Eastern Orthodoxy's gospel

Let's recap a brief conversation with DavidW, unofficial representative of Eastern Orthodox and official biblical errantist.

Me: 2) DavidW, if we don't hold to the same Gospel, how is it that you've said that I'm not headed for Hell (if my current trajectory holds)? Did you change your mind on that, or is your Gospel not all that central to how one escapes damnation?

DavidW: I trust in the loving mercy of our good God and Father.

Me: God's loving mercy unto relief from damnation (ie, salvation) is granted outside of the Gospel?

DavidW: "With God all things are possible." - Matthew 19:26.

Me: You don't think quoting Matt 19:26 in reply to that question is just a tad out of context?

DavidW: I trust in the loving mercy of our God and Father, with whom all things are possible -- and I leave it at that.


Maybe it would be helpful if we could define "Gospel". I assume you'd agree that from its Greek root, it means "good news".

What is the good news offered? Isn't it that Jesus Christ has come to take away sin, forgive sin, and give eternal life? What could be better news than that? "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and yet lose his soul?"

Why is that good news? Because we're sinners! What's the problem with that? Why does it matter that we're sinners? B/c God is angry with sin AND sinners, no?


Lk 3:7 So he began saying to the crowds who were going out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

John 3:36 “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

Rom 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness

Rom 2:5 But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, 6 who WILL RENDER TO EACH PERSON ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS: 7 to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; 8 but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation. 9 There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek,

Rom 4:14 For if those who are of the Law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise is nullified; 15 for the Law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, there also is no violation.

Rom 9:22 What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?

Col 2: 13 When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, 14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

Col 3:5 Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. 6 For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience, 7 and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them.

1 John 5:11 And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 12 He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.

Rev 6:16they said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; 17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

Rev 14:10 he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 11 “And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.”


What is the remedy for this? Jesus Christ!
What does Jn 3:36 mean?
--If one believes in Christ --> eternal life.
--If one does not believe in Christ --> not eternal life. Wrath.

And you want to tell me that Matthew 19:26's "all things are possible with God" means "self-contradiction is possible with God"?
I guess since you're an errantist, you're free to do whatever you want in this case. Do you really think that Jesus forgot His discussion with Nicodemus when He said Matthew 19:26, or vice versa? Or maybe your grand inclusivity is wrongheaded and exhibits postmodern politically correct inclusivism? I expect that from someone like Billy Graham, not from a representative of "the ancient Church".
When I was considering conversion to EOC, this is one of the things that bothered me greatly - your theology doesn't make a very big deal out of sin. It's only gotten worse and more obvious in the years since I stopped considering it.

Want to know how Romanists dance?

I've got a perfect example - Romanist apologist Scott Windsor. Watch him scurry around and make excuses for the Roman Church's refusal to excommunicate, among others, Nancy Pelosi. Instead, she gets served the Eucharist by the Pope himself. Voting in favor of murdering babies every single time apparently earns you a pat on the back from the Roman Church, not punishment.

Over at his blog.
Over at Beggars All.

More on killing aborticians

LearningIsFun brings up a couple of interesting statements from the last post.

Didn't you notice that your original post is entirely an appeal to possible hypocrisy? Wasn't that whole point? You wanted to get people to see the inconsistency between their feelings on abortion and their feelings about the thought experiment?

I don't think it's the same thing. I'm appealing to consistency of position, and illustrating it by removing the age-ist bias, which you display as well. You are a bigot.


I, personally, feel differently about the two scenarios because my moral sense doesn't equate the life of a fetus with that of an adult.

Who cares what you feel, though? How about an argument why they're different? You know, evidence?


I'm genuinely surprised that you would not save the innocent people by killing the person systematically murdering them

It would be murder on God's Law, yes, as murder is defined as the unjustified taking of human life. But it wouldn't be murder on the law of the land, and I as an individual don't have the authority given to me by God to just overturn that law whenever I want towards others. It's the same reason I don't kill aborticians or blow up their abortuaries - that's not my role and I don't have authority to do it.
(As an aside, if someone told me they were the one who killed an abortician, I'm not at all confident I'd turn them in. I'd lean towards keeping mum and plausible deniability, and would have to be persuaded to turn the person in. Same if I witnessed him setting fire to the abortuary.)


You'd probably only have to kill about a dozen doctors to make the rest too scared to continue.

That's true, and it's tempting, and I mean that. But like I said, I don't have the authority to dole out death as I see fit; only in self-defense, just war, or as part of a legitimate gov't capital punishment would I have the God-given authority and permission to do so.


By the way, I'm not advocating violence. I'm advocating that pro-lifers stop equating abortion with murder,

I understood what you were getting at, but I appreciate the clarification.

The hospital wing and the cure

Imagine a hospital wing in which lie 100 patients, in comas and unresponsive to external stimuli for the past 6 months due to a so-far incurable and terminal illness, which happens to move slowly in comatose victims. You are the admin of that wing and know that a cure, the only possibility, is being worked on, but is not ready yet.

Scenario 1: The cure is announced to be close, within the next few weeks, and you have every reason to expect it will be delivered on time. The cure is projected to bring ~20% of the patients to recovery, and that's the best that can be hoped for at this time.

Question on Scenario 1: Is it justifiable to harvest the patients' bodily organs (thus killing them) for medical experimentation before giving them the cure?

Scenario 2: The cure is discovered to be far off, ~5 years or more, and the projected recovery rate is ~20%. The patients' conditions are generally not expected to worsen in ~5 years.

Question on Scenario 2: Is it justifiable to harvest the patients' bodily organs (thus killing them) for medical experimentation while waiting for the cure?

Scenario 3: The cure is nearly available, but only 80 doses are available anytime soon. 80 of the patients are around the age of 40. The other 20 are teenagers and in their 20s. You as the hospital admin have no access to any info about their lives or families.

Question on Scenario 3: Is it justifiable to give the doses to the 40-year-olds because they are more developed and have greater ability and intelligence?

Now, if you haven't figured it out yet, conduct the following replacements:

-"terminally ill patients" -> lines of fertilised embryos that are frozen in stem-cell lines

-"medical experimentation" -> medical experimentation

-"cure" -> implantation into a woman's uterus in order to grow to full-term and be born like normal

-"recovery" -> surviving the implantation process and being born

Sola Scriptura Debate - David's first cross-examination question

Please see it here.

Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, I will post my answer by 05December.

Sola Scriptura Debate - David's first cross-examination answer is posted

See it here.


(Sorry it's late; I forgot I was supposed to post this.)

Why should my tax dollars go to this?

In a country in which the federal government wastes and wastes and wastes some more, it can numb us to the little things, but I heard this on the news today and it irritated me to some extent.

Let me get this straight - a repeat sex offender, a dirtbag, tries to commit suicide and the officer of the law stops him? So he can be in critical condition and go to the hospital at many $1000s per day of recovery? Who's paying for this dirtbag to get hospital care and for his long recovery process? When he wanted to die badly enough that he sneaked an exacto knife into a courtroom and tried to stab himself in the neck, multiple times? Come on, think. Personal responsibility. Let him die. I can think of many hundreds of better uses to which my tax dollars could go.

Carrie Prejean is an embarrassment, not a hero

Carrie Prejean has done apparently one halfway-good thing in her far too long stint in the limelight - she truthfully (and sort of correctly) answered a question in a beauty contest put to her by a moronic airhead who asked a question to which he didn't know the answer.

Apart from that, she's been one embarrassment after another, mostly to herself and also to the evanjellyfish community who has foolishly embraced her. I suppose I shouldn't be amazed at the depths to which American evanjellyfish will stoop to get their ears tickled. The ironic thing is that said tickling often comes at the hands of someone who knows exactly what to say to hit the right nerve. Given Prejean's evident intellectual limitations, I doubt she has been the calculating sort, maneuvering and finagling her way into evanjellyfish hearts everywhere; rather, she seems like a victim of this terribly sub-biblical thinking who has probably been manipulated by some clever agents into extending her public presence far, far beyond where she should have gone.
In this case, it should be obvious that saying "in my country, in my family I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman" will get one into the good graces of the evanjellyfish community. Thing is, that community has a hard time letting go. The examples are numerous - The Shack, Billy Graham, Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn, Phillips Craig and Dean, TD Jakes, Ted Haggard, Jaci Velasquez, POD, Amy Grant...I could go on, and I have in the past. As long as someone uses the word "Jesus" in conversation and expresses commonly decent moral sensibilities, they've got the secret evanjellyfish handshake down pat, and you don't get kicked out.

So, ever since she did that one thing, she's been persecuted shamelessly by the left, and shame on them for their easily-documented and highly visible idiocy and moral blindness. Backlash against Hilton for his stupid question, to which he clearly only wanted one answer? Right, sure.
Prejean has since dang near made a whole career out of people talking bad about her on national media. I don't necessarily blame her for that as much as I blame the American consumer of media, both on the left and on the right in the evanjellyfish community, and to the latter I ask: Why keep taking her in? Why keep giving her a platform? Why invite her to speak at your conferences? Why react favorably when surveyed (as her publisher no doubt did before commissioning her book) as to whether you'd buy a book about her?

Where has she given any evidence of a biblical worldview besides saying "I believe marriage is heterosexual"? Is saying "in my country, in my family, I believe" an appropriate preface to expressing a biblical statement, that homosexuals and homosexual activity are under the judgment of God, that homosexuals are commanded to repent of all their sin, including homosexuality, and be saved by the only Savior, Jesus Christ? Nowhere that I've seen (though I admittedly don't follow Prejean's life very closely).

Further, let's not forget in which context her big "Here I stand" moment took place - in a beauty pageant, a soft porn meat market, where one wins because one has a hot bod and can strut about sensually in front of dozens of cameras. That's bad enough. But nnnnoooo, she couldn't stop there.
-She openly encourages other girls to expose their bodies and sexuality to endless ogling in future pageants. It's a noble calling, you know.
-Breast augmentation surgery. Sigh.
-Pornographic photos, taken before the pageant. Double sigh.
-A pornographic video, sent to a boyfriend. Dear God, does it never end?
"That was a mistake of youth, sent to my boyfriend with whom I was in love" she says of the vid. It was 5 years ago! When you were 17! You're only 22!!!! Youth? How about "Yes, I did that, and it was a horrible sin against my Lord Jesus Christ and against my future husband, not to mention the boyfriend to whom I sent it. I didn't love him at all; my sending him that vid brought him DOWN, not up. I led him into terrible impurity, and for that I am also deeply sorry"?
But at least she said it was a mistake!
Oh yes, thank God she did. All the young girls watching her can now know that:
1) you can make a sex vid for your boyfriend
2) whom you "love"
3) at the age of 17
4) and then apologise and make it all better, 5 years later when someone else finds out about it and makes it public, and still go on to sell books to "Christians" and no one will care.
Great example for my little girl.

Finally, she has the audacity to "write" a book about her life so far. To nearly-quote the Abbé Faria from The Count of Monte Cristo - your life, young woman, has been too short to contain anything of significance. I don't know why I'm surprised that her shame threshold is a long, long way off.

The central problem with her wide acceptance among evanjellyfish is that not once has she ever even expressed a basic understanding or history of her own interaction with the Law and the Gospel. Not once that I've seen or heard has she ever recounted her struggle with her guilt under the Law of God, being crushed and shattered under the weight of its impossible demands, or crying out to God to save her from her guilt under His Law. Jesus as only Savior? Jesus as Lord? Repentance? Trusting in Christ alone, being thankful for His forgiveness, purchased on the Cross? Nowhere to be found. Rather, she was raised that way. This is one of the most common evanjellyfish idolatries - this is how my parents raised me, and my parents are kind, good people.
No, your parents are not kind, good people, and neither are you. You are a filthy sinner, rebellious, an enemy of God, and you're either forgiven and saved in spite of yourself or you're not. If you are, one would rightly expect you'd talk about it occasionally, especially when you have the spotlight (unwisely) shone directly on you. As it is, I see no reason to think Prejean has any idea what it means to know and follow Jesus. Just like the majority of American evangelicals.

Here's hoping she does everyone a favor, and soon - retreat out of the limelight, permanently. Find a godly man (for someone as hot as you, that shouldn't be a problem), marry him BEFORE having sex with him, have children and lead a godly, quiet life. And change your last name when you get married.

A quick comparison

Heard a talk-radio host this morning speaking derogatorily of recent Ft Hood mass-murderer Hasan's self-description as "Muslim first, American second". He wasn't thinking very straight, which is, in my lengthy experience, very typical among conservative talk-show hosts when they talk religion. They virtually always get it wrong, to my frustration. I myself am a Christian first, a Baptist churchman second, and an American third. It all comes down to the content of the doctrine, not its priority, as to whether I am thus a danger to society and subject to governmental repression of my religious beliefs which admittedly come before my allegiance to my country. So here's a quick comparison chart:

	Islam	Atheism	Biblical Christianity
Objective moral authority?	Yes	No	Yes
Obligation to put allegiance to religion before allegiance to country?	Yes	N/A. On atheism, there is no obligation to do anything.	Yes
How are you supposed to treat enemies?	Kill them	However you want.	Love them and pray for them (Matthew 5:44-45)
Under what circumstances is it OK to kill people?	If they're unbelievers and won't submit to Islam or pay submission tax	Whenever you want.	As a soldier in a just war; as an executor of just capital punishment as part of a legitimate gov't; in self- defense and in defense of others who are defenseless
Founder have a history of killing people and making war to advance worldview?	Very yes.	N/A	No, He got unjustly killed to advance His worldview.
Suicide bombers?	Quite a lot	No	No

Sola Scriptura Debate: My first cross-examination question

DavidW, in your 2nd rebuttal you made the following statement:

--Rhology misunderstands Christ’s word in Mark7, confusing the issue here as being one of oral versus written, while it is a conflict between the “commandments of God” and the “traditions of men;” Rhology has yet to prove that all “commandments of God” are written and has already admitted that not all traditions are “traditions of men.”--

In Mark 7:1-13, Christ identifies the Pharisees' question about eating with unwashed hands as wrongheaded, quoting Isaiah's statement, "TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN". He goes on to add, “Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men." The fact that I said not all traditions are traditions of men is exactly what I'm getting at. Christ was informing us how we can differentiate between valid and invalid traditions. So how do you know what traditions nullify the commandment of God and which do not? If any "tradition" is potentially a "commandment of God" or potentially a "tradition of men", what standard of comparison do you use to identify good big-A big-T Apostolic Tradition over and against bad little-t tradition?

Just the opinions, ma'am, just the opinions

Recently the Jolly Nihilist has returned to blogging, and the blogosphere is better for it. He has also appeared here fairly often, and such engagements are profitable for us Christians, and of course we pray they are so for him as well.
During our fairly long history of discussion and debate, I have often accused him (most notably, here) of inconsistency with respect to the way he deals with questions of morality, of should and of ought. On the one hand, he'll say:

Which is why my opinions are not facts, nor do I pretend they are or otherwise mask them as such. (source)
One can passionately hold, and articulate, opinions without believing them necessarily to be facts. (source)
Again, though I cannot speak of moral facts or objective right and wrong, this doctrine is positively noxious and almost staggering in its inhumane cruelty. (source)

Then he'll turn around and say things like:

...a charlatan associated therewith vomited up nonsense about homosexuals living in sin and just begging to be thrown into the fire pit of hell (a place, incidentally, which I deconstruct in my own latest blog post). The individuals upon whom the vomit was spewed. (source)
...mindless theological inculcation...sexual-orientation-modification experiments...fire pit of eternal torture and savagery. What beneficence...who would be harming nobody, bothering nobody, making miserable nobody...To prostrate oneself before such a pristine conception of hideousness… I dunno… I find it sad...Again, though I cannot speak of moral facts or objective right and wrong, this doctrine is positively noxious and almost staggering in its inhumane cruelty. (source)

Throwing out a token "but it's not immoral" to cover his tracks, where his tracks clearly show a trail through Moral/Immoral-Land, is unconvincing. As I've said before, his inability to hold, even for one little blog comment, to his stated beliefs about morality is staggering. And again the throwaway "cannot speak of moral facts"; he knows exactly what he's trying to say.
And for the hundredth time, who cares what he thinks?
Let me propose extending his "not facts, just opinions, since there are no facts, but I still think what I have to say has value for others, else I wouldn't be saying these things, now would I?" passive-aggressive paradigm to other areas of life and knowledge.
So, since one can passionately hold, and articulate, opinions without believing them necessarily to be facts, I passionately hold and want to articulate that evolution is false and Intelligent Design is true. Now, according to the JN, there's no way to bring evidence for or against his assertions of what he finds morally praiseworthy or reprehensible. Similarly, because I say so, and because I passionately hold to this opinion, my viewpoint is just as valid as anyone else's.

I passionately believe that the blue sky is a fuzzy blanket of happiness that God pulls over the despairing blackness of the night sky, and removes every evening. I also passionately hold that the stars are little pinpricks in the Dyson sphere-like canopy that envelopes the Earth, and God's glory, which is found in full force behind the canopy, shines through those pricks just a little bit, in order to put happy smiles on the faces of children throughout the world.

I passionately hold that mixing common household ingredients together will produce gold. (Next time, I vow to use just a little more Pine-Sol!) Last time, I mixed baking soda, vinegar, and dish soap. Even though the resulting sludge did not resemble gold as I usually experience it, that's OK b/c I know that what I passionately hold is worth expressing, and so it has value for myself and others. Hmm, where's the nearest pawn shop?

I passionately hold that since humans share a great deal of genetic code in common with broccoli, I can treat humans just like I treat broccoli. That is, I decapitate broccoli and eat it in salad. So...

I passionately hold that the President ordering the US Mint to print $3 billion in non-sequential $20 bills and giving them all to me will drastically improve the US economy. Drastically.

Remember another thing here - a very valid criticism I often level against atheists like the JN is that they frequently commit Hume's naturalistic fallacy and confuse IS statements with OUGHT statements. To wit - just because (for the sake of argument) gratuitous suffering IS/EXISTS gives us no information about any obligation, no directive as far as how we ought to respond to that suffering. Do we imprison the rapist, or do we join him in raping his victims? Without some external paradigm to provide moral direction to us, the bare fact of "this man is forcing these girls to have sex with him and they don't want to" leads neither to "I ought to stop him" nor "I ought to help him".
Thus, only IS statements exist. (Thus, atheism is the ultimate "Meh".) What else are IS statements? Everything I just said about science, evolution, chemistry, biology, astronomy, physics, and economics! Take the Jolly Nihilist's contention a little further than he has apparently thought it through and you arrive at a fantasyland where reality is limited only by your imagination, boys and girls!

God's peace in the midst of fear of commission of the unpardonable sin

A friend wrote me recently requesting prayer for his recurring fears of having committed the unpardonable sin mentioned in Matthew 12:31 - "Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven."

Here is my response, in which I took a slightly different angle to the issue:

Hey buddy,

I'd be happy to pray that the Lord would send you His comforting peace, the "peace that surpasses all understanding".
I hope you'll permit me to share a few things from the Word of God with you on this topic. My very favorite verse in the Bible is Romans 8:28, and Romans 8 is my very favorite chapter! "God works all things out for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose." He has called you out for His purposes, many of which are unseen but are (because they are unseen) more permanent than the things which are seen (2 Corinthians 4:18).
Now, follow along to the very next verses, v 29-30.

For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; 30 and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.

He has foreknown who you are and who you will be and your deliverance in Christ. And look how He takes the whole thing to completion - those who are justified are also glorified. It doesn't say that "most of those whom He justified He also glorified" or "some of those whom He justified". It's "those whom He justified".

Take a look at John 6:
37 - "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out."

John 10:
27 "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; 28 and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand."

Notice that - they will never perish. But what about those who commit the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? Well, they'll perish, but those who are His sheep will never perish. Thus, none of Christ's sheep will ever commit that blasphemy. You might as well say that they are incapable of doing so, incapable of breaking God's powerful protection over their lives in such a way.
1 Peter says just that:
1 Peter 1: 3 - In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, 5who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

He is protecting you. It's not up to you, and it never was. Do you have faith in Christ and Him alone to save you? Trust Him to bring you thru! If you do not, take this moment, right now, to tell Him, as Psalm 119:94 says, "I am Yours, save me."
Can we know that He is our Lord? Certainly we can.
1 John 5:13 - I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

You may KNOW it. Do you believe in the name of the Son of God?


Galatians 4:6 - Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" 7 Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.
More Romans 8:15 - For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God...

Do you call God your Father, your Daddy (that's what "Abba" means)? Notice that, while there is a subjective element to all this, yet also it is a fact that the Spirit testifies to our adoption by God.
Finally, note 1 Corinthians 12:3 - Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus is accursed"; and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit.

Do you say "Jesus is Lord" and mean it? This is not possible for the lost, unredeemed man. Take heart in that, my friend. Salvation is God's work and arena, not yours. And thank God for that - the stuff we do is why we need forgiveness, salvation, and redemption in the first place! God is our rescuer.

Here's a useful article to start thinking about this sin biblically.

I'll be praying for you. May the Lord bless you with His peace.

Don't be a glutton

Gluttony is wrong.

Sola Scriptura Debate - DavidW's 2nd Rebuttal

Please see DavidW's 2nd rebuttal here.

But I was born gay

...and therefore am not responsible for resisting my biological impulses. I am a robot, an automaton, a slave, provoked to specific actions (namely, sex with other men) by my genetic makeup, with which I was born. I was also born with a latent hatred for sheep, CRTs, and politicians whose names begin with "P" (either first or last name). I therefore have no ability to resist when the voices in my head genes tell me to hack up sheep with a rusty chainsaw, to pour Mountain Dew on my friends' and co-workers' computer monitors, and to plan to force a change to the position of Speaker.

When those nice people from Exodus International invite me to follow the example of many before me and to give up my gay lifestyle and orientation, I am equally incapable of resisting. I know that I am incapable of resisting, because I went to their meetings (I can tell what I was incapable of resisting by looking back after the fact) and because I now am married (to a woman) and have had three children with her. And I find her sexually attractive. So, come to think of it, I was born to be a former gay.

In which I disagree with William Lane Craig

The Jolly Nihilist has asked me about what I think of William Lane Craig and his views on Darwinian evolution.

Time for a brief walk inside my mind. :-) Watch your step - there's manure everywhere.

I respect Craig's apologetical and philosophical mind, but in fact that's kind of what gets him into trouble. He centers too much on philosophy and thus kind of leaves his moorings behind alot of the time. It leads him to say things like this, and more notably it leads him to hold to Molinism and to say "Well, I disagree with Calvinism" when Hitchens asked him if he thought any Christian denoms were wrong. (Woulda been a lot better to say "Rome" or "Eastern Orthodoxy".)

I agree with him when he says "Christians enjoy the advantage over the naturalist of being truly open to follow the evidence where it leads". Little is more apparent than this.


Craig says:
Thesis of Common Descent, one should be cautious about accepting it, although biomolecular evidence is in its favor

Here I'd say he fails to challenge the question that CD begs.


Finally, I disagree with this: "an evolutionary theory is compatible with the biblical account in Genesis 1". When it really gets down into the meat of the "biblical acct" he'd tease out of the text, it ends up in a mishmash of inconsistencies and hermeneutical gymnastics. I've seen a fair amount of that and rarely been impressed. You may have heard of the various stripes of this: theistic evolution, day-age theory, gap theory. Plenty of ppl hold to one of these, but I can't really say they're convincing to me.
Anyway, you asked me if I thought Craig's hermeneutic is flawed, and the answer is unequivocally yes, in several areas. Certainly not in all, and I'm sure we have much more in common than not, but here and in his Molinism, certainly. What I'd need to see is a good engagement with at least these three things:
1) the order of the acct - for example, plants appear on the 3rd day. Sun on 4th day. Doesn't match.
Water creatures and birds on 5th day. Doesn't match.
Land creatures on the 6th day, as well as humans. Doesn't match.

2) Jesus spoke of the first ppl as "the beginning" and God's creation. Also spoke of Noah's flood as an actual event.

3) Paul also treated Adam and Eve as real ppl and a historical event. Peter treated the flood as a real event.

There could be other things, but that's a decent start.

There's martyrs and then there's martyrs

A common argument for the historicity and factuality of the bodily, physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the origin of the apostles' faith. Peter and the rest were weak in faith and overcome by doubt and fear when Christ was nailed to the Cross and couldn't even bring themselves to witness His death agony or to lend Him support as He died. Nor could Peter answer (three times!) honestly when asked whether he knew Jesus. James the brother of Jesus was a skeptic, convinced of the resurrection and the Lordship of Christ by seeing Jesus after He'd risen from the dead. Yet these weak and unbelieving people eventually became fierce advocates of the Lordship of Christ, all suffered hardship for their faith, and most died martyrs for their faith.

The skeptical response almost never varies: Almost every faith, cause, and creed boasts martyrs and committed followers. The fact that Mohammed Atta and the other Sept 11 mass murderers were willing to fly airplanes into buildings isn't evidence for the truth of Wahhabi Islam, is it?

The difference between the original witnesses to the risen Christ and any other martyrs of any other creed that one can bring up is fundamental and striking in its power. An Islamic jihadist suicide bomber straps on his bomb vest on his way to blow up schoolchildren b/c he thinks what he is doing is sanctioned by his god. He believes it is right and has his whole life experience and pious history to "prove" its truth to him. He believes that he is walking in the truth.
The original witnesses to the risen Christ suffered and died b/c they would not deny that what they had seen and touched (2 Peter 1:16, 1 John 1). In the face of opposition - simply confess Kaiser Kurios and you can go free - they would refuse and confess Kristo Kurios. I have seen and touched this man Who was dead but then rose to life again.
What's the difference? They were in a position to know that Christ had not in fact risen, if in fact the resurrection were a lie. Who would be willing to suffer terribly, lose everything, and die a horrible death for something they knew was a lie? Will hundreds of people do this, for something they knew was untrue?

The jihadist could not know with certainty that Allah is not God. He believes (with all his heart, I don't doubt) that Allah is God and he will get his virgins if he blows up a school bus for Allah. The original disciples of Jesus could know with certainty that Christ had not risen, b/c they would know they'd been making the story up the whole time. The situations are not analogous. The quality of the original Christian martyrs is singular in its purity of devotion to truth and to Christ and forms a powerful rebuttal to those who doubt the truth of Christ's resurrection.

To those who decry "disunity"

I say let there be disunity if the option is to share communion with this.

"Let God be true, and every man a liar" (Romans 3:4).

Imagine Darwinists were advancing the conversation

The Jolly Nihilist has posted his thoughts on Coyne's latest book - Why Evolution Is True, which I've read - as well as Dick Dawk's The Greatest Show on Earth, which I don't.
He's attempting to convince us to accept Darwinian evolution. Strangely enough, he never tells us why we'd want to do that, if nihilism is true. Why not just leave everyone alone and cut butterflies into your ankles in the corner?

Anyway, the whole thing is an utter failure to interact with the creationist position in any meaningful way or to understand the problem of the internal critique for the Darwinian position.
I'd encourage you to read the post before continuing here, as this will be sort of stream-of-consciousness as you go down his post.


Creator is devious

Um, He told you exactly how it all went down in the Bible.
But you, in your intentional blindness and using pitifully limited methods, are looking for ways to prove Him wrong. You're deceiving yourself. Don't project your guilt onto others. Didn't your mother teach you that's not nice?

Let's see.
Assume uniformitarianism without argument? Check.
-With respect to tectonics. Check.
-With respect to half-lives. Check.

Assume you have any useful info about the quantity of decay at the time of creation. Check.


Jerry Coyne writes, “Several radioisotopes usually occur together, so the dates can be cross-checked, and the ages invariably agree.”

Circular self-reference as argument? Check.

Failure to interact with Henry Gee's In Search of Deep Time and mindlessly repeat old canards about the utility of the fossil record? Check.

Failure to interact with Cambrian explosion? Check.


By contrast, land mammals, reptiles, amphibians and freshwater fish would have extreme difficulty colonizing an oceanic island

Assume that it is definite that they were NEVER there and NEVER went extinct and that we just haven't yet found their fossils? Check.



Wasteful

Failure to take sin and the Fall into account, even though it's at the very heart of the Christian conception of redemptive history? Check and double-check. Atheists virtually never do this, and it's amazing.
Advance the conversation! Please! We're begging you.


Creator is idiotic

Presume to correct Him on sthg that you've never even gotten close to accomplishing yourself? Check.
Forget sin and the Fall (again)? Check.


recurrent laryngeal nerve of mammals

Argument from ignorance.
Here it is:
P1) Recurrent laryngeal nerve of mammals exists.
P2) I don't know why a creator would do it that way/I wouldn't've.

Ergo,
C) Stupid.
WOW! I'm bowled over by this forceful argumentation from Dick Dawk.

Finally, failure to interact with the EAAN? Check.

Yes, I am male

From the article mentioned yesterday:

--I'm sure the "hundreds of thousands of women" who made the intimate,difficult, selfless, and ultimately responsible decision to terminate their pregnancies appreciate you speaking for them.

You need to interact with pro-lifers a bit more often. I can't believe ppl still bring forth this old canard.
1) If you're a man, this sword cuts your own argument's throat.
2) I suppose women can't comment on things like "men shouldn't rape and kill gay men b/c they don't like gay men", eh?
3) See reasons 1-2 and 4-9.
4) Aren't more than half of worldwide abortions performed on FEMALE babies? Who speaks for them?
5) The majority of US women are pro-life.
6) If the baby is a human being (which it is) (which is the central question), then killing him is murder, whether a man or woman pulls the trigger, and yes, I'm sufficiently qualified to say murder is wrong.
But if it's not a baby, why would it be difficult? Who cries and agonises about a tonsillectomy?
7) Many women are pressured into abortion by men in their lives.
8) Most aborticians are men.
9) How am I "speaking for them"?

Need I go on?

(Edited)

Felt like ripping abortion today

Left a comment today on the local university student rag, where a friend of mine wrote a column about a recently-passed law on abortion.
I was responding to a comment by a user called "ab167", which was bookended by "You note the supposedly unproblematic part..." and "...back-alley procedures, heaven forbid". Here's my response:

--this is the first such law in the US and that there is no evidence that such abortions are occurring at all

Then presumedly you'll have no problem with its being preempted. We humans do like to find new ways to hurt and kill each other, you know.

--since it would be a glaringly difficult task to determine the motivation of the mother beyond reasonable doubt, creating a huge legal gray area.

That is a good point, one that should be very carefully thought thru. One can only wish for such thinking in other areas such as hate crime legislation. If you're for that, don't whine about this.

--I am sure you would approve of such underhanded measures to reduce abortions

And why not? I'm also in favor of sting operations to catch abusive pimps, drug dealers, and pædophiles. Or spies sent to infiltrate murderous gangs to bring them to justice.
Murdering babies is horrifying and horrible. Short of matching abortion's violence, I'm in favor of just about anythg to stop the murder of babies.

--isn't NOT LYING one of those laws you people have that goes hand in hand with not killin' babies?

Sorry, I tend to tune out when someone lectures me on morality who is trying to justify the legality of dismembering helpless children in their mothers' wombs. Let me know when you're done.

--nobody LIKES abortions

The pro-abort crowd does not act like they dislike them. You need to spend some more time among the more radical of your own kind. Hit a NOW meeting from time to time.

--not restricting access to medical care, but reducing unwanted pregnancies through education and access to contraceptives.

No one's arguing for restricting access to medical care, you morally blind fool. Medical care? Is that what you call jamming a scalpel into a baby's brain and then dismembering him with a pair of forceps after flooding his habitat with poison? What the frak kind of sick doctor do you go to? I suppose he treats broken bones by breaking others.
Further, yes, let's do the latter ALSO. And ALSO make murdering babies illegal. You know, like we've done with all sorts of other crimes, like murder and grand theft auto.

--access to legal abortions has little correlation to the number of abortions performed.

Except that now there are quite a lot more than before it was legal.
And don't try to spook me with the "back alley" bogeyman.
1) Murdering babies SHOULD be a dangerous thing to try.
2) You are so out of touch that you think modern abortuaries are even close to sanitary and professional?
3) According to the info I've seen, not even 100 women died in the entire history of "back alley" abortions in the US.

If you read this, then you weren't aborted.

Sola Scriptura Debate - 2nd Rebuttal

DavidW’s comments misunderstand the fact that there are 2 categories in Scripture – theopneustos Scripture and non-theopneustos writings. Any reference to “Scripture” in the Scripture are claims about itself, because it’s God speaking. So anything that is God speaking carries the same attributes.

King David speaks glowingly about Scripture all throughout Psalm 119. Read it recently?

25 - My soul cleaves to the dust; Revive me according to Your word.

66 - Teach me good discernment and knowledge, for I believe in Your commandments.

94 - I am Yours, save me; For I have sought Your precepts.

On and on it goes about the Scripture, yes, even the (looking back from modern times) limited Scripture that King David had. DavidW’s problem is with the Bible, not with me.

The Scripture was sufficient for King David and for Timothy to be saved, yes; see 2 Tim 3:15 and the Bereans of Acts 17. Progressive revelation, progressive responsibility. DavidW wants to catch me in some kind of 'trap' in affirming what Scripture transparently says, but argumenta ad incredulum are no good. Unlike him, I take all of what Scripture says and I submit my doctrine to it.

I'm not sure why DavidW thinks that Scripture's citing extra-biblical traditions would bother my position. It's simple - when the Scripture quotes something, that part of it is right. Doesn't make the rest of it inerrant or theopneustos, whether it's the Jewish oral traditions cited in Matt 23 or 1 Cor 10, pagan writings in Titus, or other writings in Jude.
Further, Maccabees is by and large a reliable historical account. So what if Christ celebrated Hanukkah? I've never denied that Christ followed various extra-biblical traditions. But He judged each one by Scripture, as Mark 7 makes clear. Not that DavidW would know that, as his treatment of Mark 7 is shallow (like most EOdox). He forgets that Christ uses the words "nullify the word of God by your tradition" right after quoting the OT. Naked assertions that "Word of God" can mean other things elsewhere doesn't do anything for him here. And I never claimed Mark 7:1-13 was a "condemnation of all tradition". Deal with what I actually said.

DavidW shoehorns extra-biblical tradition into 2 Tim 3 without telling us why we should think it's there. Assuming its presence doesn't get anyone anywhere, since he's supposed to PROVE his case. It is perfectly likely that "in the things you have learned and been assured of" is encompassed entirely in the NT, the entirety of which Timothy wouldn't have had on hand when Paul wrote that. Apostolic and authoritative oral tradition that was theopneustos and necessary for the church unto perpetuity became enscripturated. It's up to DavidW to prove, not assume, as he did with 2 Thess 2:15, the existence and God-breathed nature of some other alleged revelation. 2 Tim 3 also explains the end of oral apostolic tradition (so does Acts 20:32), as Paul commits his audience to the Word of God as refuge and authority during upcoming times of trouble, anticipating his upcoming death.

In citing Matt 19:7, DavidW makes a serious exegetical blunder. Christ is criticising the Pharisees for hard-heartedness at wanting to put their wives away for any reason, not Moses for allowing such. It's sometimes little things like this in which the hard heart of the errantist comes into view.

The Acts 15 council was working with a correct understanding of the purpose of OT dietary laws. Read Mark 7:14-22 and Hebrews. And it's another strawman to imply that I don't hold to the Holy Spirit's active guidance of the church of Jesus.

Let the reader judge whether
1) my quotation of Athanasius is indeed out of context.
2) whether context is all that important when someone makes such a straightforward and clear statement. DavidW has a real problem here b/c he likes to claim Athanasius is on his side, but in reality, there are two choices:
1. Athanasius held to Sola Scriptura. Thus DavidW's position fails b/c he needs SOMEone in the early church to believe like he does, otherwise his position has even less claim on the truth.
2. Athanasius was inconsistent throughout his lifetime. That leaves us with Church Fathers who have contradicted themselves. To be consistent with these Church Fathers (and remember, my claim is that modern EO-doxy is inconsistent with them), EOC would either have to:
A: Teach just as inconsistently as Athanasius did, sometimes saying one thing, sometimes the other, leading to cognitive dissonance, or
B: Call these teachings not actually part of Divine Tradition. But they’ve indeed already done just that. Somehow this man from whom EOC ostensibly derives much of its tradition and doctrine, also produced impious, ungodly, and flat wrong teachings.

Now, how would the EO know this? Apparently from judging these non-"Apostolic Traditions" by... yup, you guessed it! What The Church® Says.
In the end, it's a vicious circle of question-begging. I claim the modern EOC is not totally faithful with Church Fathers and then cite them when challenged. Then they say, "Hey, those aren't part of Apostolic Tradition!" I say, "Thanks for proving my point." Jesus judged tradition by Scripture. The EO instead appeals to his own doctrinal construct already in place to then look BACK on tradition AND Scripture and pick and choose what he will and won't believe. The problem is that DavidW doesn’t explain how he chooses between Orthodoxy and other “infallible interpreters”, but just assumes that Orthodoxy is correct. Perhaps he didn’t consider that an infallible interpreter can simply interpret selectively “2000 years of history” and anything else it wants to, for that matter, to support its view. That’s precisely what EOC does, but DavidW doesn’t see it.

We believe the Bible over other writings for lots of reasons, not least of which is that the ones he cited claim to be follow-ups and supplements to the Bible, yet contradict it at key points, thus proving inconsistent and untrustworthy.

I end with a review of what DavidW has not answered from my opener and rebuttal:

-“What could be of higher authority than the very speech of God?”

-“David, to deny the resolution successfully, must show us some other source of divine communication on par with or above Scripture.”

-What else might the man of God need that the Scripture can’t provide from the list I made of Scripture’s provisions in 2 Tim 3?

-How do you “define how we know what is good Tradition and bad tradition without a circular, question-begging appeal to The Church®?”

-Does David prove that the word of mouth is different in content than the letter mentioned? That the tradition mentioned there (like in 2 Thess 2:15) is distinct from the Scripture?

-Does David explain the lack of unity in his own church's walls if visible organisational/institutional unity is so essential? Does he exegete the disunity in the churches of Revelation 1-3, and 1 Cor 11:18-19, or does he just lazily throw up some "counter-citation" and hope nobody notices? Further, I'll add - does he explain how the Corinthian church could be so disunified and yet still be called "the church of God"?

(Word count: 1191)

(Comment repository post)

A question for Dan Barker

Dan Barker is a prolific debater for all things atheist and is one of the founders of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. I have listened to a number of his debates with Christians of various stripes, mostly on the question of whether God exists. In those debates, he has a rote presentation with stock objections, most of which are petty and silly, such as:

• out-of-context "contradictions" in the Bible,
• blatant appeals to emotion, such as "walk into any children's hospital and you'll know there is no God", and
• ridiculous claims to lacking faith in anything, such that atheists are the only purely rational people in the world.

One of the things that infuriates me most about him is his refusal ever to advance the conversation. Whenever one of someone's arguments has been clearly bested, or at least whenever one's opponents thinks it's been clearly bested, isn't it a good idea to refine one's presentation to overcome that objection and/or explain why the allegedly-good rebuttal isn't so good? Well, not Dan Barker! An example of this is found in his first debate with Douglas Wilson, in 1997, wherein the following conversation took place in the cross-examination. Barker had mentioned the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and stated that no good God would allow such an event to happen.

Barker: ...So morals are relative, to the situation...

Wilson: Why, given the fact that there is no God, and no objective morality (as you just told us that morality is relative to the situation)...

Barker: But there is an objective basis, I said, for morality. I didn't say there's no objective morality.

Wilson: OK, what is that basis?

Barker: It's nature, it's human nature and pain. We evolved to require water, for example. What if we'd evolved to require, um, sthg else like arsenic, then this might be evil, but relative to our human nature, to what helps us, what either enhances our life or what causes harm for our life, we can say relative to our human nature, this is sthg that's good. There is no Cosmic Objective Good out in the universe.

Wilson: We also evolved a mechanism whereby we blow up our enemies. So why was doing that in OKC wrong?

Barker: B/c that hurts. It causes pain. If you don't grasp the simple idea that morality is an issue of avoiding pain, blowing up people in OKC was painful, it was tragic, it was hurtful, it was bloody, and you ought to know that there's sthg wrong with that.

Barker never grasped what Wilson was getting at. Listen to his most recent debate on the same topic with James White, 12 years later. He hasn't gotten any closer to explaining why anyone should agree with him that "human nature and pain" is the objective basis for morality. He just asserts it. Thus spake Dan. Ironically, he also is fond of saying things like, in his debate with Paul Manata:

There is no moral interpreter in the cosmos, nothing cares and nobody cares.

When Wilson challenged him in that debate, and in their 2nd debate, Barker both times whiffed badly on the point, retreating to statements like "Well, if you believe that, then you're not healthy" or "you're sick, and we have police and laws to protect us from people like you". How is that even relevant to the question?

Now, consider another dumb argument Barker makes. He likes sometimes to begin his debates with something like

"There are many gods which Christians reject. I just believe in one less god than they do. The reasons that you might give for your atheism toward the Roman gods are likely the same reasons I would give for not believing in Jesus."

Vox Veritatis blows holes in this "argument" here. I'd simply like to ask Dan this question, and hopefully I'll get the chance to when/if he comes to my area in mid-November:

There are many moral systems which "moral atheists" like you reject. I just believe in one less moral system than you do. The reasons that you might give for your rejection of those other moral systems are likely the same reasons I would give for not accepting yours, that "human nature and pain" is the objective basis for morality. Now, without blatantly sidestepping the question by rejoicing that you have the law on your side (for now) and can put me in jail for acting on my beliefs that there is no morality and I can do what I want, please show why your morality is right.

Full of joviality

So late this week I was laughing at Darwinists, and before that I was laughing at atheists trying to express moral outrage. I'm gonna keep chuckling at the latter, embodied by Larry Clapp from CFI, today.


If you define something as "good" because God commands it, then it's arbitrary

Well, 'arbitrary' is sorta right. God has been and forever will be the same. So since He's always been this way, from eternity "ago", it kind of drains the meaning of arbitrary from the term. He is the only objective standard that I've encountered, and you certainly haven't presented one. God commands what is in accord with His nature, not out of some standard extraneous to Him.
Without Him, everyone is a morality of one, and can change their morality at will. THAT'S arbitrary.


But again and again (and again and again and again ...) he insisted on having reasons, which everyone took great delight in shooting down.

But again, you don't have a good reason to say "if you don't have a good reason and can't be consistent with your stated reasons, you should change your approach". Maybe he believes that it's moral and proper to act consistently inconsistently with his stated reasons. You have no access to that, and you can't tell him he's wrong. You're stuck, in a morass. The next time you encounter a pædophile in the middle of raping a child, all you can consistently do is say "I don't like that" and then infringe on his personal morality and rights by trying to stop him. When you do that, you're acting as if you were a Christian. And then you wonder why I scoff at atheism.


by definition, no atheist can be good, not even theoretically.

Now you're changing the topic. This has never been about atheisTs. It's been about your worldview.

Now let me tell you a story, similar to what you told me:
Long ago, men looked around and they saw that eating ice cream indiscriminately led to gaining weight, which they didn't like. They said "don't do that". They saw that eating broccoli led to lower weight, which they liked. They said "do that". They found that doing some things led to stuff they liked and other things led to stuff they didn't like. They encouraged the former and discouraged the latter. Somewhere along the way, they said "This isn't just me saying this, it's the gods saying this! You should obey!" Holy writ, and our "moral sense", is just (ha!) thousands of years of condensed good (and sometimes not so good) sense. But at its core it's just people talking to people, and people agreeing on certain things. Agreement. Between people. That is all.


Anyway, this is completely inadequate. You've begged the question (again) by using the word "good sense". You are unable to differentiate between current Western society, Nazi Germany, and my scenario. In fact, in my scenario, the exact same thing happened as you described, only what led to order and what the society liked was actually stealing little girls from other tribes, raping them, and killing them, leaving their bodies to rot in the jungle. So by your own logic, that's totally fine. Good luck with that.

OK, now we're just laughing at you

#12 and for all: My advice is to ignore Rhology as I now will do on blogs and in person, since he is not to be trusted for any any display of honesty, despite his stated deep belief in the Holy Bible.

Posted by: vhutchison | September 30, 2009 5:24 PM

vhutchison @19 -

I love it - now I'm dishonest. I know from other time spent here that I'm an idiot, a moron, a cretin, evil, a servant of a trickster God, spawn... hmm, what else?
Oh, you probably didn't know that I have 7 convictions for pædophilia and child rape on my record.

Anytime you feel like substantiating such accusations, Prof Hutchison, I'd love to see it. Say, a direct quote. Interestingly, I have a perfect example of either your incompetence or your own dishonesty; when we were talking Tuesday night, you told me you'd read my arguments and "they aren't any good". Then, mere minutes later I started walking you thru an extremely common argument of mine, three times, and you never showed any sign of understanding it. Were I as charitable as you, I'd already be trumpeting all about how you're not to be trusted.

Peace,
Rhology

Posted by: Rhology | October 1, 2009 8:44 AM

Rhology bloviated:

Interestingly, I have a perfect example of either your incompetence or your own dishonesty; when we were talking Tuesday night, you told me you'd read my arguments and "they aren't any good". Then, mere minutes later I started walking you thru an extremely common argument of mine, three times, and you never showed any sign of understanding it.

Your anecdote shows neither incompetence nor dishonesty. It shows someone who obviously sees the inherent worthlessness of your arguments. I suggest that there was no inability to "understand" your argument. I suggest that your argument was worthless to a degree that it was not worth paying any attention to.

Posted by: Dan J | October 1, 2009 10:51 AM

#31. Dan J. You are correct.

Posted by: vhutchison | October 1, 2009 10:58 AM

vhutchison @32 -
So *I'm* dishonest for some unspecified reason, but when you say you've read my arguments and know them well enough to know they are no good, and then completely fail to even understand one of the most basic ones in a face-to-face convo, you're off scot-free, eh? Unvarnished character, that.

Posted by: Rhology | October 1, 2009 1:18 PM

If you presented arguments for a hollow earth (ala Brooks Agnew), I would be of the opinion that you were, indeed, a crackpot of the highest order. Prof. Hutchison seems to (rightly) view you as such a person.

If you then approached me with further arguments, I would most likely ignore you. If it went further, I would most likely petition a court for a restraining order.

Claiming that the good professor does not understand your arguments does not make it so, nor does it make your arguments valid. It could very well imply that your arguments are so laughably absurd that they are truly incomprehensible to anyone not suffering from delusions similar to your own.

Posted by: Dan J | October 1, 2009 2:07 PM

Rhobot-

Oh, you probably didn't know that I have 7 convictions for pædophilia and child rape on my record.

That truly would not be surprising. It would be perfectly consistent with the character you've demonstrated thus far.

Posted by: Eric Saveau | October 1, 2009 2:41 PM

Rho, why do you seem to figure that blowing peoples' opinions of you out to comically criminal proportions in any way invalidates those original opinions?

Posted by: Ritchie Annand | October 1, 2009 3:08 PM

Rho, why do you seem to figure that blowing peoples' opinions of you out to comically criminal proportions in any way invalidates those original opinions?

At a guess, either pathetically low self-esteem fishing for compliments, or a really bad attempt at reductio ad absurdem.

Either way, it's just sad.

Posted by: LanceR, JSG | October 1, 2009 5:11 PM

why do you seem to figure that blowing peoples' opinions of you out to comically criminal proportions in any way invalidates those original opinions?

Actually, it was originally a bit of a joke. Only later did I realise its utility in drawing out how evil and gratuitously nasty some of you can be. Mission accomplished!

Posted by: Rhology | October 1, 2009 10:23 PM

Dear Darwinists,

Dear Darwinists,

From Tuesday night's performance, we have:
-Meyer and Wells LOTS
-Darwinists in attendance ZERO
Seriously you guys. The best you can do during the Q&A is
1) Have Prof Hutchison ask why it's proper to quote non-ID people expressing their views on a relevant topic (and then have Prof Hutchison warmly pat Dr Meyer on the arm and tell him that he didn't ask another question b/c he didn't want to embarrass him)?
2) Ask about the presence of ERVs evidenced during mammalian evolution (which is, for the uninitiated, AFTER the Cambrian explosion) (oh yeah, the DVD was about nothing but the Cambrian explosion)?
3) Ask about Hox genes and gene duplication (and then go into a tizzy when challenged on why a Designer just couldn't conceivably want to do it that way)?
4) Ask why a Designer would make it so humans share lots of similar genes with other organisms? (Dunno, maybe b/c they work well and the Designer doesn't like to reinvent the wheel every time? Maybe?)
5) Ask why the DVD sometimes said "designers" and sometimes "Designer"?
6) Ask whether using the normally-accepted geological scale was an intentional jab at YEC?
7) Then come right back a few minutes later and claim that I have no standing or reasonable ability to judge ToE wrong b/c I lack the qualifications, the PhD? When there were 2 PhDs standing right on the stage whom you (who don't have a PhD) were judging their theory wrong?
8) Beg the question repeatedly and mercilessly when asked to give an explanation for one's materialistic views (that was you, Prof Hutchison)?
Umm, so yeah. Not exactly the best of performances from our Darwinist friends. Send us more, we're hungry.
Peace,
Rhology

Darwin's Dilemma

We have had the privilege over the last two evenings to have, on Monday evening, Dr Stephen Meyer join us on the nearby university campus to lecture on his book Signature in the Cell and take Q&A, and then last night Dr Jonathan Wells and Meyer showed the here pictured DVD, Darwin's Dilemma, and then took Q&A from the audience again.
Overall, one might say it was a pivotal moment for ID at this university. True, there's a long way to go, but whereas it seemed like a pack of wild dogs was barely restraining themselves from cussing William Dembski out the first time he came here, though he acquitted himself well in the exchanges despite being one-on-alot and suffering from a cold and from the lack of a moderator, this time around the Darwinians in attendance mustered little of any substance in response to the points made by Meyer, Wells, and the DVD.
Now, this time around, the IDEA Club (who invited the ID guys) was wiser and had assigned moderators to make sure that the pandemonium surrounding Dembski the 1st time would not be repeated during the Q&A sessions. So, what should any reasonable and smart scientific-type person conclude from the fact that each questioner would get limited time to ask a question and probably only one follow-up? Well, you've gotta make your question count! So, did our Darwinian friends do so?

Eh, not so much.
Let's take last night's DVD showing Q&A for a great example of Darwinian futility.
Question 1: Professor Vic Hutchison was the first to raise his hand (beat everyone else by a few minutes, literally) and asked why the DVD quoted Valentine and Morris in support of their position. Um, that's your question, really? If I were Meyer and Wells, I would have smiled broadly. (In fact, Meyer told me later that he was more or less chuckling on the inside.)

Question 2: One of those guys who's always showing up for these kinds of events (you know the type) (oh wait, I'm one of those guys! Crud. Except he's in his 50s) asked about the ID answer to the presence of ERVs in mammalian evolution (which is, for the uninitiated, AFTER the Cambrian explosion) (oh yeah, the DVD was about nothing but the Cambrian explosion). He was allowed far too many followups by the moderator, and acted offended and squelched when he was told no más, to the point that he got up, gesticulated wildly for a moment, then walked out. Good riddance to irrelevant questions and their questioners.
M&W's answer was, among other things: How do you build the new proteins, new protein folds and higher body structure; we don’t think viruses can account for that.

Question 3, my favorite, was asked by one Ola F (unless I misunderstood) who is apparently a prof of behavioral ecology at the university: Why did the DVD neglect to mention Hox genes and the fact that tons of organisms share the same genes, aka housekeeping genes?
I've noticed this about Darwinians, especially around here - they have some favorite buzzword/catch-all answers they like to throw out, and whenever someone mentions them, they dissolve into laughter and booyah pwn3d!-type reactions. It's sad and funny at the same time.
Anyway, I was laughing -again- b/c the presence of such genes doesn't give evidence for Darwinism over ID at all - the Designer put them there!
Further, why would anyone think it's a challenge to ID that many organisms share similar genes? Don't Windows 98, 2000, XP, and Vista share a lot of similar code?
On top of that, the DVD addressed that very question, comparing it to the similar form of automobiles since their invention 100 yrs ago.
Meyer correctly pointed out she's begging the question.
Wells steps up and says:
-Without those genes, we're not alive. There's a reason organisms share them.
-Hox genes' effect kicks in AFTER the formation of the body plan (I'll take his word for it on this one).
-And they're just on/off switches, telling the body whether to insert an eye/leg/antenna at a given part of the body.
The questioner then whined about "Why should humans share genes with other organisms like an oak, a bird, other more primitive organisms?" That question cracked me up b/c she was implying some sort of arrogant species-ism. And she's acting, again, like she or anyone else can access the mind or motives of the Designer, which ID has taken pains to say that they can't do. So, overwhelming evidence is...where?
I later asked her what she thought was so strong about her citing the presence of Hox genes, and her response was precisely that - why would a Designer put them there? I patiently explained that the Christian position explains their presence just as well. She sort of lost her composure at that moment, started literally snapping her fingers near my face (which I did find sort of distracting, to be honest) and began ranting about how God couldn't possibly be the answer b/c He just poofs things, or how she could posit a Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc. Then "so I guess your God loves prokaryotes far more than you since they were around for billions of years!" and "if God loves these organisms, why do they go extinct so often? Huh? HUH?" Amazing.
I knew when she mentioned the FSM that she had nothing, and pressed her - that's irrelevant, and how do you know anything about the FSM? She then gave me a mini-lecture about how she has faith in God, but not THAT God, and then escaped. A professor of behavioral ecology at a major state(-funded) university.

Ironically, these were the most challenging questions of the entire session. A massive opportunity for the Darwinians to bring an intellectual beatdown of two pillars of ID, missed and missed badly.
Briefly, questions 5 and 6 were from acquaintances of mine, both solid and frequent attenders of these kinds of events, one a solid member of the local atheist club.
Question 5: The DVD said "designers" and "designer". Which is it?
While that's a technically relevant question, how is that any challenge?
Question 6: Your DVD assumes the normally-accepted geological time scale. Was this an intentional jab at YEC?
As if YEC-ists don't know what's what with respect to the ID movement. I, as a YEC-ist, simply see ID as a useful internal critique of evolutionary naturalism. ID grants naturalism and Old Earth and the usefulness and interpretability of the fossil record and all sorts of other freebies to Darwinism, then is still able to spank it soundly as a viable viewpoint. Tells me quite a lot about the internal strength of the worldview, and it's why I take an interest in this topic despite the fact that I differ with ID on age of the Earth and the utility of the fossil record.

After the formal Q&A and after Professor Ola F suffered her meltdown at my hands, my friend Biggs and I engaged Prof Hutchison in convo. He went on for some time about irrelevant topics - whether he believes in God (he does, for reasons we can't figure out), whether there are religious ppl who support Darwinism (which we know, obviously), and why ID gets so much support from Christian churches (irrelevant ad hominem). I later asked him how he knows what is true and he responded that he knows that which he accesses thru his 5 senses and thru experiments on material in the lab. I asked him how he knows, then, that it's true that one accesses truth successfully thru one's senses. He simply repeated himself. I tried to ask the question a different way, and he begged the same question the same way. Wow. And he'd had the gall to say "I've read your arguments, and they're not any good". Reading is not the same as understanding, Prof Hutchison.

Meyer's closing point was strong and trenchant - Darwinians have long been relying strongly on the "it's not science" argument to bolster its case. When the question turns away from "is it true?" to "is it in conformity with our ad hoc strongarming the rules to suit us?" it's a sign the Darwinian club is in trouble.

(HT: CharlesRansom at the IDEAClub for live-blogging the event and jogging my memory in certain places)
(Many thanks to Dr Meyer for giving me a copy of his book when I told him I was interested in this topic partly b/c I'm a Godblogger. He said "well, you're a member of the media!" Haha, right, sure I am. But I'll enjoy the book, for sure. He was a very nice and enthusiastic guy, and after an exhausting day still went out to eat with a bunch of us afterward.)

Last Tuesday-ism

Last Tuesday-ism is occasionally used as an argument against Christianity (like here), especially Young Earth Creationism, especially the kind that I generally argue, where my answer to why geological structures appear to be really old is b/c God created them, like Adam, with a certain appearance of age to the natural eye. Adam was formed and created as a fully-grown man, not a zygote. Similarly, I figure it's a good explanation to say that God created the world to look old when studied from the standpoint of unbelieving naturalistic "science", using limited methodology, knowledge, breadth of vision (ie, we can't look back very far; indeed we've recorded even less), and instrumentation, and when attempting to, as it were, prove God wrong.
But since God actually did create it more recently than many billions of yrs ago, we'd expect to see inconsistencies in any worldview that expresses the billions of yrs belief. And indeed we do. Exhibit A - evolutionary naturalism.

Anyway, the skeptic asks how this position is distinguishable from last Tuesday-ism, and the answers are manifold. Remember, we take the question from the Christian worldview, and in that worldview, God doesn't lie, and He does communicate truth. That's the fundamental axiom; w/o that, we argue (and quite successfully) that there's no way to know anything about anything. So, as I said in the ERV thread above, if God is lying to us, then we have no way to discover truth. About anything.
Basically, this is an alternative worldview, much like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so it needs its own structure and framework to be constructed by the questioner. Who is God and how do you know? How do you know God created the world last Tuesday? How can you trust the passage of time? Are all of your remembered (but completely fabricated) relationships and experiences worth anything? If so, how do you assign value to them and how do you justify that assignment?
Can you really trust airplanes, boats, drinking water out of the tap, flu shots and vaccines, ibuprofen, food, sex, your parents, given that nothing you remember about them is real? I mean, you have a whole life of work ahead of you here.
By the way, if you want to go on the fascinating but flawed "prankster/evil god" argument from there, first demonstrate how you can reliably know anything about that god.


I'd like to turn the question back around to the skeptic now. How do YOU know last Tuesday-ism isn't true? Maybe the universe exploded (out of nothing, caused by nothing, of course) into existence last Tuesday and everything we observe now in the world, galaxy, and universe coalesced in that time, and by some improbably bizarre set of circumstances (sound familiar?), the Earth and life have come together since then. And yes, evolution has taken place in that short time. Natural pressures and natural selection have determined that human beings would exist, believing by and large that the world is many billions of yrs old, b/c if they didn't believe that, then they'd commit suicide out of despair (well, that's the scientific community's best guess, though we haven't -yet- figured out a way to study that part of our past, but we're working on it. And until then, it's a fact, not a theory). So up to this present time, the human population has been shaped by these pressures and selection to express the "Earth is billions of yrs old"-belief gene in most cases.
You may scoff and say, "That's improbable! Astronomically improbable!" Wait a second. Isn't that precisely what you say about the way you already think the Earth and all life on it came into existence - thru astronomically improbable events? Further, when challengers to Old Earth or at least to evolution challenge you and contend that the odds against life appearing on Earth are simply too vast to comprehend and to attribute to mere chance, don't you respond with "well, improbable it may be, but that's the way it is"?
So that's my answer to you - improbable it may be, but that's the way it is. After all, what's the difference in probability between astronomically improbable and astronomically improbable?
Now, prove me wrong.

A grab-bag at ERV

I've been enjoying myself again over at ERV, maybe more than I should. Boy, do they hate me!
ERV's commenter-minions' inability to grasp most points is rivaled only by their familiarity with vulgar obscenities, but the gap is closing.

#69, ph42 -

But "I don't like it" is YOUR entire reason for rejecting every other religion besides your own.

How would you know that? You've never asked me.
Just FYI, I reject other religions for the same reason I reject naturalism - they're internally inconsistent, so I never even have to ask the question whether they correctly represent reality.


#70, Tyler DiPietro -
If you read them with a little care, you'll see that they're the same. My paraphrase is meant to summarise.

you still haven't explained how the inductive conclusion of common descent based on the evidence is dependent upon such a notion.

I don't see what's so hard about this. Let me repeat myself from above.
Thing is, we've got two competing explanations - common descent vs God did it. I'm looking for an argument why the former is better than the latter. What I see here, though, is some pretty serious violations of the normal and oft-proclaimed Darwinian scientist principles - we accept what we observe. You haven't observed common descent. You didn't observe these ERVs come to be. You don't have a time machine. What you do have is some pretty big assumptions, and assumptions that are tied to naturalism. On the other hand, the alternative - God created them that way - is obviously a non-naturalistic answer. It's a theistic, supernaturalistic answer. So I look at your answer and say that you've arrived at your conclusion through inconsistent means - you say usually that you accept what you observe, but in fact a great deal of this you haven't observed.


#71, ph42 -
Nature exists. This is obvious from any observations of the real world, and your determination to deny it makes no difference.

1) I don't deny nature exists. Your foaming hatred of anything Christian is getting in the way of your reason. Seriously, take a deep breath, go for a jog, have a glass of wine or sthg, then come back and let's talk.
2) How do you know your cognitive faculties are reliably aimed at producing true thoughts, if nature is all there is? If you're a bunch of chemical reactions, much like a shaken-up can of Coke? An animal evolved from a lower primate? A bag of molecules in motion? What's special about the human brain?


Nothing beyond nature has ever been conclusively demonstrated to exist.

Demonstrated by what means? What means do you accept to demonstrate things exist?


Many people claim to have seen supernatural things, but their claims are mutually exclusive

You do realise that mutually exclusive claims do not necessarily mean that both are wrong, but simply that both can't be right?


#72, Optimus -
love that Rhology says, "Just b/c you refuse to accept it b/c you have an a priori commitment to naturalism isn't my problem," and then defines naturalism as "an approach to philosophical problems that interprets them as tractable through the methods of the empirical sciences or at least, without a distinctively a priori project of theorizing." (Whatever that last bit of mangled English means.)

1) The "mangled English" is from a philosophy encyclo, in case you can't see hyperlinks.
2) And I'd fully expect an entry like that to be EXPRESSING a view, not pointing out its obvious weaknesses. This is in fact a problem for YOU and also illustrative of the kind of reductionistic thinking in which you engage. Naturalists, who say that only the natural exists, make a big deal out of demanding evidence for all questions. And yet what they never stop to think about (and which I'm trying to help you see) is that there's no way to get evidence that evidence is a good way to discover truth, beyond circular inductive "well, it's always worked for us!"-es.


#73, Reed -
By acknowledging that your god can do whatever the fuck he wants, you've admitted there is no evidence which we could perceive that your god couldn't create.

Correct. It is in fact my position that the God of the Bible created everything. It is perfectly distinguishable from last Tuesdayism b/c lT-ism is absurd; if God is lying to us, then we have no way to discover truth. About anything.
It's very helpful in understanding our world. Even if I granted that it doesn't say anythg about science (which I don't grant), there's far more to real life than science, and the Bible has tons to say about the human condition, society, morality, love and hate, good and bad, etc.


I do invite you to explain why your revelation is more believable than the revelation of hank.

How does the philosophy of hank account for the existence of the universe and of the laws of logic?


You say "naturalism is bunk", but it is objectively a better way to make predictions about the universe than appeals to ancient superstition.

Not if it's false.


Naturalism gives us vaccines and cars and airplanes and space ships. "god did it" doesn't give us shit.

No, scientific endeavor and study gave you those good things, and while naturalism cannot solve the problem of induction or justify the operation of physical laws into the future, Christianity does both. God holds the world and physical laws in the state they're in now, reliably and consistently so that things like airplane flight, ships' buoyancy, and vaccines work. How does naturalism ensure that those will be reliable one second from now? (Hint - it doesn't.)


#74, DJD -
If facts have to be interpereted through a worldview, they can't be used as evidence for that worldview.

Good question, but hopefully you've been paying attention when I've more than once referred to seeking internal consistency in worldviews.


even if you say "everything is evidence for God", then all that means is "evolution is evidence for God"

You have no evidence that evolution occurred in the way you say it did. You can't observe it. Your own ppl say the fossil record is useless in determining that question (and Gee's argument is sound). Further, God has told us how it went down; I see no reason to trust your pitiful "evidence" that begs the question for naturalism.


#75, Tyler DiPietro,
yeah it is, the fact that something "works" is predicated on it having some correspondence to reality.

I call assumption.
1) Science has gotten many things wrong when it thought to have nailed the cause for some event. Only to discover later it had it wrong.
2) If Joe Caveman runs away from a tiger, it could be from any number of reasons. Sure, it serves to keep him alive, but maybe he thought he was playing hide-and-seek with it. Or he wanted it to give him money, and he believes that the tiger will give it to him if he runs away from it at full speed and climbs a tree. The list could go on and on for these conceivable defeaters for this idea.


#77, Stephen Wells -
You read the whole Bible, that's nice. I told you exactly where to read; if you miss it AGAIN, that's no one's fault but yours.

but nowhere does it actually specify what a "god" is, what the origins of a "god" are, or how a "god" does what it supposedly does.

1) John 4:24, and all those other psgs.
2) God has no origin. He has always been. Isaiah 40-44.
3) He does it supernaturally. That's all throughout the Bible. Colossians 1.
Seriously, if you're gonna argue, don't use this willful ignorance. Who are you trying to impress?

Sola Scriptura Debate - DavidW's first rebuttal

See it here.

If life has no meaning, then no meaning has truth

A Facebook acquaintance had posted a status update recently, expressing doubt that there's really any point to all of this.
Here is our PM exchange:

Me -> acquaintance
I recall that we talked a few years ago about Jesus, and I'm just wondering what you've thought about with respect to Him over these last few years, related to your recent status update. If there really is no point, what's stopping you from turning to Jesus?
If you say that you don't think He exists, I'd offer two thoughts:
1) When was the last time you asked Him whether He exists with a truly open heart? Only you know the answer to that.
2) If there's no point, are you really worse off repenting of your sin and putting your trust in Jesus than staying an agnostic or whatever?

(I say #2 just as a thought exercise, I am convinced that Christianity is the only rational worldview and has more than enough solid argumentation in its favor.)

Anyway, I'd love to talk if you want.

Peace,


Acquaintance -> me

Yeah man I have done tons of research into religion. I find that the actual purpose to Jesus' teaching is that we all have a connection to the divine. The problem is that religion has been misguided into a ruleset to control the population. I invited jesus into my heart many years ago and only found that the bible was not a great translation of the original stories and that half the story was deemed unfit by the council. it seems that there may have been a conspiracy to hide information from the masses from the beginning. I understand that this may be far fetched to you as you are comfortable with your religious views. However, my research has expanded far beyond simple faith and now has left me feeling that the world is so far gone from real truth that we are doomed to face the inadequacies of our mistaken worldview.

Me -> acquaintance

We talked about this approx 3 yrs ago, and you gave me the same answer, heavy on the conspiracy theories and devoid of much of any factual basis. The misguidance and partial misuse of a system doesn't make the system wrong, it could be true but twisted by people, meaning that the truth is there to be found.
You're probably confusing translation with transmission, b/c for one thing, translating from Greek and Hebrew to English is very straightforward. And seriously, I mean no disrespect to you; rather, I'm pleading with you. If you don't even know the word to describe what you're trying to say, shouldn't that tell you that you don't have nearly enough info to make a decision about a topic that's so important as your eternal soul?

You apparently prefer to deceive yourself thinking all of this foggy gobbledygook when you yourself just admitted that life has no meaning. If life has no meaning, then truth has no meaning and there's no reason to seek truth. Indeed, there's no reason to complain that life has no meaning. So why do you do it?
You do it b/c you know that you've done wrong and that you are liable to answer for your lawbreaking before God, but you don't want to dwell on it b/c it makes you feel too guilty and you don't want to repent before Jesus.

Actually, my religious views as you call them don't make me very comfortable at all in a lot of ways, b/c they remind me that I have a long, long way to go if I am to be like Jesus. Indeed, I'll never get there until I die, when God will make me like Him, but it won't be b/c of anything I've done.

Anyway, why would anyone (indeed, SHOULD anyone) hold to a worldview that they know bereaves them of any meaning in life when they could have a different worldview that DOES provide meaning? You might answer "Well, I don't think that other one is true", but if life has no meaning, so what? Your worldview is the ultimate "So what?" May the Lord have mercy on you for that.

Peace,

Sad, so sad is the lost state of this person and so many others.
See also here.