How do I know who you are?

Quote from von Foerster's 1995 article Ethics and Second-order Cybernetics
(emphasis mine):

However, we do not need to go to Russell, Whitehead, Godel, or to other giants, to learn about in principle undecidable questions, we can easily find them all around.

 For instance, the question about the origin of the universe is one of those in principle undecidable questions: nobody was there to watch it. Moreover, this becomes apparent by the many different answers that are given to this question. Some say it was a single act of creation some 4 or 5,000 years ago; others say there was never a beginning and there will be never an end, because the universe is a system in perpetual dynamic equilibrium; then there are those who claim that approximately 10 or 20 billion years ago the universe came into being with a "Big Bang," whose faint remnants one is able to hear over large radio antennas; but I am inclined to trust most Chuang Tse's report, because he is the oldest and was therefore the closest to this event. He says:

Heaven does nothing; this nothing-doing is dignity;
Earth does nothing; this nothing-doing is rest;
From the union of these two nothing-doings arise all
action
And all things are brought forth.

I could go on and on with other examples, because I have not told you yet what the Burmese, the Australians, the Eskimos, the Bushmen, the Ibos, etc., would tell us about their origins. In other words, tell me how the universe came about, and I will tell you who you are.

Darwin blooper

A suprising place to find a Darwin quote:

On the Herding Cats project management blog.

I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious sensibilities of anyone - well Darwin wasn't connected with the reality of the times was he?

Trinity

During a discussion at a recent Alpha course session, someone gave an illustration of the Trinity using aspects of computing:

Using a typical business computer requires that three units of software work together: the application (e.g. word processor), the operating system (e.g. MacOS) and the bottom layer of code: firmware or microcode.

To use the word processor all three levels of software are involved: they all cooperate intimately; none works without the other; all three are completely unified in achieving a system outcome. All are totally 'software'; they all have 'software nature', but each has an independent identity, yet all work in harmony.

For the user, the work between the layers is invisible: they cannot tell which layer is doing what; but all work for the outcome.

Seemed pretty good to me. Software is a 'three in one' deal.

Father Brown

The Father Brown detective series has just started on ABC-TV (21 Saturday evenings), based on the character by G. K. Chesterton.
In the first episode a character, evidently an entomologist, says words to the effect: "...evolution makes God superfluous..." To which Brown replies with some twaddle about the unfolding understanding of God's work, or something similar.
The character has it right, of course, and, of course, evolution is but a pack of pooh tickets, but the great irony is that Chesterton would be unlikely to have given such words to Brown, as Chesterton himself was decidedly averse to the idea of evolution!

Collider

In an interview on the Megastructures episode on the CERN Large Hadron Collider, Dr Dave Barney, the CMS Outreach coordinator, said:

...what we are doing is just...trying to find out what we are made of, where we come from and what the universe is like...

Or, to decode:

1. "what we are made of": science
2. "where we come from": not in the domain of science: so, religion (probably the religion of materialism in this case)
3. "what the universe is like": both science and religion. To enquire about the universe requires axioms of departure for the enquiry. These are not established by science, but by a basic ontology and the epistemology that derives from it; thus religion, broadly defined.

Theologians who bend in the wind of evolutionary speculation misunderstand point 2 and act as though they hadn't thought of point 3 and the significance of Genesis 1 as the basis of our 'first philosophy'. But that is Gen 1 as grounded event sequence; not as ungrounded idealism.

It doesn't matter...

God created; we know that. It just doesn't matter when (or how, or over how long...).
This is a common enough view amongst Anglican clergy persons. I was going to write 'position' but I don't think that the notion is well enough thought out to be elevated to a 'position'.

No, its just a view, fairly ill-formed, if not completely uninformed, at that. And, I don't mean with respect to current debates, but I mean with respect to the 'biblical data' as theologians like to say, as if the Bible is a mere theological data mine to sustain their occupations (humph!).

The trouble with this view is that it does matter when and how and over how long that God created, because all these are elements of how God's creation is communicated and defined in the Bible, and are therefore part of what God's creation means: they establish its ontology and its historical placement with respect to us. They delimit creation in the Bible, showing its attachment to the world we are in. Indeed, the world that is created, and we as a part of it.

And the time references themselves are significant. Time's constraints are universal and order our experience, giving a trans-cultural and meta-historical system of coordination of our knowledge of events and relationships, everything has a time denotation that is part of the things characterisation in respect of all other things. It makes the disparate inseparable!

However, theology that it rooted in philosophical idealism, rather than the 'concrete-realism' of the Bible will engineer the pretense of separability between what the Bible 'says' and what we take it to mean as soon as a desire emerges to blend the Bible with paganism.

The common or garden variety of modern Anglican clergy person does this all the time, and here most particularly, betraying a view of Christian faith that has nothing to do with God's created world,  or thus the world we inhabit and find the coordinates of our meaning in, but resigns the real world over to materialism and the fantasies of evolution, just to appease the intellectual power-brokers of today.

It's a pity, really, because the Biblical tradition scorns the intellectual power-brokers of any day, and maintains a prophetic witness against them!

Evolution: don't take it literally

In my previous blog post, quoting Darwin we have Darwin giving the game away: similar language is used today about evolution: I don't take it literally, of course, but literarily; because its not science, but a 'just suppose' fantasy.

Just time: enough of it and...can anything happen?

In his interesting paper “How not to reconcile evolution and creation” (2006) Alex Pruss helpfully (that is, I don’t have to look it up) provides a quote from Darwin on the eye’s (supposed) evolution. Its a completely farcical story, but will serve to allow me to make a point.
The quote:

We must suppose each new state of the instrument to be multiplied by the million; each to be preserved until a better one is produced, and then the old ones to be all destroyed. In living bodies, variation will cause the slight alterations, generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go on for millions of years; and during each year on millions of individuals of many kinds; and may we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those of man?

Richard Dawkin’s gross morphology stories don’t get much better than his level of fantasy (note the language: 'suppose', 'may we not believe', 'might'), I might add, but more to my point is Darwin’s reliance on vast time periods, as well as the number of creatures involved, to do this transformative magic, sans an actual mechanism.
Simply put; if the process is mindless, time is the necessary ingredient. Time is a marker then, of no designer. Pruss’ paper elaborates on this in terms of stochastic explanations.
So the lack of this time in the Bible’s creation account, conversely, is indicative of a designer. Darwin et al have to remove the designer, and the means they use, to hide their overall implausibility, is extended time, in the vain hope that time will allow stochastic processes to achieve what otherwise would need a designer.

Evolution vs? Christianity

Nicely put piece on Evolution vs Christianity, by an atheist or agnostic! Better put than I've heard most Sydney Anglicans able to say!

Mississippi

Mark Twain:

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi  River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower  Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

And so with the puffery of evolution!

How dead is dead?

Every so often some theistic-evolutionist bright spark will attempt to contradict the Bible and tell us  no death before A&E's sin doesn't refer to animal death. This great big exegetical secret lets them off the hook and thus the supposed evidence of ancient death (pre-dating A&E) in the fossil record is not a problem for theistic-evolution. and let us in on the great big exegetical secret that this does not include animal death!

For most Anglicans that I've discussed this with, their thinking seems to be dominated by an excessively, and I think, misplaced forensic understanding of death.

They seem to hold who God is and what happens in his creation as being in two different thought worlds. If they are theistic evolutionists, this makes sense, because their theism is usually a conceptual bolt-on to their core world concept of naturalistic evolution.

Unwittingly, thought, they betray their misunderstanding of death, and fail to see it as a breach in both the fabric of the creation, and in God's relationship with his creation as a totality.

The creation per se is the representation of God's nature extended beyond himself. This has to be consistent with who God is (and that is love, if we are to follow the scriptures); God is also thoroughly alive and in relationship within the god-head.

For God, with such a nature to have the very opposite of relationship, life and love anywhere in the creation, would be to undo the representation of himself. He would demonstrate flaws a mile wide in a creation where basic anti-godness (death) was both the 'last enemy' and 'very good'.

It is simply incoherent to maintain death as some sort of inconvenience in the creation, affecting only animals, as though creation has multiple 'departments'. Some have death, others do not. But death in one department is death in all of the creation

And death is the negation, antithesis and reversal of God: it is maximally 'not-god'. It denies him, undoes creation and terminates relationship: love ceases to operate.

In Time

I drove a truck loaded with musical instruments and related hardware from our school's band camp back to the school today.

Our job in unloading the truck was simplified as we were told that the band leader would organise for everything to be put away properly the next day, by band members.

I idly thought to myself: we could just leave everything in the band room and let chance random events sort everything into its proper place.

Ah, but no! If we left it to random events, that is to the 'principle of evolution' it would be likely that we'd have to wait for an enormous amount of time to elapse before the instruments and equipment was in the correct place. Not helpful.

We would also have to rely on energy being converted to meaningful work; and the meaning would have to come from somewhere to achieve the organisation required; where, I wondered? Thus, not just energy: unstructured randomly directed energy is better known as an explosion; also not helpful; we would need structured energy, delivered to achieve an intention. From where?

What we'd have to rely upon is the directed, intelligent activity of people committed to the band's best interests (that is, intelligence motivated, at some level, by love) to achieve in a day what the universe, left to itself would not be able to achieve in a convenient, or even a practical time, or maybe any time at all.

This relates to a theme that I've heard discussed that one of the marks of the application of loving intelligence to the creation is that it proceeds rapidly: to wit, in 6 days. To extend the time to the meaningless durations stipulated in evolutionary writings merges purposeful intelligence with unpurposed randomness: hard to understand, then, how the event sequence of this type of creation bears the mark of a creator: of a loving intelligence.

What counts as a mark of intelligence is the time density of events along an outcome vector: events that in sequence lead to a specific time-space outcome, represented probably as a material change in the configuration of an element in an environment that achieves something meaningful (of course, all this needs greater definitional clarity); but that's the nub of it: the time density an event set along an outcome vector marks one event set as resulting from intelligence, and another set; with a very sparse density, as random; one tells of an author, the other of no author.

Survival

Anaximander makes a clever guess as to the origin of man. "...he further says that in the beginning man was born from animals of another species, for while other animals quickly find nourishment for themselves, man alone needs a lengthy period of suckling, so that had he been originally as he is now, he could never have survived." He does not explain--a perennial difficulty for evolutionists--how man survived in the transition stage.

Coppleston's History of Philosophy, v. 1, p. 25
(the Contiuum edition, 2003; first published 1946)

Dasein

From an essay by Roy Hornsby on Heidegger's thought:

By using the expression Dasein, Heidegger called attention to the fact that a human being cannot be taken into account except as being an existent in the middle of a world amongst other things (Warnock, 1970), that Dasein is 'to be there' and 'there' is the world. To be human is to be fixed, embedded and immersed in the physical, literal, tangible day to day world (Steiner, 1978).

I believe that H was on to something of profound importance in this concept: the significance of the concrete real world as the frame of our being (the world where you bump your nose if you attempt to walk through a wall and not a doorway). The creation account links that frame to God, the creator, in the account which must therefore also be denominated in the 'physical, literal, tangible day to day world' in its references, categories and relations. Once the creation account is un-linked from the world we are in, it is reduced to mere story (myth, fiction, or fantasy, it all amounts to the same thing); it breaks the link between God, his creation and us; and re-defines us as discontinuous with the creative will of God: no longer are we 'in God's image' linked by the chain of creative outcomes, but are linked to nothing and the materialist are right, in the grimness of the dust to which materialism reduces us all.

Evolutionists are right!

People like Dick Dawkins are right? How can I say such a thing?

Well, it's 'right' in a limited kind of way.

They are asking the right question.

Our origin is the fundamental question. Its answer tells who we are, what the world is like, and illuminates our quest for significance. So, it's a religious question!

In the case of evolution, mind you, the lamp is not working and no illumination occurs, because evolution is a knowledge-free industry!

The strangest thing happens when people attempt to answer the question of origins in two ways at once.

This is the ploy of theistic evolution, which attempts to add materialism's evolutionary dogma to the notion that God created.

But we end up with a funny sort of 'creating' that undoes the very meaning of the word: creation by non-creation (that is by random working of mindless material processes).

So what would this answer tell us about who we are, what our world is like, and how would it illuminate our quest for significance? Or would it even explain why we act as though we are significant, because at every turn whatever reference to God adds, acceptance of evolution takes away.

Impressive timing

From Peter Morris' book "The Management of Projects" (p. 4)

Projects have always enjoyed a symbolic, often even religious connotation. Some consider the Creation as the first great project - the timing was certainly impressive...

Morris is right; the timing was impressive; but if the timing was not in fact impressive; as is held by many who bolt their belief in evolution to their reading of the Bible, then it is hard to see how the creation bears the mark of an author, and it merges with the product of non-authorship. Consistent, of course, with the denial inherent in evolutionary thinking that there was and is no author.

One of the marks of authorship: of the application of persons to effects, is efficiency of means: remove this, and you remove the signature. The author soon follows.

ANE Science?

In his article "The Emergence of Creatures and Their Succession in a Developing Universe", Wolfhart Pannenberg (Ashbury Theological Journal 50/1, 1995) writes, referring to references claimed to be made to "Babylonian and other mythological descriptions of the origin of the world...":

Regarding both types of materials one is entitled to judge that the priestly document made comprehensive use of the science of its day in critically selecting and interpreting its results by relating them to the creative activity of God.

I could not imagine a more profound misrepresentation and am surprised that Pannenberg made it. The use of phrases such as "the science of its day" and "interpreting its results" is an anachronistic move designed, it would seem, to put the mythological fictionalising of pagan seers on an equal footing with the work of the CSIRO.

Nothing could be further from the truth. ANE pagans didn't have a science, let alone one that had results! Indeed, if you think that they did, you may as well talk about the 'results' of astrology. Go read Enuma Elish and see if you can see any traces there of a conceptualisation of the universe that would allow observations to be made as though (a) humans could draw meaningful conclusions about the characteristics of the universe and that (b) the universe was able to be subjected to rational enquiry. There is nothing in any ANE text outside of the Bible that suggests that the thought world of that day gives the universe a dependent and well structured relationship with its rational, orderly and loving creator. (You might have thought I would say that the universe was 'natural', but  not so; it is created. See my previous post on Methodological Naturalism).

Rather, quite the opposite. The ANE world didn't do science at all, and couldn't have as the modern scientific project is only a few centuries old and is rooted in Christian biblical theism. The concepts that we use today are as foreign as could be to the ancients.

The Genesian account doesn't critically select and interpret anything (to suggest it does renders it to be no more than an empty and ultimately meaningless polemic: an advertising gimick, no less!); no, it overturns competing accounts and makes of the relationship between the world its creator and humanity something entirely different from paganism's mish-mash of speculation, improbability and nonsense (this is what Pannenberg illogically, and ignorantly misnames 'science') and unique it its and any other day.

Apart from everything else it does, it lays the foundation for modern science, compared to the dead ends that paganism repeatedly runs into and creates the environment in which we relate to God as person to person, in trust and love.

Methodological Naturalism

Over a quite lunch today at Diethnes restaurant in Sydney (always a haunt when I'm in that city) I was reading an old review by Willem Drees in Zygon  (the journal, not the Dr Who characters) of Philip Clayton's "God and Contemporary Science". Although only a review, anything by Drees is worth reading, and this article was no exception. Plenty to think over, despite my being at odds with him over many of his views (that's like a gnat being at odds with an elephant over real estate, I know) but one thing caught my attention.

He mentioned the reliance of science on 'methodological naturalism'. This wasn't the main thrust of the review, and its a common enough claim in both philosophy and theology of science, but I wonder if it really holds the water claimed for it.

It sets out to eliminate reference to non-natural, or non-physical/material entities in explanations of relations in the material world. At one level this is unremarkable, as the project of science (knowledge of the material world) is that very thing. The phrase adds nothing particular to the understanding of the mission: the mission of science is to understand the  material world and to do this it seeks to understand the material world in terms of the material world. Gets us nowhere special!

However, it is more frequently extended to imply a certain ontological twinning, that is, that methodological naturalism works because naturalism is the only game in town. This view also tends to misconstrue general Christian understanding of the relation of God and his creation and the specific views of biblical creationists.

In setting its charter, MN has to refer to other than the naturalism that it seeks to rely upon; for instance, it holds that minds can have real knowledge about entities outside those minds, and that there are other minds that are interested in that knowledge; it also has to make reference to a framework of what knowledge is and how reliably it can be garnered by minds and through the senses. The reliability of its mission is not entailed in MN, but stands above it.

Moreover, MN is set within a frame of reference which is not, I think, naturalistic, but Christian-theistic; and inescapably so. That is because modern naturalism, and its pal practical atheism, is, in fact, a Christian heresy in my view. It, too, has its roots in the Christian world concept; despite protestations to the contrary and its evoking of the idea of an independent reality in the very term 'natural', when it really operates as 'methodological creationism'. By this I mean, its approach to the creation (the universe) as a place that operates with regularity, and in its own terms, at least at the level of our investigation, is an approach that derives, not from an atheistic/naturalist frame of reference, but from a Christian-theist one. This is not mere opinion, but a factuality of the history of modern science.

A pure naturalist position would have to contend with un-grounded randomness where anything can happen; but this would cripple scientific enquiry and put us back in the pagan nonsense of arbitrary gods doing all sorts of things for no sort of reason. Nor do we actually do science this way; we look for systematic relations and put aside any notion of the arbitrary as well as relying on all sorts of elements of methodological creationsim. This is not to say that non-material entities can be relied upon in materialist relations, but that our equipment for understanding, and the very systematic nature of the relations reaches to something beyond the material; otherwise we would have no hope of any worthwhile explanation of the material world if the only categories we had were within the material world.

Alvin Plantinga touches on this in his essays on Methodological Naturalism, although he goes in a different direction to mine.

God could have....

Occasionally I run into someone, or hear of someone (usually someone else, as it happens) who claims that God 'could have used evolution', or 'could have used long periods of time to do his creating'. They usually advertise these claims with the smug triumphalism that such speculation proves some point. I don't know what that point could be, of course, because there is no point at all made by idle speculation.

One may as well claim that God could stand on his head!

Lita Costner in a recent article in Creation magazine starts with quoting this sort of vain claim; to rebut it, of course; but I think that her rebuttal could go further.

The theological point that she makes is appropriate, with the implications for the very goodness of the creation being imperiled by the contradictory (you could say incoherent) presence of the last enemy in its basic makeup, but there are other considerations that bear on the question, in my view.

God's revelation is not only a representation of what he has done, but, because God is a unified being (but not a unity, being in three persons), that is, there is no separation of who he is, what he wills or thinks and what he does, as there is with us, his revelation is also a representation of him, when it addresses his acts or relationships.

So, to claim that God could act slowly through error-prone chance processes to produce something that is purpose rich on many levels seems absurd at best; but given that the revelation is all the other way: the creation occurred quickly in direct response to his will, and this as part of God's claim on our worship, representation of him who is love, it is more than absurd. One could say it refers to another god, if it makes any god-reference at all.

Could God have created over billions of years? Which 'god' in which 'world' would that be that you are referring to, now? Our God, who represents himself as his revelation sets out? I think not. He explains his relationship to his creation in completely different terms, predicated on fellowship, not distance.

The damage this does goes beyond events in the world, to the way the world is structured. There is an at least implicit ontology in the creation account; it tells us a lot about reality, how it is structured, and the concreteness with which it 'operates'. To set this aside evaporates the Bible's ontology that comes out of the structures in the creation account, and must invoke an alternative; but this time, not implicitly. The alternative has to be developed explicitly as it denies there is one from the will of God, as it denies that the creation account has concrete content that makes sense in the categories of this world: the world it relates to by referring to its categories, and therefore has no ontological content. Yet any alternative ends up conjuring up a different god and falls into idolatry by proposing a different kind of reality, from an ontology that is structured on other than the God who is, and who speaks.

Moral Tinkering

Christians seem to want to do this all the time.

I was reminded of it, listening to a sermon by Rob Jones, one time rector of St James Turramurra (I don't endorse the current silly sermon series title 'man up for God', by the way; puerile!). In mentioning Puritans, he observed that they generally failed in their objectives for a couple of reasons. One was that they sought to legislate what they saw as godliness.

Christians still do it today. I call it moral tinkering.

The 'debate' on 'gay' marriage (really homosexual marriage) is an example. The talk by churchmen of 'ethics' classes in lieu of scripture in public schools is another.

Now, I don't really care what the world does with its idea of marriage and nor should public Christians. For Christians its a distraction. No matter who is married to whom, for what reason or by whom, if the are not followers of Christ, they are not in his family. Our mission is to proclaim the gospel, not to encourage cute, but etermally useless moral conformity. If the ship is sinking, I don't care where the deck chairs are and neither should any other Christian.

The debate on 'ethics' was similar. No Christian churchman made the point that no end of ethics classes would not deal with people's inability to do as even they would want to!

So what happens when ethics fails?

Christians would point to forgiveness and salvation in Christ. All the world can do is shrug its shoulders, and maybe throw you in gaol.

Its a bit different when it comes to the death penalty, free access to firearms and abortion. These kill people and remove their opportunity for life and future encounter with Christ. All should be stopped. That's not moral tinkering, that's part of proclaiming the gospel and acting mercifully to seek opportunities for people to join the family of God.

Poverty of position

Quote from David Brickner in this month's Jews for Jesus Australian newsletter:

...in the open market place of ideas, surely it is the poverty of one's own position that leads to the desire to stifle the debate"

That goes particularly for the dirt squad (materialists), who want to promote the fiction of evolution by suppressing contrary views.

The anti-leader

I came across this piece on a church website on leadership. Now, you may know how I hate the use of this non-biblical concept, making of a type of action a static role.

But I wonder if the notion of 'leader' has any applicability in the church. After all, the church has servants, not leaders; we are all lead by Christ. The implication of 'leader' is that they know where we are going!

'Leadership' is about the one; service is about the others. Henry Mintzberg touches on this in a FT article on the subject.

So, I sent this to the church in question:

The conceptualisation of leadership in church life that I read in your blog seem to me to be at odds with the way the church is portrayed in the NT. In fact, it looks like a complete inversion of the notion of the church as a body of believers whose head (source) is Christ. As soon as you talk 'leaders' you talk the individual, inevitably, at the expense of the church as a body.

To think that a church needs a 'leader' installs a concept that is foreign to the NT theology of church. It uses a concept that is at best a modern misunderstanding of how a charismatic group 'works' (or that denies that it is charismatic, in the biblical, not the modern sense), and at worst uncritically apes the world in the installation of a paganistic hierarchy where there should be none.

In the NT, the church is a community, indeed, a family, where gifts are distributed for the mutual growth and edification of people working and living together in love. A leader at once demolishes this notion and makes of the church an organisation with someone, or a small group, who commands it, takes responsibility (in an organisational sense) and is not primarily a servant undertaking a role in a particular context.

Nowhere in the NT do I see an 'archon' mentioned in the church, which is the ancient world's equivalent of the 'leader' that comes to us from the secular world. The world of 'one is more important than the many', a world where political structure, whether in business, politics, or other social groupings is the default ordering mechanism, and social influence or the imperatives of the one are prime. This displaces the considerations of love, service and the promotion of others for a world where the leader is the front (usually) man, the one with the prestige, the one who calls the shots and sets the pace, if not the total mission.

I can't think of anything further from the church, or more likely to make the church a passive shell of what it should truly be: a mutually supportive and responsive body of serving believers.

Leaders are anti-humility, where as the notion of servant is pro-humility.

I think of the program of the church in the 1980s, when 'ministry' was often the theme in church 'development'. Ministry is where we seek how we are to serve, how we are to put the other ahead of ourselves, and how we are to express our love. Those we today would call leaders now appear to be the locus of ministry, and a magnet for prestige and adulation, at least by the secular media and institutions.

But we do not have leaders, we have people who serve in various ways and at various times, in various contexts. Some as teachers, some as pastors, some as administrators, etc. No 'leader' here, except that the whole church does the deciding, and the acting. It is the church that has presence in the kingdom of God, not 'leaders'.

Its well time that this was straightened out and we forgot about borrowing our structuring terminology from the hubristic world of business and affairs, and rather judged that world with a way of being community that showed up its puffery. Even the piece on 'anti-leadership' misses the point, I think, of the biblical passage cited, and makes of a structure, what was an organic and participative set of relationships...and, anyway, Peter was an apostle. We don't have them today in they way they were then.

Now, instead of 'leader' I'd like to see churches, and Christian organisations (ministries?) use Christian titles for their contributors: organiser would be good for people who organise things, convenor for those who bring people together for a task or activity, overseer has a biblical warrant; I think moderator also has a functional ring to it (apologies to the Presbyterians), facilitator is possibly OK, and administrator is directly biblical. Anything but the turgid puff of worldly organisations were titles are used to garner prestige!

Beyond the Pahl 5

Pahl:

Finally, if I’m right about these first four points, then whatever my personal perspectives are on exactly when or precisely how God created all things is a moot point. I'm not a scientist, so my thoughts on these matters carry no weight. And, with respect to my salvation, my orthodoxy, and my biblical fidelity, any thoughts I have on these matters are irrelevant.

Thoughts:

No if you are right about the first four points, then that God created at all, or if there is a personal God in relation with us is the moot point, if the details are rejected, then the world picture the details paint must also be rejected.

But, he's not a scientist, so his thoughts carry no weight? He's a theologian, and questions of origins are religious questions. He is eminently qualified to comment, because what we understand about origins is basic to how we grapple with the world and how we build our world picture. Our view of origins is our view of both ourselves and God (or what is independently basic). Resign this religious ground, and you leap towards deferring to an alternative conception of the world and not the one God provides.

Thus finally we come full circle to the ontology that Pahl must entertain: it must be a materialist ontology, where all that doesn't fit in a purely material conception is grafted on 'idealistically', or if I would be blunt: 'paganistically' where access to the real is not direct, but by conjuring because in the  materialist world we are either cut off from it, or 'it' is fictional, but hints of a deeper 'occult' reality to which our only access is illegitimate. Either way, not Christian.

Why don't they get it?

In the current Creation Ministries International Prayer News (Jan-Mar 13), the lead article bears the title used by this post and asks why do evolutionists refuse to be persuaded by the evidence (and arguments, presumably) put to them in support of the biblical flood and creation accounts.

Two answers are suggested in the article:

1. most evolutionists have not heard a [substantial] presentation of the case for creation, etc. and
2. they assume that all the evidence...supports evolution.

I think this misses the point.

Sure, if a disinterested person was given good reason to change their mind, one assumes that they would. But most evolutionists are not disinterested. They have a commitment, indeed, a religious commitment, to evolution's dogma.

Even should the evidence be overwhelming, many would retain their commitment because it is the basis for their world-concept and structures the foundational parameters of their life and understanding. To be persuaded they would have to, necessarily, change their intellectual, and spiritual allegiance from material which cuts them loose morally, epistemologically and ontologically to a person who seeks relationship and fellowship (with the converse if he, God, the creator, is rejected).

I think most evolutionists would understand this. Oddly, most Christians, being those who attempt the futile and non-credible amalgam of evolution and creation known as theistic evolution, don't see it. Odd, because one would think that Christians above all would understand that basic beliefs set the direction and preferences of the superstructure of understanding they support.

Lennox

A recent review of a book on the 7 days of creation (I thought it was 6, but there you go) by John Lennox addressed his disdain for the reliability of the information we have in Genesis.

Lennox is a very active debater, and a very engaging speaker as well. He is one of the current darlings of the Sydney Anglican TE crowd, likely because he endorses their uncritical acceptance of evolution as though it was a technical matter, equivalent to bicycle repair!

Lennox and those like him, however, as one of the comments on the review article pointed out, denies that God's self-disclosure about his creating has any content. I wonder what he thinks it's for then? Then in an absurd irony, he accepts that God created, but not any of the information that God gives us to show that he created!

So, how does Lennox know that God created, if the information in Genesis is incorrect?

Then, on the other hand, how does Lennox know (KNOW) that Genesis 1 is conterfactual? As another commenter pointed out, evolutionary rhetoric itself relies on a set of beliefs, not on anything to do with knowledge; a set of beliefs whose only job is to overturn the idea of creation and install a world picture that makes material primary.

Beyond the Pahl 4

Pahl:

Fourth, these modern questions about exactly when or precisely how all things came about, while potentially having tremendous theological significance, are best left to science. One should consult astronomers, physicists, geologists, paleontologists, biologists, and geneticists for these questions, not biblical scholars and theologians, let alone people who are neither trained theologians nor trained scientists.

Thoughts:

Interesting that something with potentially tremendous theological significance is best left to a pursuit which has no theological interest! But these are not simply modern questions. The church has held for about 1850 years that the world was formed about 6000 years ago. I suppose he must include Ussher in the 17th century as modern, and while in historical terms he is, I suspect that ‘modern’ in this passage means contemporaneously. So the question has been in the minds of theologians since theologians have been writing.

Nor is it that these are questions of potential theological significance; rather, they are questions pregnant with theological, and I might add, philosophical significance that go to the very foundation of Christian faith and the formation of the Christian world picture. The answers to the question will either respond in faith to Genesis 1, as the writer to the Hebrews exemplifies (11:4), and thus think within a theological structure that has God acting, relating and speaking with effect into this world circumscribed by common causality, physicality and where the Word of God delineates actual and not imaginary formations and relationship; or will reject the Hebrews writer’s faith response and defer to a world picture that refers to material as self-made, rejects that the personal is fundamental to reality and whose basic ontology is conjured up out of imaginings (thus the idealism that echoes throughout paganism, and marks its tracks) which connect only faintly with the real world of relationships and events.

Pahl's deference to science is completely misplaced and itself imports a prior concept of the world into biblical analysis. The concept is akin to the hollow and finally self-refuting nostrums of logical-positivism!


It is in pagan religions that questions of the material world are of secondary moment, because they are not engaged with the world that is, but an imaginary world of the mind; the world that is rejected with paganism’s rejection of the God who is. It is Christianity that stands in the world as present, and engages the world that is, that we all share as the setting of our existence, knowing and being. A great example of this is that the flowering of modern science is fixed firmly in the understanding that the Genesis account relates what happened; modern science started in no other thought world!

The question of origins is the question of who we are, what our connections or relationships are with other parts of the world, and sets the field of our thinking. It is the most profoundly important question that there is.

Thus the question doesn't 'potentially [have] tremendous theological significance' and is best left to science! The question of origins is a basic religious question, not a question for science at all. Pahl does his trade an injustice in slipping over this demarcation point and then fails to be able to make any real address to the world which conceptualises itself primarily in materialist terms, and uses these terms to bring all other considerations to heel.

Christianity doesn't adopt materiality as basic, of course, but has it as the result of God's willful love, and a real place where our lives are lived (including our life with God). But it and its processes being contingent, are not basic; in opposition to materialist conceptions.

And so, Pahl ends his excursion into resignation by suggesting we consult physical scientists about origins. Of course, in so doing we get modern, largely materialist speculation, and the 'meaning' that flows from this. We do not get any reflection of a world made by the will of God, but a world whose 'origin' denies that there is a God, or that his will (should there be one) has any bearing on life in this universe at all.

Mr Looking-both-ways

People who espouse 'theistic-evolution hold two incompatible ideas simultaneously:

1. the universe was created, but in such a way that it is fully explicable without a base in, or even a hint of, the personal-divine, and

2. God did this creating and uses his being the creator (referring to the terms of his activity in the Genesis account) to link his identity to our world-experience, making a god who represents himself by something that has no obvious connection with him!

This peculiar idea quickly falls back to an understanding of the world that is hard to distinguish, in the final analysis, from the idea of a world not created at all.

Beyond the Pahl 3

Pahl:

Third, the point of the biblical creation stories in Genesis 1-2 is not to answer modern questions about exactly when or precisely how all things came about. It is to answer, through an ancient genre for an ancient people, some common human questions, questions about who God is as Creator, what the cosmos is as God's creation, who we are as God's creation, how God as Creator relates to his creation, how we are to relate to our Creator and the rest of his creation, and the like. All subsequent biblical theology—as my first point illustrates—continues in this same trajectory.

Thoughts:

Interesting that he sees Genesis as having the same function as I see, but for completely different reasons!
He thinks it has this function despite having no relation to the real world that we live and move in; whereas I think that it can only have this function by virtue of being entirely about things that happened in and connected with the real world. Indeed with their connection to the real world made clear both in language and the references to shared 'real world' markers (my phrase 'common causality' captures this, but I use it to refer to the spatio-temporal continuity between the effect of God's word for, to and in this world, and its results).
It it that these things happened that they provide the platform for the other things. If they didn’t happen, and I repeat, something else instead did; then God is not shown as an actor in the world, but a figment unrelated to the world. If every point of relational connection is denied, which Pahl does, the whole theory of being that we use, or 'basic ontology' has to be derived from elsewhere. And this is the nub of the problem that I don't think is ever really dealt with in putting Genesis 1, etc. out of ‘this world’ and into some other, emblematic world where none of us really live.

Notable moment

In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.

Thomas Carlisle

Beyond the Pahl 2

Pahl:

Second, beliefs about exactly when and precisely how God created all things are neither central nor essential to an authentic Christian faith or a historically orthodox Christianity. Thus, it is not necessary for the sake of one's faith to hold to any beliefs about these matters with strong conviction; in fact, it may even be unwise to do so.

Thoughts:


Its interesting that people make this assertion just before they deny that Genesis 1, etc means anything in the real world. I always wonder about their information on this count and the rationale behind their claim. And it is always worth remembering that it is a mere claim. One made, I might add, that flies in the face of the biblical data, and is usually unsubstantiated (as per Pahl himself, of course).

But Pahl clouds the issue, just like Satan did in the garden, I might add, by inserting some concepts that aren't in the text, or in the Bible generally, then contradicting these concepts. An obvious 'straw man' manoeuvre.

Of course beliefs about EXACTLY when and PRECISELY how God created all things are neither central nor essential...etc. [And nor did God say ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden']

No one says that they are; but what the Bible is quite clear about is GENERALLY when God created, and, in BASIC terms the method he used.

Well, its a bit more than 'basic' terms when it comes to method, as the method is quite clear. He spoke things into existence; or brought them into being by divine fiat: by willing them so.

What is contended for is that generally the biblical time scale is orders of magnitude smaller than the naturalist time scale. ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE! We are not talking about a small thing here. It's also worth noting that the biblical time scale has always been orders of magnitude less than the naturalist or pagan time scale; humanity seems to have a built in desire to push the genetic connection between God and itself as far away as it can.

While reading Bulfinch's Mythology I came across this, in Palmer Bovie's foward: "If our readers ask when all this took place, we must answer, in the first place, that mythology is not careful of dates...". Thus the placing of the creation in time is very important to its historicity. If it happened in time, it needs to be set in that time; which of course, places the events of creation in our history, and removes them from an idealist or fantasy (pagan) construction that has no real relationship with 'us and now'. This is also an important part of the specificity of the recount of events in the creation passage.

It is also contended that how God created differs radically from the naturalist/materialist formulation. It's not just a little different, different as to precise values; it is vastly different. Pahl might have gained some credibility if he'd recognised these matters rather than attempted to subvert them in yet another language game.

With the 'precise' means of God's creation in question, Pahl seems to think that the Biblical data has no real bearing on anything, and we can make of it what we like. But not so. Materialist/naturalist formulations are a world apart from the Bible's formulation and therefore mean entirely different things. Thus it is important that the creation account conveys real information, because it is about something that really happened. It would be odd (and irrelevant) if it were otherwise.

The basic issues I canvassed briefly in a previous blog, but to go further (and I stoop to using 'bullets'):

• creation is the representation of God as he is: that he acted (in the terms used; there being no other reference in the biblical world-concept) is his credential for god-ness, how he acted is the representation of his nature
• creation underpins the conceptualisation of the world and the world thus represents God's action in creating, and does not obscure it, or if the world doesn't connect with God's statements about creation, then the representation is a vain one, and empties God of any claim on us.
• the naturalist 'method' is alien to God, it is impersonal and loveless; the creation account shows that is not so and, rather, has its source and unfolding in the personal and is embedded in love; it results from the action of one who cares, and cares above all for relationship; not one who sets up a machine, then lets it run.

The contrast could not be more stark; the natural method denies that mind is essential to the creation of complex order, of information, and that love is unnecessary for the creation of community and interdependence.

It overturns the counter-conceptualisation of the world as naturally explicable, and in relation to no mind or will that is over above it; rather all mind and will is contained within it: hardly god-like!

Another quote from Palmer Bovie's forward to Bulfinch: "...just as Darwin was reviving man's physical life history..." One thing the creation account does, and that the Bible hinges on, is that man's physical life history, is one with man's 'any other' life history. Action is bound up with both thought and meaning in the Biblical conception of the world. The creation account tells us that there is one unified world from the will of God; Pahl would separate our world into different and disconnected compartments; multiple worlds at work, with the world's physical history unlinked from the 'religious' history in a move that would do a pagan proud and destroys meaning.

Thus it IS important how and when things were created by God. This information establishes a number of important things about us, the world and who we are before God and in the world; about the world as setting for our relationship with God and for his redemption of us, and about the basic ontology of the world; which Pahl sets aside to make the way for an ontology that contemplates a different world, and entails a 'god' different from the one who reveals himself.

Pictures and words

Some commentators seem to regard Genesis 1 not as an account of creation, but as a picture of it. They either say this explicitly, or imply it. For instance, the 'framework' hypothesis is said by some to provide a sort of 'picture' of creation.

If the creation account is a picture, then something else is the real thing and tells us really about origins and the world. It is this that 'really happened' that defines us and the world we are in, and not the biblical account.

On this basis, the picture isn't worth even a single word; it doesn't tell us anything worthwhile! But the good news is, you don't have to buy this picture.

Perils of Theistic Evolution

I saw this nice comment on the Creation website's article Perils of Theistic Evolution:

Theistic evolution also puts a material-based principle between God and his creation. It makes some impersonal principle the mediator between God and man, and makes humanity the result, not of God speaking in love for fellowship, but of some abstract 'machine' making us; our 'father' cease[s] to be God, and he becomes the one who has pushed us away. Not only does this make the recourse to his being creator hollow, but it makes God's love for us pale, and causes the the basis for the gospel to leak away.

 There's a bit more to this, I think.

Not only to the TE-ers do this, but they do it with no reason from the Bible. They do it purely to accommodate the materialist program that the universe made it self, life is the result of matter, and mind is mere chemical reactions.

But they do it despite the Bible's lack of basis for their insertion because, I think, they think the Bible has no business talking about origins at all and if it does, they don't think that its important. Its not the Bible's proper domain.

Well, this is just neoplatonic waffle; creation is important in the Bible, because God represents himself to us as God on the basis of him being the creator; Christ's sacrifice and resurrection only makes sense if he is the creator: something the NT is pretty firm about; and God shows us that the personal (God's personhood) is basic to reality; it is the Christian 'first philosophy'. Above all, the creation account shows us the attachment point of this world to God: he made it and did so directly. There is no machine mediating between his love, expressed in his will, and our being.

Put another way, the starting point in making sense of life; of who we are and what is around us, of our relationships and understanding of the world, is our thinking about our origin. To say that the biblical information about origins is somehow incomplete, incorrect or irrelevant is to say that it does not provide the real basis for making sense of these things. And the 'sense' cannot be made both in a 'theological' biblical world that is factually inadequate, a mere 'picture' and in a completely different real world, where the sense we make has to, necessarily, play out. It is only the real world that counts. The line from origins then, to life now, has to be one line, and that line, to have any meaning at all, has to be a line in this world, and be staked at both ends in the same physical reality: that made by God, in love. If one sets aside the information that is in the Bible (Genesis 1, etc.); one is left in the imaginary reconstructions of evolutionary speculation, making a completely different sense of the world and ourselves.

Beyond the Pahl 1

In a post on his blog, Pahl set out his mini-manifesto of creation theology. It forms a suitable representative of the typical 'have it both ways' beliefs of most theistic evolutionists and so, I think, is worth commenting on. I'm setting out to do it over four or so parts.

Here, part 1:

Pahl

When it comes to origins, I have held to the same basic perspectives for quite a while now. I have stated, taught, preached, blogged, or published all of these points in various ways and in diverse venues for at least fifteen years.

First, God created all things—God himself and not merely some impersonal forces or natural laws. God created the heavens and the earth, and made humans in God’s image. Through Jesus Christ, the Word of God, the very image of God, all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible; without him nothing was made that has been made. Thus, there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

Thoughts

One becomes instantly suspicious, I think, when a theologian has to declare his orthodoxy in this way; it seems to me that he must do so only because his position on these matters is not clear from his other writings. Indeed, I think we will see over this short series of discussions that most of Pahl's writing on the matter of origins would question every point of the statement he makes in such assertive tones. As if to say, "of course I believe what you believe, I just don't believe that it happened!" So he has to shore up his orthodoxy by denying that words have stable meanings and can be reliably tracked to 'this world' referents, across time and cultures. One thinks, in some matters, that a little too much is made of culture, and not enough made of words. Their range of intent seems to be mystifyingly rubbery and they thus can mean whatever one wants them to mean, except of course, what they actually say!

And thus, I wonder why Pahl believes as he states? He undoes the credibility of his belief at every turn, as later posts will show. To that extent he makes of belief the sort of nonsense that one might hear from a Mormon 'elder' so called, who urges belief because, well, he 'really-really' believes himself; nothing to do with the warranted belief that runs through the Bible.

 In Hebrews we are told that “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible”. “By faith” does not mean, ‘unrealistic  hope against the facts’ but, because we weren’t there, we apprehend this information and accept its reliabiltiy and veracity by virtue of the word of God. The writer speaks to this in the preceding verse. The only information to which the writer could be pointing is the genesian account of creation; and this because it is the only information there is about our origin...anywhere. The locus of faith in the Bible is never counterfactual, but always predicated on actualities: in someone to be truthful to their word, or in things about which we are told, pinned to events that participated in this world's causality and whether events in a mind, or events in space.

Moreover, when the Bible refers to the creation, you can bet that the reference directs us to the Genesis account. The base creation account upon which all other references depending. So God is not the creator in some vague ethereal terms, or author of some general creation that cannot be pinned down, but of a 'creation' with specific biblical reference, and specific meaning in this world. The same terms that make sense in and circumscribe our existance in the space-time frame we inhabit and are constrained by are those terms that give the creation meaning and make a specific connection  to us by the common reference frame applying to both (deny this and the connection gets vague to the point of vanishing).

Later, confusingly, Pahl tells us that the only account we have of the creation doesn't represent things that happened. It just didn’t occur: something else occurred, presumably (which claim has its Monty Pythonesque aspect, I must suggest), but we are not told about it! How we know, I can't fathom (oh...science...we'll get to that in a later post).

So I have to wonder from whence he obtains his belief that God is creator if he denies the terms by which God represents himself as creator. He sets aside the only source of information which could underpin his belief as not in fact having happened in the terms of 'the real' that frames our lives and experiences; the information by virtue of which, in detail, we understand God as creator.

And it is the detail that is important here: the detail demonstrates God as creator by the actions he did with time and space effects. These tell us how the creation is constituted. Presumably, if this was not important, and not just 'important' in some vacuous rhetorical sense, but really important in the world we stub our toes in, it wouldn’t be provided. So if the detail is not about events, but about something else, firstly, how would we know, but then, how could we establish that God is creator? The only information he can give us, it is asserted or implied by Pahl, doesn’t actually relate to creation events, but, evidently, some other thing? What other thing this might be, we are not told. Perhaps, just a verbal flourish to 'out-flourish' the competitor accounts? But, if none of it happened, it is hard to see how it can even hope to sustain this rhetorical function.

And it's not just that 'something else' must have happened, but it's Pahl's language game that fascinates me. He takes it that words have meaning, and that meaning conveys content in the world that we are in. Presumably the content is related to some substance within the world, or the content, and the words that convey the content, would have no meaning that delineates anything within the common causality in which we live; they would be un-grounded in one sense, empty in every other. These words would merely ascend in a futile arc never landing in the world in which they were uttered to make meaning in that world in that world's terms.

Pahl's handling of the creation account in philosphical terms is even more dramatically deracinating of its biblical purpose. In saying that all the details in a house plan are wrong; but the right house will nonetheless somehow, but inexplicably, be communicated, he is speaking nonsense. This is far from a Christian approach to epistemology; knowledge is contained in the words that constitute language and have reference to the Real World that came from the fiat of God (nicely recursively), and not in pagan fashion, where content is maleable to preconception and any specific meaning is only to obscure an asserted and contrary 'truth'.

Thus, I would contend, contrary to the Cedarville College people, that Pahl is far from othodox in that he undoes the basic ontology of the Bible, founded in Genesis 1, and supposes that in the beginning, not 'God', but 'God and something...' Like most harmonisers, he fails to appreciate the grand scope of God's creation, and what it means to be solely and comprehensively from God. Like the ANE creation myths, he by implication presupposes a universe prior to God's creation of the universe! Not Christian at all.

John Chapman Foundation

I went to John Chapman's memorial service at St Andrew's Cathedral on 24 November. I admired John for his simple humility as a man, his easy communication of biblical teaching and his genuine interest in people. For an Anglican, he was as unstuffy and unimpressed by outward show as a Baptist. Excellent.

In the service papers there was a promotion for the John Chapman Foundation. Not a bad idea to remember the man and his ministry, and raise funds for the work of evangelism (probably just like Catholics have orders, Anglicans have foundations).

When I read the biog of John, I almost gagged. It was nothing like John himself, but full of the empty vanity of outward show and panting after worldly prestige and influence, as though these things are of any importance in the outlook of a Christian. They certainly never struck me as being of any significance in the John Chapman who I knew!

So, for the first time, I learn that he's preached in London; and presumably not London, Ontario, or London, Ohio. I wonder where in London he preached? In the middle of Baker Street? In Carter Lane? Clerks Place, near Wormwood St? All pretty pointless to say that he  preached in London. Anyone can preach in London. They do it all the time in Hyde Park!

But further, I see that he preached at Oxford University and Cambridge University. All I can say is, 'so what'. Does this make him a better preacher. Should I be impressed that he's been to some old stone buildings, where, incidently, anyone can preach, or am I supposed to infer that the VC called him up and said "John, what say you come along and preach to the Council here at Oxford." I think not. Rather these references represent mere Anglican bluster and hankering after worldy adulation, which, incidently, has zip to do with preaching the gospel, and double zip to do with anything in Australia, let alone Sydney. I note that there is no mention of mission work that John did (if he did) in Sydney University; right next to Moore College, or in Newtown, a densely populated suburb, also right next to Moore College, or work with the riff raff that inhabits the Sydney University Colleges (I think of St John's particularly), or about what he did do; and that was tirelessly work as a minister of the gospel in whatever setting he had access to, with humble and prayerful perserverance. And, that is the Christian way, not puffery about prestigious locations or institutions.

Or, maybe I'm wrong, maybe  John preached at Miami University, Oxford, in the USA...

Pahl...not orthodox?

An e-pal sent me his note to Michael Pahl, of recent post on this blog:

I've heard that you and Cedarville have parted company.

Unlike Cedarville, I *would* question your othodoxy.

Your view on Genesis 1, etc. amounts to a claim that nothing in Genesis 1 actually happened, and that our ontology, as Christians, therefore cannot be framed from the Bible (ontology being about what is, and ipso facto, what really is), but has to be grafted onto Christian faith from a pagan perspective in some sort of idealist conceit. So it seems that you want to pretend that questions of origins are 'scientific' questions, when their ontological implications are such that they are always finally theological questions, mediated in some ways philosophically.

Thus, you've resigned the field, and instead of allowing the revelation of God about his creation to set the structure of our understanding of our world, our setting in it, and the relations that reticulate through it, with reference to God himself (and this can only happen if G1 recounts things that happened, not fantasies, "fameworks" emblems, signs, or 'suggestions'), we are left to start our thinking with an ontological framework premised on there being no God, or if there is one, one who doesn't communicate and doesn't matter.

This is not in any way orthodox, but a view that makes Christian faith take its philosophical underpinning from a pagan world view, and is ultimately derivative of a materialist orthodoxy and not a challenge to it.

2 churches

I couldn't help but compare two local churches that have recently letter boxed my street.

One, an Anglican church, is about to celebrate the 100th anniversary of...wait for it...their building! No, not a church meeting on that site, or a church meeting in the area, or the local proclamation of the gospel, or a century of mission, no, none of those...but a darn building. As part of their celebration, they will be raising money, seeking to raise a lot of money, well in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And for? Missions? Aid? Helping people?

No, not on your nelly. They want to do more building work!

Then the other, not an Anglican church. It will be having its annual spring market. "Proceeds going to help refugees settling in Sydney".

I know which church I'd prefer to be part of.

Leave it to science

One of my listed blogs lead me to 'rustlings in the grass' where the basic perspectives on origins is to, finally, 'leave it to science' to connect us with our origins, and, presumably, to some sort of faith in some other-world set of events that God must be talking about in Genesis 1.

If I get around to it, I'll go into this a little more, but you can see my drift.

Just theological

Another zinger of a sermon this morning, further knocking Grudem out of play, for which I'm all cheers.

The minister unfortunatley has a view of Genesis 1, etc. (hereafter G1) that is common these days: that it is 'theological' and not anything else; and not therefore factual where it comes into conflict with contemporary cosmogony, evolutionary speculation or rampant materialism. One wonders how then one is able to figure which bits are important and which bits are mere 'dressing'?

But this is not a new position. I read of it in a work by Robert S. Candlish, D.D. (1806-1873) of Scotland who succeeded Thomas Chalmers in the chair of divinity at the New College, Edinburgh in 1841.

Quoting a work on Genesis:

To clear the way, therefore, at the outset, to get rid of many perplexities, and leave the narrative unencumbered for pious and practical uses, let its limited design be fairly understood, and let certain explanations be frankly made. In the first place, the object of this inspired cosmogony, or account of the world's origin, is not scientific but religious.

So...if its only religious, on what is the religious information carried, if it is not a factual account of events...is it carried on a mere fiction? If so, then the religions information is hardly worth our attention!

Yet, by the very notion of creation as set out in G1, it only has theological significance because it is about things that have happened. Just like the resurrection only has theological content because it had historical and physcial coordinates in history, and is in the same world of general causality as the one we live in. And so the resurrection has content for us. If it were in a different 'world' it would have nothing for us. And so 'creation' which sets the scene for all that follows.

Of men and women

This morning the sermon at church started a series looking at 'gender' as it is treated in the Bible.
We started with a reading from Genesis 1, which covered this passage:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” ²⁷ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. ²⁸ God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply,

(NASB)

Of course, the NASB makes the same mistake as the NIV, which our church uses, and renders 'adam' as 'man'; when it should be 'mankind' at least, or preferably 'humanity' in today's usage.

The sermon series will deal with the arguments for 'male headship' put in Grudem's edited book on this topic. We dealt with the first today, and found nothing in G1 that can be construed as giving one sex primacy over another, contrary to Grudem's assertion. The notion of priority evaporates in the Bible's definition of 'man' as being created 'male and female' That is, together in the image of God, not one sex or the other so. This is further explicated in that [together] they are to be fruitful and multiply. A bloke can't do that by himself!

The sermon mentioned in passing the ANE context of Genesis 1, and I detected here, I think a verring to the idea that Genesis is a cultural work, rather than an inspired one, giving us concrete information about us and God. The minister made the point that the passage treated humanity in its relation to God completely differently from the ANE mythology. For example, humanity is not there to get food for the gods, but is fed by God. But this is not mere rhetorical point scoring by the Genesian author; it is that related thusly because that concretely corresponds to the real that the account reflects. If it is not doing this, then, of course it is without meaning and ranks only with other stories, bearing no relation to what really is and thus how our relationship to God is founded.

It ended rebutting the silly modern idea that men and women are different but equal, or are equal but have different roles. In the final analysis both versions of the rule-making error end up with a fake distinction between inequality and 'functional difference'. Its a thin language game that convinces no one outside the camp of the bluffers.

More on this, see Christians for Biblical Equality.

Let's be Buddhists

I can't see any real difference in their appraoch to 'religion' and the world between that of Theistic Evolutionists and, say, Buddhists; or Hindus, or animists, or Aboriginal dream-time story tellers.

All of them separate religion from the real world and make claims that lie outside the world we are in!

Yet the world-concept of Christianity is that the real world shares the contours of existence with the God whose speech is his actions, and his actions occur in the world of common causality that we inhabit; and its a 'real' world, not a lesser world that we can disregard, with the really real world elsewhere.

Theistic-evolution, along with Buddhism, discounts the real ness of the world we are in and has it that 'holy books' as a class (the Bible, for TEs) are about somethiing other than the real world, which therefore, must be other than the real setting for the ontological play between what is basically real, and our life-experience.

Bollocks, of course, because Christ emptied himself of God-claims to be one of us, for our sake!

The Perils of Theistic Evolution

Any critique of Theistic Evolution has to start behind the direct facts that might be contested (that is, 'science' and the Bible), and with the philosophical position that underpins the theology which allows the Bible to be relegated to a set of ancient stories and legends that may convey spiritual truth, but have no necessary relationship to the space-time world of common causality, even in the view of some evangelicals.

The theology is more about a Barthian approach to the Bible than the world-concept of the Bible, where words connect only to ‘faith’ ethereally and do not do so by way of depicting or explicating anything in the real-world of "A does not = non-A". The ‘real’ in this formulation, is not of this world, but in a philosophically idealist move is elsewhere, so the Bible, to communicate its ‘truth’ in this higher manner does not need to tell us anything about what has really happened; and in fact, in this view both need not, and probably cannot!

The counter to this is that the very account of creation shows that God and we participate in the same real world where words relate to events and actions that are denominated in the common causality upon which we depend, and, created by God, mediates our concourse with God as well as each other.

It is actual events and actions that are real, and that instruct our apprehension of the ontological coordinates that bring us to encounter God in action by which he demonstrates who he is and who we are in relationship to him. The idealist would have it otherwise, of course, but to attempt to impress them with science, while it may influence some, will probably have little effect, as they consider that we have missed their point that the Bible is a 'faith' book, not a 'fact' book; of course, it is only a faith book because it is a fact book, otherwise faith would be in irreversible dis-connect from the world in which we act and is the scene for our encounter with God, our salvation and for God's covenants.

To encapsulate this with an illustration, you may know the old Goon Show where a bank holdup involves the use of a picture of a gun. The theological idealist would have it that the Bible is a ‘picture of a gun’; but of course, this can have no real-world effect; what we need to hold up a bank (and to make a creation by fiat that delimits the world we are in) is a real gun (and a real creation in events that make sense in the world in which they are set, and which they define).

In short, the Bible is only theologically meaningful if it is meaningful in the real world terms by which it denominates itself. God is thus creator, not by weaving a symbolic story, that point to something or other, but because he created. He identifies himself with the sequence of fiat acts, not becuase they are symbolically meaningful, but because they occured. They are meaningful, then, because they occured, and not because they did not.

An example of how this plays out was in a post and exchanges on Michael Jensen's blog, the bloggin parson. (Jensen is a lecturer at Moore College, and son of the current archbishop of Sydney, Peter J.)

Jensen was asked if he thought that Noah, of flood fame, was a real person, and by implication, that the account related events that occured. Jensen avoided a direct answer, instead asking what the text was telling us.

Now, if the text is not telling us that there was a global flood and only Noah, his family, and the animals listed were saved, then it is not telling us anything and is just a story, 'made up', with no real world referents! The point of the account is that the events recounted really happened and had a real effect on the world: thus is scripture linked to the world we are in.

The alternative, that the text is 'telling' us something based on non-events, or events mis-recounted, then it has no content relevant for our consideration as it is not about anything real, and anyone can 'make up' a story. That's the easy part.

If true, then unimportant!

A very apt comment on this article about Richard Dawkins:

The great irony of views such as Dawkins' is that, if they are correct, they are at once unimportant! How so? No arrangement of atoms has a value privilege over any other arrangement; value refers to something external to the arrangement, which the materialism that Dawkins espouses denies exists.

Are you kidding?

This line of thinking is known as "Theistic Evolution." But its followers are kidding themselves if they think it is compatible with Darwinism. First, to the extent that anyone--either God, Pope Mary's physicist, or "any being...external to our universe responsible for selecting its properties"--set nature up in any way to ensure a particular outcome, then, to that extent, although there may be evolution, there is no Darwinism. Darwin's main contribution to science was to posit a mechanism for the unfolding of life that required no input from any intelligence--random variation and natural selection. If laws were "implanted" into nature with the express knowledge that they would lead to intelligent life, then even if the results follow by "natural development," nonetheless, intelligent life is not a random result.

From Behe, The Edge of Evolution.

Bolt on Dawkins

atheist speaks

Couple of letters to papers:

As for the existence of God, the question to which no theologian has ever given a satisfactory answer - ''why does God permit natural evil (all the suffering of humans and animals caused by natural disasters and disease) to occur?'' - is sufficient to make the existence of any God extremely unlikely, to say the least.

Dennis Biggins Cooks Hill

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/pleasing-no-one-maybe-rescue-plan-is-on-target-20111129-1o5aw.html#ixzz1f89erRKH

Dennis Biggins has to explain what he means by 'natural evil' in a material world. He is clearly referring to something outside the natural world to say that some things are 'evil'. Of course they are not; the notion of evil is at best a mere social convention for events that are outside an organism's adaptive range. Evolution will, in time, deal with it through the death of mal-adapted organisms, or their eventual adaption to the natural world. The atheist position has to do away with any concept of evil, because the concept itself implies a divinity outside this world!

And that about says it!

Theistic evolution? You're kidding!

"God is the Creator of heaven and earth. If God produced the universe by a single creative act of His will, then its natural development by laws implanted in it by the Creator is to the greater glory of His Divine power and wisdom" (the 1909 Catholic Encyclopedia).

To which Behe responds:

This line of thinking is known as "Theistic Evolution." But its followers are kidding themselves if they think it is compatible with Darwinism. First, to the extent that anyone--either God, Pope Mary's physicist, or "any being...external to our universe responsible for selecting its properties"--set natuer up in any way to ensure a particular outcome, then, to that extent, although there may be evolution, there is no Darwinism. Darwin's main contribution to science was to posit a mechanism for the unfolding of life that required no input from any intelligence--random variation and natural selection.

From "The Edge of Evolution" by Michael Behe.

The first theistic evolutionist: Darwin?

From the last sentence of The Origin of Species:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

And we know where that ended up: not with the Creator's enduring praise, but with Dawkins referring to Darwinism as allowing him to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist!

Walton's lost world

Copy of a letter I sent following on from this sermon.

I was recently reminded of a part of your sermon on Genesis 1 that I had not discussed with you. Your reference to ANE cultures forming their conceptualisation of reality by creating stories about it (much like, and precisely as useful as Aboriginal 'dream time' myths), and this being the function of Genesis 1 (if I recall it accurately) came back to mind as I read a review of a book by Walton "The Lost World of Genesis 1" (reviewed here, which covered this very topic. The review, I think, deals reasonbly well with Walton's failure to comprehend the biblical data on creation, but it doesn't go far enough in philosophical terms, and lets Walton get away with his framing the creation account on a materialist basis, rather than a biblical one. This is dangerous territory as it immediately gives materialism primacy in our approach to the scriptures, and fails to use the scriptures prophetically to instead unseat materialism and make the way for their repentance.

As I read it, Walton effectively makes the Genesis account a 'story' that socially realises the cosmos and our lives and relationships within it. This is reminiscent of the much more circumscribed thesis of Berger and Luckman's book 'The Social Construction of Reality', which does have some applicability to social systems, but does not, however, apply to the external objective world.

The reason I say that Walton defers to a materialist basic philosophy in his work (although as far as I know he's a creationist, of sorts), is that his approach to Genesis 1 is conceptually congruent with one of the most significant implications of the evolutionary world view: that there is no necessary connection between our sense perception, our mentalisation of sense perceptions and the external real world. This arises because the evolutionary world view has as its only essential reproductive success, everything else is an accident, including the viability of our sense perceptions and the accuracy of their mentalisation! This of course is the unavoidable 'self-defeater' of materialism.

But the biblical world view is contrary to this, and it sets a necessary connection, not just an accidental correlation, between external real world constituents, features and relationships and our sensory-mental response to them. Therefore, in a biblical world view, things in the world have existance and relationship to other things even before they are named, and our perception of them is reliable. While we use langauge to identify objects, categories (and only in the social world, might we 'create' them in Berger and Luckman's terms) and relationships, naming is only used to identify particular charcteristics of relationships for specific purposes (e.g. Adam names the animals, but doesn't find a companion); the limit of naming is that it presumes the prior existence of the things named, their external relationships and the external real world that they occur within. It has a 'concrete realist' (as opposed to an 'idealist') conception of the world because the creation account sets out that this is the actual real world and how it works; Adam's 'naming' episode is an event within and predicated upon the real external world. The naming is to pursue a much more limited objective than a grand cosmogony: identifying his companionship need.

Walton's claim might be true of pagan ANE cultures, but I don't think he's provided evidence, either biblical or historical, that these cultural practices were applied to Genesis 1. Indeed, the fact that we see an instance of naming and construction in Genesis 1, and in highly circumscribed terms against a context of external objectification, indicates, I think, that Walton's appraisal is misplaced even on textual grounds, let alone by the philosophical abyss that he leaps into.

Walton has failed to deal with the materialist-evolutionary world view which has in fact been the basis of his thinking (every thought not being conformed to Christ: [Roms 12:2), and which sets out in question begging fashion to actually deny the biblical world view, so when taken up theologically, it sets aside the base data of theology, relying on a stance that denies that there is any theological data at all. Naturally, Walton ends up with the conclusion he does, because he starts from an assumption that only leads to that conclusion.

Why Theistic Evolution is rubbish

I would hope that Christians who think that biblical creation and evolution could be coupled ponder this quote:

In general we can be assured that we know what things are good in themselves, he submits, if what we think is in harmony with what 'other people think': "For what we think has...been determined by the course of evolution" But what we think, even if it is harmonious with the thoughts of others, does not by itself support the view that we think rationally or truly, or even that we probably do so; and appeals to "the course of evolution" in this quarter only thicken a philosophical plot already gone wrong. Unless we have independent reason to believe that what "the course of evolution" leads us to believe is, or is likely to be, correct or rational, the appeal to "evolution" is logically illicit. To suppose that some things are good because evolution leads most of us to believe that they are grievously flaunts Moore's stern requriements that we avoid naturalism in ethics.

From a biography of G. E. Moore

The pagan world

I mentioned the review of Walton's book in my post on the dangerous sermon, but would like to discuss it futher.

I think that Walton must be the source of much of the sermon in question. Walton's mistake however, is that he adopts a pagan framework from the start, and fits the Bible within it, ending up not with the God of creation, but a God within creation, who adheres to the categories of modern atheistic materialism, not the categories of the Bible. The Bible's categorical structure has will exercised in love basic to all being. A pity the speaker did not explore this, or start his thinking from the Bible instead!

Walton's view is founded on the great irony that the creation account is not about creation, but something else, also called the creation, but not the creation that we are talking about (if that seems 'double-dutch' it is). It requires creation to be independent (effectively asserting a prior material creation); he also, like most today, misunderstands the creation as an exercise in only material formation (it is far more than this), and the world view that is required to sustain his position (a pagan world view) either deifies the material creation, or regards it as a ‘given’ and does not conceive of it as having been originated in the will of one who is love.

Like many other moderns, he wants to split the creation into categories that evacuate it of meaning: some split ‘how’ and ‘why’ as the domains of science and theology, respectively. Walton, likewise splits function and being, but being is function in the unified creation that comes from God’s hand. To suppose otherwise is to fall into the pagan error, now repeated in the use of materialist categories, that the creation is otherwise originated, this origination so remote from us in every way as to be an impersonal given, destroying God’s representation to us as creator of a world where his words have real meaning in terms that make sense to us within the world (as it is from his hand, and we, his image bearers, can make sense of the words God gave to us) relating to him. In effect he ‘de-gods’ the world in its totality. This makes God not the creator of a world that is dependent upon him, and part of the means of his relating to us and extending his love to us, but a being derivative of, or referred to from the world which is beyond him.

On these grounds, who, then, are we, who is this god and whence relationship, if there is one that has any meaning at all?

The proposal is pagan from start to finish, and even if Walton truly understands ANE culture, he understands a pagan culture, against which the Bible stands and the word of God confounds! To take this as a reference is to set to one side the work of the Spirit of God in communicating the word to us and the relegate the Bible to merely another meaningless ANE curiosity of history.

And the creation account opposes both these errors in its unification of ‘how’ coupled with ‘why’, and function being part of formation.

'How’s' coupling with 'why' is made in the creation being about the relationships between persons, by the will of the almighty person, exercised in love for the bringing about of other persons to participate in that love, with all the other-centredness of love. The 'function' being part of 'formation' is made in the creation leaving God’s hand caused only by his word (will) and not an interposed mechanism so beloved of materialists who must split off matter from love to make it pre-eminent, and love subservient, and then seek a machine to do the work that the Bible tells us is the work of God’s loving mind!

Walton’s proposal, like every other attempt to defuse Genesis 1, etc. simply represents an embarrassment from pitting Genesis 1 against modern conventional materialism and wanting materialism to have the first and final word!

Inconvenient Information

The trouble with many parts of the Bible is that the information it contains is inconvenient to the aims and objects of fallen mankind.

Thus it is with Genesis 1. Many Christian commentators undertake, with great effort, the exercise of telling us that Genesis 1 doesn't say what it clearly does say. Because it is inconvenient.

It is inconvenient to smart modern people (imblued with or cowed by materialist views) that God created by his will (the method) within the span of 6 days. So much effort is put into explaining that this information, which structures and upon which the text depends, is not an essential part of the information conveyed.

Indeed, it must end up being held that Genesis 1 conveys no actual information, but merely allows the impression that God is creator, with the text providing no evidence fo the fact.

Extrodinary. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

In this vein, I'd refer to a book review by Howard Van Til: [title], where Van Til does just this, and fails to bring a Christian world-view to his work.