Evangelicals Condemn Torture

The Washington Post has an article describing the National Association of Evangelicals’ condemnation of torture. Richard Cizik is one of the co-authors of this piece, and I really appreciate the ways he has tried to broaden the “evangelical” agenda to include things like this and the environment. But, I still wonder what good proclamations like this do. Sometimes, it seems that our churches still feel like we’re in a “Constantinian” sort of setting where the government listens to our moral proclamations. Of course, perhaps it doesn’t matter if they listen as long as we present an authentic Christian witness.

One Tick at a Time

Today I’m working on Sunday’s sermon. I came across a new resource by Leonard Sweet called Wikiletics, an open source resource for illustrations (or animations as Sweet calls them), sermons, and images. As I read through some of the illustrations for this week, one in particular caught my eye.

Once upon a time, a clock became preoccupied with worry about its
future. It began thinking about the number of times it would have to tick: twice each second, 120 times per minute, 7200 times an hour, 172,800 times a day, 63,072,000 times a year. When it realized that in the next 10 years it would have to tick 630,720,000 times, it had a nervous breakdown. The clock went to the watchmaker for therapy. While under the watchmaker’s care, the clock began to realize that all it needed to do was to tick one tick at a time.

Soon it began to tick again, and it continued ticking, one tick at a
time, for one hundred years.

I’m only about two years into my life as a pastor, and I already look into the future and think about the never ending stream of sermons that I’ll write over the years. If each sermon is roughly two pages single spaced and I only write 45 a year for 30 years, then that is 2,700 pages of material! Watch out Augustine. From that perspective, it is easy to be overwhelmed. That’s why I needed to know about that clock, taking it one tick at a time.

Christian Objections to Intelligent Design

Francis Collins, one of our leading geneticists and the longtime head of the Human Genome Project, has a new book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. The book gives an interesting account of Collins’ journey to the Christian faith and is an exploration of his thoughts on the interaction between faith and science. He doesn’t offer any revolutionary insights, but does talk about many interesting topics in a manner that is very accessible for the novice who is interested in this field.

One thing Collins describes is very helpful. Many people have asked me why a scientist who is a Christian would ever be opposed to intelligent design, and I haven’t been able to give a concise answer to that question. Collins offers a very helpful chapter on just that, and I’ll summarize some of his points below. All of this information is summarized from Collins’ book (pp. 181-195).

Intelligent design (ID), in its current form, is about 15 years old. It appeared in 1991 when Phillip Johnson, a Christian lawyer at UC Berkeley, published Darwin on Trial which first laid out the position. Michael Behe, a biochemist, introduced the idea of irreducible complexity (a key to the ID position) in the book Darwin’s Black Box.

ID has roughly three propositions

Evolution promotes an atheistic worldview and therefore must be resisted by believers in God.
Evolution is fundamentally flawed, since it cannot account for the intricate complexity of nature (e.g. bacterial flagellum, the blood coagulation complex, and the process of vision in the eye).
If evolution cannot explain irreducible complexity, then there must have been an intelligent designer involved somehow, who stepped in to provide the necessary components during the course of evolution.

Collins admits these objections appear compelling, but goes on to present scientific objections to ID. First, he suggests ID fails to even qualify as a scientific theory. Theories not only make sense of experimental observations, but look forward as well. ID simply cannot suggest further experimental verification. “Outside the development of a time machine, verification of the ID theory seems profoundly unlikely.”

Second, “ID theory does not provide a mechanism by which the postulated supernatural intervention would give rise to complexity.” Further damaging ID theory is the recent development in cell and molecular biology whereby irreducible complexity is being shown not to be reducible after all. Collins suggests ID proponents have confused the unknown with the unknowable. For instance, the human blood clotting cascade (which I had the privelege of working on during my graduate studies) is slowing becoming understood as a system that has developed incrementally over time.

“So,” Collins concludes, “ID fails to hold up, providing neither an opportunity for experimental validation nor a robust foundation for its primary claim of irreducible complexity.” For Collins, ID is slowing being revealed to be a complicated “God of Gaps” approach where God is ascribed to various natural phenomena that the science of the day is unable to sort out. Futhermore, he believes that ID,

“portrays the Almighty as a clumsy Creator, having to intervene at regular intervals to fix the inadequacies of His own initial plan for generating the complexity of life. For a believer who stands in awe of the almost unimaginable intelligence and creative genius of God, this is a very unsatisfactory image (p. 194).”

Collins closes this chapter with admiration for the sincerity and faith of those who endorse and advance intelligent design. He also admits to undertsanding ID as a reaction of those who have faced outspoken evolutionists who portray evolutionary theory as demanding atheism. He then closes the chapter with these words, “To the believer and the scientist alike, I say there is a clear, compelling, and intellectually satisfying solution to this search for truth (p. 195).” In the following chapter, Collins lays out his understanding of science and faith in harmony – a synthesis known in many circles as Theistic Evolution. Perhaps I’ll outline that on another day. What do you think of Collins’ response to ID?

John Wesley’s Doppleganger

John Wesley Have you heard the news? They are making a film about John Wesley’s life. The good news is they’ve found an actor that bears an uncanny resemblance to John. The bad news is that this actor is Paul Reubens of PeeWee Herman fame. Ok, ok…I’m joking! But seriously, have you ever noticed the uncanny resemblance between the two? If Paul can do an English accent, I think we’re well on the way to seeing the ocean passage to Georgia on the big screen!

John Wesley’s Doppleganger

A 17 Month Old Looks at the World

Ever wonder what the world looks like to an 17 month old boy? Wonder no more! For Christmas, my daughter got a digital camera. A few weeks back, little brother got his hands on it and took a few “pictures.”

Caleb and Emma 2007 005

Caleb and Emma 2007 001

This sort of makes me think of our theology. We get a glimpse of God, but it’s sort of like a picture taken by a 17 mo. old. The view is a little off-kilter, the lighting is weird, and the tools we use are not the best quality. But it’s still interesting!

Borg & Crossan’s Understanding of Truth

I’ve been reading Marcus J. Borg & John Dominic Crossan’s book Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem. For those of you who know me, you may find this very surprising considering the things I’ve had to say about these two over the years. In some ways, I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Their description of Mark’s gospel and Jesus’s confrontation with the domination system of Rome is excellent and well worth reading. However, as I entered the final chapter on Easter, I was very intrigued by their understanding of history and truth.

So one should not think of history as “true” and parable as “fiction” (and therefore not nearly as important). Only since the Enlightenment of the seventeenth century have many people thought this way, for in the Enlightenment Western culture began to identify truth with “factuality.” Indeed, this identification is one of the central characteristics of modern Western culture.

…but parable, independently of historical factuality can be profoundly true. Indeed, it may be that the most important truths can be expressed only in parable (p. 194).

These statements come in the description of Jesus’ resurrection as a parable. They hesitate to say whether or not the event of Jesus’ resurrection is historically factual, but from other statements I would highly doubt they would hold to this.

Now, I understand a relational account of epistemology and truth. As a former scientist of sorts, I can appreciate the idea that knowledge and truth are more than cold hard facts isolated in a test tube. In fact, I even feel that I operate in a fairly postmodern paradigm in this regard.

However, I still have enough modern rationalist left inside to hold the questions I asked in an earlier post on truth. So again I ask, would you go to a physician who held the same view of truth as Borg and Crossan? “I’m sorry ma’am, but frankly, truth is more than connection with factuality, and I don’t ‘feel’ like you have cancer in spite of what the tests show. You’re free to go home!” Am I saying you can verify the resurrection scientifically? No, but I really don’t believe you can dismiss its historical reality and still believe it’s “true.”

Addendum: OK, I think I know one of the things that bothers me about Borg and Crossan. It seems that they have been influenced by the notion that certain things outside the realm of our modern rational understanding cannot occur in a literal sense (i.e. resurrection). So they start out of modernity, then shift into a postmodern conception of truth in order to somehow cling to the Christian doctrine of resurrection. Modern skepticism leading to postmodern acceptance on other grounds. It seems that if they were operating more consistently out of a postmodern paradigm, they would not deny the resurrection in the first place. They want to speak relevantly, it seems, to a modern world that cannot accept things like miracles, resurrection, etc., yet use a postmodern paradigm to speak to that world about the “reality” of resurrection. It seems like they want to have their epistemological cake and eat it too.

Borg & Crossan’s Understanding of Truth

So one should not think of history as “true” and parable as “fiction” (and therefore not nearly as important). Only since the Enlightenment of the seventeenth century have many people thought this way, for in the Enlightenment Western culture began to identify truth with “factuality.” Indeed, this identification is one of the central characteristics of modern Western culture.

…but parable, independently of historical factuality can be profoundly true. Indeed, it may be that the most important truths can be expressed only in parable (p. 194).

The Purple Cheetahs

So my soccer team is official. We’re the Cheetahs, and we will wear lavender and purple uniforms. I’m positive that I’m far more excited about this process than my daughter, but isn’t that the way things are supposed to be? She’s just happy we’re wearing purple, although her first choice, pink, was already taken by one of the other 5 year old teams!

Update: Huge shift – turns out we had a uniform mix-up, and now the girls will be green & peach. I don’t know if I can take any more of this! 😛

Into the Heart of Darkness: AKA Children’s Soccer

Just this morning, my wife called looking into a local soccer league for our four year old daughter. Not long ago, I found that I am a newly minted soccer coach, holding the athletic futures of five 4 & 5 year old girls in my hands. We live in a part of Oklahoma where soccer takes a backseat to T-ball and Little League, so I’ve never coached, played, or really even watched soccer. Fortunately, this must be common because there is a new coach training where we figure out the ins and outs of the game. So, for the next few weeks I’ll be trading my theology books and commentaries for “Beginning Soccer,” “Psychodynamics of Soccer-Moms,” and “Winning Strategies for Four Year Old Girls Soccer!”

Now for the hard part, what will we name our team? Based on the demographics, I have jokingly suggested My Little Soccer Ponies. Of course our colors will be pink and purple. All kidding aside, we go to sign paperwork, pick out uniforms, and get our player list tomorrow. I’m actually very excited.