The Manic Eclectic

Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield

2009-09-13T11:35:00.004-05:00

Some time ago I picked up a small paperback edition of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin at Barnes and Noble. It is a part of a series published by that same company under the heading "The Barnes and Noble Library of Essential Reading". Another I have in that series is Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton.

In chapter eight of my edition (chapter ten of the on-line edition) I ran across Franklin's experiences with and thoughts about the Rev. George Whitefield. Whitefield was an evangelical Calvinist whom God used to proclaim the gospel during the period now known as the Great Awakening. He was a contemporary of Jonathan Edwards and the Wesley brothers and along with the Wesley brothers is considered a founder of the modern Methodist church.

This chapter was so interesting to me that I decided to provide excerpts here along with my thoughts. I hope it will be worth your time.

The first excerpt begins now:

"In 1739 arrived among us from Ireland the Reverend Mr. Whitefield, who had made himself remarkable there as an itinerant preacher. He was at first permitted to preach in some of our churches; but the clergy, taking a dislike to him, soon refus'd him their pulpits, and he was oblig'd to preach in the fields. The multitudes of all sects and denominations that attended his sermons were enormous, and it was matter of speculation to me, who was one of the number, to observe the extraordinary influence of his oratory on his hearers, and how much they admir'd and respected him, notwithstanding his common abuse of them, by assuring them that they were naturally half beasts and half devils."

It takes only a general knowledge of Mr. Whitefield's life and preaching to confirm that he was completely orthodox in his theology. What, then, led the church leaders of his day to reject him their pulpits as is reported by Franklin? I speculate it was his methodology which may have been a bit unorthodox to their sensibilities. Or it may have been due to a bit of jealousy, a malady to which many preachers seem to be susceptible. If anyone reading this has a thought, or some clarity to add, I would love to hear from you in the comments section.

I have to laugh at Franklin, though I admire much of his thinking, when I read his viewpoint on the content of Whitefield's preaching. Franklin was a very self-righteous individual, as his autobiography expresses so well. Though he was brought up Presbyterian, he openly questioned many of the tenets of that faith that he had been taught as a child. His personal theology, as expressed in this autobiography, seems a bit ironic to me. He confesses that he could not accept the Christian doctrines on "God's eternal decrees, election, reprobation, so forth", yet he finally settles upon the idea, based purely on his own reasoning, of a God who is benevolent, expects virtue of his creatures, judges sin either in this life or the next, and works providentially in the lives of men. To believe in God's providence, but not in his eternal decree seems inconsistent to me, but somehow seemed consistent to him. I would surmise that this is due to the fact that Franklin was more concerned about personal virtue than about theology itself, viewing the latter as less important. His complaint, for example, about the local Presbyterin minister, whom he supported financially but not with his attendance or other assistance, was that this man seemed to be more interested in making his congregants good Presbyterians than good citizens.

As I said, Franklin was a self-righteous man, believing himself to be responsible for living as virtuous a life as possible, but believing this chiefly because his saw (properly) that a virtuous life was the key to attaining as much personal happiness as possible. To Franklin, a virtuous life was a good life was a happy life and a citizenry armed with this knowledge would lead to the best possible society. Thus, Franklin's gospel was the gospel of virtuous living, attainable by anyone who set his mind to it. Innate to this belief was a belief in the inherent goodness and ability of man to be virtuous. His own personal experiences, as related in a previous chapter to this one, would seem to belie this, nevertheless he perseveres.

All of this leads me to chortle at his reaction to Whitefield's proclamation of the gospel, the foundation of which is that man is inherently wicked. At this point Whitefield and Franklin lock horns and are, sadly, never reconciled. Look, again, at Franklin's assessment of Whitefield's declaration of human depravity:

". . . notwithstanding his common abuse of them, by assuring them that they were naturally half beasts and half devils."

Yet, in this same autobiography, we find that his personal experiences in seeking to obtain moral perfection taught him that (a) he was far less virtuous than he had at first thought, that (b) the struggle for virtue was made more difficult by his own reason which constantly sought to make excuses for his not being as virtuous as he, at other times, wished to be, and (c) that he never was able to arrive at perfection, it being what he found to be an impossible task.

Franklin's view of the human condition was that man was inherently good and should seek to attain as virtuous a life as possible because this was the road to a better life and society. The Christian viewpoint, however, is that man is inherently evil, that unless God supernaturally intervenes he will remain so, and that true virtue can only be obtained through faith in God's grace, because of the finished work of Christ at Calvary. Franklin leaves men dependent upon themselves for goodness and happiness while Whitefield points them to dependence upon God for the same.

Perhaps I shall continue this line of posting and try to get something up more than once a month.

Grace.

Cal Thomas on Episcopals and Baptists

2009-08-06T21:40:00.002-05:00

I just read this opinion piece written by Cal Thomas about a week ago and thought it worth linking here on this blog.

Here is an excerpt:

"Inclusivity has nothing to do with the foundational truths set forth in Scripture. The church, which belongs to no denomination, but to its Founding Father and His Son, is about exclusivity for those who deny the faith. The church is inclusive only for those who are adopted by faith into G0d's family. There are more biblical references to this than there is room to cite here, but for the Episcopal leadership, biblical references no longer have the power to persuade, much less compel them to conform. That's because Episcopal leadership has denied the teachings of Scripture in favor of, well, inclusivity, a word that appears nowhere in Scripture. Even if it did, Episcopal heretics — for that is what they are — would choose another word to make them feel more comfortable, since accommodation with the world seems to be a more important objective than the favor of G0d."

And here is the link to the article: link

The Frightening Thing About Health Care Reform

2009-07-21T22:13:00.002-05:00

One of the things that frightens me most about this heatlh care "reform" that Obama and Washington are trying to shove down our collective throats is the rumor I've been hearing that my tax dollars will be used to pay for abortions.

If true, this would be abhorrent and unconscionable. I would have to seriously consider civil disobedience. They cannot compel a citizen to financially support something that his conscience and religious conviction abhors.

Can they?

The Dennis Miller Radio Show

2009-07-17T00:01:00.003-05:00

My friend, Tom Sawyer, listens to the Dennis Miller Radio Show every day. Our local station only carries the first two hours, but Tom is faithful to it. Myself, I go back and forth between Dennis and Glenn Beck. Dennis is cool and laid back, Glenn is crazy and on the edge. I'm with whichever one fits my mood at the time.

A couple of days ago, Tom posted something about the Dennis Miller radio show on his blog and so the next morning I was over there at that station listening whereas I might not have been otherwise.

In the second hour, Dennis had, as his guest, Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina. Senator DeMint has recently published a book entitled Saving Freedom: We Can Stop America's Slide Into Socialism. He and Dennis had a great conversation in which Dennis, who is moderately conservative but radically funny, expressed the opinion that he thought Republicans went a bit far when they accused Democrats of being the enemies of liberty. In Dennis's opinion, this came off as a bit shrill. He asked DeMint for some examples of how Democrats sought to take away liberties. The examples DeMint gave were all economic examples. Dennis then wondered out loud if perhaps it would be better if Republicans were more specific in their criticisms by toning down the rhetoric to just "fiscal liberties." Wouldn't it be better, and more accurate, to say that Democrats were seeking to take away "fiscal liberties"?

Then, Dennis opined that he was a reasonable guy, and that, as a reasonable guy, he didn't mind giving up a portion of his income to help the down-and-out. DeMint's reply to that was great. He told Dennis that in his (Demint's) opinion, Dennis could do more to help the needy if he (Dennis) could keep his own money and distribute it himself rather than sending it to Washington.

(I wholeheartedly agree with Senator DeMint.

And, before I forget, let me add that it was primarily "fiscal liberty" over which the Revolutionary War was fought. All that soaring rhetoric about liberty which emanated from the pens and political stumps of our founders was first and foremost about "fiscal liberty." But I digress.)

That's when Miller ended the conversation by noting that he would be glad to disperse that money himself, but that he would have a hard time doing it from behind prison bars, which is exactly where he would be if he did not send his money to Washington.

Commercial break.

That's when I decided to call . . . and got through. Yes, I was shocked at how easy it was. The call screener asked me my name, where I was from, and what I wanted to say to Dennis. Two minutes later I was on the air.

Eat your heart out Tom Sawyer.

I was probably the worst caller of the day because I was so nervous. I tried to point out to Dennis that the good Senator DeMint and he had hit right on the crux of the issue with the whole "do what you want with your own money/but you can't do that from prison" exchange. This is what tyranny is, it is telling people that you (the government) know better what to do with a given individual's money than that individual and that if that you are going to take that individual's money (which represents his hands, his mind, his time, his risk, his work, his very worth) by threat of the sword and do better things with it than he can. The individual no longer works for himself and his own and his God. He now works for government so government can distribute to the collective. By-bye liberty.

I didn't do very well at expressing that on the radio, but I did pay Dennis a couple of compliments and he was able to turn them into very funny lines. I had an adrenaline rush for about two more hours and my wife was very, very impressed with me. I will certainly try calling again and maybe next time I'll do better.

Government and Tyranny

2009-07-02T21:02:00.003-05:00

A cyber-friend who goes by the handle of One Salient Oversight has done me the kindness of answering one of my posts here in the comments section of that post. Since he is quite possibly my only reader at this point, and since my response to his comment became quite lengthy, I have opted to bring it out here to the front page. OSO is an Aussie, a nice guy, and a guy who knows how to disagree graciously. I hope I can return his graciousness and that we can both profit from our discussion.

OSO is a big-government liberal and our disagreement concerns the nature and purpose of government.

First let me quote him, then I'll respond.

OSO wrote: One counter-argument from the top of my head concerns sin. Sin affects both the individual and the community. To argue that the Biblical direction is more individualistic is to argue that the sins of the many outweigh the sins of the few (in a per capita sense). I would argue that sin affects both equally.

That's not my argument. My argument is that because of our sin nature, power tends to corrupt. I firmly believe the maxim: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Though there are exceptions to the rule, history is replete with individuals who sought power for power's sake so that they could use it to tyrannize others. Give sinful man that much control over others and he tends to abuse it.

Think about it this way. Government is only necessary because of sin. Before sin, there was no need for the ten commandments. Man had God's law written on his heart, he obeyed willingly. When men sin government becomes necessary in order to execute justice and this is government's primary purpose.

The founders of our country believed this for they wrote about a Creator who had endowed us with certain unalienable rights and then they went on to delineate government's responsibility in protecting those rights. Government is about protecting the individual's liberty so that he may live free and be judged by God for how he lived in that final day. Every man's life is his own and he is responsible to God for how he lived it. It is imperative, therefore, that he be free to live that life as his conscience dictates and be judged by the just judge of the universe in that final day.

But, I've strayed. The point is that because of sin, men who have power tend to be corrupted by it. Governments, in reality, serve to perpetuate their own power and increase it. Governments never naturally shrink, they naturally grow.

Why is it that you think that you know better how others ought to live their lives than they do? And if you do, what gives you the right to enforce your viewpoint on them? You can, and should, seek to persuade men. You can, and should, take moral stands and proclaim truth and righteousness. But when do you get the right to enforce your viewpoint on another via the sword?

It is Charles Spurgeon who is credited with saying "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." This is why the marriage of church and state is a great evil. It does not make Christians of men, it only makes hypocrites and increases rebellion. Men who are born of God worship him freely.

We have every right to persuade men to come to Christ. We have no right to enforce our theological viewpoint on them. By the same token, we have every right to persuade men to give to the poor, but we have no right to reach into their pocket, take their hard-earned money, and give it to someone who has not earned it. If your name is not Government, that is called robbery and will get you in jail. Why do we think a crime can be made into a virtue by majority vote?

If I have money beyond what I need for my family, money I have earned by my labor and God's grace, and God gives me opportunity to give to another who is in need, and I do so, that is a virtuous act. God is glorified in that. But if I then go to my neighbor and by threat of physical violence compel him to give of his means to help someone else's need I have committed a grievous sin, a crime. But this is what socialist government does.

If I don't pay my taxes the government will put me in jail. But what does the government do with my money? It redistributes it to others. Gone is any virtue in my giving . . . because I was forced. Gone is any choice I had in where and how and to whom I should be charitable. Gone is my expendable income and any opportunity I might have to actually help others whom God might send across my path.

And what right do others have to tell me what to do with my money anyway? More to the point, what right does any given majority have to enforce its viewpoint on any particular individual on how he ought to use his money to help others? This is tyranny. It is the opposite of liberty.

Here's what the majority should do. It should seek to peaceably persuade others to commit acts of virtue freely, after having practiced those virtues themselves. Gone is the greedy, corrupt, wasteful, power-mongering middle-man called government. Intact is liberty. Intact is genuine charity. Intact is justice. Socialism destroys all three.

I have rambled on so far that I have forgotten my original point, but I think it was this: men are by nature corrupt, therefore their power over others should be very limited and very local and they should be held very accountable for their use of that power. The larger and more centralized a government is, the less it can be held accountable and under control.

Corporations Don't Pay Taxes

2009-07-02T00:24:00.005-05:00

It's one in a long line of stupid, leftist, class warfare mantras often repeated by leftist, socialist politicians along with their leftist, socialist propagandists in the main-stream media. It usually goes something like this: "We're going to make those big corporations pay their fair share. It's about time somebody stood up to big tobacco, oil, pharmaceuticals, fill in your favorite villainous capitalistic enterprise here."

And people buy it.

My friend Tom Sawyer at The River is a lot less charitable to Democrat voters than I am. He thinks they are all stupid. While I don't agree, I have to admit that the fact that this little ploy always seems to work makes me wonder if Tom is right.

Corporations don't pay taxes.

I know, I know, I know. You point out to me that they collect and pay sales tax. Yes, they do. They also are responsible to pay a lot of other taxes in the form of fees and regulatory sanctions most of which we don't even know about.

I know.

But I'm still telling you that corporations don't pay taxes. Now, think with me for a minute.

One, corporations are not amorphous, impersonal entities. Corporations are owned by individuals. A tax on a corporation is a tax on the individuals who are shareholders in that corporation. Some of them are businessmen. Many of them are simply people who have retirement money wrapped up in mutual funds. They are teachers, doctors, factory workers, small business owners, salesmen, tradesmen, you-name-it. Average Joes. Raising taxes on a corporation is raising taxes on average Joe.

Two, a tax on a corporation doesn't just affect the shareholders, it affects the employees. Money that could have been used to give pay raises, bonuses, vacation pay, health benefits, you name it, to employees must now be diverted to the government. Hit the corporation with new taxes and you are just taking money away from the people who work for that corporation.

But number three is the real kicker. I really want you to pay attention to number three.

Three, when you tax a business, that business simply passes the tax burden on to the consumer in the form of cost increases. This is such a no-brainer I don't know why I even have to post about it. When the federal government taxes "Big Oil", "Big Oil" just raises prices at the pump and guess who has to pay those tax increases on "Big Oil"? Yep. You do.

When you voted for a Democrat so he could make "Big Oil" pay its fair share you really socked it to "Big Oil" didn't you.

Big Government Liberal?

2009-06-28T00:35:00.006-05:00

A cyber-friend of mine posted an interesting piece on one of his blogs a few months back and since I am way out of the loop I just read it a few minutes ago. This friend is politically on the left while at the same time he has an evangelical faith. Those of you out there who are secularists might not be able to grasp that one, specifically those of you who think the term 'evangelical' is a political rather than a theological term. I'm not sure how this anomaly occurs (that of being an evangelical and a leftist) but I am almost certain it has to do with some sort of regressive genes and perhaps if our good friend Richard Dawkins were here he could explain how it might be a positive step in the evolutionary process.

(smile)

Anyway, here is what my friend One Salient Oversight wrote (I blanked out specific names of specific individuals because they were unimportant to the discussion at hand):

"I am not saying that my political stance is the way to go. One of the basic reasons of the disagreement between (...) and I is over politics. (...) is the small government is the only solution type. I am far more leftist in that regard and think largish government supported by higher taxes is a good thing. If that was all it was then I would have no problem with (...)'s politics. The problem with (...) is that he has taken on small government as being biblically taught. (...) therefore not only thinks that his political position is right, but also biblically mandated. That is where (...) and I differ. While I have leftist beliefs that I think are great there is no way I would argue that my position is biblical because neither position is backed up in scripture. Political ideology is one area that the Bible is broadly silent on and which therefore gives believers freedom to choose. (...) has taken an area of life that Christians are allowed liberty to choose in and turned it into a black/white biblical/unbiblical issue. Many of my disagreements with him have been about this very thing. I will expand this idea as I post about it."

First, let me say that I don't go to (...)'s blog, don't read what he writes at other blogs, frankly have never found him that compelling when I did read him (once upon a time), and have no desire to defend anything he has written. But what my friend OSO says in the quotation above intrigues me and I want to address some of it. Here goes:

"I am not saying that my political stance is the way to go. One of the basic reasons of the disagreement between (...) and I is over politics. (...) is the small government is the only solution type.

I, too, am a small-government-type. I don't arrive at that position by way of pragmatism, however, although I could. I arrive at it by way of principle. I believe small, decentralized government is the only way to go and that large central government is, by nature of the beast, always bad. Not that the concept is inherently bad, but that it always turns out bad due to the nature of the individuals who people it.

OSO goes on:

"I am far more leftist in that regard and think largish government supported by higher taxes is a good thing.

I find this interesting how we have almost come full circle on this left/right thing. Back in Thomas Jefferson's day he was considered a radical leftist because he championed the individual over government and thought big government was equal to tyranny. He is/was a classical liberal. Today, his position is held by no one on the American left. Modern liberals champion big government while individual liberty and Jeffersonian democracy were best represented in this last century by the Republican conservative Ronald Reagan. So in a weird twist of irony I am a classical liberal, aka conservative, while the big government conservative types of Jefferson's day find their ideology represented today on the American left.

OSO continues:

"If that was all it was then I would have no problem with (...)'s politics. The problem with (...) is that he has taken on small government as being biblically taught. (...) therefore not only thinks that his political position is right, but also biblically mandated. That is where (...) and I differ. While I have leftist beliefs that I think are great there is no way I would argue that my position is biblical because neither position is backed up in scripture. Political ideology is one area that the Bible is broadly silent on and which therefore gives believers freedom to choose. (...) has taken an area of life that Christians are allowed liberty to choose in and turned it into a black/white biblical/unbiblical issue. Many of my disagreements with him have been about this very thing."

Again, I have no desire to either learn or defend the positions of the individual cited above. But I think it is necessary to point out that I believe that a biblical world-view, consistently applied, will lead one to a position of favoring individual liberty to a large extent over big government. Government was instituted by God and some government will always be necessary. How much government is the question at stake and I do believe that my position is more theologically sound than that of One Salient Oversight. I would like the opportunity to expound upon that over time. I am sure that he will afford me that opportunity as well as give me the grace of responding thoughtfully to what I write.

And, I guess that means I am blogging again--but only sporadically.

Edmund Morris and Theodore Roosevelt

2008-09-29T08:46:00.005-05:00

You may have heard of Edmund Morris. He was the official biographer of Ronald Reagan, hired by Ron and Nancy after writing the Pullitzer Prize winning The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. His eventual biography of Reagan, Dutch, was a controversial, some say reprehensible, flop. He was criticized by liberals and conservatives alike and himself confessed that he never really understood Reagan at all--this after having spent fourteen years with him and having complete access to all his papers, files, and correspondence. His style was a self-described post-modern new style of biography where he made up a fictional narrator (himself) and apparently made up a lot of other stuff too. In short, the book was horrid. Others have done much better with Reagan's life and presidency.

Yeah, that Edmund Morris.

I absolutely loved The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and hope that some of you might read it too. You will fall in love with Teddy's character as the quintessential American and gain an appreciation for him even when rolling your eyes at some of his ideas and actions. The book paints a stunning portrait, stroke by stroke, of TR the man. While reading I wondered if TR wasn't a bit manic, but those eccentricities which led me to think that are also the bits that endeared me to him. Roosevelt comes off as a compelling contradiction, being on one hand an intellectual snob and on the other a leader and companion of the "rough riders."

I am now a few chapters into Theodore Rex, published twenty-two years after the first, but it feels like I have picked right up where I left off. The Rise gives us the story of TR from birth until right before his ascension to the presidency in 1901. Rex chronicles his two terms as President. If anything, the writing style has improved in the sequel (I wish I could write that well) and, though my reading time is limited these days, I plan to finish off its 600+ pages by Christmas. There is a planned third volume which will complete the "trilogy" and I hope Mr. Morris is working on it.

A Prayer of St. Augustine

2008-09-08T07:46:00.004-05:00

Passing time each morning (most mornings) with St. Augustine has been a joy for me this year and, I hope, a benefit. Augustine is probably not the typical Baptist's cup of tea, but I like going outside the norm in my reading. Augustine takes me back to the dawn of Christianity and allows me to delve into the thinking of the early disciples. I view The Confessions of St. Augustine as an archaeologist might view an ancient ruin. It beckons with hidden promise of rich discovery.

Two things stand out to me in Augustine's Confessions. One is humility, the other is faith. I know that I could use more of both.

This morning I read this:

Let me know Thee, O lord, who knowest me: let me know Thee, as I am known. Power of my soul, enter into it, and fit it for Thee, that Thou mayest have and hold it without spot or wrinkle. This is my hope, therefore do I speak; and in this hope do I rejoice, when I rejoice healthfully. Other things of this life are the less to be wept for, the more they are wept for; and the more to be wept for, the less men weep for them. For behold, Thou lovest the truth and he that doth it, cometh to the light. This would I do in my heart before Thee in confession: and in my writing, before many witnesses.--Confessions of St. Augustine, Book Ten, chapter 1.

(Scriptures referenced: 1 Cor. 13:12; Eph. 5:27; Ps. 116:10; Ps. 51:6; John 3:20)

There is meat in that.

Liberal Coffee

2008-09-04T21:09:00.004-05:00

I feel so good about myself today. You see, I start off each morning with coffee--good coffee--usually Distant Lands coffee purchased at my local grocer and brewed from whole beans. Coffee is important to me. I enjoy it. I thank God for it (and that goat-herder in northern Africa who discovered it). It gets me going.

I usually maintain a strict "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to the politics of my coffee. I find it easier to drink it this way. Just like with my favorite Hollywood actors, I would prefer not to know or hear their political leanings because, well, sometimes it can be scary. I like to remain blissfully naive on these things. Who wants to learn that their favorite character in a movie was portrayed by some marxist sympathizer who thinks, for example, that America should be more like Fidel Castro's Cuba? No, I'd rather just like the guy and not know anything about him.

The same goes with my coffee. I don't ask it what it thinks about capitalism and it doesn't try to raise my taxes or put me on the government dole. We just enjoy each other's company.

But this morning when I went for the coffee beans I remembered that the bag was empty. The poverty I felt at that moment had a Dickens-like character . . . enough to make a good capitalist's blood run cold.

So I made my way to work without my morning brew, vowing to stop somewhere where I could get something with some strength and fortitude, some flavor, some substance.

Something real.

Have I mentioned that typical American coffee like, say, Folgers or Maxwell House is embarassingly weak? Drinking that meager fare is akin to pouring food coloring in hot water. Seriously. American coffee, for the most part, is like half-coffee. I could not settle for that.

So I stopped at Starbucks.

I got a grande Sumatran blend and a bag of whole bean Ethiopia Sidamo. Oh, and a coffee mug for the road--liberal coffee.

I feel so good about myself now. I've probably saved a rainforest, done my part to encourage fair trading practices, helped put a long-hair through Berkeley, and, oh yeah, even built a bridge in Ethiopia to help farmers get their beans to market.

Man, what a guy I am!

I feel like Sean Connery in Medicine Man, like I'm making a difference in the world.

I bet Bush doesn't even drink coffee. The Nazi!

So if you really care about the earth, the poor, saving the rainforest, curing AIDS, fair trade, and making the world into a worker's paradise and all that, start your morning off right . . . like I do . . . with some liberal coffee!

The Theology of Atheism

2008-09-03T07:50:00.005-05:00

Random, unorganized thoughts on a rainy morning while I drink my coffee.

Atheism is a theological position.

I thought it wouldn't hurt to take a break from politics for at least one post and this thought has been in the back of my head for some time now so we'll see if I can manage to spit it out this morning in a coherent way.

Again, atheism is a theological position. I feel like it has to be said because many of the atheists I have come in contact with seem to be in denial of this. They think of themselves as a-theological or supra-theological.

"Theology?" they say. "That's for children. I believe in science and facts. I don't need theology." When challenged on the fact that they are theologically ignorant their trite response is usually something like "Why would I need to study theology to tell you I don't believe in God? Do I have to read all the books on fairies to tell you I don't believe in them? Or do I have to study Santa Claus to legitimately claim that there is none?"

Sounds cute, but it is woefully ignorant. To say that one is an atheist is to take a theological position. Everyone is a theologian. Any statement about God is a theological statement. For example, to state "I am an atheist and Christians are fools" is to make a theological statement. So when individuals choose to make theological statements but then refuse to back them up with theological arguments or at least to give themselves a cursory education in the field they are being stubbornly ignorant. They don't want to be challenged.

Oh, they may not mind making a sport of drive-by rhetorical sniping. They may enjoy strong verbal salvos aimed at those they deem ignorant. But many times those they deem ignorant at least have some knowledge of the topic at hand . . . theology.

All of this reminds me that I have a discussion to get back to with a fine gentleman from Scotland on the fundamentalist forums, a gentleman who by now is probably thinking the same about me (about the drive-by rhetorical sniping).

It also reminds me that I was reading a book by Professor Richard Dawkins, a quite interesting book that I need to get back to. I was enjoying it and I'm not sure what happened. I think I got more interested in my Teddy Roosevelt biography and laid the other aside.

Soon.

Obama and the Least of These

2008-08-20T23:56:00.002-05:00

I told you, I told you, I told you! I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet but isn't it uncanny that on Saturday morning here in east Texas I was telling you how socialists historically have misused Matthew 25 to promote a socialist agenda and that very night Barack Obama goes to Saddleback Church and does that very thing? Shouldn't I get an award or something? Check out this short video:

A couple things:

First, Christ, in the passage in Matthew 25, is not addressing a secular society, he is addressing his Church--a Christian society. It is the Church's job to care for the poor and do ministry in Christ's name, not the government's. Charity belongs in the private sector where it is done much more efficiently by self-sacrificing people who have love for Christ and others as a motive. When government does "charity" it must take the money it uses from citizens whom it threatens with the use of force and then give it to others. Those involved too often have power and control as their motivation, not love for Christ--and power naturally corrupts.

Second, America does care for its poor. My goodness, in comparison to the rest of the world we don't even have any poor. America feeds the world, cares for people who are stricken with disease and disaster, is always first to send aid to other countries in need. Always. For Obama to imply that we do little is ludicrous. Furthermore, we do it freely, through private organizations, we don't need the government to act as a middle-man. Americans are the most generous people on earth.

Third, America's greatest moral failure is abortion. Period. Up until this century it was slavery and oppression of minorities, but that has been addressed in large measure. Lincoln ended slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation and a hundred years later the Civil Rights Act went a long way toward ending institutional injustice against African Americans. That moral failure was addressed and that is something to be proud of as Americans. But abortion is worse. It takes an entire class of citizens and, instead of just enslaving them--stripping them of their God-given rights based on nothing more than color of skin--it says to them they have no right at all, to even live. It takes their life for the most inexcusable of all reasons--convenience. It is repugnant, repulsive, barbaric. It is heinous. But to the left, and to Obama, it is defended as a "right."

Do you think maybe "the least of these" as referred to by Jesus might include the most vulnerable of those in whom God has breathed the breath of life--the unborn? What will the Great Judge of all the Earth have to say about those who had it in their power to pass legislation and end the holocaust against the unborn and did not, in fact, acted to sustain the holocaust and even protect it? And what about those, like Obama, who even acted three times in the Illinois state Senate to kill bills that would have outlawed infanticide?

Your greatest moral failure, Mr. Obama, was not drugs or alcohol. It was acting to protect abortion and infanticide (a redundancy, in my opinion) when you had it in your power to work toward outlawing them. Shame on you and shame on us and shame on the Democrats.

Obama references our Scripture!

2008-08-19T08:24:00.003-05:00

Saturday night while no one was watching Obama and McCain both appeared at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church for a forum. Obama appeared first, answered questions from Warren, then left the stage for McCain to repeat the process. During his answers Obama made reference to the Scripture that I cited in my last post on the evils of socialism and used it to do exactly what I told you that 19th century evangelicals used to do with it. I have to leave for work now, but as soon as I can I will find video of it and post it here along with comments.

Uncanny.

Legally Sanctioned Robbery

2008-08-16T07:20:00.004-05:00

Governmental redistribution of income (socialism) is legally sanctioned robbery.

It is interesting to note that a large portion of the early socialist movement in England (mid to late 19th century) was made up of evangelical Christians. Their arguments were that as a society we were obligated to care for the poor and the downtrodden. This was both a logical extension of Christian theology and an integral and practical part of the Christian faith mandated by Christ himself.

Matthew 25:
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?' 45 Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

As a Christian society we are to care for the poor.

There are several problems with that and I hope to deal with each of them. They are, in no particular order:

(1) This is a mandate for the Church, not the state. "Christian society" does not equal society as a whole.

(2) What Christ mandates for the Church is rightly responded to by heartfelt agreement and submission by his disciples. In this case, the result is what we call charity--voluntary giving out of love for Christ and others (the two greatest commandments). By definition, charity cannot be forced. When it is, as in the case of governmental redistribution of wealth from the "haves" to the "have nots", it is not charity at all and thus not obedience at all.

(3) It violates the fundamental economic principles of justice taught in the rest of Scripture, principles such as "the laborer is worthy of his hire" and "if a man does not work, neither should he eat."

Let's look at the third briefly:

If I were to go to each of my neighbors and ask them to give to a worthy charitable cause this would be a laudable use of my time and energy. Some of my neighbors would likely give and they would be following the mandates of Christ in doing so. Others would not give for various reasons and this does not necessarily mean they are disobeying Christ, again for various reasons (maybe they gave at the office)(smile).

Understand, however, that there is a principle involved here that is fundamental to justice and the maintenance of a just society and it is this: money earned by an individual rightfully belongs to that individual, not to anyone else and not to society as a whole. It is that individual's right to do with that money as he wishes. When someone else takes that money by either force or deception we call that a crime. It is an injustice.

So let's go back now to my example but change it just a little. What if I go door to door to all my neighbors and instead of asking them to give voluntarily to a good cause I threaten force against them unless they hand over a certain portion of what is theirs to me so that I can give it to other people. What would happen? The police would be called and I would be thrown in jail. Why? That's called robbery and is punishable by law in every human society since the beginning of time.

Except when government does it in a socialist society.

Why is it that government can do what would be a crime if an individual did it? What right does one individual have to force another individual to do what that other individual wishes with the first individual's money? None. I have no right at all to force you to do anything with your money. It is yours. However, for some reason we have been conditioned to believe that it is okay for government to decide what individuals should do with their own money, for government to take that money by force away from its rightful owner and give it to someone else. Socialism is legally sanctioned robbery. It is a fundamental injustice and a violation of individual liberty. It is our God-given right to keep what we earn and do with it as we wish. Our obedience to God's commands and submission to Christ's mandates must be voluntary or they are not obedience or submission at all.

This is not an argument against all taxation. There are certain things that government must do to protect our liberties and those things require the equal support of all citizens, but re-distribution of wealth is not one of them. Socialism is an unjust and blatant misuse of governmental authority. It is robbery and it is tyranny.

The Death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn

2008-08-07T20:06:00.003-05:00

Alexander Solzhenitsyn died this past Sunday. Don't know who he was? Don't feel bad. Neither did I. But after reading a bit about him on Al Mohler's blog I now have some new books added to my wishlist.

Texas Stands Tall

2008-08-06T08:50:00.001-05:00

It is sad when anyone dies. It is sadder still when someone is cut off at a young age, an untimely death, as it were. What is even more sad is when the ones who die at a young age are the victims of a senseless act of evil. That was the case with Elizabeth Pena (16) and Jennifer Ertman (14) who were gang-raped and brutally murdered fifteen years ago in Houston, Texas.

One of the culprits, Jose Medellin, was executed for his part in the crime last night.

Genesis 9:6 (ESV)
“Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image.

It is not surprising to hear that Texas has executed another criminal. As Eustace would say, we do that round here. What does grab your attention is when Texas snubs its nose at Mexico and the world to do it.

Thank God for Texas. No wonder I live here.

The World Court had argued that Medellin, a Mexican national (he was here illegally, his parents having crossed over illegally when he was three), suffered legal harm when he was not informed of certain rights he had under the Vienna Convention. Mexico's Foreign Relations Department had sent a note of protest to our State Department regarding Medellin's case.

Our State Department responded back that he should not have been here illegally in the first place and the Mexican government should concern itself with that fact as well as the other fourteen gazillion illegals who are over here.

I wish.

No, in response, the President asked the states who are currently holding Mexican nationals on death row to review those cases. But the Supreme Court ruled that neither the President nor the World Court could intervene on the sovereignty of Texas and force it to delay the execution.

Duh.

What's scary is that there was ever a doubt, that this battle ever even had to be fought.

But Texas stood tall and when the time came Medellin was given his lethal injection and justice was served.

Mexico can go jump in the river (those who haven't already). If the Mexican government weren't so woefully inept and corrupt and cripplingly socialist the people wouldn't be fleeing here in droves in the first place. Take that Mexico's Foreign Relations Department.

People Are Listening to Obama

2008-08-05T10:59:00.004-05:00

There is hope for America yet. Change is no longer just a slogan, it is becoming reality. Can you feel the electricity in the air? Those aren't goosebumps, those are Obamabumps. It's the power of inevitability that is sweeping our land. Obama speaks and people listen.

Yes, I made fun of Barack Obama's suggestion that we could save as much oil by simply airing up our tires and getting tune-ups as the oil companies could produce by new drilling. Yes, I utilized my second amendment rights and unleashed my rhetorical cannons on that idea. But I now have to concede that perhaps I rushed to judgment.

People are listening.

As I was driving to work this morning and listening to the Glenn Beck program on the radio (and I highly recommend him and his show) I got to noticing the other cars out there with me. I did more than notice them, I purposely looked at all the tires that were going by me, attached to those automobiles busily carrying their human cargo to school and to work. Know what I saw?

Not one under-inflated tire.

I know, I know, I know. It's hard to believe, isn't it? What has it been, only a week? Already America is listening to Obama and inflating her tires. Why, it seems like only a few weeks ago when just about everybody was driving around with a flat. But now, thanks to Barack Obama showing us a better way, people are inflating their tires and soon, and I do believe it will be soon, gas will be back down to $3, even $2 a gallon.

Feels good doesn't it?

Douglas Adams and Dirk Gently

2008-08-04T21:07:00.002-05:00

Douglas Adams is the world-famous author of the world-famous Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. And, yes, there were five books in that trilogy. I read them in high school and, though I'm sure a lot of the satire went right over my head, I found them a delight. I read them again when in my mid-twenties and then a third time about three years ago. The first was made into a movie.

It is ironic that Adams was an atheist for, in my opinion, he was nearly a god with a pen. I absolutely adore his prose. It's not just that he's funny, he can paint a picture in a most colorful and hilarious way. He also seems to be able to find the humor in everyday characters and bring it out. As a writer I could only wish that I had the vocabulary to describe to you how great a writer I think Adams was.

Yes, was. Sadly, he is dead. Sadder still is the fact that he only wrote two novels in his Dirk Gently detective series. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul have to be the funniest books ever written. I can remember being up at 2am in my college dorm literally rolling on the floor and laughing while reading The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. I have just started reading the first one for the third time and its sequel will follow. I love these books.

Buy them. Read them. Go to your local library and check them out. Do it now!

Jupiter Rising

2008-08-04T07:54:00.004-05:00

Friday night I was peacefully eating a bite of supper and watching a little television when I noticed my boys were busy with something out in the front yard. A few minutes later in comes my younger son Michael (5) with a little bit of a disappointed look on his face. "Dad," says he, "can you help us find the star we're trying to look at? Jimmy can't find it."

"Hold on," I told him, "I'll be out there in a minute."

Sure enough, the boys were outside with the telescope. It wasn't quite dark yet and my first reaction was to tell them that it was still too bright to see any stars. Then I noticed that one star was visible just over the horizon toward our west(?) Jimmy was busy getting frustrated because he could not get it in his viewfinder. "That's not a star, that's a planet," I said, showing off just about the sum total of my astronomical knowledge.

"I know," said Jimmy who is about to turn twelve. "That's what I wanted to look at. What planet do you think it is?"

"Probably Venus," I guessed.

So I had him bring me out a chair and I sat down and tried for a good while to find the planet in the telescope. This was not as easy as it may sound as the telescope is a bit rickety on its tripod stand and it tends to not want to stay where it is fixed. Just before it was my turn to get frustrated I struck pay dirt. There was a large, bright ball of light in my lens, but out of focus. I adjusted and it got smaller and smaller until there was a tiny planet looking back at me. I was surprised, nearly stunned actually. I had not believed that the telescope would show something that clearly. I looked again. "This is not Venus," I told Jimmy. "It's Jupiter." What surprised me is that I could see it clearly enough to distinguish which planet it was. But the identity was unmistakable. I could make out the colors and the horizontal stripes. Jupiter.

The boys took turns looking at it breathlessly. I wasn't certain, but those tiny dots which seemed to be surrounding it, could they be moons? Jimmy ran and got his star book and confirmed that, yes, Jupiter was viewable in the night sky during the month of August from just before to a few hours after dark.

What excited me was how excited they were about it. Of course, Michael is excited about anything that excites Jimmy. It's a younger brother thing. I took advantage to encourage Jimmy about a possible career field in astronomy. I want him to know that the whole world is open to him as a possibility and that his only limitations are those he places upon himself, so I'm always doing this. Michael piped up, "Yeah, and I'm going to Mars."

"You are?"

"Yeah," he said matter-of-factly. "I was watching the Backyardigans the other day and they flew to Mars in a spaceship." It was as if it were commonplace.

"Well, you just might," I told him.

The Coming Ice Age

2008-07-31T07:35:00.004-05:00

From the April 28, 1975 issue of newsweek. I found it at Sweetness & Light.

The Cooling World
By Peter Gwynne
28 April 1975

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production — with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas — parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia — where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually.

During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree — a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.

“A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras — and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.

Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 — years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases — all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.

“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.”

Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects.

They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

Can anyone say, "radical theory change in science"? More on this to come.

Carl Sagan and the Matrix

2008-07-28T09:25:00.002-05:00

You might think I don't like Carl Sagan but that wouldn't be the case. I do kind of like the guy. He reminds me of those sort of smarmy teachers I had in the gifted classes I took in elementary school in Southern California as a kid. He just sort of epitomizes the 70s and science for me. Anytime I see one of his old Cosmos shows coming on one of the nerd channels I watch it. But his voice, speaking tone, and teaching manor just beg to be mocked, don't they? I ran across this little gem this morning on YouTube and absolutely loved it. You gotta watch it.

Ever wondered if scientist Carl Sagan and Agent Smith from The Matrix might be the same person somehow?

Carl Sagan Was Naive - part 2

2008-07-24T22:42:00.005-05:00

"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths."--Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot.

I think what I should do is just pick apart this statement piece by piece. I shall try to be merciful but justice demands swift punishment of such blatant and willful ignorance in a man professing to be so full of knowledge and wisdom.

And one other thing before I do that. Blaming the ignorance quoted above on marijuana use is just too easy an out for me to give Mr. Sagan. I am certain he believed this way all the time, not just when under the influence. But it was fun giving him the jab.

Sagan: "How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, . . ."

I doubt if Sagan knew much, if anything, about any major religion. The appalling ignorance in this particular quotation is prima facie evidence of this.

Why would religion spend its time looking to science? Religion looks to the God of science, not to science. It deals with things that cannot be tested with the scientific method.

Sagan: "How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'?"

Is he asking why religion has not elevated science to the status of religion like he has?

I can't speak for other religions, but I can for the Christian faith. I can think of no biblical prophet who downgraded the universe. They conceived of a universe as grand, subtle, and elegant as their limited capacity to understand it would allow them. What they did understand they praised and pointed to its grandness as proof of the greatness of God.

At least two major religions could point Sagan to Psalm 8:

O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
. . .
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

Or the prophet Amos:

He who made the Pleiades and Orion,
and turns deep darkness into the morning
and darkens the day into night,
who calls for the waters of the sea
and pours them out on the surface of the earth,
the LORD is his name;

Or how about the oldest book in either the Christian or Hebrew canon? Read as Job quotes God on the wonders of the universe pointing to the greatness of God (and the humility which should be displayed by man in the face of it and Him.)--Job 38

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

“Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb,
when I made clouds its garment
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
and prescribed limits for it
and set bars and doors,
and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?

“Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
and caused the dawn to know its place,
that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth,
and the wicked be shaken out of it?
It is changed like clay under the seal,
and its features stand out like a garment.
From the wicked their light is withheld,
and their uplifted arm is broken.

“Have you entered into the springs of the sea,
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?
Declare, if you know all this.

“Where is the way to the dwelling of light,
and where is the place of darkness,
that you may take it to its territory
and that you may discern the paths to its home?
You know, for you were born then,
and the number of your days is great!

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow,
or have you seen the storehouses of the hail,
which I have reserved for the time of trouble,
for the day of battle and war?
What is the way to the place where the light is distributed,
or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth?

“Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain
and a way for the thunderbolt,
to bring rain on a land where no man is,
on the desert in which there is no man,
to satisfy the waste and desolate land,
and to make the ground sprout with grass?

“Has the rain a father,
or who has begotten the drops of dew?
From whose womb did the ice come forth,
and who has given birth to the frost of heaven?
The waters become hard like stone,
and the face of the deep is frozen.

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades
or loose the cords of Orion?
Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season,
or can you guide the Bear with its children?
Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
Can you establish their rule on the earth?

“Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
that a flood of waters may cover you?
Can you send forth lightnings, that they may go
and say to you, ‘Here we are’?
Who has put wisdom in the inward parts
or given understanding to the mind?
Who can number the clouds by wisdom?
Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens,
when the dust runs into a mass
and the clods stick fast together?

“Can you hunt the prey for the lion,
or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,
when they crouch in their dens
or lie in wait in their thicket?
Who provides for the raven its prey,
when its young ones cry to God for help,
and wander about for lack of food?

I could go on . . . and on . . . and on. But my point, I think is made. The prophets proclaimed a grand, subtle, meticulous, orderly, wonderful universe and used it as evidence to point to the greatness of its God. For the Christian (or the orthodox Jew for that matter) the bigger science can demonstrate the universe to be, the more wondrous the world around us, the more praiseworthy is our God. All of this just renders Sagan's comment, well, stupid.

Sagan: "Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.'"

It would be nice to see some evidence of this negative assertion about the major religions. Again, I cannot speak for all of them, but I can certainly speak for the Christian faith and perhaps the Jewish one as well. We have the grandest view of God imaginable. That is why we conceive of him in terms that begin with "omni-" and "all-". You know, like omnipotent, omniscient, all-wise, all-seeing, omnipresent, etc. In fact, it is impossible to conceive of a God more grand than the Christian God and the larger science discovers the universe to be--the more complex, the more subtle, the more wondrous--the greater this God becomes in our conception.

Sagan: "A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths."

And how would Sagan know this has not happened or is not happening seeing he had nothing to do with the major religions his entire adult life? And did he (and does Dawkins) really believe that science holds a monopoly on reverence and awe for creation?

I cannot resist one more sripture quotation, this time from the prophet Isaiah (chapter 40):

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure
and weighed the mountains in scales
and the hills in a balance?
Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD,
or what man shows him his counsel?
Whom did he consult,
and who made him understand?
Who taught him the path of justice,
and taught him knowledge,
and showed him the way of understanding?
Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
and are accounted as the dust on the scales;
behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.
Lebanon would not suffice for fuel,
nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
All the nations are as nothing before him,
they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.

To whom then will you liken God,
or what likeness compare with him?
An idol! A craftsman casts it,
and a goldsmith overlays it with gold
and casts for it silver chains.
He who is too impoverished for an offering
chooses wood that will not rot;
he seeks out a skillful craftsman
to set up an idol that will not move.

Do you not know? Do you not hear?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
who brings princes to nothing,
and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.

Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows on them, and they wither,
and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

To whom then will you compare me,
that I should be like him? says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes on high and see:
who created these?
He who brings out their host by number,
calling them all by name,
by the greatness of his might,
and because he is strong in power
not one is missing.

Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.

Comes across as a small God, doesn't it? Small universe, small God. Right. Gotcha.

(all Scripture quotations taken from the English Standard Version)

Carl Sagan Was Naive

2008-07-23T21:30:00.003-05:00

In chapter one of The God Delusion Richard Dawkins quotes Carl Sagan in an effort to demonstrate how science and scientific knowledge provide a better platform for awe and wonder than does religious faith. Before getting to the quotation, I wish to reflect a bit on the deceased Mr. Sagan.

Surely you remember him, do you not? He co-wrote and hosted the television series Cosmos which first aired on PBS in 1980. Sagan did much to popularize science, including several books, essays, the television show noted above, and frequent television appearances. He was known for his belief that extra-terrestrial life existed in the universe and for his efforts to bring about its discovery. In addition he was a political activist, being one of the first to advocate the theory of a nuclear winter taking place in the aftermath of a nuclear war and also an early advocate of the idea of man-made global warming. His leftist activism led to his arrest on more than one occasion.

But Sagan was also a noted and accomplished astronomer. He was one of the first to postulate that the surface of Venus was mostly hot and arid. He conjectured that Jupiter's moon Europa might have sub-surface oceans, a theory that was later indirectly confirmed by the spacecraft Galileo. By most measures Sagan led a full, active, and productive life.

But enough of that.

Sagan was a pantheist. I remember about two years ago they were airing those old episodes of Cosmos on the Discovery Science channel. I vaguely remembered having seen some of those shows as an adolescent. Intrigued, I watched several of them in a row. Sagan, I noted, had a gift for teaching, for making complex ideas understandable. I laughed at his hairstyle and clothing which were reminiscent of the time-period. I was enjoying myself and, yes, learning. Then came the episode where Sagan was discussing the Big Bang theory. Though Sagan did not mention this in the show, I happened to know that some scientists are a bit uncomfortable with one aspect of the Big Bang theory (and this is why it was slow in ascending to supremacy among the physicists at the time of its first being postulated), specifically that the Big Bang points back to a beginning of time and matter. This idea supports theism--not pantheism. Pantheists view matter and the universe as eternal--having no beginning or ending. Most scientists are pantheists.

So anyway, in this certain episode which I am recalling Sagan takes us to India to show us a religious world-view which he could support--pantheism. He did not name it as such, but I wasn't born yesterday and I knew where he was going with it. Then, he goes on to postulate that the universe is eternal, that it is an endless cycle of expansions and retractions. Right now, the universe is expanding; one day it will begin retracting. Then, when it is back to square one, bang, it starts all over again. His evidence for this? The Brahman religion.

I'm not kidding. That was all the evidence he cited. This was compatible with what the ancient Brahmans believed.

And the facts involved, the experimentation, the logic used to prompt me to accept Brahman pantheism over, say, Christian theism? All he gave was a simple, "Why not?"

That's it. And, yes, that passed for logic and science and sound reasoning in Carl Sagan's world.

But enough of my television memories. Let's get to that Sagan quotation in Dawkins' book. Here it is:

"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths."--Carl Sagan as quoted by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, paperback, p.32,33.

You know, my knee-jerk reaction to that quotation is to ask, "What has this guy been smoking?" Turns out my knee-jerk reaction may hit closer to home than you might imagine. Sagan was, indeed, a child of his times and once wrote an essay (under a pseudonym) defending the use of cannabis in a book entitled Marihuana Reconsidered. In the essay he credits the mari-hoochie for helping to inspire some of his works and for enhancing sensual and intellectual experiences. Suddenly I know where the inspiration for this particular quotation came from. The only thing left to learn is whether it was rolled in paper or inhaled through a bong.

But that's too easy, isn't it?

In a near-future post look for me to rip Sagan's naive statement and Dawkins' gullible embracing of it in his book. It is amazing to me how these guys can make such ignorant assertions and still try to pass themselves off as the epitome of logic and reason.

I Like Dawkins

2008-07-22T07:56:00.003-05:00

The thing is I like Richard Dawkins. I disagree with him vehemently, don't get me wrong. And I look forward to ripping him apart, in so far as I am able, as I dig my way through The God Delusion. But I have to tell you that in some ways Dawkins is a breath of fresh air. At least he believes something and what he believes in he is passionate about. People nowadays don't believe in anything passionately neither will they state anything about those beliefs forcefully for fear of offending someone. Enough of the political correctness already! Who cares if people are offended? If Dawkins is right and I am a fool for believing in God then I need to be offended, knocked upside the head rhetorically; perhaps it will bring me to my senses. And if Dawkins is wrong and playing the part of the fool (as I believe) then why shouldn't I unload verbal salvos upon him and his stupid arguments? Plain speech is a virtue!

With that in mind look for four things as I slowly plow through The God Delusion. First, look for me to take it slowly. I may read each chapter two or three times before moving on to the next. This will enable me to grasp his thoughts and subtleties well and give me time to distill my thoughts and responses and answer him well. I may be dull enough not to have oversome my childhood indoctrination into Christianity, but I have enough wits, I think, to participate and participate well, in polemical discussion. Second, look for me to be fair to Dawkins and treat him honestly and fairly whether he does the same with theists and/or Christians or not. Dawkins is not Satan. He is created in the image of God and in no more or less need of God's grace than any of us. Stupid, sinful, holier-than-thou attitudes toward people like Dawkins, which I fear are the norm in our shallow age, do nothing but fan the flames of their hatred of religion and give them justification for that hatred. Third, look for me to praise those ideas and attitudes of his with which I agree. Some posts in this line-up will be exactly that. And, last, look for me to treat him roughly, just as roughly as he treats others, when it comes to points of disagreement. Dawkins obviously likes it rough so rough is how we will have it.

Dawkins is far more educated than I am, is far more accomplished, and has much more experience. For that I respect him. He has also brought this debate down to the popular level as opposed to leaving it on the academic level and for that I am thankful. I am a big first amendment guy in case you haven't noticed and I think that hashing these things out in the popular, public sector is good for society. The fact that we can discuss these things on the level of the people and leave the discussion with our lives and liberty intact is a reflection on the goodness and rightness of the American ideal. People need to be interested in events and venues which cause them to think. I hope they will. That's why what Dawkins is doing cannot be seen as ultimately bad from a Christian perspective. If he challenges us and we rise to meet that challenge then what he has done is ultimately good--good for us and good for those who are given the opportunity to hear our defense of our faith. Truth will win the day. I believe that. Don't you?

Radical Theory Change in Science

2008-07-21T07:20:00.006-05:00

Alister McGrath brings up an interesting observation in Chapter three of his Dawkins' God--Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life. In that chapter he has a section entitled "The Problem of Radical Theory Change in Science." Here is a quotation:

When I was learning physics at school, I gradually became aware of an awkward contradiction within what I was being taught. On the one hand, I was being assured that the theories of modern physics were completely reliable, the most secure form of knowledge that humanity could ever hope to possess. Yet every now and then, we would venture into a strange, twilight region in which it would be explained to us, in hushed, conspiratorial tones, that "physicists once used to believe this, but don't now." . . . At first, I thought that these old-fashioned views dated back to the sixteenth century. But the awful truth soon became clear. The acceptance of these new ideas dated from about forty years earlier. "Once" turned out to mean "quite recently."--Alister McGrath, Dawkins' God, p.102, paperback, Blackwell Publishing.

Yep. I've noticed that sort of thing myself. No, I'm no scientist, but I am a television nerd--which means I watch all the nerd channels. You know what they are--the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, NatGeo, Discovery Science, History International, etc. I watch shows dealing with astronomy, cosmology, dinosaurs, you name it. One cannot watch many of these programs without coming across statements like the one McGrath notes above. Scientific theories are always changing, always being revised, many being completely discarded and replaced. They are always getting it wrong.

Now is that a bad thing? Of course, not. Scientific discovery is a road paved with wrong ideas, but as we learn and discover further, we grow. Isn't that wonderful?

There's something else I've noted in the scientific community from watching those nifty little nerd channels. Scientists are always arguing with each other. They seldom all agree on their theories and some are even ridiculed for their ideas by their colleagues. Sometimes even, the ones who are ridiculed turn out to be right. Sometimes a scientist comes along who challenges the prevailing opinions, is ridiculed, but in the end, through his diligent experimentation and research, it turns out that he was right and he changes the face of science for a few decades (until the next guy comes along doing the same thing).

All of this is easily evident to the untutored layman like me. Yet at the same time it is astounding how arrogant the scientific community is. Imagine, for instance, a guy like Richard Dawkins. An intelligent man by all accounts, well-learned, articulate, funny, thorough, logical, Dawkins is also arrogant--arrogant to the point of expecting people to radically change their worldview because of a scientific theory. Of course, as McGrath points out, even if one were to accept the theory of evolution as genuine it does not then necessarily follow that one's theism or Christianity be discarded.

Nevertheless, here is Dawkins--who cannot prove his theory. He may be able to point to a mound of scientific evidence, yet the necessary proof is as of yet unproduced. But Dawkins ridicules those who do not accept the theory as fact, even though scientific theories have a way of being found wanting and, after being replaced by new and better ones, being cast upon the forgotten heaps of antiquated errors that litter the landscape of scientific history.

Please, guys. Keep studying, keep learning, keep discovering. I shall watch with an interested eye. But, at the same time, how about adding in a dash of humility to that theoretical cauldron? The stew you are offering will go down much better if you do.

A little more from McGrath:

Historians and philosophers of science have produced long lists of scientific theories, each of which was believed by one generation to be the best possible representation of reality, yet which were abandoned by later generations, in the light of new discoveries and increasingly precise measurements of what was already known. Some theories have proved remarkably stable; many have been radically modified, and others abandoned altogether.--Alister McGrath, Dawkins' God, p.104, paperback, Blackwell Publishing.

And:

Scientific theorizing is thus provisional. In other words, it offers what is believed to be the best account of the experimental observations currently available. Radical theory change takes place either when it is believed that there is a better explanation of what is currently known, or when new information comes to light which forces us to see what is presently known in a new light. Unless we know the future, it is impossible to take an absolute position on the question of whether any given theory is "right." What can be said--and, indeed, must be said--is that this is believed to be the best explanation currently available. History simply makes fools of those who argue that every aspect of the current theoretical situation is true for all time. The problem is that we don't know which of today's theories will be discarded as interesting failures by future generations.

If theories are thus subject to erosion, what of worldviews that are based upon them? . . .Alister McGrath, Dawkins' God, p.104,5, paperback, Blackwell Publishing.

For My Muse

2008-07-20T22:50:00.003-05:00

My paltry prose is always read by you and what life its flame contains was fanned by your encouragement. So in the midst of all my poor attempts at punditry I take this opportunity to diverge from my regular line of postings and make this trifling offering to you. May your love for me be requited a hundredfold and may God's grace be forever yours. When I think of you I feel like Shakespeare must have felt when he penned sonnet #29:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For my sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Peter's Blunder--and mine

2008-07-20T09:10:00.001-05:00

I was busy preparing the next new sermon for the Spurgeon Archive Addendum this morning when disaster happened. The sermon is No. 1823 "Peter's Blunder: A Lesson to Ourselves" and it will be the next one up. It would have been up this morning before church but half way through editing it something happened to reset my computer and, no, I had not saved it up until that point. That's my blunder.

But it is an excellent sermon and I can't wait to make it available. Here is a quotation from it which will serve as a teaser:

"'But I am strong,' say you. Nonsense, you are weak as water. You dream of perfection, but you are a mass of wants, and infirmities, and conceits; and if it were not for the infinite mercy of God, who deals tenderly with you, you would soon have most painfully to know it to your own dishonor, and to the grief of your brethren round about you. Peter is Peter still, notwithstanding what grace has done."--CHS

Let that thought sink in and I shall have the entire sermon up, if not this afternoon then perhaps tomorrow.

I Smell a Set-Up

2008-07-17T00:17:00.004-05:00

My first reaction to Richard Dawkins is that he comes across as an arrogant ass (in the King James sense, of course). I am sure I am not the first who has thought that or even verbalized it, but there it is. Of course, it has nothing to do with whether he is right or not. It is not an argument, it's an observation.

I will say this for him, his prose is written in a pleasing style. He is quite the penman.

I can tell it is going to take me a while to read this book because on every page or so I find something about which I want to protest or point out. That's what brings us here, after midnight, when I have to get up early and go to work in the morning. But I won't be able to sleep unless I blog this now.

It starts with Dawkins' stated purpose for writing this book. To do justice to his stated purpose would entail quoting the entire Preface. However, I believe the reader can get the general idea from the third paragraph of the Preface which goes like this:

"I suspect--well, I am sure--that there are lots of people out there who have been brought up in some religion or other, are unhappy in it, don't believe it, or are worried about the evils that are done in its name; people who feel vague yearnings to leave their parents' religion and wish they could, but just don't realize that leaving is an option. If you are one of them, this book is for you. It is intended to raise consciousness--raise consciousness to the fact that to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and splendid one. You can be an atheist who is happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled. That is the first of my consciousness-raising messages. I also want to raise consciousness in three other ways, which I'll come on to. . . ."--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Preface, paragraph 3.

So there you have it. Mr. Dawkins wishes to convert us, right? Wrong. He only wishes to convert "open-minded" people. He knows, on the other hand, that fundamentalists--"dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads"--are incapable of being converted. They are not open-minded. Rather, they are victims of indoctrination--and lacking the intelligence to overcome it.

From page 28 of the paperback version (emphasis mine):

"If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down. What presumptuous optimism! Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature (whether by evolution or design). Among the more effective immunological devices is a dire warning to avoid even opening a book like this, which is surely a work of Satan. But I believe there are plenty of open-minded people out there: people whose childhood indoctrination was not too insidious, or for other reasons didn't 'take', or whose native intelligence is strong enough to overcome it. Such free spirits should need only a little encouragement to break free of the vice of religion altogether."--Dawkins, The God Delusion, p.28, paperback.

I'm being set up. Can you see it? If at the end of this book Mr. Dawkins has converted me, that means I am "intelligent" and "open-minded" and a "free spirit" who was able to overcome the insidious indoctrination I received as a child. If, however, I remain unconvinced by Mr. Dawkins' impeccable logic then I am most certainly some "dyed-in-the-wool faith-head" who is just too stupid or too stubborn to bow to the great Oxford professor's wisdom. It is an appeal to pride and elitism. All the smart, beautiful people are atheists!

Hogwash. What if someone reads Dawkins' treatise and finds it (gasp) unconvincing? What if, when read, the logic is found to be full of holes? What if, when weighed in the balance, the book is found to be, in fact, very light on the logic side and very, very heavy on the rhetoric side?

Dawkins is fond of pointing out the worst in religious faith and peddling it as the norm. Thinking people, however, shouldn't buy that nonsense. For an example see the second paragraph I quoted above. Is it true, as Dawkins states, that many religious people will be warned away from his book, convinced not to read it, because some religious leader(s) will pronounce the work as a work of Satan and therefore, by extension, those who read it as participating in some evil act? Yes, that's true.

And let me also say (and I think Dawkins would agree) that if the Bible is true, then what Dawkins has produced is an evil work. In fact, it constitutes a high crime against heaven. That is, if the Bible is true (and I certainly believe that it is). Dawkins does not. In fact, he laughs at a bumper sticker which he once saw which refers to blasphemy as a victimless crime.

But it does not then follow that to read his work is an evil act. In fact, I would argue that it is a good and necessary act to read his work and engage it on an intellectual level (yes, Mr. Dawkins, some dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads do that sort of thing). This sort of diatribe needs to be answered, and answered well--with reason.

"Test everything; hold fast what is good"--St. Paul.

"Buy the truth and sell it not."--Proverbs

The Christian faith is a well-reasoned and reasonable faith which has stood the test of time--as well as an endless barrage of attacks from well-educated elitists like Dawkins. Those attacks have been traditionally answered and refuted by well-educated, thinking, reasoning men of faith who hold to the truth with such tenacity that they are not afraid to be engaged by high-minded, holier-than-thou (yes, I think it is an appropriate description of Dawkins' demeanor) zealots. Truth does not fear error. There are answers to the questions and apparent problems which the skeptics pose and Christianity is a thinking man's religion, completely intellectually and logically satisfying.

And neither will I fall prey to Dawkins' set-up. Dawkins will have to do more than merely assert that reasonable and intelligent and open-minded people will succumb to his wisdom and logic. He will have to prove it.

I have another thought which occurred to me while reading Dawkins that I will blog about later today. It is a tie-in to the religious liberty posts. I hope you will come back for it.

Everybody's Headed for the Weekend!

2008-07-16T08:28:00.005-05:00

I just finished Alister McGrath's Dawkins' God. McGrath makes some excellent points and seems to dissect some of Dawkins' more inept assertions rather nicely. Of course, I haven't read Dawkins himself yet, but his The God Delusion is next on my list. More thoughts on this later.

Hopefully I will be able to blog something later tonight. The evenings this weekend are looking rather busy, though. My boys and I are going to play basketball tonight. Tomorrow night I have the girls. Then I am spending the entire weekend with all four of them, so I am looking forward to some reading of Tolkien, no doubt, along with a quiz being given to my oldest boy over a book he is supposed to have finished by Friday night (the bio of David Livingstone published by Moody).

So . . . we have on the agenda some 19th century missions, some Tolkien, some Disney, and some twenty-first century atheism. (Is there some sort of subconscious bridge there, some sort of step-by-step progression?) Speaking of the latter, at least Dawkins, for all his flaws, is colorful and, I am told, an interesting writer who holds a disdain for post-modern thinking. A fundamentalist atheist (or would he be an atheist fundamentalist?) . . . should be a blast! I am looking forward to being shocked and offended at his over-the-top rhetoric and I plan to answer some of his points here on the blog as I know he will get my juices flowing. I only hope I can match his rhetoric and enthusiasm.

BTW - here's a rather poor photo of a large-mouth bass my son caught the other day in his grandfather's pond.

It weighed in at 3.5 lbs. Not bad.

Baptist John Leland on Religious Liberty

2008-07-14T08:28:00.004-05:00

I found this interesting little page on-line and decided to link it here. The page belongs to Pastor David L. Brown, Ph.D. I recommend you go over there and read the entire paragraph as it further supports what I have been blogging here. This is one aspect of my Baptist heritage of which I am particularly (ahem) proud. Here is a teaser:

During the summer of 2001 my family and I took a trip to Virginia and North Carolina to do family tree research and visit some historic locations. As we were traveling "the Constitution Route" on highway 20 in Virginia, I came across an interesting monument about seven miles east of Orange. On it was the embossed head of John Leland, the influential Baptist preacher and champion of religious liberty. It is believed that the monument marks the location where James Madison and John Leland met to discuss Madison’s candidacy for Virginia delegate to the Convention to ratify the Federal Constitution. . . .

Below are some of the quotations I promised from John Leland on religious liberty.

Let it suffice on this head to say, that it is not possible in the nature of things to establish religion by human laws without perverting the design of civil law and oppressing the people (from The Yankee Spy, John Leland writing under the pen name of Jack Nipps, Boston, 1794).
Is it the duty of a deist to support that which he believes to be a cheat and imposition? Is it the duty of the Jew to support the religion of Jesus Christ, when he really believes that he was an imposter? Must the papist be forced to pay men for preaching down the supremacy of the pope, whom they are sure is the head of the church? Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of mathematics (from The Yankee Spy, John Leland writing under the pen name of Jack Nipps, Boston, 1794).
To say that religion cannot stand without a state establishment is not only contrary to fact (as has been proved already) but is a contradiction in phrase. Religion must have stood a time before any law could have been made about it; and if it did stand almost three hundred years without law it can still stand without it (from The Connecticut Dissenters Strong Box, Number One, New London 1802).
If government can answer for individuals at the day of judgment, let men be controlled by it in religious matters; otherwise let men be free (from The Connecticut Dissenters Strong Box, Number One, New London 1802.
To read in the New Testament, that the Lord has ordained that those that preach the gospel shall live by its institutions and precepts, sounds very harmonical; but to read in a state constitution, that the legislature shall require men to maintain teachers of piety, religion and morality, sounds very discordant (from The Yankee Spy, John Leland writing under the pen name of Jack Nipps, Boston, 1794).
In the second article [of the Massachusetts state constitution of 1780] it is said, 'is the right and duty of all men publicly, and at stated seasons, to worship the Supreme Being.' This article would read much better in a catechism than in a state constitution, and sound more concordant in a pulpit than in a statehouse (from The Yankee Spy, John Leland writing under the pen name of Jack Nipps, Boston, 1794).
...[A]nd the reason why public worship is enjoined (required) by authority, and private worship is omitted, is only to pave the way for some religious establishment by human law, and force taxes from the people to support avaricious priests. (from The Yankee Spy, John Leland writing under the pen name of Jack Nipps, Boston, 1794).
What leads legislators into this error, is confounding sins and crimes together -- making no difference between moral evil and state rebellion: not considering that a man may be infected with moral evil, and yet be guilty of no crime, punishable by law. If a man worships one God, three Gods, twenty Gods, or no God -- if he pays adoration one day in a week, seven days or no day -- wherein does he injure the life, liberty or property of another? Let any or all these actions be supposed to be religious evils of an enormous size, yet they are not crimes to be punished by laws of state, which extend no further, in justice, than to punish the man who works ill to his neighbor (from The Yankee Spy, John Leland writing under the pen name of Jack Nipps, Boston, 1794).
In a well regulated state it will be the business of the legislature to prevent sectaries of different denominations from molesting and disturbing each other; to ordain that no part of the community shall be permitted to perplex and harass the other for any supposed heresy, but that each individual shall be allowed to have and enjoy, profess and maintain his own system of religion, provided it does not issue in overt acts of treason against the state undermining the peace and order of society. (from The Yankee Spy, John Leland writing under the pen name of Jack Nipps, Boston, 1794).

* "The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever...Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians." - A Chronicle of His Time in Virginia.

* "Truth disdains the aid of law for its defense — it will stand upon its own merits." - Right of Conscience Inalienable.

* "Every man must give account of himself to God, and therefore every man ought to be at liberty to serve God in a way that he can best reconcile to his conscience. If government can answer for individuals at the day of judgment, let men be controlled by it in religious matters; otherwise, let men be free." - Right of Conscience Inalienable.

Make no mistake. The idea of the separation of church and state is something for which Baptists fought for a very long time. Leland was perhaps one of the most vociferous, but he was certainly not alone (as I hope to demonstrate as I continue to expand upon this theme).

And I agree with John Leland and those early American Baptists. The marriage of church and state is an insufferable evil and a plague upon genuine religion and will remain so for as long as this world remains in its fallen condition. I will attempt to provide more history on the subject first, then I will attempt to demonstrate why I believe this to be so using Scripture and sound reason. Then later, I plan to make some arguments supporting my opinion that our current federal government violates this first amendment principle and usurps the role of the individual and church in its current day-to-day operations. For now I would just like you to think about an old adage that distills quite succinctly my viewpoint, then come back later for more.

"A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."

Revival Sermons

2008-07-11T07:42:00.002-05:00

Last night I was blessed with my girls and a slumber party and so I did not get as much blogging done as I would have wished. I did manage to get that brand-new Spurgeon sermon done at The Spurgeon Archive Addendum, however. The sermon is from Habakkuk 3:2 and I have a hard copy in a book called Revival Sermons which is a collection of Spurgeon's sermons selected and edited by Rev. Dr. Charles T. Cook. My edition was published in 1958 and sold for $2.95 hard-back. I also had the unedited version of the sermon on a CD-Rom from Ages software. This is a great resource but is notorious for its copying errors. So what I did was copy & paste the sermon from there, then edit it using the hard copy as a reference. It took me about an hour and a half. Hopefully I'll get faster.

Great Reading

2008-07-09T21:32:00.003-05:00

I managed to finish Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ over the weekend. This is an excellent resource. For me there was not a lot new as far as arguments and information, but what took me years and years to discover through my own private reading and research, Strobel put in one concise and easy-to-read volume that can be read in a day or two. Kudos. I recommend it to anyone and everyone. What? Are you one of the only about a hundred and fifty evangelicals who still haven't read it? Go ahead! Bite the bullet. Dew it! You won't regret it. Besides, you'll want it on your shelf as a reference. I promise you my kids will read this book when they are teens.

Since finishing that one up I have begun devouring Alister McGrath's Dawkins God--Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life. No light reading this. However, it is not a long book, my copy being about 160 pages minus the reference sections. It is worth it. We would all be better off if we turned off the television and pop culture from time to time and spent some quality hours with a good tome--thinking and developing discernment--learning. Besides that, here you have one Oxford professor taking on (and taking out) the arguments of another--an academic free-for-all! Check out what McGrath says about Dawkins and this debate in the Introduction:

"Yes, Dawkins seems to many to be immensely provocative and aggressive, dismissing alternative positions with indecent haste, or treating criticism of his personal views as an attack on the entire scientific enterprise. Yet this kind of overheated rhetoric is found in any popular debate, whether religious, philosophical, or scientific. Indeed, it is what makes popular debates interesting, and raises them above the tedious drone of normal scholarly discussion, which seems invariably to be accompanied by endless footnotes, citing of weighty but dull authorities, and cautious understatement heavily laced with qualifications. How much more exciting to have a pugnacious, no holds barred debate, without having to worry about the stifling conventions of rigorous evidence-based scholarship! Dawkins clearly wants to provoke such a debate and discussion, and it would be churlish not to accept such an invitation."

Let's get it on!

Other Blog-related Info

Tomorrow night look for me to get that list of John Leland quotations on the separation of church and state added to this blog and also look for the first sermon to be web-published to The Spurgeon Archive Addendum.

John Leland, Patriot for Liberty

2008-07-04T21:25:00.005-05:00

When we think of patriots we think of men like George Washington, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, Ben Franklin, and so on. But I bet you never stop to contemplate the effect on our liberty made by a Baptist preacher by the name of John Leland.

John Leland was a Baptist evangelist, a Calvinist, and an outspoken political activist. His issue? Separation of church and state.

Although we were all taught that our forefathers came to this land seeking religious liberty, in truth religious liberty was not law in the thirteen colonies. With the exception of Roger Williams' Rhode Island, each colony had its own state church. Yes, the pilgrims and puritans did come seeking a place where they could freely worship--and everyone else was forced to worship that way too.

We look at that and think how horrid! But we are the recipients of a moral code in this vein that was unheard of in the 17th century world. At that time there was religious liberty virtually nowhere and the idea was morally repugnant to the religious thinkers of the day (it had been for thousands of years). If the government does not enforce religious practice then the public will go wild, said they. Have you never read the Law of Moses and the Old Testament?

But in the new world that thinking was to change and that change had been coming about since the early 1600's and the appearance of the Baptists in Holland and England. Baptists were non-comformists and, as such, had been suffering at the hands of the established churches (read: state churches) since their beginnings. But they persevered through all obstacles and flourished. In the colonies, and especially in Virginia, they suffered greatly at the hands of the colonial government.

When the time came for a new nation to be born and a new government to be formed it was the Baptists, with their doctrine of liberty of conscience, who led the charge for a bill of rights which would guarantee, among other things, religious liberty--through the separation of church and state.

I read an interesting article published on-line by Homer Massey of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. I would encourage you to read the whole article, but I wanted to quote him on this next part. He writes:

"The Constitution of the United States was submitted to the various states for ratification on September 1, 1787. Each state dealt with the pros and cons on a grass-roots level, with public discussions and debates between candidates for that state’s own Constitutional Convention.

In two states--Virginia and Massachusetts--there was considerable opposition to ratification because, in the minds of many, it had no specific guaranty of religious liberty. James Madison was the primary author and he felt confident that there was no major problem. As he was returning to his home in Orange County just prior to the election there for the Convention, he stopped at Fredericksburg. There he received “an urgent warning that he should be sure to visit an influential Baptist leader and convert him from the idea that the Constitution (as it stood) menaced religious liberty.”

The influential Baptist leader was John Leland, who lived outside the town of Orange on the road to Fredericksburg. Madison discovered that Leland had garnered sufficient support to keep him out of the ratifying convention, so he and Leland met in an oak grove six miles outside Orange in the Spring of 1788. Instead of converting Leland, however, Madison was the one who was converted. As a result of this meeting he agreed to introduce amendments to the new Constitution that would spell out specific items Lelad and the Baptist were concerned about. In the county meeting shortly thereafter Madison was elected to the Convention with Leland’s support.

A local Baptist association has preserved the spot where the two men held their historic meeting, calling it “Leland Madison Park.” A fine memorial marker now stands in the small park on Highway 20 in Orange County, briefly telling the story of how the Baptists played a crucial role in securing religious liberty in America.

In June of 1789 James Madison introduced his promised amendments to the new Constitution. The first of them reads in part, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…’

This, when eventually adopted, embedded in the fundamental law of our country the historic Baptist principle of the separation of the domains of religion and civil government.”

So when you go to church this Sunday, whatever church you attend, think of John Leland and give God thanks for him. And for those of you who don't go to church and don't worship God in any form or fashion, please take some time to contemplate that it was, in part, a Baptist preacher who vehemently fought for you that right. Tomorrow I will post some quotations from John Leland on religious liberty and the separation of church and state.

Senator Jesse Helms--American Statesman

2008-07-04T15:15:00.003-05:00

On this, the 232nd anniversary of the birth of our nation we mourn the death of an American statesman--Jesse Helms of North Carolina. How fitting that he should die on this day.

“Compromise, hell! ... If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?"--Jesse Helms

We have too many politicians--men who govern by polls and fear the press and are bought by special interest groups--and too few statesmen--men of principle, men of backbone, men of courage, men of character. God rest his soul and in His grace give us more men like him.

The American Empire

2008-07-04T14:11:00.002-05:00

I just read a fabulous article at National Review Online entitled "If America Is an Empire, then Why Is Gas So Expensive?--Imperial considerations" by Thomas F. Madden. Here is a teaser:

"America has become an empire. Everyone says so.

This is a surprise to most Americans, since few imagined that they were building such a thing. But, as historians such as Walter Nugent and Robert Kagan have recently taught us, Americans have been at this imperialist expansionism for quite some time — really since the beginning of the republic. How else to explain that the United States has gone from a handful of agrarian colonies to a world-spanning colossus in the space of only a few centuries? As you read this, American military might is deployed across the planet. The U.S. Navy is literally larger than all of the other navies in the world combined. The United States military accounts for almost one-half of total global military expenditures. Never before in human history has there been such a disparity in power among sovereign states.

So, I have a question. If America is an empire (and everyone says that it is), then why is gas so expensive?"

Go read it. You will get a chuckle and you will also learn something.

The Spurgeon Archive Addendum

2008-07-04T00:09:00.002-05:00

Introducing The Spurgeon Archive Addendum--a blog which will help supplement some of the missing sermons from the famous Spurgeon Archive which highlights the work of the late Charles Haddon Spurgeon. I will be adding, hopefully, at least one new Charles Spurgeon sermon to the cyber-world per week, sermons not available at The Spurgeon Archive or anywhere else on the web. This work will hopefully help to complete that wonderful resource in the future.

Morning Musings

2008-07-02T08:03:00.005-05:00

Independence day is coming (Friday) and I am planning at least three blog posts for that day. One will be about our Christian heritage and the part it played in the formation of the Bill of Rights. One will be about the American Empire and how we differ from the historic empire model. The last will be a post on defining the American dream. Don't miss that last one.

In the meantime you might have noticed the list in the side-bar of books I am reading right now. A word on those:

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt is considered one of the best biographies of TR available. Edmund Morris received, I believe, a pullitzer for it. If I'm not mistaken it was also made into a movie starring Leonardo DiCapprio which would explain why I haven't bothered watching. But the book is excellent and I am taking my time with it. Not that it isn't a page-turner, it is that, but I have so much on my plate that I only read it on weekends when I'm at my folks' house and I set a course to complete it by the end of the year. It covers T-Rex's life from birth through his election as President. It is the first volume of a planned trilogy of which only the first two have been written thus far. The second is called Theodore Rex.

The Hobbit I have read at least four times already--once as a 7th grader, again as a young adult, then aloud to my oldest son when he was in kindergarten, and now to my younger son who will be in kindergarten next year.

The Confessions of St. Augustine is a classic which everyone should read. My copy was published by Moody. It is the edition edited by Dr. Paul Bechtel in 1981, working primarily with an edition translated from the Latin by Anglican clergyman E.B. Pusey (1800-1882). Those of you who grew up with the King James Version of the Bible will feel right at home with this translation for it has the same style of language. I will blog more on this book.

The Case for Christ I have mentioned in a previous blogpost. Nearly done with it I hope to put it back on the shelf this weekend.

Pawn of Prophecy--pure escapism. I read this series of books when I was a teenager and completely taken by the fantasy genre. I picked it back up to see if it could still maintain its captivating spell now that I'm a more mature reader. So far not bad. Better than some I have returned to after twenty-plus years.

The Church and Politics

2008-07-01T09:54:00.003-05:00

I've been a bit short on blogging time but hope to be able to get to something of substance later this evening. In the meantime I ran across a topic of interest on another more populated blog and I thought I would pass it along here. Phil Johnson of The Spurgeon Archive fame posted some interesting thoughts on what may happen when the Church mixes and mingles in the political arena and how that may affect its overall witness. I rarely read the comments over there because there are so many, but I would be interested in anyone's thoughts on the post. I will also be opining along these lines in the near future, though I may be hitting at it from a different and, perhaps, odd (unique?) angle.

Just to give you a small taste and perhaps kindle your fire a little let me tease this future line of posts by saying that I am adamantly FOR the separation of Church and State. I know that specific terminology is not used in the Bill of Rights, but I wish it had been. Evangelicals often frighten me in their inability to grasp this very important and Christian concept. The marriage of Church and State was a marriage made in hell. Though probably all of our founders were theists and many of them Christians, and though their theology cannot help but to have seeped into their writings, they set out purposely to set up a system of government that was a-theological in its institutions--not favoring one theological creed over another. My gripe, however, is not so much the Church's foray into politics (though I tend to agree with Phil) but the government's intrusion into things that properly belong in the private sector, specifically to the Church. I think as a layman I am perfectly suited to opine on this subject.

Celebrating the Second Amendment

2008-06-29T21:09:00.005-05:00

This here is my first post to the blog and I am so proud James has allowed me to perticipate. I just wanted to let yall know that I won't be postin' none of that intyllectual stuff. Mostly I'll just be reportin' what goes on around here and tryin' to keep that big-headed James in his place case he gets too big for his britches which he does from time to time if you don't watch it. Anyway, James said we should do somethin' special to celebrate that there Supreme Court ruling about us individuals having the right to keep and bear guns for our own personal defense, pleasure, or to keep them IRS *^%$#@#'s from gettin' too frisky.

Note from James: As part of Eustace's on-going education and acclimation into civilized society I will be educating him as to when and where a citizen can lawfully use firearms and, as yet, he does not fully comprehend all of its nuances. Needless to say, we at The Manic Eclectic do not advocate the use of lethal force against any civil servant until and unless (a) said civil servant is acting in violation of our lawful and constitutional rights and (b) all civil and litigious means of protecting said rights have been exhausted. But this is Eustace's post so I will now allow him to carry on.

Anyway, James said we needed to celebrate and what better way to celebrate than by whoopin' it up real good with our guns! Woohoo! Of course, the bad part about shootin' with James is he won't let me bring a case of Keystone Light. Fact, James won't let me drink at all while we's a shootin' and let me tell you it ain't nearly as fun, but tends to be a bit more safer for the limbs and lives of them that's celebratin'.

So there we was just a shootin' up a storm--tin cans, whiskey bottles, newspaper pictures of Hillary, you-name-it. Then James says we need to take out one of them old trucks we got up on blocks in the back pasture. This is the truck before we started shootin' at it.

But before we started shootin' James get all patriotic and starts a quotin' some of them what he calls our founders. You should a seen him. He gets all glassy-eyed a lookin', takes his hat off, puts it over his heart and goes off like this:

"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?"--Patrick Henry

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined."--Patrick Henry

"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"--Patrick Henry

"We are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of Nature has placed in our power... the battle, sir, is not to the strong alone it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave."--Patrick Henry

"The Bible is worth all the other books which have ever been printed."--Patrick Henry

"The great object is that every man be armed."--Patrick Henry

At that, James put back on his hat and I commenced to shootin'. Check out what I did to that old truck in honor of ol' Pat Hinry.

Now who said rednecks ain't got skills? Huh?

Justice Scalia's Opinion

2008-06-27T10:41:00.003-05:00

If you are interested, here is a link to Justice Scalia's opinion in yesterday's landmark Supreme Court ruling. It is a long opinion, some 63 pages if I'm not mistaken, but a perusal of the first ten or twelve pages is well worth it. Two quick thoughts:

1. Individual liberty was upheld yesterday against an encroaching, elitist government. Leftist do-gooders would love to take guns away from individuals because they do not trust individuals to be responsible for themselves, they want those individuals to be dependent upon government for, in this case, self-protection. In the leftist mindset only the government is responsible enough to own and use firearms and only the government should decide when and where and against whom they should be used. But this was definitely not the mindset of the founders and framers of our constitution. Check this quotation out, for example, taken from "Journal Notes of the Virginia Ratification Convention Proceedings (June 27, 1788)":

[In Amendments Proposed by the Virginia Convention]:That the people have a right to keep and bear arms: that a well regulated militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State. That standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.

2. Isn't it frightening that this decision was a 5-4 verdict? Think about that. Four supreme court justices ruled in favor of overturning the second amendment to the Constitution and nearly succeeded. We almost lost one of the basic rights guaranteed us by the Constitution. Wow. Liberty is under attack.

Ben Stein's Expelled--Rejoined

2008-06-25T20:58:00.004-05:00

One of the last things I mentioned in the previous post was what I considered to be the weak link between Darwin and Hitler as presented in the movie. This argument, that Darwin leads to Hitler, is the basic substance of the entire second part of the film. To help make the case, Stein interviews Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler.

To be fair, I haven't read the book. I note it has been widely criticized--but check this--by the academic community. Seems to me that the academic community might have a dog in this fight, so the fact that they criticized it does not necessarily carry any weight with me. On the other hand, as I already pointed out, in the film this tie-in seemed weak.

The weakness lies in the partial and parsed quotation from Darwin's The Descent of Man. See previous blogpost. Nevertheless the film slugs its way forward and demonstrates the atrocities that might develop from a Darwinist worldview.

Now this is a delicious little irony is it not?

Militant atheists are fond of pointing out all the atrocities committed by men down through history in the name of religion. They are quick to name religion as the source, the root of world evil. They gladly remonstrate against this plague of organized superstition and the zeal it produces in men's hearts for murder and mayhem. Their solution for solving the world's problems? Put an end to religion or, at the very least, neuter it by gutting it of substance (liberal theology anyone?)

Yes, they love to do that. And, yes, it is very weak argumentation, if one should deign to call it argumentation at all.

And along comes Ben Stein and points out that if one is to use the same logic--the logic that blames theism for wars, atrocities, murders, etc.--then one might similarly conclude that Darwinism and its ugly cousin atheism are similarly responsible for all the wars, atrocities, murders, etc. that took place under and because of the Nazi regime in Germany and throughout the 20th century under atheistic communists in the Soviet Union, its eastern bloc satellites, and in communist China, as well as in other communist countries.

One good turn deserves another.

Of course, as someone pointed out, the science of Darwinism is morally neutral and the theory cannot be held responsible for the way some men came along later and misused it.

Okay.

Then, in response let me say that the Church has been, all things considered, a force for moral good in this world and that those who have misused its institutions, influence, and/or teachings are, in the same way, those who are to be held responsible, not the concept of Christianity itself.

What is the common denominator? Evil men. Individuals are responsible for their actions whatever ideological or theological or scientific excuse they may invent for themselves as a cover.

I will deal more with atheism in the coming weeks as I read my new books and think more along those lines. In the meantime, when Stein's movie comes out on video, do yourself a favor and rent it. It is highly entertaining from the perspective of a Christian and you are sure to derive some satisfaction from seeing Stein make atheistic academics squirm by asking them the tough questions.

Theology and Ideology

2008-06-25T19:44:00.004-05:00

I was thinking today at work about some things I want to do with the blog and, as is my usual custom, I was also listening to talk radio. It occurred to me that I would like to blog on things political, but I'd like to find my own voice amidst the existing cacophony of political punditry. Most of what I listen to on the radio or see on television consists of people yelling past each other--shallow soundbytes. What I would like to see and hear is some depth, some reasoning. Maybe that could be my niche.

Our thinking about any given topic is driven by our presuppositions. Two people, for example, can look at the same evidence and draw two different conclusions, both of which seem logical to the individuals to whom they belong. Why is that? The difference is in the underlying presuppositions, the prisms through which we all view the world.

So what I would like to do is lay a groundwork, a foundation. I'd like to look at what is behind our political thinking. I'd like to advocate what I refer to as the American Ideal, a bedrock of ideological thinking which will help us to determine what is right or wrong in any given political situation. I think of it as American political orthodoxy and I find it in the founder's writings and in the great documents which underlie our republic.

I'm no expert. I come as a student--but also an idealist. I think the American ideal, the American form of government as envisioned by our founders, is the best possible scenario for fallen men in a fallen world. I did not say it was the solution, nor did I say it was perfect, but it is the best possible way for men to govern themselves within the gospel age. I'm no utopianist. Utopia cannot and will not exist as long as men have evil in their hearts.

And now you see how our theology and our ideology cannot be separated. The former must, and always does, inform the latter.

So look for posts along these lines in the coming days and weeks--along with a few other things. (After all, we couldn't possibly call ourselves eclectic, here, unless there was some variety.)

Ben Stein's Expelled Part 2

2008-06-24T23:22:00.004-05:00

After putting in 13 hours yesterday at work--and then wasting some time with the good people at a certain forum--I regretfully have not had time to complete this one yet. But be sure it is in the works! Look for it Wednesday evening. God bless.

Late to the Party (as usual)

2008-06-23T10:16:00.002-05:00

Lee Strobel wrote a bestseller in 1998 that was all the rave of the evangelical world for several years and I'm just now getting around to reading it. The Case for Christ. Yeah, I know. Thing is, I've always been the non-comformist and, as such, I just can't bring myself to jump on the fad-wagons of American evangelicalism at the time that they come rolling by. So, to my loss, I am only just now picking up this wonderful book.

I got the itch to read it after blogging on the Ben Stein movie (we will get back to that in a day or two) and after making my last book purchase. Christian apologetics as well as the arguments of theism vs. atheism have become my latest interest so naturally I should go ahead and read this Lee Strobel offering, especially since I already own it. (I think I picked it up very, very cheap a couple of years ago). Thus far I have found it a joy--very readable, informative, a page-turner. A lot of the information I knew already from my own studies--I own and have read material written by some of the scholars whom Strobel interviews--but Strobel puts it all together and always seems to be able to include a little more than I had known before.

I'm 134 pages in and I think I will be done with it (even on my busy schedule) within a week or so. Besides highly recommending it I wanted to pass along this little anecdote from Strobel's interview with Bruce Metzger, simply because I found it irresistibly funny.

In introducing us to Metzger, Strobel writes:

And he hasn't lost his sense of humor. He showed me a tin cannister he inherited as chairman of the Revised Standard Version Bible Committee. He opened the lid to reveal the ashes of an RSV Bible that had been torched in a 1952 bonfire during a protest by a fundamentalist preacher.

"It seems he didn't like it when the committee changed 'fellows' of the King James Version to 'comrades' in Hebrews 1:9," Metzger exclaimed with a chuckle. "He accused them of being communists!"

A gem.

Democrats or Socialists?

2008-06-22T00:57:00.004-05:00

I ran across this article on the American Thinker web-site and just had to pass along the link along with a great quotation. This, friends, is worth the read and I hope you will not hesitate to go over there and absorb it all.

The article is written by Lance Fairchok and is entitled "Why Do We Call Them 'Democrats'?"

Here is the quotation that stood out for me:

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." - Norman Thomas, U.S. Socialist Party presidential candidate 1940, 1944 and 1948

That's what we have this year, by the way, as a choice in our presidential election. We have a Marxist/Socialist in Barak Obama representing the Democrat (sic) party and we have what in a perfect world would be the liberal democrat candidate in John McCain representing the Republican party.

Obama likes to call himself a progessive who is for change, but all he offers is the same, tired, old socialism of the 20th century about which there is nothing progressive at all.

McCain is a self-styled maverick which only serves to deflect the obvious that he varies from his conservative brethren toward the liberal side far too often. In truth, he is a democrat in the mould of Harry Truman or LBJ.

Enough of politics, it's Sunday! Go to church! But be sure to read that article I linked above.

A Trip to the Candy Store!

2008-06-21T13:38:00.006-05:00

I love the book store. I could spend all day every day in a book store just looking at all the beautiful, wonderful books. There are large books, thin books, classy books, classless books, expensive, hard-to-read tomes, and vapid, pointless, mind-numbing tabloidal fodder all mixed into one giant, splendid panoply of color, odor, and excitement. I sometimes can just stop and breathe in the atmosphere of a thousand worlds and know that the only place in which this strange heterogeneous vapor might be savored in exactly this way . . . is the book store (or maybe a library, but who's counting). That's why I call it a trip to the candy store.

For Father's day I got a gift certificate to Barnes & Nobles and this is what I bought: (drum roll, please)

Dragons: The Greatest Stories - edited by Martin H. Greenberg
I find dragon stories irresistible. In fact, I'm reading a rather famous one to my younger son right now. See side bar.

The God Delusion - by Richard Dawkins
Dawkins is a vociferous, fire-breathing atheist out to save the world from religion. This one should be fun.

Dawkins' God--Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life - by Alister E. McGrath
McGrath is a fellow Oxford University professor with Dawkins and this was the first major book written to refute Dawkins' rantings. It should be good.

The Dawkins Delusion?--Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine - by Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath
A collaboration between Professor McGrath and his wife, this volume picks apart The God Delusion (I think), demonstrating the irony of Dawkins' hatred for Christian 'fundamentalism' by showing how he acts almost exactly like what he condemns, only from the opposite viewpoint.

I have to admit I gained a fascination for Dawkins after seeing the previously-posted-about Ben Stein flick Expelled and I cannot wait to read his book. He seems to me a somewhat eccentric character and I am always attracted to those. I also want to learn more of the arguments used by elitists in the intellectual community who claim that reason proves there is no God. I have always found the opposite to be true. Reason points to an uncaused First Cause. The idea that matter is eternal is ludicrous to me. There was a time and place when it came into being. Plus, I love a good argument, so off we go.

Ben Stein's Fiasco? Part 1

2008-06-19T09:38:00.008-05:00

Ben Stein's recent documentary, released in theaters a month or so ago, has produced, predictably, a firestorm of controversy. Perhaps you have heard of it? It's called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and it is a welcome, if not totally accurate mortar round fired back upon those soldiers of the elitist scientific community who scorn faith of any kind and deem it worthwhile to seek to eradicate it.

First let me say that when I saw the film in the theater I loved it. It was like a refreshing breeze on a sweltering day. I have since read many of its criticisms, some of which, I think, are predictably vapid, others which carry some validity. Let me give you my thoughts.

WARNING: RANDOM THOUGHTS FROM A MANIC MIND

1. The film does not do a good enough job of making its case that proponents of intelligent design are being persecuted, censored, and denied funds for research. In my research I found there may have been more to the individual cases than was noted in the film--another side. However, the films' critics failed to convince me that the over-all premise of the early part of the film was incorrect. I think these things do happen, they do not occur openly, however, and many good people in the scientific community are probably in denial about what some of their more unscrupulous colleagues might be capable of doing in the advancement of an anti-faith agenda.

2. Has anyone else noted that the fervor and fanaticism displayed by some in the atheistic community is almost a replica of the religious fervor which they seek to squelch and condemn as having been the plague of the world? Seems to me the problem is a combination of zealotry and depravity whether religion is sprinkled in or not. Again, the problem is not religion. The problem is human depravity.

3. Many of the film's critics attack the style. That, to me, is pretty typical. While the film attacks their practices and beliefs, their response is, "Well, what a poorly made film." That's weak with an 'A', my friends.

4. Some of the scientists made to look pretty bad in the film have cried foul, saying that they were deceived about the nature of the film and the nature of the interviews. I think some of this is legitimate. See for example Richard Dawkins' rant.

5. The film does a good job of making it obvious that Darwinism and creationism are incompatible. If you believe in Darwinism you can't take Genesis 1-3 literally. It must be looked at as myth or allegory. There are some who try to have their cake and eat it too, but at issue are two fundamentally opposed world-views.

6. The film does a good job of exposing one of the weaknesses of Darwinism, that of its failure to answer the question of where and how life originated. The only answer the Darwinists in the film could come up with was, basically, "anything but God." It is unclear how they just dismiss theism so arbitrarily without a shred of reasoning. It is so . . . unscientific. Yet there it is.

7. The tie-in to Hitler and Nazism is weak. There is a scene in which Stein is sitting near a statue of Darwin and quoting from one of Darwin's works. The quotation is ominous in light of the imagery and the tour we have just been given of Nazi concentration camps. Here is the quotation as read in the movie:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. - Darwin, The Descent of Man.

However, as pointed out in the Wikipedia article on the film, the full quotation, in context, with parts left out by Stein in bold lettering, is this:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.

Ouch. Suddenly Darwin is not quite the beast we would all like to make him out to be, eh? I dislike this type of misquotation, but to be fair to Stein, there is the possibility that he came about it honestly, for he was not the first to parse Darwin's words in the way that he does. The first to do so, according to the aforementioned Wikipedia article, was none other than William Jennings Bryan in the 1925 Scopes Trial. Ouch again.

I have more to say on this film and the issues brought up by it and will be posting a follow-up to this. I still highly recommend the film, but as with anything, as the Apostle Paul would say, "Test all things, hold to that which is good."

Ronald Reagan - American Hero

2008-06-18T22:12:00.004-05:00

I was ten when Ronald Reagan ran for President against Jimmah Carter in 1979. The most vivid memory I have of those times is turning on the news every night to find that some thugs in some podunk, backwater, third-world country were holding American citizens for hostage and we would not do a thing about it. For 444 days Islamo-fascist terrorists held us for ransom in Iran and illustrated the ineptness and futility of a Carter-led America.

When Reagan took over we were back in business.

I always knew I was a Reagan fan, but never really knew exactly why, other than he was a patriot who believed in a strong America and didn't take guff from thugs. What more did I need to know as a teenager anyway?

Well, last fall I happened to pick up a copy of Peggy Noonan's short bio of Reagan entitled: When Character Was King

Reading it, I became more impressed with Reagan the man than I was with Reagan the President. I wanted my sons to be like him. Heck, I wanted to be like him. I wanted his photo on the wall. I wanted his image stamped on my coffee mug. Reagan was DA MAN.

Then I read Paul Kengor's The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism and I was in awe. Do you realize how many millions of people alive and breathing on this planet today owe their lives and liberty to Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President of the USA? I was astounded.

You will be too, when you read those books and realize the history that was going on right around us as we lived our empty little lives watching Indiana Jones, drinking Pepsi Free and moonwalking to Michael Jackson.

Ronald Reagan, Gipper, the Manic Eclectic salutes you and will confer upon you one of its highest honors this election season--an honor to be revealed at a future date.

Somebody Hit the Manic Button!

2008-06-17T12:01:00.004-05:00

I am neither a psychologist nor the son of a psychologist. The only degrees in medicine I have are those triple-digit thermometer readings I've been having every day for the last couple of weeks because of the tonsilitis I've been suffering from. So if you want a real definition of what "manic" is, then see Dictionary.com.

But let me give you what I think it is and then explain how the inmates have taken over at this asylum. Manic is the opposite of depressed in a clinical sense. An individual suffering from depression finds something to be depressed about in everything. Often there are legitimate things for this individual to be depressed about. But in clinical depression, the individual is perhaps more depressed about these things than he should be, stays depressed about them longer than he should, and, perhaps most importantly, finds things to be depressed about which belie irrational thinking patterns. "You're depressed about what? Why would you think that?"

Mania is the opposite. The person diagnosed with mania is an individual who goes through long periods of upbeat, positive, can-do attitudes. He is happy and exciting to be around. His optimism seems to defy all logic and even the facts of his circumstances. To put them together, the psychiatric disorder now commonly known as bipolar used to be called manic/depressive. It is the condition of fluctuating between these two states, both of which are believed to be caused, at least in part, by chemical imbalance in the nervous system and treatable with medications.

Anyone out there more knowledgeable of these subjects feel free to correct any mistakes in my descriptions.

Now as far as I know I do not suffer from any psychiatric or psychological disabilities. I have friends who do and, trust me, they are some of the most interesting people you will ever meet. But if I could choose to have one disorder and there was nothing I could do to keep from having it, I would choose the "manic" disorder. Doesn't the word "mania" just sound cool?

And here at the asylum this is what has happened. The inmates have taken over. They have spray painted over the P on the Panic button and scratched in an M. Mania reigns!

What was I thinking?

2008-06-17T08:13:00.005-05:00

I think a lot. It's not my fault, really. I think I was born this way. Seriously. I've spent hours in contemplation over this and have virtually convinced myself of the concept. I have a genetic predisposition toward delving deeply into any given subject. I want at the bottom of it. I want to know "why." I also like to know what makes others think as they do. What are their thought-processes? How did they get to where they are in their thinking and, more importantly, how can I help them further along in the spiral of learning and acquiring truth?

So that's what this blog is going to be about, basically. What am I thinking? You will find if you follow along for too awful long that my thinking covers a wide range of areas, all of which I will try to cover at one time or another. We may delve into theology a little. We may take a hack or two at pop culture with my machete. We may turn up some ideological nuggets as we hurry past the ugly mine-fields of politics. We may talk a bit about my favorite television programs, cultural and scientific trends, what-have-you. We will probably get silly from time to time, for silly is a big part of my personality.

I may even have some guest bloggers to help me out during slow days. These will be hand-picked, of course, and friends of mine, though they won't necessarily agree with me always. They will be, each of them, as good or better quality as me (which shouldn't be too hard.)

Look for my next post to explain the title to the blog and look for a few other improvements as the week goes along. Then, perhaps, serious blogging will begin poste haste.

Stay Tuned to this Blog!

2008-06-01T09:46:00.001-05:00

James Spurgeon will be making his return to blogging in the next few weeks. For those of you who remember his old blogs--the Howling Coyote and Texas Baptist Underground--or his days with the Pyromaniacs, this blog will be . . . hmmmm. Hopefully the writing will be of the same quality and interest, but the subject matter will be a bit different (more eclectic?) And, yes, he is aware that "eclectic" is not a noun.