Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Hebrew Teacher Dismissed Because She’s a Woman

    This is incredible. The post on the Christians for Biblical Equality blog is dated January 25, but I just came across it today. My own advisor at the MA level was a woman, Leona Glidden Running, who was both a godly woman and a wonderful teacher. It’s incredible to me that this sort of travesty of the good news of the gospel takes place.

  • And then there was Herman Cummings . . .

    I encountered a comment by Herman Cummings on the Florida Citizens for Science Blog. I’m sorry, well, no I’m not, but I just really couldn’t resist. Here’s a guy who claims to be the foremost expert on Genesis. I kid you not.

    I quote from his web site:

    I am the foremost terrestrial authority on the book of Genesis.

    The web site is otherwise filled with large amounts of, well, pompous and vacuous claims. He’s offered his help to boards of education, governors, defendants in various cases, including Dover, only to be rejected. None of the seminaries will pay him any attention.

    He calls his comment a “guest article” and says that the real controversy is not between evolution and creation, but between all of the above and “the Oberservations of Moses.” Of course, there are no observations of Moses. One may argue that Genesis 1 is many different types of literature, but it has no points in common with any report of observations.

    I found that his article has been published elsewhere. Let’s see, it’s on The Conservative Voice. More likely that should be lunatic voice.

    Well, Mr. Cummings, someone is paying you just a little bit of attention, and I’ve tagged it under the proper category–humor. I simply find your articles way too funny to just ignore. In my wildest imaginings, I couldn’t make up anything nearly this bizarre. Let’s see, he dates Noah’s flood to 2611 BCE which was probably a huge surprise to the many thriving civilizations of that time. Unfortunately, they forgot to mention it. He knows how to scatter the days of creation around, because he, and only he, understands Genesis.

    I’m just going to quote a couple of screamers from his comment:

    Lets look deeper into evolution. The theory does not take the responsibility of stating how life originated. It delegates that to the theory of the “Big Bang”, which states that all matter in the universe was somehow contained In a very small dense hot atom, molecule, or singularity, which exploded into all the elements and celestial bodies of the universe, about 16 billion years ago. . . .

    Biologists will doubtless be shocked to find out that life was generated by the big bang. I don’t recall learning this in High School biology class.

    Now, with supposition upon supposition, we have the Earth formed, and many years passing by as it cools and becomes suitable for life. I guess that the molecules of life had to remain in a holding pattern around Earth until the conditions were “just right” to sustain life and get the “primordial soup” ready. The Primordial Soup theory suggests that life began in a pond or ocean as a result of the combination of chemicals from Earth’s atmosphere and some form of energy to make amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, which would then supposedly evolve into all the species. It seems that secular science is only interested in theories that are the best sounding fantasies, as long as it does not address the reality of the supernatural.

    I just have this wonderful picture in my mind of “molecules of life” (a substance sadly neglected in the last chemistry course I took) orbiting the earth waiting to land whenever conditions were right. One assumes that conditions were better in outer space prior to that. Of course, this picture is promptly contradicted if life instead forms in the primordial soup.

    . . .Genesis states that God created our universe, but it does not give us details on the process. The Bible only gives us the amount of time (144 hours) it took to complete. What we can gather is that the supernatural realm, gave birth to our natural
    existence in one week, about 4.6 billion years ago.

    And this is the product of the “foremost terrestrial authority on Genesis.”

    What Genesis does give us is what we will call the Observations of Moses (OM). God showed Moses, on Mt. Sinai in 1598 BC, six
    days from the ancient past which Moses would later write down (or have written) in the book of Genesis.

    I just couldn’t make that up. Note that most experts on chronology would not accept 1598 BCE as a potential date for the exodus.

    Well, so much for the humor break. I just couldn’t resist. I return you to your regular programming. If you truly want more of this nut, just type “Herman Cummings Moses” into a search engine. The words “Moses” sorts the articles out nicely, because he simply cannot avoid using the phrase “observations of Moses.”

  • 1 Corinthians Audio Series

    I’m posting my 1 Corinthians audio series on the Pacesetters Bible School Newsletter blog, with the first entry here. You can follow this series either through the “1 Corinthians” keyword or the “Bible Pacesetter Podcast” keyword. The latter is mildly misleading because this podcast is not registered with iTunes, and appears only on the Pacesetters blog.

    I originally presented this series on our Bible Pacesetter radio program which was aired only locally in the Pensacola, FL area. We (Pacesetters) eventually dropped the radio program, but I will now present all the recorded shows one per weekday on the Pacesetters blog. All programs are of me teaching without a script.

    If you like audio, have fun!

  • Are Anti-Abortion and Pro-Choice Compatible?

    John at Locusts and Honey responds to SimplyComplexJen on this topic.

    John’s basic argument is that an abortion involves taking a human life without that person’s consent, i.e., the consent of the unborn child, and thus one cannot oppose abortion personally and yet support permitting it legally.

    Frankly, I think John has left out most of the logic on this one. Hidden assumptions lumber through this like elephants, just begging someone to see them. One may, for example, simply disagree with the idea that the state always has a duty to accomplish the goals John states.

    Do I have to assume that every wrong act must also be a criminal act? John says no on a list of acts he considers wrong. He draws the line at abortion, because someone is harmed without his or her consent. But that simply moves the goal posts. So I ask again: Does every act that harms anyone else have to also be a made criminal? This is precisely the question that must be answered by the person who is personally opposed to abortion, yet believes it should be legal. I would suggest that one must ask just how effective enforcement of that particular law is going to be, and what other consequences there may be to its enforcement. The resources required in order to properly enforce a law should also be given consideration. I think this is an important point that is often ignored in immigration law. People tend to assume that if we would just pass tough enough laws, the flow of immigrants would stop. Are we prepared to pay the full cost?

    Here we have the assumption that the best response to any harmful act is to make it illegal. In other words, one must assume that the best way to reduce the number of abortions in this country is to make it illegal to perform such abortions.

    But let me add one more point–jurisdiction. We have certain limits on how much we invade the privacy of one’s home. One could make an excellent argument that the state’s jurisdiction ends right around skin level, and what goes on insides a person’s body is not under the jurisdiction of the state. I’m not entirely comfortable with that argument myself, and an abortion does not take place entirely inside someone’s body, but I do believe a quite rational person could make such an argument.

    Frankly, I see no logical requirement here whatsoever. All we wind up with is the necessary conclusion that John and certain other people don’t find these compatible in the way that they see the duty of the state. Others can surely differ, and can do so coherently. (Not me, of course. Oh, I am pro-choice politically and anti-abortion personally, but I’m not terribly coherent right now. 🙂 )

  • Interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson

    MSNBC has an excellent interview with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. It comes in five sections on the web site, but let me just quote one little thing to whet your appetite:

    Q: It’s always more newsworthy if a scientist is puzzled by something.

    A: But we’re always puzzled by something. And that fact is never conveyed. People think we have some kind of easy-chair arrogance, where someone says, “Oh, this will force everyone to forfeit their cherished theories.” Excuse me, but if you have something that works better than my theory, I’ll throw mine out in a minute. What we’re trying to do here is get closer to nature. The caricature of science is that we hold tight to the theories we have, and shun challenges to them. That’s just not true. In fact, we hold our highest rewards for those scientists who can prove others wrong. And by the way, they are famous in their own lifetimes. We don’t wait until they’re dead.

    The whole thing is great. Go read it.

  • Jesus the Logician Project

    Joe Carter at evangelical outpost is trying to relaunch his Jesus the Logician project. I think it’s an interesting idea, and an index that I would like to see, though writing this type of material would not be my cup of tea. Thus I will simply put in this plug for those who might participate, or who might want to access the index of articles on this topic.

  • Evolution Sunday Meditation

    Why do I consider an “evolution Sunday” a good idea?

    Well, the fact is that I have some mixed emotions. I like the idea of a Sunday dedicated to religion and science, and the specific meeting point right now is evolution. No other scientific theory is eliciting the type of attack from the number of religious people that evolution does. Amongst Christians, it is often presented as a fundamental issue of belief in God or not, that Christianity is valid, or not.

    The date doesn’t work for me nearly so well. There are three reasons for this. The first is simply a matter of convenience. In many years the date will fall within Lent, and in most others very shortly before that. For many churches that means that there are many scheduled activities and there are fixed items on the liturgical calendar that pastors and church leaders are rightly reluctant to alter. The second is that the specific date, Charles Darwin’s birthday, does tend to put the focus on the issue of Darwin himself, raising such questions as whether Darwin should be regarded as a “saint” or some sort of symbol. The third reason is that many churches have members who take different positions on evolution. The church of which I am a member is such a church. The name “Evolution Sunday” is a substantial barrier for such a church.

    On the first issue I see a simple solution. If a church does not want to dedicate that particular Sunday to this topic, they can simply designate a different Sunday to carry out the same type of discussion. The rather considerable season after Easter would probably be a good time for such a Sunday.

    On the second and third, I would suggest that one simply rename the day to something like “Science and Religion Sunday.” This covers the topic, but doesn’t lead to the same connotations as “Darwin Day” or “Evolution Sunday.” I personally have no problem with publicly expressing my support for the theory of evolution as a theistic evolutionist, but I recognize that there are other theologically valid positions within Christianity, and for a church that is not unified on the topic, a more open title might be appropriate.

    In the same way, I would suggest that a church conduct their commemoration, celebration, study, or other such activity in a way that allows open debate and discussion. While I do not think that either intelligent design or any form of creationism belong in the public school classroom, both because of the issue of religion supported by state money and because I believe that public school curriculum should come from consensus positions of the various fields of study, the church is an excellent place for such a discussion. Churches can and should be places of lively intellectual exchange, and such intellectual activity will be a spiritual blessing to the church as well as to the community.

    One irony, in my view, of the stenuous efforts to introduce intelligent design or other varieties of creationism into the public school classrooms is that the educational opportunities available in churches are so massively underutilized. And here is what I regard as an even better idea for introducing activities about science into church life–year round educational activities. Educate parents, educate the young people, educate the parents to use their homes as a place of active spiritual and intellectual development. There is no reason for the church to constantly lose ground to secular forces in the area of education. Much of what passes for Sunday School and for youth educational programs is really a rather poor excuse.

    Science is part of the world in which we live, and one way or another, we need to deal with it and integrate it with our spiritual life. That must be a function of the church.

  • Upgrading to WordPress 2.1

    I’m about to do it. I’ll comment on this thread when it’s done.

  • Was Priscilla the Author of Hebrews?

    Ruth Hoppin, author of Priscilla’s Letter, is the author of the month on the Religion Forum. There is a mildly interesting discussion going on there, though it could use some additional debate, so check it out.

  • Was Priscilla the Author of Hebrews?

    Ruth Hoppin, author of Priscilla’s Letter, is the author of the month on the Religion Forum. There is a mildly interesting discussion going on there, though it could use some additional debate, so check it out.