If you are an iTunes user and seeking good theological resources you may enjoy RC Sproul’s teaching series on Renewing Your Mind. Currently there is a short series on contemporary theology available. It is quite good. However, it is quite dated so that it is not really a survey of current contemporary theological trends but rather trends in 20th century theology. Nevertheless, it surveys liberalism, neo-orthodoxy, Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, process theology, and liberation theology. Useful and recommended.
September 17, 2009
Why Smart People Disagree
Why is is that equally brilliant people draw differing conclusions on the same matter? In economics, the capitalist argues with the socialist. In politics, the conservative argues with the liberal. In philosopher, the realist argues with the idealist. In theology, the Catholic argues with the Protestant. And so on and so forth, ad infinitum. Why is this?
R.C. Sproul answers this in his teaching series called The Psychology of Atheism. He gives four basic reasons why bright, intelligent thinkers disagree with one another:
- Differing epistemologies (theories of knowledge, how you to know what you know)
- Formal, logical errors
- Factual errors
- Prejudicial bias
Understanding this is really helpful in dialoguing with people with whom you disagree. Knowing this allows you to zero in on the point of disagreement. Furthermore, it helps you to chill out, understand people better, and listen to what they are saying and carefully analyze it.
Of course, before you turn your guns on someone else you should first take a look at your own position. Is your theory of knowledge valid? Are you making logical errors? Are there errors of fact in what you’re saying? And are you biased one way or the other?
I hope to unpack these a bit more in upcoming posts. Watch out!
September 16, 2009
Credo: I Believe…
A good friend, Jason Dulle, has just posted a wonderful article on a positive understanding of the concept of creeds. We all have them whether we deny it or not. In fact, it is impossible not to have a creed, at least personally. Credo simply means “I believe” in Latin. So start with “I believe” and follow that with whatever you believe. That is your creed. And you do have one! So: what do you believe and why do you believe it?
I really, really like Jason’s short creed, which is just a summary, not a full-orbed reflection of his doctrine.
I believe in one God, eternal and almighty,
creator of heaven and earth,who is one in essence, and one in person
and who for us became one of us, and yet remained God.
I believe in Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,born of the virgin Mary, and descended from David,
being both true God and true man.
Who was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day,
who ascended to heaven, from whence He’ll return in glory
to judge the world, raise the dead,
and inaugurate a kingdom without end.
I believe in salvation through Christ alone,
by grace through faith, and evidenced by good works.
I believe in repentance from sin,
baptism in Jesus’ name, and regeneration of the Spirit.
Amen.
September 16, 2009
Bloggingheads.tv Stirs Up Controversy on Creationism and ID
Bloggingheads.tv, a very interesting website for dialogue and discussion, has created quite a stir for simply giving airtime to a couple of Intelligent Design proponents. In a ridiculous reaction, a number of evolutionists and atheists have stated that they will no longer frequent the bloggingheads.tv website (here and here). Which is just silly, and shows how much they too have imbibed the spirit of fundamentalism, of course, a fundamentalism of their stripe. Again, these new atheists need to stop the name calling, names like loon, crackpot, and idiot, you know the sort of names that encourage free exchange of ideas and they need to ask, “why do other equally brilliant people draw such different conclusions about the world than I do?”
Anyway, the dialogues are pretty good and touch on the issues of: what is science? what is intelligent design? the history of science, theistic evolution, and much, much more.
Here they are:
- A dialogue between Ron Number and Paul Nelson, “Inside the Mind of a Creationist.”
- A dialogue between John McWhorter and Michael Behe, “Irreducibly Complex Edition.”
What these show, I think, is that there are a lot more folks (and smart folks too!) out there asking these questions.
September 16, 2009
So Much for Academic Freedom and Tolerance
Francis Collins, the well-known director of the Human Genome Project and author of The Language of God, has been appointed as head of the National Institute for Health this past July. He is a fascinating figure because he is a conundrum for the atheistic community-a world-class scientist, scholar, and a convinced Christian that does not ignore the bigger questions. What is so interesting is how the hardcore atheist community has reacted to Collins’s book on his faith and his appointment to the NIH. Some did not like this recent development at all and have squarely opposed it, such as Steven Pinker, who faults Collins for publicly advocating his faith! And Pinker’s worst worry is that Collins might strengthen the faith of we blighted fundamentalists:
Collins, in his book, eggs on fellow evangelical Christians in their anti-scientific beliefs. He tells them that they are “right to hold fast to the truths of the Bible” and to “the certainty that the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly resisted.” Granted, he is not a young-earth or intelligent-design creationist. But he has stated that God interacts with creation, in particular, that he designed the evolutionary process to ensure that human intelligence, morality, and Judaeo-Christian religious belief would evolve.
That is far more than just expressing an opinion. That is advocacy, which gives incalculable encouragement the forces that have been hostile to science for the past eight years. And this is not just a theoretical fear: a number of right-wing, religious apologists (e.g., Dennis Praeger, in his debate with Sam Harris) used Collins as a stick to beat secularists: “Here is a famous scientist who takes an interventionist God and the Bible seriously; who are you to contradict him?” This is going to be multiplied if Collins becomes an even more prominent face of science.
And yes, he’s right, it does mean something to me as a believer that an outstanding (and wildly successful) scientist also is a believer in the God of the Bible. May his tribe increase! While it doesn’t prove anything scientifically it does show that compatibility of the Christian faith with science and scientific research.
What seems a bit amazing to me is why do such hardcore atheists never seem to sit down and ask themselves, “why do other equally brilliant minds disagree with me on the question of God?” Instead, most of these hardcore atheists seem quite willing to just call all the rest idiots. How nice, how open-minded, how philosophically fairminded, how scientific!
While Collins was successfully apointed as head of NIH the reaction to his appointment shows what is at stake in the debates with new atheism. The new apologists for atheism are no longer willing to just have the niche carved out in the academic world over the past century and a half by their forebearers, instead they want the whole playground to themselves. If they can they are going to have the authorities send everybody home who won’t play the game by their rules.
September 15, 2009
Thanks, We Hadn’t Realized…
Atheism has gone viral these days. The New Atheism is making many headlines and they are selling many books and making a lot of appearances. I certainly am no professional apologist, but I try to read some of their stuff and think through what they are saying. And I have no comprehensive response to offer as so many apologists are doing (see Amazon.com for authors such as David Bentley Hart, Douglas Wilson, Scott Hahn, and many, many others), but what I sometimes hear these professional apologists saying, I tend to agree with: many of the arguments by the “new” atheism are nothing new at all.
Here are a few statements from atheists that show how much they talk right past Christians and their Bibles. Jerry Coyne, from Why Evolution Is True, makes this statement:”here are two more things that can’t happen, given what we know about modern biology: a human female can’t give birth to offspring unless she is inseminated, and people who are dead for three days don’t come back to life.” And his comrade-in-arms, Sean Carroll, makes a similar statement:”We know more about the natural world now than we did two millennia ago, and we know enough to say that people don’t come back from the dead.” Sorry for the sarcasm, but no kidding? Really? We had no idea…
Whatever scientific research is being done by these guys (Coyne is an evolutionary biologist and Carroll is a cosmologist), may be fantastic and all, but these sorts of statements are not arguments at all and sail right past the rest of us quite safely. Why is that? Because we know this already! These facts are thousands of years old. We know and the folks in the first century knew quite well that virgins don’t have babies and dead people don’t sit up. Not normally, often, or regularly.
When Mary had a baby bump before she married Joseph no one suspected the visitation of the Holy Spirit. This is why she fled from home to hide out with her cousin. And when Joseph of Arimathea placed Jesus’s body in his garden tomb no one expected what happened on Sunday morning. This is why all of his disciples went into hiding and few of them believed the reports of the women returning from the tomb. Indeed these events were highly unexpected, even if prophesied, and it is the sheer and absurd unlikelyness of them that makes it so amazing.
Now these events are a matter of historical investigation. They are enshrined in the New Testament witness to Jesus of Nazareth by writers claiming to provide personal eyewitness testimony of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of this most unlikely of Jewish peasant prophets. The historian’s dilemma is manifold. For one, explaining how this came to be believed almost immediately after the crucifixion of Jesus. Two, explaining how the followers of this Jewish Messiah spread His Gospel so quickly and expansively, not by the sword, but, in fact, in spite of the sword, many of them giving their own lives testifying to this Jesus. And three, explaining the amazing impact of the Christian faith on its world. The Christian answer is that God Himself broke into human history in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
Of course Coyne and Carroll and others can respond by simply re-stating that virgins don’t concieve and dead people don’t walk, and they can walk us through the pregnancy wing of the hospital and through every graveyard in the world, and we can agree with them. Yep, that’s not a virgin birth. No, they probably won’t dig themselves out and starting walking tomorrow. And within the totally god-absent universe that their minds inhabit, they are right, we should never expect otherwise. But that’s not the universe we live in. There is a Creator God and Jesus of Nazareth is the one black swan that proves otherwise. And if Jesus of Nazareth did indeed rise from the dead, His one resurrection gives the rest of us cause to rest in hope.
September 14, 2009
Global Warming is Out to Lunch. Oops.
That’s right: “Global warming takes a break.”
Obviously, going to be a lot of questions!
September 11, 2009
Recommended Article on Health Care
David Goldhill has written this insightful and passionate piece on health care, “How American Health Care Killed My Father,” in the Atlantic Monthly. Check it out. I highly recommend it. If you’re trying to understand why health care and health insurance reform is needed, please read it.
September 11, 2009
The Hubble Telescope Reveals the Glory of God
A good piece by Al Mohler concerning the new pictures being taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. And here’s a slideshow of ten new amazing pictures.
September 10, 2009
The Sermon on Health Care: My Thoughts
President Obama delivered a speech last evening to Congress concerning health care and health insurance reform. I was impressed at how sermon-like his speech was. In effect, he came down from the White House to preach a message. And he’s good at it. He is obviously far more comfortable at the podium than his predecessor and it shows. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can read it here and you can watch it here.
Here are a few thoughts after watching the speech.
- This is not about health care reform, but health insurance reform. We have the best health care in the world, though we still need actual health care reform as well, see this, and so we are fighting about how to pay for it and who should pay for it.
- The President is correct, health insurance needs major reform. The abuses are rampant, the absurdities are abundant, and one only needs to do a bit of reading and research to find a few tragic stories. Individuals who have paid for years into a plan should not be dropped when they face a major illness. Individuals should be able to seek insurance on their own and join together in groups, other than employee-based programs, for bargaining with insurance companies.
- The President is naive to say that a government public option could be properly managed, keep within a budget, or not be taken advantage of to expand government control over the lives of its citizens. He needs to understand that this is where fears of “death panels,” and big government come from. In spite of what he says, this is a Pandora’s Box of trouble that would be nearly impossible to shut once opened.
- The President is naive to say that he actually knows the cost of the public option. The government has rarely, if ever, accurately predicted the cost of a government program. Just look at Medicare and Social Security.
- The President is naive to say that the public option could be paid for without raising taxes or without increasing the deficit or that they would find enough spending cuts to provide the cash. If the costs are estimated inaccurately, then there can be no guarantees here either. Furthermore, he simply cannot control what later Congresses and administrations will do!
- The President is correct that malpractice litigation needs addressed in order to better protect doctors. I hope he really follows through on this in a meaningful, lasting way.
- After all of this talking, the American people still do have a plan for this bill that we can actually put our hands on, read, and think about. During the video of the speech, for a few brief seconds you can see a person in the audience holding a sign that says, “What Plan?” Exactly. We don’t want to know just the big picture here, we need a plan with details, for it’s the devil in the details that we are worried about.
- This episode was not the defining moment of the night, but an unguarded moment that will now be exploited by a media that loves reality TV. For what it’s worth it seems to me that, on the whole, Republicans tend to be a bit more kind than Democrats. Last night they made for a mostly kind audience in spite of Joe Wilson’s outburst and this contrasts rather sharply with Democrat responses during a number of President George W. Bush’s speeches.
- The Democrats need to drop the public plan option, and Congress needs to very specifically target health insurance reform, and provide a plan with real teeth, a plan that is shorter than War & Peace (preferably no more than a few hundred pages), that takes on the abuses in the health insurance industry, levels the playing field for all Americans, and has no hidden surprises.
By the way, you can read the Republican response here.
I’m no expert, these are just the thoughts of an American citizen and taxpayer. The question is, what do you think?
September 9, 2009
Legal Care Reform
This is a nice piece of tongue-in-cheek response to the health care reform plans by Richard Rafal posted on the Wall Street Journal Online.
September 8, 2009
Obama’s School Speech: A Balanced Response
Much has already been said on the issue, and I really don’t have much to say except to point you to some other resources. If you wish to actually read the speech, then the full-text of prepared remarks for today’s speech to public school students by President Barack Obama can found here. There are several great responses out there already and I would urge you to read these:
- Dr. John Piper’s thoughts in these two posts: “I hope my daughter hears the President’s speech,” and “I’ve Read the President’s Speech: Amazing.”
- Dr. Al Mohler outlines the whole controversy and comments on the speech itself, “The Obama School Speech Controversy – What to Think?”
September 3, 2009
If You Say Bad Design You Are Still Saying Design
My good friend Jason Dulle responded to my previous post on ID with this:
Bad design does not mean “no design.” The Pinto may have been a bad design, but it was designed nonetheless. At best, bad design could tell us something about the abilities of a designer, but it doesn’t mean there is no designer. Furthermore, what we often call “bad design” really isn’t bad design at all. Whenever you design something, there are trade-offs. Think of cars. There are all sorts of things that can be better about cars: more speed, lighter in weight, roomier interior, etc. But there are constraints that require these things to be balanced. More speed would be nice, but it may require an engine so big that the car would be too large to navigate easily. It might be nice to have a lighter car, but if it is too light it could go airborne as the car picks up speed. A roomier interior would be nice, but the car still needs to fit in the garage. So we trade-off on the optimal this and the optimal that to produce something that fits a wide range of needs. There are two other problems with the bad design argument as put forth by Darwinists: (1) It admits design is empirically detectable (making ID a true scientific enterprise); (2) To say something is sub-optimally designed presumes to know the objectives and purpose of the designer to know how the design fell short of the objectives and purpose. How could they possibly know that?
Right. You can’t say design on the one hand, and NOT say design on the other. And while we’re on it, you can’t claim to have knowledge of the intentions of a designer that you are certain doesn’t exist, and oddly, be so certain about it.
September 2, 2009
No Legislation Without Participation: Health Care & the Boston Tea Party
Patrick Lencioni has an excellent word on the Health Care reform debates dominating the congressional agenda this summer. You need to read this and think about it. This is what we need to demand of our representatives and leaders. If they desire to lead us in a certain direction, then let them lead us by taking the first step personally. We need to acknowledge that a certain moral elitism, whether of the Left or the Right, prevails on Capitol Hill. They all are attempting to legistlate morality mainly by passing something and then saying: “do as we say but not as we do.” And common sense would dictate that this needs to change, as Lencioni states:
“Simply put, if Congress is going to pass a law, then it must also have to live with the consequences of that law.”
Amen. Preach it, brother.
