You can't take it with you . . . so leave us access to it.

I'm sure this is legit and not a scam or something designed to make non-Christian onlookers all the more convinced that Christians are kooks.

Science and Scripture

St. Augustine on science and scripture - father of the faith or compromising liberal?

"In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.  That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture.

 

"On interpreting the mind of the sacred writer. Christians should not talk nonsense to unbelievers…..  

"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

"Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

"If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

"Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although ‘they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.’ (1Tm 1:7)"

St. Augustine, the Literal Meaning of Genesis. Vol. 1, pgs 41-43 in the Ancient Christian Writers series (Vol. 41). Translated and annotated by John Hammond Taylor, S.J. New York, Paulist Press, 1982.

The best birthday ever!

I got a call on my cell phone, all alone in New Jersey, on my birthday, that we've been granted guardianship.  Verbal guardianship is first, the written guardianship will come in the next few days.  This means that we start planning the trip and we are going to be parents very soon!!!  We will probably go sometime the last week of June/first week of July.  It's the end of a long, hard process, but it's really just the beginning!  

Maybe not the best birthday ever . . .

By myself in New Jersey (sniff) trying to find something to do tonight, maybe go to a movie.

Although I did get 15 (and counting) happy birthday wishes from my Facebook friends, 2 spirited voicemails from family, a touching email from my mom, and multiple warm phone conversations and birthday wishes from my lovely bride. And I just discovered Mountain Dew has 3 new flavors to try.

I AM Keith Moon

The room doesn't have a fridge to keep the Dew cold, so I went to the ice machine and used the ice bucket to fill the room's two wastebaskets with ice and put the Dew in the wastebaskets.  Take that, Clarion Hotel and Towers, Edison, New Jersey!

Christmas card from a hooker in . . .

Tom Waits just announced the dates of his Glitter and Doom summer tour, none of which are in Minneapolis.  Accompanying the tour announcement is press conference footage highlighting why we love him so much.  By we, I mean me.

Sproul/Stein III

Which brings us to the R.C. Sproul/Ben Stein interview I listened to recently (thanks, Andrea!).

My limited experience with Sproul has been that he is an intelligent man and a good speaker, and I am aware that he has been a well-respected theologian and apologist for decades. And I had heard that Stein was an intelligent man, but honestly I had only thought of him as a character actor ("Ferris Bueller's Day Off") and former game show host ("Win Ben Stein's Money"). Through the hubbub surrounding "Expelled", it has been interesting to learn that he is an Intelligent Design and pro-life proponent, from which I surmise he may be a Christian of some type.

But darn it if they didn't both fall all over each other to twist the issues and perpetuate the confusion! Before the interview even starts, the announcer refers to the "church of Darwin," casually throwing in a phrase that conceals volumes of issues and questions, with no explanation. I'm sorry, I don't think there was any part of the interview, except maybe when Sproul was joking with Stein about his lines from "Ferris Bueller", that wasn't off the mark and contributing to misinformation and confusion. I'll try to hit the main ideas.

It is my understanding that the "Expelled" movie primarily argues against Darwinism or evolution, so I was confused to hear Sproul and Stein spend the bulk of their time discussing why the universe couldn't have come into existence out of nothing, which has nothing to do with evolution. They characterize the scientific view of the universe and evolution as "random," something that no scientist claims. So you either believe in a "random" universe, or you believe it was designed. You believe we came from a mud puddle or we were designed. I have yet to see or hear anything that tells me why it can't be both. (Incidentally, if you don't believe we were formed out of a mud puddle, when was the last time you read Genesis 2:7?) Stein goes on to quip that if you question where everything came from in a university setting, "you would probably be shot." Really? The universities that I know of have whole departments for those kinds of questions - philosophy and theology departments. The science departments don't receive that type of discussion favorably within the realm of doing science, because it's not science. If the beauty, complexity, or very existence of the natural world points you to something supernatural, then praise God, you are on the right track. But you have, by definition, stepped outside the realm of science and into philosophy. Therefore, philosophy and theology aren't allowed in scientific papers (I'm not sure why they should be), but Sproul and Stein insist that this is arrogant, closed-minded, suppressing free expression, and fearfully defending job security on the part of "Big Science." This gets at the definition of science and how it operates, which maybe someone should cover in a future post.

Another main topic was the supposed implications of evolution, and I guess it's related to the above. This argument starts with the mischaracterization that evolution has its "origin in nothingness, it's destiny in nothingness", gives human beings no significance, and is "the death blow to human dignity" (Sproul). These may be the philosophical conclusions of some, but by definition they cannot be part of evolution because it is a scientific theory. I cannot see why these assertions have any more validity or are any more necessarily derived from the theory of evolution than the assertion that evolution is how God created us and we have worth and human dignity as creations of God, but Sproul and Stein spew them and refute them as if they are given. They are refuting an amalgam of philosophical viewpoints as if they are evolution/Darwinism.

"If I were a scientist convinced of the theses of macroevolution . . I would have to accept it with tears. Why would I even bother to get up in the morning?" (Sproul)

"There's no hope for any kind of eternity"(Stein)

If evolution abolishes human dignity and significance, then it is responsible for all kinds of evils and immorality, including things like Hitler's holocaust. This is getting a little long, so I won't even go into the Hitler thing, which is misguided on multiple levels, and Sproul and Stein should know better. Of course we should be against a nihilistic world view that rejects the significance of human life and says there is no purpose in the universe! But that's philosophy, not evolution. If a scientist advocates that point of view, he is stating his own philosophical conclusions, not scientific truth.

Here is another quote that is neither here nor there, except why would you even say something so nonsensical that all it does is undermine your rationality and credibility?

"People go into academic life, in large measure, because they're frightened people." (Stein)

Anybody else listen and have any opinions?