30 September 2011
Is that all that is at stake?
In this post by Al Mohler, he talks about the importance of the historical place of actual Adam and Eve, something fast eroding in even evangelical circles; or likely be the next on the list of 'it aint history' in Genesis 1-11. The results are illustrated in Al's quotes in the article
29 September 2011
28 September 2011
Consensus
I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming the matter is already settled ... the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world ... Consensus is invoked only where the science is not solid enough ... Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
Michael Crichton, 2003 Caltech lecture "Aliens Cause Global Warming"
Michael Crichton, 2003 Caltech lecture "Aliens Cause Global Warming"
25 September 2011
Archbishop off the rails
At the “Intelligence Squared” public debate held a little while ago in Sydney there were six speakers; 3 spoke for the motion “Atheists are wrong”; 3 against, but this Peter Jensen quote from his presentation followed by an extract from Russell Blackford’s later address highlights the strategic vulnerability of Jensen’s agnosticsm-based doctrine of creation.
Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen: Thus, it is not with evolution as science that I have a problem; it is with evolution as an idolatrous explanation of all things; it confuses mechanism with agency; science with theology.
Now, the AB clearly has a content-less doctrine of creation here; not seemingly aware of this aspect of the doctrine, that reality; or all that created; is ontologically isotropic; and congruently exhibits a uniformity of causal transactions. He seems to think that the one reality is open to different basic descriptions, or different natures: that is, one is like God (in the Bible) and the other is not like God. Blackford, below, picks this up (and interestingly, his evolutionary way does not result in God's being glorified, which tends to rule it out as having any part of the creation) noting that evolutionary doctrines are disjunctive with the world having been very good before man's fall. He regards the fall as fictional, of course; so he is left with a world that is temporally replete with suffering. Jensen is left in this place too, with no connection between the real world and a history that does not embed enmity between creation and God.
And its not even that he needs to discuss science: he's committed the error of the two magisteria here; playing right into the atheist trap; pity he doesn't have sufficient confidence in the revelation of God to set his revelation in the history of his actions in relation to us to whom he reveals himself and out of that bring a critique of atheist nonsense and its self refuting implications.
Dr Russell Blackford [part-way into his presentation]: As we survey all the world's horrible circumstances, the endlessly varied kinds of excruciating pain, the deep suffering and sheer misery, inflicted on so many human beings and other vulnerable living things, it is not believable that a God of Love would have remotely adequate reasons to permit it all.
And it's no use responding to such questions with talk of free will. If free will means anything, it means being able to act in accordance with your own nature and values.
God is supposed to have free will, and yet we are assured by theologians that God will never act malevolently because it is not in his nature to do so. God will always freely choose to do good.
Well, why wouldn't God create other beings with benevolent natures who will also freely choose to do good? Heaven is supposed to be like that, so why isn't Earth?
And anyway, only a relatively small amount of the suffering there has been in the world over hundreds of millions of years could possibly have anything to do with the free choices of human beings.
Why has an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love brought about the world's current life forms through the process of biological evolution, which has, as God could have foreseen, led to untold misery in the animal world? Why would God choose this as the process to bring about beings like us?
Biologists tell us that the evolutionary process inevitably produces design flaws - often painful or debilitating for the creatures concerned. These are present everywhere in the natural world, and in fact in the human genome itself.
These flaws are just part of the evidence that life on Earth has diversified over time through the blind process of evolution, rather than being the product of a guiding intelligence.
So why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love choose a process that foreseeably produces so many atrocious outcomes for the creatures involved?
Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love choose the cruel, brutal operation of evolution, in which species supersede each other? You can't reconcile the process of evolution with the existence of such a god.
Indeed, in Blackford’s comments introducing the above extract he scornfully taunted his Christian opponents’ lack of faith:
Russell Blackford: In fact, though, they [Peter Jensen, Tracey Rowland, Scott Stephens] seem to have shown a lack of faith. None of the traditional arguments for the existence of God have been relied upon - they seem to have no faith in those arguments.
Indeed, no argument of any kind for the existence of a god was developed by them in any concerted way.
The transcripts: Jensen's and Blackford’s.
,
Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen: Thus, it is not with evolution as science that I have a problem; it is with evolution as an idolatrous explanation of all things; it confuses mechanism with agency; science with theology.
Now, the AB clearly has a content-less doctrine of creation here; not seemingly aware of this aspect of the doctrine, that reality; or all that created; is ontologically isotropic; and congruently exhibits a uniformity of causal transactions. He seems to think that the one reality is open to different basic descriptions, or different natures: that is, one is like God (in the Bible) and the other is not like God. Blackford, below, picks this up (and interestingly, his evolutionary way does not result in God's being glorified, which tends to rule it out as having any part of the creation) noting that evolutionary doctrines are disjunctive with the world having been very good before man's fall. He regards the fall as fictional, of course; so he is left with a world that is temporally replete with suffering. Jensen is left in this place too, with no connection between the real world and a history that does not embed enmity between creation and God.
And its not even that he needs to discuss science: he's committed the error of the two magisteria here; playing right into the atheist trap; pity he doesn't have sufficient confidence in the revelation of God to set his revelation in the history of his actions in relation to us to whom he reveals himself and out of that bring a critique of atheist nonsense and its self refuting implications.
Dr Russell Blackford [part-way into his presentation]: As we survey all the world's horrible circumstances, the endlessly varied kinds of excruciating pain, the deep suffering and sheer misery, inflicted on so many human beings and other vulnerable living things, it is not believable that a God of Love would have remotely adequate reasons to permit it all.
And it's no use responding to such questions with talk of free will. If free will means anything, it means being able to act in accordance with your own nature and values.
God is supposed to have free will, and yet we are assured by theologians that God will never act malevolently because it is not in his nature to do so. God will always freely choose to do good.
Well, why wouldn't God create other beings with benevolent natures who will also freely choose to do good? Heaven is supposed to be like that, so why isn't Earth?
And anyway, only a relatively small amount of the suffering there has been in the world over hundreds of millions of years could possibly have anything to do with the free choices of human beings.
Why has an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love brought about the world's current life forms through the process of biological evolution, which has, as God could have foreseen, led to untold misery in the animal world? Why would God choose this as the process to bring about beings like us?
Biologists tell us that the evolutionary process inevitably produces design flaws - often painful or debilitating for the creatures concerned. These are present everywhere in the natural world, and in fact in the human genome itself.
These flaws are just part of the evidence that life on Earth has diversified over time through the blind process of evolution, rather than being the product of a guiding intelligence.
So why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love choose a process that foreseeably produces so many atrocious outcomes for the creatures involved?
Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love choose the cruel, brutal operation of evolution, in which species supersede each other? You can't reconcile the process of evolution with the existence of such a god.
Indeed, in Blackford’s comments introducing the above extract he scornfully taunted his Christian opponents’ lack of faith:
Russell Blackford: In fact, though, they [Peter Jensen, Tracey Rowland, Scott Stephens] seem to have shown a lack of faith. None of the traditional arguments for the existence of God have been relied upon - they seem to have no faith in those arguments.
Indeed, no argument of any kind for the existence of a god was developed by them in any concerted way.
The transcripts: Jensen's and Blackford’s.
,
22 September 2011
Rocks in mud
In a recent promo on TV for a series on the cosmos, it was claimed that the series told us who we were and how we fitted into the universe.
That is, physical sciences, or the materialist interpretation of the physical world, is looked to for basic ontology and this as the foundation for human existential affirmations.
As I heard this promo, my mind went to the oft repeated phrase that religion (meaining biblical Christianity) and 'science' have two different domains of reference. The implication is that science deals with the real world; what actually is or actually happened, and is thus the real (material) basis for who we are and what significance we have (or don't), but religion deals within the real world about values, morals and other affective ethical aspects of life. But the important thing to note is that science is definitional and real, religion is derivative and encompased by the real defined by science. Science (in the sense of religions materialism and its cognates) then is the ultimate reference point, and religion is not.
Science, of course, is contextualised here by the materialist evolutionary world view, which sets out a comprehensive view of life, yet oddly introduces teleological concepts left right and centre contrary to its premis (see for instance the very notion of meaning: if there is in fact no 'meaning', or rather significance, meaning being a property of propositions, not phenomena, then science tells us nothing and any whiff of intentionality in any mind is a chimera).
Then, of course we have those theologians who, riding the wave of religion materialism's boosting, agree that the biblical informaiton about creation and contemporary scientific (materialist) claims about evolution treat different things, and are brought into compatibility in the notion of theistic evolution. Theistic evolution means that evolution is accepted, and any thing that God might have done is made consistent with the current materialist story.
Yet, this leaves one in great perplexity, because each has over-arching ontological claims with completely different epistemic and existential outworkings, which do not permit the glib compatibilist formulation that we have in theistic evolution.
Either the one is right: and intention is real because person-ness is basic in the structure of reality (that is God is and everything is a result of his intention, intention in love, moreover); or the other is, and if so, bibilical Christianity, and the spiritual matters it explicates are captured within the over-arching materialist ontology, and are not only finally, but are totally empty. The alternative, which theistic evolution seems to want to entertain, is that there is a functional dualism, with the real world we inhabit having a dualist character; at once created and un-created; with the incarnation being then inexplicable as there being no clear ontological relation between the dual ontologies. But this is simply unworkable because we can only live life as a unity, not monadically, but existentially and therefore ontologically unified with relations operating in consistent causality across time, space and domains of being.
What ends up is that we come straight round to material being basic, provding the root ontology, and intention (loving intention: our existential rootedness) being a (mere) epiphenomenon of matter and thus reflecting an arbitrary, or random, set of mechanical interactions at the atomic level with as much purpose and significanance as rocks caught in a mud slide!
That is, physical sciences, or the materialist interpretation of the physical world, is looked to for basic ontology and this as the foundation for human existential affirmations.
As I heard this promo, my mind went to the oft repeated phrase that religion (meaining biblical Christianity) and 'science' have two different domains of reference. The implication is that science deals with the real world; what actually is or actually happened, and is thus the real (material) basis for who we are and what significance we have (or don't), but religion deals within the real world about values, morals and other affective ethical aspects of life. But the important thing to note is that science is definitional and real, religion is derivative and encompased by the real defined by science. Science (in the sense of religions materialism and its cognates) then is the ultimate reference point, and religion is not.
Science, of course, is contextualised here by the materialist evolutionary world view, which sets out a comprehensive view of life, yet oddly introduces teleological concepts left right and centre contrary to its premis (see for instance the very notion of meaning: if there is in fact no 'meaning', or rather significance, meaning being a property of propositions, not phenomena, then science tells us nothing and any whiff of intentionality in any mind is a chimera).
Then, of course we have those theologians who, riding the wave of religion materialism's boosting, agree that the biblical informaiton about creation and contemporary scientific (materialist) claims about evolution treat different things, and are brought into compatibility in the notion of theistic evolution. Theistic evolution means that evolution is accepted, and any thing that God might have done is made consistent with the current materialist story.
Yet, this leaves one in great perplexity, because each has over-arching ontological claims with completely different epistemic and existential outworkings, which do not permit the glib compatibilist formulation that we have in theistic evolution.
Either the one is right: and intention is real because person-ness is basic in the structure of reality (that is God is and everything is a result of his intention, intention in love, moreover); or the other is, and if so, bibilical Christianity, and the spiritual matters it explicates are captured within the over-arching materialist ontology, and are not only finally, but are totally empty. The alternative, which theistic evolution seems to want to entertain, is that there is a functional dualism, with the real world we inhabit having a dualist character; at once created and un-created; with the incarnation being then inexplicable as there being no clear ontological relation between the dual ontologies. But this is simply unworkable because we can only live life as a unity, not monadically, but existentially and therefore ontologically unified with relations operating in consistent causality across time, space and domains of being.
What ends up is that we come straight round to material being basic, provding the root ontology, and intention (loving intention: our existential rootedness) being a (mere) epiphenomenon of matter and thus reflecting an arbitrary, or random, set of mechanical interactions at the atomic level with as much purpose and significanance as rocks caught in a mud slide!
17 September 2011
Self Organisation
A self-organizing garden is called a weed patch.
Courtesy of this post on organising in IT projects using the 'agile' methodology.
Courtesy of this post on organising in IT projects using the 'agile' methodology.
15 September 2011
Earth...Light...Action
In response to this Creation item; the following comment:
Thinking that the existence of light prior to the sun is problematic is, I think, an example of trying to project a naive observer view of the cosmos back into Genesis. While it is true that Genesis 1 has naive observer aspects, and some theologians think that this is the dominating characteristic of Genesis 1; I don't think that this is a necessary conclusion.
From a naive observor viewpoint is would seem peculiar if light, which seems to be made by the sun, existed before its source; but this misunderstands the physics of light. In fact, if there was no light: no photons emitted by sub-atomic excitement, there would be nothing coming out of the sun at all. Further, as light is but a part of the electromagnetic spectrum, one would reasonably surmise that the creation of light signified the creation of the entire spectrum, if not the entire energy field of the cosmos.
Could the lack of light be related to the formlessness and voidness of the 'stuff' of the cosmos: the heavens and earth as summary of all that was made, as inert 'stuff' un-energised occupant of space; add energy, and things really get going.
On these grounds, of course light would have to be 'made'. Without it the sun would be just sitting there, a mass of inert unproductive not-quite-matter.
Then this goes on to light being involved in the marking of evening and morning. I don't think that this occurs before day 4 when the marking of time is done by the heavenly bodies. Thus this marking was not occurring prior. So the evening and morning are set as nominal signifiers of the passing of time congruent with the later defined days now timed by the astronomical markers: same days by duration, different signification, but the same period of time elapsing on the basis of the equivalence of names.
I recall traveling in the arctic circle where my fellow travelers and I entertained each other playing with the fact that the light was the same at evening and morning: the light really didn't vary that much, but time still did pass, and the names gave meaning to the course of diurnal time. So with the days prior to day 4; I think is possible.
Thinking that the existence of light prior to the sun is problematic is, I think, an example of trying to project a naive observer view of the cosmos back into Genesis. While it is true that Genesis 1 has naive observer aspects, and some theologians think that this is the dominating characteristic of Genesis 1; I don't think that this is a necessary conclusion.
From a naive observor viewpoint is would seem peculiar if light, which seems to be made by the sun, existed before its source; but this misunderstands the physics of light. In fact, if there was no light: no photons emitted by sub-atomic excitement, there would be nothing coming out of the sun at all. Further, as light is but a part of the electromagnetic spectrum, one would reasonably surmise that the creation of light signified the creation of the entire spectrum, if not the entire energy field of the cosmos.
Could the lack of light be related to the formlessness and voidness of the 'stuff' of the cosmos: the heavens and earth as summary of all that was made, as inert 'stuff' un-energised occupant of space; add energy, and things really get going.
On these grounds, of course light would have to be 'made'. Without it the sun would be just sitting there, a mass of inert unproductive not-quite-matter.
Then this goes on to light being involved in the marking of evening and morning. I don't think that this occurs before day 4 when the marking of time is done by the heavenly bodies. Thus this marking was not occurring prior. So the evening and morning are set as nominal signifiers of the passing of time congruent with the later defined days now timed by the astronomical markers: same days by duration, different signification, but the same period of time elapsing on the basis of the equivalence of names.
I recall traveling in the arctic circle where my fellow travelers and I entertained each other playing with the fact that the light was the same at evening and morning: the light really didn't vary that much, but time still did pass, and the names gave meaning to the course of diurnal time. So with the days prior to day 4; I think is possible.
9 September 2011
Sample of 1
A local newspaper reported a new allegedly candidate transitional ape-to-man fossil.
Well, it might be an intermediate between two species, but I don't know how this could be determined. From a fossil, ancestry and progination are just not determinable either in general or the particular; so its a mountain of speculation: if people financed their businesses this way, we'd all be broke overnight.
But its also impossible to determine what we are dealing with with a sample size of just 1.
Nevertheless, much trumpeted!
Also of interest is the volume of comments attracted (see below). For a matter that is largely neglected by the church, it has obvious attraction, usually far outweighing the attraction of many other topics.
Paul was right.
The article mentioned the supposed age of the find; but, true to a newspaper, without mentioning the range of results, their error bands and the physical calibration that applied (as opposed to the guesswork calibration of fossil order).
Well, it might be an intermediate between two species, but I don't know how this could be determined. From a fossil, ancestry and progination are just not determinable either in general or the particular; so its a mountain of speculation: if people financed their businesses this way, we'd all be broke overnight.
But its also impossible to determine what we are dealing with with a sample size of just 1.
Nevertheless, much trumpeted!
Also of interest is the volume of comments attracted (see below). For a matter that is largely neglected by the church, it has obvious attraction, usually far outweighing the attraction of many other topics.
Paul was right.
The article mentioned the supposed age of the find; but, true to a newspaper, without mentioning the range of results, their error bands and the physical calibration that applied (as opposed to the guesswork calibration of fossil order).
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