Francis Schaeffer on Punk Rock

"Why does human life have any value at all?  Not only are you going to die individually, but the whole human race is going to die.  Someday the world will grow too hot or cold and all you people will not only be individually dead, but the whole conscious life on this world will be dead and nobody will see the birds fly.  As you know, I don't speak academically, shut off in a scholastic cubicle.  I have lots of young people come to us from the end of the earth.  And they have gone to the end of this logically.  They realize what the situation is.  They can't find any meaning to life.  It's the meaning of the words "punk rock".  I must say that on the basis of what they're being taught in schools, that the final reality is only this material thing - they're not wrong; they're right."

- Francis Schaeffer

Why and for Whom do we clap?

An incredible video snippet from David Gallo's TED talk "underwater astonishments", one of the top 10 most viewed TED talks of all time.

A simple question: Why did it end in spontaneous applause?  For Whom were these people clapping?  The octopus?  Gallo?  I think not.  Then for Whom? SomeOne else.

Romans 1.20.

Psalm 23 a Modern Secularized Version

We will have no shepherd, and yet we shall not want …

By getting a competitive and marketable degree I have postured myself to lie down in the green pastures.

By attaining a certain socio-economic status I am able to reside beside the still waters,

I maintaining a generally law-abiding lifestyle I walk on the paths of practicing random acts of kindness from time to time for the sake of a tolerant coexistence,

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death with the help of my therapist I will fear no evil; my expansive healthcare benefits and the technical advances of medical researchers comfort me.

Thanks to modern biology, nutritional science, and economics – I have prepared a table for myself and my elected officials wield our military might to keep our enemies as far away as possible.

I’m able to take advantage of the convergence of Madison Avenue and Wallstreet so that my head is anointed with this season’s latest fashionable accessories, and inasmuch as I’m able to be savvy and tap into their lifegiving streams - my cup runneth over.

Surely material abundance and the right to make my own personal choices about truth and reality shall follow me all the days of my life and then afterward I will dwell in the house of bliss forever according to the details of my own preferred religion’s happy ending – unless of course there is no life after death in which case, I won’t.

On "Givenness" ...

"I've tended to use 'givenness' in reflecting upon the given order that God has placed in creation, but creation also has a 'gift-quality' about it.  It's very existence doesn't need to be.
When I was in Sunday School as a kid, the first theological definition I can remember receiving was 'grace is unmerited favor'.  And we usually think of grace as coming after our sin, and yet the existence of all creation is an unmerited favor.  We didn't have to wait to sin to receive God's unmerited favor.
When we receive a great gift, we're delighted in the gift, but we're also delighted in the generosity of the Giver.  And so it is with the reception of a powerful work of art.
When I hear a thoughtful and attentive performance of a carefully crafted piece of music or when I watch a masterfully constructed film, I often have a sense of gratitude, not just to the performers or composer or director - but a gratitude to God as well; gratitude to live in a world where such joys are possible.
The gratitude that is felt by recipients of a gift typically resonates with the delight that is known by the Giver of the gift.  And that is a pattern built into creation."

- Ken Myers

Thoughts on the Nye / Ham Debate ...

I did a lot of sighing.  Of course, I am grateful for Ken Ham, his gifts and faithful ministry ... but anyone familiar with Greg Bahnsen or any Reformed debater downstream from him was sighing along with me.  [*disclaimer: because I was also watching my children, I missed 10-20% of the debate, but most of it was from the Q&A at the end.]

Don't get me wrong.  It wasn't like watching the Super bowl all over again.  It was by no means a landslide victory for Nye.  But I think it's safe to say that, in boxing terms, this one went to a decision.  And as they say, the first rule of winning is, never let it go to a decision; never give it to the judges.

Here are 2 lessons I took away from the debate.

1. Doctrine Matters.

The fact that Ham is not self-consciously Reformed was a major handicap for his position.  Presuppositional apologetics is king.  Resistance is futile.  The debate is never really the debate. The resolution always teeters precariously on top of a whole pile of assumptions and underlying presuppositions which have to be aggressively challenged.  Don't argue details the whole time.  Touch on them.  But spend the bulk of your time deeper.  It's like championship ping-pong.  You have to back several steps away from the table to really get that spin and speed to win.  You'll miss the bigger picture if you're not at least a few steps back.
Bill Nye debated for an hour with a Kentucky fossil rock sitting on top of his podium.  He was locked into the debate on the myopic level of details, individual proofs, and datum.  But as the holocaust, Margaret Sanger's eugenics, and Columbine have taught us, the most compelling problems with evolution are found on a worldview level.  It's not the rattle that concerns me so much as the dripping fangs I found attached to the head on the other end when I traced the connection.
And while we're at it, does your worldview account for the laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, the possibility of scientific advancement, not to mention the possibility of human morality, dignity, the reliability of empirical data, the existence of mind, human thought, and inquiry, etc.?  No.  As a matter of fact, your worldview directly undermines these things.

Please Speak Directly Into the Microphone ...

" ... there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference. . . . We are machines for propagating DNA . . . . It is every living object’s sole reason for being.” 

-Richard Dawkins  [compilation by William Lane Craig]

[photo: freerepublic.com - sorry, I couldn't resist posting the picture, especially when the quote was about man's chief end being to propogate his DNA ... ]

Genesis Debate, part 4 [conclusion]

HIM: B...I have not heard of that - it was my impression that many unbelieving scholars believed it to be a type of origin myth.

1 or 2 arguments:

1) I already mentioned the common 7 day literary convention in ANE literature (see Davis, "Bible, Rocks and Time")

2) The 6th day seemed to have an awful lot of things take place on it for it to be a 24 hour day

3) The 7th day clearly is not 24 hour day, unless I am greatly mistaken when I read Hebrews; if the 7th isn't, why the other 6?

As far as "Satan enticing Christians"...I'm sure the folks over at The Association for Biblical Astronomy, who still hold to an earth that neither rotates daily NOR revolves annually around the sun "because the Bible says SO!", would make the same accusations against YOU! And how would YOU go about assuring them they were wrong, I wonder? Would you go to Scripture, and say "look, this language is phenomological"? I bet their response would be something like this: "nobody thought it was phenomological UNTIL godless scientists told us that the earth spins daily and revolves around the sun, and then Christians compromised their belief in an inerrant Word of God by re-interpreting those verses!! You are letting Satan entice you away from plainly believing what you have plainly read in the Bible! The serpent is near, asking, 'Yea, hath God said?' " Something to think about, isn't it?

I think I'm getting tired of the FB exchange. When and where ya wanna do lunch? We can spar over it more then.

ME: A - that's it? All the activities of day 6 could have been done well before sunset, because - something neither of us can relate to - this took place before the invention of paperwork & cubicles; Heb 4 is moot w/ regard to our debate. I was looking for more ... oh well, back to the lab ;?).

I was also hoping our comment stream would reach 100, but alas, we're just short [finally petered out at 98]. Let me end by affirming my love and gratitude to my brother, A - and offering him the last word [his response - a short restatement of his initial post - was lost ... sorry!] ... and by asking if anyone else is even still reading and has found our exchange interesting and/or helpful ...?

Thanks, Pastor B, for stirring the Pot. Love and prayers to you, your family, and church.

Genesis Debate, part 3

ME: Well, I guess that in the same way you affirm “**creation in 6 days**” I affirm “**your position**”.

‘Mountains of evidence’… was that a pun? ;?) How big do you think the mounts of opposing ev were in Galileo’s day?

So is the debate: ‘my int.... of Gen’ vs Nature OR Genesis vs Your interpretation of nature? IMHO it’s too high a view of “science” – having spent countless hours renewing our minds via Discovery Channel HD, we’ll not doubt 1 jot or tittle of this month’s National Geographic. I’d blame your high school education, but … ;?)  [we went to the same High School]

Of the “2 books of God’s revelation” – Scripture and Nature [only 1 of which is actually a “book”] - which one is more clear? When they seem to conflict, which do we bend to fit? Which is subject to revision? Which involves more interpretation [ie. Which is harder to “read”?]? I’m telling you that Genesis is not compatible w/ these “scientific” interpretations. The text itself does not allow it.

The question is [cover your ears kids] epistemological. As one said: in Scripture, what is the opposite of “faith”? The knee-jerk Reformed answer is “works”, but that is not it … it’s SIGHT.

A, I really appreciate your candor, bro. ... I’ll reciprocate – no, I don’t read much science. But the question isn’t scientific, it’s literary. What was Moses saying? What did Israel believe? What did the Apostles teach? IMO, that’s the bottom line – take it or leave it.

HIM: B...Mountains of evidence! HA! I made a funny, and didn't even realize it! : D

I think you are well aware that there are many conservative evangelical, even Reformed, OT scholars who don't seem to have a problem understanding Genesis ...1 in such a way that it doesn't require 6 24-hour days. Ben, have you considered the fact that much ANE literature utilized a 7-day structure, which was clearly a literary device never intended to convey literal 24 days? Is it absolutely outside the realm of possibility that Moses could have used a literary convention such as this, one that his original audience (the Israelites) would have appreciated, even if we don't?

As I've tried to emphasize before, the truth discovered in God's creation will never contradict the truth in Scripture. With that much I think we agree. However, our interpretations of both creation and Scripture are fallible. You're convinced that I'm interpreting creation incorrectly (although you admit that you don't really understand the "story" that creation is telling, because you haven't read much in the area), and I'm convinced that you're interpreting Scripture wrongly. Can I humbly suggest that before you get locked in to that position, that you invest in "Bible, Rocks and Time" or another book providing the multiple lines of evidence behind the age of the earth? To me it just seems like the intellectually fair thing to do. When we get together for lunch, I'll even lend one to you.

You make jokes about putting too much stock in science shows, magazines, etc. The implication is that you think scientists are somehow more "fallible" than Bible interpreters. I beg to differ! C'mon, Ben, you've gone from being Arminian to Reformed, and from credobapist to paedobaptist (and perhaps you've changed your views in other ways too). Are you seriously trying to suggest that there aren't a lot of fallible interpretations held by fallible brethren in Christ?? On the other hand, in the scientific community NOBODY affirms a 10,000 year old earth, EXCEPT the handful of people who are bound to a specific interpretation of Genesis; and they don't really have credible scientific evidence to bring against an old earth...just an unwavering faith that this interpretation of Genesis 1 is the only conceivable interpretation. Don't you find that even a little bit troubling? Just a wee bit?

B, would you admit that there have certainly been times in the past when the commonly held beliefs of the day (which were engrained in minds because of what people THOUGHT was supported from Scripture) have been RIGHTLY discarded mainly due to new light that scientific discoveries shed? If you admit it, please remember that history tends to repeat itself.

ME: A - because you are a gentleman, brother in Christ, and buddy - I would certainly be willing to reconsider your position. Let me ask this: what do you think are the 1 or 2 strongest arguments WITHIN THE TEXT ITSELF for a loose reading/interpretation?

@ N [per A's comment] No N, actually Satan is involved a lot earlier on in the process, enticing Christians away from the practice of plainly believing what they have plainly read in the Bible from its first pages.

"Yea, hath... God said? ... Oh ... yeah, He did. But He didn't actually mean THAT, did He?"

The Disadvantages of Modern Civilization

“To build his pyramid Cheops packed some pounds of rice into the stomachs of innumerable Egyptians and Israelites. We today would pack some pounds of coal inside steam boilers to do the same thing, and this might be cited as an instance of the superiority of modern civilization over ancient brute force. But when referred to the sun, our true standard of reference, the comparison is naught, because to produce these few pounds of coal required a thousand times more solar energy than to produce the few pounds of rice. We are simply taking advantage of an accidental circumstance.

It took Cheops twenty years to build his pyramid, but if he had had a lot of Trustees, contractors, and newspaper reporters to worry him, he might not have finished it by that time. The advantages of modern engineering are in many ways over balanced by the disadvantages of modern civilization.”

-Washington Roebling, chief engineer of the brooklyn bridge

Who are You? 2 Views ...

In the Darwinist worldview, you are the descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three and a half billion years ago. You are the blind and arbitrary product of time, chance, and natural forces. You are a mere grab-bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system in an empty corner of a universe. You are a purely biological entity, different only in degree but not in kind from a microbe, virus, or amoeba. You have no essence beyond your body, and at death you will cease to exist entirely. In short you come from nothing and are going to nowhere.  

By contrast, in the Christian worldview, you are the special creation of a good and all-powerful God. You are created in His image; with capacities to think, feel, and worship that set you above all other life forms. You differ from the animals not simply in degree but in kind. Not only is your kind unique, but you are unique among you kind. Your Creator loves you so much and so intensely desires you companionship and affection that he has a perfect plan for you life. In addition God gave the life of His only son that you might spend eternity with Him. If you are willing to accept his gift of salvation, you can become a child of God.

- Randy Alcorn

[photo: desiringgod.org]

What about Galileo?

I once got a chance to meet and ask Ken Ham about the story of Galileo, science, and the Church.  His response really set me back on my heels.  He said that when Church officials refused to hear Galileo’s case – they were really only doing so because Church doctrine had been established by both Biblical language AND THE ‘SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS’ of the day. The scientists of his day were originally opposed to Galileo along w/ the clergy. It’s actually most analogous to mainstream/liberal ministers shunning intelligent design or young-earth scientists today.

Genesis Debate, part 2

ME: So, when Scripture is read, should we wait for the lab results before saying the 'Amen'? Dave's point stands - if theology is subject to scientific consensus then what else is up for grabs? What stops us IN PRINCIPLE? Isn't it THE slippery slope that marks the point of departure, historically, from orthodoxy into liberalism?

A - love you, brother, but 'proven'? When scientists claim to have "proven" fossil aging in the billions of years in the same way that - say - they did the polio vaccine, a certain cynicism is in order. On the contrary, God's Word is sure. Its clear points are to be clearly and plainly believed.
@ Galileo - I asked for chapters - because that's what we have for creation. And their CLEAR point is 6-day creation, while the metaphorical "sun rising / setting" is incidental. There is no honest comparison.

A - hope to get together again soon, maybe in DC?

Pastor B, as 1 Peter commands, preach as the oracle of God, not the oracle of God**.

Let God be true and every man a liar [white lab coat notwithstanding].

HIM: B- you can still say the "Amen" whether the days are meant to be literal or figurative, because the message of Scripture is that GOD created the universe! The same way that 400 years ago, the congregation could say the "Amen" to the "...geocentric" verses before "the observatory results" were in, because the message is NOT geocentrism OR heliocentrism.

Genesis Debate, part 1

Here is an old online debate I had with a dear friend on our reading of Genesis 1-11.  Enjoy!

HIS THESIS:  Science proves that the earth is billions of years old and this is compatible with the teachings of early Genesis. 

MY THESIS: The earth is only thousands of years old and any honest reading of Genesis demands this view.

ME: A - your position can be summed up in w/ the words: square peg; round hole; hammer not included.

Here’s a big clue: something interesting to note - Unbelieving scholarship uniformely confirms … without blinking … the simple reading - without the pressure of having to actually make the account seem believable, … like the insecure, affection-starved girl mistaking lust for love, we confuse honest exegesis for sophisticated interpretations.

Can you give me the one or two strongest reasons WITHIN THE TEXT ITSELF for a “loose interpretation”?

HIM: B! Good to hear from you! I remember talking about this before with you : D It seems you haven't changed your mind on the age of the earth, but you have changed your mind on baptism! Your wisdom is now suspect... HAHAHA (kidding) : D"

No doubt similar arguments were made during Galileo's time...

Discovery Channel Worldview

This week the Discovery Channel is launching a new show called "Curiosity".  It is purported to be a five year deal to explore the most tantalizing and provocative questions of science and technology.  The first episode, hosted by Stephen Hawking, is entitled, "Did God create the Universe?"  With all these things in the air, I found myself unable to ward off the parody demons.  To the tune of 'Jesus Loves Me'. 

Darwin loves me this I know

Stephen Hawking tells me so
Say goodbye to right and wrong
all the weak to feed the strong

Chorus:…

Self adapters will survive
and the fittest stay alive
Progress Darwin’s all about
Till our bright, hot sun burns out

Chorus: …

Nature red in tooth and claw
Is life’s only certain law
Thankfully for Stephen’s sake
We still often that law break.

Chorus: ...
 
Once again, I can't resist quoting the close of Steven Turner's Creed:
 
If chance be the Father of all flesh,

disaster is his rainbow in the sky,
and when you hear
State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting!
Bomb Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man worshiping his maker.

The Other George Grant

“Perhaps we are lacking the recognition that our response to the whole world should not most deeply be that of doing, . . . but that of wondering or marveling at what is, being amazed or astonished by it, or perhaps best, in a discarded English usage, admiring it.”

- George Parkin Grant

BLINDSPOTS 101

"The most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making."

-Douglas Adams

The Hollow Sciences

"The questions that human beings still want to ask, science has no answers for by definition- by deliberate design.  It refuses to take up those questions.  It has said, 'That's for the Theology department or Philosophers.'  When it comes to the question of purpose or what is human flourishing.  It can show you how to fix a bone but how one should live one's life is not a question that science is going to answer."

- Dr. Leon Kass

Presuppositional Apologetics: Monty Python-Style

Presuppositional apololgetics always engages in an "internal critique" of an unbeliever's worldview to show its inherent, destructive self-contradiction... you must show the unbeliever where his presuppositions lead: to epistemological futility.

-Greg Bahnsen, Pushing the Antithesis

Alan Keyes on Morality and Pulic Life

Without faith, without a sense of God in this universe, there is no ground for either decent human freedom or the determinations of right and wrong. Science can tell us what happens – it can tell us causes, materially, that makes things happens. But it cannot tell us whether what happened is right or wrong – whether it accords with the principle of good. That is something that we have to get from our experience as human beings who stand before the Principle of our existence – that is God Almighty. And learn from Him and from His Presence in our hearts and in our history what constitutes justice and what constitutes the true basis for right and wrong.

-Alan Keyes on Generations w/ Kevin Swanson

Another Flew Shot

“Schroeder first referred to an experiment conducted by the British National Council of Arts. A computer was placed in a cage with six monkeys. After one month of hammering away at it (as well as using it as a bathroom!), the monkeys produced fifty typed pages—but not a single word. Schroeder noted that this was the case even though the shortest word in the English language is one letter (a or I). A is a word only if there is a space on either side of it. If we take it that the keyboard has thirty characters (the twenty-six letters and other symbols), then the likelihood of getting a one-letter word is 30 times 30 times 30, which is 27,000. The likelihood of a getting a one-letter word is one chance out of 27,000.

“Schroeder then applied the probabilities to the sonnet analogy. ‘What’s the chance of getting a Shakespearean sonnet?’ he asked. He continued: ‘All the sonnets are the same length. They’re by definition fourteen lines long. I picked the one I knew the opening line for, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” I counted the number of letters; there are 488 letters in that sonnet. What’s the likelihood of hammering away and getting 488 letters in the exact sequence as in “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?”? What you end up with is 26 multiplied by itself 488 times – or 26 to the 488th power. Or, in other words, in base 10, 10 to the 690th.

“Now the number of particles in the universe – not grains of sand, I’m talking about protons, electrons, and neutrons – is 10 to the 80th. Ten to the 80th is 1 with 80 zeros after it. Ten to the 690th is 1 with 690 zeros after it. There are not enough particles in the universe to write down the trials; you’d be off by a factor of 10 to the 600th. If you took the entire universe and converted it to computer chips – forget the monkeys – each one weighing a millionth of a gram and had each computer chip able to spin out 488 trials at, say, a million times a second; if you turn the entire universe into these microcomputer chips and these chips were spinning a million times a second [producing] random letters, the number of trials you would get since the beginning of time would be 10 to the 90th trials. It would be off again by a factor of 10 to the 600th. You will never get a sonnet by chance. The universe would have to be 10 to the 600th times larger. Yet the world just thinks the monkeys can do it every time.’

“After hearing Schroeder’s presentation, I told him that he had very satisfactorily and decisively established that the ‘monkey theorem’ was a load of rubbish, and that it was particularly good to do it with just a sonnet; the theorem is sometimes proposed using the works of Shakespeare or a single play, such as Hamlet. If the theorem won’t work for a single sonnet, then of course it’s simply absurd to suggest that the more elaborate feat of the origin of life could have been achieved by chance.”

- Anthony Flew,

There is A God – How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind