Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • The More in Space the Merrier

    It’s good to see that South Korea has joined those nations who have sent someone into space, in this case the youngest woman to do so. Congratulations! The more the merrier!

  • Hillary Clinton Should not be Blamed for This

    All my readers know by now that I prefer Barack Obama out of the available options. Now we receive the exciting news that Bill Clinton disagrees with her on free trade with Colombia. Huge surprise there, considering he pushed NAFTA through, though it’s mildly surprising that he isn’t trying to cover it all up.

    Personally I’m with Bill Clinton on this one. I favor even the slow progress of free trade, and I am unhappy with both Democratic candidates for their stand on this one. But such is life. There is no candidate I can endorse without a footnote.

    But I think it is terribly unfair if people criticize Hillary Clinton for her husband’s position on this issue. My wife and I can argue a great deal on politics, and I think we’re both better for it. Before each election we sit down together with a sample ballot and debate our intended votes. Occasionally one of us changes the other’s mind. Mostly we clarify. Sometimes we go back and do more research. But I think both our votes are more intelligent because of the process.

    Two people don’t have to agree on everything just because they are married. There may be some basis to question Hillary Clinton’s firmness on free trade, but this isn’t one of them.

  • Book Meme Driving me Insane

    A few days ago Peter Kirk tagged me with a meme. I tend not to like memes, but I thought this one would be interesting, even if it required me to annoy a few friends!

    I must confess, however, that I can’t do it. I can’t name a single book. The whole scenario drives me crazy. I’d either be locked up as insane, or I’d be out fighting the system, or something similar to that. I’m going to back out, in order to save my sanity. Just imagining a world in which I had to select just one book to keep threatens my mental balance!

    Sorry Peter!

  • Does God Hate Sinners?

    Peter Kirk reviews some comments to see if John Piper believes this. It’s a worthwhile, link-rich post. Check it out.

  • Piper: Suffering is Judicial

    This is via a summary by Adrian Warnock, but I doubt Adrian would get a whole section wrong. There are a large number of things in this message that are right on target, and a few also with which I disagree.

    But the reason I’m posting a brief response is this: As has become standard with those who accept penal substitutionary atonement (PSA), metaphor has been promoted to reality. Everything gets placed in the courtroom. If we cannot distinguish spiritual things from the worldly metaphors used to describe them, then we will always be off track.

    Let me quote Piper as summarized by Adrian Warnock:

    Suffering is Judicial
    John PiperThis is most important, most controversial, and most helpful. In verse 20 it is clear that somebody took the universe and disordered it. Someone brought painful disorder to our relationships, workplaces, etc. GOD did it. We know it must have been God because it was done in hope! There can only be two other candidates—Adam and the devil. Did Adam and Eve sin in the hope of a future new heaven and earth? They didn’t have a clue about that when they fell! Was it the devil’s design to do it in hope? No! Only God did this in hope. God judged the universe because of sin. . . .

    Now while there are even some valid points within that selection, there is also a basic error. The courtroom has been imported and made into the reality. If God allows this to happen as a consequence of sin, that is apparently not sufficient for Piper. But God is still doing it, because God is in and behind everything that is. The courtroom metaphor distorts the issue.

    Quoting further (after skipping half of a long paragraph), still from Adrian’s summary:

    The meaning of all misery in the universe is that sin is horrific. All natural evil such as floods, disease, etc. is a statement about the horror of moral evil. God looked upon sin, and he said, “Here is my response to that.” He subjected the entire creation to this. Until you see the moral outrage of sin in proper proportions, and the magnificence of God in proper proportions, that will seem to you like an over-reaction. The world will say, “That’s ridiculous! He saw one sin and he did all that?” The reason for suffering is to teach you about your heart. You don’t even get close to understanding the horror of the way you treat your wife. There is a moral scandal about falling short of God’s glory.

    Here I have to disagree again. The imaginary universe in which no natural disasters occur is just that–imaginary. Again, promotion of a metaphor (the courtroom) to reality distorts our ability to discuss the issue.

    I’m wondering if Piper and those who hold a similar view don’t also have to hold a young earth creationism position. Certainly there were natural disasters before the fall of humanity if one holds that the earth is old. The old earth creationism position would suggest physical death as a natural part of the world, not as a consequence of sin, and much of that death historically was caused by natural disasters.

  • If You Miss Expelled . . .

    … try this idea posted on The Panda’s Thumb. I’ve already declared that I won’t spend money on the film, but it’s a good idea anyhow.

  • Florida Academic Chaos Bill Advances

    The badly misnamed Academic Freedom Bill has advanced through the judiciary committee of the Florida senate. You can find an account of the event on the Florida Citizens for Science blog, and some additional commentary by Pete Dunkelberg on The Panda’s Thumb.

    Pete notes quite correctly that teachers are not prevented from presenting any scientific material in support of meeting the curriculum standards:

    But there is no scientific material that anyone has been inhibited from presenting. There is however a certain view that some people wish to pretend is scientific even while knowing it isn’t. That view is called creationism or intelligent design. If the bill is not to allow teaching creationism, it has no function or purpose.

    And that is indeed the problem. Because they don’t like the curriculum standards that were designed by a very well qualified and representative team, these folks basically want to remove any requirement that Middle and High School teachers follow the curriculum standards. In other words, anything goes. The standards do not present the teachers from teaching science. And what else is there that these people could be wanting to introduce. Could it be religion? Of course they deny this.

    I don’t believe “lying” is too strong a word for what sponsors like Senator Ronda Storms are doing to the citizens of Florida. I believe she and her supporters know full well that this bill will result in chaos and legal action. But for certain people, the hope that they will get some religious teaching into public schools somewhere is a good enough excuse.

    22 Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are his delight. — Proverbs 12:22 (KJV)

    (See how nice I am! I even quoted it from the KJV for those know-nothings who think that version is the most accurate.)

  • Of Ossuaries and Toilets

    When the James ossuary was found I initially commented that I thought it looked like a forgery. This was a rather bold statement on my part, probably excessively so. I’m not a paleographer, and I only had a newspaper photograph to work from. Nonetheless, there was enough that I could see that I seriously questioned the item, and I do read both Aramaic and Hebrew, which makes me a little more qualified than the average bear, though not by much. Unfortunately this was in preblogging days, and I don’t have a copy of my remarks from that time, made in the Compuserve Religion Form under its old software.

    Whether I was right for adequate or not at the time, nothing that has occurred since has served to convince me that I was wrong, and a number of things have been written to convince me that I was right. Now 60 minutes has a segment on the collector who brought this ossuary to light and other forgeries in which he has participated. There is no absolute proof that this particular ossuary is a forgery, but combining its own problems with a provenance of “a forger’s house,” it would seem questionable at best to give it any credence.

    A hat tip goes to Jim West for leading me to the 60 minutes article indirectly, but then I also want to link to his picture of the ossuary in situ for your viewing pleasure!

  • Dynamic Range: Breaking Bread and the Eucharist

    This post is based on Acts 2:42 and 46. In the NLT of Acts 2:42 the phrase breaking of bread, admittedly a bit less than meaningful in modern English, is translated as sharing in the Lord’s supper. The NRSV reads “breaking of bread” but a note in the New Interpreter’s Study Bible suggests “Lord’s Supper,” and the New Oxford Annotated Bible has a note suggesting “Eucharist.” (These are in the study notes, not translator’s notes. The NLT does not have a note.

    I’m questioning the validity of this translation for the time in question. We might well ask just what this activity consisted of at the time, and whether “Lord’s Supper” or “Eucharist” will suggest the right idea to modern readers. Personally, “Lord’s Supper” brings up my youth as a Seventh-day Adventist, and celebration of the Lord’s Supper which happened every quarter and was a longer church service than normal. It would be hard to fit that concept in which an activity carried out daily.

    Eucharist is even more formalized and I would suggest that what is practiced in modern churches is very different from what would have happened at this time. I’m aware this wasn’t suggested as a translation but rather as a study note, yet even so is not the modern English reader misled?

    Most likely this breaking of bread was a common meal by which Christians offered fellowship. It is unlikely that there was much ritual beyond what would be normal at a Jewish meal. The thing that was special about these meals was the offering of fellowship. I’m having a hard time replacing “breaking of bread” with something useful, but I’m thinking of one of these:

    • sharing a common meal
    • eating together as a sign of fellowship
    • commemorating Jesus and their fellowship by eating together

    Perhaps, however, the CEV has the best of it, however, with “They also broke bread . . .”

  • Unlumping the Various Creationists

    . . . or not, as the case may be.

    Almost two years ago I wrote about my difficulties with the term theistic evolutionist. (I dealt with these definitions more recently here.) My problem was, and is, that the theory of evolution I accept is not different from that accepted by non-theistic evolutionists. The theory of evolution explains a variety of natural processes and brings them together in a theoretical framework. My theism doesn’t alter anything there.

    Today Ed Brayton has elevated a discussion between himself and commenter King of Ireland about this issue to a full post. In his case it’s kind of the opposing sphere, and the question is whether it’s right to lump together a large group of people from intelligent design (ID) advocates to young earth creationists and call them all “creationists.” Would it be useful to add those who believe in guided evolution into the same crowd?

    Let’s look at this just a bit. Evolution involves a group of concepts. I’m going to list them in the order of how thoroughly established they are. Understand that I regard all of these elements as well established; I require them in an order to deal with division of the creationists below.

    1. The earth is old, about 4.5 billion years old, in fact
    2. All life on earth is related (common descent)
    3. The relatedness of all life can be substantially explained by variation and natural selection

    I call anyone who accepts all these points an evolutionist. I don’t like the “ist,” but “someone who accepts the theory of evolution” gets clumsy after a few repetitions. There are a couple of variants that should be mentioned.

    First, there is the notion of guided evolution. There is an important divide here between those who think guidance can be detected, and those who do not. The latter are still generally evolutionists, and could carry out research within the theory. Guided evolution in that sense is a philosophical view, not a scientific one as I see it. Those who believe that the guided evolution is detectable, on the other hand, step outside the theory of evolution, and should be expected to provide hypotheses and test them.

    Second, there is that group of people who expect natural causes to explain everything, but don’t think the current explanations are sufficient. They might, for example, assume that life came here from outer space, but believe it formed elsewhere under unknown conditions. Aside from noting that the actual origin of life is not part of the theory of evolution, while this is a bit perverse, it is nonetheless a natural type of explanation. Lacking evidence for or against, it is simply speculation. Again, the proponents need to get down to the hard science.

    Now for creationists. There are several key breaking points, which I list below in less logical order:

    1. The Bible provides accurate scientific information
    2. The earth is young, 6,000 to 10,000 years old (young earth creationists who deny the great age of the earth)
    3. There is a substantial barrier to variation so that new “kinds” cannot be produced (generally old earth creationists, though the point is applicable to all)
    4. God has intervened repeatedly in the history of life to produce new kinds, and this interference can be detected, or at least the need for it can be demonstrated. (I regard “it might be a space alien” as just a silly attempt to distract us from the religious nature of the claim.)

    Are there substantial differences between these views? Absolutely. The fourth option does not require one to accept that the Bible conveys accurate scientific information, nor does it expect one to deny the overwhelming evidence of the age of the earth. One might argue that it doesn’t even require one to deny common descent, as claimed by Michael Behe.

    So is it fair to group these people together as “creationists” and to exclude the people I described as evolutionists from the camp, even though they might believe in God as ultimate creator?

    There is, in fact, one huge common denominator between all of the groups of creationists: They believe that God has intervenes in the world on an ongoing basis in a way that can be detected. Generally this takes the form of claiming that certain levels of changes in organisms cannot be explained through natural means, thus requiring intervention of the intelligent designer. I’d be unsurprised if someone came by to tell me yet again that this designer need not be God, but I find that explanation so contrived that it’s hard to imagine it is being seriously presented.

    The ID proponents themselves, however, have contributed to this lumping, even though they regularly complain about it. In creating a big tent, they have brought young earth creationists, old earth creationists, and guided evolutionists into the same big tent. Then they complain if they are all called by the same label. The odd thing is that ID is a proposition that can sound good to people with such a wide variety of viewpoints. The sneaky part of it is that it manages this by failing to propose anything very substantial.

    Consider the vast differences there would be in nature if there had been a world wide flood. I can’t see how you get believers in a world wide flood under the same tent as those who propose a more local event. Actually covering the entire planet with water would leave such an indelible mark that it would be unmistakable, and no explanation of the geological record that didn’t take it into account would get anywhere. Yet supposedly both work together under ID.

    Someone might say that I have been terribly unfair, because ID says nothing related to a global flood. ID could be true, whether or not such a thing happened. And certainly ID would be true in all cases. That’s how in combines Michael Behe on the one hand and someone like Paul Nelson on the other. It doesn’t say very much.

    But what it does say is very, very powerful–to the creationist mind. It provides the one single thing that all these views have in common: God intervened repeatedly in the history of life in the world.

    All varieties of creationist agree that natural processes, whether or not one postulates they were created by God, are insufficient to explain the diversification of life on earth. ID is not merely creationism; it is distilled, bottled, and aged creationism.

    Based on this I believe it is entirely fair to refer to this entire group as creationists. They may distance themselves from one another, and it is also good to distinguish them from one another when that is signification, young earth, old earth, believer in a universal flood, and so forth.

    ID is the essence of creationism. It is creationism. It’s proponents have been careful to gather the widest variety of creationists possible under their umbrella. All we are doing in calling them creationists is going with what they, themselves have done. They’d prefer we didn’t, and that should tell us something as well. What sort of people like to disguise their identities?