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A Good Day

Last Saturday was a good day for me. (This line keeps running through my head from a rap song in the 90's-"I have to say it was a good day." I'm glad none of the readers of this blog probably know that song. I shudder to think what the rest of the words may be. I think it was one of the Ice's-i.e. T or Cube, please don't research and let me know. Let's just say, they had a juke box in the UAB Pizza Hut when I was in junior high and that's the kinda stuff they used to play...I'm sure I can come up with some other excuses if that one doesn't get me off the hook...but, I digress.)

Last Saturday was a good day for me. My son (whom I shall call "junior" here because of all those weirdos on the internet-you know, the adults that have a myspace page and all of their friends are under 18...um...all those other adults with such pages, I'm a high school teacher and they all want to be my friends and I want to know what they are up to-don't tell them...I digress again)...My son "junior" played his final "regular season" baseball game Saturday. He had prayed for a win for my birthday, but it was not to be. Saturday was to be different. Friday night we prayed for a win and if possible for junior to score a run (he hadn't gotten past second base since the season started, mainly because of where he has been in the batting order and the inning ending with him on base). Not only did he score a run (much to his own bewilderment) but his team also won the game in the bottom of the last inning of the game.

My younger son had a t-ball game earlier that morning, and it was a typical t-ball affair. Mass confusion, half the team dog-piling on the ball, and someone emerging from the bottom of the pile to hurl the ball in the general direction of the first base dugout while the batter finds first base...and the dirt pile beside it. Every player is an artist and the grass and dirt of the field is his/her canvas. The most exciting player on the team is a little girl with a pink helmet about 5 sizes too big (even though it's probably the smallest one they make) and a face mask she has to hold onto while running. There are two reasons she holds onto it: 1) the keep it from falling off 2) to turn the helmet so her legs will know which way to run. It is hilarious to see her turn the helmet and 2 steps later her legs turn the rest of her. Also, while running, it is difficult to keep the helmet straight so she often runs as if someone spiked her sippy cup with a little pre-game go-juice...or vitameatavegamin. Her explanation has been that snakes, alligators, or some other wild animals are snapping at her feet. Whatever is going on inside that helmet, it makes the game more enjoyable for all of us.

After the games were over, we went to see Prince Caspian, the newest movie installment of the Narnia series. The boys thoroughly enjoyed it (if a 4 year old never leaving the edge of your seat or taking his eyes off the screen for 2+ hours is a sign of enjoyment). The movie didn't follow the book as closely as we would have liked, but the action scenes really held the boys' attention.
(Somebody on some blog that I have seen over the past two hours said that they like the movie better than the book. I can't find that blog again for some reason, and I really don't understand why someone would like a movie better because usually, the original books are better than the movies. I am somewhat of a purist and don't like for people to monkey with the details, but that's just me.)

All that to say, last Saturday was a good day after almost a whole school year of seemingly pointless, depressing, and stressful days. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel know and God's glorious grace is apparent to me once again. Here's to more days of enjoying the family and the life with which God has blessed me.

Dawkins/Lennox debate

OK, it was Wed. night and I was supposed to leave church early to listen to the debate on the radio. However, the conversation was was too interesting to walk out (and I figured that I could buy a recording of the debate but not the class at church). I tuned in about 45 minutes into the debate and got to listen for over an hour. The following are some of the points I heard during the debate.

Part of Dawkin's book, The God Delusion, says something to the effect of, Along with John Lenin, imagine a world with no religion, with no Crusades, no terrorists, no 9/11, etc.
John Lennox's reply began with, Along with John Lennox, imagine a world with no atheism, no Hitler, Stalin, Communism, etc.

Later, Dawkins said that "faith" is believing something in the absence of reason. A lot of times, people believe that faith is only available if there is no evidence (or at least, not sufficient evidence). Those of faith should be encouraged to seek reasons.
Lennox stated that "faith" means "to believe in x." It is correct that people need reasons for what they believe. He then stated that Dawkins has faith in his own wife, and he has this faith on the basis of evidence from his experience of knowing her for years. Lennox agreed that it is proper to believe on evidence, but that we have evidence for Christianity so it is proper for us to believe.
Lennox stated that "Atheism is a faith as well."
To which Dawkins replied, "No it's not!"
Under Lennox's definition, atheism does qualify as a faith b/c Dawkins believes it. Atheism is not just a lack of belief, it is a positive belief that God does not exist. Even agnosticism is the belief that there is not enough evidence to warrant belief in God. This qualifies both as faiths. [Geisler has written a book entitled, I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist.]


Dawkins stated that he does not see a logical path from atheism to "It is ok to do evil action x" whereas theists can believe deeply that God told them to do x and be perfectly rational b/c they are operating under the assumption that God exists and He told them to do x. If an atheist does x, he is acting irrationally.
The problem is that atheism lacks a rational ground for morality. There is no rational reason for the categories or moral goodness or evil in the absence of God's existence.
Dawkins: "You don't need God to be moral or immoral." IOW, you can act in either a moral or immoral way without God. He also said that you picked or chose how to read the Bible based on prior presuppositions which the atheist also has (but different ones). His point is that we pick or choose what we choose from the Bible to be representations of moral actions which we should emulate rather than purely descriptive accounts of wrong actions which were committed but should not be repeated.
He also states that there is a universal idea of what is moral which we get from common sense. Even though there are disagreements over what specific actions are moral in different cultures, there is a common moral sense of what is right or wrong in general. [One point at which we agree.] Finally, Dawkins says that we evolved in clans with a lust for good. It is difficult at best to see how any altruistic actions would be supported by evolution. It may be good for the clan but not for the individual. I'm sure there is some reason that can be developed for this, but it will take some work.

Lennox agrees that the atheist can be good (i.e. do good actions) without a proper ground for his behavior. [Though Augustine would insist that we can't even do good without being reconciled to God first.]
Lennox gives the example of a rock falling from a cliff which lands on your head. This just happened as a result of physical processes and is thus not an immoral action: physical processes are not moral agents. If our choice of preferred actions is simply the result of physical, evolutionary development, then it is also merely a physical process resulting the way our DNA evolved. Our actions, as the result of how our physical DNA was formed, are no more members of any moral category than the result of the physical processes which led to your being smitten by the boulder. Thus, the categories of good and evil cease to exist. No action can be called wrong because they are all simply resulting from our DNA.

That is what I got from the debate. I hope to hear the rest of it soon.

On teaching Creationism in Christian schools

I attended a session at the before mentioned conference which was to cover how to effectively teach creationism to Christian high school students. I was underwhelmed to say the least. One of the first things said was that there are 2 options on how the world came into existence: evolution and creationism. Evolution was defined as a purely naturalistic system of natural selection. Creationism was defined as a supernaturalistic theory of how God created the world in 6 literal days, 6000 years ago. The speaker apparently believed that these two mutually exclusive options were the only ones available. He then stated that other views of creation (all of which were conflated with theistic evolution) were self-contradictory because they try to combine, in one way or another, a supernatural with a purely naturalistic theory. Of course, you can't both have God involved and not have Him involved in the creation process; this is contradictory. To combine a natural, physical phenomenon with a supernatural one is not contradictory. Is this not what we find in the world even if we assume Young Earth Creationism? A natural, physical world that involves a supernatural cause. The two can apparently mix. What he meant was that naturalistic processes cannot be used by God because this would mix two mutually contradictory options (the only two, according to him). Do we really want to limit God in this way? I think not. [Even if we want to say this, for whatever reason, our simply saying it does not in fact limit God in this way.] It does not seem to entail a contradiction for God to use naturalistic processes (i.e. processes in the physical world which He set into place).

The conflation of theistic evolution with the processes of intelligent design seems to be an obvious problem. Theistic evolution does not allow for God to step back into the process once He has set it in place (similar to Deism, except that God is allowed to remain imminent in the world as long as He doesn't violate the created order). Intelligent Design postulates a much different idea: God has to step in at certain junctures in the "evolving" process. Without God's intervention at certain points, the physical world could not have evolved past certain points. (Just as in the micro-evolution that takes place now. Human beings may be taller than they have been in the past, but they will never be 20 feet tall.)

The one good point that I got from the session was that the Flood during Noah's time could not have been a local flood. Noah was on the ark for 1 year according to the flood account in the Bible. No localized flood would have remained for 1 year. It only rained for 40 days and nights, but the water did not recede enough for the animals and Noah's family to get off for a whole year. Why would the animals need to be protected if they could just migrate anyway? This is the only argument that made sense to me and seemed to be valid.

I grew up being taught the Young Earth Creationist position, but the lack of (or poor) intellectual interaction with the arguments is unfortunate for someone that would like to see Y.E.C. succeed. It would certainly make the literal interpretation of Genesis 1 much easier to defend.

That's my take on it. For at least nostalgic reasons, I would like to hear good, scientific interaction by Y.E.C., but as of yet, very few of them offer more than strawmen arguments and invalid arguments. There seems to be a general sense of giving academia and scientific reasoning over to the world and setting up a fort to protect the religious world from intellectual interaction with the world. It is sad. Those of us who can help need to serve the Lord and the church in this way, today!

But seriously

I spent the last couple of days at a very conservative Christian school convention. I met some interesting people and reconnected with some of my former teachers. On balance, it was a good experience.

The difficult parts: I am teaching at a school that is conservative but probably considered liberal or worldly by the other schools at the conference. We were wearing comfortable clothing while the others were wearing suits. Some of my fellow teachers were not accustomed to the ultra-conservative genre in which the other schools operate. I was in the middle and tried to explain where each other was coming from but there were several blank stairs and lack of understanding between the groups. No super bad arguments took place but a general sense of not understanding why the other group is not like "us." If you've ever been to a convention where members of a former school meet along with members of your current school, you have some idea of what I felt. I also have a few friends that went to elementary/high school and college with me. It is neat to look at someone you have known for so long and not have to say anything but have a complete understanding of what is going through each other's head (or close enough).

I met a really nice apologetics teacher with whom I connected pretty well. Also, the other high school teachers and I got to hang out more than we do at school since we're usually teaching most of the time. They are a great bunch.

I'll make a separate post about one of the sessions I attended. When it rains, it pours and when I blog, I really start blogging. Check the next post.

My apologies

It was a complete oversight on my part to follow a blog entry on a weight loss program with one on amputation. It is true that the quickest way to lose 15 pounds is to cut your head off (according to certain of my in-laws, who are always there for helpful advice), but there was no intention on my part to connect the two entries.

My last suggestion for easy weight loss for the foreseeable future is to use the potty before you weigh. The most results for the least effort (in most cases).

"Amputee Wannabes" have healthy limbs removed

We studied this in ethics class. It seems so bizarre when this is the result, but the underlying problem is prevalent in today's society. People often say that they have a need to feel like "themselves." They either lack something that would make them the person they feel they "really are" on the inside or they have some additional characteristic which they feel is foreign to "the real me." Think about it though, do you feel like the real you when you don't have on makeup or are in some other state in which you'd rather not have people see you? Today, all kinds of cosmetic surgeries are looked at with little more thought than wearing makeup. We seldom ask why the person feels that he or she needs the surgery in order to feel "right." Part of a consumerist society leads advertising to give us a sense of lacking something. When we buy into this idea that we are always lacking something, we do not have an accurate perception of what it means to be an authentic self. We look at what others say we should be and only feed the beast when we agree and join their ranks. We pride ourselves on using our autonomy to become "ourselves" when we are really only copies of what our society has said we should be. Instead of becoming our own selves, we have become one of the faceless masses--the very thing we were trying to avoid by "bettering" ourselves.
As Christians, we can avoid this problem by thinking about Jesus' love for us. My grandfather (Pawpaw) used to talk about ways he had failed as a father or some other capacity, but when he got done thinking about what a poor job he had done he always followed it up with, "but the Lord Jesus knows all about that." I've been thinking about what this means. Because God has full knowledge of all past and future truths, He has always known what we would do, and fail to do, our entire lives. Here's the kicker, the chose to save us knowing full well when and where we would fail. Our hope is not in our own merits but in the fact that Jesus looked at us and chose us as His own in spite of what He knew about us, how we would fail Him and others. So fear not, we need not determine who we really are or what society wants us to be; we are to become like Christ and are loved by Him. He is our standard of what it means to be an authentic self, and this only comes through pursuing a life in loving submission to Him.

clipped from www.slate.com Baz remembers first seeing an amputee when he was a 4-year old boy in Liverpool. By the time he was 7 he had begun to think, "This is the way I should be." It was not until Baz was in his 50s, however, that he actually had his leg amputated. Baz froze his leg in dry ice until it was irreversibly damaged, then persuaded a surgeon to complete the job. When he awoke from the anesthetic and his left leg was gone, he says, "All my torment had disappeared." Wannabes desperately wish to have their healthy limbs removed, and some have succeeded in having it done. Why? Nobody really knows, including the wannabes themselves, who often say they have had the desire since they were children. "It's obviously peculiar," admits Kevin. "But knowing it is peculiar and saying it is weird does not do away with the problem." In the meantime, psychiatrists are no closer to understanding the condition, and they are proposing no therapy other than amputation.

My weight loss program

Everybody has a new diet or weight loss program these days. Mine? Go back to school. As this article states, you burn calories while thinking about difficult topics. Your food consumption will go down as well. 1. You won't have time to eat and 2. Even if you had time, you couldn't afford food anyway.
So go back to school, lose weight, create jobs for teachers, and give me something better to do than create blog entries. We'll all be happy!

clipped from www.popsci.com Need to lose some flab? Sit your big butt down with a math book—and feel the burn. The human brain is a 24-hour workhorse. While you’re thinking, millions of neurons fire messages back and forth to each other and to the various tissues in the body. These neurons need fuel, consuming a full 75 percent of the blood sugar from the liver and 20 percent of the body’s total used oxygen Here’s how your neurons feed: Astrocytes—the cells near the capillary walls in your brain—suck energy-rich glucose from the bloodstream and convert it into a form that the neurons can soak up. The neurons then use it to fuel the production of neurotransmitters and, eventually, conscious thought. “The more energy an area of the brain wants, the more glucose that part of the brain will break down,” when you’re hunched over a crossword puzzle? Your brain is blasting through a respectable 1.5 calories a minute.

Graduation

On Friday, May 25, 2007, I received my master's degree in philosophy of religion and ethics from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. Some of you may recognize the fellow in the middle. I think he teaches philosophy or something...


Some of you who are progressing through the current dispensation may recognize this prof.


This one's a little blurry, but we had to fit all six of us in the picture. (Our friends Ed and Dana are having a little boy in the near future.) Also in the picture is my friend Dr. Geivett.

It was a long journey, but we made it. We learned a lot, not only from classes but also about life in general. SoCal is a lot different than the South, and we really learned a lot about making it without being able to depend on family for help. One of the best parts was all of the neat people we met. I made a lot of really good friends from all over the country. We are so glad that the Lord led us here, but we'll be glad to be back home. Hopefully, we still have friends back there.

Really Cool Free Stuff

Since I am between semesters (at least for the weekend), I decided to check out some really cheep/free stuff to do on the web. I found several things that were interesting and wanted to share.

free e-books These are e-book formats of books that have expired copyrights. This includes Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, classic fairytales, tons of classic works both philosophical and political (everything from Nietzsche to Marx), basically anything too old to retain a copyright. Some of you homeschoolers can save money on books this way.

free theology texts A lot of works by church fathers. Really interesting stuff. You should try reading some of the theology they did in the early church. Really fascinating how deep they got, asking and answering questions I would have even thought of. While I'm thinking about it, gnosticism is a very old heresy and the early church dealt with the problems involved in it. Though some of the gnostic "gospels" have been found in the last few decades, their existence was well known and countered by the early church fathers.

listen to the Bible This site has links for you to listen to the Bible in mp3 format (which plays on Windows Media Player, etc. If you can get on the internet with your computer, you probably have something on your computer already that can play it.). If you want to hear what the Old Testament sounds like in Hebrew, they've got that, too.

Also, I found out that if you google and Bible reference and add "ESV" next to it, you will get a link to the English Standard Bible online which has a "Listen" option next to the title. Try it some time when you want to read the Bible but need to wash your dishes or fold your clothes at the same time or want your children to fall asleep listening to the Word (not saying that it would put you to sleep but find a good Psalm or something that is relaxing or comforting, though if you have trouble sleeping, the drone of a good genealogy sometimes works wonders).

Dr. Douglas Groothuis has given permission to this site to provide some of his lectures from Denver Seminary.

There are a ton of downloads on this site as well. Many of the are excellent for philosophy and theology geeks. Of particular interest to anyone, is C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity audio book. If you've ever wanted to read it but couldn't find the time, now it can be read to you while you are "redeeming the time" (or "seizing the day").

FOR ENTERTAINMENT

For those of us who are OCD and like to collect books, I've put the part of my collection that I have in CA online here. I think you can list up to 200 books without paying anything. A lifetime membership is only $25, I think, so it qualifies as cheap if not free (though you have to provide your own books).

I also found out that, similar to the copyright on old literature expiring, some software companies "abandon" their old programs that are out of date according to today's standards. Just imagine if someone came up to you on the street and handed you a nintendo with all of the games you used to play in the 80's/90's. These old PC games are now known as "abandonware." There are several sites that carry these, but I quickly found one that was overly sufficient for my present purposes. (I found Final Fantasy: Endless Nova there.)

Cure for wanting to move to California. Compare two things: the traffic and housing costs.
California traffic
vs
Alabama traffic

typical CA house (3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms) $500-600k (including a patch of grass that must be perfectly manicured and colored vibrant green 12 months of the year)
typical AL house (dito) $100-$150 k (including a yard, which is expected to change colors during season changes and normally receives water from some unknown source which the locals call "rain")

If that doesn't do it for you, here's the earthquake tracker for CA.
Then, there's always the gas prices
CA
vs
AL

I'm sure there are some other cool things I could find, but school starts again tomorrow so I'd better quit for now. Enjoy!

Where I've Been

I could tell you that I was abducted by aliens for the past six months or so and most of my friends wouldn't have proof that I wasn't. (I hope you still call me a friends or at least remember me.) Last semester, I took a full load along with my duties as a stay at home father, cook (via microwave), taxi driver, and furniture holder down. I also took an interterm class in Philosophy of Religion that was like an apologetics class on steroids. I have finished that class as of last Friday and have the weekend off before classes begin again. What to do with myself? I found a number of free things on the web that I will share in a different post.

About the class, it was taught by William Lane Craig. If you haven't heard of him, you may have seen him on a tv special about the resurrection or debates about the existence of God, etc. He's really a top notch scholar. You should check him out some time. It seemed that everything I had been learning up to this point in my apologetics/philosophy education came out in this class. I was so glad to have the background information that I did or else I probably would not have understood the deeper implications of some of the points made in the class. By way of example, I just finished a class on epistemology in which I wrote a paper about Alvin Plantinga's A Critique of Internalism. If I had not done that, I probably wouldn't have understood the implications of his Reformed Epistemology that we studied in phil of religion. I also took a class from Craig last January on God's relation to time, in which we studied Einstein's theories and different theories of time. When we got to that section in phil of religion, I had some background info to work with. It's really cool when all the connections are being made between classes.

Anyway, I am only taking 3 classes this semester, and I'll be done in May so I may have more time to blog in the coming months if anyone is interested. If anybody really reads this and wants to drop me a line, either comment or email, I'll feel more motivated to post something as time permits.