What To Buy Your Darwinian Friends For Christmas

Wait a minute. Christmas? If the message of Christmas -- a God-incarnate, uncorrupted-natured Man --is real and true, then philosophical darwinism is both false and shabby. No Christmas? No Easter. No Easter? No hope.

No hope. Nohope. Noope. Nope. In four easy mutations.

I can understand the beliefs of darwinists; what I don't understand is the gloating. The idea that there is no God, and therefore we face extinction with no hope of redemption beyond bodily death, should be the cause of extreme mental horror and angst. Philosophical darwinists, at a minimum, should wish Christianity were true; instead, they both hate it and trample evidences for it underfoot -- ironically, fulfilling Scripture.

Merry Christmas!

Is This The World's Worst-Designed Website?

Well?

Miller Time or Mecca Time: "Red Cross Bans Itself"

                                       Image via Wikipedia

Well, not quite.  For 2010, we'll have to settle for "Red Cross Bans Christmas" (UK).

Give it a few years. It's getting to the point where parody headlines write themselves. How can anyone take western society seriously when it can't stand itself?

Meanwhile, closer to home, the gals manning the Salvation Army kettle at the local Toronto Costco unfailingly wish the shoppers "happy holidays". Haven't heard a "Merry Christmas" yet. Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to favour Christian organizations willing to take a brave public stand and wish passers-by "merry Christmas".

Is it Miller Time or Mecca Time? In the U.K., it's clearly Mecca Time.

Gandalf on Mars: What Bleeping Codes Say About Intelligent Design

    Image by jasondondi. via Flickr

As yet more evidence of my meagre knowledge of all things important, I discovered a new magazine today, and I'm still on my first coffee. It's called Salvo.

In it, you'll find an excellent article, written by Richard W. Stevens (a new name to me) articulating the intelligent design argument. Here's the heart of it:

Dressed as neo-Darwinism, secular humanism, or resurgent atheism, the "scientific" contender in the worldview wars is materialism (aka naturalism). Materialism declares that the entire universe operates by physical laws of energy and matter alone. If intelligence exists at all, it has resulted from a combination of purely impersonal, undirected, purposeless material forces.

Consider the implications of this. If a Thoughtless Thing is impersonal, undirected, and purposeless, then the Thing does not know or even care about future events. Therefore, that Thoughtless Thing cannot and does not plan for future conditions. It does not foresee its own future nor the future or even the existence of any other thing.

Such a Thoughtless Thing cannot and will not create a code, let alone an encoder–decoder device. Why not? Because to encode a message now presumes the belief that the message might be decoded later—in the future. Similarly, to build a decoder device today presumes the belief that a coded message will arrive in the future. Yet a Thoughtless Thing cannot and does not imagine any future event.

No Thoughtless Thing—no impersonal, undirected, purposeless material force—can create a Gandalf system. Neo-Darwinism's mechanisms, undirected mutation and natural selection, are Thoughtless Things. Therefore, neo-Darwinism's mechanisms cannot create a Gandalf system.

So, had you guys already heard of Salvo, or are we on this learning-curve together? While you ponder that, I'm off for my second coffee.

[name and link corrected]

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I Find Myself (Mostly) Agreeing With An Anti-ID Guy

                                          Image via Wikipedia

“The problem is that the cosmology in Genesis does not resemble what we know about the origins of the world.... If you believe that the world was created by God in six days because the Bible says so, then you must also believe that the Israelites saw God’s hand, because the Bible says so, and that Moses spoke to God face to face, because the Bible says so, and that God’s feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, because the Bible says so, and so on.... Sanctity is not an excuse for stupidity.” -- Leon Wieseltier, 2005, quoted here.

I had to whittle down the comment to pull it off, but, having done so, I agree with what this anti-ID guy says. The valid point he makes is this: the Bible must be interpreted. Not all statements ought to be understood as historic or scientific or literal.

Examples? The parables of Jesus convey profound truths, but they need not have been the recounting of historical events. The sun rising in the east and setting in the west is true in an anthropic sense, but not in a scientific sense. God's hand, face, arm, etc. convey truth about the deity, but are not literally true, at least, not true in the materialistic sense which is just about the only way we are able to think of hands, faces, and arms.

There is no need for the cosmology in Genesis to be entirely scientifically or historically or literally true in order to be true, and indeed, to communicate indispensable truths about God and the human condition. The literalness of Genesis depends on both the communicative intents of the Author/author(s) of these accounts, and the way in which these accounts would have been understood by their original hearers. As 21st century persons, we are "listening in" on an ancient communication that did and still does communicate vitally relevant and true information to humankind.

God created. Man fell. God promised a Saviour. The Saviour Came. There's a new world coming.

It's our move.™

Miller Time or Mecca Time: Austrian Yodelling

 

You've heard of the offence of driving while drinking? How about yodelling while mowing?

An Austrian court has recently fined a citizen for yodeling while mowing his lawn, according to a report in The Kronen Zeitung newspaper.

Unfortunately for Helmut G., his neighbors were in the middle of a prayer when he started to yodel. The Kronen Zeitung reported that he was fined 800 Euros after judges ruled that he could have tried to offend his neighbors and ridicule their belief.

Helmut G. clarified that “It was not my intention to imitate or insult them. I simply started to yodel a few tunes because I was in such a good mood.”

Miller Time or Mecca Time? In Austria, it's Mecca Time.

The western impulse to appease Islam knows no bounds. It's getting ridiculous. And 800 Euros is not chump change.

Enjoy the video.

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I Am The Eggman

         Image by dullhunk via Flickr

I am the Eggman.

Eggman is now getting by with a little help from his friends.

Goo goo goo joob.

Is Belief In God Natural and Intuitive?

 Image by jimforest via Flickr

There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of the divinity. This we take to be beyond controversy. To prevent anyone from taking refuge in the pretense of ignorance, God himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majesty. Ever renewing its memory, he repeatedly sheds fresh drops.” As Calvin further explained, “from the beginning of the world there has been no region, no city, in short, no household, that could do without religion, there lies in this a tacit confession of a sense of deity inscribed in the hearts of all. -- John Calvin, quoted by Albert Mohler, here.

Calvin may have pressed his point too far when he speaks of "no household", but the point is well taken nonetheless. If what he claims is so, then belief in God may sufficiently rest on intuitive sense alone, and the philosopher Plantinga is right when he claims that belief is "properly basic".  The apostle Paul does not lament that people do not reach a knowledge of God through insufficient empirical evidence, but the opposite -- that people willfully suppress the knowledge of God, a knowledge which is evident from the creation, and, perhaps, as an indwelling intuition.

And We Mock The U.S.' Healthcare?

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Suffering headaches, vomiting and imbalance, Suresh Kapur was diagnosed with bleeding on the brain when he showed up at a Toronto-area hospital, then given an “urgent” follow-up appointment with a neurosurgeon — three days later.

“The system is in serious trouble,” he said. “I was recently back in Buffalo and all the doctors who had seen me, all talked about this case and they all said, ‘How can this happen?’ ”

Thank God for the U.S.A.

Story here.

"The Problem of Evil" Illustrated: Voicemail

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The problem of evil is considered the most serious objection to belief in the existence of God.

Anyone who has been subjected to the humiliation of voicemail knows the reality of evil; evil exists, and voice mail is its poster-boy, and I want to know the name of the guy behind it.

Tried to call Sears and ask about a vacuum cleaner. How complicated can that be?

1. First call. Have to listen to an "ad" about men's and women's robes; nice try, but, it's not what I'm calling about; then invited to listen to a list of departments. Small appliances are not listed. Go through list again and select major appliances. Connect to major appliances. Get put on hold. Followed by line disconnect.

2. Second call. Go through the same process but at an opportune point I deke them out and dial 0. Am connected with a human being! Ask for small appliances. Get transferred to "Bed and Bath" and am asked to hold. I hold. Being put on hold is voice mail purgatory. Memo to self: maybe the Catholics are on to something. I speak to second person who tells me I have the wrong location and need extension 220. Rather than get patched over, which usually results in limbo-hold followed by dial tone, I say I'll call back.

3. Third call. Listen to the voice ad for the third time. Men's and women's robes are still on for half price! Key in extension 220. Get connected to a voice mail message which asks me to leave a message, followed by second message informing me that messages cannot be left at this time. I try this again and get connected to a voice mail message which asks me to leave a message, followed by second message informing me that messages cannot be left at this time I press 0. I press 0. I press 0. Get the operator again and explain my plight. She offers to page them!  I, Ball Bounces, have caused a page announcement to be broadcast throughout Sears. A frisson of excitement courses through my body!

4. After a suitable wait to allow me to cool down, operator informs me salespeople are all busy with other customers, and I should leave my name and number so they can call me back.

I do and, 15 minutes later, they do.

The Sears vac we want isn't available in Canada.

And that's the way the voicemailed Ball bounces.

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Snowman Murdered: Should the Perp Be Iced?

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

A snowman was murdered in cold, er, ice by an uncaring Illinois bus driver. The snowman was standing on the road, minding his own business, not doing much, when the bus driver plowed right into him.

What makes this act especially egregious is the fact that the snowman, unlike humans who are the product of nothing more than mindless, uncaring processes, was loved. Unlike us, he was desired. He existed in the mind of his creators before he was brought into being. And, if three round lumps of snow atop each other mean anything, he was (gasp) intelligently designed.

Arguably, if love and creation confer value on their objects, he has more value than a human being.

What makes us so special that we have rights and snowmen don't?  Aren't we all just part of seamless nature, the dance of molecules in motion? As a creation of evolution's finest mindless outcome, doesn't the snowman himself stand atop the evolutionary mount? Where's Ignatieff and the party of the Charter and inclusion and equality rights when we need him? If this had been a cross-dressing snowman, would it have made any difference?

The perp has either been fired or quit his job.  But is this enough? Should be iced?

And that's the way the Ball bounces.

A further thought: The perp should argue he was engaged in an existential act of performance art; not only would he be lauded by the contemporary art world for his brave statement, he could probably get some federal grant monies.

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Mohler Monday: "Materialism can’t answer the big questions"

"Materialism just can’t answer the big questions" -- Albert Mohler, here.

me:

Materialism is reductionist. It reduces man to a mere random arrangement of molecules. You can never get to authentic human existence, with our hopes, dreams,  spiritual longings, moral aspirations, creativity, etc., from a materialistic starting point. And yet, most scientists are supposedly materialists. Materialists redefine and refine themselves out of existence.

Materialism proves scientists don't exist.

"Evolution and Religious Faith" - Five Views

                                         Image via Wikipedia

NPR had a Forum on “Evolution and Religious Faith” back in 2005.  Five views were presented. Albert Mohler provides a snippet of each person's contribution:


An Evangelical Baptist View, R. Albert Mohler, Jr.The Christian doctrine of creation sets the stage for a comprehensive Christian view of life and human dignity. Without the doctrine of creation, Christianity is only one more artifact of an evolutionary process. The Christian affirmation represents the most significant intellectual challenge to evolutionary naturalism.
A Jewish View, Rabbi Bradley HirschfieldThe increasingly nasty debate between believers in Darwinian evolution and advocates for intelligent design theory hinges on the fact that most creationists relate to evolutionists as if they have no soul, and most evolutionists relate to the creationists as if they have no brain.An Episcopal View, Katherine Jefferts Schon
I simply find it a rejection of the goodness of God’s gifts to say that all of this evidence is to be refused because it does not seem to accord with a literal reading of one of the stories in Genesis. Making any kind of faith decision is based on accumulating the best evidence one can find — what one’s senses and reason indicate, what the rest of the community has believed over time, and what the community judges most accurate today.
A Catholic View, George Sim JohnsonThe Church has had no problem with evolutionary theory or the idea that the first humans had biological antecedents — so long as divine causality is not kept out of the big picture. The pope added that there had to have been an “ontological leap” from any presumed ancestor to homo sapiens. In other words, we are not simply trousered apes — something you can verify by trying to explain the Superbowl to the smartest chimpanzee.
A Muslim View, Sulayman NyangMuslims embrace much of the scientific argument about human origins, but not all. We part company with secular fundamentalists on an important issue: Muslims do not take a Promethean view of man and his activities on Earth, that is, the perception that man is the measure of all things.


Each person's contribution is about a page in length. I read each one and rank them as follows:


1. Catholic
2. Evangelical
3. Jewish 
4. Episcopal
5. Muslim

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Mohler Monday: "Most of those who urge a reconciliation of evolution and the Christian faith do so at the most superficial level"

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Most of those who urge a reconciliation of evolution and the Christian faith do so at the most superficial level, without ever acknowledging the near-total transformation of Christian theology that must result if serious minds ask the serious questions and do the serious work of actually thinking seriously. -- Albert Mohler, 2010, here.

 

Mocking Palin

Cover of C.S. Lewis

A voice from the left mocks Palin for reading "children's author" C.S. Lewis, here.

Could be wrong, but, didn't C. S. Lewis write some other things besides children's books??!!

(I've been to his pub in Oxford -- mighty fine.)

Update: For a good post on this, including what C.S. Lewis has written besides "children's books", try He doesn't know Jack (powerlineblog.com).

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Sunday Quote of the Day: "We find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways"

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“In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.” -- Augustine, quoted here.

We are told this quote concerns his interpretation of the book of Genesis. If so, it surely applies equally to uncritical proponents of darwinian evolution and biblical fundamentalism.

The Christian Darwinist in Three Easy Steps

                                    Image via Wikipedia

1. The Christian believes that God created man.

2. The Darwinist on the other hand believes that man created God.

3. The Christian Darwinist on the other other hand believes that God created man who created God.

Or, as Denyse O'Leary puts it:

So man created God, but no, God created man. Or God created man with the capacity of accidentally evolv[ing] an idea of God as an illusion. Why? Because he couldn’t reveal himself?

Or, as I try to explain it:

My meagre understanding of the Christian Darwinist (i.e., the theistic evolutionist) is that he believes

a) that life appeared entirely via the mechanism of evolution without any gaps requiring divine assistance, and

b) evolution appears to be random from a scientific point of view, but, since God is sovereign, what appears random to us is actually the unfolding of a process established by God at work.

So, he’s comfy with the darwinist who insists on random evolution, but does not himself equate randomness with directionlessness. It's like the Christian darwinist overlays the randomness of evolution with the sovereign providence of God. So, design is real, but not detectable.

What gets me is the allergic reaction of a theistic evolutionist to the ID assertion that, no, the design is in fact detectable via the inductive methods of science. Horrors!

And the beat goes on...

Does "Science" Deny The Humanity of the Unborn?

               Cover via Amazon

It does when it comes from the National Center for Science Education's Program and Policy Director Josh Rosenau. Evolution News and Views' Michael Egnor writes:

... Rosenau has made disturbing arguments in favor of abortion. On his personal blog Thoughts from Kansas, Rosenau, who has been a doctoral candidate in evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas, asserted that children in the womb were nearly indistinguishable from... cancer.

* * * 

The Program Director of National Center for Science Education crudely provides this vital bit of education: Darwinism is a deeply anti-human ideology, and it has consequences. Acceptance of the worldview that human beings are animals evolved by a struggle of the fittest naturally tends to the denial of full humanity for the weak, and ultimately to the dissolution of the bonds of love and of family and of simple decency. The most dangerous place in America, without rival, is in a mother's womb.

Philosophical darwinism is indeed a universal acid. Except, it doesn't eat away falsehood; it eats away the soul.

Related: Abortion is often referred to as "terminating the pregnancy", a shift away from "terminating the fetus", and still further away from "killing the unborn child". That "terminating the pregnancy" is euphemistic and dishonest becomes clear when it comes to selectively killing a twin to serve the parent's or parents' wishes to have only one child. It is not the pregnancy that is being terminated; it is  the fetus. This is becoming commonplace, and has a name, "reducing".

“I’m absolutely sure I did the right thing,” she said. “I had read some online forums, people were speaking of grieving, feeling a sense of loss. I didn’t feel any of that. Not that I’m a cruel, bitter person ... I just didn’t feel I would be able to care for (twins) in a way that I wanted to.” [emphasis mine]

We usually associate evil with secrecy -- hiding the theft, the murder, the infanticide, etc.; it's disturbing to see it openly and freely expressed in a public forum. May God have mercy on us.

The Roman Catholic Church and Evolution: “An unguided evolutionary process cannot exist.”

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.

Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.

In an unfortunate new twist on this old controversy, neo-Darwinists recently have sought to portray our new pope, Benedict XVI, as a satisfied evolutionist. They have quoted a sentence about common ancestry from a 2004 document of the International Theological Commission, pointed out that Benedict was at the time head of the commission, and concluded that the Catholic Church has no problem with the notion of “evolution” as used by mainstream biologists - that is, synonymous with neo-Darwinism.

The commission’s document, however, reaffirms the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church about the reality of design in nature. Commenting on the widespread abuse of John Paul’s 1996 letter on evolution, the commission cautions that “the letter cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe.”

Furthermore, according to the commission, “An unguided evolutionary process - one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence - simply cannot exist.” -- quoted by Albert Mohler, here.

A good point. God may have created entirely via natural processes he authored, or via natural processes supplemented with active intervention, to produce designs which bring him glory and which are, via intelligent design theory, scientifically detectable. And this is what the leading intelligent design theorists such as Michael Behe and William Dembski (rabid blog-defenders of ID notwithstanding), actually teach.

The irreducible minimum issue is not whether God actively intervened in natural processes, but whether nature is nothing more than uncreated blind, purposeless, reductionist "mechanisms" that are nevertheless a sufficient cause to create biological complexity, consciousness, moral sense, sublime human aspirations, authentic love, etc. Common sense ridicules this notion, and ID offers scientific evidence which would disprove it.

ID is merely the scientific nail in the darwinian coffin which reasonable people rightly and reasonably reject by common sense alone.

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Quote of the Day: "Not even God can direct an “undirected” process"

                               Image via Wikipedia

When English speakers use the word “evolution” they usually mean neo-Darwinian evolution which means that all the adaptive complexity you see is the result of random genetic mutation acted on by natural selection and they mean that as an impersonal and purposeless process. But when they say “random,” that’s not just some mathematical term that’s perfectly compatible with a view of God’s providence. They mean “purposeless” and that’s the problem. Not even God can direct an “undirected” process. -- Jay Richards, quoted here.

Life is not the result of chaotic randomness. Evolution is algorithmic. There is (apparently) random variation within algorithmic constraints. The emergence of life is like a game board in which there are constraints and rules. Within the constraints and rules there is a degree of algorithmic randomness. And there is lots of room within this context for sovereign action by the game board designer as he pleases. The game of life is designed.