Sunspots 159

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Humor:
(or something) K has tried a new kind of fruit, with photos.

Science:
Wired on a giant squid, with the largest eye ever studied.

Literature:
An interview with Patricia A. McKillip, wherein she answers questions about her writing habits. Spoiler: she listens to Telemann while writing.

Christianity:
Bonnie on how to keep up with what's going on in the world (or not).

Russell on how men look at women, and how they should (or shouldn't).

Slate has a disturbing article (disturbing because of what it says about some Christians) about alternative Christian culture. For example, I had no idea that there was a "Christian pro wrestling." What makes it Christian? Do they hit each other's heads with softer chairs?

Image source (public domain)

What a year in basketball! (so far)

There have been big trades in the NBA, perhaps bringing the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers back to playing each other for a championship. Bob Knight resigned in the middle of the season. The Indiana men's coach had to resign in the middle of the season, because of recruiting violations. Yao Ming was injured, ruining his chances of an NBA championship this year, and, probably of playing for China in China for the Olympics, LeBron James became the youngest NBA player ever to score 10,000 points. What's next?

I'd like to highlight two other big developments. I heard Doris Burke calling a men's college game, not as a sideline interviewer, but calling the game. C. Vivian Stringer has become only the third major college women's coach to win over 800 games, and the first African-American coach of either men's or women's major college basketball to do so. Congratulations, ladies!

Thanks for reading.

Congratulations, Phoenix Mercury

The Phoenix Mercury handily defeated the Detroit Shock yesterday, the first Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) team ever to win a championship on their opponent's floor. They only used 8 players. It was a team effort, but Cappy Pondexter deserved, and got, the Most Valuable Player award. Pondexter thanked God and her teammates.

The Mercury played good defense, and were better shots, among other things. The team made 29 of 30 free throws, and shot over 52% from the field. Tangela Smith made all 4 of her shots from the field. The other players, Diana Taurasi, Penny Tayor, Kelly Miller, Belinda Snell, Kelly Mazzante, and Kelly Schumacher, also played well. (I guess the Mercury had too many Kellys for the Schock!) The Mercury had 9 turnovers, compared to 17 for the Shock. Six of their players scored 10 or more. A team effort, indeed.

Paul Westhead becomes the first person to win both an NBA and a WNBA championship as head coach. Both he, and the Shock's coach, Bill Laimbeer, are said to want other jobs. In Laimbeer's case, an NBA head coaching job. If Laimbeer gets such a job, I hope that he brings his female assistant, Cheryl Reeve, with him to the NBA. She seems to have expertise, and is respected by Laimbeer, the players, and the media. If men can coach women, and do a good job at it, why can't women coach men?

Thanks for reading.

Sunspots 123

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Humor: (also sports) Peyton Manning, Indianapolis Colts quarterback, on how to hold the clipboard.

There is an organization devoted to the question of what happens to that missing other sock.

Science: Google Earth now includes the sky. I hope you can use this -- I can't, probably because of my firewall settings.

There has been some doubt about studies, suggesting that peppered moths were selected for camouflage color by bird predation, although I'm not sure why, as almost every scientist, including young-earth creationists, accepts the reality of natural selection, at least in such minor changes. Apparently, the original experiments have been updated, and natural selection still works.

The lower Jordan River is badly polluted.

Sports: Time, on the low number of female coaches of women's college sports.

Baseball and Economics, in Books and Culture.

Computing: USB goes bananas -- see photos of USB sushi, a USB Barbie doll, and more. Really.

Christianity: Bonnie, on the relationship between love and demand.

This week's Christian Carnival is here. For information on these Carnivals, go here.

Thanks for reading! Keep clicking away.

Women are not the cause of the Fall

Gaius also proceeded, and said, I will now speak on the behalf of women, to take away their reproach. For as death and the curse came into the world by a woman, (Gen. 3), so also did life and health: "God sent forth His Son made of a woman" (Gal. 4:4). Yea, to show how much those that came after, did abhor the act of the mother, this sex, in the Old Testament, coveted children, if happily this or that woman might be the mother of the Saviour of the world.

I will say again, that when the Saviour was come, women rejoiced in Him before either man or angel (Luke 2). I read not, that ever any man did give unto Christ so much as one groat; but the women followed Him, and ministered to Him of their substance (Luke 8:2, 3). It was a woman that washed His feet with tears, and a woman that anointed His body to the burial (Luke 7:37, 50; John 11:2; 12:3). They were women that wept, when He was going to the Cross, and women that followed Him from the Cross, and that sat by His sepulchre, when he was buried (Luke 23:27; Matt. 27:55, 56, 61). They were women that were first with Him at His resurrection-morn; and women that brought tidings first to His disciples, that He was risen from the dead (Luke 24:22, 23). Women, therefore, are highly favoured, and show by these things that they are sharers with us in the grace of life.

This is an extract from the second part of Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan (1684, public domain). Thanks for reading.

Women in the Old Testament, 3: Athaliah

At a recent midweek service, my pastor asked who we thought was the wickedest woman in the Bible. There were several responses, including Jezebel, Herodias, and Potiphar's wife. I was a little surprised to hear Eve mentioned as a candidate. I suggested Athaliah. I hadn't researched her lately, but decided to do so, and post on her. I have previously posted about some good, or at least neutral, women from the Old Testament. I don't have anything good to report about Athaliah.

What was so bad?

Athaliah's story is found in 2 Kings 8 - 11. 8:16 tells us that her husband was King Jehoram of Judah, the Southern Kingdom. 8:18 says that she was Ahab's daughter, and, presumably, also Jezebel's. Not a great ancestry, but people have overcome their ancestry. Did she? No. Verse 8:26 names her for the first time, and says that she was also the granddaughter of King Omri. So, she had an idolatrous father, mother and grandfather. What did she do?

What she did was to kill all her grandsons, when her son died, so that she could take the throne for herself. 2 Kings 11:1 describes this killing. One of her grandsons escaped, because his aunt Jehosheba (aka Jehoshabeath) hid six-year-old Joash (aka Jehoash) from his grandmother. Eventually, Jehoiada, the High Priest, brought young Joash forward as king, and had the wicked Athaliah killed.

The story is also told in 2 Chronicles 22-23.

Destroying your own grandsons, to further your own ambition, strikes me as about as evil a thing as one can do. I can't imagine any grandmother I know doing that, and it's hard to imagine any grandmother I don't know doing it, either.

I don't know who the wickedest woman in the Bible was, but Athaliah is a candidate, I guess.

Here's part 1, and here's part 2 of this series. These are both more general than this one. Here are three specific posts on such women, one a post on five sisters, one on Abishag, and one on Tamar.

Thanks for reading.

Women in the Old Testament, 2

Over a year ago, I posted on Jacob's family, in Genesis, and women's importance. I pointed out that Genesis says that 66 persons went with Jacob to Egypt, and names them, but there are almost no women in the list. Women almost certainly went, but just weren't included in the count. This morning, in my devotional reading, I found this verse, also about Jacob:

Genesis 37:35 All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, “No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.” Thus his father wept for him. (ESV)

This is in the story of Joseph, after his brothers had sold him into slavery, and deceived their father, making Jacob believe that he was dead.

As far as I know, only one daughter, Dinah, is mentioned in Genesis by name, but this verse indicates that there must have been at least a few more of them. It is possible that all of these daughters married, and stayed behind when Jacob and his family went to Egypt, but I doubt this, for two reasons. Dinah was raped, and therefore probably not as desirable as a wife, so perhaps she didn't marry. One or more of Jacob's other daughters may not have married, either. Except for the Dinah story, there is no indication in Genesis that Jacob became related to anyone by a daughter's marriage, and that exception was temporary. Benjamin was fairly young when the family went to Egypt, and it is possible that he had half-sisters of about his own age. Since the daughters comforted Jacob, they may have still lived in the household, either unmarried, or with their husbands, and this means that it seems at least possible that some of them were still with the household when the family moved to Egypt.

As Carol Hill and others have pointed out, not only were women's roles different in the times of the patriarchs than they are in 21st century North America, but numbers in Genesis were used differently than we might use them.

Thanks for reading.

". . . being dead, yet speaketh." Science

My wife saw a quote from a previous post of mine, which said this:

"I am constantly struck by the strangeness of reading works that seem addressed, personally and intimately, to me, and yet were written by people who crumbled to dust long ago." (source)

She told me that she wanted to know some of the statements that seem addressed to me. In other words, who speaks to me, though dead? (Hebrews 11:4, KJV, says "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh.")

In the first installment of this series, I quoted 10 brief sections from the Bible which particularly speak to me. In the second installment, I posted quotations from three of my favorite dead authors of fantastic literature, all of them Christians, namely George MacDonald, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis.

Quotations from science are more difficult. Science typically depends on periodical articles, many of them so specialized that even scientists reading outside their own area find them difficult to understand. Most scientists of the twenty-first century have never read Galileo, Newton, Darwin or Einstein, whereas, in literature and theology, as I understand it, it is important to read the classics. Nonetheless, below are some important quotations from the literature of science. (The quotations are in black. Various reference and explanatory material is in this color.)

Galileo accepted the inerrancy of Scripture; but he was also mindful of Cardinal Baronius's quip that the bible "is intended to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." "The Galileo Affair," by Catholic.net.

And so, after postulating movements, which, farther on in the book, I ascribe to the Earth, I have found by many and long observations that if the movements of the other planets are assumed for the circular motion of the Earth and are substituted for the revolution of each star, not only do their phenomena follow logically therefrom, but the relative positions and magnitudes both of the stars and all their orbits, and of the heavens themselves, become so closely related that in none of its parts can anything be changed without causing confusion in the other parts and in the whole universe. Therefore, in the course of the work I have followed this plan: I describe in the first book all the positions of the orbits together with the movements which I ascribe to the Earth, in order that this book might contain, as it were, the general scheme of the universe. Thereafter in the remaining books, I set forth the motions of the other stars and of all their orbits together with the movement of the Earth, in order that one may see from this to what extent the movements and appearances of the other stars and their orbits can be saved, if they are transferred to the movement of the Earth. Nor do I doubt that ingenious and learned mathematicians will sustain me, if they are willing to recognize and weigh, not superficially, but with that thoroughness which Philosophy demands above all things, those matters which have been adduced by me in this work to demonstrate these theories. In order, however, that both the learned and the unlearned equally may see that I do not avoid anyone's judgment, I have preferred to dedicate these lucubrations of mine to Your Holiness rather than to any other, because, even in this remote corner of the world where I live, you are considered to be the most eminent man in dignity of rank and in love of all learning and even of mathematics, so that by your authority and judgment you can easily suppress the bites of slanderers, albeit the proverb hath it that there is no remedy for the bite of a sycophant. If perchance there shall be idle talkers, who, though they are ignorant of all mathematical sciences, nevertheless assume the right to pass judgment on these things, and if they should dare to criticise and attack this theory of mine because of some passage of scripture which they have falsely distorted for their own purpose, I care not at all; I will even despise their judgment as foolish. Nicolas Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, public domain, 1543, from the dedication to Pope Paul III. The Wikipedia article on the history of science says that this book, claiming that the earth was not the center of the universe, began the scientific revolution.

Our design not respecting arts, but philosophy, and our subject not manual but natural powers, we consider chiefly those things which relate to gravity, levity, elastic force, the resistance of fluids, and the like forces, whether attractive or impulsive; and therefore we offer this work as the mathematical principles of philosophy; for all the difficulty of philosophy seems to consist in this – from the phenomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena; and to this end the general propositions in the first and second book are directed. In the third book we give an example of this in the explication of the System of the World; for by the propositions mathematically demonstrated in the former books, we in the third derive from the celestial phenomena the forces of gravity with which bodies tend to the sun and the several planets. Then from these forces, by other propositions which are also mathematical, we deduce the motions of the planets, the comets, the moon, and the sea. I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles here laid down will afford some light either to this or some truer method of philosophy. Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, public domain, 1687. This passage is from the Preface to the first edition. Newton was a philosopher, in his own eyes, and scientific journals weren't as important in his day, hence the introduction of Newton's ideas in this book, rather than in a journal article. This book, more than any other, founded classical physics. The Wikipedia article on the history of science says that this book completed the scientific revolution.

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, public domain, 1859. This is the last paragraph of that book. Note that Darwin said "originally breathed into a few forms or into one," thus allowing for Divine creation.

"I did not think; I investigated." Wilhelm Roentgen, on his thoughts when he first discovered X-rays, from an interview with McClure's Magazine, May 1, 1896. Ideally, scientists don't have preconceived ideas about what they will find, but just let the facts take them where they will. In practice, of course, that isn't always true.

Sometimes, as Max Planck observed, and Thomas S. Kuhn quoted (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (Wikipedia article on that book, accessed 12/07/2006) p. 151):

"a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

Thomas S. Kuhn was a historian of science. The quotation encapsulates the idea of his book, namely that science doesn't "progress" (he didn't use that word) by adding experiment to experiment, but by sudden leaps, or scientific revolutions, when some scientist has a revolutionary insight, such as Newton's (possibly legendary) sudden revelation, when seeing an apple fall from a tree, that gravity is an attractive force. The following quote is from a man who is not known for the experiments he did, except those he did in his own head:

The basal principle, which was the pivot of all our previous considerations, was the special principle of relativity, i.e. the principle of the physical relativity of all uniform motion. Let as once more analyse its meaning carefully.

It was at all times clear that, from the point of view of the idea it conveys to us, every motion must be considered only as a relative motion. Returning to the illustration we have frequently used of the embankment and the railway carriage, we can express the fact of the motion here taking place in the following two forms, both of which are equally justifiable :
(a) The carriage is in motion relative to the embankment,
(b) The embankment is in motion relative to the carriage.

In (a) the embankment, in (b) the carriage, serves as the body of reference in our statement of the motion taking place. If it is simply a question of detecting or of describing the motion involved, it is in principle immaterial to what reference-body we refer the motion. As already mentioned, this is self-evident, but it must not be confused with the much more comprehensive statement called "the principle of relativity," which we have taken as the basis of our investigations.
The principle we have made use of not only maintains that we may equally well choose the carriage or the embankment as our reference-body for the description of any event (for this, too, is self-evident). Our principle rather asserts what follows : If we formulate the general laws of nature as they are obtained from experience, by making use of
(a) the embankment as reference-body,
(b) the railway carriage as reference-body,

then these general laws of nature (e.g. the laws of mechanics or the law of the propagation of light in vacuo) have exactly the same form in both cases. Albert Einstein, Relativity: the Special and General Theory, public domain, from the chapter entitled "Special and General Theory of Relativity." The theory of special relativity was actually introduced in an article, one of those published in Einstein's breakout year, 1905, not in this book.

Margrethe So what was this mysterious thing you said?

Heisenberg There's no mystery about it. There never was any mystery. I remember it absolutely clearly, because my life was at stake, and I chose my words very carefully. I simply asked you if as a physicist one had the moral right to work on the practical exploitation of atomic energy. . . . (p. 36) Michael Frayn, Copenhagen. New York: Anchor Books, 2000. (Copyright by Michael Frayn, 1998) This excerpt was written about two scientists, not by them. For more on this play, see here. Scientists have occasionally been very concerned about the social impact of their work. They haven't always been concerned enough.

We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D. N. A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest. . . . It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material. J. D. Watson and F. H. C. Crick, "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" Nature 171:737-738, 1953. The first sentence is the opening sentence of this paper. The second sentence I have quoted comes near the end of this two-page article, and it indicates that Watson and Crick knew that this was a highly significant result. Crick is now dead. Watson isn't (yet).

Watson and Crick might not have published this paper without the work of Rosalind Franklin. I am sorry to say that none of the quotes above are from a woman, except the fictional one from Margrethe Bohr, who was not a scientist. There have been, unfortunately, until my own lifetime, few women who achieved prominence in science. I have previously posted about a female scientist who didn't achieve prominence, but did some very significant work.

Report on a life-changing experience

I went to chapel at Southern Wesleyan University today. Since I retired from there, over a year ago, I haven't been to chapel but twice, counting today. (I used to go regularly.) The women's basketball team (the link currently leads to last year's roster) was scheduled to report on their trip to the Czech Republic, and I wanted to hear the report. I'm glad I went.

Ten of the Lady Warriors, and their coach, went to the Czech Republic for 11 days, participating in a Sports event for the mission work of The Wesleyan Church. What does basketball have to do with missions? Sport? Let's put it this way. A number of years ago, when the first Wesleyan mission couple went there, the man was asked to coach a semi-pro football team (American style, not soccer). He's still doing it. It turns out that that was a great way to reach young men for Christ. The sports ministry has grown, to the point where it seemed advisable to have a major event, bringing in teams from four Wesleyan colleges to play other teams, meet with them one-on-one, hold clinics for kids, and engage in other activities. By all accounts, the young people (and their coaches) did what they came to do -- present the claims of Jesus Christ.

Probably more important than that, it was a life-changing experience for the young women. Some of them had never been on a plane, and none of them had ever been to Europe. They had to raise $1700 each, as did the coach, and all of them were able to do it. They shared one electrical outlet and one hair wand. One girl's luggage never came, but the others shared their clothes.

I was especially struck by what three of the ladies said. One of them, who came to SWU three years ago, mostly to play basketball, kicked it off by telling about the trip. It was obvious that she had been changed by going, and it was obvious that she was a much more mature Christian for it. A second said that she, too, just came to SWU because she could get a basketball scholarship. She said that she had never been in church, or opened a Bible, until she became a student. She, too, was clearly growing in grace. A third, as part of her prepared testimony while abroad, told, publicly, for the first time, and then to chapel, how she had had an alcoholic father who was physically and emotionally abusive, and how that had burdened her throughout her school career, but that God had healed her father, and enabled her to forgive him. There weren't many dry eyes. I doubt that there were many in Brno, either, even with translation.

Christian colleges generally have sports teams. I won't say that they are always worth it, or that everyone who comes to play ends up a model citizen, but then sometimes people who come to study for the ministry don't, either. It costs money to hire coaches, build and maintain gyms and athletic fields, and offer scholarships. But, on balance, it's more than worth it. Athletics motivates some people as nothing else, and exposure to a Christian environment can be transforming. I remember, for example, a student who came to SWU to play basketball and major in science. He did. He met his wife there. She was youth pastor of a church when they were first married. Now he is senior pastor of a church, and God is blessing their work. Another one I know of had been kicked out of a public university, and off its basketball team, for drinking. He found out about SWU's coach, and asked him for a chance. His first year after college was spent helping out the sports ministry in the Czech Republic. He married a young lady who was on a one-year missions trip to Germany at the same time he was in Europe. They both raised their support for their year in Europe. They are now co-pastors of a church, and he is the Missions Director for the South Carolina District of The Wesleyan Church.

May God bless the coaches and athletic teams of SWU and similar schools.

Shocked -- Detroit Shocked, that is

The Detroit Shock won the WNBA championship on Saturday, September 9th. I got to watch most of the game. It was a good game, and either team could have won up until the last 90 seconds or so, when Katie Smith put in a shot that put her team ahead for good. It was Smith's first championship, as a pro, or in college. She has played all 10 seasons that the WNBA has been in existence, and is one of the ten players selected to the All-Decade team.

Smith certainly wasn't the whole game. It was a team effort by both clubs, and Smith scored less than her co-guard, Deanna Nolan.

It's harder for women to make a career in sport than it is for a man. One reason is that there are fewer opportunities. Major league baseball has 25 players per roster, plus an extensive farm system, and while those down on the farm aren't getting rich, there are a lot of jobs available for men. Then there's pro American football, with even larger rosters. There are minor league men's basketball teams. There's also hockey, with quite a few positions available. There's much less available for women.

One reason for this, of course, is that there is less demand to watch female team sports than male team sports. Why? I'm not sure. Some of it, possibly, is that sport is a form of warfare, and most battles in human history have used young males as cannon fodder, so we do the same in sport. It is true that, generally, male athletes are larger, and can hit, throw, and kick harder, and jump higher, than women. Maybe that's part of the reason. Women in tennis seem to do roughly as well as men, in terms of pay, and in terms of the fame and financial rewards bestowed by society. Women golfers don't do quite as well, but Annika Sorenstam and Michele Wie, at least, are probably better known by far than any WNBA player, and perhaps as well known as their male counterparts, except, of course, for Tiger Woods. (See here for an article on sports attendance.)

Another reason that a career in sports is difficult for women is that they get pregnant, and men don't (duh!). One of the Sacramento Monarchs, DeMya Walker, got hit pretty hard during the game, and the commentator remarked that he didn't think that was as bad as having had a C-section. I don't think so, not to mention the previous pregnancy and the following recovery and care of the little one. Her daughter was born on April 11, less than five months before the final game. It's amazing that she was playing at all, but she was a starter for Sacramento, and played well.

I'd like to mention one other player, Yolanda Griffith of the Monarchs, also a member of the All-Decade team, who is 36 years old, and has a 17-year old daughter. This may have been her last game. The biography furnished by her team says that she supported herself and her daughter, while in college, by repossessing autos. Griffith, and most of the other players in the WNBA, have worked very hard to make it in athletics. They deserve more adulation, and are better role models, than the overpaid spoiled brats who are sometimes found on men's teams.

Thanks for reading.

Proverbs and other stuff

I've made these up, I think. You're welcome to use them. If you made them up, or know some other source, let me know, please.

1) Always try to park so you don't have to back up. It's safer.

2) Everybody works harder than everybody else. If you don't believe it, just ask them.

3) Never say "I'll never forget . . . ." None of us are guaranteed to remember even our own names for all of our lives. (Try not to forget that!)

4) If asked "How are you?" the proper answer is "Better than I deserve." But for the grace of God, we'd all be dead and eternally lost.

Have you got one (or more)?

While watching the WNBA playoffs, I heard a remark I wish I had made: Sue Bird, point guard for the Seattle Storm, had had an injury to her nose in the previous game. She thought it was broken (it has been broken twice) but it wasn't. Nonetheless, she wore a mostly transparent mask. (Richard Hamilton, of the Detroit Pistons, wore one when his team won a championship, for similar reasons.) Doris Burke, calling the game for ESPN, said that Bird had a "twisted beak." (Bird, and the Storm, lost to the Los Angeles Sparks, who advanced in the playoffs.) Burke has called both men's and women's college and professional basketball games.

Numbers in Genesis

As Carol Hill points out, some of the numbers in Genesis cause some questions. Among these are the reported ages of the patriarchs. Hill, writing in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, presents considerable evidence from scripture, archaeology, and elsewhere, that suggests strongly that these numbers, and others, had more symbolic than literal significance. The article is well written, seems to be authoritative, and does not require any special knowledge to understand, but it is not the sort of thing you are going to be able to read and digest in five minutes.

Here's perhaps the most important passage:

All age-numbers (30 in all) from Adam to Noah are a combination of the sacred numbers 60 (years and months) and 7. No numbers end in 1, 3, 4, 6, or 8—a chance probability of one in a billion. Thirteen numbers end in 0 (some multiple or combination of 60), 8 numbers end in 5 (5 years = 60 months), 3 numbers end in 7, 5 numbers end in 2 (5yrs + 7 yrs = 12), and 1 number ends in 9 (5yrs + 7yrs + 7yrs = 19). All of this cannot be coincidental. The Mesopotamians were using sacred numbers, not real numbers. Therefore, these numbers were not meant to be (and should not be) interpreted as real numbers.

There have been some responses to Hill's article, which can be found here. One of them is a letter from me, which points out that the Bible indicates the number of people that went to Egypt with Jacob during the famine. Only two of those listed and included in the total are female, which is inconsistent with common sense, and also inconsistent with the scripture's own statement that Jacob's son's wives went along. I take this as further evidence that not all the numbers in the Bible were meant to be taken literally.

Here's a link to the ESV Bible, Genesis 46:8-27, which is the passage I was referring to.

Thanks for reading.

January 17, 2006: I have posted more on the subject of the women in Jacob's family.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt and the size of the universe

Talk about a big subject!

How do we know how large the universe is, or how far away a particular extra-terrestrial body, such as another star, is? The short answer is, we have to make some assumptions, and do some measurements. (The same is true for learning about the past, or predicting the future.)

The first basic tool for determining the distance of objects was triangulation. In other words, measure the apparent angles of the direction of an object from two points, as far apart as reasonably possible, and use trigonometric functions, or some such mathematics, to determine the distance. The problem with triangulation is that most objects outside of our solar system are so far away that the apparent angles will be the same, or, to put it another way, the triangle used will be too skinny to use. About the longest possible distance between observation points is the distance between the position of the earth, six months apart, when we have traveled half way around the earth's orbit. Even that distance is a tiny fraction of most distances to other stars and galaxies.

Well, can't you determine how far away something is by its brightness? Brighter objects should be closer, shouldn't they? Well, yes, all other things being equal, but they aren't. Some objects are much brighter than others. We can, for example, triangulate the distances to the moon and the sun, and the moon is closer, even though it appears less bright than the sun. A distant galaxy would not seem very bright, but a nearby meteor, quite small, could appear as quite bright.

Enter Henrietta Leavitt. Leavitt, who, like most female English-speaking scientists, wasn't given the status or position that her good work deserved, discovered that there was a type of variable star, and that a few dozen of these were found in the Magellanic Clouds, the two galaxies closest to ours. (These two are not visible from the Northern Hemisphere.) Her assumption was that all the stars in these two galaxies were essentially the same distance from us, so that the brightest-appearing of them should actually be the brightest, and largest of stars of that type. She found a relationship between the period of the variation and the brightness. This enabled astronomers who had found such variable stars elsewhere to measure the period, and, from that, infer the brightness, hence the distance, of such stars.

The Wikipedia article, which I linked to in the previous paragraph, has, somewhat to my surprise, a link to a web page entitled World's Greatest Creation Scientists from Y1K to Y2K, where she is listed as one of a few such. Based on the best biography of Leavitt, Miss Leavitt'sStars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe, by George Johnson (New York: Norton, 2005) it seems that Leavitt was, indeed, a believer. There doesn't seem to be enough information to infer any particular belief about origins, such as young-earth creationism or Intelligent Design. (The web page does not do so for Leavitt.)

I am not an astronomer. I was amazed to read in Johnson's book that there was still some controversy, as late as 1996 (there probably still is) about what assumptions to make about measuring the distance of distant objects.

Basketball: Monarchs, proposals

I know -- the About paragraph at the upper right of this blog page says nothing about basketball, but sometimes I can't resist (or can't think of anything else to efficiently post).


Congratulations to the Sacramento Monarchs, who won the WNBA championship on Tuesday night. I watched almost the entire game. The Connecticut Sun, who narrowly lost, were hampered by injuries to one of their stars, Lindsay Whalen, point guard. I saw Whalen on TV when she was with the University of Minnesota, two years ago. She was an exciting player, but passed the ball out of bounds a little too much. The commentators on this year's finals series said that she had been the best point guard in the WNBA, which is high praise, indeed, so she has evidently matured, and is more under control. The Sun, of course, have a number of other good players. One of their players, not quite as skilled, but good enough, is 7 foot, 2 inch Margo Dydek.

Yolanda Griffith was most valuable player for the championship series. She was also the oldest player on either team, being born March 1, 1970. She has a 16 year old daughter. The Monarch's page on Griffith indicates that she was among the league's best players (between 3rd best and 18th best) in 27 different statistical categories, which is remarkable. I'm too lazy to check, but suspect that no other player in the league compares with that. Obviously a solid player, all-around. Taj McWilliams-Franklin of the Sun was also born in 1970, also was excellent in the championship series, and is among the best players in the league in 23 different statistical categories. Also, obviously a solid player. McWilliams-Franklin has an 11 year old daughter. Both of these women appear to have improved, basketball-wise, at least, with age.


I have some suggestions for those in charge of my favorite game. I don't believe, for a tenth of a second, that anyone who is in charge will even see them, let alone implement them.

For basketball at all levels:
1) Make another line, beyond the 3-point line, and have 4-point shots, with four free throws if a player is fouled in the act of shooting from beyond this line. This should open up the game, make it more exciting, and make it possible to score lots of points in a hurry.

2) Assess fouls to more than one defensive player, if an offensive shooter is fouled by more than one person while in the act of shooting. Shooters are often clobbered by at least two persons, and only one gets a foul.

3) Cut back on the number of time-outs taken during the last two minutes of a game, or don't allow full time-outs during that period. As any fan knows, the last "few minutes" of a close game can take half an hour.

4) Have more female coaches of men's teams. Men have done very well as women's coaches (so have women--but both the Sun and the Monarchs had male coaches) so why shouldn't the reverse be true? Rick Pitino had a female assistant when he was at Kentucky, and John Thompson had a female academic advisor who sat on the bench at Georgetown. There should be more female coaches of men's teams.

5) Have more female TV commentators on men's basketball. (It's been done at least once, but there are some excellent female commentators--why restrict them to brief interviews at the end of the first half?)

For the NBA:
6) Assess more fouls to players with the ball who shove defenders (like Shaq does.)

7) Have an NBA coaching staff salary cap.

8) Don't draft players until they have finished college in their native country, or are old enough that they could have, if they had remained in college.

I have posted about basketball previously, at least here, here and here, on, respectively, a book about high school coach Bob Hurley; Reggie and Cheryl Miller, arguably basketball's first family; and Kwame Brown, a failure in the NBA who was drafted out of high school.

Women in ministry: Transcultural?

I am referring to a previous post, and to a comment on that post.

The commenter referred to an article from Apologetics Press. As the commenter says, it's a fairly long article. This quote contains the central claim, referring to 1 Corinthians 11 and 14: ". . . both passages demonstrate the clear application of the transcultural principle (female subordination in worship) to a specific cultural circumstance. The underlying submission principle remains intact as an inbuilt constituent element of the created order." In other words, the author states that subordination of women in worship is not a cultural matter, but is built into creation, like, say, gravity.

That can, of course, be argued, and has been, by those who claim that female subordination in worship is not transcultural, but that the passages which seem to teach it were related to specific cultural situations, not necessarily applicable to, say, 21st Century North America. Such arguments generally appeal to such scriptures as Acts 2:16-21, and to the fact that there were prophetesses in the Old Testament (Exodus 15:20, Micah 6:4, Judges 4, 2 Kings 22:14-23:3), and the New (Acts 21:9), and that even 1 Corinthians 11 does not say that women are not to pray or prophesy, but that their head is to be covered when they do. (The article cited concedes that head covering, at least, was cultural.)

Here's Acts 2:17-18 (ASV, emphasis added): 17 And it shall be in the last days, saith God, I will pour forth of my Spirit upon all flesh: And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, And your young men shall see visions, And your old men shall dream dreams:18 Yea and on my servants and on my handmaidens in those days Will I pour forth of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.

My impression is that everybody, including me, has a tendency to think that scriptural admonitions that we agree with are transcultural, and those that we don't like very much aren't. Clearly, that's a danger.

My wife has been asking me about Acts 15. I don't have many answers, but here are some of her questions, and the matter is related to the idea of transcultural.

Acts 15:28 For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: 29 that ye abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication; from which if ye keep yourselves, it shall be well with you. Fare ye well. (ASV)

The Jerusalem Council had four commands for Gentile Christians. It is interesting that few churches these days have anything at all to say about the first three of them. "Abstaining from things sacrificed to idols" isn't mentioned now because, in the literal sense, no such things now exist. However, Paul said, in 1 Corinthians 8, that the main reason for not eating food offered to idols was not because it had been offered to idols, but because doing so might bother someone with a weak conscience. In 1 Corinthians 10:27, he told the Corinthian church that, if they were invited to eat with an idol-worshiper, they shouldn't ask whether the food had been sacrificed to idols. If they were told that it was, then they should abstain. Thus, even in New Testament times, one of the four prohibitions was weakened somewhat by Paul. Most Christians, I suppose, would say that eating blood, or meat from an animal which did not had the blood drained out of id, is not a sin, which, if true, means that these prohibitions were cultural, not transcultural. (The culture it applied to was one which mostly kept the Jewish dietary laws.) Abstaining from fornication is still taken as transcultural, and there is reason for that, as God's sexual ideal for humans, throughout scripture, is that it should only take place between a male and female who are married to each other.

My point is that it seems hard to tell which of the commandments given to the early church should be taken as transcultural, and which applied to a particular situation or culture. As indicated previously, I believe, along with some who know better than I (check references in that post), that prohibitions against women in spiritual leadership were cultural, and, in the US, at least, they still are. I believe that weakens the church. I certainly respect the views of those who think such prohibitions are transcultural. They could be right. They could also be wrong.

Women in ministry and 1 Timothy 2:12

I am not a Greek scholar. I am a Sunday School teacher, in a denomination that, at least in theory, encourages females to seek pastoral roles. Our lesson for today includes 1 Timothy 2:12, "But I permit not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over a man, but to be in quietness." (ASV). (The lesson is about more than that!)

The author of the lesson commentary is a (male) Greek scholar. He states that the word authentein, translated above as "have dominion over," occurs only this once in the New Testament. He further states that this refers to a particular heretical teaching, from outside the church, but affecting it, found in Ephesus at the time, and says that a better translation would be "'I do not permit a woman to teach that she has absolute domination over a man,' or 'I do not permit a woman to claim that she is the author (originator) of man.'" (Lee M. Haines, "Maximizing our Service to God," Lesson for June 12, 2005, Wesley Adult Bible Series, p. 15. Noblesville, Indiana: Wesleyan Publishing House, 2005)

His claim about the occurrence of authentein is correct. As would be expected, there is disagreement over the interpretation. Katherine Kroeger expands on Haines' argument, and probably was at least part of the basis for it. D. L. agrees with Kroeger. Panning defends the interpretation of women as subordinate. (Available as a .PDF document linked here.) I am sure that there are other scholars on at least two sides of this debate. The debate has implications for other areas. Bilezikian, in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, claims that mistakenly arguing for subordination of women has led to a mistaken view of the position of Christ. (March, 1997, issue, Volume 40, pp. 57-68. The Journal is available here. You can navigate to the specific article from that point.)

Bilezikian writes, about some interpretations of I Corinthians 11:3:

They insist that this text teaches the existence of an order of hierarchy between God and Christ on one hand and between men and women on the other. Of course they have no satisfactory answer for the fact that Paul’s ordering of the three clauses rules out a hierarchical sequence (BCA instead of ABC) and for the fact that the meaning of “head” in this statement, as well as in other NT passages where it is similarly used, is better rendered as “one considered preeminent but acting as servant-provider, or source (of life and growth).”

I recognize that I do not have the last word on this topic, and that it is controversial. Nonetheless, I think it is safe to say that there are some interpretions of 1 Timothy 2:12 that do not exclude women from leadership positions. There are other passages that indicate that women had such roles in the New Testament. (See here for another denomination's scriptural rationale for having women in the ministry.)

I referred to this topic earlier, but in ignorance of even this much Greek, in the comments to this post.

Women in the Old Testament: 5 Sisters

Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah--they were the daughters of Zelophehad, and their story is told in Numbers 26:33, 27:1-7, 36:2-12, and Joshua 17:3-6. What was their story? They were the only children of their father. He had no sons. Since he had no sons, his family stood to lose any hope of possessions in his name in the Promised Land. The five sisters did something about this. They thrust themselves forward, appealing to Moses, and asked that they be given rights to land ownership, just as men were. It is possible that they presented their request to one or more underlings of Moses first. If so, the underling decided that this was a hard case, and passed the decision on up. Moses listened to their request, and passed it up, too. He asked God, and God said that they were right, and that they should be given an inheritance, so that Zelophehad's name would not be lost.

Numbers 36:6b is amazing: "Let them be married to whom they think best; only into the family of the tribe of their father shall they be married." (ASV) This gave these five women the privilege of selecting husbands for themselves. I don't believe there is another record of this in the Old Testament, unless it be Rebekah's choice whether or not to go with Abraham's servant, to marry Isaac. True, the privilege of choosing a spouse is tempered by a restriction, and a restriction not placed on men, but the privilege is still there.

God's people were willing to hear a request by women for treatment as full citizens, and God Himself made sure that the request was granted.

I have posted on Women in the Old Testament previously. Here's a post on Tamar. Here's the first in the series. I have also posted on Abishag, a particular woman. For a post on Athaliah, and links to posts on women in the OT, generally, see here.

Pro Basketball's First Family?

There are, no doubt, several good candidates for this non-existent title. The Van Gundy brothers, Jeff and Stan, are both NBA head coaches. Another candidate is the Miller family. Only two of the five siblings have been connected with professional basketball in important ways, but those two are significant.

Cheryl Miller is a basketball hall of famer. She received that honor in 1995. She had been an outstanding high school, college, and Olympic player and gold medal winner, and a winning college coach, by that time. Since then, she became a Women's NBA coach, and a broadcaster. She was the first woman to call a men's professional basketball game for a television broadcast. I am not sure, but I believe that she was the first woman to call a televised game in any men's professional team sport, and also, that she has been, so far, the only one to do it. She has been called the "greatest female basketball player of all time."

Her brother, Reggie, is retiring from the Indiana Pacers after this season. Miller is 12th in career NBA scoring, 6th in career minutes played, and 7th in career games played. This would be striking enough, but perhaps even more striking is the fact that Miller has played his entire career, beginning with the 1987-88 season, with the same team.

In 2005, that is rare. Most professional athletes change franchises several times. The Pacers, and Miller, were able to adjust to Reggie Miller's reduced scoring role in the last few seasons, with Miller setting an example of genuine professionalism, coming off the bench when asked to, working hard for his team, even though others had become the stars. I am sure that he has an ego--most people do--but he subordinated his own glorification for the good of the team. Many highly paid athletes haven't even tried to do this--it's a foreign concept. For example, there are rumors that Chris Webber doesn't want to play with Allen Iverson, claiming that Iverson doesn't allow him the chance to score enough.

On May 19th, Reggie Miller played his last game. The Pacers lost to the Detroit Pistons, who go on to face Shaquille O'Neal, Dwyane Wade, Stan Van Gundy and the rest of the Miami Heat in the NBA playoffs. Miller was high scorer for his team in his last game. His coach took him out with a few seconds to go. The crowd, including his opponents, gave Miller a standing ovation, which resumed after the game ended, and clearly would have lasted long after Miller walked down the tunnel to the locker room. A referee, his teammates, and most or all of the Pistons personally acknowledged his achievements. The Detroit coach called a time out to allow for extended applause. This was especially remarkable, as these two teams got into a fight that turned into a mini-riot in November. One of the Pacers, Ron Artest, was suspended for the season. There was no sign of any remaining rancor between the teams on the 19th. Pro athletes can be good sports!

Professional athletes, like other entertainers, are role models, whether they want to be or not, and whether they are good ones or not (Some professional entertainers are not good models). Reggie and Cheryl Miller have set examples of excellence in sport, working hard to take long-term advantage of their tremendous talent. I do not know if either of them are believers. I hope so.

Women in the Old Testament: Tamar

In a previous post, I commented on the subordinate status of women in much of the first part of Genesis. Things changed as time went on. Sarah told Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away, and Abraham did so. Rebekah was given a choice--did she want to stay home, or go far away to be the wife of Isaac, a man she had never seen? It was her choice (Genesis 24). Later, perhaps at God's direction, she interfered with Isaac's plans for Esau, so that Jacob, her favorite, got the blessing, and had to leave home, which is how he found Leah and Rachel, his wives. Clearly, Rebekah was a strong woman, and one who had the chance to play a part.

The story of Tamar (Genesis 38) is, if anything, even more remarkable. She, too, was a woman who took things into her own hands, perhaps at God's direction, to right a wrong. Judah's first son, her husband, was evil, and God killed him. In those days, a surviving wife was supposed to produce an heir for her dead husband, with the help of one of his close male relatives. Onan, her husband's brother, did not do what custom required. He practiced coitus interruptus, getting pleasure out of his sister-in-law without the chance of her becoming pregnant. So God killed Onan, too. (As I understand it, Catholics use this story as one justification of their rejection of birth control methods. Some Protestants believe that Onan was killed because he was selfish, and used his sister-in-law as a sex object, not because he practiced birth control.)

Judah didn't send his third son to Tamar, blaming her falsely for the death of his first two sons. She then dressed herself as a prostitute, and placed herself on a route that Judah would travel. Judah took the bait, used her, and she became pregnant, which was her intention. This sexual activity took place without Judah recognizing the voice, or anything else, about the woman who had married his son. Judah, if not chaste, was just. When he wanted to have his daughter-in-law stoned to death for her adultery, (Even though he had, at least once, coupled with a woman not his wife--double standard) Tamar proved to him that he had been the father. He did not have her stoned. Her twin sons were born, and he accepted them as his own.

It is difficult to know for sure (previous post) but I'm guessing that Tamar was one of those who went into Egypt with Judah and Jacob, during the famine that Joseph saved his own people from. The Bible makes it clear that this strong woman was one of the ancestors of David, hence of Jesus, through one of those twins. Sarah and Rebekah were also ancestors, of course.

For links to some other posts on women in the Old Testament, see here.

Thanks for reading.

Women in the Old Testament, 1

In case you haven't thought of it before, you read it here first. Women were apparently not considered to be as important as men in the culture of the patriarchs.

Why do I say that? Well, for one thing, Genesis 5 gives a genealogy, beginning with Adam, and going through Noah's sons. In all that list, no woman is listed, only men.

Here's another piece of evidence. Genesis 46 says there were 66 people who went with Jacob into Egypt, and lists them, but there is only one of Jacob's daughters, and one granddaughter, who are listed. It seems unlikely that all of Jacob’s descendants, save these two, were male, especially since verse 5 says that there were daughters and granddaughters, both plural. No wives are mentioned by name at all, except Rachel, Leah, Zilpah and Bilhah, who were the mothers of Jacob's twelve sons and one daughter, all four of whom were presumably dead by this time. (verse 5 says that Jacob's sons did take their wives.) So men are listed, but not women.

I expect to post more about this topic later. (Addendum, Jan 17, 2006: I now have done so, here.)

Addendum, Jan 26, 2007: There are now more posts about women in the Old Testament, including three about specific women. See here for links.

The latest Christian Carnival (links to about sixty posts) is here.