No, not here, and not by me, but my Marc Wagner on the Spectrum Magazine web site. Spectrum Magazine is the journal of the Association of Adventist Forums.
The reason I want to call special attention to this review is that it reflects some of my own background. I grew up as an SDA and young earth creationist. It was not in studying skulls, but rather in studying the history of the Biblical text that I began to see some other options.
A few years ago I was discussing the behavior of a televangelist (who and the particular behavior is unimportant), when she said, “You know, if I believed in God, I’d be afraid to do that.”
Now there are certain assumptions in that statement. The God in question must be one who rewards and punishes in the afterlife, and who cares how we behave in this life. But that’s not so far off as reasonably Biblical description of God.
Thus I was interested to find the following quote in Judgment Day, the NOVA documentary on the Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial. Lauri Lebo, a journalist, is commenting on her father’s view and that of other Christians in the area.
If you believe in heaven and hell and you believe you have to be saved. Nothing else could possibly matter. Not the first amendment, not science, not rational debate. Er, all that matters is that you’re going to be rejoined with the people you love most on this Earth. (Source: Transcript part 9
Now this statement struck me, and reminded me of my particular conversation. Though I obviously have a “side” in this case–I’m very much pro-evolution–I’m not primarily interested here in the constant battles over who is more truth-challenged in these debates. I think that the school board in this case came out pretty bad from the point of view of integrity, but that’s not my major point.
My concern here is simply for the attitudes and practices that are appropriate for Christians who believe in eternal life. Is it proper to let the belief in eternal life overcome your scruples about everything else?
Lectionary texts for the last week have dealt quite a bit with the question of waiting for the coming of Jesus and what we are to do in that case. I know that many people wonder why God would not tell us precisely when Jesus was scheduled to return. I could give many answers to that, but one would have to be this: We can’t afford to know when such a thing will happen. Every time someone has convinced a large group of people that the end of the world was coming on a particular date, they lose all interest in behaving themselves in this one.
People spend a great deal of time in Revelation and related apocalyptic passages, but I would suggest we spend a little bit more time with Mark 13/Matthew 24/Luke 21, which can be summarized as saying to relax and keep right on going until it’s right there. In 2 Thessalonians 3:13, Paul gets in on the act as well, telling people not to tire of doing good.
That one line is probably the best advice to Christians in anticipating the end of the world. Just keep on behaving like you’re going to be living out your life right here. Keep on doing good!
I have encountered this attitude in academic disciplines. Why bother with scholarship, or why bother with extremely careful scholarship? The key thing is that you bring in souls. I have encountered this in daily life. Why should I put out my best effort at work? The ministry is more important. Why should I be careful with financial accountability? I’m doing God’s work.
In connection with neglecting one’s secular work, I can’t resist a story. More than 30 years ago my father was medical director of a health conditioning center. They were building a new hospital facility, a good portion of it self-help. My dad was pretty handy, and as he was able, he was out getting his hands dirty, and especially working on the electrical installation.
The facility was Christian, and there was a young man there who was supposed to be working, but who would bring his Bible, and would stop working and share things from it with other workers. Not only was he not working himself, he was disrupting everyone else. But what do you do? It’s a Christian facility, and look how holy he is! Well, my dad banned him from bringing his Bible to the site. It was quite a scandal for a few days. How could a Christian physician order a subordinate not to bring his Bible to work? But my dad stuck to his decision.
I would suggest that the right attitude is to be doubly accountable–here and for the next world. Live like you don’t get to hide anything. Be as honest as you possibly can. Carry out your work as conscientiously as you possibly can.
It isn’t a matter of putting eternity on the back burner. The Bible repeatedly commands faithfulness here. I think that means faithfulness in work, research, publication, and one’s political activities, as well as in one’s church activities. Lying, even if motivated by kingdom concerns, is not an option.
Who cares about the present? We all should.
MBWR #135 has been posted.
As I’ve been trying to do more frequently, I’m giving a few highlights from each of the carnivals and roundups I read. There is so much good in these, and of course the person who does the complete roundup can’t really rank them all that much, so I think it’s nice to link to posts that really catch my attention.
So here are my personal highlights from this week’s MBWR.
Mitch Lewis is posting on The Wrath of God in Romans 12-13. As I was blogging earlier on why I’m not a pacifist I thought I might invoke Romans 13, but never got there. Mitch has done a much more thorough job than I was planning to do. He also commented briefly on my post, though it took me until today to check out his. It’s worth checking out.
William Chaney is wondering about the accountability of prosperity preachers. I’m a pretty big fan of accountability myself. Good question!
Allan called this one from the Questing Parson “best of the Methodist blogosphere” and I agree. And the adults shouldn’t just tolerate laughing, they should tolerate a bit of running around too! So there!
Here’s a cause to get involved in. Or not.
Well, that’s enough fun for this time!
I want to warn those who expect a certain amount of conciliatory tone in my posts on doctrinal issues that I intend to speak more harshly in this post. If that offends you, try reading a different one. I don’t mean to dismiss you, but I feel the need to make some points very strongly so as not to be misunderstood. Also, for those who may not be aware, PSA stands for “penal substitutionary atonement.” I will also be speaking very much of a debate within Christianity, and I will make many assumptions that will generally be shared only by Christians.
As has happened very often recently, this post starts from a comment made or quoted by Adrian Warnock. In his recent post Mark Driscoll Preaches on the Atonement in Edinburgh, Scotland, Adrian provided a video of Mark Driscoll preaching on the atonement. Peter Kirk has responded to Mark Driscoll’s comments, and I am in agreement with what he has said about those.
I, however, am responding only to one line in Adrian’s summary of Driscoll’s comments:
- The Central ThemePenal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA)
This is the reason I have spoken out against PSA so frequently, not that PSA has no basis whatsoever in scripture (though as I study the new perspectives on Paul that basis gets smaller and smaller), but that its centrality has no basis in scripture, and in fact, does great harm to large portions of salvation history. I like Tillich’s definition of idolatry, paraphrases as “having as your ultimate concern something that is not ultimate.” I apply that doctrinally to state that making something central that is not, in fact, central will have the same effect, and will lead to idolatry.
Now before I go on, let me answer a question. Just what do I regard as central to the gospel?
I can answer that in two parts. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16, NRSV). The first central point is God’s love. God gave his son so that, if we believe (or put our trust) in him, we could live with him eternally. That’s one statement of the gospel in a nutshell. Now note that it doesn’t mention a courtroom. It doesn’t mention God’s wrath. It doesn’t mention punishment. It does not call for belief in a set of doctrines, but rather in a person. It operates from a foundation of love that results in giving–giving of the Son, and giving of eternal life.
I can inversely state this with the two laws, love for God and love for one’s neighbor (Matt. 22:34-40). The starting point for this command is loving God with the whole heart, mind, and soul. I cite the Matthean version because Matthew explicitly records Jesus as saying that the law and the prophets “hang” on these two commands, thus giving them a certain centrality. I think they are central as the opposite side of the same coin with John 3:16. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). While the two commands are central, they attach to the even more central idea that love in general starts with God. If God did not “so love,” then we would not love God, and if those two events did not happen, the full measure of love for one’s neighbor would never become a reality.
Note here that I’m not claiming that only Christians can love. God’s love is there because God is love (1 John 4:7-8). I actually think I should be able to stop there, because I think it is so abundantly clear that God’s love is more central than any theory of it, and that’s God’s love is the central point of the atonement. God loved; God gave. The courtroom is simply one way in which people have tried to express how God can carry out his love in practice and how we can understand it. But the metaphor, the attempt to understand, cannot take over the center from the reality.
How would PSA suggest we express the first commandment? Well, we have at the foundation of PSA God’s essential revulsion at human sin, and even his inability to look at it. In order for God to accept us he must look at Jesus, who is the only righteous one. Rather than God’s love, we have God’s loathing placed into focus. Even if one says he’s doing it all ultimately because he loves us, PSA puts the focus on the negative, on the complete depravity of humans and God’s inability to forgive them without killing somebody.
So how does this evoke my love for God? I am to love God with my whole heart, mind, and soul, even while he loathes me, a sinner, with everything in his being. To look at me, he has to play pretend, and look at Jesus instead.
How would this work in real life? Supposing that I inform my wife that I loathe her, that I cannot stand to look at her body, and that in order to make love to her, I must imagine her to be someone else. Would this tend to improve or to destroy our relationship? Would she enter into passion with her whole heart, knowing that I must imagine another in order to find her presence acceptable in our bed?
Yet this is essentially the “love” with which we are presented in PSA. Is it any wonder that advocates search for texts about God hating his enemies, and find the language of hatred, disgust, and loathing more appropriate than any normal language of love? We are constantly reminded that various excessive expressions are just individual views, and may be hyperbole taken out of context. But should I constantly tame the rhetoric of actual advocates of PSA in order to match up with an ideal view that is rarely expressed?
Now in a few paragraphs I’m going to spend a few moments on PSA as a metaphor, taken out of the center, but nonetheless seen as expressive of the atonement. But first, let me look at the human centered nature of PSA.
Human centered? The constant refrain is that those of us to don’t accept PSA as central are the ones who are taking God out of the center. But consider just what the most important issue in PSA is for the believer.
Let me take this through a metaphor. When I was a boy I would occasionally get in trouble, shocking as that may seem. I would be confronted by one of my parents. Now think of me as a boy standing before mother or father after I have committed some significant infraction. What is my major concern? Well, as I remember it, my major hope was to avoid punishment. Reform, relationship building, the peace of the family as a whole, and ultimate justice in the universe were nowhere in my thinking. I wanted to avoid punishment.
That is precisely the focus of PSA. With all the emphasis on human depravity, on God’s sovereignty, on universal justice, and other such concepts, at the bottom line PSA tells me that I get to avoid punishment. If PSA is the central understanding of the atonement, then that implies that the primary problem following the fall was not the damage caused by evil actions, or the devastation caused by people separation from and rebellion against God. The central problem that God faced, in this scenario, was that he just has to punish someone.
On the one hand we have helpless humans. Having committed one sin, they have become totally incapable of doing anything good, totally depraved. They are helpless. But on the other hand, we have a God who is so hopelessly out of control and helpless that he cannot manage to handle this in any way but to strike out and punish someone, anyone. So this helpless God arranges some sleight of hand, and strikes out at his son instead, so he doesn’t have to punish those helpless depraved humans.
The only thing that is solved in this view of PSA is that the people don’t have to be punished. I don’t have to be punished. Now that’s some pretty good news right there, but it is a very narcissistic set of good news. I’m filled with joy that I dodged the bullet. There is no purpose, however, other than this satisfaction of an oddly medieval sense of justice. So the problem of punishment is solved, but the nasty behavior continues, and is essentially doomed to continue.
It has always seemed odd to me that so many people of my acquaintance can find such joy in predestination, when the opposite side of that coin is that some are predestined to hell, or if we state it in a less extreme form, some simply fail of being predestined to heaven and thus default into hell. I’m sure that while burning in the fire, this doctrinal nuance will be of great comfort to them. But supposing I believe that I am predestined to heaven. What if my wife is not? You say, “Is she not a Christian?” Well, according to some Calvinists I have encountered, should she backslide, one might conclude that she never really was. Or perhaps I will backslide. Great comfort there! But for some reason nobody who currently professes belief assumes that he or she is headed for the wrong place. That seems a bit narcissistic to me, and so does PSA if made central.
Now how can PSA be read when not central? Well, first, we do not have to make it walk on all four. If it’s central, then somehow each element must fit around the core, and thus we get imbalances such as God’s loathing for sinners.
Second, we no longer have to assume that the problem referenced and solved by PSA is the central problem of the fall. Certainly, we would all see avoiding punishment as a very important point, but if that was the most important point, then surely a most powerful God could figure out a way to solve it. But there is a more central problem of sin–the damage that it does to the creatures God loves. I think the atonement addresses this problem as well, and I think that the problem of sin and its damage is more important in God’s eyes than the problem of the consequences I face for being a rebel.
Third, I am more free to bring the trinity into the equation. In some ways, PSA starts to make less sense, when we bring trinitarian theology to bear. God killing himself? God taking the penalty on himself? In other ways it begins to make more sense. One way for God to demonstrate to us both that sin is horrible, but that he is willing to forgive and redeem is to himself take on those consequences.
And those are not the only items. What I want to bring out here is that there are many theological themes that tend to blunt the nastier aspects of PSA, but those themes also tend to move PSA out of the center. As the central doctrine of the atonement I think PSA will always become a stumbling block and result in the language of pure wrath, loathing, and of a God who is truth challenged, limited, and has to pretend in order to accomplish his will.
I am not a pastor, though I took my MA in Religion (concentrating in Biblical and cognate languages) at a seminary. But for me the key issue here is first pastoral–how do I reach people. I believe Jesus gives me every license by his words and deeds to place that first. Second, the issue is Biblical, and only third do I see it as theological. (The theologically trained may blame that on the lack of theological training in my Biblical studies programs.)
My focus is illustrated by a gentleman who came to my office, referred to me by a pastor. He believed he was oppressed by the devil and by demons and I began to ask him about his relationship with Jesus and his personal trust in Him for salvation. He could recite doctrines. He was a sinner, and knew it. He knew the offer for his salvation. He could recite John 3:16. But he could not honestly say, he told me, that God so loved him.
He was a transient, and he left the area before our second appointment, so I do not know how well the seed I tried to sow grew, or if it grew at all. But for me the bottom line on a view of the good news and the atonement is this: How well does it help you look someone in the eye and say, “God loves you!”
In that task, I believe, PSA repeatedly fails.
has been posted at The Minor Prophet.
In this week’s carnival Josiah Concept Ministries both tipped me off to, and responded to, an atheist, VJACK, who is reading the Bible through and commenting. Both posts make good reading.
But the final comment in VJACK’s post is pretty interesting:
Don’t get me wrong – I’m glad that today’s Christians ignore nearly all of the laws their biblical god hands down in these three books. And yet, I remain puzzled that anyone claiming to be a Christian can ignore all of this, selectively choosing the couple parts that make them feel good while neglecting the bulk of what is actually there. This is the sort of god who is unlikely to react favorably to such neglect. If I believed in such a god, I don’t think I’d go near anything containing yeast!
It’s important to look at when, where, and how particular laws apply. That’s why I like to remind people that nobody actually keeps all the laws in scripture, nor are they supposed to. There seems to be an assumption both amongst many Christians and amongst those who are not but yet study the Bible that it must be taken as a list of commands to be obeyed. But it is embedded in both a mythology and a history, and you have to ask where in this process each thing fits.
Further, you won’t all agree even then, and that’s not necessarily bad. There are more sources of information than the Bible, as I must so often remind my fellow Christians.
Barbara at Tidbits and Treasures discusses the efficacy of official days of prayer. I would say that personally I pray about just about everything, and yet I have a hard time seeing the value of a governor calling for prayer. But Barbara makes some interesting points.
. . . has been posted at The Minor Prophet.
A couple of posts are of particular interest in Biblical studies. First, from dokeo kago grapho soi kratistos Theophilos we have Words of Amos, which is a response to comments on an earlier post on the possible Samaritan background of Stephen’s speech in Acts 7. I find the discussion interesting, though I have definitely not studied this area enough to have an intelligent comment!
Jeremy Pierce writes on dating Deuteronomy 32:26-27, asking just how well this passage fits into the normal late 7th century dating for the D source. Commenters pointed out that this is an archaic poem, probably written much earlier than the remainder of the book, and might have been well known, and thus very difficult to change. I would add that while I support the source theory for the Pentateuch, I think D needs to be dated a bit earlier than that in order to work well historically, but that’s a large topic in itself.
There’s lots of other good stuff there, but those were the major points of interest in Biblical studies–that I saw, at least.
I am doing some reading before I respond to a couple of posts, but I did want to link to some interesting stuff.
Both Mark Olson (Pseudo-polymath) and Anne (Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength) have written posts discussing justification from a perspective other than the judicial/penal substitution approach. Their posts simply confirm to me that there are many, many valid ways to talk about the sacrifice that Jesus made on our behalf, and that penal substitution is just one of those. Unlike some, I do not wish to discard it, but I also will not make it the one and only metaphor.
Adrian Warnock has posted twice, first Legalism, Racism, and the First Century Jew, to which I will respond later at some length. I find much to object to in that short post, but I’m also working through Piper’s comments in their context before I blow off steam.
The second one is 2 Corinthians 5 and Romans 5 – Two Critical Passages on Justification in which he links an article that I had linked earlier, and says:
If you are interested in seeing an example of this, there is an article by Wright on 2 Corinthians 5:21 [PDF-HN] that I must say I found wholly unconvincing.
I see a great deal of “finding unconvincing” but I see remarkably little actual exegetical argument. The primary form of argument appears to be theological. If the question is whether the new perspectives on Paul differ from prior theological statements, then we can cheerfully answer yes, and go on. But for me the question is whether the new perspective gets us closer to correctly understanding Paul and what he has to say.
One of the keys here is to understand the paradigm shift that several interpreters have taken. If you do not accept that paradigm shift, you are likely not to accept Wright’s specific exegesis of 2 Corinthians 5:21. That is not surprising, since he is dealing with that verse in the context of that new paradigm. (I am not overly fond of “paradigm shift,” as a term, or at least I don’t think I am, but it seems to me that the new perspectives on Paul do justify that term.)
Peter Kirk blogged on this same topic, and brings up a number of points. I have to say that anyone who implies that Augustine was a theological pygmy is likely to get my favorable attention! But more importantly, Peter points to one side issue, and that is the way in which (some?) reformed theology can make God look like he is a bit veracity-challenged, and can’t truly tell whether people are righteous or not.
Meanwhile, the view that I am working towards is a rejection of the Reformed idea that Christians remain sinners in actual fact but are nevertheless, by a legal fiction, counted as righteous in Christ. Instead of this, the picture I have, based on various biblical passages such as Ephesians 4:22-24, is that the Christian consists of two separate persons or personalities: the old self (in some versions old man, but to be understood of course in a gender generic sense) born by natural birth who is a sinner, guilty, condemned to death and destined to die; and the new self born of the Spirit and into Christ, who is righteous, holy, free from condemnation, will not die, and indeed is already living eternal life in Gods kingdom. . . .
Just so. Like Peter, I continue to be in flux on some of these issues. There are boundary lines that I’m fairly certain of, but others I’m studying a great deal, but Peter’s paragraph is one of those that strikes me as promising. When I read it, I feel that he is “with” Paul in a significant way. Perhaps he’ll have to adjust some, as he says, but he’s going the right direction.
I will be blogging a bit more on 2 Corinthians 5 from an exegetical point of view, hopefully in the next few days.
Dan Wallace has started a series (actually he did so last week), on textual variants in the New Testament. His first article The Number of Textual Variants: An Evangelical Miscalculation deals with the definition of a textual variant and then with an estimate of the total number of textual variants in the New Testament text. The second deals with the nature of these variants.
Information about textual variants is abused constantly in discussions both within and about Christianity. Dr. Wallace is setting about providing a basis for correcting some of these abuses. The number of variants is cited raw as evidence that one cannot trust the Bible. The number of manuscripts is cited as evidence of the historical reliability of the New Testament. Yet both of these uses miss the mark. The first fails to take into account the nature of the variants, which Dr. Wallace begins to do in his second article. (I will link to the next part when it appears). The second, is based on the false premise that one can demonstrate the veracity of a document based on the number of times it is copied.
At the same time, the number of manuscripts and the number of variants can be used to demonstrate the likelihood that we do, in fact, have something close to the original text of the New Testament. Wallace contends that meaningful, viable variants constitute less than 1% of the total variants, and he may be generous in that estimate. The vast majority of the New Testament text is not even disputed.
Note, of course, that neither the number of variants, nor the number of manuscripts, actually impacts the historicity of the autograph. These statistics form the basis for our best measure of how accurate our current copies are, information that we need in studying the now absent autographs.
I use the fact that there are some substantial variants in my book When People Speak for God in discussing inerrancy. Modern proponents of inerrancy assert inerrancy of the autographs, and believe that inerrancy is a necessary characteristic if one is to assert any authority for scripture. I challenge this on the basis that we do not have the autographs, yet many of us do, in fact, accept the authority of the scripture as we have it.
This relates to Wallace’s third category, which he describes thus:
The third category are those variants that can affect the meaning in a significant way but have a very poor pedigree. A classic example is 1 John 5.7 in the King James Bible (For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one). This reading is not found in any manuscripts prior to the 12th century, and even then it is found as a marginal reading written by a scribe several centuries later than the original scribe wrote. . . .
The paragraph continues with the sparse representation of this reading. Certainly no modern textual critic would be likely to argue that 1 John 5:7-8 as read in the KJV is an original reading. Yet many people have used Bibles that contain that disputed passage, and seen them as authoritative. In other words, inerrancy is not needed for authority, and in fact, very, very few people have had an inerrant Bible, even if inerrancy of the autographs is essential.
I believe the Bible is adequately preserved for it’s intended purpose, and that we do not need to possess an inerrant Bible for that purpose.
Having digressed into my side interest, the value of Dr. Wallace’s work is that he is so thorough in his basic scholarship that you can often evaluate opponents’ work by reading his summary of their view. Thus while I will disagree with some conclusions, the basic work is exceptional. He is doing a great service in going over this basic information. Many church members are quite confused on the subject of textual criticism, and what it means or does not mean, for the reliability of the Bibles they hold in their hands.
“Teach the controversy” is one of the well-worn slogans of the creationist movement, and has been well used in the controversy about intelligent design (ID). It’s power is in an appeal to fairness. There’s a dispute? Teach both sides. What could be fairer than that?
As with most slogans the problems occur in practically every word. What is “the” controversy? What are the “weaknesses” of evolutionary theory that one should teach? And even more importantly, what does it mean to teach a controversy?
I would suggest that in order to actually teach something, the instructor needs to take the students through a process of evaluation, of weighing and testing the evidence provided. If that controversy is ID vs the theory of evolution, such a weighing and testing will result in a negative evaluation of ID–unless, of course, one tries to privilege certain ideas over others.
This is not the type of “teaching the controversy” that is desired by ID proponents. In general, they are asking that their views, though representing those of a very small minority of the scientific community, should be taught alongside evolution as having equal validity. The attempt to get these materials into public schools is simply an end-run around the process of science, and indeed of scholarship in general. What ID advocates are asking is that ideas that have been rejected by the vast majority of the scientific community should be presented instead to high school students for their evaluation.
I can understand this desire. It’s always fun to take your material to an audience that will not be qualified to challenge you seriously on facts or logic. But it’s not the proper place to get ideas evaluated.
We have just seen an example of “teaching the controversy”, and doing it well, on NOVA, and the ID folks don’t particularly like it. (The complaints about “Inherit the Wind” footage are particularly humorous.)
Well, I’m not surprised. They didn’t actually want the whole controversy taught. They didn’t want all their claims evaluated. They just hoped they would be presented side by side to unsuspecting high school students who do not yet have the knowledge to evaluate what they are hearing.
There are reasons why ID is presented to popular audiences rather than scientific ones. 1) Doing the actual science is too hard, or perhaps 2) The advocates know that no matter how hard they work, the evidence just isn’t there, or 3) They don’t actually care about science at all, and they’re just trying to make points in the culture wars. Come to think of it, it could be all of the above.
But this argument does not only apply to ID. In the public school science program, we need to teach science, and we need to have some basis on which to decide what is and is not science. Any minority viewpoint can hire PR firms and try to get itself treated as science through the political process, but that is not a good way to determine what really is science. I suggest one standard: Consensus science. There is plenty of that to fill the science curriculum. Other ideas may apply, but the process goes through the scientific community for publication, testing, and verification.
I would add one more note on this. I have commented before on the NCBCPS Bible curriculum which is aimed at public schools. Many Christians see this as a wonderful opportunity to restore Biblical literacy. But they need to think again. Just how is it that the Bible can properly be taught in public schools? It will have to be taught as an academic subject, which means that the historicity of certain stories, such as the exodus, the destruction of Jericho, or similar things, should be evaluated in a scholarly fashion, as objectively as possible.
That requires, amongst other things, qualified instructors, and good curriculum (NCBCPS isn’t good curriculum). This will be Bible as a secular topic. Now I wouldn’t mind such a class. The reason I still oppose putting this in public schools is that I believe it inappropriately privileges my own sacred book over that of others and that it is extremely unlikely that we will find appropriately qualified teachers for a sound, academic course on the Bible at the High School level.
I know, for example, that if I were to teach such a course, many fundamentalist and conservative evangelical students and parents would be shocked at what I would say, though I would be able to point to a great deal of scholarship in all of it. You see, I would “teach the controversy” about many of these subjects, evaluating the evidence, and some people would not be happy with the results.
Perhaps in High School classes we should teach the most important elements of a subject (and make no mistake, evolution is one of these), and leave the myriad of controversies that people can cook up to be settled through examination by qualified persons.
I think I’m at least in the right month this time, which is a good thing because there are some really interesting things to read on the creation-evolution controversy.
Some time ago I wrote about a waste of $25 million represented by the creation museum in Kentucky. As it turns out it was a waste of more like $27 million, though it does appear to have found a purpose in providing some amusement. John Scalzi was persuaded (or paid) by his readers to visit the museum and report, and the result is a quite snarky, but enjoyable piece. For those of my readers who prefer to avoid certain four letter words, be warned–this article uses them. If you can handle that, I recommend it. Scalzi also provides a slide show, which is linked from the main entry.
Carl Zimmer provides some amusement by linking to a slide show on the changes in terminology used by the creationist movement. Is ID creationism or is it creationism? Those of us to followed the Dover trial are already acquainted with this, but the graphics are nice.
I always like links coming in, but when certain blogs put you on their blogroll, it’s a real honor. Quintessence of Dust, Dr. Stephen Matheson’s blog, is one of these. The reason I feel that way is that Dr. Matheson takes great care in his blog writing, and is the very essence of a modern science blogger (OK, apologies, couldn’t resist).
What brought on this complimentary note? Well, he is asking other scientists to informally peer review some of his writing on his blog. They are catching some minor errors, and he’s correcting them. Folks, that is modeling the attitude of a scientist, and I wish I had an award or something I could throw his way, but a compliment will have to do.
Oops, I forgot to mention that I have written the final post in my series on the primeval history in Genesis, dealing with Genesis 11. I color code the traditional source documents and make some literary/exegetical comments.
