Southern History, American Freedom, Christian Liberty
STR linked to this today on their blog. This might be one of the funniest arguments I’ve ever read. Dawkins totally comes out of nowhere with his conclusion. And to think it came from Richard Dawkins(the modern-day Bertrand Russell) is just amazing. William Lane Craig is extremely gracious in his reponse. I would have found it difficult not to laugh out loud. I guess I need to work on my ambassador skills.
I’ve adressed it a few times before, but this is evidently going to be a centerpiece of the neo-darwinian playbook for some time so I better dust off the ol’ cut,copy,paste keys on the keyboard and get ready to repeat myself. I was reading Evan’s blog the other day and came across the following in one of his posts around Easter:
I’ve come to the realization that there is only one thing that people use religion for: Comfort.
It’s comforting to think that there’s somebody out there who really, really loves you.
It’s comforting to think that there’s some nice place you go when you die.
It’s comforting to have a community of people believe something for no reason than they heard it from somebody else, was raised that way, or read a book about it.
It’s comforting to have a support network, to have something to pray to, to have an out for your fears, frustrations, hopes.
It’s comfort I don’t really need. It’s comfort I can live without. You want to talk to yourself and tell the imaginary guy how you’re feeling, who you’re thinking about? I’m cool with that. We’re human beings, we don’t do rational things all of the time. It’s not “rational” to believe in a God, but it sure is comforting.
In our time of need? “Oh God, oh God, oh God…”
In times of thanks “Thank you God, thank you God…”
In times of uncertainty “Give me strength, Lord…”
And on it goes. And it’s all very comforting. And it’s all very nice. And it’s a fine way to live your life. But it’s also psychologically taxing to children, it’s power than can corrupt absolute, and it’s a little silly in the scheme of things.
–Evan Erwin, http://www.misterorange.com/2007/04/easter-and-scope.html
This idea that people believe in religion because it makes them feel better and more comfortable with this cold, cruel universe is of course not a new one. Freud brought it into it’s modern incarnation in 1913 with Totem and Taboo and modern physicalist philosophers have struggled to explain religion in evolutionary terms as well. Daniel Dennett wrote a book last year called Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon attempting to do just that. It was summarily given an absolute bashing by the New York Times. Their review is excellent and rare for a simple book review.
Going back to Evan’s comments, their are a few immediate problems. First, if theistic belief was only found in a rural, Inherit the Wind type, old-time religion setting then his comment that people “believe something for no reason than they heard it from somebody else, was raised that way, or read a book about it” might hold up. That’s not the case though. Religious belief crosses every historical, cultural, societal, classical and vocational line. Not only that, but individual religious belief systems criss-cross over the same sets of lines. We find Baptists in India, hindus in America, Christians in China, Bhuddists in Russia, etc. Like I’ve said before, in order to believe this, we will have to say that some of the most intelligent people in history must be guilty of just believing something “because they heard it from somebody else.” That’s a very, very hard pill to swallow.
To be continued…
I’ve often wondered why homosexuality is given a free pass when it comes to moral scrutiny when other sexually aberrant behaviors are not. This is true particularly at higher levels in politics, where few seem willing to call it wrong. I’ve posted before about how most of these people who feign acceptance of it are actually creeped out by it when the spotlight is turned off. So why would they be so unwilling to come out against it and speak how they truly feel? The only thing I can think is that it gets them some sort of moral superiority within the politically correct socio-political framework we are in right now. You know. It’s the one where up is down and right is wrong.
So here’s my theory. We know that modern day liberalism and political correctness was born out of the rebelliousness of the sixties and seventies youth. To be a liberal continues to be closely tied to a sense of counterculture and rebellion against any type of orthodoxy or establishment. But there is a line that liberals will instinctively not cross when it comes to anarchial tendencies. They won’t, for instance, say that it’s alright to murder, rape, etc. But anything else they can find that is instinctively wrong or uncomfortable to the establishment, but doesn’t cross that line, they will embrace into their moral repertoire. In their eyes this gives them the politically correct moral highground. Homosexuality falls perfectly into this category.
So here is the argument:
In other words, homosexuality is one of those issues that challenges our moral sensibilities to the limit without actually breaking any of the “universals”. That makes it the perfect politically correct moral trump card. The problem, as is often the case in modern liberalism, is that it damages culture and society, even if it doesn’t hurt those directly involved. I’ll get into that another time though.
If you are a PC gamer and also like the Tolkein universe, you should really go by and pick up a copy of The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar when it’s released to the public tommorrow (April 24th). I’ve been beta-testing it since December of last year and I can say without a doubt that it is an awesome game experience. It’s based on The Lord of the Rings book rights instead of the movie rights, so you aren’t just going to see a clone of the movie. Personally, I think that makes it a much fresher experience than it would have otherwise been. Now that the non-disclosure agreement has been lifted, I can get into a little more detail.
The playable races are Elf, Man and Hobbit and based on which you choose, you will be able to play as either a Champion, Guardian, Minstrel, Captain, Burglar, Hunter or Lore-Master. There is also monster-play available once you reach level 10. The lore-master and minstrel classes are the closest thing to magic users you will find in the game. This may seem odd for an RPG, but the books never had much magic in them, so it’s appropriate to use it only sparingly in the game as well. The initial level cap will be 50. This is certain to be raised with future expansion packs though. The first expansion has already been announced, so it appears that all the pre-release hype has been encouraging enough to the developers to push on with more content.
As far as gameplay goes, it has all the things you would expect from a modern MMORPG. Questing, grinding, chat, auction system, emotes, crafting, etc. It also has a vast deed system that will reward you with new skills and traits based on various deeds you complete during routine play. For example, you will be rewarded with the title of “Orc-Hewer”, a skill and XP for killing a certain number of orcs in the Lone-Lands part of the map. That helps to keep grinding from being so tedious. I’ll posts some pictures later. For now, just go pick up a copy. I promise you’ll like it.
I mentioned the other day in my post about PodWrangler 1.5.3 that I had some trouble downloading mp3’s from the Renewing Your Mind podcast that R.C. Sproul’s ministry publishes on their website. Specifically the problem I was having is that when I added the feed URL into PodWrangler, it would detect the feed title fine but then it would give a 403 error every time it attempted to actually download the mp3 files. Now, if you are familiar with HTTP at all you will know that a 403 response means “Access Forbidden”. What? Why would you publish a feed and then forbid access to the actual content?
My first thought was maybe it was a server misconfiguration. So I figured I’d try the feed subscription through iTunes and see what happened. To my chagrin, it worked perfectly through iTunes. That could mean only one thing. Ligonier’s website was blocking any attempt to download an mp3 file through any software other than iTunes. The only way that can work is for the server to inspect the User-Agent header that is sent with the HTTP request. That’s easy to change, so I just modified PodWrangler’s user-agent string to read “iTunes/7.1 (PodWrangler 1.5.3)” and recompiled. After that change, PodWrangler happily downloaded the mp3’s.
This whole thing is troubling to me though. This is the second time that I’ve encountered a ministry that tried to restrict their podcast feed to be useable only through iTunes. The only reason I can see for this is that by forcing people to use iTunes, it bolsters their podcast’s ranking on the iTunes marketplace. What a waste of time. Currently the two top spots in the iTunes rankings are both filled by Joel Osteen, and somehow people still think that the ranking has credibility. Note to ministries: “Stop trying to restrict your podcasts to only certain software. It’s not only trivial to bypass by changing the user-agent header, it also creates technical issues for people trying to subscribe to your feed.”
If, heaven forbid, someone doesn’t use iTunes as their be-all end-all audio software, then they probably really don’t want to have to download and install it just to subscribe to one arnery podcast. If someone already has all of their music in Napster, for instance, they are seriously going to balk at having to install iTunes. And what if a potential subscriber uses Linux? Are they out of luck? The bottom line is that it’s a purely arbitrary restriction that creates issues for subscribers that are totally unnecessary. The simple question is, why would any ministry restrict access to their free content just to boost their ranking in some list? What’s more important – the content getting to those who need it, or being able to stick your chest out for having a high rank?
I’ve been looking into apologetics and ID and stuff like that for probably at least a decade now, and I can’t recall ever hearing the name Sam Harris before. But all of the sudden he is everywhere this past month spewing Denton-Dawkins-esque anti-religion rhetoric. I wanted to know more about him than the fact that he looks exactly like the host of Survivor so I looked him up on wikipedia (because we all know it’s flawless, right). What I found out is that even though he is about forty years old, he is relitively new on the larger scene, having his first big success with the book The End of Faith in 2005.
Without reading any further for the moment, the first thing that strikes me is the boldness of that title. It takes some big ones to put out a book like that when religious belief might be at an all-time high in human history. The second thing is that even though the wikipedia write-up notes his particular interest in Islam, let’s not kid ourselves. He has his eyes set squarely on Christianity just as all of his type do. That’s pretty obvious seeing as how his next big book was called Letter to a Christian Nation, published in 2006. Now, why go after Christians right out of the gate if Islam is what your focus is on?
I’m not going to go over the rest of the wikipedia write-up since you can read it for yourself, but my knee-jerk reaction is that he is just a young, extroverted Daniel Dennett. I would say that he is probably the first of what we will see from my generation of neo-darwinian humanist philosophers. What will set them apart from the baby-boomer philosophers is their willingness to cross out of academia and take their conclusions straight to the socio-political level (like being a poster at huffingtonpost). In that sense they are probably more akin to Neitzche and Freud. They are also far more comfortable overstating the scientific evidence than their predecessors were. They will tell you with total conviction that such-and-such scientific evidence is rock solid when they have barely even skimmed the cliff notes. The reason for all of this is pretty obvious to me. Christian philosophers have gained tremendous ground in the ivory towers over the last 2 decades. It was only a matter of time before the secularists turned the volume up.
The last thing I’ll say is that I didn’t see a single debate with a competent Christian philosopher listed in his bio. I hope that’s not right, because if Rick Warren is the only Christian he has debated then he is leveling off at about 0.5 on my philosopher respect meter. I’ll do a little more research than simply a wikipedia read and post more about his specific beliefs later. If you know anything specific about his philosophy shoot me an email.
New version of PodWrangler today. I ran into a problem yesterday(I’ll save the specifics for another post) when trying to add the podcast feed from ligonier ministries into PodWrangler. In the process I discovered some serious problems with the way I had written the feed parser. To be honest, I’m surprised that it even worked as it was written. I guess I was just a beneficiary of the well-formedness of the XML specification. But nonetheless, it means that you will not be able to auto-upgrade to this new version. You’ll have to download 1.5.3 manually. Just download it manually from the link below, click “Exit” on your existing running copy of PodWrangler, and then start the new copy up. After the new version is running in your system tray just click on “Autostart with Windows” from the menu. That will install it and preserve all your feeds. The new source code will be up shortly.
Old Truth posted a link to some photos of what you might call a “Seeker-Sensitive Potty”. I don’t know what’s more disturbing. The fact that they are willing to turn the restroom into a Disneyland ride in order to get people to come to church or the fact that having a sign that mentions an oil change in a men’s room doesn’t seem to bother them. But seriously, I’m more taken aback by what the pastor said when interviewed about it:
“Part of the mission statement at Christ’s Family Church is to proclaim God’s reconciling love through Jesus Christ to neighbors, co-workers and friends,” he said. “The men’s room is just one of the many ways this church is trying to accomplish this mission. We are willing to go to any lengths, use any means necessary, to bring people closer to Christ.”
His statement reminds me of a question Greg Koukl asked a caller a long time ago. Do you think that God’s main enterprise is to get as many people saved as possible? If you stop and think about it for a minute, that’s a very interesting question. If you’re like me, you will find that your knee-jerk reaction to that question is mixed. I feel like I should answer yes, but at the same time I instinctively know that the answer is no. We cheapen our worship when we get down on all fours and beg people to come to church. Just look at the exchange Jesus had with the rich young ruler as an example:
A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ’Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’” “All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said. When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus replied, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.”
The rich man wanted in, and instead of throwing the doors open wide, Jesus shrank the door down to the size of the eye of a needle. People freak every time I say this, but church is for Christians. Evangelism should be done in the marketplace – out on the streets where the people are. I think that’s pretty obvious from the scriptures. Don’t stand in the church threshold and scream at people as they walk by, begging them to come in and hear your sales pitch. Walk out the door and engage them where they are.
We can only wonder how many lives might have been saved if responsible students would have been able to carry concealed. When are people going to understand that banning guns turns innocent people into helpless targets who are unable to defend themselves or save others. Just read on and wonder:
Gun bill gets shot down by panel
HB 1572, which would have allowed handguns on college campuses, died in subcommittee.
A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.
House Bill 1572 didn’t get through the House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety. It died Monday in the subcommittee stage, the first of several hurdles bills must overcome before becoming laws.
The bill was proposed by Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County, on behalf of the Virginia Citizens Defense League. Gilbert was unavailable Monday and spokesman Gary Frink would not comment on the bill’s defeat other than to say the issue was dead for this General Assembly session.
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. “I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.”
Del. Dave Nutter, R-Christiansburg, would not comment Monday because he was not part of the subcommittee that discussed the bill.
Most universities in Virginia require students and employees, other than police, to check their guns with police or campus security upon entering campus. The legislation was designed to prohibit public universities from making “rules or regulations limiting or abridging the ability of a student who possesses a valid concealed handgun permit … from lawfully carrying a concealed handgun.”
The legislation allowed for exceptions for participants in athletic events, storage of guns in residence halls and military training programs.
Last spring a Virginia Tech student was disciplined for bringing a handgun to class, despite having a concealed handgun permit. Some gun owners questioned the university’s authority, while the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police came out against the presence of guns on campus.
In June, Tech’s governing board approved a violence prevention policy reiterating its ban on students or employees carrying guns and prohibiting visitors from bringing them into campus facilities.
–Greg Esposito, January 31, 2006
All the buzz in the paleontology community last week was about some newly found evidence that is supposed to be the first to actually link dinosaurs and birds in the evolutionary scheme. What you probably totally missed is that this evidence came out of the story that I posted about last year dealing with a soft-tissue discovery inside a T. Rex fossil.
So this is basically the end-game for this story as far as the scientific community is concerned. They evidently have no problem with soft tissue surviving for 68 million years. Excuse me?! Meanwhile… in the real world, real people know that’s totally absurd. Talk about blind faith in evolution. This has to take the cake. As I watch some roadkill vanish into dust after only a few weeks of driving to work, I’m starting to think the presup. guys have the right idea. It’s pretty obvious from this that bias is enough to blind anyone to the truth, no matter the evidence.
The very first question asked while reading this story should have been, “How the heck do you get a collagen protein from a 68 million year old fossil?” But evidently they aren’t too concerned with that. Sheesh! David over at Creation-Evolution Headlines has some good insight as always:
“How can they completely ignore the big question? Don’t just tell us this stuff did survive for millions of years—tell us how it could.”
“Read these articles in disbelief. Notice how nothing in secular science is fixed in stone except for faith in evolution and its requirement, “geological time.””
–David Coppedge, crev.info
If you haven’t done so already, you should really add the crev.info RSS feed to your news tracker. They do great work. The link is on the blogroll.
