halfway to the Sky, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

I recently posted about Leap of Faith, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Since then, I have read, and liked, her halfway to the Sky. Leap of Faith was about coming to faith in God. I found no mention of worship, or faith, in this book.

I'm giving away much of the plot of this one.

So what is it about? It is about a twelve-year-old girl, trying to get over the death of her older brother from Muscular Dystrophy, and her parents' divorce. Dani tries to run away by hiking the Appalachian Trail. (Her real name is Katahdin. Her brother's was Springer. Her parents met and married on the Trail. Springer Mountain is at the Georgia end, Mt. Katahdin at the Maine end.)

Dani's mother finds her, shortly after the beginning of the Trail in Georgia. Dani has prepared carefully, buying gear, hiking clothing, and food. Her mother has come quickly, without preparation. The mother decides to walk the Trail with Dani. Dani gradually comes to understand her mother, her brother's death, her father, even her father's new wife, and herself. A friend she made early on the trail comes to let her down badly, emotionally. A new friend, an older woman who is a cancer survivor, comes to be valued by both Dani and her mother. Her father helps them both out in unexpected ways.

Because of Dani's mother's work, they cannot walk the whole Trail. However, a person who walks part of the Trail at a time is recognized as a thru-hiker, if they walk the entire Trail, just as much as one who goes the entire way at one time. They plan to walk the next section of the Trail in a year or so.

At the end of the book, Dani has a new half-brother, and agrees to baby-sit him for her stepmother. Dani and her mother sell their house, and move into a cabin closer to the Trail. (They are still in Bristol, TN, which is within easy driving distance of the Trail.)

Bradley seems to be very knowledgable about Trail hiking. The book is divided by days, and each chapter is headed by how far Dani has walked that day, how far she has gone, in total, on the Trail, and the weather. There are a lot of details about dangers and joys in hiking, gear, food, and geography. I did not find this background boring, but quite interesting.

A splendid coming-of-age and family understanding book. (Although Dani hasn't reached 14 years old by the end.)

Thanks for reading. Read Bradley.

Young-Earth Creationism and fossils

A post in the Panda's Thumb refers to a 1995 article by Kurt Wise, and labels him an "honest creationist." (The Panda's Thumb post indicates how to access the article by Wise.) The Wikipedia article on him indicates that he is an important and influential young-earth creationist. He has more than adequate scientific credentials, having taken a Ph. D. in paleontology at Harvard under the late Stephen Jay Gould.

Wise says, in the indicated article, at least two interesting and important things:

". . . there is no sense in which creationist paleontology at this point is capable of addressing the traditional transitional forms issue in any rigorous sense." CEN Tech J., vol 9, no. 2, 1995, p. 216.

"Evidence for not just one but for all three of the species level and above types of stratomorphic intermediates expected by macroevolutionary theory is surely strong evidence for macroevolutionary theory. Creationists therefore need to accept this fact. It certainly CANNOT said that traditional creation theory expected (predicted) any of these fossil finds." p. 219 (emphasis in original)

Wise is not about to give up young-earth creationism, and he makes that clear. He believes that explanations compatible with young-earth creationism can be found eventually. However, he argues, in this article, that young-earth creationist scientists should be concentrating on fields other than fossil transitional forms.

Even though this article is nearly 15 years old, I know no evidence that young-earth creationist paleontology has changed enough in the meantime to negate what Wise said in 1995. In other words, the fossil record can be taken as providing evidence which supports mainstream evolutionary theory.

Thanks for reading.

Some thoughts on Joseph

The story of Joseph is well-known. In re-reading it recently, I was struck by some particulars that I had forgotten, or never knew:

1) Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, first ancestors of two prominent tribes of Israel, were half Egyptian. (Perhaps their own children were more Egyptian than Israelite -- we don't know who Ephraim and Manasseh married. We do know that Manasseh had a son, Machir, by an Aramean concubine -- 1 Chronicles 7:14. It seems almost certain that others of Jacob's sons married unrelated women. Judah married a Canaanite woman. His offspring were by Tamar -- Genesis 38 does not make clear whether she, too was a Canaanite, or if he married her.)
Genesis 41:50 Before the year of famine came, two sons were born to Joseph. Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On, bore them to him. 51 Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh. “For,” he said, “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father's house.” 52 The name of the second he called Ephraim, “For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” (All scripture from the ESV.)

2) Joseph, who had been a steward himself, although perhaps not with that title, trusted his steward:
Genesis 43:16 When Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the steward of his house, “Bring the men into the house, and slaughter an animal and make ready, for the men are to dine with me at noon.” 17 The man did as Joseph told him and brought the men to Joseph's house. 18 And the men were afraid because they were brought to Joseph's house, and they said, “It is because of the money, which was replaced in our sacks the first time, that we are brought in, so that he may assault us and fall upon us to make us servants and seize our donkeys.” 19 So they went up to the steward of Joseph's house and spoke with him at the door of the house, 20 and said, “Oh, my lord, we came down the first time to buy food. 21 And when we came to the lodging place we opened our sacks, and there was each man's money in the mouth of his sack, our money in full weight. So we have brought it again with us, 22 and we have brought other money down with us to buy food. We do not know who put our money in our sacks.” 23 He replied, “Peace to you, do not be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has put treasure in your sacks for you. I received your money.” Then he brought Simeon out to them.

The steward seemed to recognize, and honor, possibly even to worship, Joseph's God.

3) Joseph gave the priests of a foreign god special privilege:
Genesis 47:20 So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, for all the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe on them. The land became Pharaoh's. 21 As for the people, he made servants of them from one end of Egypt to the other. 22 Only the land of the priests he did not buy, for the priests had a fixed allowance from Pharaoh and lived on the allowance that Pharaoh gave them; therefore they did not sell their land.

I find that remarkable. Was this because his own wife was from a priestly family? I don't know.

Thanks for reading.

A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by David Snoke, part 10

I have published a series of posts on David Snoke's A Biblical Case for an Old Earth (Grand Rapids, Mi: Baker Books, 2006). The latest post is here.

In his eighth chapter, Snoke considers the Flood.

He begins by discussing miracles. Real miracles, he says, leave traces (sometimes large traces) in the real world. For example, A blind man healed by Jesus could really see, after the miracle. This relates to the Flood, in that, if there was a world-wide deluge, there should be world-wide traces. He is not convinced that such evidence is present, in spite of the work of so-called flood geologists. (Snoke is not alone. Many other Bible-believing Christian scientists don't find such evidence, either.)

Snoke has a great sentence:
The entire program of flood geology is to argue that science as we know it supports their interpretation of the Bible, not to propose unknown laws of physics that no one could guess at unless they were needed to cover up inconvenient facts. (160)

Snoke supposes that there was a flood that covered the entire earth, including the tallest mountains. He then says that, for the results to be consistent with the biblical story of Noah, and with the scientific evidence, there must have been a lot of miracles, involving the migration of the animals; keeping all the needed animals and their food on an ark of limited space; feeding carnivorous animals on the ark; caring for all those animals by just eight people; heat disposal -- the number of animals in that space must have generated lots of heat, enough to kill some of them, and Noah and his family; survival of animals from extreme climates, or unique habitats, such as tide pools, on the ark; the appearance and disappearance of enough water to cover the earth that much; that the earth's crust did not sink under that much water; that plants and trees survived flooding for that length of time; survival of freshwater fish in salt water (or the reverse); survival of small invertebrates under the water (or caring for anthills, worms, nematodes, etc., on the ark); fossil sorting after the flood; and trees remaining upright during the flood. An amazing list. Snoke concludes that it just didn't happen that way, not because God couldn't have done it, but because the Bible doesn't indicate that any of these things happened.

Says Snoke:
Just as young-earth advocates read in an entire re-creation of the world in the curse of Genesis 3, flood geology reads in another entire re-creation, not mentioned in Scripture, after the flood. Flood geology has God creating the world not once, but three times, without any direct Scriptural evidence, and in contradiction to the statement in Genesis 2:1 that the entire creation was completed by the seventh day. (165)

Snoke, who takes the Bible very seriously, presents evidence, which I'll leave to the reader of his book -- you need to read this for yourself -- that the Bible is consistent with the flood being local, not world-wide. He also thinks that there is no scientific evidence for a world-wide flood.

Thanks for reading. Read Snoke.

Lilith, by George MacDonald

Lilith, by George MacDonald, is in the public domain, having been originally published in 1895. It is a fine book of fantastic literature, still very much readable, although a bit dated. (Too many exclamation points for modern tastes, for one thing.)

The entire book is available from Project Gutenberg, and there is a plot summary in the book's Wikipedia article. I wish to briefly state the major theme.

The major theme of the book is that you cannot truly be yourself, until you are willing to give up yourself. In this, the book is an example of Matthew 10:39 "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." (ESV, Jesus speaking)

MacDonald (and, I think, Jesus) is speaking on two levels here. First, you can't really accomplish anything worthwhile in life without making Jesus Christ Lord of that life. It's tempting to think you can, but you won't. Second, of course, is the heavenly reward for the believer. Two of MacDonald's characters spend most of the book trying to live for self. Mr. Vane (I don't think the name is an accident -- he is unsettled, subject, as it were, to the direction of the wind.) the protagonist, wants to do good, but tries to do it on his own, and the result is that his heart's love dies, and he doesn't accomplish much, if any, of what he had tried to do. Besides that, he has misled a group of children who depended on him for leadership. Lilith (from a legend, Adam's first wife, before Eve) who is still alive after all these years, makes no pretense of doing good. She is almost entirely selfish. But she knows, deep down, that she needs to yield herself to the ministrations of Adam, Eve, and Mara (sorrow) their daughter. Finally, she does.*

There are many plot twists, and I don't think I've given away too much, for anyone who wants to read this book.

*It is likely, as the Wikipedia article on the book suggests, that MacDonald is arguing for Christian universalism -- everyone, even Satan, will eventually be redeemed. MacDonald was not orthodox in this, of course, but, other than that, he is.

Thanks for reading. Read MacDonald. I have quoted from the book a few times in previous posts. To see these, click on "Lilith" in the tags following.

Sunspots 196

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

Humor:
A Reasonable Imagination has some advice, from (fictitious) publishers, to St. Augustine on the manuscript of his Confessions, and for C. S. Lewis on the manuscript of his Miracles: A Preliminary Study. Unfortunately, it rings true.

Science:
We still don't know everything. Surprise! Carl Zimmer writes about "vaults," tiny cell parts (organelles) that seem to be found in most living things. We don't know what they do. They may have some relationship to cancer. Zimmer has another post about vaults here. There is a brief Wikipedia entry on the subject.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a trial of embryonic stem cells in paraplegic humans, says Wired. The cell line used was one of those approved by President Bush in August, 2001

Music:
An article about Anthony McGill, who played clarinet (with some other luminaries!) for the inauguration of President Obama.

Christianity:
Heart, Mind, Soul and Strength continues her thorough study on prophecies in the gospels, and their fulfillment.

Image source (public domain)

Happy Birthday, Mozart

W. Amadeus Mozart was born on this date in 1756.

Here's a video of a boy's choir singing the Gloria from one of his masses. Glory to God, indeed!

George MacDonald on the only way to eradicate evil

Nothing will ever close that wound," he answered, with a sigh. "It must eat into her heart! Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil." George MacDonald, Lilith (public domain, 1895) Chapter XXX (Adam, or Mr. Raven, to Vane, the main character.

God's Intelligent Design

Proverbs 3:19 The Lord by wisdom founded the earth;
by understanding he established the heavens; (Quotations from the ESV)

Jeremiah 10:12 It is he who made the earth by his power,
who established the world by his wisdom,
and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.

Jeremiah 51:15 has exactly the same wording as Jeremiah 10:12.

These passages are not written as scientific descriptions, nor even, probably, as historical descriptions, but they are faith statements. The authors believed that God purposely brought about the way things are, and that only an infinitely wise and understanding God could have done it. In other words, these writers believed in an intelligent Designer. I do, too. (However, I have indicated, elsewhere, my problems with the Intelligent Design movement, if you care to read about them.)

Thanks for reading. Praise the Creator!

Knowledge and Understanding

"That is one of the pet falsehoods of your world! Is man's greatest knowledge more than a little? or is it therefore dangerous? The fancy that knowledge is in itself a great thing, would make any degree of knowledge more dangerous than any amount of ignorance. To know all things would not be greatness." George MacDonald, Lilith (public domain, 1895) Chapter XXVIII

The fact is, no man understands anything; when he knows he does not understand, that is his first tottering step--not toward understanding, but toward the capability of one day understanding. George MacDonald, Lilith (public domain, 1895) Chapter XXX

Thoreau on fairies

I took a walk on Spaulding’s Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall. I was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining family had settled there in that part of the land called Concord, unknown to me,—to whom the sun was servant,—who had not gone into society in the village,—who had not been called on. I saw their park, their pleasure ground, beyond through the wood, in Spaulding’s cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished them with gables as they grew. Their house was not obvious to vision; the trees grew through it. I do not know whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not. They seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters. They are quite well. The farmer’s cart-path, which leads directly through their hall, does not in the least put them out,—as the muddy bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies. They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is their neighbor,—notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove his team through the house. Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives. Their coat of arms is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. Their attics were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics. There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum,—as of a distant hive in May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their industry was not as in knots and excrescences embayed.
- "Walking," by Henry David Thoreau. Chapter XIII of Matthews, Brander, ed. The Oxford Book of American Essays. 1914. Public Domain.

Thanks for reading.

Sunspots 195

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

Humor:
Seen on a billboard in Oconee County, South Carolina:

One-Flush Plumbing
One flush beats a full house

Science:
Carl Zimmer on some recent evidence that there may be life on Mars.

Wired has an article, with photos and videos, of various animals (including birds, and both land and water mammals) that use tools.

Politics:
A map of the US, showing all the mottoes of the states.

Music:
Jan, on whether "Christian music" is dying, and on whether or not that would be a good thing.

Sports:
A Sports Illustrated columnist honors Tony Dungy, NFL coach who just announced his retirement, by saying that the author has never known a more decent man in the business. The article also says that Dungy didn't let coaching define his life -- he drove his kids to school. (Dungy is a Christian, although the article doesn't come out and say that directly.)

Christianity:
Weekend Fisher has done some serious study of the prophecies (or prophesys, as she puts it) of the New Testament. The results of her study, in a table, are here.

Henry Neufeld considers the question of how God spoke about scientific matters in the Bible.

Image source (public domain)

God's best, President Obama!

Congratulations, President Obama! God help you. You will need it.

I have previously posted on what the New Testament says about what the Christian's attitude toward government should be, and also on the Old Testament. Basically, we should pray for those in authority, and, with very rare exceptions, submit to them.

God help us all.

Following God by faith, not sight

Then the great old, young, beautiful princess turned to Curdie.

'Now, Curdie, are you ready?' she said.

'Yes, ma'am,' answered Curdie.

'You do not know what for.'

'You do, ma'am. That is enough.'

'You could not have given me a better answer, or done more to
prepare yourself, Curdie,' she returned, with one of her radiant
smiles. 'Do you think you will know me again?'

'I think so. But how can I tell what you may look like next?'

The Princess and Curdie, 1883, Public Domain, Chapter 7. (Available from Project Gutenberg)

The Princess and Curdie is a pretty good story, as story, but MacDonald's writing is also full of gems like the above, which stand alone. As in several of MacDonald's fantastic writings, there is a very old wise woman, who, at least partly, stands for God, who appears to us in all sorts of guises.

Thanks for reading. Read MacDonald.

Mrs. Hunter's Happy Death, part 2

J. Wood's account of her life and death makes clear that Mrs. Hunter did not so much "study" the Bible. Rather she partook of it, she savored it, and she ingested it, as if it were food and promised nourishment she could find nowhere else. . . . Her deep and abiding concern was how she herself could get on those pagers, how she could make the story of her own life conform to the stories she encountered there. (p. 133)

In my experience, people die the way they live. There are exceptions, of course . . . But most people's dying words -- the words of their final days and weeks and months -- have been bred into them by years and years of practice and repetition. (p. 141. Quotes from Mrs. Hunter's Happy Death: Lessons on Living from People Preparing to Die. New York: Doubleday, 2006, by John Fanestil. The book has its own web site.

Fanestil deals with Kübler-Ross's concept of the stages of dying. But, he says, her scheme is based on fear and denial of death, which is not the way everyone approaches that last transition. Specifically, Mrs. Hunter did not, and we shouldn't. (176-7)

Fanestil, quoting one of his own sermons, delivered in a home for the aged and infirm, points out that almost anyone with any mental capacity at all can believe, and think about, and act like the two main commandments given by Christ: love God, and love your neighbor. (182)

Fanestil and his father went to England, and tried to find out more about Mrs. Hunter. Apparently she was pretty well off, and it is likely that one of her siblings knew John Wesley well. (Possibly Mrs. Hunter did, too.) Wesley said "our people die well." Evidently they did. They died well because they lived well -- they lived holy lives dedicated to a relationship with God. Fanestil is not the only author to research this topic, but he is probably the first to concentrate on Mrs. Hunter.

The first part of this two-part series is here.

Thanks for reading. Read Fanestil.

Mrs. Hunter's Happy Death

Mrs. Hunter and her peers in the late eighteenth century did not consider questions of religious belief unimportant, but their primary concern was not that they get things right intellectually. For them the life of faith was more about the heart than it was about the head. So Mary Clulow -- not yet married and just a few months past her eighteenth birthday -- saw clearly what should be her life's principal ambition: to love God with her whole heart. (77)

Mary Clulow Hunter, an exemplary Methodist, was extraordinarily busy in "working out her own salvation." She was busy at worship and prayer, busy at reading the Bible, busy at doing good. She did not perceive her life to be divided into spheres -- "private" and "public," "work" and "play," "personal" and "social" -- as so many modern people are inclined to do. The whole of her life was consumed with her search for holiness, or "purity of heart." She perceived her every act -- from "attending to her little ones" to "visiting persons in the sick-ward," from "domestic duties" to her dedicated times of prayer -- as a part of this single, overriding concern. For Mrs. Hunter the life of faith was by no means confined to church -- to the contrary, she saw opportunities to exercise holiness at every turn and every avenue of life. She dedicated her daily living to fulfilling the most familiar phrase from Jesus' most familiar prayer: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." (79) (Both quotes from Mrs. Hunter's Happy Death: Lessons on Living from People Preparing to Die. New York: Doubleday, 2006, by John Fanestil. The book has its own web site.)

Fanestil, until recently a twenty first century Methodist preacher, has written a fine book. The first half of it details some examples of "happy death" from his own experience, which he intersperses with the account of the life and death of Mrs. Hunter, who was twenty-six at the time of her death, in 1801. He makes clear that her life and death were typical, not exceptional, for the Methodists of her time. The second half is entitled "Lessons on Living from People Preparing to Die." The lessons are predictable enough -- prayer, Bible reading, taking up the cross, recognizing God's presence, praising God, loving one's neighbors, and similar portions of seeking God through our lives. In an appendix, the entire account of Mrs. Hunter's life and death, largely taken from her own journal, and edited by a J. Wood, is set forth.

Fanestil's people are diverse -- male and female, young and older, dying from various things.

The author spends a little time on doctrine, explaining something of the long-standing arguments between Arminians and Calvinists, but the book is, like Mrs. Hunter's life, about far more than that, and about something simpler than that.

Mrs. Hunter passed away on January 17, 1801.

Thanks for reading. Get this book, and read it, if you can.

Sounder, by William H. Armstrong

I finally got around to reading Sounder, about a boy, an African-American sharecropper, his family, his dog, and learning to read. I won't give away any all of the plot, but here's a quotation that struck me as worth noting.
"Why are you so feared for me to go?" he would ask, for now he was old enough to argue with his mother. "In Bible stories everybody's always goin' on a long journey. Abraham goes on a long journey. Jacob goes into a strange land where his uncle lives, and he don't know where he lives, but he finds him easy. Joseph goes on the longest journey of all and has more troubles, but the Lord watches over him. And in Bible-story journeys, ain't no journey hopeless. Everybody finds what they suppose to find." William H. Armstrong, Sounder. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. p. 77.

Thanks for reading. Read Sounder. The book won a well-deserved Newbery award, and was also made into a movie.

On the deposition of fossil pollen

. . . considering that millions of fossils have been carefully catalogued with respect to location in the geological column during the past two hundred years, flood geologists can only point to a few possible examples of fossils that do not fit the well-established patterns of distribution. Rather than the very rare exception, flood geologists should expect and would predict out-of-place fossils to be the rule rather than the exception. R. Joel Duff, "Flood Geology's Abominable Mystery," Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 60:166-177, p. 175, September, 2008. The "Abominable Mystery" has to do with the deposition of fossil pollen.

Sunspots 194

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

Science:
(or politics, perhaps) Wired reports on our nation's first inaugural address, which was surprisingly science-oriented.

Christianity:
He Lives has an introduction to church history.

Ken Schenck continues his series on the Bible as Christian Scripture.

Jan continues her excellent series on Leadership vs. Servanthood, by defining her terms.

Image source (public domain)

Noah's flood? Was there rain before it?

I have recently been pointed to a fairly old article on the Canopy Theory, entitled "Does the Canopy Theory Hold Water?" from Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, December, 1985. The purpose of the article is to examine the theory that most, or all, of the water that appeared at the time of Noah's Flood was because of a canopy of water vapor that was over the earth before the flood. The author, Thomas Key, argues pretty convincingly that this could not have worked.

I was struck by this statement in his article:

What about the assertion that there was no rain or snow prior to the Flood, and that the only way that plants were watered was by mist (Gen. 2:6) and rivers (Gen. 2: 10)? The references in Genesis do not limit the watering of plants only to a single mist or even to a series of mists and by a river or rivers. Genesis 2:10-14 describes four large rivers in existence before the numerous and complex events of the Sixth Day. These huge rivers obviously could not have come from a mere mist that occurred once or even many times. Rivers come from rains and melted snows. They also come from underground streams. However, underground streams also come from rains and melted snows. The four large rivers in Eden, which went over "The whole land of Ethiopa" [sic] (Gen. 2:13) to Assyria (Gen, 2:14) and included the Euphrates (Gen. 2:14) would have required rains, rains, and more rains over an extended period of time. No mere mist will ever do as an adequate explanation for these vast rivers, and certainly not a mere mist that occurred only a few hours or literal days before.

In other words, it must have rained before the flood. I checked, and found no statement in the early part of Genesis that says that Noah and his contemporaries had never experienced rain, although I have heard people say that they didn't.

Thanks for reading.