Well, Fletcher did it. With 50% of the vote to his main opponent’s 37% (Source: CQPolitics.com) he became the Republican nominee. I find it interesting that Bush’s approval rating is lower than Fletcher’s (38%), and Fletcher was indicted while in office. Yes, I know there’s the unpopular war in Iraq, but then one also [...]
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Note: My wife Jody doesn’t post here often. This is from her. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief. On April 29, 2007, a young man made the decision to go out and drink and then get behind the wheel of his SUV and drive. He died. His name was Josh Hancock, a Major League baseball pitcher with the St. Louis Cardinals. Today, his father has filed a wrongful death suit against the restaurant franchise where his son had spent some time that evening drinking, the driver of the stalled car, and the owner of the tow truck company. A statement from Dean Hancock states: “The facts and circumstances associated with the death of my son, Josh Hancock, have caused great pain to all of Josh’s family. On May 18, 2007, I was appointed the Administrator of Josh’s estate by the Chancellor of the Lee County, Mississippi Chancery Court. As the Administrator of Josh’s estate, I have a duty to represent Josh’s family regarding all of the issues related to his death and the overall administration of his estate, including any legal actions necessary against those who contributed to the untimely and unnecessary death of my son at the age of 29. As Josh’s father, I have this same duty. Unfortunately, my duties involve pursuing legal actions against those businesses and individuals who contributed to the death of Josh.” (Source: MLB.COM) The death of a child is no doubt a parent’s worse nightmare. I believe it is a nightmare that neither Hollywood nor the most vivid imagination can create. The pain brings you not just to your knees but into the very pit of hell. Whether that child’s death is due to disease, an accident, war, or the intentional actions of someone else, a parent will find themselves screaming in disbelief and pain. In the days that follow it is important, even vital, to find somewhere to put blame which is part of the equation that will bring reason to an un-reasonable event. My youngest son, James, died two years and eight months ago. My oldest son, John, is a professional baseball player. Do I sympathize with Mr. Hancock? Yes. Do I empathize with Mr. Hancock? Yes. Do I agree with what he is doing? No. His actions are going to take enormous amounts energy and time. His actions are going to cause a great deal of pain to others and not relieve the excruciating pain that is ripping through his family nor is it going to heal his family. Time is the simple but difficult element that is going to bring healing. Finding a constructive way to remember their son and reach out to others is healthy and brings new life into the hole that was once occupied by the one that you loved more than your own life. What a voice of truth would be heard loud and clear to encourage other players, and boys who look at these players as role models, not to drink and drive! C.S. Lewis was wrong about a key point. I don’t have to live each endless day in grief. I live each day with the grief that James and I are separated for now. I can live – and so will James. Here is a link to one of the ways that our family found to remember and reach out: John Webb Winter Golf Tournament. My Christianity Today Connection news e-mail connected me to an article in Today’s Christian Woman titled The Goddess Unmasked. It’s a Christian response to Wicca, looking at reasons why women who have grown up Christian become Wiccans, and discusses ministry to them. It’s not my intention to discuss the issue of responses to various religions or specifically to Wicca here. This article caught my attention due to the topic, and it kept my attention because of the reasons, as summarized in this quote: What lies behind the allure of goddess worship and its sister religion, witchcraft/Wicca? For many—especially those women who feel marginalized or devalued by what they perceive as the traditional, male-dominated church—its appeal is found in its affirmation of female spirituality. It is very common in my experience that people who change religions from the faith in which they were brought up do so more because of the way they were treated than because they have been convinced that their old religion was false and the new one true. I’m going to guess that it is easier to recruit new converts amongst those who are loosely attached to their own faith or have been separated from it in some way, and that is usually going to be the result of a relationship problem of some sort, not just family, but community. They may well become convinced of the tenets of the new religion, but that wasn’t the starting point. I don’t mean here to call converts dishonest. I’m sure they are, in general, following their consciences. I also apply this same principle both to converts to and from Christianity or any other faith. I see a tragedy in this story in that so much of the church can be seen as male dominated. In some groups I know of, single women with children have been warned that if they don’t get married, and have a male in the home covering them, they are leaving the door open to Satan’s attacks, since they are not following the God-ordained plan for the home. That plan, according to these folks, is that a woman is always under the authority of some man. We give some lip service in many churches to the idea that God encompasses both genders, and thus is no more “male” than “female.” That is a good theological view, but try referring to God as “she,” even in many churches who would accept women as pastors, and the reaction will be negative. Using “parent” instead of “father” in reference to God is even controversial. I greatly appreciate Andrew Greeley’s mixture of gender language in his novels, which I regard as excellent presentations of the gospel in the form of fiction. But for many, referring to God as heavenly mother is just too jarring. On the other hand we can just as easily put down feminine spirituality in a condescending way, by talking about women being more spiritual because of emotional responses. “Isn’t it nice that the women are praying and crying at the altar,” someone says, with the obvious implication that such prayer is women’s work. This cuts both ways, by the implication that being male says you can’t have emotions, and that all women are totally subject to theirs. How about both men and women can be spiritual people, but they may be differently spiritual. Not less or more, but different. Just how different and in what way? That’s not my problem. All I need to do is follow my own spiritual walk and avoid criticizing that of others. If our concern is to keep people in our community of faith, the best approach, it seems to me, is to get about fulfilling spiritual needs. People who are put on the fringes, subjected to an amused tolerance, or even suppressed are likely to look for a place where those things don’t happen. Shocking, isn’t it? It seems that the probability arguments related to creationism don’t change much at the core, they just get more complex and verbose. The old “747 from a hurricane in a junk yard” argument just gets reformatted and reused about different things. Ed Brayton has a response to DaveScot that is so good I need [...] Does this strike anyone else as odd? Fletcher’s political recovery has been little short of remarkable. A year ago, he was under indictment on three misdemeanor charges of rigging state hiring to favor loyalists. He declined to speak to a grand jury, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and issued a blanket [...] I got my ears pinned back (very politely) in a comment by Mary on my previous post on this topic, and the commenter made such good points I think it is appropriate to promote her comment there to a post so more people will see it. You’ve asked some interesting questions about UC’s admissions policies. Most of them can be answered by a close read of the UC admissions web pages. The UC campuses have many more well qualified applicants than can possibly be accommodated. Anywhere from a third to half must be rejected, and it is only fair to give preference to students who can demonstrate that they are most likely to succeed. There are several ways for students to demonstrate that they are qualified. Very high test scores are one, special exemption is another, and there are other ways for transfer and nontraditional students to get in, but the easiest path for freshmen is to get good grades in a UC-approved core curriculum in high school. UC takes the approval process very seriously: it examines the textbook, the syllabus, any supplemental materials, sample lesson plans, and so on, to determine that each approved class actually teaches the material UC wants its incoming freshmen to know, at a college-prep level, accurately and completely. Students who have not demonstrated that they know this core material (because they didn’t bother to take the approved courses, or because they were home schooled) can still get in using the other pathways, although students relying on test scores alone must have higher test scores than students whose grades also demonstrate that they actually learned something in high school. One could argue that this arrangement is unfair to home schooled students, but as you pointed out, the quality of home schooling is hugely variable, and UC has no way to tell which parents have provided a good education. It is important for a university to have a student body with diverse interests and backgrounds, but it benefits neither UC nor the students themselves to accept unqualified students. In principle and in effect, UC’s requirements are no different from an employer giving preference to a job applicant who presents evidence of actual relevant job experience over one who scores well on an aptitude test, but doesn’t present evidence of relevant job experience. UC has no intention of closing its alternative paths to admissions, and Calvary Chapel’s students can use them even if they haven’t taken the proper coursework, just like any other applicant. Alternatively, a Calvary Chapel student can sign up for the appropriate number and kinds of UC-approved courses (the school has sufficient approved courses to offer students some choice while still fulfilling the requirements). What Calvary Chapel and its students can’t do is substitute unapproved Bible Study classes for the required science, history, and other academic classes, and expect a world-class secular university to go along with it. One has to wonder at the sheer hubris that leads them to file this lawsuit. Let me add a starting link to UC’s freshman admission policies. I have no way of knowing how these are actually applied myself, but the process described by Mary seems very rational to me. Specific answers to the process for home schooled applications start here. Pastor Tom Sims has a good short note on Christians and money, titles Spelling M-O-N-E-Y Biblically. Money is a tough topic for Christians. We tend either to go overboard on prosperity theology or be afraid of prosperity lest it destroy us spiritually. Tom’s thoughts may provide some guidance. It’s been a few days since this was front and center, triggered by the presentation of an expert report by Dr. Michael Behe, but I wanted to write a few notes about the issue of admissions at UC and homeschooling. There’s an article ACSI v. Stearns, aka Wendell Bird vs. UC on Panda’s Thumb [...] Intelligent Design advocates are trying to make us believe that their struggle is primarily about academic freedom, about allowing a new idea to get the examination it deserves, and about ensuring that people are not persecuted for their beliefs. Similar arguments are used from the high school level on up, with the phrase “teach the controversy” setting the tone. People attuned to fair play like the sound of “teach the controversy.” It sounds like a fine idea–whenever it’s done in somebody else’s sandbox. Recently a firestorm has arisen in the blogosphere over the decision at Iowa State University to deny tenure to Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez. You can find some of the controversy via the following links: Tenure Statistics Contradict Iowa State’s Claim that “many good researchers have failed to satisfy the demands of earning tenure” at ISU I don’t have any new revelations from the Gonzalez case. The arguments over the facts surrounding it are going full steam around the various blogs involved. I want to think just a bit about academic freedom, priorities, and how serious we are about them. You see, I don’t think the ID people put a high priority on academic freedom as such. What they put a high priority on is freedom specifically for their point of view. That is not actually all that uncommon. Most of us get hostile about attacks on freedom of speech when the person speaking does not support our particular point of view. When we despise them, it’s much harder. This isn’t a left or right phenomenon. When I see footage of a KKK demonstration, at some level I’d really like to see their mouths forcibly shut and have them hauled off the streets. I feel even more strongly about the Westboro Baptist people (not to be associated with any other variety of Baptist), who protest at funerals. But I have a stronger belief in freedom of speech. I think that in the long run we are worse off if I get to cart the people who anger me at the most basic level off to jail. For me, freedom of speech is more important. The ACLU is frequently criticized for supporting free speech for people who are despicable, but their finest work, in my opinion, is done when they are under attack from the right and the left. They stand up and demand freedom for people that they themselves despise. There are some similarities in academic freedom. I see this from a slightly different perspective because I was homeschooled, and then completed both undergraduate and graduate work at private schools (Walla Walla College and Andrews University respectively). These are Seventh-day Adventist institutions, and are not only conservative, but in the area of origins are (or at least were) generally young earth. I started as a young earther myself with a view of Biblical inspiration that was compatible with inerrancy. During my studies I came to reject both inerrancy and young earth creationism. But that wasn’t where I got into trouble. My studies had nothing to do with that. Where I got into some difficulty was in the area of comparative literature. Just what of the Biblical text is original, and what might have its source, either literarily or in terms of ideas, in other ancient near eastern literature? When it came time to write my thesis, it turned out that due to timing, we could find two, but not three professors who were open to my research subject. I am a controversy avoider, so my adviser and I did a count, we demoted my thesis to “project” and I took four more hours of classwork, completing a non-thesis MA. Now there’s no reason to sympathize with me here. The university was private, religious, and I was writing a thesis in Biblical studies. I took the path of least resistance and took my degree. But just beyond the edges of my path of least resistance I knew there was the fact that academics are not entirely free. Should academics be entirely free? That depends on what one means by freedom, and the range over which the problem is discussed. In discussing freedom of speech, I argue that speech should be almost entirely free. I accept obvious exceptions such as incitement. But there are those who will argue that one’s speech cannot be free unless one is provided a platform. I see that differently. I don’t have to provide a platform to everyone, no matter what they have to say. They can provide their own platform. I believe that applies even more in academic freedom. For some people, academic freedom means that no matter what a person teaches, no matter how bizarre, no matter how untested, they should have a university platform from which to say it. Now they don’t usually make such a broad claim. What happens in fact is that when my favorite idea is not given the hearing that I think it deserves, I yell “academic freedom.” But academic ideas are not created equal. Professors are not equal. In general those in academia approve of standards of some type. They just want those standards to let them in and keep others out. But I don’t see academic freedom threatened by one wrong decision on tenure at one university. (Note that I am not calling the decision on Gonzalez at ISU wrong. Let’s call this a hypothetical wrong decision.) First, there are numerous universities. Other people who are denied tenure go find themselves more fertile ground. Students then examine various universities and decide where they want to get their education. A pattern of wrong decisions on tenure would be destructive of any academic program in the long term. Good decisions will tend to make a strong department. DIs blog has just such a suggestion. Intelligent Design activists could try to model the type of behavior they advocate by creating departments at their various religious schools and seminaries that include “Darwinists” and atheists, and of course Christians of various other denominations to “teach the controversy” in all of their various departments. I think Baptist schools should have Methodist professors to “teach the controversy” about baptism by immersion. Certainly, Richard Dawkins should be a regularly invited speaker for programs at seminaries to “teach the controversy” over the existence of God. You may think I’m joking. I truly believe that Christian education could do with a huge dose of the academic freedom that is now advocated for public and/or secular institutions. I’ve carried out such projects in Sunday School classes and small groups. I recommend Bible study with commentaries from traditions that get on your nerves. Anything that will tend to prevent inbreeding. At the same time there need to be boundaries. Another popular definition of academic freedom is freedom from criticism. The inverse of that is the definition of any criticism whatsoever as “persecution.” Scientific ideas need to be tested and challenged. Amongst the questions that should be raised are whether the idea itself is a scientific idea that generates explanations and new questions that can be objectively studied and tested. Few people would argue that an astronomy department should grant tenure to someone who believes that the earth is flat, or that the sun revolves around the earth, or that the earth is the center of the universe. Few would argue that a chemistry department should invite an alchemist to teach or grant him tenure. Where one draws the line is going to be difficult. Most importantly, however, different departments are going to draw that line in different places, and thus we will get to see how things work. It may be sad for people refused tenure who might have deserved it, though I suspect if someone truly deserved tenure and was refused, they will find an institution to grant it. It may be sad for the students who study at the university that makes a series of poor decisions. But those students also have a choice of where to study. But in the end, the fact that we have a very large academic community in many institutions under many different organizations will tend to bring things out to better conclusions. The ID community is itself proving how free ideas are through their ability to keep the waters stirred in public discourse even while they claim academic persecution. If rejected by all of academia, one can, as a last resort, write popular books. And there is where I think the real failure of the ID community lies thus far. They are more anxious to play the PR war than to demonstrate their ideas. I personally don’t think they will ever be able to do so. I think their ideas are philosophical and religious despite their claims. But the one way to push the scientific community into seeing their work as science is to work on their formulations to provide testable material and then get into the lab or the field and test those predictions. If the existing publications won’t publish, publish those articles yourself. Build a substantial body of research literature that demonstrates your claim that you’re being frozen out. I don’t think you can, but that’s the proper way to gain acceptance for a scientific idea, and it’s the proper response to skepticism. Joe Carter has an excellent post looking at the Christian standards on drinking. What does one do with the behavior of Jesus, who did drink? Would Jesus be acceptable as a pastor or elder in our churches or as a faculty member in our seminaries? I am a member of a United Methodist congregation, [...] |
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