bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/

It really disturbs me when terms are abused and this happens often.  It is especially disturbing when those who are adversarial to the term in question use it to mean something it does not.  This means they are either ignorant or dishonest.  So this is a public service announcement for the benefit of all the adversaries of Intelligent Design out there.

Intelligent Design is not a rival to Evolution.  When you pit the two against one another, you sound stupid.  You are making either a claim from ignorance or are being dishonest.  Both discredit you and your argument.  Furthermore, intellectual dishonesty runs completely contrary to the ideals of scientific inquiry which you attack Intelligent Design for violating.  Therefore you are a hypocrit.

Young Earth Creationism is a rival to Evolution, Intelligent Design is not.  Most Intelligent Design proponents reject Evolution, but the theory itself does not.

Evolution (personified) should take no issue with Intelligent Design.  Intelligent Design (though not a direct rival) is a rejection of Modernism, with its rejection of all things super-natural.  It is not a rejection of Evolution which makes no claim with regards to the super-natural.  Lets get this right, Please!

    A colleague of mine in the blogging world, Adrian Thysse commented on my last article, The Fifty-First Psalm in English Verse.  His comment brought up some interesting and very important questions facing the world today.  These questions are some of the key battlefields in the so called, culture wars.  I started to respond to Mr. Thysse’s comment with another comment but, it soon became too long and too divergent from the original article.  Mr. Thysse’s original comment appears below in full.

Adrian Thysse
June 30, 2008

“Behold, I in iniquity
Was formed the womb within;
My mother conceived me also,
In guiltiness and sin.

It is a heavy burden Christian’s bear, but self imposed.Doesn’t your passion for truth conflict with your faith? How do you keep them separate?

The first part is a direct quote from my post.  It is Psalm 51:5, in an English verse translation.  My response to the questions raised by Mr. Thysse is below.  In deciding how to respond, I found that moving in reverse order (of that in which the questions were posed) will work best. 

    How do I keep my faith and my passion for truth separate?  There is an underlying claim in this question and it is that, my faith is not also true.   I fully understand that Mr. Thysse is not a Christian and so, I expect him to believe Christianity to be false.  Also nothing should be taken dogmatically.  The more important an issue is, the more reason there is to test the conclusion.  Certainly world view and metaphysical beliefs are extremely important, and so should be subjected to the highest levels of scrutiny.  See my article, Pseudo-Polite Conversation, for more on my views on this.  

The unstated premises (I hope Mr. Thysse will forgive me for making assumptions) for this question are that,

• Christian faith is unreasonable and not supported by reason.
• I am a reasonable person (he says that I have a “passion for truth”) and yet am a Christian.
  
• The first and second premises contradict
  
• Therefore, I am either making a separation between faith and rationality (as Mr Thysse believes) or I am a walking contradiction.

    Now that I have spent two paragraphs expanding a six word question, I will get to answering it.  First I would like to thank Mr. Thysse for implying that I am a reasonable person.  Thanks.  I try my best to be reasonable and your ackowledgment of the fact means that we can conduct a civilized debate.

    Second, I do not keep them separate.  (Hey, a six word response!)  To do so would constitute a contradiction.  I can not love truth during the week and indulge in what I know to be fantasy on Sundays.  That would be literally and in all other ways, insane. 

    So, it appears that I have backed myself into a corner.  Mr. Thysse presented a dilemma, either I make a separation or I live a contradiction.  I have stated that to make a separation would be a contradiction.  So it appears that, I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.  I have already stated that I do not make a separation between my faith and my passion for truth.  I’ll now address the other option in the dilemma, namely that I am a walking contradiction.

    This, I do not accept.  I do not believe that a contradiction exists between my faith and my pursuit of truth.  (I suppose, I should be thankful to Mr. Thysse for assuming that I made a separation rather than asking “why are you a walking contradiction?”)  I find Christian faith to best explain the universe we live in.  That is to say, I find Christianity to be reasonable and rational. 

    We must dismiss completely, with the idea that metaphysical questions, (such as, what is ultimate reality, is there a god, what is the meaning of life,  and why is there evil?) are questions of science or that science could answer.  They are not.  These are not the sort of questions that scientists ask; nor are they the sort of questions that science answers.  If we found video footage of the last six billion (or 100 billion) years and could see the beginning of life and all the wars and famines in history, it would not tell us why there is evil, if there is a god, if he is active or passive, or if he is knowable or distant. 

    Science ( and mathematics, physics etc.)  is very useful but, it is limited.  Science can answer many questions but not questions of this sort.  I do not know if Mr. Thysse’s belief that Christianity is unreasonable is based on an adherence to science or not but, it is very common to believe that science is somehow at odds with faith, religion, and even philosophy.  It is not.  It cannot be.  Science being opposed to these things is like English muffins being opposed to purple.  If you believe in English muffins then you cannot believe in purple and the other way around.  It makes now sense at all.  You cannot even conceive of what it means for English muffins to oppose purple.  The same is true of science opposing faith.

    It seems that in the course of answering the question about separation, I have also answered the question, “doesn’t your passion for truth conflict with your faith?”  It does not.  My faith is based on what I believe to be true.  I believe it was Augustine who said that “all truth is God’s truth.”  This is what I believe.  If God exists, and I believe he does, then all honest search for truth whether molecular biology, astronomy, philosophy, or a criminal investigation, is a search for God.  This is true even when the searcher is not conscience of it or does not believe in God. However, when the search is not really about truth but rather about supporting a previously held position, then neither is it a search for God. 

    Now to respond to the first sentence in Mr. Thysse’s comment. 

It is a heavy burden Christian’s bear, but self imposed.

The burden is only self imposed if it is not true, but that is beside the point and not worth arguing about at the moment.  Mr. Thysse has made a very astute observation that most of the secular world does not recognize or at least, does not admit to recognizing.  Mr. Thysse has recognized the heavy burden.  Yes there is a heavy burden, but Christians do not bear it.  That is the essence of Christianity.  We have sinned, we are living outside of our original nature, we are God’s enemies but God in his love has extended his hand to us, so that we may become His children!  He has taken the burden from us!  We do not bear the burden because Jesus bore it on our behalf.  As Paul said,

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Romans 8:1 English Standard Version. Underlining mine.

 Or even earlier in that same Psalm,

For your compassion great, blots out
All my iniquity.
Psalm 51:2 

And later,

With perfume do, you sprinkle me,
I shall be cleansed so;
Yes, wash me please, and then I will
Be whiter than new snow!
Psalm 51:7

Or as Jesus Himself said,

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.“ 
Mathew 11:28-30 English Standard Version. Underlining mine.

This is Why Christianity is ultimately reasonable and rational.

• It explains where the universe came from, God created it.  This is a question that you must answer no matter what you believe about old Earth creationism, young Earth creationism, intelligent design, evolution, the big bang, panspermia, or any other theory out there.
• It accepts the existence of evil as evil. (as does Islam and some other religions)
• It reconciles men who do evil with God, (Islam does not) who is pure good and has nothing to do with evil. 
  
• This is accomplished through Jesus Christ.  This is the lifting of the burden.

Looking back, I’m glad that I made an article out of this instead of a comment.  I hope this is useful to Mr. Thysse and anyone else out there with similar questions.  I gladly accept comments and criticism especially from Mr. Thysse.  Please don’t hesitate to comment, anyone, this is a debate after all. 

I read the New York Times every day, and on the whole I find it to be a pretty good source of news.  Though the New York Times leans liberal as with most news agencies in the US, I do not buy into the right wing conspiracy theories that the New York Times exists as a propaganda wing of the DNC or anything like that.  However today there was an editorial that was so false and offensive, that I was compelled to respond.  The first thing that is offensive about it is that it was printed as an editorial, this means no one had to attach their name to it.  If you’re going to express your opinion, especially one so controversial, be vertebrate enough to attach your name to it. I have reprinted the article below in its entirety, it is of course copyright, the New York Times, 2008, and you can go to the original article by clicking on the title.  My responses are in italics.

June 7, 2008

Editorial

The Cons of Creationism

When it comes to science, creationists tend to struggle with reality. They believe, after all, that evolution by means of natural selection is false and that Earth is only a few thousand years old. They also believe that students who are taught a creationist view of biology — or who are taught to disregard the Darwinist view — are not being disadvantaged.

This first paragraph serves no purpose except to set up the enemies of the New York Times editorial board in a bad light by associating them with the name, creationist.  The New York Times has stooped the same level as drunk kids, who call the police, the Gestapo.  They are trying to generate negative sympathy by calling names.

The Texas State Board of Education is again considering a science curriculum that teaches the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, setting an example that several other states are likely to follow. This is code for teaching creationism.

Not only is this a lie, but it’s not a very good lie.  Any human who is not in a vegetative state, should be able to distinguish between teaching the strengths and weaknesses of one theory from teaching a totally different theory.  The New York Times has effectively said that, “teaching the advantages and disadvantages of freestyle swimming is the same thing as teaching the backstroke.” 

Any theory that is to be taught should be taught in its strengths and its weaknesses, to do otherwise would be to teach dogma, not science.  Education should be about teaching children how to think.  The New York Times seems to believe education is about teaching children to regurgitate facts given them by their betters.  In the pursuit of truth, all facts should be allowed to come to light.  If the New York Times is so confident in the theory of evolution than they certainly have nothing to fear from teaching its weaknesses.

It has the advantage of sounding more balanced than teaching “intelligent design,” which the courts have consistently banned from science classrooms. It has the disadvantage of being nonsense.

Because there cannot possibly be weakness in dogma.

The chairman of the Texas board, a dentist named Don McLeroy, advocates the “strengths and weaknesses” approach, as does a near majority of the board. The system accommodates what Dr. McLeroy calls two systems of science, creationist and “naturalist.”

The trouble is, a creationist system of science is not science at all. It is faith. All science is “naturalist” to the extent that it tries to understand the laws of nature and the character of the universe on their own terms, without reference to a divine creator. Every student who hopes to understand the scientific reality of life will sooner or later need to accept the elegant truth of evolution as it has itself evolved since it was first postulated by Darwin. If the creationist view prevails in Texas, students interested in learning how science really works and what scientists really understand about life will first have to overcome the handicap of their own education.

With this first statement, I completely agree.  The Genesis story is a story that must be taken on faith.  However, the New York Times is once again resorted to equating Darwinism’s weaknesses with creationism.  There is no reason whatsoever to reference any divine creator, when speaking of the weaknesses of a scientific theory. 

If evolution has evolved since the time of Darwin, then it must necessarily have had weaknesses.  If it had no weakness then it could not have evolved. 

Students will certainly be handicapped by not having the approved dogma drilled into their skulls.  After all, they are only deltas.  They are not capable of examining evidence without  the guidance of someone superior to themselves.  Instead, they will have a scientific theory that as the New York Times rightly points out is evolving, taught to them in its strengths and weaknesses.  Who knows what this could do to a Delta’s mind?  It is obviously in their own best interest of a shield them from this.

Scientists are always probing the strengths and weakness of their hypotheses. That is the very nature of the enterprise. But evolution is no longer a hypothesis. It is a theory rigorously supported by abundant evidence. The weaknesses that creationists hope to teach as a way of refuting evolution are themselves antiquated, long since filed away as solved. The religious faith underlying creationism has a place, in church and social studies courses. Science belongs in science classrooms.

Ahhh, I get it now.  Evolution is exempt from examination.

If the weaknesses are antiquated and long since solved, then teach that.  It is not too difficult to do, “this is a purported weakness, and this is how it has been purported to be solved.”

This last sentence is the most offensive of the entire article.  The condescension and patronization is blatant and disgusting.  They believe that people of faith are too stupid to see that this is mockery in the clothing of a concession.  The New York Times has spent several paragraphs, demonstrating that they believe creationism to be a fantasy.  Then they have the gall to elaborate on where it should be taught!  No I’m sorry, it is never appropriate to teach fantasies as realities.

The origins debate rarely rises above the level of a playground brawl on either side, and that is a shame.  However, the New York Times has brought it to a new low.  In the past people such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris have argued that religious faith was nothing more than fantasy, but they had the decency to state the obvious, that fantasy should not be taught anywhere.  They also had the decency to write their names on the front of their books.
                                                                                                                                     J. W. Kraft

I recently got Dragon NaturallySpeaking transcription software. I’ve been using it for the last couple days, and I am blown away! I’m using it to write this post right now, I also used it to write the last couple posts on JWKraft.com, and I’ve been using it to write my upcoming book on Wisdom, Solomon, and Ecclesiastes. Dragon can spell Ecclesiastes, is that cool or what! I can’t even spell Ecclesiastes. Anyway, the new book is still in the draft stage. It is not a commentary or scholarly work on Ecclesiastes, but rather a book on the wisdom found in Ecclesiastes for a lay audience. I haven’t come up with a name for the book yet, I was thinking about Fist Full of Smoke. It sounds very postmodern. Let me know if you’ve any good (i.e., better) ideas for the name of the book.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking comes in several editions including the standard or preferred edition, the professional edition, the medical addition, and the legal edition. I believe, they start around two hundred bucks. Buy it here, and I get paid. Or at least I think I get paid, if not then they are getting free advertisement. Anyway, I know this is an unusual post, but I just wanted to let y’all know about my upcoming book, and Dragon, I really highly recommend it.

I recently heard an episode of “Culture Shock” on the BBC in which they were interviewing a Professor Gerd Gigerenzer (I’m not making that up) about his ideas on so called, intuition. His latest book Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious is on that very subject and the man is considered something of a leader in the field. What he claims to have verified through various studies is that decisions made through first reaction responses or gut reactions are often more accurate than those made through careful deliberations. This is something of a new idea though a trendy one, in 2005 another popular book, Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, was published. It had a very similar premise.

I am constantly amazed at how often people cherry pick the facts to suit their own arguments.  I expect this from advertisements and unfortunately I have grown accustomed to spin in the news, but I am seeing it more and more from people who I would expect better from.  Many of these people are even arguing for positions I agree with, but do it through bad reasoning.  When you argue from poor reasoning you open yourself up to criticism and discredit the position you were arguing in favor of.  You better serve your position by keeping quiet than by deceptive and poor arguing tactics. 

The blogs are the worst about this.  The more I get into blogging, the more blogs I read and it seems that these otherwise intelligent and ethical people believe that they can misconstrue, misrepresent, misquote, and omit anything that is not supportive of their point.  The most common things to cherry pick from seem to be the Bible, the Constitution, the Quran, and now Me!  Oh well, I suppose that comes with the territory.  I honestly cannot understand how someone gets satisfaction from winning an argument or making a profound point when it is based on faulty reasoning.  It is beyond me.  I am behooved.   One of the most common places to find this fake arguing is under the philosophy tag.  I would like to point out that philosopher means lover of wisdom.  You cannot love wisdom if you do not first love truth. 

Another dishonest tactic that is getting more popular, is to make a statement and then cite some fact as support when the fact in reality has little or nothing to do with the statement made.  I am forced to conclude that many people are so blinded by their convictions that they cannot even defend them properly, so blinded that they can no longer see any logic in contrary positions and thus they, cannot make a logical argument against them.  When people get to this point, facts of little relevance become sound and insurmountable arguments to bolster their own position. 

If you truly believed in whatever position you were arguing for then you should be more than happy to bring all the facts to light as they should reveal the truth in your position.  When you feel that you must filter information then you must have very little faith  in your position.  If that is the case then the best that can be said of you is that you don’t know what you believe and the worst is that you are pushing a position which you believe to be false. 

The purpose of engaging in an argument should be to discover the truth, not to bolster your own ego and not to “win” at all costs.  This is especially true when the argument is one sided, as in a blog post (unless you get comments).

“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on what they find attractive.” -Pascal

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions” 2 Timothy 4:3 ESV

Intelligent Design and its proponents have been accused of making a war on science.  However, most of the leading figures in the I.D. movement are themselves scientists.  It is not a matter of method; the methods of I.D. scientists are scientific.  They are more or less identical to those used in archeology and forensics.  The reason I.D. is denounced by the scientific community is the conclusion drawn.  According to Dr. William Dembski, I.D. is, “the study of patterns in nature that are best described as signs of intelligence.”  It is these signs of intelligence that have the conventional scientific community up in arms.  They take offence not because the conclusions are not logical and not because the methods are not scientific* but rather because, the materialist ideology that pervades in the scientific community does not allow for the possibility of intelligence.  Some scientists are willing to entertain the idea of a designing intelligence but not scientifically.  That kind of thing is in their view, for the church to deal with and not the scientific community.  These scientist believe that science is the study of what is natural and thus anything invoking the supernatural is by definition not science.  The I.D. scientists are fighting for a broader definition of science, one that would allow for the possibility of the supernatural when that is the most logical conclusion.  Thus, they are not fighting against science but rather to reform it.  Just as protestants did not fight against the church but to reform it and that era is now know as the Protestant Reformation.  What is being attempted by the I.D. proponents is a scientific reformation not a war on science. 

So this all comes down to who’s definition of what is scientific you accept.  Those who hold to the narrower view of science do not say that the I.D. researchers do not have a rightto do their research but that it is not scientific.  So if everyone is willing to live and let live, what is the big deal?  Why get hung up on who is scientific and who is not?  The answer is two fold, schooling and money.  If the broader definition of science is accepted then the I.D. proponents would be officially doing “science” and could apply for and get government grants.  These grants would then not go to the scientists who are today fighting for the narrower definition. 

If I.D. is accepted as science it would also be taught in the science class along side with and as a competing theory to evolution.  Evolution is the sacred cow of materialist ideology.  Richard Dawkins said, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”  For the materialists, teaching anything that competes with evolution in a science class is like teaching the Quran in Sunday school.  It simply cannot be done. 

While I haven’t thought of a way to solve the first dilemma accept for the government to stop giving out research grants altogether (and stop taxing us for them!).  I believe I can solve the problem of the competing theories in the classroom and it seems only logical.  Aristotle. 

That’s it.  Aristotle solved this problem way way back when.  You see today what is known as the theory of evolution is said (by mainstream scientists) to be a scientific fact.  Michael Ruse famously said, “Evolution is fact, Fact, FACT!”  I suspect that some I.D. proponents would say (though they are not as loud) that intelligent design theory is a scientific fact.  Both of these “scientific facts” are called theories, even by their supporters.  This is because no one alive today witnessed the dawn of the universe (or of life), no one wrote down what happened (religious texts aside), and no photographs of the event survive.  So no matter the volume of evidence that is collected to support any particular theory, it will all be circumstantial and thus subject to interpretation and not of sufficient quality to be proof beyond any doubt. 

So what does Aristotle have to do with all of this?  Aristotle distinguished between general knowledge and scientific knowledge.  The scientists who hold to the narrower view of science and still believe in the supernatural are making a distinction between kinds of knowledge as well.  Another example of this distinction is demonstrated by the difference in the phrases, “beyond reasonable doubt” and “beyond the shadow of a doubt.”  Aristotle said that for any knowledge to qualify as scientific knowledge required demonstration.  What is meant by demonstration, is that not only do we know something, but we know that it must necessarily be, and cannot not be.  This is the criteria that I propose we use in determining what is a scientific fact.  The very fact that there is debate about I.D. and evolution excludes both of them.  So neither need be or should be in a science class. 

*I am obviously not saying that mainline scientists accept the claims of I.D.  They do however give de facto recognition to both the logic and the methods through their acceptance of archeology, forensics, and the like as legitimate scientific fields of study. 

This is an issue I’ve put quite a bit of thought into and the more I think about it, the more I think it is a good idea.  Oil exporting countries have formed a cartel that can set the price of oil with essentially no opposition, it only makes sense to form a cartel of oil importing countries that would be powerful enough to negotiate with OPEC and lower the price of oil.  It seems like a no-brainer.  There is so much to this that I should be writing a book instead of a blog post but this will have to do for now. 

If the major oil importers bound themselves together and were willing the bare the initial and inevitable embargo from OPEC, the rewards that they would reap would be enormous.  Today oil is at nearly $100 a barrel, in 1999 it was around $10 a barrel.  Don’t believe me?  Just imagine what it would do for our economy if oil suddenly dropped to, say $20 a barrel.  That is not an unreasonable figure provided someone like OPIC was negotiating the price for us. 

Here is one example of how something like OPIC could work.  Representatives from the U.S., China, Canada, the E.U., Japan, Australia, and other Oil importing countries meet in Geneva and decide that they will pay $40 a barrel for oil.  The various countries refuse to buy any oil for any more than that.  At this point OPEC is almost certain to react by refusing to sell any oil at all.  Then the game of chicken begins.  It would all depend on who blinks first.  If OPIC could stomach gasoline rations and high prices long enough then OPEC would give in.  If OPEC would not agree to OPIC’s price then at least they might open up to negotiations on the price.  Another possibility is that the OPEC cartel would break.  Saudi Arabia, replete with cash, might be willing to hold out longer than some of the other OPEC members but, as soon as one OPEC country broke and started to sell two things would happen, the price of oil would start to drop thereby giving relief to the OPIC countries and the other OPEC members would begin to follow suit.  The former OPEC countries would have to compete to sell oil on the open market.  OPIC might even be able to shutter the windows.  One thing that makes me think a strategy like this could work is that OPEC does not control all the world’s oil.  This means that during the stand off the OPIC nations would not run completely out of oil. 

One objection that might arise to the idea of OPIC is that it isn’t very capitalistic.  This however, is not the case.  What is more capitalistic than leveraging all the power you have to negotiate a better price for a product?  OPIC would be a great expression of capitalism.  Labor unions and monopolies are both capitalistic in the same way.  The problem with them both is that they could potentially hurt the economy as a whole.  However OPIC would be working to help the economy. 

It is at least food for thought.  We can’t go on like this, especially with so much of the Islamic terrorism being funded by petro-dollars.  If the price of oil does in the next 9 years what it did in the previous 9 years then in 2017 we will be paying close to $1,000 a barrel.  That would be $30 or $40 a gallon at the pump!  Organisation of Petroleum Importing Countries, it has a nice ring to it doesn’t it? 

Often times people use the statement “there is no controversy” when engaged in a debate. It has enjoyed wide usage recently in the Evolution and Intelligent Design debates.