topic?  You ask:

What is the wisdom in the ever-perpetuation of racial classification in new society like that of the US (or Canada for that matter)?

As far as I can tell, from an institutional point of view, its a practical aid in determining who is entitled to what benefit/aid in a socialistic society.  Every government form I’ve ever filled out in my life asks what race I belong to.  Its something that’s perpetuated by an institutionalized version of social justice.  I am male..check the box.  I am white…check the box.  Both identities are reinforced and reaffirmed through my actions.  I’d much rather be able to self-identify with the culture/race that I most associate with – German/Irish.  However, society’s attention span will not accomodate it…therefore I am white, others are black, or how about the infamous ‘other’?  I agree it is demeaning, unfair, and reenforces bad attitudes/behaviour, but its what we’ve got. 

That’s the second comment on this post.

Well, Mark, I most likely have up to 15% “black” blood – most likely Khoi / San. But even with the majority of my ancestors having lived and died in Africa for more than 3 centuries, much like a lot of Americans have in the US, I would loose my African heritage the moment I step of that continent, were I coming to the US.

My point is this: What is the wisdom in the ever-perpetuation of racial classification in new society like that of the US (or Canada for that matter)? A study of the racial classification of Mexicans in the US is highly enlightening – they’ve been white on and off for many a century, till they’ve now been reclassified as Latino. In the century before last, it was the Irish who suffered: There was one of Canda’s early great politicians, Thomas McGee, the first victim of a political assasination: He left Ireland, to get away from oppresion by the English, only to walk into discrimination in the US. He then found freedom back within the British Empire – in Canada.

How far are we in the New World from becoming less race-obsessed? The society I was born in was extremely race-obsessed, and self-destructed as a direct consequence of that. The question is not whether Obama is black, and Hillary white etc etc – it is if they’ll make a good president or not. Past (and present) injustices cannot be ignored, and have to be dealt with, but with the object of getting past the divide, not of perpetuating it.

 From Wiki:

African Americans or Black Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa.^[5] In the United States, the term is generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry. Most African Americans are the descendants of captive Africans who survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present United States, although some are — or are descended from — voluntary immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, South America, or elsewhere.^[

If my family immigrated to the US instead of Canada, would my kids be African-Americans?

Just wait for Obama to get the nomination (or even elected – y’never know…) and watch that “False Christs” indicator rise sharply. (jn)

You’ll notice that the number 39 indicator of impending armageddon is… “Civil Rights”. Yuk.

Edit: Lurker Jon emailed me to point out that the explanation for #39 on the RI site is that it relates to the loss of civil rights. Apparently the explanation reads as follows:

To have a dictator, there must be a shortage of civil rights, and of human rights. The time a people least expect their losing their freedom is when they are willingly giving it up.

Serves me right for jumping to conclusions and assuming the worst of people just because I disagree with their theological/political position.

Lutheran rocker Jonathan Rundman comments on journalists undercover at Christian events.

I’m listening to his Public Library  CD now.  If you like Derek Webb’s music, you’d probably like it, though I like this better than Derek Webb.

Randy

Truly bizarre…I can’t tell if its a tongue-and-cheek poke at armageddaholics or if its serious. To use a BHTism…I am not edified.

If the rapture index is not strange enough for you, how about this (from the same site).  Its a rundown of who gets to live in the Ultimate Gated Community (heaven) and who gets to live in the spiritual projects. 

I heard Rev. Wright’s press conference on Public Radio and what the Times article describes is accurate: a self-absorbed, self-indulgent rant-maker that sees himself as representative of all black Americans. The more he is in the news making his preposterous claims the more he damages Obama’s image. As we are well aware, Obama has done nothing but reject Wright’s claims as he seeks to be a race-transcending candidate. Wright is certainly more sophisticated than what the sound bites portray, but seeing him as a more complex figure is still bad for Obama any way you look at it.

The rapture index is 168, down from a high of 182 seven years ago. I guess the rapture is moving farther in the future. That is counter to all expectations, just like the gospel.

I’ve defended Rev. Wright previously, but recent events have made the whole thing even a bit more complex.  From what I’ve heard, though I haven’t seen it yet, yesterday’s press club meeting was a disaster.  I’ll have to watch it for myself.  I had heard really good things about his hour with Moyers, which I also plan to watch.

But what’s sad about it all is that it looks like he’s playing the pawn in political maneuvering.  It’s almost as if he thinks he can use Obama’s popularity as a stage for his message to get a wider audience, but the Clintonites are behind the scenes, laughing, as he does enough damage to Obama through the MSM, creating more sound-bytes to make superdelegates rethink Obama’s electability.

Jason:

I’m at a loss as to what text they use.  I can find out more information tonight from my kids.  I know that they use a combination of songs, texts, online competitions, and plays to learn Latin. 

The NY Times has an unflattering article about Rev J Wright.  Honestly, I haven’t been paying too much attention to it, as I don’t trust the media to really be fair to anyone who says something controversial.  Case in point: look at the Brit press treatment of…well…everything, but especially the Archbishop of Canterbury’s comments on how Christinaity informs public life. 

This article seems a bit over the top.  It reads more like the headline story in people magazine rather than the NY Times…where have all the real journalists gone?  I really wish that someone with the resources would re-invent how we get our news.  Eliminate the talking heads and bring in some analysis that isn’t ego or agenda driven.

Mark N, what texts are you using to teach Latin to the students? (As I am preparing myself to go to seminary this fall, I lament more and more my lack of a proper classical education. I don’t regret studying computer engineering at all, and there is some value in digital logic, but it’s not philosophy in the proper sense.)

Edit: Never mind – I just found it on your web site. 8-) (See kids, RTFM works!)

Big Discovery on this morning’s Onion Radio News. (Content/language Warning.)

Listening to a reformed pastor explain how God has ordained all evil things for a good purpose…I am not edified. Not so much that “God isn’t in “control,” but just where do Christians look during times of tragedy? These brothers are convinced that the place to look is deep theology of contingency and foreordination, etc. We’d do better to learn a theology of lament and how to pray the Psalms rather than hand out printed outlines of Jonathan Edwards.

Thanks for the link, Bob. It came at a great time for me. Every once in a while I g