The Bible and the Global Warming petition

I saw a brief excerpt from a political rally, featuring Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, on a TV news program a few days ago. When global warming was mentioned, at least some people in the crowd booed loudly. Palin apparently expected this reaction. I sometimes get e-mails or other indications from fellow Christians, questioning global warming, which usually means that they doubt that humans have, or can, influence climate. Sometimes, they even doubt that global temperatures are increasing.

Perhaps the most obvious questioning of the validity of human effects on climate is the Global Warming Petition Project, which claims that there:
". . . is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the forseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate." (All web sources in this document were consulted on October 9th, 2008. I expect that there will be additional signatures on the Global Warming Petition, and other changes in the information given below, as time passes.)

The Project says that 31,072 American scientists have signed the petition. Less than one-third of these have an earned doctorate, according to the petition's own web site. There doesn't seem to be a breakdown by academic field. There is a breakdown by state. There are 351 signers who are from South Carolina. I am from South Carolina, so I am especially interested in that state. The SC State Climatology Office has five persons on its staff. None of them have signed. The Natural Science Faculty of Bob Jones University, a conservative Christian institution which is in South Carolina, has sixteen faculty listed, apparently none with degrees in climate or weather studies. Of these, the chair (who has a doctorate in analytical chemistry) and other faculty have signed, including a microbiologist with a Ph. D., a field biologist with a Ph. D, and a person whose highest degree is a bachelor's in broadcast engineering from BJU*, making 25% of the listed faculty. Is petition-signing a religious right conspiracy of some sort? If so, it's not very effective. I checked Liberty University. That school has no weather-related department, but there are 22 faculty in the combined biology-chemistry unit. Of these, none have signed the petition. I also checked a Southern Baptist college from South Carolina. 2 of their 19 faculty had signed the petition. Both had a Ph. D. in chemistry.

Neither Clemson University (in South Carolina) or the University of South Carolina have a department of climate or weather studies, so far as I can determine, and I didn't check their faculties against the list. Nor does Georgia or the University of North Carolina. So I looked at Florida. 1502 persons from Florida signed the petition. Florida State University has a meteorology department, with 16 faculty. None of them have signed the petition.

There aren't many scientists with advanced degrees in meteorology, and not many academic departments in that subject, at all. Apparently few, if any, academics with credentials in climate and weather studies have signed the petition. Scientists with degrees in other types of science, including many without advanced degrees, and a few whose academic credentials in the sciences are suspect, probably make up the vast majority of signers.

From the Wikipedia article:
The text of the petition is often misrepresented: for example, until recently the petition's website stated that the petition's signatories "declare that global warming is a lie with no scientific basis whatsoever."^[4] The two-paragraph petition used the terms catastrophic heating and disruption , not "global warming." The original article associated with the petition . . . defined "global warming" as "severe increases in Earth's atmospheric and surface temperatures, with disastrous environmental consequences".^[5] This differs from both scientific usage and dictionary definitions, in which "global warming" is an increase in the global mean atmospheric temperature^[6][7] without implying that the increase is "severe" or will have "disastrous environmental consequences." (emphasis and links in the original)

The McCain-Palin campaign page does not explicitly say that humans contribute to climate change, but it assumes it. The page has a plan for mitigating emission of greenhouse gases. The GOP platform says explicitly that climate change is caused by human activity ("The same human economic activity that has brought freedom and opportunity to billions has also increased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.") Sarah Palin is on record as doubting, or denying, that humans are responsible, for climate change. This, of course, is not the first time that a national candidate has disagreed with a running mate, or with the party platform, on all sorts of issues.

Why is there such widespread doubt of the conclusions of scientific experts, who say that humans have and are contributing to climate change? I am not sure of all of the reasons. One reason, I suspect, is the involvement of Al Gore, who was the Democratic presidential candidate in 2000, in this field. (He won a Nobel Prize for his involvement.) A lot of Republicans, and others, don't much like Mr. Gore. (Many people do, of course!) Ideally, it doesn't matter who is responsible for bringing a message, but what should matter is whether the message is valid, but it doesn't always work that way.

Another reason, of course, is that we usually don't want to hear bad news, if that news means that we will have to change our habits and thinking. Doing something about global warming would also mean changes in many industries.

What does the Bible have to do with all this?
Well, in the first place, some Christians believe that Revelation 16:8-9 may refer to global warming. Maybe. It's difficult to know what just about any particular passage in Revelation means.

Second, some Christians invoke Genesis 8:22, part of God's promise to Noah, that day and night, and the seasons, would continue, as meaning that there can be no global warming. But that verse doesn't say that the seasons will always be identical. There is considerable evidence of an ice age, although perhaps that was before the time of Noah. There was apparently a Little Ice Age since the time of Christ. There have been times in the past, in various parts of the world, when the climate was significantly warmer than usual for that area, or colder, or drier, or wetter. The passage doesn't rule out times when it will get warmer than we are used to.

Third, and, I believe, most important, some Christians reject science in general, as anti-God. Although the charge is not without some foundation, it is an oversimplification, at best, and short-sighted and unbiblical.

Why an oversimplification? Because many important scientists, from, say, Copernicus through Francis Collins, head of the US human genome project, have been believers.

Why short-sighted? Because rejecting scientific findings unnecessarily alienates potential followers of Christ. "If they are so wrong about the science, why should they be right about salvation?"

Why unbiblical? Because God reveals Himself in more than one way, according the the Bible. Psalm 19:1-4 tells us that God is revealed through nature, which means that scientific findings can tell us something of God's nature and power. Romans 1 says: "20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse." (ESV, which version allows quotation for uses such as this, if properly cited.) Does that mean that scientists are always right? Of course not. There was a time, in the previous century, when the scientific consensus was that genes were made of protein, not DNA. That was wrong. Scientists have made other mistakes, and will continue to make some. But that doesn't mean that consensus science should be rejected out of hand. It's usually right, and its findings are part of God's revelation to us. Mistakes have been made, and will be made, in the interpretation of the Bible, too. That doesn't mean that we should ignore it. The Bible is always right, and our understanding of it usually is.

Am I absolutely certain that there is real global warming, and that humans are partly or entirely causing it? No. But the overwhelming consensus of scientists in the field, around the world, is that there is, and that we are acting such as to accelerate it. Christians, and others, should take the warnings about global warming seriously. We have responsibility, under God, for the world around us, and for the well-being of our own offspring.

*This statement, based on Bob Jones University's own web site, is not meant to disparage that institution, or this particular faculty member. I have no advanced degree in physics, but taught that subject at two accredited institutions of higher education, as justified by my experience in the field. This experience was accepted by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the accrediting agency,for both of these institutions. Probably this faculty member is a similar situation, and has significant experience not indicated by his degree. Or it is possible that BJU has included broadcast engineering in their science department. But I should not be taken as seriously as an expert on physics. Or at least not as seriously as a person with an advanced degree in the field would be. It wouldn't seem that a person with a bachelor's in broadcast engineering as his highest degree would have anything very authoritative to say about climate change, either.

Thanks for reading!

Sunspots 180

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

Humor:
A hilarious video (non-political, in any sense I can think of) of a Southern pastor, telling a PG or G rated story about a husband and wife with some zipper problems.

Science:
Carl Zimmer on the genetics of human intelligence, published in Scientific American. Bottom line: no genes with major effects on intelligence have been discovered yet.

Politics:
Christianity Today on why pastors shouldn't dabble (or major) in politics.

Newsweek poses 21 moral questions that the writer thinks presidential and vice-presidential candidates should answer.

Literature:
I have discovered a new blog. One of Mr. Velarde's posts is on how C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien disagreed about the meaning and significance of marriage.

Image source (public domain)

Perhaps you are a liberal, and don't know it . . .

''. . . if by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties - someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a liberal, then I'm proud to say that I'm a liberal.” John F. Kennedy, speaking before the New York State Liberal Party, Sept 14, 1960.

This seems quite compatible with the Golden Rule of Matthew 7:12.

Thanks for reading.

Why was there a Garden of Eden?

He Lives has raised a question that, I confess, is new to me. It shouldn't have been. That's why I read his blog.

The question is this. If there was no death, even of animals, before the Fall, was that true over the entire earth, or just in the Garden of Eden?

If your answer is "over the whole earth," then what, if anything, was special about the Garden of Eden? Why was there such a place, and what else was special about it?

That's a good question. Heddle's answer is that there was, indeed, death of animals before the Fall, but that the Garden of Eden was a place that was protected from that.

I'm not sure that I buy this answer, but I don't have a better one. One reason I'm not fully convinced is that David Snoke has argued that, when Adam was warned about eating from the Tree of Life, Adam had seen animal death. If he hadn't seen it, it would have been difficult for him to understand the warning. I'm not sure that that is true, either, of course. But if He Lives is correct, then presumably Adam wouldn't have seen death before the warning in Genesis 2.

Thanks for reading!

Carl Zimmer muses on parasitism

Spontaneous generation was the best explanation for parasites, given the evidence at hand. But, it was also a profound heresy. The Bible taught that life was created by God in the first week of creation, and every creature was a reflection of His design and His beneficence. Everything that lived today must descend from those primordial creatures, in an unbroken chain of parents and children -- nothing could later come squirting into existence thanks to some vital, untamed force. If our own blood could spontaneously generate life, what help did it need from God back in the days of Genesis?
The mysterious nature of parasites created a strange, disturbing catechism of its own. Why did God create parasites? To keep us from being too proud, by reminding us that we were merely dust. How did parasites get into us? They must have been put there by God, since there was no apparent way for them to get in by themselves. Perhaps they were passed down through generations within our bodies to the bodies of our children. Did that mean that Adam, who was created in purest innocence, came into being already loaded with parasites? Maybe the parasites were created in him after his fall. But wouldn't this be a second creation, an eighth day added on to the first week. . . Well, then, maybe Adam was created with parasites after all, but in Eden parasites were his helpmates. They ate the food he couldn't fully digest and licked his wounds clean from within. But why should Adam, created not only in innocence but in perfection, need any help at all? Here the catechism seems to have finally fallen apart. Carl Zimmer, Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures (New York: Free Press, 2000, p. 5)

See here for Zimmer's blog.

Thanks for reading.

Not a Shock

Congratulations (grudgingly -- I didn't much admire Bill Laimbeer, their coach, when he played for the NBA Detroit Pistons) to the Detroit Shock of the Women's National Basketball Association, who won the league championship today.

The Shock played hard. Laimbeer and his staff are good coaches. With one starter injured, and unable to play, and another one who probably shouldn't have because of an injury, the team swept the San Antonio Silver Stars in three games. Katie Smith, who has more career points than any other U. S. women's pro player, was a brilliant shooter, and was great on defense, too. Deanna Nolan was also splendid at both ends. Taj McWilliams-Franklin, who was acquired to fill in the gaps caused by injury, and will soon be 38 years old, played effectively on offense and defense. At the end of the game, she honored her husband, who, she said, has supported her through a career that hadn't included a championship, and has included playing for some pretty discouraging teams.

Thanks for reading.

Isaiah: some thoughts on origins, 2

Isaiah 45:18a 18 For thus says the Lord,
who created the heavens
(he is God!),
who formed the earth and made it
(he established it;
he did not create it empty,
he formed it to be inhabited!) (ESV)

Here God indicates, through the prophet Isaiah, that He purposefully made the earth as a habitation for creatures, including, humans, or maybe He is speaking just of humans here.. This relates to what is called the anthropic principle.

Thanks for reading.

Parasitism, again

This is a photo of Indian Pipe, Monotropa uniflora.

Indian Pipe is a flowering plant, and there are flowers on the plant in this photo. Almost all flowering plants have chlorophyll, a green pigment. This plant does not, and it does not carry out photosynthesis. Hence, it needs to get its energy some way. The Wikipedia article on the plant says that it is a parasite, living on underground fungi, which surprised me. Fungi are often parasites on flowering plants. Well, why not the reverse, once in a while?

We found this along a hiking trail in the Beaverhead National Forest, in Montana, USA.

Thanks for reading, and looking.

Is Lois McMaster Bujold's The Curse of Chalion a Christian novel?

Lois McMaster Bujold is an important author of fantastic literature. She has won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. She has written both science fiction and fantasy literature. I recently read her The Curse of Chalion (New York: HarperCollins, 2001) a fantasy novel. There are miracles, there are no spaceships, the weapons are swords and spears, and there is no explicit real location in the book. In this post, I attempted to summarize the novel. See here for the Wikipedia article on it.

The title of this post asks whether The Curse of Chalion is a Christian novel. In order to answer that question, I need to know what makes a novel Christian. Over three years ago -- a long time in blog years -- in a fit of near-hubris, I attempted to answer that question. My answer was complex, and not completely satisfying, even to me. Others certainly might have good reason to disagree with me. There are several insightful comments, some of them from practicing Christian authors. (Of books, that is, not blogs.)

All that being said, I apply my own flawed instrument to the question. I proposed these criteria, in the characters and/or plot:
1) A Christ-figure.
2) Belief in important Christian doctrine.
3) Praying to a monotheistic divine being.
4) Expressing a relationship with God.
5) Consciousness of supernatural guidance.
6) Explicit rejection of personified evil.

1) Is there a Christ-figure in Curse? It depends, of course, on what is meant by a Christ-figure. I believe that Cazaril is such a figure. He willing offers himself to die to keep Iselle, the young lady he tutors and is responsible for, from marriage to an evil man. He also willingly sacrifices himself to keep a young man, a fellow galley slave, from being punished or killed. Cazaril could have died in both of these situations, and, in fact, he appears to have been saved from death in both of these cases by divine intervention. Or, actually, in both these cases, and another one, Cazaril is resurrected.
2) Is there belief in important Christian doctrine? (Such as, for example, the trinity, or substitutionary atonement) I didn't see such.
3) There is prayer, by several characters, including Cazaril. These characters clearly believe that their prayers could be answered. In some cases, they are answered. However, there's a problem. The prayers are not to a single God. As this Wikipedia article details, there are five deities in Bujold's sub-creation. That's four too many.
4) With the same caveat as for the previous item, there are characters who know that they have some sort of relationship with one of the deities. There are at least five such characters, including Cazaril.
5) Cazaril is conscious of supernatural guidance. In fact, this may be said to be the main theme of the book -- does Cazaril have the capacity to choose to disobey that guidance? He does not seem to have ever disobeyed it, and the question of whether he could have is not clearly answered, at least to me. There are discussions about the matter between the characters.
6) Cazaril, and other characters, reject evil, as personified especially in the dy Jironal brothers. Cazaril is presented with important moral choices. He rejects lucrative offers to betray Iselle, his pupil and ward. He tries to help people he doesn't have to help. He cares for others, and loves them unselfishly.

So, in summary, is The Curse of Chalion a Christian novel? Not quite, I'm afraid. The five-fold god theology makes that impossible. But it's a good book, and it gives an example of a main character, and some others, who seem to be wholly unselfish, without being preachy or unreal. I'm glad I read it, and I expect to read it again. There are two more books written about the same setting, and I expect to read them, too. Thank you, Ms. Bujold!

I have also written posts on specific works of fantastic literature, including novels by Patricia McKillip, Elizabeth Moon (here and here), J. K. Rowling and Juliet Marillier, attempting to ask the same question about them. For these works, at least, I have not come to a firm conclusion, but I believe that the attempt was of use, at least to me. I found important Christian elements in works by all of these writers, including Marillier, who is a self-confessed Druid.

An on-line listing of important authors of fantastic fiction, giving information about their religious affilation, does not list Marillier, McKillip, Moon, or even Rowling. In my opinion, all of these are important enough to be added, but it's not my web page. The author does list Bujold, but is not aware of information on her religious affiliation. I have none, either.

Thanks for reading.

On October 5th, I corrected some ambiguity in point 5 of my discussion of the novel.

* * * * *

On April 2, 2009, E Stephen Burnett wrote an essay, asking questions about how far a Christian author could go in writing fiction which has a God who is significantly different from the Christian God, and whether a Christian could legitimately create a fictional character who is in defiance of God. I posted tentative answers to these questions, which are related to the subject of the post above, on April 13, 2009.

Sunspots 179

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

Science:
(Sort of) An artist has built a temple for science, sort of, says Wired (with some photos).

Politics:
A Wired article claims, with good reason, that the water availability crisis is what the next President really should be thinking about.

Sports:
Wired reports that two physicists say that sliding into a base head-first is faster than feet first.

Philosophy:
Henry Neufeld distinguishes between presuppositions and assumptions, among other things.

Christianity:
Scott on taking communion -- how's our attitude?

Bonnie on what the Kingdom of God is really about.

Image source (public domain)

Speaking of parasitism

In my previous post, I made a brief reference to a parasitic relationship. There are some really amazing, or perhaps strange, such. Here's a YouTube video, of a parasitized snail. The video is about 90 seconds in length. The parasite has changed the behavior of the snail, to the detriment of the host, but to the advantage of the parasite.

Note that if a parasite is too harmful, it will destroy it's own ecological niche -- parasites need hosts.

Thanks for reading.

A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by Snoke, part 6: Death before the Fall? (part 2)

In Genesis 2, God warns Adam:

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (All Bible quotation from the ESV. The creation of Eve is described later in the same chapter.)

If there was no animal death until after the Fall, would it have been possible for Adam to fully understand this warning? Perhaps not. It would seem that, if Adam had seen a dead animal, for example one killed by a predator, he would have comprehended the idea of death more fully.

David Snoke, in his A Biblical Case for an Old Earth (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2006), uses this argument in favor of death before the Fall. He also raise other arguments. (See here for my most recent post on this topic.)

Snoke does raise other arguments. One of them is from Romans 1. In that chapter, Paul writes:
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. Note the emphasized phrase. Snoke points out, correctly, that Paul didn't say "ever since the Fall." He said since the creation.

Snoke claims, with good reason, I believe, after reading his book, that part of God's attributes are, and have always been, his wrath, leading to righteous judgement. If God's wrath was perceivable before the Fall, then some of the effects of God's wrath, or at least animal death, and perhaps similar things (tripping over rocks, seeing tree branches break, and the like) must have been known to Adam and Eve. Says Snoke:
If Adam had obeyed God, this "very good" creation still would have testified to Adam of the power of God and the wrath he had escaped. (95)

Snoke also writes:
We must marvel at the shark, even while fearing it. It is well designed, frighteningly so. So also are many parasites. It is hard to believe that such well-designed weapons could arise by chance --they are good designs. . . . the main reason why many people want Darwinism to be true is that they just cannot accept the idea of God being glorified by violence. Darwin used the example of a wasp-eating larva as an example of something he just could not imagine God making in a good world. . . . If it would have been bad for God to have made wasp-eating larvae before the fall, how is it now justified? If we say that the only merit in making natural evil is to punish humans, then how are we punished by the death of a wasp? If we say, on the other hand, that the death of a wasp serves as a reminder to us of the wrath of God, why could not that have been the case before the Fall? God's wrath did not suddenly spring into existence when Adam and Eve sinned, and God had no desire to hide this side of his nature. (pp. 96-7. I pointed out, in an earlier post, that I do not agree fully with Snoke on the question of intelligent design, but his argument doesn't depend on direct supernatural design of the shark's body, or lack thereof.)

Thanks for reading. I hope to post more on Snoke's book later.

Isaiah: some thoughts on origins

Isaiah 45:7 I form light and create darkness,
I make well-being and create calamity,
I am the Lord, who does all these things. (ESV)

Isaiah is speaking for God here, of course. There are two very interesting ideas here. First, the passage speaks as if God created darkness, not as if darkness is merely the absence of light. Is this poetry, or is this a description of how and what God created? I don't know.

Second, God speaks as if he created calamity, or problems. Interesting, to be sure.

Thanks for reading.

Stem Cell breakthrough - iPS cells from adult skin cells

Wired reports that Science will publish an article on a breakthrough in stem cell research.

iPS (induced pluripotent stem) cells can be made from adult mouse cells, using viruses to insert genes that are characteristic of embryonic cells. The breakthrough is that the virus carriers do not persist, which would be a serious potential danger.

Here is an abstract of the forthcoming paper, from the American Association for the Advancement of Science web site.

Science is the most important scientific journal published in the US. All of the authors of the article are affiliated with Harvard. These facts, and the fact that this research builds on previous cutting-edge research by scientists at prominent institutions, should put to rest any complaints that stem cell research is ignoring the possibility of using cells which do not come from embryos. Stem cell researchers have been exploring that possibility, but, understandably, research with embryo-derived cells is further along.

Note that it is possible that this technique won't work in human cells, for some reason.

Thanks for reading.

A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by Snoke, part 5: Death before the Fall?

I have been occasionally posting about David Snoke's A Biblical Case for an Old Earth (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006). For the most recent post, see here, or click on "David Snoke" among the tags at the end of this post.

Snoke, in his third chapter, says that the main reasons that many Christians believe that the earth is not very old are beliefs that the days of Genesis 1 were 24-hour days, and that the Bible says that there was no death before the Fall. Snoke says that the second belief is the more important objection, and chooses to deal with it first.

Why do many Christians believe that there was no death before the Fall? One reason is Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— (all Bible quotes are from the ESV)

A second reason is Genesis 9:3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. God told Noah this, and it seems to imply that humans didn't eat animals before the Flood, which, of course, came after the Fall. Eating meat is one of the main reasons for killing animals.

To quote Snoke:

Proponents of the young-earth view, however, would say that the statements of Genesis 1:29-30 rule out meat-eating before the fall. In so saying, however, they are arguing from a positive command to a negative one. They take the statement, "I give you x for food," to mean, "You are forbidden to eat anything else." This does not necessarily follow. The parallelism of Genesis 1:28-30 and Genesis 9:1-3 may be taken to imply the opposite, that is, that Genesis 9:1-3 is simply a repetition of the same charge given in Genesis 1:28-30, and that the expansion that includes eating animals is the same as other expansions of parallel passages in Scripture, such as the different versions of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 or the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-12 and Luke 6:20-26. The later version dos not negate the earlier version; rather, it is taken as simply saying the same thing with slightly more information. . . .
If eating animals was not forbidden, then why would God single out green plants as food in the charge of Genesis 1:28-30? There are several plausible reasons. The best reason, in my opinion, is that God was establishing the hierarchy of his creation: green plants are the basis of the food chain. (pp. 65-66) Genesis 1:28-30 is here.

If animals didn't die before the Fall, then significant changes in animal types couldn't have been brought about by natural selection. Also, fossils, indicating that significant changes have occurred, wouldn't have been laid down a long time ago if animals didn't die before the Fall.

What does Snoke say about this? He argues that the death referred to in Romans 5:12 and other passages about the effects of the Fall is spiritual death, not physical. Adam, after all, did not die immediately when he and Eve first sinned, but, says Snoke, he did die spiritually, immediately. Since his death was spiritual only, it didn't affect the animals directly.

I will not reproduce all of Snoke's arguments here, but will mention one more such. Job 38 mentions, in the last verses of the chapter, predators and prey. Predators, of course, kill other animals. The context of the chapter is about God's creation. This strongly suggests that there was predation before the Fall. (An article by Snoke, about dangerous animals and the Bible, may be found here.)

I believe that Snoke makes a good case. I hope to post more on his book later. Thanks for reading.

(Note that Snoke, nor the Bible, say very little about the death of plants, so I haven't either.)

Sunspots 178

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

Science:
Wired reminds us that 325 years ago, Sept. 17, 1683, van Leeuwenhoek announced microscopic discoveries, and the world has not been the same since.

Wired also tells us about the origin of emoticons, such as :-)

NASA has a splendid NASA images site, with lots of photos of space exploration.

Politics:
(Or something) Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize-winner in economics, tells CNN how to prevent the next crisis in Wall Street.

Christianity:
He Lives on the meaning of the Hebrew word yôm (day).

Image source (public domain)

Politics and the truth

Leonard Pitts, with his usual economical elegance, has put into words something that seems to be true. That is, all too many US citizens have a very mushy working definition of truth -- truth is, for so many of us, what I want to be true. (The candidates haven't helped.)

Pitts starts off with various rumors about Obama and Palin, rumors that are just that, and that have no basis in fact. But "red" citizens want to believe that Obama doesn't salute the flag, and "blue" citizens want to believe that Palin banned books in the local library when she was mayor. Anyone who says that Obama salutes the flag, or that Palin didn't throw library books into the incinerator, is a liar, un-American, and probably unChristian.

What are the consequences? Well, one consequence is that citizens aren't asking questions that they should be, especially about the qualifications of these relatively inexperienced candidates. "Red" citizens need to ask if a candidate who had no passport until about the time she became governor about two years ago is really qualified to be one heartbeat away from the presidency, especially when the presidential candidate is so old. "Blue" citizens need to ask if a person with so little concrete legislative accomplishment really is the leader that he claims to be.

There is a much more important consequence. Christians, above all others, should be zealous in their defense of objective truth. Jesus did die. He was resurrected. The only solution to the sin problem is Christ's sacrifice. If the truth is only what I want to believe, then I won't believe this awesome and fundamental truth. I'll believe that I can solve the sin problem myself, or that I don't have such a problem, in spite of common experience and what the Bible says.

As Pitts put it:
All things are up in the air, all things open to interpretation. Indeed, truth hardly seems to be the point anymore. Lies serve just as well. As a result, we are no longer grounded in the same shared body of facts and in a very real sense, have no basis upon which to reason together, no basis for shared mission, purpose or identity.

Please, God, if it isn't too late, help the citizens of our country to wake up to the fact that there are some things that are true, no matter who says them, and some things that are false, no matter who says them, and that knowing this makes eternal differences.

Thanks for reading.

Bujold's The Curse of Chalion: The Story

Some weeks ago, having read all the fantastic literature that I really wanted to, and not having any books that I really wanted to re-read, I looked for guidance as to something new to read. Going over the winners of various yearly prizes in fantastic literature, I found, rather to my amazement, the following in the Wikipedia: "This is not only a novel about self-sacrifice and redemption, but also a piece of speculative theological fiction which closely examines the relationship between free will, fate and divine intervention."

The article was on The Curse of Chalion, (New York: HarperCollins, 2001) by Lois McMaster Bujold. I decided that I would read that novel, and I am glad that I did. I have already quoted the novel in two posts, one on the effects of war.

I plan to consider the question of whether the book is a Christian novel in a future post. First, I need to summarize the plot.

Cazaril is the main character. When we first meet him, he is clearly poor, and in bad physical shape. Two events begin to change his fortune, and, eventually, his health. First, a soldier mistakenly gives him a valuable coin, enabling him to go to Vallenda, the nearest city, and pay for new clothes and a haircut, so that he may present himself to the castle of the local royalty. Secondly, he finds a man who has died, and is able to honorably obtain his clothes (the body is burned). He also finds out that the man has died as a result of what is called death magic.

As the book progresses, we learn that Cazaril used to be a page in Vallenda, that he rose to a responsible position in the army of Chalion, the country, and that Dondo dy Jironal, a man evil in almost every possible way, saw to it, with his brother, Martou dy Jironal, that Cazaril was turned over to Chalion's enemies as a galley slave, which accounts for his poverty and his physical condition. At one point, he was beaten nearly to death, because he defended a young galley slave from the slavemasters. His back carries the scars of that beating.

We also learn that death magic isn't exactly magic. It is possible, in this sub-creation, to pray to one of the five gods of Chalion that someone else die, and, as part of the answer to that prayer, you will die, too. Cazaril learns more about this from a notebook left in the dead man's clothes -- the dead man died after praying that an evil man would die. Not just anyone can be killed by this sort of prayer. Only evil people may be.

For more on the religion of Bujold's fictional universe, see this article.

Cazaril presents himself at court, and is given the position of tutor and secretary to Iselle, a teenaged girl who is half-sister to the current Roya, or king, by Iselle's grandmother, who is the ruler of Vallenda. Betriz, Iselle's companion, also becomes his pupil.

After a time, Cazaril and his charges are called to the capital city, where Cazaril is responsible for them. Iselle's younger brother is also required to go, but he is not Cazaril's charge. The court is tainted by evil. The Roya is under a curse, and has ceded almost all authority to Martou dy Jironal, his chancellor. Cazaril conducts himself wisely. There is no decision he makes, in the entire book, to advance himself at the expense of others, or to choose evil over good. He does everything he can to promote Iselle's well-being. Iselle and Betriz learn from him, and they, too, are wise and good, which is difficult, under the circumstances of living in an evil court. Betriz queries Cazaril about what is wrong, and he tells her that a royal court needs a moral center.

The chancellor persuades the king to have Iselle marry his brother Dondo. In addition to being a drunkard, cruel, a womanizer, and evil in other ways, he is also over twice Iselle's age. She does not want to marry him. Finally, in desperation, Cazaril decides that the only thing that he can do to stop the wedding is to pray that Dondo will die, and that he, Cazaril, will die simultaneously. In other words, he prays for death magic. Dondo does die, but, Cazaril does not, an unprecedented event. However, Dondo's soul, and the demon that took his life, are encapsulated in a tumor in Cazaril's abdomen. Somehow, this event gives Cazaril spiritual discernment found only in a few, and he sees that not only is the Roya cursed, but Iselle and other members of her family are, too.

Iselle decides, correctly, that she must take action to forestall any other evil marriages arranged by the chancellor. Her younger brother dies, as a result of an evil action suggested to him by Dondo, before Dondo's death. Iselle takes the body to Vallenda for burial, and sends Cazaril to Ibran, a nearby kingdom, to try to arrange a marriage with the heir of that kingdom. Cazaril succeeds in persuading the young man's father that this would be a good marriage, in part because it turns out that the prospective groom was the young slave that Cazaril tried to protect. Cazaril didn't know of the young man's position -- he was incognito at the time.

Cazaril is told that the only way that the curse can be lifted is if someone is willing to die three times to lift it.

Martou dy Jironal, seeing Iselle escaping from his influence, is enraged, and tries to kill Cazaril. When his sword enters his body, Cazaril has a vision of one of the gods of Chalion. But the sword thrust releases Dondo's soul, and the demon, and the demon kills chancellor Martou dy Jironal.

Cazaril has died three times, and been brought back to life by a supernatural intervention each time -- once as a galley slave, once when he prayed that Dondo would die, and once when Martou stabbed him. The curse is lifted, Iselle and her new husband begin what appears to be a just and good reign (her brother's action has led to the Roya's death) and Betriz insists that she wants to marry Cazaril (who has wanted to do this). A storybook ending.

A question that occurs, to Cazaril, or to his friends, at various points in the story, is the question of his free will. Has he been chosen to lift the curse, and start Iselle's reign, or did he do this on his own initiative? Did he have any choice in the matter? The question is not completely resolved, but it is clear that serving the gods has its costs, as well as its rewards.

The book is well written, with interesting characters and situations. I found it especially interesting because of its religious nature. In other words, I found the quotation from the Wikipedia article on the book, given above, to be accurate.

Thanks for reading.

Susanna Wesley on sin

Take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself.
from Susanna Wesley: The Complete Writings, by Susanna Annesley Wesley, Susanna Wesley, and Charles Wallace, Oxford University Press US, 1997, p. 109. Susanna Wesley was the mother of John and Charles Wesley.

Cazaril, from Bujold's The Curse of Chalion, on a proper royal court

"Does this court . . ." Betriz frowned, clearly trying to frame unfamiliar thoughts, "Does this court have a center?"
Cazaril vented a wary sigh. "A well-conducted court always has someone in moral authority. . . . (Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion, New York: HarperCollins, 2001, page 137.)

By "court," here, Cazaril means the people around the ruler, not a court with a judge.

Thanks for reading.

*   *   *   *   *

I have gotten several spam comments on this post, so I'm no longer allowing comments on it.

Cazaril, from Bujold's The Curse of Chalion, on war

"Chalion lost more than dy Jironal gained on that ill-conceived venture."
Iselle's eyebrows bent. "Was it not a victory?"
"By what definition? We and the Roknari princedoms have been pushing shoving over that border area for decades -- it's now a waste. Orchards and olive groves and vineyards burned, farms abandoned, animals turned loose to go wild or starve -- it's peace, not war,that makes wealth for a country. War just transfers posession of the residue from the weaker to the stronger. Worse, what is bought with blood is sold for coin, and then stolen back again." He brooded, and added bitterly, "Your grandfather Roya Fonsa bought Gotorget with the lives of his sons. It was sold by March dy Jironal for three hundred thousand royals. It's a wondrous transmutation, where the blood of one man is turned into the money of another. Lead into gold is nothing to it." (Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion, New York: HarperCollins, 2001, pp. 131-2) Cazaril is in Roya (king) Orico's menagerie with Iselle, now 16, the Roya's half-sister, and Betriz, her companion, a little older. He is tutoring them. Umegat, who runs the menagerie, is also present. The conversation starts with a discussion of a rare bird brought to the menagerie by dy Jironal.

Sunspots 177

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

Science:
CNN reports that the Large Hadron Collider was successfully started up. Google memorialized the event with an icon for the day.

Unfortunately, one of our local TV stations turned this event into an "either God created or the Big Bang," news report, when, of course, God could have used the Big Bang. The news report had other serious flaws, such as pronouncing collider incorrectly, but maybe I'm the only one who really watched it. I hope so.

Computing:
Wired reports that iPhone users are unknowningly creating continuous, hacker-accessible photos of their activity on the device.

Christianity:
Ray Boltz, Contemporary Christian Musician ("I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb," "Watch the Lamb") has "come out" as a homosexual, according to a Christianity Today blog.

Image source (public domain)

How truthful are the four major candidates? Not very.

PolitiFact (which is nonpartisan) rates the truthfulness of the major candidates for public office.

Go here for the page on Sarah Palin -- there are easy links to the others from that page.

Palin (who has been running for the shortest time) has made fewer statements to check. 10% of her public statements, which were checked by PolitiFact, were either "Barely True," "False," or "Pants-on-Fire" lies, as of September 16, 5 AM EDT. That makes her, I am sorry to say, the most truthful (so far, at least) of the four. Obama's rating is next best, at 26%. Biden's is 37%, McCain's is an awful 43%. Biden has told 2 "Pants-on-fire" lies, McCain 6. Obama and Palin aren't currently charged with any. Maybe those two really are unqualified for high political office!

I haven't included statements which are half-true as lies. All of the candidates have made some of them, of course.

God help us all.

A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by Snoke, part 4, Eden, Revelation, and the present

On pages 52-3, of his A Biblical Case for an Old Earth (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006) David Snoke discusses two views of the relationship between the world before the Fall, the present world, and that which is to come.
He says that there are two views about this relationship. One holds that the pre-Fall world and the world described in Revelation 21-22 are the same world, restored to the way it was in the beginning, at the end. Snoke does not hold that view. Says he:
In the second view, the original world of creation and our world are essentially the same, and the new heaven and new earth of Revelation 21-22 is utterly different from these. This view is supported by several key differences between the world of Revelations 21-22 and the world of Genesis 1-3. . . . First, Revelation 21:1 (NIV) makes clear that "there was no longer any sea," while Genesis 1 emphasizes the creation of the sea. Also, Revelation 21:23 and 22:4-5 emphasize that there shall no longer be "night" or "the sun and the moon," while Genesis 1 emphasizes the existence of darkness, held back by the lights form the sun and moon,and the balance of morning with evening, that is, nightfall. (p. 53)

Snoke also points out, on page 55, that the serpent, Satan, was present in the garden, while Revelation 20 and 21 state that nothing evil will enter the heavenly city. So, he makes a good case that the present earth is more like the world before the Fall than like the world at the end.

Thanks for reading.

The sea as a symbol of evil in the Bible, from Snoke

In the third chapter of his book, A Biblical Case for an Old Earth (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), David Snoke includes evidence that the ancient Hebrews saw the sea as symbolic of evil. Most of us do not, but see the ocean as a symbol of calm, rest, vacation, and the like. (See my post, sort of on this subject, which is not nearly as thorough as Snoke's book. See also the most recent previous post on this book.)

Snoke, in his Table 2 (pp. 60-61) quotes 21 Bible references, from Exodus, Job, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Amos, Jonah, Zechariah, Luke, Acts, Jude, and Revelation as evidence. Some of these are not obvious, but the preponderance of the evidence makes the author's case.

Here are a few of the more obvious cases, using Snoke's table, and the ESV Bible:

Exodus 15:19: For when the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his horsemen went into the sea, the Lord brought back the waters of the sea upon them, but the people of Israel walked on dry ground in the midst of the sea.

Isaiah 57:20 But the wicked are like the tossing sea;
for it cannot be quiet,
and its waters toss up mire and dirt.

Jeremiah 5:22 Do you not fear me? declares the Lord.
Do you not tremble before me?
I placed the sand as the boundary for the sea,
a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass;
though the waves toss, they cannot prevail;
though they roar, they cannot pass over it.

Luke 21:25 “And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves,

Jude 1:11-13 Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and perished in Korah's rebellion. 12 These are hidden reefs* at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; 13 wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
*or blemishes
(Snoke didn't include verses 11 and 12)

Thanks for reading!

A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by Snoke, part 3, starlight

This is my 3rd post on A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by David Snoke. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006) See here for the 2nd post.

As I mentioned before, Snoke is not a biologist, which means that he does not discuss some issues that I wish he would have, but his background as a physicist is a plus, as well as a minus. On pages 25-30, he considers the question of light from apparently distant stars. As he says, a person who believes that the universe is no more than a few thousand years old has a problem with evidence that some stars are very far away. Such a person has three alternatives:
1) The distance measurements are wrong, and there are no stars more than a few thousand light-years away.
2) The speed of light used to be much faster, so that, say, a star which is really 5,555 light-years away seems to be much further away.
3) The light which seems to be from stars that are far away was actually created in place, giving an appearance of age.

Snoke says that there are serious problems with all of these alternatives.

All of the observed stars can't really be relatively close to us, because if they were, there would be serious gravitational and heat effects, which we don't see.

Snoke writes: Even a slight change in the speed of light over time would imply major changes in the calculations of electric and magnetic fields . . . . The speed of light is not independent of other physical effects. Many phenomena, including radio, light, magnetic and electric fields, X-rays, and friction, are all described by one set of elegant and simple equations, known as Maxwell's equations. These equations were created by James Maxwell, a Scottish Presbyterian believer with a strong faith in the beauty and simplicity of God's creation. The unification of all these effects into one set of equations means that one cannot propose a change in the speed of light without also proposing changes in everything from the structure of atoms to the color of the sun to the cost of computer circuits. (p. 28)

As to the "appearance of age" explanation, in the first place, this raises questions about God deceiving us. In the second, says Snoke, young-earth creationists, like almost everybody else, don't really argue for an appearance of age. They argue that the earth, and the universe, really are only a few thousand years old.

Thanks for reading.

A. A. Milne writes about a little boy growing up

. . . Pooh!"
"Yes, Christopher Robin?"
"I'm not going to do Nothing any more."
"Never again?"
"Well, not so much. They don't let you."
-A. A. Milne, The World of Pooh, New York: Dutton, 1957, p. 312. Originally in The House at Pooh Corner, 1928, Chapter 10, "In Which Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place, and We Leave Them There." (Public Domain)

Christopher Robin is going.
At least I think he is.
Where?
Nobody knows.
But he is going --
I mean he goes
(to rhyme with "knows")
Do we care?
(to rhyme with "where")
We do
Very much.
(I haven't got a rhyme for that "is" in the second line yet. Bother.)
(Now I haven't got a rhyme for bother. Bother.)
Those two bothers will have to rhyme with each other Buther.
The fact is this is more difficult than I thought,
I ought --
(Very good indeed)
I ought
To begin again,
But it is easier
To stop.
Christopher Robin, good-bye,
I
(Good)
I
And all your friends
Sends --
I mean all you friend
Send --
(Very awkward this, it keeps going wrong)
Well, anyhow, we send
Our love
END.
A. A. Milne, The Complete Tales & Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh, pp. 329-330. (New York: Dutton, 2001) Originally in The House at Pooh Corner, 1928, Chapter 10, "In Which Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place, and We Leave Them There." Public Domain. See here for more on Winnie-the-Pooh.

God bless all little boys (and girls) as they grow up.

Thanks for reading!

Sunspots 176

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

Computing:
Wired reports that the newest version of Picasa, a free photo program, can recognize faces.

From Slate: Buying great eyeglasses cheaply on-line.


Christianity:
An article in Slate that discusses what's happened to the marital practices of evangelicals, using the Palin family as a springboard. What has happened is not good.

Henry Neufeld argues that "The Bible Does Not Contain Science ."

Image source (public domain)

A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by Snoke, part 2: View of Scripture

To part 1 of this series, on A Biblical Case for an Old Earth (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006) by David Snoke.

Does Snoke take the Bible seriously? Let's put it this way. There is a Scripture Index in the back of the book, which shows that Snoke has referred to 37 of the 66 books of the Bible, using more than 300 different passages.

Snoke devotes his first chapter to an important issue, namely "is it legitimate for non-Biblical experience, such as scientific evidence, to influence our interpretation of the Bible?" His answer is a carefully qualified "yes." The most important qualification is this: It is illegitimate to place anything generated by human beings in a position of unquestioned authority over the Bible." (13) He also states, on the same page, that it is illegitimate to change our view because our original view did not conform to popular opinion.

So why does Snoke say that extra-Biblical experience, including scientific findings, can legitimately influence our interpretation of the Bible?

He argues for this by using examples. Some of these have no direct relationship to science. Snoke, for instance, says that most Christians do not believe that there are any Apostles now living on earth, in spite of such verses as Ephesians 4:11. The reason that we don't think there are any Apostles now is that we don't have evidence of contemporary Apostles.

Snoke also considers the statement by Christ that some who were alive would not see death until he returned (Matthew 16:24-28, Mark 8:34-9:1, Luke 9:23-27). Here, again, he says, we do not interpret that as having the apparent literal meaning, because of our experience -- Christ has not returned yet.

The author uses other examples, scientific and non-scientific. The science-related example he gives is the matter of the motion of the earth. There are passages in the Bible which seem to teach that the earth does not move, such as Psalm 93:1, 96:10, and 104:5. But, because of the scientific evidence that it does move, we have altered our beliefs about what the Bible is really saying about the subject.

I agree with Snoke, and, clearly, other Christians who take the Bible very seriously also do -- we do interpret what God said in the Bible in the light of our experience, including scientific findings.

Thanks for reading. I expect to publish more posts about this book.

Job on the source of wisdom (Hint: it isn't in human accomplishment)

From Job 28:

9 “Man puts his hand to the flinty rock
and overturns mountains by the roots.
10 He cuts out channels in the rocks,
and his eye sees every precious thing.
11 He dams up the streams so that they do not trickle,
and the thing that is hidden he brings out to light.

12 “But where shall wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
13 Man does not know its worth,
and it is not found in the land of the living.
14 The deep says, ‘It is not in me,’
and the sea says, ‘It is not with me.’
15 It cannot be bought for gold,
and silver cannot be weighed as its price.

20 “From where, then, does wisdom come?
And where is the place of understanding?

23 “God understands the way to it,
and he knows its place.

28 And he said to man,
‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom,
and to turn away from evil is understanding.’” (ESV)

The sciences: unshakable knowledge?

Descartes, who instituted a quite reasonable and modest search for new standards of certainty in science, also had the vision of something much grander that might lie beyond them -- of an absolute, invulnerable certainty, an ideal form of knowledge which nothing could ever shake. This unreal vision has given endless trouble. It is not only excessive; it gives priority to the wrong sort of ambition. The kind of perfection at which the Cartesian project aims is the perfection of epistemic safety. It concentrates on knowledge, not because of any special view (such as Plato had) about what we need to know and why we need to know it, but because knowledge means security from error. By assuming that the possibility of error is the evil that must above all be avoided, it distracts (among other things) from asking about the various reasons why knowledge can be important. And . . . it systematically directs us away from interesting and important questions that possibly cannot be completely settled, and towards less interesting ones where the risk of error seems easier to control.
All this might not matter so much if the demand for unshakable certainty could be satisfied and then put aside. But it cannot. Its ideal is unattainable, going far beyond anything the sciences have ever delivered or could deliver. In all of them since Descartes's time, beliefs which were thought to be unshakable have been first shaken and then abandoned. Mary Midgley, Wisdom, Information, and Wonder: What Is Knowledge for? New York: Routledge, 1995, p.36.

Losing and finding

I lost something today -- a flash drive -- and eventually found it, right where I had placed it, in a pocket I had never used to store it before. Thank God, who answered prayer in this matter.

If I hadn't done a fairly thorough search, I would not have found another item that was lost 2 or 3 years ago. Thank God for that, too.

A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by Snoke, part 1

I intend, God helping me, to present a critique of A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by David Snoke. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), in several posts. In the past, I have treated two other important books relating to both science and religious issues in this way. For the last post on The Language of God, by Francis Collins, go here. For the last post on Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator, go here.

May I say at the outset that I have two problems with Snoke's book. First, he doesn't seem to understand evolution (by which I mean change over time, due to selective processes), or at least he doesn't write very much about it. This is not surprising, since Snoke is a physicist, I guess. The second problem is related. Snoke is a believer in Intelligent Design. So am I, depending on how you define it. (See the second paragraph of this post.) However, I have serious problems with the Intelligent Design movement, and I'm not alone in this. A number of Christians with scientific training have expressed similar concerns. Snoke doesn't seem to have these problems. I wish he did.

In spite of my reservations, Snoke has written an excellent book. He is a good writer, and a careful one. He examines scripture carefully, knows it well, and takes it seriously. He deals with possible arguments against his position, gently demolishing most of them, in my view.

Snoke's book is best summarized by its title. Snoke recognizes that many Christians have serious reservations about his thesis, in particular, they believe that there was no death before the Fall, and that the days of Genesis 1 were literal days. Snoke discusses these reservations carefully. He makes, I believe, a compelling case that the Bible does not teach that there was no animal death before the Fall, and a compelling case that the Bible does not teach that the days of Genesis 1 were consecutive literal 24-hour days.

Thanks for reading.

Blood Clotting in humans isn't irreducibly complex

The Panda's Thumb is an anti-Intelligent Design blog. Although the authors are sometimes rather tranquil, the posts are often strident. A recent post isn't especially strident, I guess, but it undercuts (not for the first time) the central claim of Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box, with scientific evidence.

Behe's central claim was that some processes, including blood clotting, are irreducibly complex -- they require several separate parts, and wouldn't work if any one of the parts were missing. Thus, these processes couldn't have developed from simpler ones through natural selection. (Behe is not a young earth creationist. He has a doctorate in biochemistry.)

The post indicated shows that blood clotting does work in lampreys (simple fish) without some of the molecules required for blood clotting in humans. It predicts that even simpler animals, thought to be similar to the ancestors of vertebrates, will have a clotting system that works, even though such a clotting system would not have all the molecules of the lamprey clotting system.

We'll see if that prediction holds up. Behe's prediction hasn't.

Thanks for reading.

Sunspots 175

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

Science:
Quintessence of Dust is in the process of critiquing Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution. Here's one part of his critique, and here's another.


Computing:
Rebecca Blood's blog ethics , which apply to blogs that attempt to impart information that might be of interest to readers unknown to the blogger.

Wired says that Google is working on its own browser, and it's close to being released.

Literature:
E. Stephen Burnett has written the first part of an essay on "purity," and Christ-honoring art, discussing such matters as whether Christians can produce, see, and be edified by such art as movies which aren't G-rated. Among other things, he considers Philippians 4:8.

Image source (public domain)

Freedom in Proper Perspective: Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones.

However, in early democracies, as in the American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. From the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "A World Split Apart," speech delivered at Harvard University, June 8, 1978.

Thanks for reading.

I Am Not Skilled to Understand

I am not skilled to understand
What God hath willed, what God hath planned;
I only know that at His right hand
Is One Who is my Savior!
I take Him at His word indeed;
“Christ died for sinners”—this I read;
For in my heart I find a need
Of Him to be my Savior!
That He should leave His place on high
And come for sinful man to die,
You count it strange? So once did I,
Before I knew my Savior!
And oh, that He fulfilled may see
The travail of His soul in me,
And with His work contented be,
As I with my dear Savior!
Yea, living, dying, let me bring
My strength, my solace from this Spring;
That He Who lives to be my King
Once died to be my Savior!
Words: Dorothy Greenwell, 1873. Music: “Greenwell,” William J. Kirkpatrick, 1885
See the Cyber Hymnal for an audible rendition of the music.

Sunspots 174

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

Sports:
Wired on how to cheat in athletic contests and not get caught.

Sports Illustrated reports that John McEnroe is still getting in trouble because of his bad behavior.

Computing:
Legislation attempting to regulate on-line contact between public school students and teachers is under consideration in Missouri, says CNN.

Christianity:
rustyfly reminds us that visiting pornographic web sites may be aiding slavery.

David Heddle, of He Lives, has considered the length of days in the Bible, and calls John and Henry Morris liberal, because of the way they use scripture.

Image source (public domain)

A little about "Grace" in the Bible

Many people know what the first verse in the Bible says. Not nearly so many know what the last one says. I'll give you a hint. It's about grace.

Grace is an important Christian concept. (See here for the Wikipedia article on Divine Grace.)

A search of the on-line English Standard Version Bible initially turns up 171 hits if I search for "grace." Of these, 47 are in the Old Testament, which means, of course, that most of the occurrences are in the New Testament.

The disparity between the Testaments is even greater, however. A simple search for "grace" also finds "disgrace," and variations of it. Of the 47 hits in the Old Testament, 36 are for "disgrace," and a few are for "graceful," which means that there isn't much mention of "grace," as such, in the Old Testament.

"Grace" as a word, is in the Old Testament as follows:
Esther 2:17 says that Esther found grace in the eyes of the king, her future husband.

Psalm 45:2 says that grace is poured upon the king's lips. (A possible reference to Christ?)

In Psalm 86:6, I find what seems to be the first legitimate request for God's grace, and the first mention of His grace in the Bible, in this pleading psalm of David.

Proverbs 3:34 uses "favor," referring to God's favor, and both the ESV and the New International Version have a text note, indicating that "grace" is a possible alternate reading.

Jeremiah 31 speaks of God's love for the people of Israel, and mentions that they found grace when wandering through the wilderness.

I make no claim to understanding of the meaning of Zechariah 4:1-7, but it seems to include a mention of God's grace.

Zechariah 12:10 also prophesies of God's grace to come.

Thus, I find but five occurrences of the word "grace," referring to God's grace, in the Old Testament.

It is not surprising that Grace is a mainly New Testament concept. John 1:17 says:
17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (All scripture quotations are from the ESV)

Here are some of the other places where "grace" is found in the New Testament:

There's a contrast between our inheritance from Adam and Eve, and our inheritance in Christ, in
Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. 16 And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. 17 For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Although grace is free, and covers sin, we must not go on sinning, says Paul, in Romans 6:1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?
and, the same chapter:
14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

1 Peter reminds us that our service to others is also part of God's grace:
10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace . . .

"Grace be with you," or a variation of that, is common in the New Testament. Perhaps the most significant of those statements is the last verse in the Bible:
Revelation 22:21 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.

Grace be with you. Thanks for reading.

Hiatus coming

I am going on hiatus, and don't expect to post much, except for some Sunday devotional posts, and perhaps a "Sunspots" once in a while, until September. More important things are scheduled.

I don't expect to be able to read most (maybe not any) of your posts, either.

Thanks for reading!

Sunspots 173

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

Science:
Wired on how networking really works.

Wired has an article (with photos) that says that some viruses are attacked by other viruses.

Sports:
(or politics) A Sports Illustrated commentator on how US Olympic officials are acting too pro-Chinese.

Christianity:
Slate says that Franklin Graham has discouraged evangelism by Westerners at the Beijing Olympics.

Image source (public domain)

Do the Narnia books tell us about the planets?

First Things has a review of a book by Michael Ward, entitled Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis. The theme of the book, published by Oxford University Press, no less, is that the seven Narnia books were consciously related to the seven heavenly bodies known to the ancients, by Lewis.

The author of the review says, understandably, that such a thesis sounds nutty. He goes on to say that, although Ward didn't convince him, his book did offer insights into the Narnia books that he hadn't had before, and that his idea isn't nearly as wrong as he thought it was when before he read Ward's book.

The review is long enough to explain what the book is about, with examples, but not too long for a reasonably easy read.

Thanks for reading. Thanks, First Things!

Did NASA prove that Joshua's long day happened?

I received an e-mail forward a few days ago, which claimed that NASA had proved the story of the long day, told in the book of Joshua.

The Bible story is true, although I don't know how to explain it, but the story that NASA has proved it isn't. See my previous post, from over two years ago, on this subject. The false rumor is still out there, and still circulating. (See here and here) That's too bad. God's truth is not served by false information, whether circulated knowing that it's false, or not.

Thanks.

Ordering God around, at Isaiah's command.

This is one of many remarkable statements in the Bible:

Isaiah 62:6 On your walls, O Jerusalem,
I have set watchmen;
all the day and all the night
they shall never be silent.
You who put the Lord in remembrance,
take no rest,
7 and give him no rest
until he establishes Jerusalem
and makes it a praise in the earth. (ESV)

What a command to pray. "Him" is God, in this passage! We are to give God no rest!

Thanks for reading.