Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christianity

  • We Killed Less People than They Did

    I am often annoyed by the things that the Traditional Values Coalition does. When they call for a boycott of Walmart I don’t expect much damage to be done except to the general reputation of Christians.

    But today I got an alert e-mail from them that strikes me as celebrating Christmas by stirring up hatred. This alert, available online and titled Atheism Has Fueled Greatest Mass Murders In World History is apparently a reaction to some recent comments from various people who object to religion in general and Christianity in particular.

    The response, however, is less than constructive. It appears to be largely an attempt to smeer atheists by linking them with militant Muslims and blaming them for various historical slaughters. After quoting some of the attacks on Christianity, Sheldon says:

    The Christian-haters should turn their attentions to militant Islam and Atheism as the most serious dangers to the world.

    One of my many questions is simply which group of atheists right now is behaving in a manner at all similar to militant Muslims? This strikes me as simply striking out at people one would like to hate without any consideration for the facts or the consequences. (Note that at the same time as I am opposed to demonizing atheists, I would suggest watching out for demonizing Muslims.)

    The attacks to which this alert supposedly responds are a collection of the rather standard attacks on Christianity–responsibility for the crusades, the inquisition, and the Salem witch trials, for example. And what is the response to this? Apparently it is that not nearly as many people were killed as some people claim were killed.

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  • How God Impacts Science

    There’s been a bit of a dust-up around the blogosphere about this over the last few days to a large extent amongst people involved in science professionally in one way or another. Since I’m not responding directly, I will only note that I read of this debate through Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and you can find links at Ed’s current post, Clarifying the Moran Debate.

    Since I’m called a theistic evolutionist, though it is a term to which I have previously objected, I thought I’d make a few comments on how God and scripture impact the way I look at science. I can’t say “the way I do science, because my field is Biblical studies, and not one of the natural sciences.

    My answer to the question could be either “lots, in every way” (to paraphrase Paul in Romans 3:2), or “not at all.”

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  • Bad Teaching and Abuse

    Al Johnson has posted a story about an abused wife on Recovery Poetry blog.

    Before I comment on this particular story, I want to note that a site like Johnson’s blog can be an important tool for people who are suffering abuse, no matter what the cause or the background. In working in ministry in various churches I’ve found that one of the most damaging problems, if not the most damaging, is a feeling of isolation.

    There are many causes for this feel.  One factor is the “faith face.”  We know we’re supposed to be doing well, because good Christians are happy people, so we paste a smile on our face and charge forward.  Another factor is gossip.  Churches are often small, closed (unforunately) communities, and gossip is a besetting sin.  As soon as someone’s personal story is repeated, trust is lost, and that person will become more isolated.  Judgment is also a factor, usually cloaked in a guise of simply protecting the reputation of the community.  But the more people any individual has heard condemned, the less likely that person is to share any problem they may have.

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  • The Spiritual Importance of Separation of Church and State

    When I’m challenged on historical facts about the separation of church and state, I usually simply tell people that if separation of church and state was not part of our constitutional law (and I believe it is), I would still support it.  At least as strong as my political reasons for supporting the separation are spiritual reasons.

    Ed Brayton has been commenting on Berkley, Michigan where the decision has been made to turn a nativity display over to the city’s churches.  Ed notes:

    And it seems to me that the Christians there should be happy with this as well. Keeping the creche on city property required adding in a bunch of secular symbols as well, watering down the religious significance of the display. I can’t imagine why they would prefer to do that and keep it on city property rather than have it on church property where they have no such restrictions.

    I think it’s very bad for religion to acquire the power of the state for itself.  There is an immediate tendency in two directions.  First, we become lazy, expecting the state to do things for us.  Second, we start to compromise in order to keep everyone on board as we must in order to keep that official support.  The town of Berkley, MI may not have its nativity display on public property, a dubious blessing at best, but it will now have a Christian display.

    But it’s the first point I want to emphasize.  We are instructed in the gospel commission to make disciples.  Disciples don’t happen because somebody makes a law.  They don’t happen because of monuments to the 10 commandments.  They happen because one Christian is an effective witness to another person and then helps that person become a disciple.

    We have the means and the instructions for reducing the rate of abortions, divorces, drug addiction, murder, and other crimes.  It’s reaching out and making disciples, one person at a time.  The money is there in the churches, though often it is spent more to maintain structures than to carry out the gospel commission.  There are people in the churches who could do this, though many, if not most of them are sitting in the pews once a week.

    Christianity, or better being a follower of Christ, should be a voluntary effort, funded by the efforts of followers of Christ, and uncompromising because it is carried out by those same followers.  When we get government funding involved in religion I do believe there is a danger to the state.  There is a danger of people enforcing their religion on others.  There is plenty of evidence of this.

    But there is also the danger to spirituality, when the things that should be our passion–living Christlike lives characterized by the two laws–become simply a matter of custom and law.

    Christians should be concerned about preventing evil deeds.  But they should be more concerned about transforming the people who might commit those deeds.

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  • Making Miracles Possible

    Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars in which Ed Brayton responds to some of the scientific claims, I found this post.

    Now I’m not particularly interested in the specific scientific claim, and whether it makes the virgin birth more “possible” somehow.  What interests me here is the tendency to try to find natural explanations for miracle claims.  DaveScot says:

    I have a problem with these people in that they arbitrarily limit what science can potentially explain. The so called supernatural remains supernatural only as long as there’s no metric by which to measure it. Once a metric is discovered the supernatural becomes the natural.

    Paul quotes someone on the virgin birth of Christ saying that it defies everything
    science has revealed in regard to mammalian reproduction. This is utter dreck.

    My response, however, is disbelief.  First, explaining that some part of the reproductive process might be compatible with the human reproductive process seems to me to accomplish precisely nothing.  Is it DaveScot’s intention to claim that the virgin birth is a purely natural event?  But second how is it that he expects to come up with a metric to measure the supernatural?

    Bluntly, this illustrates even more why much of what is claimed for intelligent design (ID) is simply horrifying theology.  First, the virgin birth in which I express belief each Sunday in the apostle’s creed is not a natural event.  I don’t care how easy or hard it might be made to appear, it’s not natural.  The key point of having it in the creed in the first place is that it is an ultimate example of God stepping into history.  It’s different from those natural occurences, such as gravity or my own birth that occur due to natural law, or what I would better express as the consistent will of God.

    What DaveScot appears to be proposing here is that one eliminate the supernatural through learning to measure and presumably explain it.  But that goes quite contrary to the primary intelligent design claim of either irreducible complexity or specified complexity, which requires something other than a natural process to explain.  Now I must ask which ID theorists want.  Do they want to stop looking for a natural explanation, or would they prefer to explain everything naturally.  If the latter, in what way are they not more anti-God than their opponents.  (Personally I don’t think DaveScot’s claims here would hold general acceptance amongst ID proponents, but I could be wrong.)

    On my second point, however, I affirm God the creator in the same creed with the virgin birth, by which I do not mean a God of either disappears or becomes natural as we find a way to measure him.

    I have always had little sympathy for the tendency to try to explain miracles.  Either one believes God can intervene or one doesn’t.  If one does believe God can intervene, no natural explanation is necessary.  There could, of course, be alleged miracles which are merely fortuitous natural events.  But that is not the claim of believers.  The claim of believers is that God did, in fact, intervene in the case of the miracle.  For the virgin birth, the bigger claim than the physical event is that Jesus the human being was/became God incarnate and lived on earth as a human being.  No amount of explanation of the human birth processes can explain that.

    My personal belief is that while God created a universe that will successfully run without intervention, God does interven to communicate.  But I need no physical explanations of the possibility of such intervention.  If I had such, that would simply become another natural part of the universe.

    Again, I believe I’m confronted with the mysteriously shrinking god of ID.  It just doesn’t make it theologically.

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  • Conceptual Idolatry

    Paul tells us that we now “see dimly in a mrror” (1 Corinthians 13:12), but some of us are quite certain that we see clearly. While I believe we should make every effort to get closer to the truth, it’s important that we understand that God’s ways are not our ways, and thus we will never get precisely to a “God’s eye view” of any problem or issue. In a recent comment Oloryn noted that:

    . . . in reading scripture, we are in the position of listing to One who does not share our outlook. If we haven’t learned to do that with people, are we going to be able to do that with God?

    Now he was responding to some comments I made about listening to God in scripture, and those were some good points, but in making that point he has also noted that God does not share our outlook. And that’s an important point to remember.

    This post was triggered by a post by Joe Carter over on Evangelical Outpost. In that post he accuses Bart Campolo (son of Tony) of idolatry:

    Still, it is rather shocking to hear someone be unabashedly open about their idolatry as Bart Campolo, son of Tony Campolo, is in a recent article for The Journal of Student Ministries*:

    [Carter continues by quoting Campolo]

    Now my intention is not to respond in detail to Joe Carter on this. It’s simply that his post came at a time when I was thinking about this sort of thing and struck me as just plain wrong. There are some points on which I disagree with Campolo as well, though my primary intention is not to defend him either.

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  • More on Evolution Conflict

    Ed Brayton has again weighed in on the framing of the conflict over science education. I agree with the way in which Ed has laid out the issues, and strongly recommend reading his piece.

    As an advocate of sound science education, I would like to repeat some things I’ve said before, but that are often forgotten in discussion.

    I am not opposed to free speech for intelligent design advocates. In fact, I see them exercising free speech all the time. What I would suggest they do about the peer reviewed publication is to simply establish one or more publications with peer review and publish scientific research in those publications. If it is done well, scientists will begin to read and respond to the new evidence they present. Of course I think the reason they are not generally published in peer-reviewed journals is because they are not doing research that is worthy of such publication.

    Further, I have no problem with ID being discussed at the college or university level to whatever extent the people who are teaching there want to discuss it. I went to college at a place where young earth creationism was a regular topic. Nobody is actually being repressed here, no matter how loud the whining becomes.

    But more important than my perception of repression or its absence–after all, I could be totally wrong–is the simple fact that there are other avenues open. In this age of the internet and various easy print publication opportunities, it’s quite easy to get something into print. But the real complaint is not getting published or not, it’s where one is published, or how much respect one gets from scienfic colleagues.

    That respect from scientific colleagues, however, has to be earned. And earning it is hard work. New ideas do work their way into the scientific community only slowly, and most new ideas get thrown out in the process of discussion. That is appropriate. One can argue that there should be more room or less room for new ideas, but ultimately, science must test ideas thoroughly before they are accepted.

    And that leads me to the place where I do not think that ID has a place–the high school science classroom. Why? Very simply I believe that the high school curriculum is packed enough with consensus science, and that it should be limited to that. Let new ideas be discussed elsewhere and when a scientific consensus arises, that will be time enough to add that material to the high school science curriculum.

    Framing the debate a s religion vs science, however, makes this difficult, no matter which side frames the discussion in that fashion.

    (Note: Read Ed’s piece before you comment here. I’m only making a small subpoint.)

  • A Consistent and Principled Approach

    In a poll taken before the last election respondents indicated strong disapproval of congress (31% approve/63% disapprove) as a whole, and yet by an almost equal margin (60%/33%), they indicated approval of their own congressman (Fox Poll 10/13/06). This type of result occurs repeatedly in polls. I’m just using those numbers as an example. Similarly polls (and general observation) shows that people disapprove of attorneys as a profession, but like their own attorney, or certainly want a good, hard-hitting attorney on their side if they are in trouble.

    It’s very likely that these differences in perception have something to do with who each of those people are working for. My congressman has to try to serve my district, for example by trying to keep military bases here, get federal road projects here, and so forth. There are 434 other congressmen who don’t share his priorities on those district based items, and thus it is very unlikely that the people in any single district will approve of the whole of congress as much as they approve of their own.

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  • Tolerance or Homogenization

    I value tolerance. Even more, I value and celebrate diversity. But frequently I see definitions of tolerance that must be considered self-destructive.

    I usually encounter these in the form of straw-man arguments. Someone may ask me if I believe in tolerance. When I acknowledge that I do, they will ask me then whether I will tolerate some form of intolerance or another. The answer to that is, “It depends.” Whereupon I’m informed that I really don’t believe in tolerance because I don’t tolerate everything.

    I believe in tolerance as a value, not as an absolute. I don’t believe in tolerating everything, merely as much as it is possible to tolerate practically. If someone believes in firing a machine gun into a crowd of people, I find it quite appropriate not to tolerate his belief, at least if he has the intention and the means to act on it.

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  • Environmental Skepticism Where Appropriate

    The Evangelical Ecologist has an excellent post on the value of skepticism in the appropriate place, and also touches on where it is appropriate.

    He says:

    There is an important distinction, then, between aggressively promoting environmental stewardship as a God-ordained moral ethic (which it is), and aggressively promoting a particular area of human-derived environmental science as a moral ethic (which it is not).

    I think he makes a couple of excellent points in this post. I’ve been trying to find time to link to some of his stuff since I first found the site a few weeks ago, but I haven’t had the time. Go over and check it out.