On one of my favourite TV shows Lewis, recently, one of the characters asked Det. Sgt Hathaway (Lawrence Fox), if he believed in God. Fox plays a fellow who was a candidate for the priesthood, which brings interesting quirks in the script.
Fox evaded an answer: good police behaviour in avoiding the personal, but the protagonist, a researcher into religious beliefs, claimed later that he therefore knew that Hathaway was a believer.
Now, if Hathaway wasn't a police officer, his inference would have been likely correct. Evade the question of Christian belief, and you are. An atheist couldn't care less, of course.
Here's how to handle it:
Q: "Do you believe in God" [asked in a cynical or mocking tone by Eric the dill]
A: "Yes; what do you believe in? Dirt?" [stated directly, without emotion by Colin the robustly informed Christian]
Most people who would ask in a mocking tone would be materialists, either explicitly, or implicitly. If so, they believe that matter, or in our language, dirt, is basic. So go ahead and ask.
If they are dirt-huggers, then you've got to ask them why they act as though there's more to life than the dust they walk on, and why do they care anyway? If its all just dirt, then nothing really matters, because its all just a random dirt configuration, or a result thereof.
27 May 2014
24 May 2014
Evolution: Good Science?
I've just read Evolution: Good Science? by Dominic Statham.
Not having read a basic introductory work on this topic (or on any topic, for that matter) for some time, I was very pleased to read this, while having an enjoyable break at a place called Yarramalong, near Newcastle in Australia.
Dominic travels the territory of the dogma of evolution and picks up on the several improbable things it does before breakfast.
The chapters are:
The book is replete with references to both the relevant primary and secondary literature, so a great mine of sources for high school students to use to baffle their teachers (on my experience, this is not hard. I once countered an assertion made by my science teacher from my then recent reading of Lorenz' On Aggression. He had nothing to say! Happily this teacher, back in the 1970s, was a firm sceptic as to evolutionary ideas).
One of the strengths of the book is that it compares what evolutionary 'theory' should predict with what is found in fact. The theory is found wanting.
This brings to mind a discussion I witnessed at a L'Abri seminar where a Christian physicist who was a well known evolution booster said that evolution's strength was its predictive power. Statham shows that it demonstrates very weak predictive power. This is particularly so in the area of homology where nothing lines up with evolutionary expectations.
The author refers to Walter ReMine's work. ReMine avers that this may be as a result of God's structuring the creation in such a fashion as to frustrate evolutionary explanations. This may be so, but I prefer to regard it as the creator showing diversity of effective means, and that this is what the real world is really like: diversity. It is not a 'one way' world but one of abundance of pathways of action.
BTW, here's a link to Haldane's famous paper on The Cost of Natural Selection which Statham mentions. There is also a nice treatment of the topic by Walter ReMine.
Not having read a basic introductory work on this topic (or on any topic, for that matter) for some time, I was very pleased to read this, while having an enjoyable break at a place called Yarramalong, near Newcastle in Australia.
Dominic travels the territory of the dogma of evolution and picks up on the several improbable things it does before breakfast.
The chapters are:
- What is Darwin's theory of evolution?
- The fossil record
- 'It is observed today'
- Homology
- Vestigial organs and embryology
- Biogeography
- 'It is recorded in DNA'
- Evidence of design in nature
- Is belief in evolution necessary for scientific progress
- Why do so many scientist subscribe to the theory of evolution?
- Is evolution compatible with Christianity?
The book is replete with references to both the relevant primary and secondary literature, so a great mine of sources for high school students to use to baffle their teachers (on my experience, this is not hard. I once countered an assertion made by my science teacher from my then recent reading of Lorenz' On Aggression. He had nothing to say! Happily this teacher, back in the 1970s, was a firm sceptic as to evolutionary ideas).
One of the strengths of the book is that it compares what evolutionary 'theory' should predict with what is found in fact. The theory is found wanting.
This brings to mind a discussion I witnessed at a L'Abri seminar where a Christian physicist who was a well known evolution booster said that evolution's strength was its predictive power. Statham shows that it demonstrates very weak predictive power. This is particularly so in the area of homology where nothing lines up with evolutionary expectations.
The author refers to Walter ReMine's work. ReMine avers that this may be as a result of God's structuring the creation in such a fashion as to frustrate evolutionary explanations. This may be so, but I prefer to regard it as the creator showing diversity of effective means, and that this is what the real world is really like: diversity. It is not a 'one way' world but one of abundance of pathways of action.
BTW, here's a link to Haldane's famous paper on The Cost of Natural Selection which Statham mentions. There is also a nice treatment of the topic by Walter ReMine.
18 May 2014
Christianity Explored and...science
I've recently participated in a Christianity Explored program at a local church and came across the so-called 'leader's guide' ('facilitator's guide' or 'minister's guide' would be more Christian terminology, but, being Anglicans they're right into the 'leader-power' thing).
Much like the Alpha course, it contains a list of Questions about Christian Belief. Being Calvinists, they have trouble answering some questions, or at best, the answers are a tad lame; but being agnostic on creation, they duck and weave on the question of science and faith.
Quite rightly they pin down the real question: "hasn't the theory of evolution replaced creation and so disproved Christianity", but proceed to go all thumbs on the answers.
Tactically the line of answers is not too bad:
"Start by asking what they mean..." [always a good idea]
"Avoid a technical discussion..." [particularly if you are not skilled in the topic; but sometimes a 'technical' discussion is necessary to undo someone's rhetorical reliance on 'evolution']
"Ask what conclusion they are drawing from evolution." [another good one]
But it goes off the rails at a couple of points:
"How God made the universe is not as important a point as that he made it."
Even the average village atheist should be able to walk through that reply. The only information we have that he made it is the information about how he made it! The two are inseparable. If you deny that the Genesis account is factual, you deny the basis for claiming that God made it!
And who are we to claim that how is less important than why? The Spirit goes into significant detail as to events and timing to inform us as to the creation. And this is not important? It is only modern Western idealism, or a maneuver of theological equivocation that could think it credible to split the how and the why. For God, both are conjoined and march together, because God is not a bureaucracy. He is a unity of being, will and action.
Sundering the content and form of the creation account re-calibrates the Bible to meet the expectations of humanism with the obvious position being that the Bible has nothing of importance to say about origins. It follows that we defer to the 'world view' settings of the (empty) claims of materialists..the people whose basic belief is in dirt!
The other derailing 'answer' is to imagine that evolution does not answer the bigger questions. Well, no; it does answer them; that, in fact, is what it is all about; the putative scientific questions are trivial by comparison.
Their purpose is to give credibility to the world view of evolution: and it does tell about design, order and purpose. It tells us that design and order are merely human constructs on the inevitabilities of material behaviour, without significance beyond this, and that purpose is not a question with any meaning at all. Thus, we have none.
Evolution's biggest 'answer' and its orientating thrust is that material is basically real, and the personal is derivative.
The Bible's teaching is quite the contrary: the personal (God in the community of the trinity), indeed, loving community is basically real, and material is a result of loving intention!
Much like the Alpha course, it contains a list of Questions about Christian Belief. Being Calvinists, they have trouble answering some questions, or at best, the answers are a tad lame; but being agnostic on creation, they duck and weave on the question of science and faith.
Quite rightly they pin down the real question: "hasn't the theory of evolution replaced creation and so disproved Christianity", but proceed to go all thumbs on the answers.
Tactically the line of answers is not too bad:
"Start by asking what they mean..." [always a good idea]
"Avoid a technical discussion..." [particularly if you are not skilled in the topic; but sometimes a 'technical' discussion is necessary to undo someone's rhetorical reliance on 'evolution']
"Ask what conclusion they are drawing from evolution." [another good one]
But it goes off the rails at a couple of points:
"How God made the universe is not as important a point as that he made it."
Even the average village atheist should be able to walk through that reply. The only information we have that he made it is the information about how he made it! The two are inseparable. If you deny that the Genesis account is factual, you deny the basis for claiming that God made it!
And who are we to claim that how is less important than why? The Spirit goes into significant detail as to events and timing to inform us as to the creation. And this is not important? It is only modern Western idealism, or a maneuver of theological equivocation that could think it credible to split the how and the why. For God, both are conjoined and march together, because God is not a bureaucracy. He is a unity of being, will and action.
Sundering the content and form of the creation account re-calibrates the Bible to meet the expectations of humanism with the obvious position being that the Bible has nothing of importance to say about origins. It follows that we defer to the 'world view' settings of the (empty) claims of materialists..the people whose basic belief is in dirt!
The other derailing 'answer' is to imagine that evolution does not answer the bigger questions. Well, no; it does answer them; that, in fact, is what it is all about; the putative scientific questions are trivial by comparison.
Their purpose is to give credibility to the world view of evolution: and it does tell about design, order and purpose. It tells us that design and order are merely human constructs on the inevitabilities of material behaviour, without significance beyond this, and that purpose is not a question with any meaning at all. Thus, we have none.
Evolution's biggest 'answer' and its orientating thrust is that material is basically real, and the personal is derivative.
The Bible's teaching is quite the contrary: the personal (God in the community of the trinity), indeed, loving community is basically real, and material is a result of loving intention!
3 May 2014
Millstone awards 2014
The winners are...
Roman Catholic Church (various orders and diocese...most probably)
Anglican Church (various diocese)
Salvation Army
Citation
For express and wonton behaviour
that would tend to separate
or
has separated
children
from the experience of
the love of God
in his church.
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