Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Energion.com

  • A Teacher of Myths

    Ed Brayton promoted a discussion I had with another commenter on his blog, and that has generated yet another discussion of whether religion and science are incompatible. A certain number of folks believe they are not, and that religion should fade away as science rules all. For some unfathomable reason, I disagree.

    One of the commenters there, bernarda, stated:

    Sorry if I am a bit brutal, but what rational person cares about “theological systems”? Theology is entirely summed up by trying to count the number of angels on the head of a pin.

    “Henry is a Christian, a Hebrew scholar and the director of a Bible school;”

    So he believes mythology, he studies mythology, and teaches mythology.

    I often have a reaction to a comment that is clearly not what the author intended. My first thought was, “Yeah, that’s me!” My second was, “I’m going to steal that and use it next time I need to introduce myself to a class.” But then I remembered a post I had bookmarked a couple of days ago in the hopes I’d have time to write about it and respond to it.

    This article by Lifewish on the blog Areté, is beautifully titled The Art of Religion, and comments on a post of my own, Believing in Words and Symbols. I can hardly fail to respond to a post that starts: “Henry Neufeld is a really nice guy.”

    A little further on, however, he notes the following with reference to my post (already linked):

    . . . The underlying theme is that he really only has one core belief: that there is Something out there. Everything else – the Trinity, the Resurrection – is really just a language, a set of myths that seem to convey the feelings he experiences.

    Now note that Lifewish has said about me pretty much the same thing that bernarda did, though clearly with a bit of a different intent. Now it’s quite likely that I take the language I use more seriously than an atheist imagines, yet at the same time considering that I don’t believe I actually know, but rather use the best language available to describe an experience that is intensely personal, I will have a hard time quibbling.

    When you add it all up, just what does the doctrine of the trinity mean in terms of any sort of physical reality. Actually very little. It’s not supposed to. It is language that works very well for me in speaking about God. When I speak about my car I have a very clear referent. It’s sitting outside the window. I can look at it and verify my understanding. When I speak about God, I’m far out of that world. When I add to that and use the language of trinitarian theology, one can justifiably say that I do not truly know what I’m doing.

    Yet I believe that, I have faith that, I am somehow talking about something, even though I find the word “something” grotesquely inadequate. Thus the very obscurity of some of the language of the trinity helps make it work for me.

    So I think the description, presumably intended as negative is very good for me, though I would do it in a different order. So I study mythology, I teach mythology, and I’m so mentally primitive that I actually believe mythology. On some days I believe it more intensely than physical reality.

    But as for ever knowing it, I confess the doctrine of infinite ignorance. I, a finite person, am ever infinitely ignorant of God. No matter how much knowledge I gain, when subtracted from infinity, it leaves infinity.

    Ouch! Or Wow! (Hallelujah is “churchese” for Wow!)

  • Guilty of Pastoral Malpractice

    Thom Rainer posted an article on Lifeway’s Web Site claiming that pastors who did not preach penal substitutionary atonement (he didn’t use the term, he described the doctrine in very strong terms) are guilty of pastoral malpractice. He used the word “treasonous.”

    Will, a United Methodist pastor and blogger pleads guilty in that case. I know a few other United Methodist pastors who would join him in that. I was talking to one the other day who regards PSA as a serious heresy that leads in turn to a heretical view of the trinity. Not being as interested as others in just what “heresy” is, I won’t go there.

    A commenter on the Lifeway post cheers on Mr. Rainer, and comments on how people are tired of a “watered down gospel.” What I’m wondering is this: Why is it OK to water down God’s love, but it’s somehow “treasonous” to water down his wrath?

    I wonder which is more important.

  • How it Happened vs. Probabilities

    I may be hopelessly naive in the matter of probability, though it is the one area of math that I have actually studied, but I am simply not terribly impressed with probability arguments. That’s probably (!) a major reason why I’m not impressed with intelligent design (ID). I’m particularly not impressed with probabilities calculated for processes that are not yet understood. If you don’t know all the factors, how can you calculate a probability?

    On the other hand, it appears that many creationists are much more impressed with probabilities that are largely guessed, while they are not terribly impressed with extrapolation in historical studies. For them, it often doesn’t matter how much detail you get for the development of various structures in the past, it’s not enough, because it would only be testable if we could see every stage and explain everything.

    Thus when an ID writer claims something is highly improbable, even though he hasn’t a clue how it actually happened, it impresses his fellow creationists, while when a scientist extrapolates development between existing specimens, the same creationists are totally unimpressed. Yet which of these is operating on the greater level of evidence?

    If anyone is wondering why I see strong evidence for evolution, here’s the answer. I’m used to and respect historical methods. If you find a pottery type developing, and then you find several examples of stages, sequentially arranged by date, you can extrapolate a path from one style to the next. You don’t need an example of every pot. If you see writing develop from one style to the next, you don’t need every stage. You can extrapolate.

    For me, the simple fact of large numbers of sequences in the development of complex structures suggests that such things have developed naturally. Extrapolating the intermediate steps is not terribly difficult for those who study these things, and it is a quite proper procedure. Challenging the observed sequence by indicating that it is improbable strikes me as absurd. The only proper challenge would be to say, “Here! This is where the intelligent designer intervened.” But of course, ID advocates do no such thing.

    NCSE has produced a video, which I will embed below, that shows such a sequence on the development of the eye. It’s very clear, but it lacks some steps. I don’t know whether the video produced all the steps we know of, or just a sampling, but if these were the sum total of examples we have in a sequence of eye development, we would have good cause to believe that the eye evolved.

    This video comes from the truly excellent site Expelled Exposed, sponsored by NCSE. Hat tip goes to The Panda’s Thumb.

  • Distinguishing Freedom and Ability

    I have always preferred our classic statements of rights, such as the bill of rights, to such statements as Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms.” What interests me is that while our classic statements of rights indicate things that the government is not permitted to prevent you from doing, the latter two freedoms from Roosevelt’s list, and especially the third, indicate things that you get to have.

    The four freedoms Roosevelt mentioned are:

    1. Freedom of speech
    2. Freedom of worship
    3. Freedom from want
    4. Freedom from fear

    This ambiguity comes up in plenty of discussions of rights. What precisely does “freedom from want’ require, who gets to decide just how much want is permissible, and who gets to decide who has to produce all of that? I, for example, would like a much better computer. It would help me in my creative activities. Perhaps someone should give me one in order to improve my mental health.

    Of course I’m not serious about that. Nobody has any duty to give me a computer. I will have to earn the money and buy one. People often assume that we will all have a reasonable definition of “want” in place, but the fact is that we don’t agree on such things.

    That, however, is not my main point. I would like to focus on the distinction between these two types of rights. The first, freedom of speech, is provided by the government failing to take certain actions–not suppressing speech. There is, of course, the positive action of maintaining a lawful framework, but that is a requirement for the existence of any right. Freedom from want requires some positive action on someone else’s part, namely to produce the particular goods.

    While I believe I have an obligation as a Christian, individually and in community, to care for those who are less advantaged, I have a distinct problem with many of the government programs that do what I believe I must do privately, because they tend to make one person have an inherent, legal right (I think those are oxymoronic, but they are commonly used together) to that which someone else must go out and produce. I advocate certain safety net welfare programs in any case, not as a right of those who receive them, but as part of maintaining a workable society.

    But I want to apply this now to speech and to the controversy about intelligent design. There’s a regular chorus going on right now about suppression. I think that chorus is based on a confusion of their rights with someone else’s production.

    I have a right to free speech. I do not have a right to any particular medium. If I can find no publisher for my writing, then my writing will not get printed. Since I am a publisher, I have the right to refuse to print someone else’s drivel, or even their masterpiece, and I am not suppressing free speech, even if they find no other way to publish.

    Besides forcing someone else to produce what they believe is a right, people who make such claim try to take away the rights of others. Again, illustrating with myself. As a publisher, were I required to print the works of someone even though I chose not to, then my right of free speech is abridged. My right of free speech does not require a carpenter to build a stage, an electrician to wire the sound system, a newspaper to print an ad for my event, nor any person to come an listen to me.

    My belief that I have important things to say does not require a college or university to gather students to hear it. There are things that are of value under those circumstances, and other things that are not. If I were the chair of a religion department, for example, I would consider it quite appropriate to refuse a place on the faculty to a KJV-Only advocate, even if he could produce the appropriate accredited degrees.

    In High School curricula, we have the need to cover a great deal of material, and some things are in while others are out. We have groups whose job it is to decide which is which. Subject matter needs to meet a threshold of validity and usefulness in order to merit a place in such a curriculum, otherwise you are forcing students to spend time learning that which will not work to their benefit.

    Now there is a little glitch in the educational plan. What about state sponsored institutions of higher learning? Shouldn’t they have to provide a platform for anyone in the name of free speech? They are the government, after all. I would say rather than if we allow a government to operate an academic institution, that is precisely what we should expect them to run, and that will mean making choices, discriminating against bad ideas (it isn’t prejudice if you studied it ahead of time!), and allowing some in and not allowing others.

    I say to the intelligent design advocates: You don’t have a right to access to scientific journals and faculties. Your presence in such places must be earned. Your ideas should not appear in curricula by right, but rather because they have proven themselves in the appropriate arena.

    ID is trying to create a welfare state for ideas. It’s a bad idea economically, and it’s no better of an idea in the realm of ideas.

  • My Advice for Florida Creationists

    Which, for those in doubt, includes advocates of intelligent design (ID). I know they won’t take it, but here it is:

    Just tell the truth.

    John West, over at Evolution News and Views, has written a quite disingenuous post in which he wonders about the motives of advocates in the Florida House who insisted on passing a measure that differed from the one in the Florida Senate and one which would most likely be rejected. Personally I don’t think there was any certainty that the Senate would decide to reject the House bill in the end, but that’s how it worked out.

    West thinks this “smacks of classic back-room politics by politicians who are trying to play both sides of an issue.” I’m sure back-room politics is alive and well in Florida, despite sunshine laws, but the real “sunshine” problem here is with ID advocates themselves. You see, if you stick with the truth, you only have to remember one story, but if you decide on lies, then you have to agree on your lies, and you have to keep the various stories coordinated.

    What the Florida creationists want is religion taught in public schools, but they can’t write a law to do that directly, so instead they have to write some other scenario, and that’s when things get difficult. The real effect of each of these bills would be to refer the issue to the courts, and the main issue then is just what do you want to take to court with you, considering the truth absolutely won’t do.

    That was the problem in Dover. The people who pushed intelligent design really wanted religion in the classroom, and ID was just the means to an end. Once you get one set of materials in you start working on the next one. As long as you are trying to get something that you can’t admit you want, you’re going to have confusion of strategy.

    I have been astounded at the number of ID advocates who have told me here on this blog, in e-mail, or in person that I am horribly misunderstanding their position because I think ID has to do with religion. But there is simply no possibility that ID, without any religious overtones, has any audience at all. If the whole argument is about the possibility that some form of alien life is interfering with earth life, perhaps a roomful of weirdos would be interested. The fact is that “intelligent designer” is heard (correctly) as a codeword for God, and that is what gives this traction.

    Whether ID advocates are creationists or not–and I think they are–it is certainly creationists in the older sense (YEC or OEC) who are carrying the torch for this movement. What happened in the Florida legislature is that conservative Christians who believe that their particular faith position should be taught in public schools tried to get some portion of it allowed in the curriculum of Florida public schools. There was no back-room deals needed to kill the legislation; differences in the particular form of the lie that should be told in order to reap the greatest benefit spelled doom for the bills.

    I cannot prove there were no back-room deals. If there were, I wish I knew who was involved so I could vote for the people responsible. In the legislature I’d prefer crooks who are in favor of good education to crooks who want to lie for God.

    One more thing from West:

    . . . More importantly, we still live in America, and although Darwinists are doing their best to shut down and intimidate anyone who raises questions about Neo-Darwinism, we still have free speech, and they can’t prevent people from hearing about the debate in the public arena, no matter how hard they try.

    I’m wondering if West is even aware of what this bill was for. This was about High School curriculum. It wasn’t about “the public arena.” The ID movement is the noisiest bunch of “suppressed” people in history. If their voices are cut off, there sure is no evidence of the fact.

  • Hosting Bible Translations Wiki

    Updated: I added one more topic for the wiki, and also changed the links to point to mybibleversion.com which is where I think this belongs. The old URLs are redirected.

    Before I discuss this, it is not a diversion from personalizing the MyBibleVersion.com site. In fact, it is now a part of that process.

    “This” is my creation is a Bible Translations Wiki, which will be hosted at Energion.com, the same physical site as hosts MyBibleVersion.com. I have wanted to do this for some time in order to enhance the available information. I had a small database of definitions, but it is nothing like what could be done with a Wiki specific to Bible translations.

    Associated with the Wiki is a forum. In order to be a user of the Wiki, users will register in the forum, and the same registration will be useful for both. This is why I installed the Wiki and the Forum first. The same registration will also be used when you create Bible translation profiles on MyBibleVersion.com.

    What will go into this Wiki?

    1. Definitions of terms related to Bible translation
    2. Basic information on Bible versions
    3. Reference sources, including books, blogs, and web sites
    4. General information to which you might need to link in discussing Bible translations
    5. Translation discussions for specific texts and issues

    I’ll be trying to avoid duplicating Wikipedia and writing more specialized materials. I will also be setting up style guides to divide information into general user sections and separate advanced sections.

    I have left this open so that anyone can contribute. Just create your account and start adding entries. I will be an editor, and I’m looking for a few others who would like to help edit. I do hope that many people will contribute. I don’t want the Wiki to be a form of self-expression for me. I have blogs to to that! I hope it will be a community project of value to those interested in Bible translation.

    While the software is stable, WikiMedia and phpBB, the installation should be considered in its very early stages. There aren’t many pages yet, and most of the needed help and introductory pages are still blank. I just thought it would be worthwhile letting people know and seeing if anyone was interested before I tried to spruce everything up.

    Go on over and check it out.

  • Faith and Imagination

    I haven’t been blogging here for the last couple of days. Even though I only do network management/maintenance work part time, every so often I end up with full days away from my computer, and thus likely to write much less. I must confess that my market value in technical work (I have my own company) is substantially higher than as a writer or lecturer. Thus I keep doing it.

    As always I was collecting ideas for blogging. I found the Rapture Ready site through Exploring Our Matrix, and my plan was to post something about my Revelation study guide on my company blog–and I still plan to do so. (How’s that for sneaking the commercial into the intro?)

    So this is my “Sunday morning, I got up early enough for work, but have time before church” blog! What caught my attention as I worked my way through the Rapture Ready site was a paragraph on evolution, and even there it was not what it said about evolution, but what it says about faith and imagination that really caught my interest:

    In my opinion, it takes less faith to believe that Almighty God created the earth in six days—He could have done it in six minutes if He chose to—than to believe that some cosmic explosion is responsible for the life and beauty all around us. The creation story is not in conflict with science; it is in conflict with any worldview in which God is absent. When I look at a newborn baby, I cannot imagine a big bang, but I can imagine a loving creator.

    “It takes less faith . . .” I’ve heard that one plenty of times. Someone explains some ridiculous conception of origins, and then says that it takes more faith than believing whatever they believe about origins. Now whether you agree with me on the theory of evolution or not, I’d like you to consider whether that is an argument you’d like to use.

    Is there some benefit somewhere in believing the thing that takes less faith? “1Now faith is the substantial nature of things we hope for, the clear conviction of things we don’t see.” — Hebrews 11:1, my translation. There are really two elements here, the first is faith and its value, and the second is “things we don’t see.” I’ll get to that in a moment.

    Regarding faith, however, I have a second question. If you believe God did it, how can there be a difference in the amount of faith it requires to believe in a particular way in which God did it? Apparently for the author of the Rapture Ready web site, it is much easier to believe in a literal creation week. But somehow he finds the Big Bang difficult to comprehend. (Since I’m not really trying to debate evolution here, I’ll ignore the fact that the Big Bang is not a part of the theory of evolution, well, at least mostly ignore it.)

    But if God could make the world in six minutes if he chose, why not six seconds? Why not a fraction of a second? Why not in no time at all? The point I’m trying to make is that if God is omnipotent, or something so close to it that we can’t tell the difference, then there is no difference in the probability that he might use any particular way. If I see a complex creation of human ingenuity, I will assume that it was assembled one part at a time in some logical order. That’s because humans are limited. But if I assume a device that can create whole machines instantly, I would no longer be able to look at an assembled machine and make such an assumption.

    There are no probabilities with God. We can’t say, based solely on theology, what God can or can’t do. That’s what omnipotence is all about. So theologically it truly shouldn’t take any different amount of faith to believe that God accomplished his will through one means or another. God can do it in whatever manner he chose.

    In addition, there is certainly no value in believing the thing that takes less faith. Bluntly for me the “low faith” option is to just accept that the world is, and not worry about its origins. I’m actually quite capable of doing that. Christians might ask if I’m not really defaulting to a “high faith” option of believing that everything came into existence by pure chance. No, I would not be. Some people seem to have problems with unanswered questions. I’m fine with saying, “Here’s the universe. I’m clueless as to why it’s here, but here it is.” It happens that my faith goes beyond that, but that’s another thing. Amongst the various ways in which God could have done it, I see no difference in the faith required to believe any particular one.

    But then we get to imagination. I think spirituality requires some imagination. I don’t really know all that much about any spiritual realm. I frequently disappoint atheist or agnostic friends with my lack of effort to prove any of the things I believe–by faith. You see, they are “not seen” and I don’t try to pretend that they really are seen. So in that gap there is some room for imagination.

    People have imagined things in the spiritual realm for millenia. Descriptions of angels and demons, of God’s home in heaven or the place of torment in hell, and all the various ways God accomplishes things–all these are products of imagination. I believe that there is a spiritual something–we often use “spiritual reality” but that sounds like an oxymoron to me–behind the things that I imagine, but I suspect (or imagine?) that what is, in a spiritual sense, is so much beyond my imagination that I would find it not only hard, but impossible to imagine. MercyMe may only be able to imagine (I love the song), but I can’t even do that.

    I think these are two arguments that should be dropped from our vocabulary. We can’t measure the faith required to believe God did things a particular way, because he is equally capable of using any way he chooses. If we could measure the faith, there is no reason to believe that the means requiring less faith would be better. Our imaginations aren’t the measure of what is true or what is possible. We can only imagine, and we do it poorly.

    I have faith because, well, I just do. I imagine because it’s a great joy to do so. Neither prove anything.

  • HRC Panders on Oil

    There is always profit for politicians in pandering to the short term interests of the voters. That’s because there are enough voters who simply don’t understand their long term interest or who don’t care enough about the future to take it into consideration.

    The stimulus package is one such case of pandering, and all the politicians got on board. Why? It would be political suicide to refuse to send the poor voters some more money. In the short term, I appreciate this money that will land in my bank account, but it’s not going to solve much in the long term. Long term economic growth will result from accumulation of capital, entrepreneurship, and inventiveness. Unfortunately, the politicians can’t transmit those to my bank account or send them out in an envelope.

    Now McCain started, and Hillary Clinton has taken up the call for another short term way to make the voters temporarily happy without solving any of the underlying problems–the gas tax holiday. Gas prices hit me pretty hard in my business, because I do work at my customers’ businesses. What that means is that I have to drive a good deal, and often can’t plan my driving because it’s in response to emergencies. So gas prices have hurt me. But a gas tax holiday will provide some short term relief at the long term cost. We are already not paying for what we are doing. We’re charging it all to the future when some other congress can create a short term solution until, as will inevitably happen, we run out of such short term solutions.

    In an election year, this is to be expected. Yet I would urge my fellow voters not to make your decisions based upon this type of vote buying. We need to work toward effective energy independence in this country. That will take a great deal of time and effort, and there are many different ways in which we will have to work. But the technology is getting better all the time, and the potential is there. One silver lining to the cloud of higher gas prices is that the higher those prices go the more incentive there is to develop alternatives.

    That type of economic incentive will produce better alternatives. Right now the government is trying to mandate particular alternatives that we need to develop. But technology moves much faster than the speed of government. What the government is mandating today may be tomorrow’s rejected option. You have to research in order to find that out, but the government can’t get in and out of such market’s fast enough.

    Similarly, a government windfall profits tax on the oil companies for such research is not the best way to bring about innovation. Robert Reich proposed such a tax here, after writing an excellent challenge to the gas tax holiday. Further, despite much erudite talking about defining windfall profits by economists, the real, practical definition is that any profit someone doesn’t like is a “windfall.” And yes, I have studied the technical definition–I just think it’s garbage.

    In fact, such government redirection of money is more likely to stagnate than to stimulate the process. The simple fact is that painful as they are, the greatest incentive to developing new energy resources is the pain of higher gas costs. A whole range of options immediately comes up, and starts to become economically feasible: More mass transit, alternative sources for oil, clean coal, solar and wind, more efficient vehicles, and the list goes on.

    It’s quite possible that the solution lies outside of the range of ideas at the present, or that there is no single major component, but rather lots of small ones. Whatever it is, you can count on the government to screw it up.

    Hillary Clinton should be ashamed of herself for supporting such a bad idea. Clearly she believes she can increase her lead amongst blue collar voters. I’m thinking they may catch on to what’s happening instead.

  • Psalm 104 Article

    Since Psalm 104 is in the lectionary for Pentecost (May 11), I thought I’d take this opportunity to link again to my essay on that Psalm which dates from when I was working on my MA.

    I created a critical (or reconstructed) Hebrew text, provided a translation and notes, and did some analysis on the structure. Most of my conclusions I would still support today, even though more years have passed than I care to number.

    It’s a wonderful Psalm, and I hope my work on it will be of help to someone who is studying it along with the lectionary.

  • Police Can’t Afford to Jump to Conclusions

    . . . but reporters apparently can. I’m going to embed the fox video that set this off. I saw it on the TV while eating my lunch, and then looked it up for your viewing pleasure (or not).

    I’m pretty tense about any government official overstepping the bounds of their authority. Police face great danger for our sakes, but they also receive great trust, and they should be careful to merit that trust. Most of the time they do. When they don’t, I’ll speak about that.

    But very often I think the media doesn’t take the time to determine facts before they start pushing. Now the video I’m embedding isn’t horribly offensive. It’s just a reporter trying to push a spokesman for the Phoenix police department to say more than he knows. The death in question is very suspicious. But you see, I can afford to jump to conclusions and decide that a college professor in whose home an unconscious teenager was found is a pervert and possibly a murderer. I can, even though I won’t. If I did, however, the consequences are very minor, because I lack any form of authority to act.

    The reporter has more power than I do, based on the size of his audience. In my view, that should make him more responsible. Why should we come to conclusions before we have all the facts? Of course the answer is “ratings.” It’s much better for one’s ratings to announce the actual result first.

    The police spokesman, representing the Phoenix police department, has a much greater responsibility, one that he is carrying out quite well. He and his department can’t afford to jump to conclusions, however obvious those conclusions appear on the surface. He and his department are quite right to wait till they get all the facts, such as the coroner’s report and the tox screen. That is the best thing for justice. They’re doing that, as far as I can see. If the reporter had any evidence available that was not made public, he failed to make use of it, thus I would say that the “I don’t know” and “wait until the evidence is in” approach is the correct one.

    I feel for the police and prosecutors in a situation like this. If they go too far, too fast, they face the possibility of lawsuits, they ruin reputations perhaps needlessly, and they may muddy the waters so that justice will never be done. If they hold back, they face accusations that they aren’t working hard enough or are missing the obvious.

    I’m firmly on the side of caution. If we think things go too slowly in investigations, perhaps we should remember this at election time when tax issues are voted or candidates are elected who will decide on the budget. We must hold public officials, including police, accountable, but accountability minus appropriate resources is just bullying.

    I’m firmly on the side of letting them have the time to do their job. I sympathize with a family that is hurting. But the course of action that will most probably result in justice is to let the facts come in, be sorted out, and be taken care of. I certainly cannot be certain that their choice to hire a detective is wrong. I’m commenting strictly on the interview between the police spokesman and the Fox interviewer and their respective attitudes.

    And the interviewer should realize that when he jumps to conclusions, the worst consequence is a retraction by the network. If the police jump to a conclusion, many lives may be irreparably harmed.