Christian Carnival 213
February 28th 2008
It’s the Bookstore Edition at Jevlir Caravansary.
Archive for February, 2008
The Design Matrix
February 28th 2008
Book Review
A friend of mine has an overly strong commitment to things she learned when she was growing up. “Doctors say you need to drink eight glasses of water a day” is one. I ran across a repot in which a leading researcher in this field told of his attempts to track down the source of that belief. He found no medical evidence for it. Apparently it just showed up one day in some magazine, and grew. He said there was no truth to it whatever. My friend’s response: “I don’t believe it.” She wouldn’t look at the source material; she already had her facts.
There is research out this week casting doubt on the belief that stretching before sports activities reduces injuries. I’m not going to bother telling my friend. She won’t read the report, and she wouldn’t believe me if I said. She knows we should all drink eight glasses of water a day, and that stretching before exercise reduces injuries. She knows it because that’s what she has always heard.
I expect similar reactions from evolutionists to Mike Gene’s The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues. Everyone in the pro-evolution, anti-Intelligent Design crowd knows that:
- ID is thinly disguised creationism
- ID is just negative science (nothing but picking points against evolution)
- ID has no positive research program
- ID makes no predictions
- ID relies on a “God of the gaps” approach to knowledge
- ID presents no testable hypotheses
- ID is dogmatically driven by people with a theological/philosophical agenda
Everybody knows these things. Mike Gene shows that none of them are true. The evolutionists, I fear, are not going to read it; they’re just going to say, “I don’t believe it.” Like my friend, they will stick with what’s always been “true” for them in the past.
The author uses a pseudonym, obviously, and as far as I know no one has cracked his real identity (or if they have, they’re not telling). He says in the intro to the book that he remains anonymous so that his ideas can be evaluated for themselves, without regard for who has presented them. It seems likely he’s also carrying out some career protection, too. If he’s working in a university biology department (and yes, he does know his science), it could obviously risky for him to “come out” as an ID supporter. (See his Design Matrix website for more.)
The way that he supports ID is refreshingly unique, however. He doesn’t argue for a conclusion of Intelligent Design at all. He argues more modestly, for a suspicion of Intelligent Design. He would have a beef with dogmatists on either side of the issue. Quite helpfully he distinguishes between the strong evidence required for conviction by a court of law, and evidence required by an investigating detective. A detective arrives on the scene with nothing but questions. His first objective is to move toward reasonable suspicions. A little hint there, a vague clue there: these things can move him toward a theory of a crime; and from there he can begin to look for more definite signs. Eventually, much further down the road, proof may come. Mike Gene believes we should recognize ID is in the developing suspicion stage: there is no hard scientific proof of design, but there are hints and clues that raise a most reasonable suspicion, and which can lead to a search for more definite signs.
These hints and clues he summarizes into his “Design Matrix,” four relatively independent factors to test for in nature:
- Analogy with known instances of design
- Discontinuity with observed or means by which evolution works
- Rationality apparent in the design of the natural feature
- Foresight apparent in the design of the natural feature
These are defined such that they can all lead to testable research hypotheses. We’re not talking about black/white, unambiguous research results, however (”Evolution never could have done this!” or “Evolution absolutely could have done this, it’s easy!”). Natural phenomena can be scored on a continuum, Mike Gene says; we’re still in the detective stage, not the judge and jury stage. We’re looking for suspicions of ID, so we should be open to gradations on the scales of the Design Matrix. Only one of them, by the way (Discontinuity), bears any relationship to the tired stereotype that ID is nothing but a negative science that resorts to god-of-the-gaps thinking.
Mike Gene wrote this book with a sense of humor. (Thank God for an evolution/ID-related book with a sense of humor!) The book wraps around a theme of the Rabbit and the Duck. It’s a metaphor about our preconceptions, and the way they can color our perceptions. I won’t try to replay it for you; I’ll just quote the book’s final paragraph, and leave it to you to read the book and chase down the metaphor for yourself:
So as we begin our journey, these lessons, coupled with all the lessons in these chapters, must be kept in mind. We are not engaging in a Duck Hunt; we are going to chase the Rabbit. So, do you see that rabbit hole over your shoulder? Yeah, that one. Wanna have some fun? Well, grab your Design Matrix, and follow that Rabbit.
(There’s much more Rabbit fun on the Telic Thoughts blog, where Mike Gene writes frequently.)
Some of you reading this “know” that ID is nothing but negative science, it’s just god-of-the-gaps, and it’s a mere religious ploy. You won’t read the book; you won’t accept that ID-related thinking can lead to genuine research questions; you’ll just say, “I don’t believe it.” I strongly urge you to get your hands on a copy of this uniquely creative approach to Intelligent Design, and find out where the Rabbit leads you.
The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues by Mike Gene. No City: Arbor Vitae Press, 2007. 291 pages plus index. Amazon Price US$16.47.
Reading Opposing Views
February 26th 2008
I ended my last post with this:
Agree or disagree with what he has to say–either way, you’ll find a lot to learn in it.
I got to wondering as I wrote that: do you read authors you disagree with? I’m especially interested to know if atheistic/agnostic visitors here read good Christian authors. I commend you for visiting a Christian blog–that certainly indicates your willingness to grapple with opposing views. But this is a short form, and there are better authors than me.
I could not be confident in my own beliefs if I hadn’t read some of the best from atheists or strict evolutionists: Ehrman, Ruse, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, Gould, Mayr, Forrest and Gross, Miller, etc.. Atheists and agnostics, have you read Moreland, Craig, Willard, Plantinga, Geisler, or Habermas (more than articles, that is)? Have you looked through MikeGene’s work on Intelligent Design, The Design Matrix? (I haven’t reviewed it yet, but it’s on the list. Here’s a preview: far and away, it’s the one book I would most recommend to ID skeptics.)
It comes down to this: are your convictions against Christian faith directed against the real thing? How do you know?
On Blogging a Philosophy Book
February 26th 2008
A few days ago I confidently announced I was going to blog my way through J.P. Moreland’s Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical Investigation. What I failed to recognize was that the first chapter is considerably more “bloggable” than the rest. I’m scaling back my plans now.
Moreland’s book began with the difficulty of strictly defining what science is or is not. Within his set of reasons there was one easily extracted subset, from Judge Overton’s decision in a creation science trial. The conclusions Moreland drew were both significant and relatively uncontroversial, as witnessed by neo-Darwinist Michael Ruse’s general agreement. All this made it rather easy to blog.
I let myself think the rest of the book would be similarly easy to condense, but it isn’t. (I should have known better from the start.) Though it’s not my first time reading the book, it’s the first time I’ve done it with blogging in mind, and now I’ve recognized it won’t all summarize into this format.
There are some things I will come back to, like the misconceptions surrounding the “scientific method” we all learned in school: science doesn’t always use it, science doesn’t only use it (other disciplines employ many of the same methods). There’s some very fascinating stuff there to discuss.
But I’m backing off on my plans to cover it all. It won’t condense that way. That opens the door again, though, for me to make a strong recommendation: get yourself a copy and read it! Agree or disagree with what he has to say–either way, you’ll find a lot to learn in it.
An Interview with Timothy Keller
February 25th 2008
In his new book, The Reason for God, currently No. 18 on the New York Times bestseller list, Keller offers what one might call his summa: the meat of his preaching, teaching, and confession of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior for a world of unexamined materialist presuppositions, genetic determinisms, and endless digital cross-chatter.
I [Anthony Sacramone] sat down to talk with Pastor Keller at the Redeemer offices in Manhattan….
[From FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » An Interview with Timothy Keller]
This is What Not Discriminating Looks Like?
February 25th 2008
Homosexual activists in the Keystone State are blasting a public school principal simply because he is a Boy Scout leader…. the president of an organization that claims the Scouts practice discrimination by prohibiting homosexuals to be leaders said the school should not support the Scouts and should never have allowed them inside the building in their uniforms.
[From Homosexuals rip Penn. principal for wearing Boy Scout uniform (OneNewsNow.com) ]
The ostensible offense is that “the Scouts practice discrimination.” Is there not discrimination being practiced against the Scouts here, though? This Scout leader appeared on a local TV show featuring good deeds the Scouts had been doing. He was not representing the school, as far as we can tell from the report; when he’s in his Scout uniform, he is just a Scout leader who happens also to be a principal. And he got blasted for it. (It was students, not the principal, who wore their uniforms to school.)
“Discrimination” is typically used in one of two senses. The second, unfortunately, is becoming far more common than the first.
At its core it refers to making suitability judgments on the basis of factors deemed to be relevant to the issue at hand. For example, we discriminate against high school dropouts performing brain surgery. The word “discrimination” in this context always belongs in an extended clause: “wrongful or rightful discrimination on the basis of…” Whether it is right or wrong depends on whether the factors for discrimination are relevant. Character and skills are relevant. Skin color is not–unless you’re talking about hiring actors to play, say, George Washington, or George Washington Carver. Then, racial discrimination is based on relevant factors, and there’s nothing at all wrong with it.
Whether we ever had such a pure conception of how “discrimination” should be used, I do not know. I do know that as our culture was gaining awareness that racial discrimination was (almost always) wrong, we used the word “discrimination” by itself, without the rest of the extended clause, and everybody knew just what it meant. It was a useful abbreviation for the whole, because in that era, racial discrimination was the only kind that got much discussion.
Then the connotations of the word evolved toward the second sense of the term. It was, for a while, a specific label attached to a specific evil. By constant use in that context it became associated generally with evil–even though good and positive uses of the word still existed (as in high school dropouts and brain surgery). It gained an emotional overtone. Racial discrimination was and is truly wrong and evil. “Racial discrimination” was shorted to just “discrimination.” And then, “discrimination” by itself picked up the sense of being truly wrong and evil.
Concurrently and also following this evolution, “discrimination” became a word to be claimed especially by minority groups or groups who could claim they had been oppressed in some way similar to African-Americans. Often, in the early years of this process, these groups too were being wrongly discriminated against on the basis of irrelevant factors.
But then some minority groups–and I’m thinking especially of homosexual activists now–realized what they had available to them. Here was a word that evoked universally negative emotions, which the public was used to applying to minority groups. They could claim it for themselves, point to examples where they were being oppressed, and use it against anyone who stood against them.
But the Boy Scouts are a minority group, with considerably less political clout these days than the homosexual activists have. Attacks like this one on the Scout leader are surely a form of oppression. If “discrimination” just means separating out minority groups for oppressive treatment, then the homosexual activists are discriminating against the Scouts!
Actually, discrimination runs both directions: the Boy Scouts actually do discriminate against homosexuals in leadership. Homosexual activists actually and do discriminate against the Scouts. The word by itself tells us nothing about whether one group is right or the other is wrong. But somehow its emotional weight seems to land heavy on the Scouts when thrown their way. It’s because we react to the emotional tone of the word, instead of recalling what it really means.
Discrimination is wrong when it is based on irrelevant factors. The Scouts can make a case that for their character-building goals, sexual practice is relevant. I hope they also discriminate against openly promiscuous heterosexuals, too, though I don’t know how often this happens. There might be room for some argument there.
There is no room, though, for argument on this: homosexual activists cannot claim they are innocent of discrimination while the Scouts are guilty. Not unless they fill out the rest of the clause to show whether they’re discriminating based on relevant factors.
Related: Hijacking the Civil Rights Legacy
External: “Boy Scouts Must Endure, Says TX Governor“
“The Irrational Atheist”
February 21st 2008
First Things has published Anthony Sacramone’s review of Vox Day’s book, The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. It includes:
To take just one of many examples, a common trope among atheists is that religion is the No. 1 cause of wars in history. “If religion were an important element of warmaking, one would expect to find a great deal of text commenting upon it,” Day writes. But you don’t. After reading the great war theorists, from Sun Tzu to Von Clausewitz, Day found pages and pages about perseverance, spies, geometry, inspirational music—but virtually nothing about religion.
As for the nature of the wars themselves, talk about specific: Day found 123 wars that could validly be claimed to have religion at their heart—a grand total of 6.98 percent of all wars fought. “It’s also interesting to note that more than half of these religious wars, sixty-six in all, were waged by Islamic nations,” Day offers as an aside.
About 7% of identifiable wars in history war fought for religious reasons. Most of those were initiated by Muslims. This does not justify any war fought for the purpose of advancing Christianity. But it certainly puts the lie to beliefs that Christianity bears the blame for a large part of the violence in world history.
We might as well add this current item to the point, too: 150 million murdered in the 20th century–by whom?
Hat Tip: One Eternal Day
A Dying Man’s Demand for Definite Answers
February 20th 2008
The ER clip on a dying patient’s intense spiritual questions has gone viral, according to viralvideochart.com, which ranks it at number 11 on their list this afternoon. (The list is apparently generated by the number of blogs referencing each video.)
This patient was asking for–no, demanding–straight answers to straight questions. The chaplain couldn’t answer (SteveK showed us additional context in support of that conclusion). The patient didn’t want maybe, didn’t want doubts, didn’t want what-ifs; he wanted certainty. What do we make of that kind of demand? Is it legitimate? Most believers in Christ would say “yes, absolutely!” We think there are real answers to his questions.
It’s terribly counter-cultural, though, to talk in terms of spiritual certainty* and “yes, absolutely.” We’re a pluralistic culture, especially in regards to religion and values. If the chaplain had told him, “You can find forgiveness only by placing your faith in Jesus Christ and His death for you,” she would have been violating one of the Western world’s cardinal rules: Never claim one religion is better than any other.
That’s a rule we followers of Christ break all the time. It’s one reason Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins think we’re so dangerous. We’re exclusivistic.
This is a great time to introduce Timothy Keller, senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. It’s a seriously New York kind of church. They have two classical worship-style services every Sunday, and three jazz services. Did I mention they have five services every Sunday? Close observers point out that the church has grown primarily by Keller’s taking New Yorkers seriously, especially intellectual New Yorkers. He has just published a book handling their most serious questions, and from the book’s website you can connect to a message (mp3)he gave on the first of those objections: Christian exclusivity.
Keller displays a C.S. Lewis-like ability to explain complex topics clearly and cleanly. My summary here will not do his message justice, so I urge you to listen to it yourself. It boils down to these points:
- Religious exclusivisity can indeed be extremely odious, if not dangerous: it typically leads to the belief in one’s moral and intellectual superiority, which leads to de-humanizing others who disagree.
- Christianity is not the only exclusivist belief system; in fact, all spiritual belief systems are exclusivistic.
- Christianity is the one belief system that (if practiced for what it truly is) leads to peace rather than to a de-humanizing belief in one’s moral superiority.
I’ll take these up in turn. Please continue to bear in mind this is just a brief version.
1. Religions generally teach that one attains one’s spiritual goal (however defined) by doing what’s right. If I believe I’m on the right spiritual path, then, I must also believe I have a better sense of what’s moral and ethical and right than you do, if you’ve chosen a different spiritual path. If I think I’m making any progress at all on that path, I’m bound to believe that I’m behaving more morally and ethically and rightly than you are. Now, if evangelical Christianity is the first thing to pop into your mind when you hear that, please consider 2:
2. Every spiritual belief is exclusivistic. Evangelical Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the one answer. Muslims believe theirs is the one answer. Hindus do too, at least in the home of Hinduism–the apparently pluralistic version we know in the West is considered heretical back in India. But what if you take a more inclusivist view? Then you are bound to believe that we Christians and Muslims and Hindus are all wrong–and that you’re right! The chaplain on this ER episode considered it wrong to take a definite spiritual position–but in so saying, she was taking a definite spiritual position.
Furthermore, your belief system entails an ethical system to go with it, for example, “It’s rude and odious and wrong for Christians to say Jesus Christ is the one answer.”
I could go on, but I’m really just trying to whet your appetite to listen to Keller, whose next point is:
3. Given that all spiritual belief systems are exclusivistic, which one is most likely to produce peace in human relationships? The true uniqueness of Christianity shows its importance now. First, let’s take honest note of the moral exclusivisity of pluralism. It is genuinely a sin–and frequently punished–to deny pluralism. Try disagreeing with homosexual practice on a modern campus if you doubt this. The hammer will fall.
What about Christianity? We are committed to a belief in the goodness of Christ, a conviction from which we cannot budge. We are not, however, committed to believing in our own moral or intellectual superiority. Far from it. We believe that Jesus Christ had to die just because of our moral weakness, that we were enemies of God, that intellect has nothing to do with salvation, that one of our chief callings is to love those with whom we differ and disagree, and to treat them well. The apostle Paul summarizes it (emphasis added):
Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit,serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
No one has lived up fully to this ideal since Jesus Christ himself. Keller is very forthright on this, both here and in other messages in this series of his. I could point out, with tears, many examples of our failure. The greatest Christian heresy down the ages has been legalism, the belief that one’s own actions actually can lead one to the goal, and that one actually can some kind of moral superiority over others.
This is where the beliefs of Christianity essentially aim, however. Jesus Christ took such a strong stand against legalism (or moralism) that the ones He was opposing had Him executed to get Him out of their way. (It didn’t work.) The more thoroughly one adopts the exclusive message of Jesus Christ, the more peace his or her life will display. The fully believing Christian will contend for the greatness of Jesus Christ and for the unworthiness of self. Humility, not superiority, is written deep into Christian exclusivity.
What about Christians’ calls for Biblical morality? I did not say we believe that no moral beliefs are better than any other. I said that we believe no one of us is more morally qualified before God than anyone else is. We stand for what we believe in. By God’s grace, we also strive to act accordingly. We fail. Often. We rely on God’s grace to pick us up from there.
So to summarize my summary, all belief systems are exclusivistic. One of them, though, at its very core, leads to humility rather than de-humanizing superiority. And for the man on ER, the same one could have showed him how to be forgiven.
Keller (need I say it again?) covers it all far more thoroughly. His talk will be well worth the time you spend listening to it.
*I must qualify what I mean by “certainty.” It’s not that I can prove my beliefs are true, or that they are as demonstrably certain as the fact that George Bush is the current President of the United States. For me, they are certain enough that I can feel confident and comfortable staking my whole life on them. I know I could be wrong; but I’m certain of it enough that if I had to, I would be willing to die for my beliefs.
Links
February 18th 2008
Banishing Christianity from the public square (From Gene Veith)
A letter-writer to the “Washington Post” fulminates at the way NASCAR allowed the Daytona 500 to begin with a prayer. Not only a prayer, but one that “invoked Jesus Christ by name.” This, says the letter-writer, is another step in the effort to make Christianity into our nation’s official state religion. Read the letter.
Notice what is happening. Yes, the government is not allowed to favor Christianity in schools, the military, and public events. But now that same standard is being applied to a private event that receives no federal money (why should NASCAR need to?).
From “seeker” at two or three.net: 13 Misconceptions About Evolution. Seeker is a brave blogger. What he has listed there is quite good–but I can just imagine the missiles flying if I put the same up here at Thinking Christian!
One ancient mystery solved–but the big one remains (Scientific American, on the Burgess Shale, famous as one locus of research into the Cambrian explosion)
Michael Ruse on Dawkins’ Delusion (Uncommon Descent)
And more, this time from N.T. Wright quoted at Covenant, on what Archbishop Rowan Williams actually said, including:
First, quite simply, the Archbishop didn’t say what the media said he said. His real offence is that he has presumed to challenge the media’s vice-like control on public opinion, and so is being called arrogant and patronizing by people who don’t want reasoned discourse and prefer only catchy soundbites.
The second issue raised by the Archbishop’s speech is his careful deconstruction, in line more or less with that of Professor John Gray of this institution (Straw Dogs, False Dawn, Heresies, etc.), of the Enlightenment myth of secular progress and its accompanying political discourse. He has pointed out on the one hand the religious and indeed Christian roots of the Enlightenment’s vision of justice and rights, and on the other the way in which the secularist rhetoric, growing ever more shrill these days, effectively cuts off the branch of Reason on which it claims to be sitting – as, again, we see in the media reaction.
The Washington Post on The King’s College–a conservative Christian college in the heart of Manhattan (associated with Campus Crusade for Christ, by the way).