Bill Nye, the ideology guy

My boys loved Bill Nye when they were little. Truth be told, I loved Bill Nye. How could you not love a goofy guy who made you hungry for science.

But that was then, and this is now. Bill has bounded out of the realm of science into philosophy, and not content with philosophy, he has donned the mantle of authority when it comes to how parents should train up their children.

Mr. Nye is a staunch evolutionist. In a recent video titled "Creationism is not appropriate for children," he said that when you ignore evolution"your worldview becomes crazy, untenable, itself inconsistent (1)." Honestly, most creationists think the same thing about an evolutionary worldview. Crazy. Untenable. Inconsistent. Fantasy.

Yet, despite incessant indoctrination from kindergarten through post-graduate studies, 46% of Americans remain young earth creationists according to a recent Gallup poll. Thirty-two percent believe God used evolution and only 15% believe (interesting word) in atheistic evolution. For that large a swath of the American fabric to still hold to a six-day creation, there must be something more substantial, more evidential to cling to than a fairy tale.

Mr. Nye doesn't think so and lets the insults fly:

"I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, that's completely inconsistent with the world we observe, that's fine."

Gee, thanks, Bill. Should they pad my room, too? He has gone beyond observation and experimentation into philosophy.  Despite over a century and a half since Darwin published Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, no proof has been found indicating one kind of animal has ever transitioned to become another kind. Dogs beget still dogs. Fish beget fish. Chimps beget chimps and yes, man begets man.

Had he only coughed up that hairball, we could get busy with dinner, but Mr. Nye went further:

"But don't make your kids do it (deny evolution).  Because we need them.  We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future.  We need engineers that can build stuff and solve problems."

That's creepy stuff. You need them?! So, Bill, you don't want me to teach my kids what I am convinced is true and that I am convinced gives dignity to humanity within the created order? You don't want me to teach him the foundation of "love your neighbor as yourself?" or why all mankind is equal?

To Mr. Nye, only an evolutionist is equipped to teach science of any kind (Astro? Aero? Civil engineering??) to our children. That's disturbing.

Teaching my kids a responsibility to the God who made them does not them scientifically illiterate. It didn't slow down Blaise Pascal or Robert Oppenheimer. 

Does worshiping the God who raises up and puts down kingdoms make one ill-qualified to vote? It seems to me that President Obama appreciates my tax-dollars despite my believing in the one who suggested that I render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's (which is everything, by the way). 

And how, pray tell, does believing in a Creator impair one from being a creator or problem solver? Wouldn't that naturally follow? 

Al Campanis, the general manager for the Los Angeles Dodgers, was rightly fired the day after the racism of his heart overflowed in a Nightline interview in 1987. But for the Bill Nyes of the world, it's okay to denigrate those who take God at his word. Such animosity is in season (here).

Few will bat an eyelash over his propaganda and slurring of Bible-believers. Well, Bill, not that you care, but you've lost one fan.

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 (1) Taken from CNN's "Bill Nye slams creationism" here.

Imagine there's no heaven: Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking, the man with perhaps the most active and analytical brain on the planet, has once again stepped beyond the bounds of his own reason. In an interview with the Guardian newspaper (excerpted on Fox News here and in full here), the renowned physicist declared

"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

Now you might consider me well outside of my intellectual bounds in declaring the doctor downright daffy, but wasn't it a child that exposed the emperor as having exposed himself? Consider me an intellectual child for the moment, if you will, for Mr. Hawking refutes his own assertion.

Huh? Consider. If our brain is nothing but a computer, how did it get assembled? If all is merely machinistic, who assembled this extraordinary machine that is the universe, much less the even more mind-boggling sentient machine that is man? In a universe marked by entropy, things do not move to a higher state of order, especially on the magnitude of the human brain.

Those who advocate for a material universe alone cannot explain the immaterial. From whence cometh consciousness? How does life spring from non-life? We can theorize until we are blue in the face and posit parallel quantum mashed potatoes, but when we look about us into tangible reality, does it make any sense whatsoever? How is it I can imagine a purple elephant when in my mind there is neither purple nor elephant? What of good and evil if all that there is merely is? For the pure materialist, there can be no good or evil.  We just are.

Jean-Paul Sartre, the preeminent existentialist and atheist, could not come to terms with why there was something rather than nothing. Not only could he not get to first base, he couldn't even get up to the plate for why there was a plate versus no plate at all?

In trying to make a play for some kind of morality, Hawking suggested

"We should seek the greatest value of our action."

One has to ask, why? If I'm just a machine, why should I not seek my maximum pleasure? Why should I not do that which makes my engine run the longest?  From whence cometh altruism and philanthropy? What is love? Why should I flop on a grenade to save my chums? That doesn't sound like a very good way to keep my computer running.

In direct rejection of what God has said in his word, Hawking stands upon the mountain and proclaims

"The universe is governed by science."

The choice becomes very stark. Those who try and dance the line between naturalism/materialism and theism find no room to stand.  Hawking makes plain the end of naturalism: there is no God, there is no heaven. God has revealed himself in the cosmos; His fingerprints are everywhere.

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1, see also Psalm 148:3-6)

Perhaps the most troubling passage in all of Scripture for those who have stared into the wonder of the heavens or have looked at the miracle of a newborn and spit, indicates that God's wrath awaits those who have seen the wonder of creation and turned their backs.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened (Romans 1:18-21).

So I stand with my hand in my Father's hand, and as the emperor strides by, I cannot help but declare, "Papa, he's naked." I look into my Father's face and see a tear roll down his cheek.

Indy's bane

Sometimes reality can creep you out far worse than fiction.  Just watch the Kagan hearings, for instance.

Here's another example.  A friend of my aunt sent these pics to her. My mom sent them to me. Just a nice day for a hike in southern Arizona.

Your typical, craggy desert hillside.  Oh wait, what's that under the tree?

Is that a pile of wood for building a fire?  Jackpot!

Oh, wait.  The pile's moving.  OH, MY!

One...two...three...oh, my...

Please tell me this individual used a zoom lens!

Kind of makes it hard to imagine the fulfillment of the following prophecy, but one day, fulfilled it will be.

The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.

Isaiah 11:8-9

Planet Earth

Zoinks.

Oh, wow!

(Stunned silence).

These have been typical of the responses that have poured forth from me and other members of my family as we've sat in pop-eyed wander watching the BBC/Discovery Channel mini-series Planet Earth. I don't mean to sound bathetic (correct spelling), but I don't think it's trite to state that this is one of the most superb uses of the visual medium that I have ever seen.

Apart from the occasional evolutionary terminology (it's always a fact, don'tcha know), I don't know that I have ever seen anything on television that so declared the glory of God. Easily 99% of the places and things seen and recorded by these photographers I will never see. You'll swallow hard wondering how they got some of the shots they got.

What a phenomenal, breath-seizing opportunity to see things on this planet that must have given God great delight and joy to craft. I can imagine him sitting in the wings while the first folks ever to see some of these sights rounded the corner to stumble upon them. It had to be a better sensation than a parent watching their child tear into an unexpected and unbelievable birthday gift.

It's not a cheap mini-series. Perhaps you could ask for it as a gift for your family (thanks, Mom!). Maybe you can borrow it from a friend or check it out from the library. Or you might catch it on the Discovery Channel. In any case, for the one's who know the One who knit the tapestry together, it will serve to make you marvel all the more at the extraordinary God who created our home.

"Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good."