I was actually planning to work on it starting in about an hour, but I just got a service call that’s likely to take a couple of hours. I am really still planning to do this, so be patient!
Author: henry
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If You Want to Pray, then Pray!
I worked with a pastor a few years ago who was frequently called up to counsel and pray with other pastors and church leaders. I won’t go into the reasons. In general, he was a bit impatient with talking about the problems, and just wanted to get praying. Normally he’d get a couple of the folks who worked with him to join in praying for the person, and I was often one of those.
I used to enjoy watching him, because you could tell as the conversation went on that he was getting less and less interested in hearing about the problems. Suddenly he’d break in and say, “Why don’t we just pray about it?” Now whatever you think about the balance between receiving good counsel and having someone pray for you, you can tell from his actions that this pastor was really focused on prayer. Prayer was what was important to him. When prayer is important to you you pray.
I was reminded of this as I read this post which tells about some reaction to the settlement in Odessa. Now that issue was about teaching Bible in public schools. Personally, as I have said before, I think we would be better off without specific Bible classes in public schools largely because of the difficulty with prescribing a good curriculum and finding qualified teachers. I think the Bible belongs in public schools, but it should come up appropriately in literature, social studies, history, and even music classes. But it is constitutional to have a Bible class.
Yet when we get into court things get tangled. That’s because the NCBCPS curriculum that many schools are using is not very good and is quite sectarian (read a report by a professor at Perkins School of Theology). It’s interdenominational only in the sense that a number of very conservative denominations would find it acceptable. It doesn’t deal with a broad range of academic issues, and certainly doesn’t handle interfaith issues properly.
Now if you really wanted to teach a Bible class, it would likely be easier to find or design a curriculum that would pass constitutional muster (there already is one that’s quite good). Then you go ahead and have your Bible class. People like me can object and suggest this is better done at home and at one’s place of worship as part of religious education, but there’s really nothing I can do to stop it.
On the other hand if you want to make trouble, and get publicity waging some kind of culture war, well, you choose a curriculum that is likely to be challenged, and you use that.
Similarly with prayer in public schools, if you want your children to pray, they can. There are a number of legal ways to do this, while not disrupting the classroom. You can’t have government mandated prayers, or prayers led by school officials. But if you want to pray, you can quite easily work it out and go ahead and pray. One key element here would be teaching your children to pray so that they could do so without needing an adult to make it happen.
On the other hand if you want to fuss about praying, and try to make points in the culture war, you find a place where you can’t pray, and you do it there. On the other hand, administrators who would like to make points might just order you not to pray, or not to include religious references in art, or might try to make a music teacher eliminate sacred music from the repertoire. In that case they are making trouble instead of doing their job. Of course, in many cases it’s just ignorance, but the law is not that hard to follow. You can get pamphlets that will cover easily more than 90% of the questions that might arise.
I’m beginning to believe more and more that the vast majority of these cases arise from a combination of stupidity and the desire to fight, and not from the desire to pray or study the Bible.
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Handing School Administration to the Courts
In a previous post I mentioned that the proposed Academic Chaos Bill here in Florida was cowardly in that it created a very confused situation which others would have to navigate. The Florida house analysis of the bill says much the same thing:
Finally, if a principal, the district school superintendent, or the school board determine that the information a teacher is presenting is not objective, relevant, or scientific, then the administration must prove its case prior to any action against a teacher. This may result in case-by-case determinations which, based on the propensities of the science teachers in the district, may prove frequent and challenging. This bill will affect costs of administering the science curriculum and, although indeterminate, may increase litigation expenses for the school district. (page 4, source: here, hat tip: Florida Citizens for Science Blog)
With this clear analysis provided to the legislators, there is every reason that any who vote in favor should be made to regret their decision. They have chosen a few political points over the good of the children of Florida, and if they are not stopped, will have put a great burden on teachers, principles, and administrators throughout the state.
Hopefully, since the house voted out an amended version, this thing can be killed at least for this session.
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More on the Original Text
I’m not going to link to every post in Tim’s series, but he has just posted his first substantive one, and I’d like to note a couple of things and then quote part of one paragraph.
If you read his first post you will know that Tim is planning to make an argument for the reliability of the original text of the New Testament. Now depending on just what he means by “original” that could vary from difficult to impossible. In fact, he has taken on a difficult, but in my view not impossible task because he understands the nature of the task.
Responding to a claim that it is futile to try to reconstruct the first century text, he says:
. . . Most assertions, scientific, theological, or otherwise, are hypotheses, attempting to explain as much of the evidence as possible. One theme we will come back to again and again is that possibility is not the same as probability. That a hypothesis exists at all is not an argument in favor of its viability. That a hypothesis cannot be proven 100% true by reason or evidence does not mean that it can’t be maintained with a reasonable degree of certainty.
That is absolutely correct, and something that needs to be said repeatedly. People are constantly asking for absolute certainty in historical matters, and it cannot be provided. The only way we could be completely certain about the original text of the New Testament would be to actually have the autographs. Then we could compare what we have to them. As it is, we will always be dealing with probabilities.
But we must resist the temptation to assume that a probability is the equivalent of the absence of knowledge. We live with probabilities every day. Right now I’m using my computer even though I know there’s a 30% chance of thunderstorms. I’m generally protected, but in our worst storms I will shut the system down. I’m quite functional even though I don’t have absolute certainty.
With that, I look back at the earlier part of Tim’s post. My only problem here is not with the data, which he summarizes quite well, but with the context. I think it is very difficult for laypeople to understand the meaning of these manuscript numbers. They sound impressive, but what do they mean? That requires some context in terms of how many manuscripts we normally have for ancient documents (many less), and just what one can do with manuscripts.
Herewith a quibble. Manuscripts are weighed, not counted, and that can mentally skew these numbers. Those approximately 5,500 mss are not all of equal weight. At the same time they do have some weight, which it is easy to forget when one is busy weighing fragmentary papyri and key early manuscripts.
In any case, I’m enjoying reading Tim’s series, and look forward to continuing. I have also demonstrated my verbosity, having written at least as many words commenting on Tim’s post as he put into it. It is unlikely, however, that at half a century I will change that much!
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Defending the Originals
Keep an eye on if i were a bell, i’d ring for more on this. He just attended a conference and has those intellectual juices flowing.
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Notes on Scot McKnight – Teaching the Bible to Emerging Generations
Gavin has his rather useful sounding notes here. There are many aspects of postmodernism, especially as it looks when it gets to where I live, but there’s also a great deal of good in it. This is some of the good.
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Threads Comment Policy
I was going to update it to emphasize comment moderation, but I see I already did that. The key point to note here is that I use comment moderation with as careful of filtering as I can. Inevitably it catches legitimate comments and puts them in the moderation queue. Since I work in front of my computer normally at least 10 hours a day, moderation is usually very fast. I do sleep at night, however, so it takes a bit longer!
The bottom line on my comment policy is that if you’re talking about the subject, it’s hard to get deleted. But if you can’t insult me without constant use of the f-word, your comments won’t be kept here. Polished insults are acceptable, and often even get me to laugh.
I’m copying the policy here, with some emphasis added:
I have resisted posting a comments policy, because I pretty much allow any comment except for obvious spam and things that would be illegal. I dont delete comments for criticizing me or my positions.
Recently, however, I have had an influx of spam, and posters should be aware that I have added a substantial number of terms to my moderation list. This means that inevitably some comments will be held for moderation. I will get to them as soon as I can. Thus far, the vast majority of legitimate comments are still getting through.
Other than eliminating the spam, I do intend to keep an open comment and trackback policy, which is simple. I will remove any spam comments, any comments which are illegal or advocate illegal activities, any comments which are likely to get me sued, and any comments that threaten the family nature of this blog. In the last category I include posts that use excessive profanity, excessive being my subjective judgment. That does mean that comments can be insulting and quite annoying, but I prefer to keep the discussion out in the open where I can. On the other hand, abusive posters need to learn how to insult without resorting to profanity to any substantial degree.
The only comments I have removed thus far have been spam. I do, however, reserve the right to interpret my rules according to my own subjective judgment.
You can read it again here at its normal location.
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XVIVO Claims Copyright Violation in Expelled!
As has been previously reported by a number of bloggers, XVIVO believes that Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed has infringed on their copyright by using portions of their video The Inner Life of a Cell.
In a letter demanding that this material be removed prior to the movie’s release, and threatening legal action if it is not, David Bolinsky, XVIVO LLC partner and medical director, said:
It has come to our intention that Premise Media and Rampant Films has produced a film entitled Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which is scheduled for commercial release and distribution on April 18, 2008. To our knowledge, this film includes a segment depicting biological cellular activity that was copied by computer-generated means from a video entitled The Inner Life of a Cell. XVIVO holds the copyright to all the models, processes, and depictions in this video, and has not authorized Premise Media or Rampant Films to make any use of this material.
It looks like there is enough copying just in the promotional material that XVIVO believes it has grounds for this action.
It is just too ironic that a movie produced to tell us about the moral problems of atheism and “Darwinism” includes plagiarized material. Just amazing.
Stay tuned. Perhaps folks were expelled for plagiarism, and not for creative ideas!
Note: As I was putting in the link to the earlier article from ERV above, I note that ERV also has the full letter posted. So if you want more than my snippet go there. Come to think of it, go there anyhow. It’s a great blog.
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Science Panel in Tallahassee
And a stellar one it is. This discussion is sponsored by Florida Citizens for Science. You can find details here.
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New Poll: Who Does God Hate?