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.

The dead feel no pain

"Recent studies" are like weather predictions.  Inexact at best and bound to change by noon.

A recent British study concluded that babies do not feel pain until 24 weeks after conception (here).  An American study had set the bar at 28 weeks. 

I'll cede the study.  I don't know that a baby "feels pain" or if it can respond to stimulus when it's only one cell, two cells, or even eight cells.  It's obvious that at some point, the en utero baby will feel pain.

The reason this "recent study" has gotten so much ink this past week is because the media believes this diminishes the argument of British pro-life forces seeking to shrink the line in the sand after which a child may not be aborted (yes, I understand that's a polite euphemism).

Pro-life forces have used the "pain of the fetus" argument to get legislatures to enact laws to curtail when doctors can destroy the child.  If you press those in the pro-LIFE camp, you'll find that pain is not at the root of their efforts.  They believe human life to be sacred and that innocent life must be protected.

Really, it doesn't matter if the baby feels pain at 24 weeks.  It won't matter if next week they determine the child doesn't feel pain until 13 weeks.  If the study is accurate, whether dismantled at 8 weeks and oblivious or at 28 weeks and in agony, the haunting end remains the same.

The child is dead.

A glorious ladybug: Jewish DNA

One of the comical and wondrous aspects of parenthood occurs when your child "discovers" something "new."  It starts early.  What parent hasn't laughed hysterically when junior first noticed his fingers passing in front of his face at random intervals?  And then the startled awe on the month old face when he realizes that the muscle flinch in the right arm causes those micro sausages to hover there in front of the face.  Another flinch and--oh, now we get some real examination--the fingers find their way into the mouth.

A few weeks ago I was in the kitchen doing something grown-up.  In the front door storms my seven-year old with, "DADDY, COME AND SEE!  COME AND SEE!"  I bolt off my stool thinking that Mars had broken orbit had collided with the moon and the galactic cataclysm could be seen from the daytime sky.  "What?  What?" I beckoned.  "A ladybug!  Kara found a ladybug!"  Feign excitement, jaded daddy, feign excitement.  There is wonder there.  You have simply lost it.

Much of what is learned by our youngsters will be learned by their youngsters and was learned by all of us.  We shrug our shoulders and yawn.
 
My wife purchased some caterpillars a month ago hoping that they would spin cocoons and become butterflies (can you think of beautiful butterflies and not mimic Heimlich from "A Bug's Life"?).  Most cool experiments we give a shot at land with a "splut," but when the five caterpillars arrived, things looked up. All  five had survived the TLC of the US Postal Service.  In a few days, all cocooned, and within a week, all butterflied.  We felt like Watson and Crick!  I pulled out a microscope and stared in awe at the cocoon's remains, at what biologists have stared at for over a hundred years.  I felt as exultant as Emma when she rejoiced over Kara finding a ladybug.

Saturday night I came across a science headline that made me think of a child discovering it's shadow for the first time.  Check it out:

Jews Worldwide Linked by Common Genetic Ancestry

It's like I'd just read that some Harvard scientist discovered a ladybug.  Are you kidding me?  No, it was for real (here).  Some guy got published in the American Journal of Human Genetics --what?!  You're not a subscriber?-- for studying the genetic makeup of 237 Jews worldwide and discovering that Jews have a common ancestor.  I can hardly filet a fish much less dissect genetic code, but I know that fact without so much as a blood test.  In fact, I'll trump that.  Don't tell Mr. Geneticist, but I know the guy's name.

I sat down to write this post on stupid science.  You might as well prove water wet and Death Valley hot, but the more I thought about it, the more my mind changed.  My heart soared and sank in rapid succession.  It soared because it didn't surprise me a lick that science can't help but point directly to the God who is there and glorify his name.  Then it sank.  Science acts like it's discovered cancer's cure only because it refuses to accept what the Bible has stated for millenia.  I'd be willing to wager that science will soon find that within the DNA of the Jews 12 distinct and identifiable groups emerge, too (13 if you want to split hairs).

So tonight I'll try not to be jaded.  Ah, the ladybug.  Up goes the heart.  What a wonder that man has seen how the written word of the DNA declares the same thing as the written word of God!

The fallibility of science: The scientist

A few weeks back I jotted a series covering a biblical response to environmentalism, global warming, etc. (here, here, here, and here).  Then I tapped out a couple of posts exposing man's fallen nature--yes, I'm included in that--(here, here, and here).  Now we have the merging of fallen man with environmentalism and you get the Climate Change Scandal, a change you can't believe in.

What?  You have not heard about the doctoring and fudging of statistical data to make global warming appear a fact?  You have not heard about the corruption of the peer-review process preventing those with papers that deny man-made climate change from getting published?  You have not heard about the e-mails between such vaunted scientists as they explain to one another the best ways to cook the books and to silence the rabble?  All this from the premiere institution for the study of climate change.

If you haven't tracked this, I invite you to read two columns from Jonah Goldberg here and here.  The first gives a bit more detail behind the corruption of the environmental "science," and leads into the second article, the reason this scandal is so significant.  Later this month, the world converges on Copenhagen, Denmark to determine what steps the nations will take to stem the tide of "global warming."  The restrictions upon industry and upon individuals will be pocket-biting. 

Even as Climategate begins to get some press, many are frantically trying to get the genie back in the bottle.  "Man-made global warming is real," they cry.  "Man is the blight of the planet."  No, man is the God-given steward of the planet. 

Like many other moral issues, should one side of the debate persist with its message and should they get a few who hear them in key locations (like a vice president?), then more and more folks are going to come to see this inconvenience as truth even though true data-crunching science does not support the conclusion.  On that day, man submits himself to a most unforgiving planet.

The GOD Particle (or the religion of science)

How low can you go? That's limbos ultimate question. A human being can only mash himself so skinny and then wriggle under a bar on their toes. I guess if you lopped off your ears you might be able to decrease the width of the human head.

Or what happens when you divide an inch in half and then half the half. Then half that half. Then...well, you get the idea. How small can you get? Imagination would argue that you can descend into infinite regression. Men in Black gives us the universe on Orion's belt and Seuss gives us worlds on specks.

Really, then, it's no surprise that science would attempt to probe as deeply into inner space as they have into outer space. But how low can you go?

Science, the meticulous examination of the world around us, began because man believed through Scripture that a knowable God created a knowable world. They were not disappointed. Only in the last 100 years has God been banned from the study of his creation. Parade Magazine, the Sunday insert to many newspapers, made that point quite clear beginning with their title, "The Race for the Secret of the Universe" (full story here), the implication being that the purpose/secret/glue of the universe had not yet been revealed.

I took a deep breath, hoped for the best, and plowed into the article. The objective storyline is about the search for the Higgs boson, a sub-atomic particle monikered "the God particle" because "without (it)...atoms would have no integrity, so there would be no chemical bonding, no stable structures..." When you cut through the lingo, scientists want to know why things stick together at all. What holds them together?

Right now, inneratomic bonding remains mysterious. You can only get so small can't you? As scientists through massive accelerators split the parts of the atom into smaller and smaller parts, they hope to find the particle that will "contain the very essence--or at least the mechanism--of existence itself, a way to finally understand how matter becomes and remains matter."

Sounds pretty theological to me, but they won't admit it. They do understand the theological consequences, though. These scientists hope to find that for which only God has been the explanation hence the derogatory nickname of the Higgs boson. For many in the scientific community, "God" is a joke, the answer or solution of scientists who don't do science very well. The mother of one of the scientists in fact calls her son and asks, "Have you found God yet?" Should this theoretical particle be found, scientists will dismiss the Creator still further from their laboratories (if that were possible).

Some scientists do remain skeptical about such a particle. And the search has been fraught with setbacks. The 17 mile long sub-atomic accelerator in Switzerland blew out a ten-million dollar section searching for God. No one was killed. The 4 mile long Fermilab just oustide of Chicago continues smashing particles faster than a toddler smashing toys. The American lab would love to beat its more impressive but currently hobbled European cousin to the Higgs boson discovery.

What if they started with God and like scientists of old, attempted from that starting point to learn the atom's function, would they have greater success? The Bible gives a matter of fact answer, "All things were created through him (Jesus Christ) and for him...and in him all things hold together."

That sounds like the solution to their enigma. They just don't like the answer.

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(The article ends with a quote from the lab's "genius emeritus." He declares, "You know, we have a genetic disease here--called optimism." The Bible declares that man has a genetic disease, too. The Bible calls it sin.)

Science v. Religion II

Last week, the headlines across cyberspace announced, "THE MISSING LINK FOUND!" In keeping with my last post, rather than pitch my Bible in the trash, I kicked back waiting for the other shoe to fall. Every year since I can remember, a missing link has been found, and every year since I can remember, a few days, weeks, months after the announcement, a retraction gets printed somewhere in the bowels of the paper or web-site.

This time it only took a week (here and here). The fossil that looked like a half-million year old lemur is just that, a lemur-like critter from some indeterminable time. Did anyone really think it a link between monkey and man? You got me.

Mr. Darwin contended that the fossil record, as more and more fossils were unearthed, would give weight to his theory that animals transitioned between kinds. That has proven a major problem for evolutionists because the fossil record has shown a dearth of fossils pointing to linkage. On the contrary, they point to clear and distinct kinds. Almost like they were created that way (oops!).

Still, America remains duped that Darwinian evolution is great science. It's proven! It's fact! No, it's a theory and will ever remain a theory because it cannot be tested and cannot be proven. That doesn't dissuade evolutionists from asserting the "factual nature" of evolution. In my local paper, a science teacher dismissed Intelligent Design or any assessment of science in light of the biblical creation as unscientific. He avered, "If an idea (like intelligent design) cannot be objectively tested, then it is not science."

That's utter rot. Examine the evidence. Postulate your theory. Continue to examine your evidence and see how the theory holds. That's the science of prehistory. We have no witnesses (other than God) to day one so we have no one we can question. Creating an experiment to cause evolution (interesting verbs, don't you think?) has proved fruitless. If we use untestability to delineate science and non-science, then Darwinian evolution falls short.

Now we have another article on Fox indicating life on earth MAY have begun earlier than previously thought. Ahhh-hah. Note the qualifier. Rather read the article (here) and notice all the qualifiers, the might-haves & could-haves, as they discuss these theories.

No, I don't think I'll be chunking my Bible into the kitchen trash any time soon. The heavens declare the handiwork of God. Yes, they do.

Science v. Religion

Our local paper reported Sunday on the Texas state school board coming to terms with science controversies in the classroom. A sub-story explored the "religion controversay" and how one science teacher believes that science reinforces his faith (here).

Rather than seeing science and faith/religion as controversial, the teacher separated them into "how" and "why." Science tells us how things happen. Religion tells us why they happen. In other words, religion has no place within the scientific disciplines because it is irrelevant to science.But the truth is that much of science and the scientific method was birthed within Christendom. God encourages man to know Him and to seek Him through His revealed word, the Bible. While God cannot be known exhaustively, He can be known truly (Schaeffer). That means what we read in the Bible is true about God. No, we cannot know all there is to know about Him. If that were true, He would be finite and could not be God. That does not mean that we cannot know the truth about Him. We can and we do through His word and through His creation.

Men of old (Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Descartes, Faraday, Boyle as examples) posited that if this were true of the Special Revelation, the Bible, then it should be true of the General Revelation, all of creation, as well. The Bible declares that the heavens declare the handiwork of God and all creation reveals His glory. With that knowledge, men of God moved with confidence into the world with the knowledge that a) the world could be known, and b) what could be known about it would reveal even more of the magnificence of the God who created it.

There is a line between science and God, but it is not vertical. It's horizontal. If, and let me emphasize the word if, in fact God created the universe, then all of the sciences, yea even all academic disciplines, are revelatory about the God who is there. Science is submitted to God in truth, though not in practice. The line does not separate science from God but brings it to its rightful place under the authority of and in submission to the God who spoke the universe into being.
Today, God is not permitted within the fields of science, yet more and more the evidence points to a God who fine-tuned not only man but the entirety of the cosmos. He is dismissed from the answer from those who purport to seek the truth. Which begs the question, if He is the answer but is not allowed to be the answer, can man ever come to know the truth?

This dismissal is most troubling when it comes from scientists who are Christian. When evidence appears to run contrary to the Bible, something's gotta give. Do I go with appearance? Or do I go with the word of God? For the atheist or agnostic, this is a no-brainer. God's word carries no more weight than Green Eggs and Ham, so they happily run with the contrary. The believer, because of the overwhelming tide within academia and society, has often compromised his view of Scripture and of God because of the appearance of where the scientific evidence leads.

Since the time of Darwin, those theories based upon appearances have ever been in a state of flux. How old the universe? How old man? The theories are ever changing to accomodate the appearance of the evidence.

So very much evidence within the scientific realm points to God (DNA as an example). So very much points to Genesis (geochronometers, flood strata, and yes, even the fossil record). The Bible is not a book of science, but where it does touch the scientific realm, it does speak truly.

Trying to divide God from science is wholly unnecessary, for if God is, then He is the God of science, too. If we must use a line, let it be horizontal.

God & Darwin

Darwin's 200th birthday came and went this past week like a burrito-induced gas bubble. I noticed its arrival but hardly noticed its passing.

Many know the title to his most famous work, "The Origin of Species," but I venture that better than 97% do not know Mr. Darwin's subtitle. Do you? It is:

"The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life"

Might someone explain to me why you cannot find a recent print of that book with the subtitle included? Hmmm...

Marvin Olasky wrote a column for a recent issue of "World Magazine" that highlights some huge misconceptions about evolution arguments and how to enter the debate with honey vice vinegar. It's a good read (here).

He ends with a quote from Kurt Vonnegut, a most secular writer/philosopher ("Slaughterhouse Five," "Breakfast of Champions"), who has come to a most observant conclusion:

"My body and your body are miracles of design. Scientists are pretending they have the answer as to how we got this way when natural selection couldn't possibly have produced such machines."

You go, Kurt!

Eureka! Scientist's create life

Sort of. Okay, not quite. Still, Fox's headline (article linked here) was kind of cute:

Life as we know it nearly created in lab

Nearly.

Then they really crank up the equivocation. Perhaps. Maybe. Possibly.

But Fox exposes the real linchpin of this entire experimental problem when they note:

Now scientists have created something in the lab that is tantalizingly close to what might have happened (at the time life began).

Created. Very little is stated in Fox's article about what really took place in the lab, but the most important thing to note is that intelligent beings had to establish the parameters and bring together the materials for this perfect condition to come about. "Scientists created." What? That's open for debate. But scientists tinkered, tweaked and finagled.

The experiment required a experimenter.

Why the resistance to accept the Creator?

Celestial warming?

Now that astronomers have determined that our galaxy is bigger and denser than previously thought (here), anticipate, oh, another three days before some bark-eater (**ad hominem attack warning**) has an epiphany and announces that we have caused this density increase and runaway growth by launching exploratory spacecraft into the cosmos.

Man-made celestial expandensation?

Obamatheology

Haven't heard about folks railing against folks for wanting evolution challenged in a while.

Fox News posted a piece (here) about a scientist who is coming out with something revolutionary. He's suggesting a combination of science and religion. Compatibility. Kumbayah, all over again.

I'll not use 301 to vent against evolution and all its tentacles but to point out the San Andreas Fault that this guy has picked as his "firm" foundation. (Excerpted from Fox, parentheses mine)

The scientist: "I was raised believing in God, so for me, the onus would be on someone to stop me from believing. There is a certain momentum that is already there."


(Has the man never heard of inertia?)

The skeptic interviewer: "So you're stepping off the page of science?"



(Not required for belief in God or Genesis 1. What most Christians don't grasp is that the one who created science is the One who wrote the book. Trying to conform the Bible to science is silly. God will not be inconsistent between the General Revelation (nature) and the Special Revelation (the Bible) )

The scientist: "Absolutely," he said, but added that he thinks science will soon nail down a definition of consciousness that will make God's intentions more clear.



(Um, it's called the Bible)

Life: The chasm between nominees

The protection of life in the womb delineates more than any other issue the difference between presidential choices this November. Yuval Levin examines the topic in this National Review article.

Within the article, he takes note of how science, like the Republican party, goes to bat on behalf the uni-celled, multi-celled, and barely formed child. Over and over, the more science learns about the mind-boggling machinations within the womb, the more they concede the humanity of the child from the moment of conception.

Levin noted that Senator Obama Houdini'ed around Pastor Rick Warren's question during the Saddleback Forum regarding the moment at which life begins. The candidate asserted that the answer was above his pay grade. In other words, who is he to know the mind of God.

Levin summed up the parties' position with this gem of a query:

"Now tell me again which party seeks refuge in theology when it doesn’t like the facts that science helps us know."

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A number of other articles have surfaced on the strong stand the Republican party has taken regarding the sanctity of human life in its addition of Sarah Palin to the ticket. Some superb articles just today:

• Ken Blackwell, "Candidates Abortion Views Inform"
• Rich Lowry, "Choosing Trig"
• Paul Weyrich, "The Speaker's Unusual Description of Catholic Dogma"

This is about choice, the choice that we as a nation will make to speak out on behalf of the weak, the frail, those who cannot speak for themselves. Will we speak on behalf of the innocents?

Braking the global warming bandwagon

You cannot obtain objective clarity about the outside world staring through a snow-frosted windshield. As much as the passenger next to you might think he can explain what's going on outside your Neon, he sees only as well as you do. Guessing helps not at all.

Two things might assist. You could get a call from someone outside who has a clear view of what's going on. Or you could turn on the defrost and melt the frost (I guess you could get out and scrape the windshield, too, but that would ruin my analogy).

With regard to global warming, the only one external to this big blue marble upon which we're riding is God Almighty. He has told us plainly to steward the earth. He destroyed it once before by flood but promised never to do that again (by flood, anyway). Nothing within prophecy seems to indicate the demise of the earth either by man's hand or God's. From my chair, it seems man's stewardship of the earth, for the most part, is pretty good.

For those of us within the car (living within the car), it's tough to say. Ice cores from the poles have so many presuppositions that if any one of them is not right, the resulting conclusions could be 180-out. What was the temperature in Minsk like from 2000 BC to 1500 BC? Ummm...

The consensus regarding global warming is that there is no consensus. Many would have us believe that no educated person could possibly deny that we are destroying the planet, but that is simply not the case. So what's a sane person to do? Turn on the defrost.

The best that we can do, since we're not likely to determine whether global warming or global cooling is in our future, is to ask smart questions about the premises, presuppositions and conclusions about those who are certain about what's happening outside the car.

Regis Nicoll analyzed the PP&C of those pushing us to adopt the Kyoto Accords, extreme environmental government impositions to somehow reduce the heating affect upon the planet. In his article (linked here), he asked six great questions that stewards like you and me can ask about the soothsayers who see environmental catastrophe over our horizon. Here they are:

1. Is the earth warming?
2. Is warming an overall bad thing?
3. Is human activity the primary cause?
4. Would forced standards sufficiently reduce global temperatures?
5. Would they be cost-effective?
6. Would forced standards not create more—or more severe—problems than they solve?

He handles his questions in greater depth in the article. What such questions expose is that the fellow sitting next to you can't see out the window any better than you can. Perhaps the questions might defrost the issue a bit and help us all see things a bit more clearly.

Photos:
Frost from www.wunderground.com
Sun from NASA.gov

Little green men revisited

A few weeks ago I posted about the Vatican's statement that the idea of little green men did not stand contrary to the Bible. I don't know if you've given it any thought, but the headlines of the last few days bring it back to light.

• "Life on Mars?" queried the headline on the Drudge Report in bigger font than I've ever seen.
• "In search of life," hailed FoxNews.
• Then there's the guy who had incontrovertible proof through a homemade video that aliens exist. I think the real alien was behind the camera.
  

What is the purpose of the Phoenix Mars Lander (PML), NASA's latest expedition? The headlines seem to think it's a search for Gazoo. A careful examination of the University of Arizona's goals along with NASA's objectives confirms that apart some other scientific inquiries about the Red Planet, the search is in fact for ET life.

Here we go again; so what?

I'll be right up front; the theory of biological life outside the boundaries of our earth gets tangled in some fundamental biblical principles. Here are some of the issues:

1. Exodus 20:8-11 declares that everything within the Creation was created during those first six days. As such, if alien life did exist, God created them at that time. Were life to come about by evolution, the odds of it occurring at all in the universe are as close to zero as you can get. It would be more absurd that hitting 1,000,000 consecutive slot machines. The fact that life is present here would not diminish the statistical impossibility of it being anywhere else.
   
2. Man's sin brought death and destruction into the cosmos (Romans 8:20-22). Death is not natural; it is a consequence of sin (this is why life evolving from non-life runs counter to the Bible). If alien life exists on a planet orbiting Seti Alpha 3, the decay of the creation would extend to their corner of the universe, too. They would have death imposed upon them unrighteously. Humanity was justly under condemnation for its own sin. It would have beeen unjust for God to punish Klingons who had done no wrong (Kitamer notwithstanding).
3. God the Son, Jesus Christ, was bodily raised. Christ was never un-incarnated. It is precisely because He was fully man that He could die as substitute for all mankind. Were the Wookies to defy God's law, how would God provide for their atonement?
4. Could what we perceive to be alien apparitions (something of which the Bible does not speak) really be spiritual apparitions (something of which the Bible does speak...at length)?

Can I know absolutely that there is no biological life outside our atmosphere? No, but it is as close to a statistical impossibility that you can get. Marry that with what the Bible says about man, death, God's justice, and Christ's atonement, I think we can dismiss the possibility of running into any Cardasian warbirds the next time we head out to Saturn.

Photo from starwars.com

Six-day creation: What's the big deal?

In a recent column in World Magazine, Andree Seu recalled the turning point at Harvard University (I'd link the article but it costs to be a member of World's web-site unless you already get their magazine. I can e-mail you the article directly and legally if you'd like to read it. Just let me know).

Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were pitted against two Boston pastors, Charles Chauncey and Jonathan Mayhew in the direction the venerable university would take. The former were concerned about the drift of secularism the university was taking. The latter felt the former were too ecstatic in their theological views and that their should "be freedom of inquiry and judgment in religious matters."

Harvard, the university founded to create missionaries for America, followed the direction of Chauncey and Mayhew and the rest is history. It's known within Christendom as "The Infidelity."

When we read Genesis one and two, why do we buck against what it says? If you ask a child unindoctrinated by evolutionary science to read Genesis chapter 1, you'll either get "six regular days" or "can I have peanut butter and jelly for lunch?" So to quote the movie Grinch, "What is the deal?!?"

Part of it, certainly, is the barrage of evolutionary science each one of us has received from the cradle to the present. We will follow the drift of Chauncey and Mayhew and side with the tides of evolutionary science.

I can hear the hue and cry now about how all science is not atheistic. I know and I agree. But many of the assumptions of science, that the universe is a closed and static system, are just that, assumptions. Has the speed of light been constant from the creation? That is not known (by science), but that is what is assumed. The Bible seems to indicate light before there were light-producers. Has the world gone on in exactly the same fashion since its birth? That is not known (by science), but that is what is assumed. The Bible seems to indicate that the world before chapter three and the world before chapter six of Genesis was vastly different than the world that came out of those two chapters.

There are scientific observations that point to a young earth that coincide quite nicely with Genesis, but those are wholly rejected by the scientific community as religiously-driven instead of "objectively-driven" science. Scientists who have observed evidence for a young earth keep to themselves in the intolerant halls of academia or are relegated to the Institute for Creation Research, Answers in Genesis, or similar organizations. They are dismissed as quacks.

So when confronted with an apparent contradiction between observation or scientific theory and the Bible, what do we do? Please don't go "Gallileo" on me either, because the church was using some lousy biblical hermeneutics (science of biblical interpretation) sprinkled with the humanistic ideas of the Greek philosophers when they made him recant his teaching. Galileo showed where the Bible actually supported his position.

Could I be making the same mistake? I don't think so. The medieval church erroneously used poetic language sections of the Bible to conclude that the sun went around the earth. Genesis 1 & 2 are historic narrative just like the rest of Genesis. It is the most objective language outside mathematics you could use. There is very little in Genesis that requires deep biblical scholarship to understand.

Back to my question: how do we handle apparent contradictions? Our only options are a) conform the Bible to modern scientific theories, b) reject the historic accuracy of sections of the Bible, c) hold to the Bible and reject modern science, or d) hold to the Bible and trust that the plain truth from the general revelation (nature) will not clash with the plain truth from the special revelation (the Bible).

Many churches have followed the way of Chauncey and Mayhew and bowed to the altar of science and followed pathway b). The churches have become, like Harvard, little different than an episode of Oprah.

Many sincere believers have followed pathway a) having not challenged the assumptions of some of the measurements, observations, or theories nor have they researched the evidence from the general revelation for the truthfulness of the special revelation.

Then you have the crowd that buries their head in the sand following the ignorance-is-bliss mentality of pathway c). That doesn't go a long way in sharing the truth with your neighbor.

Science is not God. It's laws submit to the God who created the universe in an orderly and knowable fashion. It is a dangerous thing to lean away from the plain understanding of what God's word says.

Homosexual marriage has become accepted in our land. It took less than fifty years. The American family (the noun is for the most part absent outside our country) suffers erosion every day pummeled by the elements within our culture, but the real travesty is the erosion being caused by our churches because pastors and men and women refuse to preach, teach and abide by God's delineation of what it means to be a man or a woman, a husband or a wife, a father and a mother.

Six-day creation? No big thing? No, it's a huge thing. We can know nothing with absolute certainty from science before recorded history. All is in the realm of the theoretical. Hear the first temptation of Satan, ironically, shortly after the creation, "Has God indeed said..." and then he had the audacity to counter Eve's hedging with "You'll not surely die...your eyes will be opened." Civilization can abide little more decay.

As such, I will stand upon a firm, unshakable, and unchanging foundation. I will stand upon the word of God. The cost and danger of doing otherwise is too high.

Yes, God did indeed say.

Little green men?

We'll set the Creation aside for an evening. This should get the juices flowing. The Vatican's chief astronomer has no problem with the idea of other life in the universe. Some quotes from the USA Today article (or another article here):

• "The Bible "is not a science book," Funes said, adding that he believes the Big Bang theory is the most "reasonable" explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter. But he said he continues to believe that "God is the creator of the universe and that we are not the result of chance.""

• "How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes said. "Just as we consider earthly creatures as 'a brother,' and 'sister,' why should we not talk about an 'extraterrestrial brother'? It would still be part of creation."

We're covering the first bullet in the discussion of the creation, and I'll ignore the second bullet as completely ignorant of the biblical distinction between Man and animal. I would like to pose a question to you: what would be the theological problem if there was life on other planets?

Talk amongst yourselves.

Image from Hanna-Barbera