gnosos

Two Articles Published in Virginia Tech's Collegiate Times

2009-04-11T07:27:00.003-05:00

I am a PhD student at Virginia Tech, a school firmly entrenched in the Bible Belt. Yesterday, our campus newspaper, The Collegiate Times, published a special Good Friday issue called The God Issue. As a member of the Freethinkers at Virginia Tech club (http://www.freeatvt.org/), I was genuinely surprised that they wrote a very positive article about our club in addition to giving me the opportunity to write an essay on a Freethinking topic. They also published a 2008 survey of 4,804 of our students that indicates that 19.7% of Virginia Tech students have no religious preference; this is up 0.8% from 2007. This is an encouraging direction for a campus with such a strong Christian tradition.

The article on the club is here: http://www.collegiatetimes.com/stories/13506. Of course, there is a lot more they could have printed that we said that criticized religion and explained secular humanism, but at least it is positive.

The essay I wrote: http://www.collegiatetimes.com/stories/13494. The editor changed the title from my original, "There Can Be Fruitful Dialogue between Believers and Atheists." It was not intended to be an introduction to Freethinking. But at least they printed it.

The other articles about religion in The God Issue: http://www.collegiatetimes.com/stories/13510

The results of the religious preference survey were only published in the paper, not online.

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To keep a record on my blog, I'm pasting my article below:

There Can Be Fruitful Dialogue between Believers and Atheists

“Truth springs from argument amongst friends.” – David Hume

The discourse between religious believers and atheists is once again publicly prominent, thanks to the “New Atheists” – Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens – and their equally vocal religious counterparts. This discussion devolves too often into a rancorous exchange, and common ground seems hard to find when opinions are so diametrically opposed. However, I sincerely believe that this common ground can be found, leading to a new level of mutual respect between the debating parties.

I am a non-believer, but I grew up in an evangelical Christian home, participated actively in the Navigators and NLCF at Virginia Tech as an undergraduate, served as a missionary to Japan, Guatemala, and Florida, and led music in several churches. Many among my friends and family are seminary educated missionaries and clergy who are familiar with the best of Christian intellectual traditions. Although I left my faith through a long journey studying science, philosophy, history, and religion, I maintain one of the principles I held as a sincere Christian: I will believe only what is true. The Apostle Paul described the value of truth to the Christian when he said that if hope in the afterlife is untrue, “we are of all men most to be pitied.” As a non-believer, I espouse the related concept that if an idea is intellectually vacuous, it should be discarded. The religious and non-religious both believe that an idea is only as valuable as it is true.

Given this common ground, let me speak to the believers. (Forgive my generalizations; brevity extinguishes nuance.) I will momentarily ignore the fact that you believe that your God will torture me for all eternity in hell, and I request the same in return about my belief that your vision of God and a reward in the afterlife is mistaken. Let's call the offenses even and move forward to determine what the truth might be. When we come into this life, we have nothing and know nothing. Yet as unprepared as we are, the mysteries of life immediately surround us. Solutions are presented by the people closest to us: our parents, pastors, teachers, and friends. To discern the best choice from among the varieties of opinion, we need to learn how to think correctly; only then can we know what to think. We must adopt the attitude Aristotle had towards his beloved teacher when he said, “Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.” We want the fishing pole – and we want to know if, why, and how well it works. We must not be satisfied simply by the fish given to us by others.

The differences between atheists and believers are rooted in our differing methods of discovering truth. My truth-discovering mechanism is the application of reason to the evidence presented to us by the natural world. Believers augment their reason with faith – faith in ideas revealed through holy books and religious traditions. Here begins the controversy. Freethinking non-believers assert that faith offers no means of evaluating the truth of any claim about reality. Faith might offer answers, but it cannot tell you if its answers are true.

If you have faith that the universe is young when others claim it is very old, we turn to the reason-based physical sciences to discern the answer. If a Christian’s faith says that Jesus died and was resurrected but a Muslim’s faith says that Jesus ascended to heaven before he could be crucified, they also turn to reason. Though neither can justify their position with direct evidence, both would point to reasons why their holy book is more reliable than the other’s. While I assert that reason supports neither miraculous account, the answer to the above debates is less important than the following question: what value does faith bring to either discussion if we all eventually turn to reason for justification? The initial faith does not provide a comment on the truth. Why, then, do we bother with the faith in the first place? A more intellectually tenable position is to believe only what is reasonable based on the evidence at hand. The remainder is a mystery yet to be solved.

Though we may diverge in methodology, let us discuss our differences while remembering our shared ideal of honesty in our search for truth, discarding the prejudice that either the religious or the non-believer is stupid, immoral, or dangerous. I have experienced this kind of friendly debate with my family and friends, and I sincerely believe it can take place on a larger scale in our society. Let us, with Thomas Jefferson, “question with boldness even the existence of a god,” while taking it upon ourselves at Virginia Tech to seek the answers with an attitude of mutual respect.

Hell

2008-12-30T17:39:00.002-05:00

I am in the middle of reading "The Language of God" by Francis Collins. Like Ken Miller's "Finding Darwin's God", he accurately represents science, so the differences between their positions and mine come down to philosophy and faith. The thought that keeps striking me is how much I share in common with them: science, history, etc. The major difference is that they make assertions about what exists outside the universe (God, the supernatural), and I profess agnosticism about it due to lack of evidence. The further thought that has dogged me lately is this: why does that simple difference carry such gravity? In the end, the answer to this question is not the existence of God, nor is it life after death. In the end, the answer is the doctrine of hell.

With no hell, it does not matter if we believe in a god or not. A God without a hell is one that recognizes the limitations placed on our knowledge and does not punish us for not recognizing him in this universe. This God is also not so petty as to take offense at the musings of men. With no hell, it does not matter if miracles happen or not (like Collins, C.S. Lewis, and Miller conjecture). These three would have little difficulty with a person voicing disagreement about supernatural intervention into the natural order if they did not believe that such opinions led to the damnation of one's soul. With no hell, the presence or absence of any other kind of afterlife is also a neutral question. The assertion of heaven, reincarnation, or eternal nothingness would be questions of much less offense if people didn't believe in hell as an option. Ultimately, it is hell - not God, not the supernatural, not Creationism, not Biblical inerrancy - that is the most damnable doctrine, since it is the one that stands in the way of rational discourse about all of the others.

Dover Beach

2008-04-29T09:00:00.002-05:00

So I'm probably the last non-religious person in the world to have found Matthew Arnold's poetry, but his 1867 poem "Dover Beach" is beautiful:

The sea is calm to-night,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -- on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

April 16

2008-04-16T08:23:00.002-05:00

It is once again April 16th, a day that will never be the same for any Virginia Tech Hokie. The kind comments of people who read my reflections from that day helped me a lot in my grieving process. I sincerely appreciate those other bloggers who linked to my article. That drove a lot of traffic to my little blog and enabled me to have conversations with lots of web friends. It was healing to know that people were listening.

I took the day off work and school to attend the memorial services and vigils on campus today. I don't know how the day is going to affect me. I can't imagine what it's like for the families of the victims to see the news once again recount the horrors of that day.

Reading List and What I've Been Up to When Not Posting Here

2007-10-05T09:43:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted much here in quite some time. I've been busy largely with three things.

First, work has consumed most of my time as of late. I recently won a large research contract, and working to win it, negotiate its contract, arrange the personnel, and prepare for kicking it off has killed my time and energy. This has left little time for my dissertation, too!

Second, I've been concentrating on losing weight, and living a healthy lifestyle takes time! I'm down about 30 lbs so far - finally in the healthy range. I've been on SparkPeople, a free weight loss website, and I highly recommend it.

Third, I've been doing a lot of reading. I have recently finished:

Carl Sagan's The Varieties of Scientific Experience
Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation
Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion

I'm terrible at reading one book at a time, so I'm very close to finishing the following as well:

Daniel Dennet's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Dan Barker's Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist
John Polkinghorne's Faith, Science, and Understanding

On my list to start on next (or, more likely, before I actually finish the above texts). Many of these, I've actually already started:

Annie Laurie Gaylor's Women Without Superstition: No Gods - No Masters
Kenneth Miller's Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution
Francis Collins' The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
Victor Stenger's God: The Failed Hypothesis
Robert Price's Incredible Shrinking Son of Man and The Pre-Nicene New Testament
Carl Sagan's Demon-Haunted World, Pale Blue Dot, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, and Billions & Billions
Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, Lost Christianities, and The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture

Rather than write individual reviews of the books I'm finishing up now, if I have time, I'd like to write an omnibus review of all of them, then move on to what's next on my list. If anyone has a comment on a book on my past, current, or future lists, I'd like to hear them. Plus, if you have a recommendation for a book I should put in the queue, I'm all ears.

Theology

2007-09-20T11:54:00.000-05:00

Theology, as a system of thought, is so far removed from any reliable method of evaluating truth claims that its value is entirely questionable.

Concert for Virginia Tech

2007-09-07T09:59:00.001-05:00

Last night, still getting over my cold, I went with my wife to "The Concert for Virginia Tech." Dave Matthews put together a show that also included John Mayer, NAS, and Phil Vasser. What a moment. Our Blacksburg community is still raw from the horrific events of 4/16, and any opportunity the school has to get together in one place is a chance to lift our collective spirits. I have been to every memorial service held on the campus as well as the gatherings at football games -- and now this memorial concert. We're trying to heal, and it is not easy. Each commemorative event brings with it the rush of emotions of the terrible day, but with each new coming together, we find strength.

At concerts, chanting and cheering is usually reserved only for the musicians. At this concert, with 45,000 in attendance at our football stadium, every break in the show was filled with "Let's Go, Hokies!" -- a chant rooting for ourselves and our revival. Dave Matthews is a good man for organizing this event and giving us a chance to listen to music, dance, and put our minds on happier things for a while.

Thanks are due to all the artists, none of whom were compensated for their time.

Oh, yeah -- the music! Amazing. I'm not a big John Mayer or Dave Matthews fan, but they are spectacular musicians. As a guitarist, I was wowed by Mayer's blues riffs. I wish more of his bluesy music would get played on the radio, because it's a lot better than his pop! The Dave Matthew's Band is one of the greatest collections of musicians on tour now. They jam over every piece. In concert, the Dave Matthews songs you hear on the radio become just the theme, and it is in the innumerable variations the band discovers in their live shows that the magic happens. A great show.

A Good Question about Faith

2007-08-25T13:12:00.000-05:00

This week, I was listening to the "Faith and Freethought" podcast, one of the Triad of Reason podcasts most famous for the "Infidel Guy" show by Reggie Finley. On this particular episode, there were three friends, including the host, who had attended a Christian college together -- where they each had lost their faith. During the discussion, they brought up a question they had asked their professors, but one for which they had never received a response! I think it is worth pondering:

How can faith be used as the basis of an epistemological framework when it does not provide a means of discerning true claims from false ones?

This is just a paraphrase, but the gist of it is there.

In other words, faith itself does not distinguish whether what one has his faith in is true or false. If by its very nature, faith offers no insight into truth, why should faith serve any role at all in our pursuit of truth? I welcome responses while continue I think about the question as well.

Heaven and Hell

2007-06-27T14:14:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post has an interesting online panel article about Heaven and Hell. The panelists were asked:

"Do you believe in heaven or hell? If not, why not? If so, who's going there and how do you know?"

Samples of the interesting entries:

Lisa Miller, the Post writer and organizer of the panel, sets the tone nicely:

In a world devoted to truth, science and skepticism, these may seem like silly questions, or, at best, late-night mind-benders at a sophomore beer party. But let’s look at the question of heaven another way: 81% of us say we believe in it and all of us are going to die. Wouldn’t it be worth applying some of our intellect and curiosity to this widely held belief so that when we do answer in an affirmative to the Gallup pollster, we’re certain we’re talking about something more important and more transcendent than the North Pole, home of Santa Claus?

Applying his "intellect and curiosity," Cal Thomas came up with:

Scripture repeatedly teaches the existence of a literal Heaven and a literal hell. Whether you believe depends on whether you think God is telling the truth and His Word is reliable. Waiting to find out for sure is too late. Tickets are “on sale” now. Choose your destination. Both are one-way journeys. The trip to Heaven is a free gift that has already been paid for, but like any gift you have to receive it. The trip to hell you must pay (and pay and pay) yourself.

Without the same trite analogy, Chuck Colson used hell the ways its inventors intended -- to keep us in line:

God doesn’t send anyone to hell. He gives us the clear understanding of how we are to behave and how we may have faith in Him and therefore be saved for eternity.

To the deep discernments of Cal and Chuck, Bob Edgar, General secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, added ALL CAPS:

If God is love then God’s heaven is dwelling in that love. Hell is being on the outside of God's love, looking in. Fortunately, that never has to be the case, at least as far as God is concerned. The welcome mat is always out. God's persistent and ever-faithful message to humanity is: I LOVE YOU AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!

Such unsupported Christian thinking is chastised in a sense by the unsupported thinking of another panelist. I hope when Christians read Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo's mystically preachy response about the "spirit world" they begin to ask themselves what the difference is between their unjustified rationalizations and his:

A thinking, rational person is hard put to deny evidence of spirits. In my opinion, the reality of such spirits is more proximate than the existence of God. Consider these three factual sources of evidence. First: the history of humankind shows that most people over the 40,000 years or so of our species’ existence have contacted spirits. ... Second: the reported pattern of spirit behavior is consistent through history and across cultures, converting denial of spirits into a denial of empirical evidence. [Sounds like an apologist's argument for God based on the universality of belief!] ... Third: people who communicate with the spirits are not stupid.

I know Christians who would laugh about the last one unless you replaced "spirits" with God or Angels.

For good measure, the lone Mormon respondent, Kathleen Flake, also lays bare the empirically justified tenets of her beliefs:

Latter-day Saints believe the playing field is leveled by provision of a two-stage process in the afterlife: the first, called the “spirit world” allows for further preparation for the second (the degrees of glory) and the demarcation between the two is marked by God's judgment. Those who did not, in mortality, hear of Christ will be taught and have the choice of whether to be baptized. In the next world too, faith is an act of free will and not required for resurrection. Once all have had the chance to make an informed decision, they are judged by God and inhabit the degree of glory commensurate with their choice.

Again, how do you differentiate the mere assertions of one holy book against another? Remember, the charge here was to be "certain we’re talking about something more important and more transcendent than the North Pole, home of Santa Claus." Thus far, the respondents' replies to the "how do you know?" part of the question have not transcended Santa's legend.

Some Christian responders, such as Gardner Calvin Taylor, Senior Pastor Emeritus of Concord Baptist Church of Christ, replied more cautiously about their faith:

I believe heaven is the immediate presence of God. I believe hell is the total absence of God. As to who will be in heaven, I plead a reverent agnosticism.

As an elderly Christian, Taylor reminds me in his response of Billy Graham's gradual lifelong change from a fiery Christian preacher to a more reflective older man. They still cling to the promises, but enjoy the divisiveness a bit less.

A few replies made me cringe more than others, since they attempt to lure people in with a modicum of scientific thinking. Thomas J. Reese, Jesuit Priest, puts a Catholic spin on a Sagan-esque question:

Meditating on our place in the universe as taught to us by science should make us humble. We live for a brief time on a small planet spinning around a sun that is one star in a galaxy that is only one of the millions of galaxies in the universe. How insignificant we are. As a result, I sometimes think that the hardest act of faith for a modern person is believing that God cares about us.

How does he resolve this crisis of faith? With faith itself (of course!), a bit from Matthew 25, and the conclusion that "anyone who loves can go to heaven." It is just this kind of inanity that embarrassed me when I was a Christian and these guys purported to represent my thinking.

It gets worse! Jim Cooper of Trinity Church, New York, takes the cake:

If Einstein is correct and energy is neither created nor destroyed, we have energy and therefore in some basic way we continue.

Just like the crystal healers, Jim conflates the scientific concept of energy with the mystical, life force energy concept. But he said it with a collar on, so he will be believed by many a Christian ("Wow, Einstein believes what I believe?!").

There were a few dissenting voices on the panel. Wendy Doniger fatalistically observed:

I can’t believe in heaven, because I no longer believe in the possibility of justice; I cannot even imagine a world in which there is perfect justice.

Most insightful was Susan Jacoby, who turned the discussion towards the way the very ideas of heaven and hell are responsible for people denying their own reason in favor of illogical and immoral actions:

Oh, for heaven's sake. This question irritates the...inferno out of me. Of all the pointless, utterly childish notions associated with traditional religion, belief in eternal bliss in heaven or eternal damnation in hell surely tops the list.

Religions that have allowed themselves to be modified by secular knowledge downplay orthodox ideas of heaven and hell for the very good reason that such beliefs have been used throughout history to justify the most evil earthly acts imaginable. Christians slaughtered Jews and Muslims during the Crusades precisely because they believed that they were earning themselves a place in an all-Christian heaven, hemmed in by restrictive covenants.

In recent years, radical Islamists have embarked on suicide murder missions with the absolute conviction that they will be rewarded with a place in a Muslim paradise. The 60 percent of Muslim Americans who, according to a recent Pew Poll, do not accept the fact that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were carried out by Muslim Arabs, are deluded. Like the Christian Crusades, Islamist terror attacks are deeply involved with a form of religion that forsees an eternal reward for dastardly crimes against humanity.

I know that indignant readers will claim that none of these crimes have anything to do with the "real" Christianity or the "real" Islam. They don't have anything to do with modern, moderate forms of Christianity or Islam, but they have everything to do with retrograde expressions of religions that preach, among other things, the doctrine of eternal damnation for unbelievers and infidels. And these retrograde religious forms are on the rise in the world. They are every bit as "real" as religion based on earthly, loving kindness--something that promoters of religion as an unqualified good never want to admit.

All of these articles allow comments. Thankfully, hers generated the most discussion by far.

(There were many others who posted. Among these most notably was NT Wright, who used the question as a means to get into a theological discussion about the difference between heaven and the Bible's prophesied New Heavens and New Earth. His entry does not break down to a sound bite easily, but it shows the distance than can emerge between Christian theologians who are examining the same texts and finding markedly different points of emphasis -- resulting in a different conclusion: "God's new world will not have in it 'a concentration camp in the midst of a beautiful landscape', as some earlier visions of 'hell' have supposed, but rather the celebration (1 Corinthians 20.28) that 'God will be all in all'." )

Reflections on Mourning for Virginia Tech

2007-04-18T09:26:00.000-05:00

At least half of the mourning process after an event of this magnitude involves convincing yourself that it is real. I do not think I have comprehended its reality, in spite of having spent every moment I could since Monday on campus, desperately trying to bend my mind around this horror.

For the last 9 years, I have been a Virginia Tech Hokie as an undergraduate and graduate student, and now as a part-time PhD student. On Monday, I was working my day job, which takes me about 40 miles northeast to Roanoke. I first heard of the tragedy from my wife, who is a graduate student. She was driving to school that morning, and decided instead to stop at Starbucks for coffee. She was there when the town went on lockdown, and I raced home to be with her. By the time I left, ambulances were already racing north on Route 81 to the hospitals in Roanoke; I raced south, my small Prius flanked by news vans. All the way south to Blacksburg, family and friends were calling, trying to determine if anyone we knew had been killed.

These buildings mentioned in the news – Norris, Ambler-Johnston (AJ), Torgerson, Harper – all have significant and special meanings to me. I park every Tuesday and Thursday in front of Norris Hall to go to my office in Torgerson. I usually arrive about 9 AM. Norris is where the worst of it took place, at about 9 AM but on a Monday, and Torgerson was cleared out twice last week by the shooter’s bomb threats. As an undergraduate, I lived in Harper Hall, where the shooter lived. Most of my friends, however, lived in AJ. I spent an inappropriately proportioned amount of my undergraduate career playing video games, drinking, and just hanging out there. These buildings are the sanctuaries of my Virginia Tech experience.

As I arrived in Blacksburg, I pulled into Starbucks. My wife met me as soon as I opened the door and we embraced. The whole restaurant had been sharing stories. She sat with a family who was here to tour the campus. Their son had just been accepted, and Virginia Tech was his first choice among VT, Georgia Tech, and Northwestern. At one point, the door burst open, and a woman flew through it to embrace her husband. He worked in Norris Hall on the second floor, and he had been late to work that day, due to sleeping in. His co-workers had already told him of having to step over dead bodies as they fled.

After we went home, we turned on the news. We watched in horror for a few hours. It was too much for me – I had to be on campus. The news reported that there was a vigil planned Monday afternoon on the field in front of Lee Hall. When we arrived, the news was incorrect. Instead we just walked. We walked to AJ. We just stared, the monumental, 450-room dorm just loomed large, its Hokie stone exterior unmoving. We walked to the drillfield and gazed across at Norris.

I felt a need to be close, so we walked. A few walked with us, keeping a respectful distance from the active police. The wind gusted to 40 MPH, nearly tipping us over along the long trek across the drillfield. The wind had picked up a what looked like a few small items of trash, blowing them like tumbleweeds in front of us. As we approached, we realized what was really floating through the air. They were surgical gloves, blown from the triage centers on site.

The entire area around Norris hall was cordoned off by police tape, at least a full acre. Every square foot inside the tape was covered by a police car or armored personnel carrier. As we walked, about 6 in the evening, the armed-to-the-teeth police force was unloading their M4 and M16 assault rifles. Looking at this, I was overcome by a feeling of futility. Here we had an army with assault vehicles, helmets, rifles, jackets. This army was available on a moment’s notice, and still, one lone shooter can fly under the radar and inflict this much damage. We trust, in this country, in the goodness of our countrymen and guests. What makes us great also makes us vulnerable.

I say none of this to fault the response of the school. I am not one of those calling for the resignation of our university president. In his defense, there had never been a school shooting in history that started with signs indicating a domestic dispute. At the time the shots rang out in Norris, the police were interviewing the person they thought was the prime suspect. In retrospect, of course, events like these will lead in the future to an immediate lockdown, but we must remember the information available to the university at the time.

Yesterday, Tuesday, we attended the campus memorial events. We came two hours early for the convocation in Cassell Coliseum, our basketball arena. There was already a line of people four-wide, stretching at least a mile, all people waiting to get in. There were residents of Blacksburg and students, and people from around the country were already arriving.

The line stretched by the Baptist Student Union and Latter Day Saints outreach centers. The BSU had a big sign out reminding us that God is real, hears our prayers, and is able to move to heal us. Apparently, He is simply unwilling to move to save us in the first place. I am an atheist with respect to every god I’ve met in religious literature, and an agnostic on the concept of god in general. This kind of event seems more explicable as a person’s response to something horrible in his finite, physical mind and taking action in a finite, physical world. What is the alternative? A demon torturing his soul, and an all-powerful God who lets the innocent die? A God who is willing to clean up the mess by healing the survivors, but would not intervene to save those killed?

Getting to the end of the line, I realized that we were probably 30,000^th in line for a 10,000-seat arena. About that time, they announced overflow seating in the football stadium, where they would show the convocation on the jumbotron. It was good just to be with other students. The entire field was filled with Hokies, and about a third of the 65,000 seats were occupied.

You all watched the service. I appreciated the ecumenical approach, including Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, and Christian clergy. I will count the psychologist director of our counseling center as speaking the atheist perspective on healing. I did, however, have the thought that one of the professors killed was Indian, and most likely Hindu. I hope his family was able to find some solace.

Nikki Giovanni, a faculty member whose eloquent poetry is always a welcome addition to our engineering-focused school, captured our feelings best:

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech.

The vigil that night is almost to close to me now to describe. People absolutely poured onto the drillfield. I signed the VT memorial that President Bush signed, so filled now with signatures that I had to sign on the back. I can mourn this tragedy with Bush, even if my politics lead me to dislike him. Politics seem so far away now. I left notes on the big poster boards set up. After about an hour, there must have been 50,000 or more people on the field. I’m no expert at estimating crowd sizes. The only reference point I have is our football stadium, at it seemed we had at least a football-sized crowd.

I am not an externally emotional person. I have cried infrequently enough in my adult life that the act of so doing serves as a marker to my rational brain that something significant is happening to me. Until Tuesday, it had been fewer than three or four times. Now I don’t know how to count it, when I cried on and off all day. I’m tearing up just writing this. It happens at odd times. I broke down in the shower, just getting ready for the day yesterday, and I sobbed into my towel. Every time we sang a school song or chanted “Let’s Go Hokies!” I had to sit out until the final refrains to clear my eyes and throat. When I met people who had traveled to Virginia Tech from Texas and New York, I was choked up again.

Talking to friends as we gathered, we heard from people who knew the fallen. From the names released so far, I am not directly connected to any of the injured or killed. The closest connection to the names released so far is a biology-graduate-student friend who was teaching a class attended by Ryan Clark, the exemplary undergraduate who was graduating in May with a triple major. She had a one-on-one meeting with him scheduled for Friday to go over his semester project. Ryan was the RA killed in AJ. My friend is quite shaken. My pain is not as acute as those who have directly lost their loved ones, but this is my Hokie family. I have never felt a loss like this.

Prior to the start of the vigil, the silence alone was enough to break your heart. Just image being in the presence of tens of thousands, yet still having to converse in hushed tones to respect the reverence of the moment. Most silent of all were those standing near Norris, just off the drillfield. Sitting just a few dozen yards away were beautiful flowers, sent from universities around the country to make yet another memorial. Yet here at Norris, there were CSIs walking in and out, feet covered in cloth slippers, hands in green rubber gloves. It was too much, and both my wife and I lost it once again.

Which brings me to the press. I refuse to let my memory of the day be ruined by the vulturous photographers, but this should not go unsaid. There in the sanctuary of mourning outside Norris, a Reuters photographer stuck a telephoto lens not less than 18 inches from my wife’s weeping face and started clicking. One photo, I would have let it go. But he just kept shooting. Click-click-kik-kik-kik. In a hushed tone, I told him to leave, and to what little credit he deserves, he did. Nonetheless, the moment of mourning that he invaded so rudely made it to Yahoo’s picture feed. Sometimes we need to worry less about what posterity will remember from the day, and let us have a moment.

Worse yet were those taking pictures of the vigil. Cameramen stood atop the permanent stone podium in front of our iconic Burruss Hall, shooting directly down on the memorial itself. They were standing atop the memorial! This was where the student leaders were to speak! Finally, they were cleared out for a few moments to let the leaders speak, but as soon as the service was over and the prolonged moment of silence began, they invaded the podium like an army and the silence was broken by a machine gun fire of cameras. They blocked so much of the area behind the podium that our Corps of Cadets could not line up there as they planned, and they instead went into the crowd of students. The cameramen ignored the pleas of students who asked them to clear away from the memorial and give us 15 minutes before shooting again. The members of the corps who stood at parade rest in silent vigil, guarding the memorial, had cameras a foot from their faces to capture every last somber tear. Suffice it to say that I’m upset, but let’s not remember the day for the actions of the press.

More impressive were the thousands upon thousands of students, Blacksburg residents, and Hokies and supporters from around the world who showed solidarity in the face of tragedy. No photograph or video I’ve seen since could possibly capture what it was like to see candles raised above heads and people shouting “Let’s Go Hokies!” It seemed odd at first to shout as we do for our football team, but the cry now means so much more. I’m pushing two meters, so I had a good panoramic view of the small flames that stretched endlessly in the black night, each flickering light a person who will miss the fallen, who will never forget their memory, and who will rebuild this university stronger out of this adversity.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech.

My Campus (Virginia Tech): Worst Shooting in US History

2007-04-16T13:41:00.000-05:00

I cannot believe what I am seeing. The worst shooting in the history of the United States took place at my school, Virginia Tech, today.

Everyone I know so far is OK, but with 31 so far confirmed dead and 29 others injured -- and the shooting taking place in an Engineering building -- I have the horrible feeling that someone I know is dead.

Three times a week, I park in the lot where you see the police staging the raid of Norris Hall. I have class in the building next door on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I have an office in Torgerson Hall, the building threatened with the bombings last week. I spent a good bit of my undergraduate career hanging out in Ambler Johnston Hall with my friends.

This is unbelievably horrible, and far too close. I'm at home with my wife now watching the horror on television.

Henry Morris and Virginia Tech

2007-03-19T11:46:00.000-05:00

PZ Myers posts about owning an old copy of Henry Morris' The Twilight of Evolution.

Henry Morris was a professor and eventually the head of the department of Civil Engineering at my school, Virginia Tech, from 1957-1970. He wrote this book during his tenure here. (I'm currently a PhD student at VT in Computer Engineering.)

Yesterday, I went to a discussion group that was talking about Dawkins' The God Delusion. There, the topic of Henry Morris came up. There were several retired VT professors of Biology, Computer Engineering, and other sciences there that personally know both him and Ken Cumming, another VT professor who co-founded the Institute for Creation Research with Morris. It was fascinating to hear stories about what these guys were like when they were at VT.

Morris was apparently a top-quality engineer, but he evidently betrayed strong signs of knowledge compartmentalization from the beginning. One of the stories told was that in the middle of the night, he saw a vision or heard a voice from God telling him that He was going to divinely destroy Blacksburg, VA (VT's town) for its sins. Morris apparently immediately roused his entire family and walked the perimeter of the town, praying God's forgiveness on the town. God apparently listened, since Blacksburg is still around. BTW, Blacksburg is a not a big town, but it's no small feat to walk its perimeter... maybe they meant the perimeter of the campus.

I'll have to see if I can find these former faculty members again and get some more first-hand impressions of Morris in his early days. It could be valuable, considering Morris is the modern founder of the American creationist movement.

Hovind Sentenced

2007-01-20T10:27:00.000-05:00

Kent Hovind gets 10 years. I don't take much pleasure in his prison sentence. Yes, it is justice; he broke the law. But as it relates to issues of science, those who side with him see him as a martyr, those who do not did not need convincing of his illogic. Yet he did leave us with one more insight into his character:

Hovind said the Internal Revenue Service, presiding judge and prosecutor broke the law by going after him, and there were things he could do "to make their lives miserable."

Comparing himself to a buffalo in a lion fight, Hovind's voice was heard saying "As long as I have some horns, I'm going to swing. As long as I have some hoofs, I'm going to kick. As long as I have some teeth, I'm going to fight. The lion's going to know he's been in a fight."

...

[R]ecordings, compiled by the IRS from phone conversations from jail, showed Kent Hovind was trying to hide assets from the government, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Heldmyer said.

In one phone conversation played in court, Kent Hovind was heard to advise a business partner to put only "what you can afford to lose" in a church account.

So even after he was in jail, he was still making threats against the government, still evading tax laws.

After all this, take a look at the first user comment posted at the end of the article:

By the power of the Holy Spirit, Dr. Hovind will do to prison what he did to jail: Turn it into another "Paul the Apostle" experience, winning the lost inmates and guards to Jesus Christ, the Savior we must ALL have if we want eternal life. Dr. Hovind truly is an "ambassador in chains."

Hovind's wife will be sentenced March 1.

New Template

2007-01-18T14:15:00.000-05:00

No new musings, but I have a new template! What do you think?

Taking a Break

2006-10-01T14:21:00.000-05:00

I realized a few weeks ago that I am burnt out a bit regarding the topics on this blog. My passionate interest in the issues surrounding Christianity, atheism, agnosticism, creation, and evolution can only take the front seat in my life for so long. While I can never really turn off my desire to learn about these subjects, I can feel myself getting overwhelmed with the number of goals I've set for myself simultaneously. I am a full-time PhD student in Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech and a full-time computer architect professionally. This is enough to fill my time. The Blog and the constant interest in other blogs, books, and podcasts has got to be put down for a while. My dissertation is looming large, and I'm going to try to focus on it for a while.

After having decided to take this break a few weeks ago, I've found it quite refreshing. In the midst of class, work, and dissertation time, I've actually found the time to whip out my axe (electric guitar) and wail away for a while. Good times. Guitar is the other great passion of my life -- yes, in addition to computer architecture, science, philosophy, and religion. I don't know how long I'll be away, but I do know what I'll be doing: working, class, dissertation, and rocking out on my electric/bass/classical/steel-string gutars.

Hitler and Evolution

2006-08-24T08:16:00.000-05:00

This topic makes me sick. Once it seemed only to be whackos like Kent Hovind who spouted the ridiculous claim that Hitler could not have been successful without the theory of evolution. Now, more mainstream Christians have made a TV special and a book that espouse the same vitriolic asinine fatuity. The best treatment of the current controversy is from Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Comments on Strobel's "Case for Christ"

2006-08-23T10:34:00.000-05:00

A reader recently e-mailed me (zeteo DOT eurisko AT gmail DOT com) to ask about my promised review of Lee Strobel's book The Case for Christ:

I have run across your blog in my search for truth which most people begin at some time or another and was curious as to your thoughts on Lee Strobel's "A Case For Christ"? I noticed you had an outline, but I didn't find much information. Any information provided will be very much appreciated.

My response follows.

A review of Strobel's book is somewhat on hold. In reading his book, as well as the apologetic works of Josh McDowell, I am frustrated by the one-sided presentation of the material. They never include a complete presentation of the views and arguments of their opponents. They both often include long passages refuting opposing opinions, but the reader unfamiliar with those alternate views is left to either trust that the apologist is right or seek out the alternative views themselves for closer examination.

I have selected the second path. Strobel and McDowell have taken on such a broad subject matter in their writings that the diligent truth seeker will do well to pursue further study. For a start, read Jeff Lowder's article on the Strobel book:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/strobel-rev.html

(Infidels.org is a good site for finding opinions opposing those of the apologists. I'm not necessarily endorsing the site -- read their views as critically as you would any other! It is a good resource for counterpoint, though.)

The book that I'm reading now has been quite interesting. It is Bart Ehrman's New Testament introduction:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195154622/sr=8-3/qid=1156345461/ref=pd_bbs_3/002-6654396-3744819?ie=UTF8

It's actually a college textbook, so the overview of the NT is quite extensive, but the text is accessible to someone, like me, who is not an NT scholar. This is an interesting work in that it does not so much endorse strong conclusions -- like the apologists' works -- as it teaches the methods by which scholars come to those conclusions through various methods of critical thinking. The text also serves as a repository of good information that counters apologists' arguments.

Note that both Ehrman and Lowder were both once evangelical Christians whose reasoned study has led them to alternative conclusions. Lowder is an atheist, Ehrman, an agnostic.

The most important thing is to critically evaluate your sources of information, whether they be Christian or not. This requires lots of reading in addition to any single perspective.

Manhunt for Cop Killer on My Campus (Virginia Tech)

2006-08-21T12:20:00.000-05:00

This is an terrible way to return to school: there is a manhunt for a cop killer going on at Virginia Tech as I write. The man, William Morva, (a kid really - he's 24) stole a gun from an officer while on hospital release from jail, after which he killed a hospital security guard and a police officer. Virginia Tech and the whole town of Blacksburg are shut down. Both my company and my school are closed, and people have been asked to stay home with doors locked. He is supposedly still hiding somewhere on campus or in town, and the news is mentioning the possibility of hostages. My house is unfortunately right next door to the convenience store that Morva attempted to rob at gunpoint one year ago - the crime that put him in jail in the first place. This is the second time in my life that I wish I owned a gun.

For a small, tight-knit town that has been for a long time one of the safest places to live in Virginia, this is unusual. Virginia Tech now has the feel of downtown Oakland, CA, where my childhood home was occasionally sprayed with bullets. Let's hope they get this guy soon and return sleepy little Blacksburg, VA back to its usual serenity.

Intelligent Design: Twisting Recent History

2006-08-12T11:11:00.000-05:00

Ed Darrell, at the blog Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, has posted an extremely insightful two-part essay (Part 1, Part 2) about the intelligent design (ID) movement's proclivity to twist even recent history to erroneously support their positions. Darrell wrote in response to Joe Carter's two-part complaint piece about the "10 Ways Darwinists Help Intelligent Design" on the Evangelical Outpost (Part 1, Part 2). Darrell masterfully examines and rejects each of Carter's arguments.

I found a careful reading rewarding. Darrell's work stands apart from other debunkings of ID thought in that it (1) accurately depicts the nuances of the ID movement, (2) references history and science to discredit the claims of ID, and (3) does not conflate the issues of faith an science. As far as (3) is concerned, Darrell is careful to show how Christianity stands quite apart from the claims of evolution and must be evaluated separately. Very well done.

My favorite quote:

Creationists don't know why ignorance is not honored as knowledge among the knowledgeable, and hubristically they demand that their favored brand of ignorance be given a seat at the table of science.

To the YECs an IDers: before you get angry about why he might make this claim, evaluate his arguments and demonstrate where he is wrong.

Update: My apologies to Ed Darrell for calling him "Michael Martine" in the original post. I got Martine's name from the bottom of Ed's post, but apparently I did not read carefully -- Martine only created the blog template that Ed uses.

Ocellated on Evolution

2006-08-11T16:55:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to enjoy reading the insights of Jay over at the Ocellated blog. Jay is a Christian who firmly holds to scientific principles in his perception of the natural world. Two posts are worth perusing. First, check out his take on Evolution. Then read his recent post discussing research that shows that the U.S. ranks just above Turkey and below Cyprus in terms of population percentage that accept the truth of science.

Why I am not a young-earth creationist

2006-08-08T13:49:00.000-05:00

Several young-earth creationists (YECs) have read my post on Evidences for Evolution and asked me why I changed my affiliation from YEC theory to the theory of evolution. One of these is Janice, and in my response to her, I outline the process I went through in "changing teams." I have included much of her original e-mail, since I think it is a good example of the letters I have received in response to my recent post.

Janice's words in yellow. Mine in white.

---

Janice,

I appreciate the opportunity to interact with you on this topic. Since tone is hard to read in an e-mail, let me just state at the outset that I consider this a rational discussion, not an argument.

>> Thanks for that very interesting trip into your blog and the websites. I find myself feeling sorry for "Nick", though. I was not surprised that you directed him and myself to websites to sort through endless information, most of which, you already knew, that we would not understand anyway.

It was certainly not my intent to send you to information you found unintelligible! I apologize if you found this to be the case. You asked a $50 question, and I was trying to give you a $50 answer. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that an e-mail will not change your mind, so I pointed you towards some of the resources that helped change mine. It has taken me years to wade through a stack of books and a litany of websites. I have found that this is the best way to make an informed decision, rather than dogmatically asserting allegiance to either creation or evolution without a rational basis.

>> Every person that believes in evolution, that I have asked to show me why, just points me to another website, written by another person, who believes in evolution.

Again, this is because it takes a detailed application of one's mind to come to a conclusion about the confusing array of information out there. Please do not write off my opinion just because the answer cannot be summed into a sound bite.

>> Maybe you can explain some of the main concepts, simply, for those of us who are not as "advanced " as you in this Field. I think that would be a GREAT blog for you, from your OWN words, not other people's.

OK, let me give it a shot...

>> You say that you used to be a Christian, so think back to that point and try to explain what inevitably brought you to where you are now.

... but let me state again that what I say about evolution and science is not the same as criticizing Christianity. My reasons for being an agnostic philosophically/religiously are not the same as the scientific reasons I accept evolution as the best theory to describe our origins. For now, I am only speaking about evolution, not Christianity. In the past hundred years, it has only been a recent trend, since Henry Morris' work in the 1960's, to conflate the two.

>> ... I assume that it was alot of information over the years, but if you had to explain it to a child, using just some main points that stand out, what would you say?

As I stated in the post on evidences for evolution, my process for accepting evolution had two parts. (1) I found that YEC theories are untenable. There was a period after this discovery during which I subscribed to neither YEC nor evolution. During this period I devoured much of the material listed in the post, along with much written by YEC's and intelligent design folks. (2) I found that the theory of evolution fits the evidence found in the natural world better than any other theory.

Let me create an outline. My process of discovering that YEC is untenable followed these lines of logic. Once again, I provide websites to back up the science, but what you were most interested in was my line of reasoning. The reasoning based on the evidence is my own. (Note: many of my links are from Christian sites!)

1. The earth is old

Dendrochronology (Tree ring dating). This is one of the most accurate dating methods known. Trees only ever produce one ring per year, and those rings are affected by the environment during the years the trees were producing rings, creating markers. We can use these markers to match up environmental events in history to create a description of history back over 9,000 years. Note that the flood was to have taken place about 4500 years ago, which would have destroyed this record, and that creation was supposed to have taken place 6,000 years ago. There is already a problem. http://www.sonic.net/bristlecone/dendro.html
Varves. Varves refer to an annual deposit of either sediment (at the bottom of lakes) or rock (in mineral deposits). Only one layer (or one couplet) is deposited per year. These can be counted back 40-50,000 years when counting sediments in lakebeds. In geological deposits, we can count back millions of years. It's a simple process very similar to tree rings. We can see how varves are created today; we can count how many have been created. The interesting thing is that these deposits show that they are laid down under tranquil conditions, excluding the possibility of a flood. http://www.ibri.org/Tracts/varvetct.htm
Ice core dating. Similar to the varves and tree rings above, we can note that layers are also added to glacial ice deposits annually. In some formations, we can count back approximately 160,000 years. This also eliminates the possibility of a recent worldwide flood. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core
Carbon 14 dating. Without getting into detail, the half-life of Carbon 14 lets us date things back to 40,000 years with great accuracy (60,000 years with some newer methods). What is interesting is that this method can be cross calibrated with other methods to see if they both achieve the same result. For example, this has been done in conjunction with dendrochronology, sedimentary varves, and ice cores. Guess what? They agree with each other. http://www.howstuffworks.com/carbon-14.htm
Radiometric dating. This operates on the same principle as carbon 14 dating, but since the half-lives of other radioactive elements (Uranium, Argon, Rubidium) are much longer, we can date even older things. These dates can take us back billions of years accurately. Once again, this is not just one method, and when tested against one another, they agree with each other. Scientists are not just shooting in the dark. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

At this point, I have named 5 categories with multiple dating techniques within each that all point to a world older than that described by young earth creationists. To believe the YECs, all of this -- supported by the sciences of physics, chemistry, and geology -- must be discarded. Not only are these methods supported by these sciences, when cross checked, they agree with one another. The world is looking pretty old.

2. Geological features are not supported by the flood.

River channels in the geological column. This is an interesting one. There are many examples of rivers found buried in the geological column with many layers beneath them and many above. If a flood laid down all the layers, how was a river preserved in the middle of them? http://home.entouch.net/dmd/rivchan.htm
There are lots more examples like this one of structures that cannot form during a flood. One of them is coprolites -- fossilized animal droppings. These are found in various layers throughout the geological column. According to flood theories, these must have been fossilized during a catastrophic flooding event. However, similar to the rivers, coprolites are found both on top of and underneath many layers of rock. It's hard to imagine a flood scenario that lays down many layers of rock, stops for long enough for coprolites to be created, then continues to lay down rock. http://home.entouch.net/dmd/bathroom.htm
I name only two here; there are a multitude more.

So, then, not only does science say the world is old by dating techniques, the flood theory breaks down because we find features in the geological column that cannot have been created in a flood. Please note that I have said nothing about biology. The above facts were not invented to support the theory of evolution, they exist and are confirmed outside of it.

3. Geological features point to biological change over time

The Geological Column. Yes, it does exist, despite the protestations of creationists. This column, dated accurately by the methods listed above, tells the story of a Cambrian explosion of life over 500 million years ago, new life forms emerging over time, old life forms becoming extinct, simple life forms becoming more complex, sea life moving to land-based life, and much, much more. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/geocolumn/

What do we know at this point? (1) We know the world is old. (2) We know that the flood is not possible, nor is it recorded anywhere on earth geologically or dendrochronologically. (3) We see life changing over time in the geological column. None of these evidences against Young Earth Creationism are based on any assumption of evolutionary theory -- they are independently justified. There is a multitude of other lines of reasoning that could also reach these conclusions -- again without needing to resort to evolutionary assumptions. Let me know if you need more.

When I reached this understanding, I was at a stasis point. I had realized that the YEC position is indefensible. I found the YEC protestations to this case unreasonable. None of these reasons require the assumption that evolution is true, they are all independently justified, and they all seem to tell the same story. If young-earth creationism does not fit the evidence, what does?

This is when I was finally willing to consider evolution as a potential theory to describe the origins of life on earth. For this reasoning, I will point you back to my original post, Evidences for Evolution. http://gnosos.blogspot.com/2006/07/evidences-for-evolution.html

Again, to summarize, I didn't just jump ship to support evolution in a day. Through a reasoned study I concluded (1) that YEC does not make sense and then (2) evolution fits the evidence better than any competing theory.

>> "It is impossible for those who have been once enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace." Heb 6:4-7
>> I certainly hope you "calculated" this into your equations...

Again, this response is all about evolution, not Christianity. But, since you seem to have read my thinking on religion as well, I will respond. Of course, I am aware of this passage in Hebrews. Scary stuff. For some of my thoughts on the matter, please see my post here: http://gnosos.blogspot.com/2006/03/what-am-i-freeing-myself-to.html

Janice, I have laid my thinking out before you. I would be curious if you will return the favor. How do you justify your own system of thought that includes a young earth?

Thanks,

Z

YEC, Sprittibee: Part 2

2006-07-21T15:27:00.000-05:00

An excellent discussion occurred over at Sprittibee, which encompassed the full spectrum -- YEC, OEC, theistic evolution, naturalistic evolution -- of the creation/evolution debate before being closed by the site admin. Worth perusing for those who are interested. Work this week included an 18 hour day on Monday, which threw off my schedule for the rest of the week, leaving me unable to scan the blogosphere or contribute to Sprittibee's lively back-and-forth.

A new site emerged from the discussion that may be of interest. Ocellated is maintained by Jay, who is aparently a reader of Gnosos. (Hello, Jay!)

YEC Discussion with Sprittibee

2006-07-16T17:29:00.000-05:00

I am having a discussion about Young Earth Creationism with Sprittibee, a homeschooling mother, over at her website. She and I certainly do not agree, but she clearly paid me the compliment of reading many of my blog posts and considering their contents before disagreeing with my position. If I can find the time over the next week, I will post a response on my site.

Kent Hovind Arrest Update

2006-07-14T08:59:00.000-05:00

Kent Hovind Arrested

2006-07-13T17:13:00.000-05:00

As those of you that have researched him know, famous Creation Evangelist Kent Hovind is dishonest about more than just science. Hovind was just arrested today on "58 charges that include income tax evasion, making threats against investigators and filing false complaints against Internal Revenue Service agents." His wife was indicted on an additional 44 counts. I've read his ramblings on political/tax theory, so suffice it to say, he's got a convoluted explanation for this one, too. We will see if the judge is convinced.

Update:
More info here

Patrick Henry College

2006-07-10T11:58:00.000-05:00

As many of you know, I was home educated in a fundamentalist Christian environment, and I believed along party lines until [see the entire contents of this blog]. The following video is about Patrick Henry College, a recently founded institution dedicated to accelerating conservative Christian (80% home educated) students into positions of influence in government. Though I never attended the college, I met many of the students. I grew up 20 minutes outside D.C. among these folks, I worked on the PHC president Mike Farris' political campains, and my home education followed exactly the same philosophy as PHC. For a taste of what that would be like, watch the BBC documentary:

God's Next Army

Evidences for Evolution

2006-07-01T15:28:00.000-05:00

In the comments of my Kent Hovind post, Nick, a young-earth creationist (YEC), asks:

Do you believe in evolution? I might as well just come out and tell you I don't. I am a YEC as Kent Hovind is. But I am not closed minded. Can you please give me proof, any proof for evolution[?]

Nick is a bit younger than me, and at his age, I was also a fervent YEC, ready to defend the faith with the piles of "evidence" for creationism against what I perceived to be the "transparent lies" of the evolutionists. Having been there, I feel that honest questions like his deserve complete answers. This is a very commonly asked question due to the fact that YEC leaders have convinced so many congregations that there is not a sure-fire evolutionist answer.

The answer to the question is absolutely, resoundingly yes - there are innumerable evidences for evolution. But, speaking from experience, I was not convinced to abandon my YEC convictions by some single, simple proof. My transformation in thinking resulted from several years of detailed study. My thoughts changed in a two-step process. First, I was convinced by scientific evidence that YEC theories are completely unworkable. I was assured of this long before I considered evolution to be a viable alternative. Second, I slowly and meticulously studied evidences for evolution, and I now find it to be the most plausible explanation for human origins.

Please note: it is not a matter of simple belief, it is a matter of study and truth.

I certainly owe the readers of this blog a complete biography of my scientific and spiritual journeys. But, as this is my first day off in a very long time, my answer to Nick's question will constrained to a list of references for further reading. Included among them are a multitude of evidences for evolution.

As a starting point, these websites offer excellent introductions to evolution:
Understanding Evolution - http://evolution.berkeley.edu/
Evolution - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/

A good repository of information and debates on evolution is Talk.Origins:
http://www.talkorigins.org/

On the Talk.Origins archive is one of the best repositories of evidences for evolution. This is written at a more advanced level than most material on the Internet. It is worth wading through, however.
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution - http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

Similarly, Talk.Origins also maintains an archive of the distortions that YEC leaders put out there to mislead the flock on scientific matters. It is arranged by topic. If you hear a creationist claim, check out the rebuttal here:
Index to Creationist Claims - http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/

Similarly, the following site exists specifically to counter every claim Kent Hovind has ever made:
An Analysis of Kent Hovind (Dr. Dino) - http://www.kent-hovind.com/

Finally, an author whose work was of great interest to me while I was leaving the YEC fold was Glenn Morton. A professional geophysicist, Glenn worked at and published research for the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) until his scientific honesty led him away from the ICR party line. Though he has suffered a split with ICR's YEC theory and become an evolutionist, he has attempted to maintain his Christian faith. [I have not maintained this same faith, and I do not agree with his theological discussions.] Glenn's site is hard to navigate, but the content is worth it. A multitude of articles can be found here:
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/dmd.htm

Nick, I sincerely wish you the best of luck wrestling with this issue. Take your time with this - a real answer takes real study! Make sure that in the end you are convinced because of your own thoughts and conclusions - not those impressed upon you by a YEC teacher, by a scientist, or by me. But in all this, keep this as your standard of measure: what can be shown to be TRUE.

Feel free to keep asking me questions.

Dawkins on Religion (On Google)

2006-07-01T15:21:00.000-05:00

Sorry for being away for so long! If I have any readers left after leaving my blog to rot for a while, please forgive my time away -- the "real world" of work has been insane lately...

I watched Richard Dawkin's two part BBC series on religion recently. I won't make comment on it, but it will give you a lot to ponder and argue about. It is worth two lunch breaks.

The Root of All Evil? (Part 1)
The Root of All Evil? (Part 2)

Triablogue

2006-05-19T18:10:00.000-05:00

A new blog of interest is the Triablogue, a group of Christians that post interesting apologetic discussions and often responses to the Debunking Christianity and Out of Christianity blogs. I have entered a discussion with them about the inerrancy of scripture, after first calling one of their bloggers arrogant for what I perceived to be the tone of his previous responses. I regret starting off a discussion with them with a personal comment, but I look forward to what our future conversations might reveal.

Reflections on a Mote of Dust

2006-05-19T13:15:00.000-05:00

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

-- Carl Sagan, commenting on the above image taken by the Voyager 1 Spacecraft. From nineplanets.org.

Sagan's new book The Varieties of Scientific Experience (posthumously published, of course) chronicles his search for God as given in a series of lectures in the 80's. Should be an interesting read. His wife, and his frequent co-author, Ann Druyan said his theme was "the devoutness of the search itself, of being absolutely true in your searching to the methodology of science, to the error-correcting mechanism."

She continues:

In a way it makes someone who thinks that our spiritual understanding of the universe is complete seem that much less devout. His argument is not with God in this book. His argument is with those people who think that we know everything that we need to know about God. Rather than being dismissive or contemptuous of anybody, he takes the science he knew, everthing that he gathered in his life, and offers it as a way of explaining how he came to believe what he believed.

Bones, Rocks, and Stars

2006-05-19T10:15:00.000-05:00

I am very excited about this book - Bones, Rocks and Stars: The Science of When Things Happened. It will be available June 8^th, but you can read one advance review here. The book is all about how scientists attach dates to when things happened at various points in ancient history. Odd as it may seem, I have been hoping for just such a book for a while!

Here’s why: too often in the Creation/Evolution debate, young-earth creationists (YECs) tend to strongly believe that ancient dates are made up solely because billions of years are necessary to make evolution feasible. History teaches just the opposite: geologists had described an ancient earth long before Darwin. I hope that a book like this one can be used to separate in YEC minds the reasons that the YEC position is scientifically untenable from the reasons that evolution is reasonable.

Amazon has this to say about the book:

Understanding how we pinpoint the past is crucial to putting the present in perspective and planning for the future. Now, for the first time, journalist and geologist Chris Turney explains to the non-specialist exactly how archaeologists, paleontologists, and geologists "tell the time". Each chapter explores one famous event or object from the past, walking readers step by step through the detective work used to determine when things happened. From the Ice Age to the pyramids, from human evolution to the Shroud of Turin, Turney reveals how written records, carbon, pollen, constellations, DNA sequencing, and more all play a part in solving the mystery of the true age of objects and events. As we struggle to manage current environmental threats and conservation troubles, we ignore or misunderstand these techniques and their results at our peril.

Comparative Resurrections

2006-05-08T17:43:00.000-05:00

I was raised following this mantra: let scripture interpret scripture. Thus, the arguments against the Bible that are the most poignant for me are those comprised of Biblical contradictions. When scripture cannot be harmonized except by the most painful contortions of logic, believers in Biblical inerrancy and literalism should stop and think.

Aaron Rossetti over at the Out of Christianity blog has written an excellent piece entitled Death & Resurrection. In it, he lets the Bible speak for itself by comparing the four gospels’ accounts of the resurrection and examining their contradictory details. Check out the link, open up Bible Gateway’s side-by-side rendering of the accounts, and give it a shot in answering his questions.

As a layman, Aaron’s questions are the most cogent part of his piece. However, that’s kind of the point. It takes a layman to ask these questions; it takes a theologian to answer them! Should it really require a Th.D. to understand an inerrant book describing a straightforward account of people walking to and from a tomb?

UPDATE: Harmonization attempts:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8449/harmonize.html
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/ordorise.html

UPDATE: For a more in-depth look at the same subject, check out Dan Barker's article "Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?" -- it's worth a few minutes' thought. From the article:

What time did the women visit the tomb?

Matthew: "as it began to dawn" (28:1)
Mark "very early in the morning . . . at the rising of the sun" (16:2, KJV); "when the sun had risen" (NRSV); "just after sunrise" (NIV)
Luke: "very early in the morning" (24:1, KJV) "at early dawn" (NRSV)
John: "when it was yet dark" (20:1)

Who were the women?

Matthew: Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (28:1)
Mark: Mary Magdalene, the mother of James, and Salome (16:1)
Luke: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women (24:10)
John: Mary Magdalene (20:1)

What was their purpose?

Matthew: to see the tomb (28:1)
Mark: had already seen the tomb (15:47), brought spices (16:1)
Luke: had already seen the tomb (23:55), brought spices (24:1)
John: the body had already been spiced before they arrived (19:39,40)

Was the tomb open when they arrived?

Matthew: No (28:2)
Mark: Yes (16:4)
Luke: Yes (24:2)
John: Yes (20:1)

Who was at the tomb when they arrived?

Matthew: One angel (28:2-7)
Mark: One young man (16:5)
Luke: Two men (24:4)
John: Two angels (20:12)

Where were these messengers situated?

Matthew: Angel sitting on the stone (28:2)
Mark: Young man sitting inside, on the right (16:5)
Luke: Two men standing inside (24:4)
John: Two angels sitting on each end of the bed (20:12)

What did the messenger(s) say?

Matthew: "Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead: and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you." (28:5-7)
Mark: "Be not afrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you." (16:6-7)
Luke: "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again." (24:5-7)
John: "Woman, why weepest thou?" (20:13)

Did the women tell what happened?

Matthew: Yes (28:8)
Mark: No. "Neither said they any thing to any man." (16:8)
Luke: Yes. "And they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven, and to all the rest." (24:9, 22-24)
John: Yes (20:18)

When Mary returned from the tomb, did she know Jesus had been resurrected?

Matthew: Yes (28:7-8)
Mark: Yes (16:10,11[23])
Luke: Yes (24:6-9,23)
John: No (20:2)

When did Mary first see Jesus?

Matthew: Before she returned to the disciples (28:9)
Mark: Before she returned to the disciples (16:9,10[23])
John: After she returned to the disciples (20:2,14)

Could Jesus be touched after the resurrection?

Matthew: Yes (28:9)
John: No (20:17), Yes (20:27)

After the women, to whom did Jesus first appear?

Matthew: Eleven disciples (28:16)
Mark: Two disciples in the country, later to eleven (16:12,14[23])
Luke: Two disciples in Emmaus, later to eleven (24:13,36)
John: Ten disciples (Judas and Thomas were absent) (20:19, 24)
Paul: First to Cephas (Peter), then to the twelve. (Twelve? Judas was dead). (I Corinthians 15:5)

Where did Jesus first appear to the disciples?

Matthew: On a mountain in Galilee (60-100 miles away) (28:16-17)
Mark: To two in the country, to eleven "as they sat at meat" (16:12,14[23])
Luke: In Emmaus (about seven miles away) at evening, to the rest in a room in Jerusalem later that night. (24:31, 36)
John: In a room, at evening (20:19)

Did the disciples believe the two men?

Mark: No (16:13[23])
Luke: Yes (24:34--it is the group speaking here, not the two)

What happened at that first appearance?

Matthew: Disciples worshipped, some doubted, "Go preach." (28:17-20)
Mark: Jesus reprimanded them, said "Go preach" (16:14-19[23])
Luke: Christ incognito, vanishing act, materialized out of thin air, reprimand, supper (24:13-51)
John: Passed through solid door, disciples happy, Jesus blesses them, no reprimand (21:19-23)

Did Jesus stay on earth for more than a day?

Mark: No (16:19[23]) Compare 16:14 with John 20:19 to show that this was all done on Sunday
Luke: No (24:50-52) It all happened on Sunday
John: Yes, at least eight days (20:26, 21:1-22)
Acts: Yes, at least forty days (1:3)

Where did the ascension take place?

Matthew: No ascension. Book ends on mountain in Galilee
Mark: In or near Jerusalem, after supper (16:19[23])
Luke: In Bethany, very close to Jerusalem, after supper (24:50-51)
John: No ascension
Paul: No ascension
Acts: Ascended from Mount of Olives (1:9-12)

The Relativity of Biblical Ethics

2006-05-05T12:24:00.000-05:00

In spite of appearances to the contrary, I am still interested in the cross-blog discussion with the Sophia blog regarding ethics and the moral argument for God’s existence. I have yet to find the time to author a full response, but I have been doing quite a lot of reading. Little of it, however, has been on the web, except for a few articles recently read.

Here is one that provides some interesting counterpoint to the Sophia blog’s perspective:

The Relativity of Biblical Ethics by Joe Edward Barnhard

Martin Luther on Predestination

2006-05-05T09:48:00.000-05:00

From On the Bondage of the Will:

This is the acme of faith, to believe that He is merciful who saves so few and who condemns so many; that He is just who at His own pleasure has made us necessarily doomed to damnation; so that, as Erasmus says, He seems to delight in the tortures of the wretched, and to be more deserving of hatred than of love. If by any effort of reason I could conceive how God could be merciful and just who shows so much anger and iniquity, there would be no need for faith.

The Anthropic Principle and the Question of God

2006-04-20T12:53:00.000-05:00

Island asked in a comment on my Atheism-of-the-Gaps post what the anthropic principle has to do with the existence of God. I should be specific that I am referring to the Weak anthropic principle (WAP), as defined by Barrow and Tipler:

The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirements that the Universe be old enough for it to have already done so.

Perhaps we are not entitled to be surprised to find a complete lack of features in the universe that are incompatible with our existence – were such a feature found, we would not exist to observe it! However, given that “the observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable,” we can still be justifiably surprised that we do find features that are compatible with the existence of life. It is not self-stultifying to make both of these statements simultaneously. At the very least, there are far more possible universes that could not sustain life.

For clarification, let’s look at the end of an argument on the subject by William Lane Craig (don’t knock me because I quote a Christian – look at his argument):

Let us concede that it follows from WAP that
3. We should not be surprised that we do not observe features of the universe which are incompatible with our own existence.

For if the features of the universe were incompatible with our existence, we should not be here to notice it. Hence, it is not surprising that we do not observe such features. But it follows neither from WAP nor (3) that
4. We should not be surprised that we do observe features of the universe which are compatible with out existence.

For although the object of surprise in (4) might at first blush appear to be simply the contrapositive of the object of surprise in (3), this is mistaken. This can be clearly seen by means of an illustration (borrowed from John Leslie): suppose you are dragged before a firing squad of 100 trained marksmen, all of them with rifles aimed at your heart, to be executed. The command is given; you hear the deafening sound of the guns. And you observe that you are still alive, that all of the 100 marksmen missed! Now while it is true that
5. You should not be surprised that you do not observe that you are dead,

nonetheless it is equally true that
6. You should be surprised that you do observe that you are alive.

Since the firing squad's missing you altogether is extremely improbable, the surprise expressed in (6) is wholly appropriate, though you are not surprised that you do not observe that you are dead, since if you were dead you could not observe it. Similarly, while we should not be surprised that we do not observe features of the universe which are incompatible with our existence, it is nevertheless true that

7. We should he surprised that we do observe features of the universe which are compatible with our existence,
in view of the enormous improbability, demonstrated repeatedly by Barrow and Tipler, that the universe should possess such features.

Thus, our ability to observe is not surprising given our existence, but what we are observing - an improbable universe - can still surprise us.

To answer Island’s question, we must ask ourselves what to do with this observation of our own improbability. My answer is that this makes the question of God one worth asking. The question has empirical grounds.

At this point in my thinking, I am honestly not sure how to proceed from here to an answer to the question of God. My post on the Root of My Agnosticism sheds some light on my philosophical quandaries. Despite not having an answer to the question of God, I think demonstrating its empirical validity is a significant step.

Atheism-of-the-Gaps

2006-04-20T09:15:00.000-05:00

A few months ago, I blogged about this article about the Anthropic Principle by Victor Stenger, a University of Colorado professor. In it, he attacks those who see design in the universe as "still seeking the God-of-the-gaps:"

Look at history. Science has always explained observations in terms of natural (that is, nonsupernatural) phenomena. Religion has always proposed supernatural explanations to fill those gaps where science provided no natural explanations, or simply remained silent.

We cannot explain why the constants of nature have the curious values they have, so maybe God made them so. We cannot explain the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics," so maybe God invented mathematics. Maybe. But is this modern God of the gaps any more plausible than the God of the shamans and priests? Maybe one day science will fill in these gaps without the premise of God.

Of all places, the Panda's Thumb has posted an interesting counterpoint to this argument. Matt Young, an atheist himself, after having listened to a speech by Stenger, points out that Stenger employs a similarly flawed argument, atheism-of-the-gaps:

The claim that science has conclusively disproved God is what your physician might call a diagnosis of exclusion. That is what she uses when she has no firm idea what you have. Let us say you go to the doc complaining of fatigue, muscle and joint pains, and physical weakness. The doc fails to find anything wrong with you and tells you, by exclusion, that there is indeed nothing wrong with you (or it is all in your head). The next day (or so it seems), medicine discovers a new syndrome, fibromyalgia. The etiology of fibromyalgia is unclear, though it may be related to autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Nevertheless, it is a recognized syndrome, and there is after all something wrong with you.

The physician's diagnosis was justified when she made it, but it was a diagnosis-of-the-gaps argument and promptly disproved. Professor Stenger's argument is likewise an atheism-of-the-gaps argument, and, whereas I think it is most likely right, I cannot agree that it is conclusive. Indeed, it is the same diagnosis of exclusion that intelligent-design creationists use when they claim that we cannot figure out how the bacterial flagellum has evolved, so therefore it did not.

I agree with Young's major point that neutrality is important to scientific discussion. It is crucial for both religious and non-religious people to recognize where science ends and philosophy begins.

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics - Irrelevant to Origins

2006-04-15T16:05:00.000-05:00

This second law discussion is popping up all over the web at the same time as it is being discussed here. This debate now has that exciting real-time quality to it! (If you need a layman’s refresher on basic 2nd Law principles, check this one out (PDF).)

For the history of the discussion on this site, this post talked about an American Spectator article by UTEP mathematics professor Granville Sewell that reformulated the argument that the process of evolution violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. On the Panda’s Thumb, retired Cal Fullerton physics professor Mark Perakh wrote an extensive critique of Sewell’s idea. My conclusion on my first post was that Sewell’s argument, stripped of its complexities, breaks down to this statement:

There is no process that can decrease the entropy of an undeveloped earth in such a way that would result in the biological complexity around us without violating the second law of thermodynamics.

Thus, I perceive that we are back in the realm of biology, discussing whether evolution is a reasonable mechanism to produce biological complexity. This does not really seem to augment the ID/evolution discussion; it just gets us to the starting point of the debate in a novel way.

But much more has recently been said! Let me lay out the most interesting points of discussion here, and let the reader wrestle with them along with me. (Come up with your own opinions and read the articles yourself. Frankly, my opinion on these matters means little, for my formal training in physics has reached its expiration date.)

First up, Arthenor, a former home schooler and current community college student (both experiences I have shared), posts a detailed response to Perakh's argument. However, Arthenor gets mostly tied up in parsing both Perakh’s and Sewell’s spurious and confusing analogies. His conclusion does not progress the discussion:

[I]t is EXTREMELY IMPROBABLE that such an outcome [the order found in nature] should occur or be expected and the fact that the system is open does not change that any more than the system being open allows me to fly by flapping my arms. The point, again, is that while entropy may decrease in an open system, that does not suddenly cause miracles.

Once again, the question left unanswered is whether evolution is a plausible mechanism to account for this local decrease in entropy without violating the 2nd Law. And once again, we must look to biology for the answers, and we’re back at the starting point of the ID/evolution debate – not a conclusion.

Much more interesting than Arthenor’s discussion were questions raised in comments on my site by “A Friend,” who is a mathematical physicist nearing the end of his PhD studies. He reformulates Sewell’s conclusions into a set of questions:

I'd like to follow up for a moment on my first comment where I mentioned the interaction of different "kinds" of order. If there were only thermal order, and the thermal distribution follows a diffusion equation as is commonly accepted, then there would be no escaping the implications of the 2nd law for the development of life. However, our universe doesn't work like that. There are different kinds of particles, different chemicals, and all sorts of intricate interactions that can occur between them. So, the question that is important in the evolution debate is not one of equilibrium thermodynamics (dominated by the diffusion equation, entropy increases, and the second law) but rather one of non-equilibrium dynamics (where the interactions of the various types of distributions is taken into account mathematically). Can the large thermal gradient generated by the sun drive the entropy (of some non-thermal parameter, like the distribution of carbon atoms) down? Will it be driven down sufficiently for "rare" reactions to occur spontaneously? Specifically, can it drive the biochemical reactions necessary to produce life?

The answers to these questions are perhaps not given but at least framed, by Jason Rosenhouse, a mathematics professor from just up the road at James Madison University. He has just published another response to Sewell. This one, like Perakh’s, does not honor Sewell’s request for respectful discussion sans personal attacks, but he much more effectively and concisely frames the problem with Sewell’s argument:

[F]ormulating the second law mathematically makes it clear that Sewell cannot merely assert that some process (evolution by natural selection in this case) violates the second law. There is a very clear test to pass to show that a given process really has a second law problem.

You see, any claim that evolution violates the second law must be backed up with a calculation. Sewell believes that the second law is a problem for evolution? Very well. Let him evaluate the integral I mentioned [see the article] and show that the change in entropy has been smaller than it should be. Anything short of that is no longer an argument based on thermodynamics. It is just ye olde argument from personal incredulity, in which Sewell is expressing nothing more than his own disbelief that biological complexity could have evolved naturally. Since every formulation of the second law allows for local increases of order and complexity, the mere observation of such increases does not constitute an apparent violation of thermodynamic principles.

His discussion, in a way, supports my assertion that we have once again reached the starting point of the ID/evolution debate. Sewell’s argument makes no comment – except the argument from incredulity – on the quality of evolution by natural selection as an explanation for the observed order in nature.

This begins to provide answers to A Friend’s questions. Until Sewell can accomplish the virtually impossible task of proving that abiogenesis and evolution definitively violate the 2nd Law, we must rely on other observations to inform their plausibility. While it is well beyond the scope of this post to list them, there are enough observations in favor of evolution that many are convinced that it did occur and that, being the concrete law that it is, the 2nd Law must not have been violated.

This is somewhat like arguments for the existence of God. Theists put it on the atheists to prove that God cannot exist; atheists put it on the theist to first prove that He does. Here, the evolutionists are putting it on the creationists/IDers to prove first that evolution violates the second law before they will throw away a theory that is otherwise well supported. The creationists/IDers prefer to claim that it is likely that it does violate the second law, and ask that the evolutionist prove that it does not before claiming it is true. Given the impossibility of a formal proof or disproof in this matter, I think it is better that we look elsewhere for evidences for or against evolution, realizing that the arguments of Sewell and his detractors can never ultimately comment on the question of whether man’s origin is explained best by naturalistic or divine causes.

---

A few articles for future reading:

The comments at Thermodynamics, Again
Jacob Bronowski’s “Thermodynamics and the Arrow of Time,” another evolutionary rebuttal to the creationist 2nd Law argument.
Granville Sewell’s 2004 article “Evolution and the Second Law of Thermodynamics” (PDF), an extended discussion about his earlier theory of evolution’s violation of the 2nd Law. This includes rebuttals to Rosenhouse’s early claims. I haven’t read it yet, but it may be worth more comments in a future post.

Design Arguments from the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics - Revisited

2006-04-12T17:54:00.000-05:00

This is worth top-posting again. A mathematical physicist friend of mine is commenting on the Sewell/Perakh discussion on whether evolution violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Young Earth Creationism on the Sopranos

2006-04-04T06:33:00.000-05:00

This week's episode of the Sopranos had a hilarious surprise for me – a discussion of YEC philosophy. With Tony in the hospital, his daughter brings him a book on dinosaurs. When the evangelical minister who has been at Tony's bedside sees the book, he explains to the group of gangsters that the world is only 6000 years old and that dinosaurs lived with humans. To which Christopher Moltisanti replies, in that great New Jersey accent:

T-Rex in the Garden of Eden? Adam and Eve would be runnin' all the time scared s***less!

Couldn't have said it better! Check out the video at http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/04/what_like_the_f.html

What am I Freeing Myself To?

2006-03-21T17:01:00.000-05:00

P.Z. Myers over at Pharyngula has a post up about atheism and spirituality, which, along with its excellent comments, brought to mind some of my recent ponderings.

I am still working my way through the whole Moral Argument for the Existence of God. I've read a multitude of philosophers' and theologians' ideas on the subject, and I believe I'm coming to the conclusion that morality neither confirms nor denies the existence of God - it is a concept that stands on its own. I have yet to see if I can support that.

Anyway. When mulling matters of spiritual significance - particularly the existence of God - the more I pull away from my Christian roots, the more I ask myself a question: "What am I freeing myself to?"

I am well aware of what I am freeing myself from - dogmatic fundamentalist Christianity, which I am increasingly convinced cannot be entirely reasonable. The harder question is what I am becoming: something without a label. To say atheist is to speak too soon - while my arguments may lean in that direction, I am not there yet. To say non-Christian theist is to speak with too much authority. While as an engineer, I am drawn to the seeming telos (purpose) exhibited in the universe, I also see order arising from purely natural processes. I am sans conclusion.

This limbo dramatically affects one of the fundamental elements of meaning in life: self-definition. Who am I? Losing the label of Christian, all I can call myself now is human. While such a perception engenders all the self-determinant freedom that humanists promise, I can't help but feel empty when once I defined myself as so much more - a Child of God who would be rewarded in Heaven. Atheism hardly has a concept to replace that.

Nonetheless, intellectual honesty demands that we divorce our search for truth from any fantasy we have attached to the result of our quest. The theist, therefore, must justify that the conclusion of God's existence is not motivated by the desire for an afterlife and supernatural reward. If this heavenly result is an a priori desire attached to the thesis rather than an a posteriori claim after having already proved God, the theist must question the validity of their quest for truth: was their conclusion informed by desire and longing or by reason?

Similarly, the agnostic or atheist that seeks to claim logic as the root of their beliefs must also search themselves to determine if their hope for a reality without God did not motivate their conclusion against him. Defining the Christian, Islamic, or Judaic God as non-existent necessarily forces us to restructure traditional morality according to a paradigm of reality that affords an immense amount more personal freedom and self-definition. If this desire is an a priori motivation for the atheist, he must, with the same rigor required of the theist above, determine if his conclusion was based on desire or reason.

As human beings, the question "Which came first, desire or reason?" will plague our every philosophical and moral endeavor. For those that fall on either side of any debate, however, intellectual honesty requires that after the self-examination is complete, the most reasonable conclusion is accepted.

Such introspection leads me to honesty, but not to meaning or self-definition. I am no closer to answering what I am freeing myself to.

Finished a Book!

2006-03-11T16:08:00.000-05:00

For the first time in a very long while, I finished a single book without being distracted by a litany of others. I'm much better at starting than finishing. Prompted by Paule over at Sophia, I'm examining the Moral Argument for the Existence of God. My first step was to read a few of his articles, which prompted me to read a few other authors prior to posting a response. The first author I read was Ravi Zacharias, whose Can Man Live Without God? I have outlined it here:

Can Man Live without God?

By Ravi Zacharias

Outline/Summary by Zeteo Eurisko

Outline Written March 11, 2006

This is a tossed together page of notes. Most of this is a summary of RZ's thoughts, not my own. I wrote this only for a short record of what I have read. I do have a few personal interjections throughout. Also, this is meant to be an outline of the book, not an exposition of RZ's argument – read the book to clarify any points.

My original intent of reading Can Man Live Without God? was to find a coherent, modern rendering of the moral argument for the existence of God. While this book provides this, it reaches beyond the simple postulates of argumentation. It begins by describing the principles of atheistic, postmodern thinking and empirically testing them through the experience of history. The major thesis of the book is that atheistic philosophy has proved completely unworkable when tested historically in its purest forms, while theism provides both rationally and empirically fulfilling precepts. It is only through theism that an intellectually satisfying, non-self-stultifying philosophical framework can be made for morality, and, thus, society and law. Similarly, meaning and hope can only be defined rationally with God as their basis.

The book is fascinating in its breadth while being comprehensible in its focus – a difficult task for any author to accomplish. I readily admit that Zacharias' intellectual faculties and familiarity with philosophy dwarf my own capabilities. In his prose, he can, seemingly on a whim, bring forth a pertinent example or quote from any of an army of philosophers to illustrate his points. While each chapter is tightly argued around a sub-thesis in support of his major hypothesis, the content is engaging enough to transfer the reader through each argument without giving the impression of suffering through an outline of postulates.

It must be noted that morality in the Christian world view is a central principle of how man relates to God. It is an imperative Christian belief that men are born innately evil and require Christ's sacrifice to bridge the gap between God's perfection and man's sin. This being the case, the argument from morality can be considered a necessary (though not sufficient) postulate that must be thoroughly proven prior to one's acceptance of Christianity as a world view. Zacharias makes the case from history that any godless philosophy that does not include this belief is fatally flawed. He then proceeds to build a defense of Christianity from this perspective.

An outline of the book follows. The bold text are chapter and section headings. Quotes are from the text. All other text comprises my notes.

Part 1: Antitheism is Alive – and Deadly

This section “analyzes the antitheistic world-view, demonstrating both its built-in logical contradictions and its existential inadequacies that ultimately make it philosophically unlivable.... A philosophy of meaninglessness is an unavoidable consequence of the antitheistic starting point.”

Anguish in Affluence
Straying through an Infinite Nothing
The Madman Arrives
The Homeless Mind
Where Is Antitheism When It Hurts?
In Search of Lower Meaning

My question from this section, however, is this: Who says we are even to be looking for law, hope, and meaning? Why do we even think we are owed these things? Is the answer simply that not looking for these things makes life unlivable?

Part 2: What Gives Life Meaning?

Is meaninglessness really liberating, as philosophers espouse? Why do we continue, generation after generation, to search for meaning, and what best explains that search? It is an error to assume “this hunger to be merely a belief and not a certainty.” This section “defends the certainty of the longing for meaning and provides some cogent answers in that search.”

The Science of Knowing and the Art of Living
The Romance of Enchantment
Truth – an Endangered Species
Love's Labor Won
Crossing the Bar

Part 3: Who Is Jesus (and Why Does it Matter?)

“It is to the gnawing question of the tenability of the Christian message that the third section of this book addresses itself.... [Jesus'] answers to life's deepest questions are presented, not only as relevant for our time, but as compellingly unique, both in detail and in extent.”

Getting to the Truth
Humanity's Dilemma
The Philosopher's Quest
The Historian's Centerpiece
The Believer's Treasure

Appendix A: Questions and Answers on Atheism and Theism

A compelling section of Q&A from the Veritas Lectures Zacharias gave at Harvard University.

Appendix B: Mentors to the Skeptic

Brief biographies of the philosophers most quoted in the text: Rene Descartes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, and Jean-Paul Sartre.

From the Notes: Authors/Books Zeteo Wants to Read Further

Some of these I've read in their entirety, some in part, others I heard of for the first time by reading this book:

Angeles, Peter; Critiques of God
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich; “Who am I?” from Letters and Papers from Prison
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer
Borne, Etienne; Atheism
Brown, Colin; Philosophy and the Christian Faith
Browning, Christopher; Ordinary Men
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Browning
Bultmann, Rudolf
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bultmann%2C_Rudolf
Chapian, Marie; Of Whom the World was not Worthy
Chesterton, G.K.; Orthodoxy and As I was Saying
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton
Descartes, Rene
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rene_Descartes
Edwards, Paul; Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Edwards
Frankl, Viktor; The Doctor and the Soul: Introduction to Logotherapy
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl
Freud, Sigmund; “Timely Thoughts on War and Death”
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud
Geisler, Norman; Is Man the Measure? and Christian Apologetics and Philosophy of Religion
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Geisler
Gould, Stephen Jay
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould
Hawking, Stephen; A Brief History of Time
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_hawking
Heidegger, Martin
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger
Hume, David; “My Own Life” and Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Treatise of Human Nature
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume
Huxley, Aldus; Ends and Means
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldus_Huxley
Huxley, T. H.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Henry_Huxley
Johnson, Phillip; Darwin on Trial
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_E._Johnson
Kant, Immanuel; Critique of Pure Reason
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kant
Kaufmann, Walter; The Faith of a Heretic
Kierkegaard, Soren
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kierkegaard
Kreeft, Peter; The Snakebite Letters
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kreeft
Lewis, C.S.; The Problem of Pain and Mere Christianity and Beyond Personality
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_s_lewis
MacIntyre, Alasdair; After Virtue
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alasdair_Macintyre
MacQuarrie, Jon; An Existential Theology: A Comparison of Heidegger and Bultmann
McGrath, Alister; Intellectuals Don't Need God
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alister_McGrath
Miller, Kenneth R.; “Life's Grand Design” in Technology Review
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Miller
Moreland, J.P. And Nielsen, Kai; Does God Exist?
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.P._Moreland
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Nielsen
Morely, Christopher
Mowrer, Hobart
Muggeridge, Malcolm; The Green Stick: A Chronicle of Wasted Years and Jesus Rediscovered and A Twentieth Century Testimony
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Muggeridge
Murdoch, Iris; The Sovereignty of Good
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Murdoch
Murray O'Hair, Madalyn; What on Earth is an Atheist?
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madalyn_Murray_O%27Hair
Nietzsche, Friedrich W.; “The Madman” in The Portable Nietzsche
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzsche
Pascal, Blaise; Pensees and The Mind on Fire
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal
Polanyi, Michael; Meaning
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Polanyi
Polkinghorne, John; One World
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Polkinghorne
Russell, Bertrand
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell
Sartre, Jean-Paul
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sartre
Schopenhauer, Arthur; Don't You Believe It
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer
Stein, Gordon; An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism
Willard, Dallas
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Willard

Kent Hovind: The Complete Encounter

2006-03-01T13:47:00.000-05:00

I intended to give this post more time and thought, but I owe it to those posters on Pharyngula and UTI - who generously answered my request for ideas - to convey a record of my encounter with the consummate showman of the young-earth Creationsists, Kent Hovind. (My boss reads my blog, so, for the record, this was written over a long lunch, off the clock…)

First, a bit about my background. For those of you that don’t believe that an indoctrinated YEC mind can muster the intellectual velocity to escape the orbit of a fundamentalist upbringing, I am the exception. I was home schooled and home churched throughout my childhood and adolescence in an isolated environment of fundamentalist doctrine and Biblical literalism. My science education was learned physically at the feet of Ken Ham, Henry Morris, John Morris, and Russell Humphreys. Their word was my confidence; their books, an extension to my Bible.

Enlightenment began for me at 16, when I entered college early, as many home schooled students do – academically ahead in all aspects except turning a trained intellect on the Bible. A complete biography of my de-conversion will wait for another post, but suffice it to say that now I consider myself an honest agnostic religiously and a methodological naturalist scientifically (Yes, that means I “believe” in evolution).

With this background, I entered the Hovind talk with no small amount of roiling emotion welling in my gut. I was five minutes late to the talk, and the 450 seat auditorium in our student center was packed to the aisles and walkways with at least 500 people – standing, sitting on stairs, listening from outside the auditorium. The church busses and vans outside betrayed that people had traveled from several surrounding counties for their science lesson, many, I’m sure, receiving “credit” in their home/church schools for attending. A vote requested by Kent at the beginning revealed a 75% pro-Creationist audience.

Kent did not stray from his usual talking points. These have been well-described at http://www.kent-hovind.com and http://www.talkorigins.org . He spoke only for 75 minutes before stopping to use the rest of the session for Q&A – a straight 3 hours!

Ah, the stupidity of the students who came to the mic! They came ill-prepared with their sophomore-level understanding of science and evolution and played right into the hand of the master performer who deftly redirected the audience with his 1000 PowerPoint slides – with the same vapid, well-worn answers for every evidence for evolution – ready with the click of a hyperlink to redefine any given question to fit the answer for which he had colorfully, graphically prepared. These kids did not realize they were dealing with a master manipulator and a very intelligent man who knows how to anticipate questions, redefine them into straw men, and burn them at the stake to the delighted cries and laughter of his self assured, uneducated audience.

I thus decided to take a different tactic. Knowing the audience to be predominantly YECs, I chose to draw upon my experience within that mindset to drive a wedge between him and more respected YEC thinkers. I thought this might get a few people to realize that hell does not await all those who counter Kent; lots of well-respected Christians do, without the expected lightning from heaven.

My conversation went thusly, as best I remember. He interrupted me during each sentence, so it did not come off this cleanly. The only actual quotes are in quotes. My comments in [].

ZE: Creation science, as you’ve described it, is largely an observational science…

KH: Oh, no it’s not. [Begins rapidly flipping around his PowerPoint slides]

ZE: Observational sciences include the practice of creating hypotheses that best fit observations and checking those hypotheses for accuracy based on how well they fit existing and new evidence. It is on that basis they are accepted or rejected.

KH: [Motioning to his slide showing the Wright Flyer] The Wright brothers were Creationists and they were the first to fly. That’s not observational science.

ZE: That is completely off topic. The creation science you’ve been discussing has to do with the age of the earth. That is observational.

KH: OK.

ZE: Please give me three examples of creation science ideas or hypotheses that you have rejected on the basis of a close examination of observed evidence. [Intending to show that he does not apply any critical thinking to the evidences he uses for a young earth – anything works as long as it makes the earth look young.]

KH: There are many evidences for a young earth. [He then went, slides and all, into a discussion of the Recession of the Moon argument.]

ZE: That’s based on a flawed model that assumes a constant rate of the moon’s orbit extending [a bit more back and forth]. But it’s off topic. Let me be more specific. In your talk you claimed that the speed of light has changed throughout history to prove that distant supernovas are less than 6000 years old. You also quoted Dr. Russell Humphreys' Creationist work, Starlight and Time, to prove the same point. Humphreys assumes that both general and special relativity are accurate – a point you discount in your educational material – and that the speed of time is constant and has been throughout history. Which is right? Is it constant or not?

KH: Humphreys is wrong, the speed of light has changed.

ZE: On the basis of what evidence?

KH: [Flipping back through his presentation] All these physicists who say the speed of light has changed.

ZE: Then why did you quote both to support your argument? Humphreys is a member of a Creationist group, Answers in Genesis, that has several web pages dedicated to debunking the science that you use.

KH: They shouldn’t do that. I think they should take them down. [And, upon further inspection, I think they have.] It comes down to this: “I’m right and they are wrong.” [A direct quote, emphasis mine.]

ZE: On the basis of what? They have trained scientists such as Kurt Wise from Harvard and Russell Humphreys – you have a degree from Patriot University!

KH: OK, now you’re doing an ad hominem attack. [Motions to cut off my mic.]

ZE: It’s not ad hominem since you just established yourself as the only basis of authority for your claim! I'm attacking the authority you established! [Realizing my mic is off, I get very angry and return to my seat.]

Again, the exchange was not this clean, and, I must admit, I made the mistake of getting angry in the face of his ever-smiling, happily-defending-the-faith visage. I got stuck winning the logic, but losing my composure. In all, I think most people got lost due to his indirections. Note that by appealing to the authority of better educated Creationists, I was not agreeing with them, just establishing them as a more respected source for the audience to use as a basis for critical thinking within their insulated minds.

And it worked. The end result was that I was treated afterwards by the exiting audience as a source of counterpoint to what they had just heard. I spoke to at least 10 people – both students of evolutionary biology who were confused about what they had just experienced and YEC kids who ranged from inquisitive to belligerent – about my alternative point of view. I pointed lots of folks to good websites. It may be a minor victory, but one that means a lot to me, since my mind was similarly opened by taking the first baby steps towards independent, critical thinking.

In closing, a few comments to those YECs that read my blog. When you see a guy like Kent Hovind, meditate for a moment about where you are putting your faith. Are you really putting your faith in the literal truth of Genesis, or are you putting it in the perceived confidence of an intelligent showman? As you leave the show, are you on an emotional high or an intellectual high? Will you follow up? Please read the Index to Creationist Claims on Talk Origins. Then answer me this one question. If you claim to believe by faith the literal accounts of Genesis that can be and have been demonstrated false by Christian and Atheist scientists alike, why should rational thinkers listen when you claim to put the same faith in Jesus for the sake of salvation? If your faith is tested this one way and fails, why should any thinking person believe you when you claim, by faith, anything else? Please consider the damage you are doing to a faith that, in my opinion, has a lot more to offer than rhetoric, illogic, and misdirection.

My Question for Kent Hovind

2006-03-01T00:35:00.000-05:00

It will have to suffice for now to say that my question was good enough for me to be the only guy up there who got his mic turned off because Kent didn't like what I was saying.

I have to calm down now because I'm so angry at this Kent Hovind guy. Not only did he not listen to my valid questions, he told my wife that she and I had to leave the auditorium at MY SCHOOL because after the talk we were standing around answering the questions of the Campus Crusaders in whose minds new neurons had fired based on the points I brought up. We did not leave.

In all, I suppose I was successful in getting a few folks to think in a novel way. I'm on vacation from my full-time work and full-time school schedule next week, and I'll try to find time to blog more completely then.

More on Kent Hovind...

2006-02-27T17:58:00.000-05:00

I have been doing some reading. Clearly the best page rebutting Kent Hovind specifically is http://www.kent-hovind.com/ -- I highly recommend it.

From their page, http://www.kent-hovind.com/puzzling.htm , I borrow the following questions:

* Why are "99%" of the public figures, speakers, evangelists of the Young Earth Movement white males? Where are the women? Where are the Asians, African Americans, etc?

* Why do all Biblical Literalists with science training testify they became a Literalist before their "science" confirmed their position? For example, why are no Young Earth geologists stating, "I came to believe in a young Earth because my data kept returning an age of less than 10,000 years but I didn't change my religious position until later"? In other words, why does the religious conversion always occur before the "science"?

* Why don't Young Earth Creationist websites (eg AIG, ICR) provide links to mainstream museums, science publications or general science knowledge?

* Why are the major Young Earth Creationist organizations (ICR, AIG) based in the United States of America?

* Why is there no attempt at discovering the actual process of Creation by followers of Creation Science? Does this reluctance make the phrase Creation Science an oxymoron?

* Why do those Young Earth Creationist organizations which claim to be applying science (ICR, AIG) demand members sign contracts with the clauses like, "By definition, no apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record."

* Why are there no companies listed on a stock exchange which use Young Earth geology to explore for oil and gas?

Kent Hovind on Campus

2006-02-27T15:05:00.000-05:00

Kent Hovind is visiting my campus soon (I'm working on a PhD in Computer Engineering), and to prepare for attending his speech on Biblical Creationism, I sent a question to two high-profile bloggers, Brent Rasmussen and Dr. P.Z. Myers. To my surprise and delight, both of them posted my question about what they would ask "Dr" Hovind, given 15 seconds in which to ask it. See their blogs, UTI and Pharyngula, for lots of interesting comments.

Back to the Sophia/Gnosos discussion soon, I promise...

Gnosos/Sophia Cross-Blog Discussion

2006-02-08T18:34:00.000-05:00

Pablo P from Sophia, a philosophy blog that takes more of a mainstream Christian approach to many of the same topics discussed on Gnosos, has engaged me in an interesting discussion regarding my post on the root of my agnosticism. See his comment there, then check out a couple of his other articles: first, Ethics Discarded, then The Existence of God. (Click the [+] to expand his articles.) These are concise summaries of the Christian perspective on ethics and arguments for the existence of God.

I'm reading through them now, and I will be commenting on each of these in a near-future post.

More on the Supernatural

2006-02-03T16:57:00.000-05:00

There are some comments worth reading that were recently published at the bottom of my post on the Root of My Agnosticism , including a response from me.

Since I like to keep record of what I've written, I'm posting my response to Amanda's comment here:

Perhaps I was a bit unclear in my reasoning regarding a few of the arguments for God's existence.

My discussions of the "Moral Argument" were intended to comprise a rejection of it. I listed Ravi Zacharias' claims as those with which I disagree. I will grant that an absence of God does change the way many people look at Law, Hope, and Meaning. Nonetheless, a human desire for absolute law, hope for the future, and meaning to our lives does not necessitate God, as RZ seems to argue in the linked sermons and in his book Can Man Live Without God. This amounts to wishing God into existence because he would be the last piece of our law/hope/meaning puzzles. I reject the argument as wishful thinking.

My point about the cosmological argument was that the very concept of causation depends entirely on the meaning of time. The foundation of the cause/effect relationship is removed when time cannot be used as a descriptor. With space and time unequivocally linked since Einstein, there is no meaning to the phrase "before the beginning of the universe." To describe what happened before the universe ( e.g., to describe the cause of the universe) is to describe what happened before time. Again, you cannot have a concept of "before" without the concept of time. Thus, the cosmological argument dissolves into meaninglessness as soon as you begin to describe the cause that existed before the universe.

Now to the teleological argument. You mentioned that you "cannot believe that such intricacy came out of chaos in the way that philosophical evolution mandates." This is one where, I must admit, I do not have a firm answer. I am an engineer professionally and academically (BS, MS, working on a PhD). The only means I have of understanding complexity is through deliberate design. However, the field of biology works with different materials (life), leverages different design influences (natural selection, mutation), and has only one metric for success (survival through reproduction). While I am not fully convinced of these mechanisms' ability to create the living complexity around us, I am not a biologist; I am putting a lot of thought to this now. Aside from evolution, the question of abiogenesis - a completely separate field of thought - must also be considered.

However, I recognize that my position - and yours - amount to a logical fallacy: the argument from personal incredulity. Just because we do not currently understand how something could happen does not mean that it did not occur. To claim that life neither sprang from non-living elements (abiogenesis) nor gradually shaped itself into the natural world as we know it (evolution) simply because we do not understand how it could have happened is not a strong argument. Thus, to find a more satisfactory answer, I am seeking, reading, and pondering.

In short, I do not think we are on the same page with respect to your concluding points 1-3 in your final paragraph. The arguments - moral, cosmological, and teleological - break down into wishful thinking, misapplied logic, and a mystery, respectively. So, hope for a successful argument for the existence of God does lie in the argument from miracles alone, unsupported by the others listed. The others are wrong, inconclusive, or do not lead to God.

The reliability of the Bible is an enormous field. Questions include: Was it reproduced and translated correctly from the original autographs? Did the various councils of Christian fathers (e.g. Council of Nicea) make the correct choices in determining the cannon of scripture? Does it describe historically verifiable events correctly? These are all important, and very well addressed by the references you mention. However, this does not address where I am stuck.

For the sake of brevity, let's grant that the Bible we have is exactly what was written by the original authors, all the books included in it are exclusively the correct ones with no omissions, and that it is generally accurate in describing testable historical events ( e.g., city locations, who was a ruler and when, wars, etc.). This still does nothing to establish a precedent to believe the Biblical authors when they make claims about the supernatural. Fallacies could have been correctly reproduced throughout history in a document that records a mostly accurate secular history of events interwoven with tales of the supernatural. Just because the book was reproduced correctly does not mean that what is being reproduced is true. Just because the book describes wars and rulers to within reasonable limits of accuracy does not mean that when it begins to describe the supernatural, we should believe it on these points as well.

A review of my original post reveals my position that the supernatural can only be understood through experience. We have two means of acquiring knowledge as human beings: reason and experience. The supernatural is something that by definition defies reason -- the only explanation for the supernatural is something outside the reasonable, natural world. There does not exist a process rooted solely in reason that can have us understand the resurrection of a dead man. Thus, I make the case that experiencing a miracle is the only means by which we can acquire knowledge of a miracle or supernatural event. Having not experienced the miracles - including the resurrection of Christ - I claim that there is no means through reason that one can gain knowledge of them, and thus belief in them. Therefore, I do not believe in the supernatural, having neither experienced it nor been given reason to believe in it.

Design Arguments from the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics

2006-01-03T16:07:00.000-05:00

A common design argument relates to the concept that abiogenesis and evolution violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics. (Often unfortunately lost in the discussion is the distiction between abiogenesis and evolution by natural selection, however.)

An excellent example of the arguments for and against this concept are found here:

Argument for: Evolution's Thermodynamic Failure, By Granville Sewell (PhD, Mathematics)
Argument against: Sewell's Thermodynamic Failure, By Mark Perakh (PhD, Physics)

If you have an 30-60 mins, both articles are worth your time. My take:

Sewell’s claim can be reduced for the general reader. Consider the following, where he quotes himself in the article:

...order can increase in an open system, not because the laws of probability are suspended when the door is open, but simply because order may walk in through the door…. If we found evidence that DNA, auto parts, computer chips, and books entered through the Earth’s atmosphere at some time in the past, then perhaps the appearance of humans, cars, computers, and encyclopedias on a previously barren planet could be explained without postulating a violation of the second law here (it would have been violated somewhere else!). But if all we see entering is radiation and meteorite fragments, it seems clear that what is entering through the boundary cannot explain the increase in order observed here.

His issue is with the fact that the “order” added to the earth — “radiation and meteorite fragments” — does not appear to him to be the kind of order that could generate “humans, cars, computers, and encyclopedias.” He simply does not believe in a process that can change the kind of order added into the kind of order produced. The root of his claim is that any process that could make this change violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Therefore, the point of his article can be reduced to: There is no process that can decrease the entropy of an undeveloped earth in such a way that would result in the biological order around us without violating the second law of thermodynamics.

I think it helps to summarize his hypothesis in this way. Previous criticisms of this hypothesis apply; for the general reader, the criticisms should be similarly summarized.

(Sewell has more articles posted on his son's website.)

The Root of My Agnosticism

2005-12-22T13:32:00.000-05:00

Conversing with me recently, a friend spoke of the demonic encounters of some of his Indonesian classmates. This brings up the idea of the observation of the supernatural. This is an enormous topic, encompassing theological, philosophical, and metaphysical arguments. But it is the crux of why I struggle. I wrote the following in an e-mail to my friend, and I’ve modified it slightly for this post.

This is the most important post I’ve ever left on this blog. I welcome comments.

Allow me, if you will, to attempt to tie a broad philosophical discussion to a single point about the supernatural. If I have any skill as a communicator, I'll get back to this point in a moment. I'm going to attempt to bring up several large areas of philosophy and theology and return to this one -- give me a second, and please try not to get distracted by my rabbit trails. I'll try to bring this all back to a comprehensible, razor's edge conclusion.

I think everyone can agree that there are six categories of arguments for the existence of God. They are:

Ontological Arguments: Arguments from nothing but analytic, a priori and necessary premises to the conclusion that God exists. In other words, the logic of God requires God. (St. Anselm, et al) All other arguments are a posteriori arguments.
Cosmological Arguments: Facts about the world require a God. This encompasses first cause, Kalam, and related arguments. (Aquinas, et al)
Teleological Arguments: Arguments from Design. Creation science and Intelligent Design are the modern incarnations.
Arguments from Miracles. Attestation of divinity claims through the working of supernatural healings, resurrection, etc.
Moral Arguments. C.S. Lewis and Ravi Zacharias really like this one. These arguments center around the necessity of an absolute moral being to create the moral order that, it is argued, is present all around us.
Pragmatic Arguments: The most famous is Pascal's Wager: you're better off believing. This could be excluded from this list, as it makes claims about belief in the existence of God rather than claims directly about the existence of God.

The reason I bring these up is that these arguments are not only used to prove the existence of God, but they are also used by various religions to make claims about their validity -- i.e., the existence of their God/god. It is in this light that I wish to pursue discussion.

While its apologists have used at various times the myriad forms of each argument, the Bible directly makes claims about itself -- or the characters portrayed on its pages -- using four arguments. Let's use the Bible as the source text, rather than apologists or critics:

Moral Argument: God is the lawgiver and "the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good" "the Law is spiritual"
Argument from Miracles: Jesus as God because of healings and resurrection.
Cosmological: God is portrayed as the first/sustaining cause: "In the beginning was the word..."
Teleological: God is the Creator: "In the beginning, God created..." "since the creation of the world... His invisible attributes have been clearly seen... so that [unbelievers] are without excuse"

There are certainly other places in the Bible where these arguments are found. The Ontological argument can be injected into scripture, but only through eisegesis, which all honest readers want to avoid. (Not an attempt to discredit the argument; it is simply not in the Bible.) The Pragmatic argument can be seen in parts ('The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God "' -- a comment about belief rather than for the existence of God). But again, there is more eisegesis than exegesis to be done here.

Thus, in examining the Bible, we are left with four kinds of claims, arguments, or proofs of the truth of the Bible: cosmological, teleological, miraculous, and moral. Note that I am not the one phrasing the argument this way -- this is what the Bible puts forward as its own reason-based claims. [Correct me if I'm wrong at this point, because these are still suppositions leading up to my argument.]

One more supposition. We learn through either reason or experience. Reason encompasses logic, science, etc. Experience includes observation, direct interaction, and, in the dualistic view of the psyche, spiritual experiences. Thus, we are left to examine the claims of the Bible using the same faculties we employ when considering any truth claim: reason and experience.

Now for the broadening of my claim, which will result in the major obstacle between me and complete belief in the Bible:

The necessary use of these faculties requires us to compare what is stated as truth in the Bible to other truths learned by these faculties. This comparison must take place prior to accepting the Bible's claims as absolute truth, otherwise we are being intellectually dishonest. When I therefore turn these -- reason and experience -- on the Bible's truth claims, I come to the following basic conclusions. (These are summaries, not my complete thinking).

Moral Arguments
Faculties available for argumentation: Reason and Experience

There is a lot I could say on this topic that would get us off track -- for instance, is the God of the OT moral in absolute terms? For now, I will focus on a classical formulation of the Moral Argument.

Ravi Zacharias' messages and books on “Why I am not an Atheist (Part 1/2)" and "Is Atheism Dead, Is God Alive? (1/2)" summarize a Biblical Moral Argument for God's existence:

Without God there is no Law -- How else do we define absolutes?
Without God there is no Hope -- Theism answers the question of death.
Without God there is no Meaning -- God supplies meaning to our actions while we live.

While considering his claims, I had the following thoughts, which he never addressed. First, why can we claim that we are owed Law, Hope, or Meaning. Innately, we wish for justice. We want to have eternal hope. We would like to think that our lives mean something. I agree that the theistic world view gives answers to these three neatly, but the bigger question is -- are they the right answers? Life is easier with theistic answers, but who says that we are owed Law, Hope, or Meaning?

His argument strikes me as this: he wishes it so, it gives his life internal consistency, so it must be. Why, other than wishing, are we owed these three? I want to live my life based first on Truth; if Law, Hope, and Meaning fit in with that, so be it. I do not believe in wishing the God of the Bible into existence because he makes my personal world view consistent.

Arguments from Miracles (or, at its root, the supernatural)
Faculties available for argumentation: Experience (reason can only be used indirectly)

Miracles are acts that must be experienced to believe. Reason cannot be used to compel a person to believe in them since by their very definition they are contrary to reason. My friend’s Indonesian buddies believe in the supernatural because of their claim to have directly observed it. New Testament believers commonly found faith due to the direct observation of a disciple or Jesus performing a supernatural wonder. Others at the time disbelieved these because they did not directly observe them. Arguments, such as the argument that the disciples died for claiming belief in the miracle of the resurrection, are indirect uses of reason to describe a miraculous event -- not a direct reasonable argument for miracles.

Thus to believe in the miraculous (or the supernatural), I have to experience it directly. I do not believe I ever have. I have prayed throughout my life to witness the supernatural or a miracle, because I believe that this is a huge barrier to my belief. I am one of those for whom God has allotted a small measure of faith, and I need, like Thomas, to see before I believe. I'll pass on the extra helping of blessing granted to those who believe without seeing to gain the smallest foothold in the world of belief. For now, though, I find it hard to believe in the supernatural or in miracles.

Cosmological Arguments
Faculties available for argumentation: Reason (you cannot experience logic)

Cosmological arguments have at their root the logic of the world around us. There are attributes of the universe -- for instance the relationship between space and time -- that make it logically feasible that space and time require a cause or starting point (creation/big bang/the beginning of time), but something outside the universe and the constraints of the space/time relationship does not. This is effectively a little cosmology + the Kalam Cosmological argument. Whatever is outside space and time cannot be described by this argument, though -- and likely it could never be understood by beings who operate within space and time. Thus, attributing first cause to something outside space and time does not lead us to God -- it leads us only outside space and time.

Teleological Arguments
Faculties available for argumentation: Reason (you cannot understand design through experience)

This, of course, is where the Young-Earth Creationist (YEC) interpretation of the Bible finds a mass of incongruence with just about every area that science has ever observed. I do not believe in a massive conspiracy against the literal interpretation of Genesis. I believe that theories about the age of the earth and universe and the nature of biology and evolution are correct according to the simplest explanations of observed attributes of our world. These explanations change as we gain more knowledge, but they typically change further away from the YEC account with each new observation of the world.

My YEC friends and I could write forever back and forth and never solve this, but let me say this: there is ample reason within the Biblical text to believe in a non-scientifically-literal Genesis creation account. First, the Creation account in Genesis is a poem; second... we could go on about this forever. I'm sure by now some have written me off as a God-hating, left-wing, atheistic, baby-eating, Christmas-warring, free-loving, all-colors-of-the-rainbow-of-thought-accepting, Bush-bashing liberal (I am not), but I actually don't believe that arguments from design must be thrown out due to the success of evolutionary theory.

On the other hand, I haven't found a theory of design that leads directly to the Bible's God. The engineer in me, though, has trouble seeing the weak anthropic principle, design in nature, and order throughout the cosmos without thinking that something started this whole space/time arrangement in our universe. Nonetheless, this observaion (I do not say conclusion yet) does not lead us exclusively to the truth of the Bible.

So, I promised that I would go from broad to narrow and make a single point. Here's my best shot. This is where I get back to my discussion of my friend’s Indonesian friends' supernatural observations.

My point: of all the arguments for the existence of God, the only one that leads a person to the God of the Bible is the argument from Miracles. Moral arguments, cosmological arguments, and teleological arguments can lead a person to a God-concept or a moral absolute, but not to the God of the Bible. Proving what you are asserting through demonstrations of the supernatural that augment and agree with your other truth claims about God necessarily shows a uniqueness to your claim when compared to other truth claims about God. Thus, I agree with the Bible in that the most comprehensive way for Jesus to prove his deity was through just these kinds of demonstrations, culminating with the resurrection.

Another reason why the argument from miracles is so important is that it makes all the other arguments fall into place. It grants a person to the God of the teleological and cosmological arguments and a face to the moral absolute of moral arguments. Without it, everything is in the abstract.

My problem is that these miraculous demonstrations were experienced by others, not me. These others include the gospel writers, those in Jesus' time who claim to have witnessed these miracles, and those in my time, like the Indonesian guys, who claim to have experienced the supernatural in a manner consistent with the Bible's description. The only "learning faculty" I can therefore bring to bear on these claims is my reason, and these claims fly in the face of reason. There is no means of reasoning your way into believing these unreasonable claims without, as mentioned before, sacrificing your intellectual honesty by accepting the Bible as true from the outset.

This is where I'm stuck.

I have never experienced the supernatural in a manner consistent with the Bible's description; thus, I do not believe.

Demons in the OT, Concluded

2005-12-22T13:25:00.000-05:00

I think the error in my previous thinking can be pin-pointed to one mistake: narrowing the definition of a demon to being 'a supernatural being capable of possession.' With that as the strict definition, there are not demons in the Old Testament. Understanding possession as a new behavior from an old kind of supernatural being clears this up. Demons existed in the old testament, but they exhibited different -- but closely related -- behaviors.

Demons in the Old Testament, Part 2

2005-12-16T14:49:00.000-05:00

I've put a bit more thought into this, and I think I've found a reasonable means of reconciling the Jews' acceptance of the concept of demons with the OT teachings on the supernatural.

Many point to King Saul's interaction with a spirit as evidence of demon possession in the OT. However, Saul was not possessed in 1 Sam 16. An evil spirit from "God"/"the LORD" "terrorized him". I think that is very different. There is some question as to whether the being tormenting Saul was evil by nature (a demon), since it was performing the will of God. This could get down to the theology of God's moral will vs sovereign will, but a direct reading leads me to believe that God commanded it. Nonetheless, the point is, this was not a possession.

A second point: in my thinking, though, this encounter is still important. It establishes precedent for a hierarchy of supernatural beings -- beyond just God + Satan -- that Jews of the Jesus' time would recognize. While possession does not have a direct precedent, the existence of these beings does. The Jews could, at the very least, use Saul's encounter with the supernatural as a warning to be aware of both good and evil supernatural beings at work in the world. Nowhere does the OT claim that it enumerates the entire bag of tricks available to these beings -- but it does mention them. Possession is a new behavior from a known set of beings.

Possession, then, once granted as a real, observed occurrence, would naturally be recognized by the Jews as the work of supernatural beings somewhere lower on the org chart than God. If "demon" was the best word to describe it at the time, so be it. No big deal -- a word, not a theological concept, was borrowed.

There is still some contingency in this conclusion, but this is a summation of my current thinking.

Demons in the Old Testament

2005-12-02T15:27:00.000-05:00

At the weekly Bible study I still attend, we are studying Luke. We recently came across Luke's first account of Jesus casting a demon out of a person. While reading it, I had the thought that demons -- in the sense of evil spirits capable of possessing a person and thereby controlling their actions -- did not exist in the Old Testament. Rather, they appear suddenly and without introduction in the New Testament. The Gospel writers mention them as if their readers are well-aware of them.

Questioning my study leader about this (and, admittedly, demonology was not the topic of the study, so I didn't expect a thorough answer), he said about the same thing I suspected: the Greek/Roman cultures at the time had well-developed beliefs about good and bad demons. Thus, they needed no intro.

This bothers me, though. It smacks of the naturalistic view of the evolution of religion to claim that Christianity assimilated the idea of demons from outside cultures and integrated Greek/Roman religion into its theology. It seems to feed the critics.

A good study on Demons in the Old Testament is found here. It concludes,

[T]here is no Hebrew word that can be translated as "demons" with the semantic range of that word in English. There does lie behind the Old Testament conception a basic animistic and mythological world view with which the Israelites are in dialog. But they are using the terms and in dialog with such conceptions, not because they accept them or are dominated by them, but precisely to deny the validity of such mythological world views. The biblical writers use the terms not to accept what they represent but precisely to reject it. It is clear that there was a popular belief among Israelites in such things as ghosts and the mythological creatures of Canaanite religion. But the biblical tradition as it stands moves beyond such popular mythological conceptions to a vision of a Creator, a sovereign God who is in sole control of the world, and does not share that with anything or anyone. So again, there are no "demons" in the Old Testament, only idols that are rejected as "no-gods."

Additionally, God is said to have at his disposal spirits that he can dispatch for various purposes, but possessing demons that operate as independent malignant beings are never mentioned. In OT terms, such beings seem to fall into the "no-gods"/"mythological world view" category, which means that OT believers would not even recognize them as existing. Why do they all of the sudden appear, if not because the people's understanding and preconceptions of the supernatural have evolved?

One of the guys at the Bible study posited that demons became active only around the time of Christ because Satan was waging a spiritual war when the time was ripe for fighting (i.e., when Jesus was around and Christianity was getting started). However, that is still taking a developed Christian demonology and looking backwards at the situation. At the time, why did the Jews -- the only ones who had received God's revealed word -- even accept the concept of a demon, unless they had adopted it from other religions?

If they adopted the idea from other religions, the apologist is stuck. Either he has to admit (1) there was an incompleteness in God's revealed word at the time that had to be filled in with knowledge from other religions or (2) the Greek/Roman demon concept was actually incorrect, though the Bible includes it.

Let me bend my mind around that one for a while to see if there are other options...

Outlining Lee Strobel's Case for Christ

2005-11-08T17:19:00.000-05:00

I am right now listening to the audiobook version of Lee Strobel's A Case for Christ. I am outlining the book as I listen to it. I will flesh out the outline as I progress through the book:

Outline of Lee Strobel's A Case for Christ

By Zeteo Eurisko

The book is comprised of several interviews with many of conservative Christendom's most noted scholars. These are my uncritical notes, taken simply to ensure that I understand the major points of the book.

Part 1. Examining the Record

1. The Eyewitness Evidence: Can the biographies of Jesus be trusted? (Dr. Craig Blomberg)
2. Testing the Eyewitness Evidence: Do the biographies of Jesus stand up to scrutiny? (Dr. Craig Blomberg)
3. The Documentary Evidence: Were Jesus' biographies reliably preserved for us? (Dr. Bruce Metzger)
4. The Corroborating Evidence: Is there credible evidence for Jesus outside his biographies? (Dr. Edwin Yamauchi)
5. The Scientific Evidence: Does archeology confirm or contradict Jesus' biographies? (Dr. John McRay)
6. The Rebuttal Evidence: Is the Jesus of history the same as the Jesus of faith? (Dr. Gregory Boyd)

Part 2. Analyzing Jesus

7. The Identity Evidence: Was Jesus really convinced that he was the son of God? (Dr. Ben Witherington III)
8. The Psychological Evidence: Was Jesus crazy when he claimed to be the son of God? (Dr. Gary Collins)
9. The Profile Evidence: Did Jesus fulfill the attributes of God? (Dr. D.A. Carson)
10. The Fingerprint Evidence: Did Jesus – and Jesus alone – match the identity of the messiah? (Louis Lapides, M.Div., Th.M.)

Part 3. Researching the Resurrection

11. The Medical Evidence: Was Jesus' death a sham and his resurrection a hoax? (Dr. Alexander Metherell)
12. The Evidence of the Missing Body: Was Jesus' body really absent from his tomb? (Dr. William Lane Craig)
13. The Evidence of Appearances: Was Jesus seen alive after his death on the cross? (Dr. Gary Habermas)
14. The Circumstantial Evidence: Are there any supporting facts that point to the resurrection? (Dr. J.P. Moreland)

Conclusion: The Verdict of History

* What does the evidence establish – and what does it mean today?

Why (Ravi Zacharias) is not an Atheist

2005-11-01T11:23:00.000-05:00

After not posting for a long time, I'm back. I listened through four 30-minute MP3's worth of Ravi Zacharias' messages on "Why I am not an Atheist, 1 & 2" and "Is Atheism Dead, Is God Alive? 1 & 2". In these two talks he makes the following main points:

Without God there is no Law -- How else do we define absolutes?
Without God there is no Hope -- Theism answers the question of death.
Without God there is no Meaning -- God supplies meaning to our actions while we live.

In the "Not an atheist" talk he adds to these a fourth -- "Without God there is no Recovery." By this he posits the classic Pascal's Wager argument that after guessing against God and being wrong -- going to Hell to burn for all eternity -- there's no chance for recovery.

While listening to both of these, I had the following thoughts, which he never addressed. First, why can we claim that we are owed Law, Hope, or Meaning. Innately, we wish for justice. We want to have eternal hope. We would like to think that our lives mean something.

I agree that the theistic worldview gives answers to these three neatly, but the bigger question is -- are they the right answers? Life is easier with theistic answers, but who says that we are owed Law, Hope, or Meaning? His argument strikes me as this: he wishes it so, it gives his life internal consistency, so it must be. Why, other than wishing, are we owed these three?

A second comment is this: he defines all atheists as positive atheists. It's easy to attack a positive atheist who claims definitively that there is no God. It's harder to address the position of an agnostic who claims we don't know if there is a God.

Finally, a comment on Pascal's Wager. If we bet for God, and there is none, then we have spent our entire lives striving for a false religion while never stopping to appreciate that what we have now is all there is or will ever be. I'm not solving the argument of God/no God, its just an observation.

Faith as a Selective Advantage

2005-05-02T16:38:00.000-05:00

I've been reading through the responses to The World Question Center's Edge Annual Question: What do you believe even though you cannot prove it? While many of the responses have been interesting reading, the response from Dr. Randolf Nesse, a Psychiatrist, was particularly insightful and thought-provoking. He postulates that faith is a selective advantage:

I can't prove it, but I am pretty sure that people gain a selective advantage from believing in things they can't prove. I am dead serious about this. People who are sometimes consumed by false beliefs do better than those who insist on evidence before they believe and act. People who are sometimes swept away by emotions do better in life than those who calculate every move. These advantages have, I believe, shaped mental capacities for intense emotion and passionate beliefs because they give a selective advantage in certain situations.
I am not advocating for irrationality or extreme emotionality. Many, perhaps even most problems of individuals and groups arise from actions based on passion. The Greek initiators and Enlightenment implementers recognized correctly that the world would be better off if reason displaced superstition and crude emotion. I have no interest in going back on that road and fundamentalism remains a severe threat to enlightened civilization. I am arguing, however, that if we want to understand these tendencies we need to quit dismissing them as defects and start considering how they came to exist.

For the full article, follow this link: http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html#nesse

I may post more about some of the other interesting responses.

Can Man Live Without God?

2005-04-09T14:07:00.000-05:00

I'm reading a book called "Can Man Live Without God?" by the Christian apologist [1] Ravi Zacharias. I'm intrigued that his premise in the introduction of the book addresses the frustration of those such as myself, who feel the church broadcasts so much anti-intellectualism. This thought is expressed in the second of these two paragraphs, in which he describes the purpose of the book:

Though proud skepticism is rife in academic bastions, the human spirit still longs for something more. This tension must be addressed, especially at this time of cultural upheaval, and it is imperative that the answers [Christians] espouse meet not only the intimations of the heart but the demands of the mind. Here the greatest question of our time must be considered: Can man live without God? It must be answered not only by those who are avowedly antitheistic, but also by the many who functionally live as if there were no God and that His existence does not matter.

But in all fairness, there is another side to this story, justifiably provoking the contempt of the skeptic. Much of what has passed for the Christian message has been nothing more than frothy God-talk -- mindless, thoughtless, and in its exploitation of people, heartless. This, too, will not do. Just as so much of antitheistic thinking when scrutinized is sensically impoverished, so also much religious verbiage, seeped in emotional drivel and bereft of reason, can be tossed at unsuspecting audiences in the name of orthodoxy. The ruinous end of the latter, in its destruction of lives plundered materially and spiritually, may be greater than the ideas perpetrated by the openly cynical. Is there an answer to all of this? I sincerely trust there is. And it is to find that common ground of interaction that this material is presented.

(Italics mine)

I've been openly skeptical of other Christian apologists, but, I must admit, Zacharias' straightforwardness and balance in reasoning is disarming. I'll post further thoughts on this text as I explore it further.

1. For those that don't know, the term "apologist" comes from the Greek word meaning "defender," in the sense of a defense attorney. A Christian apologist is one who "defends the faith."

Anthropic Principle, Revisited

2005-04-09T12:48:00.000-05:00

Thinking further about the theistic view of the Anthropic Principle (that fine-tuning of the universe for the purpose of life points to a Creator), I read an article called "Has Science Found God?" by Victor J. Stenger, an athiest and secular humanist.

One point I thought interesting:

To [the theist], the big bang provides "evidence" that creation took place in time - just as in the biblical (that is, Babylonian) myth. Something cannot come from nothing, and so the universe needs a creator. That the creator must have come from nothing is finessed away. God is a different "logical type" than the universe - a type that does not require creation. Theologians do not make clear why the universe itself cannot be of this logical type.

To a mind trained in Christianity, this rings of "worshipping the creation, not the Creator." Not that this simplistic statement is intended as an argument that debunks his claim, I just think it's interesting that throughout history the concept of a creator god was pitted against those who worshipped the sun, moon, or rain or saw meaning in the stars. Now, the creator concept goes up against thinkers who place the Universe on the top of the heap as the ultimate "being." In an odd way, not much has changed.

That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9

Stenger's full article here.

An e-mail conversation with friends, Part 6

2005-04-09T12:43:00.000-05:00

Pistos responds to my quick e-mail:

Zeteo,

Thank you for your email. I wanted to get mine out earlier, but better late then never. I really appreciate your openness and honesty about your feelings. And am very glad to hear that you have been listening (and letting it sink in sometimes :) to Ravi. And I am much happier about labeling you a seeking and confused theist than an outright agnostic.

>>Zeteo Wrote>> How do I know if the roots of my intellectual doubt are moral in nature? Even if they are, do the questions themselves become any less relevant? The simple presence of sin in my life does not prove, even when working in a Christian framework, that the questions are rooted in moral shortcomings, for Christians sin as well. Why does the source make a difference in the validity of a question about a truth claim?

I believe that this is a huge issue. And to be honest, I'm not sure if there is any "three step method for determining the root of intellectual doubt." Habermas actually wrote a book on it (if I remember right) as he experienced doubt after the death of his wife. However, I think that to the extent you can distinguish your intellectual questions from your moral / emotional experiences, you will be more at ease.

Why does the source of doubt make a difference in the validity of a question about a truth claim? Good question! What are your thoughts? If nothing else, if your doubt is really biased on emotion / moral issues, then all the "truth" in the world won't help take away the doubt. So is there a moral (or immoral) source for your doubt? Maybe even if it isn't something you are struggling with at the moment but before when the doubt started? If nothing else, I know that for me, my flirtations with doubt have been when I wanted to serve #1 and not God (which is really what I meant about serving two masters). I believe we all have a tendency to rebel against authority, and God is the ultimate authority. Is that really the risk you want to take though? We are born into the enemy camp. We want to serve ourselves. That's what it means to be a sinner. So if our "doubt" isn't biased on the validity of a truth claim (which sounds and feels so pure and nice) but really on a desire to ditch God's authority in our life (which is probably more like it and doesn't altruistic at all) then I doubt we can end up agreeing about a truth claim regardless of the evidence.

As to Christians sinning, of course we do! :) Not that I'm proud about it. But at least we know (even if we don't always act like it) where we should go to deal with our sin (which is the cross, surprise, the same place we all need to go). Personally, I have found that the less time I spend seeking God (and this is as a Christian) the more I end up sinning and the more I feel far from God and start to doubt and sin more and feel farther.... I suppose its like any other relationship.

>>Zeteo Wrote>> Anyway, this was meant to be a simple e-mail expressing my gratitude for your attention. There's just so much I feel I want to say when I know there is an ear that is listening to me.

Again, thank you as well for being open to me. I'm here. I'll listen, and I'm praying too. If it helps, I'm glad.

>>Zeteo Wrote>> I'll get back to the matter of the resurrection. I'm reading the link you mentioned. Makes me want material by Craig, considering the reverence the atheistic author seems to have for him.

Craig has a web site, and although it could use some updating in format, at least there is some information there.

Yours,

Pistos

An e-mail conversation with friends, Part 5

2005-04-09T12:37:00.000-05:00

This e-mail from me does not address everything from Pistos' last e-mail. Just a quick one:

Pistos,

Without the time to address everything in your e-mail, let me thank you for engaging me in this. I've felt so alone in this struggle for so long. [… 2 personal sentences omitted …] I have literally obsessed 24/7 about this issue since our conversation.

I think I may have found a proper definition of an apologist. Paraphrasing a podcast (http://www.rzim.org/radio/radio.php) by Ravi Zacharias whose archives I've been listening through, the job of a Christian apologist is to remove the intellectual obstacles of a seeker in order to let the seeker see that their problems are moral, and no longer intellectual, in nature. I feel like I've been playing both apologist and seeker for myself for quite some time. My claim now is simply that I cannot be both, and I should most accurately be called a seeker.

How do I know if the roots of my intellectual doubt are moral in nature? Even if they are, do the questions themselves become any less relevant? The simple presence of sin in my life does not prove, even when working in a Christian framework, that the questions are rooted in moral shortcomings, for Christians sin as well. Why does the source make a difference in the validity of a question about a truth claim?

Another comment on our Saturday discussion: You're right, I'm not an Agnostic in the purest definition of the word. I am a Theist. I am agnostic not in the sense that I firmly believe that truth about God is unknowable; I am an agnostic only insofar as I don't believe I can claim to know truth about God currently. Thus, I am not a Deist, for they make truth claims about God's actions and relationship to the world. I am agnostic Theist, in that I believe in God, but I don't know what to do with it.

I admit that's a pathetic position. It's certainly not a position I recommend as far as letting you get to sleep at night.

Anyway, this was meant to be a simple e-mail expressing my gratitude for your attention. There's just so much I feel I want to say when I know there is an ear that is listening to me.

I'll get back to the matter of the resurrection. I'm reading the link you mentioned. Makes me want material by Craig, considering the reverence the atheistic author seems to have for him.

Your friend,

Zeteo

An e-mail conversation with friends, Part 4

2005-04-09T11:20:00.000-05:00

There are some good points made here -- Pistos responds:

Zeteo,

>>Zeteo Wrote>> That's one of the hang-ups that I have: that someone can come to life-saving faith by illogical means. Is the correct conclusion all that counts? Even if it is come to through untrue or groundless means? Perhaps so -- it's true in life.

If you don't play in the highway because you think dragons will eat you, won't you be less likely to get hit by a truck? I don't recommend being illogical, but I don't think one has to be Spock to believe either.

>>Zeteo Wrote>> Then why be an apologist? If reasoning cannot compel one closer to the truth of the Bible, what good is apologia?

Back up a sec. I never said that "reasoning cannot compel one closer to the truth of the Bible." I said that you can't argue someone into the kingdom. After all, even knowing the truth undeniably doesn't mean you're saved. Satan (oh, sorry there I go using Biblical examples again) knew the truth, but that didn't stop him from rebelling against God.

My point was that being is more than just pure logic and thought. You are also a being with emotions and volition, which both have an incredible influence and power to delude our thinking, as I'm sure you know.

>>Zeteo Wrote>> The requirement that you have faith first ("Believe and then you'll see") makes Christianity seem almost gnostic in nature: once you're in the "saved" group, you'll understand the reasoning.

I never said that you must believe before seeing the light either (although we could begin a discussion on election, and that may shed an entirely different light on the subject. For several months I was convinced of the existence of God and the fact of the resurrection, but couldn't quite see if God had chosen me or not. That's where my faith came in.).

It is easy to beat up a straw man, let’s make sure we are very careful about what we are saying. Faith is a gift, and cannot be arrived at by reason. However, I believe that reason can defend the truth, and that the truth can stand up to the test of reason. I also believe that intelligent people who want to be faithless can find means of misrepresenting, misinterpreting, distorting, or otherwise ignoring the truth. Many "wise" men have found Christ's cross foolish, and being fools called God dead.

The resurrection, by the way, is very unscientific! By it's very nature, it is outside the realm of science. It was a super natural act. As such, it is outside the realm of repeatable, laboratorizable experimentation. What that means is we can't dismiss it outright as David Hume would have us do. We can however use scientific sleuthing to arrive at a verdict of beyond reasonable doubt. Which reminds me, how have you set your standards for "reasonable" doubt? What got me mad Saturday is that I saw that your doubt (which I had actually heard you express before) has begun to demand that you raise the definition of "reasonable" so high that I'm not sure you can ever know much at all.

>>Zeteo Wrote>> No, but see above. If the mind is corrupt, why be an apologist? If the mind is corrupt, why does God command us to use it as an instrument with which to love Him?

Hang on, that's two questions, slow down. :) The mind is very corrupt. The reason I still use it is I haven't gotten the replacement in yet. Recognizing that it is corrupt though helps me not to be overly proud in my own assessment of my ability. Pride after all is not next to godliness. Why be an apologist? Because I believe that my faith is defend-able and because it is required of me (1 Pet 3:16).

Why does God want corrupt sinful people worshiping Him? Good question. Ask Him sometime. I don't know.

>>Zeteo Wrote>> You're /reasoning /with me in your e-mail. You're /reasoning/ with me to convince me that my mind cannot be trusted. My mind is all I've got -- I /have/ to trust it. Even to concede your point -- that I cannot trust my mind -- I would have to trust my mind. What do you suggest that I do trust? The minds of others? The Bible? How do I trust the Bible or God (as portrayed in the Bible) without being assured in my own mind? (I'm not saying that you cannot trust the Bible or God, just that you cannot trust either one without being "assured in your own mind.")

I think my point is extent of trust. I like reason and logic, but both are tricky and can be used to misrepresent truth. There an ton of bad logic out there, and I don't what you to let yourself get caught up in it.

>>>>Pistos Wrote>>>> Are you so sure that you are not unjustly biased?

>>Zeteo Wrote>> No, I'm frankly not sure. Which is exactly why I'm in the mess in the first place. I am biased in two ways (on a good day: sometimes I'm really confused ;) ): (1) I've been conditioned to believe by what I've been taught as a child and (2) I'm conditioned to disbelieve by what I've seen in practice and have reasoned as a man. So I'm torn, and I'm trying to apply reason to get myself to some sort of conclusion.

"what I've seen in practice and have reasoned as a man"

Deep. That could cover any range of subjects. Just 'cause you may have some half-wit "Christian" friends doesn't mean we are all bad or all crazy. What exactly do you really mean here? I think you just dumped a bunch of feeling from other issues into our nice healthy debate about reason and resurrection.

>>>>Pistos Wrote>>>> I heard you spout hook-line-and-sinker every whisper of higher criticism without any question as to their authority or objectiveness on the subject. I just want to make sure you realize that you are a firm believer in their dogma.

>>Zeteo Wrote>> And yet if I believed Josh McDowell without question -- even though his authority, objectiveness, or even correctness might be suspect -- I would be saved. Is it really a matter of who I'm believing and who I'm questioning, or is it a matter of the conclusions I'm coming to? Don't think, either, that I'm not capable of coming up with questions on my own without the whispers of higher criticism.

No kidding. We all have a propensity to rebel, of course you can come up with doubts. The question is what you do with them. There are reasonable answers that you have forgotten. For now, let's ignore this issue, and get back to it later. I just want to let you know, that although I think lower criticism is good and healthy, higher criticism is a bunch of trash and you are wollowing in it.

>>Zeteo Wrote>> But your assertion that I accept liberal dogma unquestioningly is not exactly accurate. As I said, I'm torn. Without prompting, I brought up the point Saturday that the disciples went out an got themselves martyred for what they believed. That speaks volumes, if the volumes in which those stories are written can be trusted. In other instances, I think the criticisms make more sense than the fundamentalist viewpoint. I'm trying to come to a resolution between the two. What I admitted Saturday is not that I believe all the dogma spouted by one side or the other, it's that I /don't/ entirely believe either yet. I'm not yet black or white.

Good. Maybe there is still hope yet.

>>>>Pistos Wrote>>>> Are you really interested in God, or does love of money consume you? You cannot server two masters Zeteo. I'm sorry you have chosen the temporal things to be your master.

>>Zeteo Wrote>> The conclusion that money is keeping me from God is a bit unfair, in that I'm not making much of it comparatively and passed on offers for a lot more. It's not entirely unfounded, either, as I was somewhat consumed by materialism in years past. However, I wouldn't now say that money is the driving force in my doubt.

But when did your doubt start? In "years past"??? Just a thought.

>>Zeteo Wrote>> Now I can tell you what I fear: death and eternity. I am absolutely terrified both that the Bible is right and that the Bible is wrong. I fear that the Bible is right and I'm an unbeliever. I fear my inability to decide, and my lack of faith to fill in the gaps. For years I prayed for wisdom on this matter. For years I got more and more confused and saw more that showed me the ineffectiveness of Christianity. I know that Christians are not Christ, and wrongs are committed in every name, and I fear that my doubt and my experiences might lead me to dispel the good because of the bad. I fear not having the time to make up my mind. I fear hell.

Good. That's healthy.

>>Zeteo Wrote>> On the other hand, I fear the naturalistic answer even more. I fear an eternity of non-existence upon death. I fear a godless, centerless life without purpose. I fear the believable rationale of the naturalistic explanations of the origins and evolution of religion. I fear that my own observations of these things -- prior to the influence of others -- led me to the questions that torment me. I fear that a questioning, faithless nature has been ingrained and evident in me since I was a child, and that I've been influenced to model my behavior in a Christian way and claim I have all the answers while ignoring my doubt.

At least you're being more open about it. Although I still say you owe it to your missionary parents to tell them there beloved son is going south. They should at least have the right to pray.

>>Zeteo Wrote>> More to your question of what I love, while I do value honesty and open-mindedness, I don't think that I have exactly epitomized those attributes in my "search for truth" in the past few years. Towards the end of my undergraduate education, I exhausted myself emotionally with the issue and became so frustrated with what I saw that I decided that it was easier to just not think about it. Indirectly, you made the point on Saturday that my inability to fully articulate my position betrays a lack of recent thought or effort. While I have a library of apologetics texts, it has been literally years since I've cracked them. If you accomplished anything on Saturday it was to remind me to continue in my search. It's a search that I feel desperately inadequate to carry out, but, under eternal penalty, inescapably required to complete. Zeteo

Hmmm... At least I can be a catalyst for something then. Even if it ends up being change for the worse.

Incidentally, googling for "Jesus resurrection" came up with this interesting article, from one of your fellow I-hate-Josh friends:

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/jesus_resurrection/index.shtml

I actually didn't finish reading the meat of it, but at the end, he sounds rather unconvinced either way. Interesting. I suppose we could dissect it piece by piece.

Anyways, I ordered Wright's book as well. I'm waiting for it to come in.

Pistos

Role of an Apologist, Role of a Seeker

2005-04-06T12:29:00.000-05:00

Listening further in the Ravi Zacharias "Mind & Heart" series, I came across his definitions of the roles of the Apologist (an answer to the question I put to Pistos) and the Seeker. According to him, paraphrased in my words:

Apologist - The job of a Christian apologist is to remove the intellectual obstacles of a seeker in order to let the seeker see that their problems are moral, and no longer intellectual, in nature.

This would be why Pistos was probing for a moral issue (the question about if I'm serving money) behind my doubt in his letter. He was trying to determine if I'm being honest that I don't have enough reason to believe or if there is a moral impediment to my belief. In other words, am I being honest that I'm unconvinced intellectually or is there a moral behavior that I know I'd have to give up if I became a Christian, but refuse to do so? I'm unsure, but I think my questions are more intellectual in nature.

Seeker - The role of a seeker is to :

Be ruthlessly honest, or you will be smothered with your own deceit.
Get into the Bible; he suggests the Gospel of John.
Be aware of the emotional & experiential baggage you're taking with you in your search. Get help for it, maybe from a book.
Know that the propositional answers you come across in your search will become relational answers as you develop a relationship in your own experience with Jesus.

You shall seek me, and find me, when you shall search for me with all your heart. -- Jeremiah 29:13

This promise is effectively all I have to go on. I'm trying to be honest, as number 1 requires, and I suppose I need to honestly and thoroughly consider the possibility of a moral, not intellectual, impediment.

Anthropic Principle

2005-04-06T08:48:00.000-05:00

Today I'm pondering the Anthropic Principle: the concept that there are physically observable constants in the universe such that if they were only slightly different, the Universe would not be able to produce life. For example, cosmologists claim that if the rate of the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang were different by only one part in 10^55, the development of carbon-based life would be impossible in any part ot the universe.

An e-mail conversation with friends, Part 3

2005-04-05T15:08:00.000-05:00

My response to Pistos's letter.

Pistos,

>>Pistos Wrote>> I urge you to speak with your parents soon on this issue.

My previous discussions about doubt with my parents have been entirely unfruitful. I would prefer to keep them out of it and come to conclusions on my own. They know that I struggle with it. You saw that my brother was not surprised.

>>Pistos Wrote>> I apologize for putting things so bluntly the other night, and for not being more equipped...

You did nothing wrong -- you weren't overly blunt. You were emotional because I took you by surprise, but you listened and pointed me towards resources, addressing my questions directly with reasoned responses. I'm not upset with you -- on the contrary, I appreciate your willingness to talk with me. Almost to a man, every other Christian friend I've had has not addressed my concerns or considered them important outside my own crazy head.

>>Pistos Wrote>> I'm sorry to hear that McDowell's book stunk so badly on the issue. Like I said before, maybe that helps someone...

That's one of the hang-ups that I have: that someone can come to life-saving faith by illogical means. Is the correct conclusion all that counts? Even if it is come to through untrue or groundless means? Perhaps so -- it's true in life.

>>Pistos Wrote>> If any book can help you, the ones that you bought should be able to. Hopefully they will. However, without a complete change of heart and an injection of faith into your life, frankly I doubt they will. And that saddens me greatly. You can't be argued into a relationship with Jesus.

Then why be an apologist? If reasoning cannot compel one closer to the truth of the Bible, what good is apologia? The requirement that you have faith first ("Believe and then you'll see") makes Christianity seem almost gnostic in nature: once you're in the "saved" group, you'll understand the reasoning. Reason has to be able to point to truth; otherwise, we should all be fideists (believers in faith only, not reason). Remember the noble-minded Bareans: they started with what they accepted (Jewish O.T.) and reasoned that what Paul and Silas were teaching was true. In my case, I'm not starting with the same assumptions.

>>Pistos Wrote>> Are you sure that you can be assured in your own mind? The mind, Zeteo, is also corrupt. It can be whacked out, disillusioned, mislead.

No, but see above. If the mind is corrupt, why be an apologist? If the mind is corrupt, why does God command us to use it as an instrument with which to love Him? Reason has to be able to point to truth, or we're all in trouble. You're reasoning with me in your e-mail. You're reasoning with me to convince me that my mind cannot be trusted. My mind is all I've got -- I have to trust it. Even to concede your point -- that I cannot trust my mind -- I would have to trust my mind. What do you suggest that I do trust? The minds of others? The Bible? How do I trust the Bible or God (as portrayed in the Bible) without being assured in my own mind? (I'm not saying that you cannot trust the Bible or God, just that you cannot trust either one without being "assured in your own mind.")

>>Pistos Wrote>> Are you so sure that you are not unjustly biased?

No, I'm frankly not sure. Which is exactly why I'm in the mess in the first place. I am biased in two ways (on a good day: sometimes I'm really confused ;) ): (1) I've been conditioned to believe by what I've been taught as a child and (2) I'm conditioned to disbelieve by what I've seen in practice and have reasoned as a man. So I'm torn, and I'm trying to apply reason to get myself to some sort of conclusion.

>>Pistos Wrote>> I heard you spout hook-line-and-sinker every whisper of higher criticism without any question as to their authority or objectiveness on the subject. I just want to make sure you realize that you are a firm believer in their dogma.

And yet if I believed Josh McDowell without question -- even though his authority, objectiveness, or even correctness might be suspect -- I would be saved. Is it really a matter of who I'm believing and who I'm questioning, or is it a matter of the conclusions I'm coming to? Don't think, either, that I'm not capable of coming up with questions on my own without the whispers of higher criticism.

But your assertion that I accept liberal dogma unquestioningly is not exactly accurate. As I said, I'm torn. Without prompting, I brought up the point Saturday that the disciples went out an got themselves martyred for what they believed. That speaks volumes, if the volumes in which those stories are written can be trusted. In other instances, I think the criticisms make more sense than the fundamentalist viewpoint. I'm trying to come to a resolution between the two. What I admitted Saturday is not that I believe all the dogma spouted by one side or the other, it's that I don't entirely believe either yet. I'm not yet black or white.

>>Pistos Wrote>> I am saddened almost beyond words Zeteo. I hope you realize this, because perhaps in written form these words don't portray there emotional content.

I understand. Believe me, I understand. This struggle more than anything in my life has torn my mind and heart asunder. I can see the pain in your words, and I regret causing it. I know you feel betrayed, and I know what you believe the consequences of my actions are. Knowing these possibilities is what applies so much pressure, pain, and heartache to this search. It has taken me years to be able to express myself aloud, outside my own thinking. Never had I done it with one so close as you until Saturday.

>>Pistos Wrote>> Are you really interested in God, or does love of money consume you? You cannot serve two masters Zeteo. I'm sorry you have chosen the temporal things to be your master.

The conclusion that money is keeping me from God is a bit unfair, in that I'm not making much of it comparatively and passed on offers for a lot more. It's not entirely unfounded, either, as I was somewhat consumed by materialism in years past. However, I wouldn't now say that money is the driving force in my doubt. I don't think the "you cannot serve God and Mammon" concept necessarily suggests that if you're not serving God, you're serving money. I feel more like I'm in a frustrating position of limbo, not knowing what to do, rather than serving money or God.

>>Pistos Wrote>> What is it if anything that you love Zeteo? Do you really love honesty and open-mindedness, or are you pre-convinced by your need to be approved in academia by the other liberals?

Quite the opposite. There is not a single person in my life that is a liberal and is encouraging me to disbelieve the Bible. My current spiritual status is entirely a product of my own thinking and investigation. I'm not trying to impress anyone. My entire peer group and family group consists of Christians: my parents, you guys, the folks at our church at home, my Bible study, etc. Many of the lab members at the University are Bible-believing, conservative-church-attending Christians. I don't have a close friend in town -- either now or during college -- who is not a Christian. My wife and her family are Christians. I've become more ostracized and isolated in the process of asking questions and thinking independently than I would be if I just gave in and kept the mask on. I'm not trying to win friends or influence people. I'm not seeking anyone's approval here, or I would have continued to pretend to be something I'm not. Don't think it's an easy think to realize that you're different from everyone around you, and don't think it's a simple thing to risk to let them know.

Now I can tell you what I fear: death and eternity. I am absolutely terrified both that the Bible is right and that the Bible is wrong. I fear that the Bible is right and I'm an unbeliever. I fear my inability to decide, and my lack of faith to fill in the gaps. For years I prayed for wisdom on this matter. For years I got more and more confused and saw more that showed me the ineffectiveness of Christianity. I know that Christians are not Christ, and wrongs are committed in every name, and I fear that my doubt and my experiences might lead me to dispel the good because of the bad. I fear not having the time to make up my mind. I fear hell.

On the other hand, I fear the naturalistic answer even more. I fear an eternity of non-existence upon death. I fear a godless, centerless life without purpose. I fear the believable rationale of the naturalistic explanations of the origins and evolution of religion. I fear that my own observations of these things -- prior to the influence of others -- led me to the questions that torment me. I fear that a questioning, faithless nature has been ingrained and evident in me since I was a child, and that I've been influenced to model my behavior in a Christian way and claim I have all the answers while ignoring my doubt.

More to your question of what I love, while I do value honesty and open-mindedness, I don't think that I have exactly epitomized those attributes in my "search for truth" in the past few years. Towards the end of my undergraduate education, I exhausted myself emotionally with the issue and became so frustrated with what I saw that I decided that it was easier to just not think about it. Indirectly, you made the point on Saturday that my inability to fully articulate my position betrays a lack of recent thought or effort. While I have a library of apologetics texts, it has been literally years since I've cracked them.

If you accomplished anything on Saturday it was to remind me to continue in my search. It's a search that I feel desperately inadequate to carry out, but, under eternal penalty, inescapably required to complete.

Zeteo

An e-mail conversation with friends, Part 2

2005-04-05T15:00:00.000-05:00

The following is the response I got from Pistos.

Zeteo,

I urge you to speak with your parents soon on this issue. I don't know how long I can contain myself. If they ask me how you are I don't know what I would say. I would probably tell them to call you. If you want to be honest, then they deserve to be devastated as well.

I apologize for putting things so bluntly the other night, and for not being more equipped, but your soul, when all said and done, is your responsibility before God, and not mine.

I'm sorry to hear that McDowell's book stunk so badly on the issue. Like I said before, maybe that helps someone, but its obviously not what you want. If any book can help you, the ones that you bought should be able to. Hopefully they will. However, without a complete change of heart and an injection of faith into your life, frankly I doubt they will. And that saddens me greatly. You can't be argued into a relationship with Jesus.

>>Zeteo Wrote>> I just don't want to misrepresent myself any more, so I can be assured in my own mind that my conclusions are honest.

Are you sure that you can be assured in your own mind? The mind, Zeteo, is also corrupt. It can be whacked out, disillusioned, mislead. Are you so sure that you are not unjustly biased? I heard you spout hook-line-and-sinker every whisper of higher criticism without any question as to their authority or objectiveness on the subject. I just want to make sure you realize that you are a firm believer in their dogma.

I am saddened almost beyond words, Zeteo. I hope you realize this, because perhaps in written form these words don't portray there emotional content.

What is it if anything that you love, Zeteo? Do you really love honesty and open-mindedness, or are you pre-convinced by your need to be approved in academia by the other liberals? Are you really interested in God, or does love of money consume you? You cannot serve two masters Zeteo. I'm sorry you have chosen the temporal things to be your master.

Pistos

An e-mail conversation with friends, Part 1

2005-04-05T14:41:00.000-05:00

The following e-mail chain is a conversation between my Christian friends and I. As I'm sure it's easy to guess, their names (as well as mine) have been changed to Greek words.

Pistos and Elpis,

I thought I would send an e-mail along about our discussion Friday.

I've been wanting to discuss my earnest doubts of Christianity and Christ with you guys for quite some time. You two are the most well-read and well-equipped Christian thinkers in my group of friends. Yours are words I trust as I've seen your testimony and know your intellectual gifting and honesty. I've felt for a long time that yours would be voices of reason in the midst of the turmoil in my mind.

The thing that has prevented me from fully expressing myself previously was a fear of judgment of my weak faith and damage to our friendship. Even now I'm terribly sad and afraid to think that I might have irrevocably changed the nature of our relationship. But lately I've taken the policy of thought that I can only be honest. Misrepresenting my position as Christian is evidence in my character of the very intellectually dishonesty that has sickened me in the Christian church. When Pistos asked me how I'm doing spiritually, I could not resort to a practiced equivocation, spoken in the Christian language in which I'm well-versed. If I count myself among the goats, I don't want it to be a surprise to me; I don't want to lie to myself and others about where I stand.

At the same time, I hope you will treat my confession with a strong measure of discretion. I have never been as candid with any of my Christian friends from home as I was with you Saturday. I have not lied; I have simply avoided the full disclosure of my doubt. My reasoning is that I need to come to my own conclusions outside the influence of the conditioned responses of my upbringing. Discussions with my parents and other members of our church at home bring up guilt and a desire to please them, leading me to want to agree with them -- but leaving me just as empty and unsatisfied with the positions I end up expressing. I hope that you will permit me the opportunity to represent myself to my family, especially.

I appreciate the focus of thought you presented in our discussion. I have been thinking quite a lot about determining the logical "root node" of Christianity (I'm thinking in terms of data structures here). Reasoning that starts with "Is there a God?" can quickly get muddy, metaphysical, and complicated. Meditating on Pistos's (really Paul's) assertion that Christianity starts with the resurrection led me to re-think this logical root. "Is there a God?" is actually a question that can be addressed after the resurrection is considered.

Saturday night I retired a bit early in order to read the resurrection material in my brother's copy of Josh McDowell's "A Ready Defense". His reasoning immediately reminded me of why I hate reading Josh McDowell. He just appealed to authority by quoting several dozen people who agree with him. Then he stated that he's given the issue "700 hours" of thought and come to the conclusion that Jesus' resurrection is un-doubtable. Next, he said that we should believe in the resurrection because the Bible says so. Finally, he concluded with a brief paragraph about extra-biblical sources, none of which he directly mentioned (except Josephus, who never actually even discusses the resurrection).

I did, however, take Pistos's advice and buy Gary Habermas's book on the "Case for the Resurrection of Jesus" as well as a book called "The Resurrection of the Son of God" by N.T. Wright, a conservative Anglican apologist. Those were the best two I could find on Amazon.

Anyway, I should probably get back to work. I just thought I'd write to tell you that I appreciate your friendship, and I admire you guys in your ability to discuss these things with me without hatred of me. I understand that it must feel like a betrayal, and I apologize for that. I just don't want to misrepresent myself any more, so I can be assured in my own mind that my conclusions are honest.

Your friend,

Zeteo

Thought from Ravi Zacharias

2005-04-05T14:06:00.000-05:00

As I seek for answers, I want to include all sources, whether they be of religious or secular origin. To be as unprejudiced as possible, the religious convictions of a person should bias me neither towards nor against their statements; each statement should be evaluated upon its own merit, regardless of the source. From time to time, I will post quotes here that I'm thinking about, often without comment. As I am listening to a series of lectures from Ravi Zacharias, a Christian apologist, today's quote comes from him:

[God has] put enough in this world to make faith one of the most reasonable things. He's left enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason alone.
Ravi Zacharias, Mind & Heart (Recorded Lecture)

Revelations

2005-04-05T09:52:00.000-05:00

After years of being in the fundamentalist Christian church and calling myself an apologist or a Christian who "struggles with doubt," I finally revealed my true beliefs to my two best Christian friends. I told them I'm somewhere between an Agnostic and a Deist. What's followed has brought the pain of my past struggles with doubt into sharp focus in the present.

This blog is intended as an excercise for myself. I will lay bare, as honestly as I can, the history of my experiences in the Christian church. I will document, as thoroughly as I can, my current search for knowledge.

I'm writing this blog to see my thoughts on the screen with the hopes that the comments of others and the thought it takes to express myself in writing will somehow lead to a conclusion about truth.

Come along with me if you wish. Help me if you can. And by all means, keep searching yourself.