If you ever have trouble finding your glasses, wallet, or keys, it’s even harder after an earthquake, but you’ll need them more than ever. So watch where you put them—your medicines, too—every day and every night.

This is off-topic but it might be useful to someone. The recent Chino Hills earthquake has re-awakened California to reality. I lived in Southern California for 13 years. The magnitude 7.3 (or 7.6, depending on your source) Landers earthquake in 1992 was just 25 miles from our family’s home at the time in Big Bear City. Depending again on your source, it was either the most powerful earthquake in the continental U.S. in the last one hundred years, or it was at least tied for that honor. You may not remember this earthquake because that region is sparsely populated, there were few injuries, and it was overshadowed in the news very soon afterward by Hurricane Andrew. My family certainly remembers it.

Even more memorable, though, was the 6.4 (or 6.7) aftershock three hours later. This one was centered very near our home. We had somehow suffered no damage from the Landers quake, but this second one shook almost everything out of our cupboards and off our shelves. One of our neighbors was trapped for a while under a fallen bookshelf. There were so many broken plates on our kitchen floor I had to clear a path through them all with a snow shovel. Our masonry chimney cracked badly; some of our neighbors’ chimneys fell right through their roofs and into their living rooms. A local hardware store changed its business model for a few weeks: instead of selling paint and fasteners and other assorted goods, they charged tourists a nice fee to peek at the mess it made when it all got tossed on the floor.

Which brings me to a piece of earthquake advice I never heard in all my years in California. A big earthquake will totally scramble your possessions. Do you ever have trouble finding your wallet, keys, and glasses? Think of looking for them under your fallen bookshelf, instead of on top where you think you left them. Think of scrabbling through piles of stuff to find them while aftershocks are making you wish you weren’t even indoors. Think of the shape your glasses will be in when you finally find them.

Because of aftershocks, our house was a significant hazard zone until we could get our cracked chimney safely taken down. We were homeless for a week, with only as many of our possessions as we were able to dash in for and grab in a hurry. Think of being forced out of your home with no keys to get in your car for shelter or mobility, or not having any cash or credit cards with you.

Thankfully, we were able to find what we absolutely had to find, but we were lucky. So here’s my extra preparedness advice for anyone who lives in or travels to an earthquake zone

You will really need your glasses, your wallet, your medicines, and your keys, and you’re going to want them right now as you’re running out of the house.

So keep track of them.

When you go to bed every night, put them where you know you’ll be able to find them easily—even after your house has gone through a blender.

I’m afraid I have to disagree with Nathan Schneider again. This time it’s about his AlterNet assessment of the Dover trial and the Intelligent Design controversy. I have several things to say about it. For starters, he makes this most curious allusion:

The Dover trial followed in the footsteps of its notorious predecessor, the famed Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee. Like Dover, Dayton was a set-up, orchestrated by money and interests from far away. The ACLU backed Clarence Darrow, the great freethinking lawyer, against the towering populist politician William Jennings Bryan, who fought, literally, to his death — he died, exhausted and disgraced, a week after the trial ended. All of it was immortalized by H.L. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun, one of the foremost journalists of his generation.

Mencken may have immortalized it, but as MSNBC notes, he did it by distorting it:

The picture that emerged, especially in the hyperventilating prose of the iconoclastic Baltimore journalist H.L. Mencken and later in the play and movie “Inherit the Wind,” was of a town full of “Christian pro-creation” believers who were “uneducated, dimwitted people who came to town barefoot and married their cousin,” said historian John Perry, co-author of a new book, “Monkey Business: The True Story of the Scopes Trial“…. That caricature, like so much we think we remember about the famous Monkey Trial, was largely wrong.

And it would be all too easy to conclude from Schneider’s account here that Dayton was a creationist set-up. The “money and interests from far away” were the ACLU’s.

Schneider’s information on Dover apparently comes from Laurie Lebo’s bookThe Devil in Dover: An Insider’s Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-Town America. It is not without some distortion of its own, not so much in what is said but (as above) in what is left unsaid. The Discovery Institute is made to appear pragmatically calculating:

Early on, seeing how the case would go, the Discovery Institute withdrew its support.

In fact the DI did not just withdraw support, turning tail and running from the case as soon as it looked lost. They consistently advised the school board not to proceed with its new policy, just because it was ill-advised (here and here).

Under current case law, Judge Jones was right to rule against the Dover School Board because of their openly religious intent. He went far beyond his proper role, though, in ruling Intelligent Design unscientific. Though Schneider called this “damning” for ID, it’s really quite irrelevant, unless the science community thinks they should submit all of their conclusions to federal judges for final approval.

Schneider proceeds to engage in some serious stereotyping:

The pro-evolution science establishment wants to protect the methodology and public support that have allowed it to learn so much already and poise it for endless more. Secularists want to protect the American legal tradition that keeps church and state comfortably separate. Religious fundamentalists want to bear witness to the created truth of God before the invented truths of people, winning even as they lose.

That is breathtakingly … something. (You fill in the blank.) Where do I begin to respond to this?

First I’ll ask whether Schneider considers David Berlinski to be a religious fundamentalist. What, in fact, does “religious fundamentalist” mean, other than being a convenient name to pin on persons so you can dismiss them out of hand?

Next, what is it that the science establishment needs so carefully to protect? What in ID is an attack on scientific methodology? Only this: that it will not insist on philosophical materialism, the doctrine that nothing exists except for matter, energy, and their interactions; or, that every natural event without exception has a natural cause that in principle could be investigated by scientific means. ID brings no “attack” on science per se. It does suggest that science may not be able to answer every question that can possibly be asked, a fact that is as well established as gravity and relativity theory. Some scientists may feel personally attacked by that. But science itself needs no protection from truth.

As for public support, I don’t think evolutionists’ dogmatic closed-mindedness contributes much toward public goodwill. Scientists who think otherwise are making a serious strategic error.

ID is also not about attacking the “separation of church and state.” Remember, the DI advised Dover against taking up their policy. Recall too that there are two streams to this debate. ID opponents seem to jump from one of these streams to the other, based on rhetorical convenience. There is the pursuit of scientific knowledge, and there is science education in public schools. The matter of ID in science education is not in dispute. Despite some serious distortions of fact regarding Texas, Missouri, and Florida, nobody is calling for ID to be taught in American public schools. That’s settled, and it’s hard to see why it keeps coming up from anti-ID writers.

The other stream is the pursuit of scientific knowledge, which is not a matter of constitutional law (despite Judge Jones’s sticking his nose into it). This stream is not about what’s being taught in the schools, it’s about what’s being studied in the labs. This is where the future of this debate needs to go. It may be the only thing that has any chance of ending the stalemate Schneider describes. We ought not to expect it to change the debate much for a few years, though; not until a critical mass of young pro-ID scientists attain tenure and feel safe to publish on the topic.

Schneider says in the end we just ought to change the subject:

Despite its theatrical appeal, battling creationists will not fix science education. Teaching science will — with high standards, qualified teachers, and access to lab equipment.

I wonder if he thinks that contributes anything to the debate. I would ask him to pick up the phone, call the Discovery Institute, and ask them to respond to that. Here’s how they’ll answer: “Thank you for that. We’ve been saying that all along!”

From Charles Colson:

It is all about equal rights, the gay “marriage” lobby keeps telling us. We just want the right to marry, like everyone else.

That is what they are telling us. But that is not what they mean. If same-sex “marriage” becomes the law of the land, we can expect massive persecution of the Church.

[Link: The Coming Persecution - Prison Fellowship]

This is not just theory; it’s cropping up already in big and small ways all over North America. Is this the end for the First Amendment in the U.S., and for religious freedom in Canada?

Here’s a good example of how not to marry science with a worldview: the so-called Evolutionary Manifesto. There are lessons here for Christians who want to understand origins both in relation to the teachings of science as well asto alternate religions.

This Evolutionary Manifesto is not the product of science, but of a New Age-oriented worldview; yet its author seems to accept evolutionary theory as fact. It’s a rather unique version of evolutionary theory, however:

At the heart of the evolutionary worldview is the fact that evolution has a trajectory—it heads in a particular direction.

No, that’s not at the heart of evolutionary theory, at least not as biology departments teach it. It’s the theory as it has been commonly misunderstood, though: a comic-book version of evolution.

I mean that quite literally. I can remember a couple of comic books I read as a kid (why this sticks in my memory I have no idea). In one of them, the bad guy had learned how to “speed up” evolution for himself, and he personally went through a progression: from shark to fish to some kind of mammal to ape to human – and then he went right on past human to the next step, which was stronger, smarter, better in all the ways humans would value. Sure, it’s a comic book, and it’s fair that it would call on us to suspend disbelief regarding one organism experiencing eons of evolutionary change. I don’t have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is what it did count on us believing: that evolution’s next step of progress would be something super-human like that.

In another comic there were aliens posing as humans on earth. They looked exactly like us except that “a quirk of evolution” (I remember the phrase exactly) had caused them to have two right hands (that is, their left-hand thumbs were on the wrong side of the hand). That’s how Superboy was able to identify them as impostors and save the human race. (Today they wouldn’t last two days passing themselves off as teenagers. I mean, just imagine how they would tie their hands in knots while texting!)

In both of these comic-book depictions, there is indeed a trajectory, a “particular direction” that evolution inevitably follows, unless some “quirk” sidetracks it. Real evolution, however, knows nothing of long-term progress or direction. Its only trajectory is toward whatever turns out to have been successful for reproduction. Now, did the verb tenses in that last sentence seem awkward? That was intentional, indeed necessary, to state the case accurately. Evolution’s “plan,” as it were, is to go wherever it happens to have gone. Its direction is toward wherever it happens to have ended up. It knows of progress in no other terms except reproductive fitness. And all of these terms—progress, direction, plan—are anthropomorphisms. If we see any of these sorts of things in evolution, it is because we have projected our own ways of thinking upon a process that has no analogue to it at all.

Note well that this is not an Intelligent Design distortion of evolution. This is what the theory actually means. So the above-mentioned “Evolutionary Manifesto” has almost nothing to do with real evolutionary theory. In fact, as it goes on it relies on an ironic, rather comical turn toward Intelligent Design:

In this new phase evolution will be driven intentionally, by humanity. The evolutionary worldview that emerges from an understanding of our role in the new phase has the potential to transform the nature of human existence.

Victor Reppert (at whose blog I found the link to this Manifesto) noted,

I smell the naturalistic fallacy (illicit shift from “is” to “ought”).

That’s for sure. For example:

“It relies solely on scientific knowledge and reason to identify our critical role in future evolution.”

All of the above quotes come from just the first five paragraphs. The sixth displays all of these errors in one compact location:

It is as if evolution is a developmental process. Just as a human embryo is organized to develop through a number of stages to produce an adult, evolution tends to produce a particular sequence of outcomes of increasing complexity. Initially, evolution moves in this direction of its own accord. However, at a particular point evolution will continue to advance only if certain conditions are met: organisms must emerge that awaken to the possibility that they are living in the midst of a developmental process; they must realize that the continued success of the process depends on them; and they must commit to actively moving the process forward.

Somehow this sells anyway. I wonder how many misunderstand the truth? How many think the science of evolution is about that comic-book version of progress? How many buy into New-Age optimistic corruptions of evolutionary theory? (I assure you this is not the only place I’ve seen it.) How many recognize, on the other hand, that evolutionary theory provides no basis whatever to regard humans as more advanced or progressed than any other organism?

Self-oriented, lightly founded moral philosophy is not so new after all. Going back some 350 years:

Doubtless there are natural laws; but good reason once corrupted has corrupted all…. The result of this confusion is that one affirms the essence of justice to be the authority of the legislator; another, the interest of the sovereign; another, present custom, and this is the most sure. Nothing, according to reason alone, is just in itself; all changes with time. Custom creates the whole of equity, for the simple reason that it is accepted….

Veri juris. We have it no more; if we had it, we should take conformity to the customs of a country as the rule of justice. It is here that, not finding justice, we have found force, etc.

Justice, might.—It is right that what is just should be obeyed; it is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed. Justice without might is helpless; might without justice is tyrannical. Justice without might is gainsaid, because there are always offenders; might without justice is condemned. We must then combine justice and might, and for this end make what is just strong, or what is strong just.

Justice is subject to dispute; might is easily recognised and is not disputed. So we cannot give might to justice, because might has gainsaid justice, and has declared that it is she herself who is just. And thus being unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 294, 297, 298. (I hasten to add that Pascal was not writing in support of this position.)

Wise words from Anthony Esolen:

For the progressive secularists are misnamed. They cannot possibly progress, since they have ruled out the notion that there is any end towards which we are to proceed; the admission of an end would bring back the dreaded transcendent; it would revive the sleeping metaphysical giant.

[Link: Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments: Parochialism of Time]

(Note added 9/3/08: Comments are closed here, but the discussion remains open. See the final comment on this thread for explanation.)

The real question Christopher Hitchens was trying to get readers focused on here (as opposed to the one he said he was answering), was something like this:

“Why should we think people who believe in God behave better than those who do not?”

He goes on to tell about Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses whose behaviors are less than exemplary, and he insists (quite rightly) that atheists most certainly do good things. I have several brief responses from a Christian perspective.

1. Christians are by no means committed to believing that belief in God or gods taken generally is good, or that it leads to ethical actions. The Bible is full of people who believed in a God or gods, and yet sacrificed children to their gods, practiced temple prostitution, and committed other abominable acts. Christians believe there is but one God, revealed in Jesus Christ, that contradictory beliefs are in error, and that there is no reason to expect extraordinary good to come from believing in any other religions.

2. This may come as a surprise to some readers, but Christianity is not committed to the belief that Christians are more ethical than others. The explanation for this comes in three parts.*

a. Following Jesus Christ with one’s whole heart, in a supportive context and practicing the normal disciplines of the Christian life, will certainly lead to growth in one’s character, with outwardly visible effects. Christianity is quite committed to this belief. If followers of Christ came from a representative portion of any population, the difference in our lives ought to be apparent for all to see.

b. But Christianity is not committed to the belief that followers of Christ come from a random, representative sample of any population. We’re a bunch of sinners. That means me, and it means any other Christian reading this. It includes Billy Graham and the Pope, and it includes anybody who does not yet believe in Christ, but knows they are not perfect. We do not come to Jesus Christ, and we do not (or should not) present ourselves to the world, as any better than anyone else.

Quite the opposite, in fact. Consider what Jesus said about the Pharisee, who was a model of ideal behavior, and the tax collector, who represented greed, thievery, and betrayal of his people. It was the tax collector who “went home justified.” Jesus was considerably more comfortable with those who misbehaved than he was with the Pharisees, who were outwardly the party of the perfect. He came to call not the righteous, but sinners, to follow him.

c. Therefore even if Christians grow in character through following Christ, we may very well just be catching up with the rest of the world in our outward behavior.

3. Nevertheless, there is good sociological evidence that followers of Christ are, on average, are doing okay with respect to character and ethics, in comparison with social peers.

*Credit goes to Timothy Keller for bringing this to light.

Update 9/6/08: I have turned off threaded comments, as explained here. This will unfortunately jumble up the sequence of the comments on this post, for which I offer my apologies.

As noted on the new “Wall,” I am testing a Threaded Comments feature. Please let me know what you think. The limit for nested comments is 4 layers (original comment, then 3 layers of replies) deep.

If this doesn’t work out and I turn it off, no comments will be lost. They will be re-arranged, and presented in the normal chronological order.

While I’m on the topic of comments, I’d like to hear from you about the spam filter. Sometimes it catches my comments for reasons I don’t understand. Is it happening to you, too? How often, and how big a problem is it?

Christopher Hitchens says that since he published God is Not Great,

[t]he case that keeps coming up against me is this: If the heavens are empty (as I maintain in my little book God Is Not Great), then why should anyone behave ethically?

[Link: Search Magazine - Finding Morals Under Empty Heavens]

The question has seemed absurd to him, he says. Now, though, he has heard it so often he feels he has to respond. Watch what happens when he starts to answer:

Yet, I keep being asked, by good and anxious people, how we would teach morality in the absence of God. This question has two minor implications. It first shows a lack of confidence among believers, as if they half know that faith is weak, and suspect that morality might also be so. Second, it insults unbelievers, as if we infidels might at any moment give ourselves over to slaughter and rapine. Beyond this, it suggests a sort of arid pragmatism. So, faith has given people strength?

He took an interesting turn at right about that point, which invalidates his ensuing answer to the question he opened with. I’m not talking about his dismissiveness toward “good and anxious people.” That’s just his typical smugness. The problem is not (just) in his attitude but in his reasoning.

Rather than telling you what I’m seeing, I’m going to let you puzzle it out. Here’s a hint: you might not even need to read the article to see it—it shows up in just these quotes. I would still encourage you to read the article anyway. It’s not long, and none of us would want to misrepresent Mr. Hitchens by taking quotes out of context.

We do not require great education of the mind to understand that here is no real and lasting satisfaction; that our pleasures are only vanity; that our evils are infinite; and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being for ever either annihilated or unhappy.

There is nothing more real than this, nothing more terrible. Be we as heroic as we like, that is the end which awaits the noblest life in the world. Let us reflect on this, and then say whether it is not beyond doubt that there is no good in this life but in the hope of another; that we are happy only in proportion as we draw near it; and that, as there are no more woes for those who have complete assurance of eternity, so there is no more happiness for those who have no insight into it.

….

Nothing is so important to man as his own state, nothing is so formidable to him as eternity; and thus it is not natural that there should be men indifferent to the loss of their existence, and to the perils of everlasting suffering. They are quite different with regard to all other things. They are afraid of mere trifles; they foresee them; they feel them. And this same man who spends so many days and nights in rage and despair for the loss of office, or for some imaginary insult to his honour, is the very one who knows without anxiety and without emotion that he will lose all by death. It is a monstrous thing to see in the same heart and at the same time this sensibility to trifles and this strange insensibility to the greatest objects. It is an incomprehensible enchantment, and a supernatural slumber, which indicates as its cause an all-powerful force.

There must be a strange confusion in the nature of man, that he should boast of being in that state in which it seems incredible that a single individual should be.

….

Nothing is more indicative of a bad disposition of heart than not to desire the truth of eternal promises. Nothing is more dastardly than to act with bravado before God. Let them then leave these impieties to those who are sufficiently ill-bred to be really capable of them. Let them at least be honest men, if they cannot be Christians. Finally, let them recognise that there are two kinds of people one can call reasonable; those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart because they do not know Him.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 194

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

Pensées, 183