Earth Day and Origins: Why Celebrate Accidents?

Well, it's time for Earth Day, when New Age and pagan Earth worship takes center stage, and many theists go along for the ride. I'm all for conserving God's creation, but I recognize that the creation is wearing out, even with the best conservation efforts. Only a resurrection will redeem it.

I prefer to worship the Creator, and admire the creation.

Speaking of that, from letters to the editor printed in the Los Angeles Times around Earth Day 2008, inspired by a commentary by Richard Dawkins:

Ken Savage or Palm Desert chimed in:

Everyone has faith in something that is beyond science to prove.

That is true. Even a statement such as "Science discovers all truth" is a philosophical statement outside of science itself, and thus can't be true.

Dawkins has a similar problem to those who cannot explain where a complex God came from. Where did the Big Bang come from, and what existed before?

As I understand it, one of the explanations is "nothing". If the entire universe could come from nothing without a cause outside itself, how can we trust any lab results? How do we know matter/energy is not emerging in the middle of such experiments, thus skewing the results? Another answer I've been told is "We don't know, but we know it wasn't God!"  Uh, okay.

Nature Doesn't Care if Your CEO Bends Over

There are two distinct sexes, men and women, who are different from each other. That someone of one sex does some things associated in our culture with the other sex doesn't change that fact that there are two distinct sexes. Nor the does the occasional genetic anomaly or the occasional newborn appearing to be "intersex." An adult human female is a woman. An adult human male is a man. 

The pairing of a man and woman is objectively different than the pairing of two women or two men, or not being paired. This naturally follows from the first premise. The pairing of a man and a woman is how all of us got here; even people conceived in a lab from donated gametes wouldn't exist if there hadn't been a long line before that moment consisting of repeated instances of a man and a woman getting together.

These things are true regardless of what:

• any law says
• any court says
• any politician says
• any public policy says
• any media depicts
• any theatrical or comedic presentation or performance depicts
• any celebrity says
• any academic program teaches
• any church teaches
• any activist group claims
• any workplace training or policy
• any corporate policy or signaling 
• anyone feels about it, especially anyone on Twitter or any other social media

If you hound a corporate CEO into denying any of this, bending over for you, repeating your scriptures or doctrines, and donating to your slush funds, you haven't changed the facts. You have cajoled someone into acting against reality. Acting against these basic realities doesn't change them. Rather, it results in dysfunction. But if you're empowered/financially enriched for now, you might not care. But decent people do care.

Earth Day and Origins: Why Celebrate Accidents?

Well, it's time for Earth Day, when New Age and pagan Earth worship takes center stage, and many theists go along for the ride. I'm all for conserving God's creation, but I recognize that the creation is wearing out, even with the best conservation efforts. Only a resurrection will redeem it. [This is bumped up from past years.]

I prefer to worship the Creator, and admire the creation.

Speaking of that, from letters to the editor printed in the Los Angeles Times around Earth Day 2008, inspired by a commentary by Richard Dawkins:

Ken Savage or Palm Desert chimed in:

Everyone has faith in something that is beyond science to prove.

That is true. Even a statement such as "Science discovers all truth" is a philosophical statement outside of science itself, and thus can't be true.

Dawkins has a similar problem to those who cannot explain where a complex God came from. Where did the Big Bang come from, and what existed before?

As I understand it, one of the explanations is "nothing". If the entire universe could come from nothing without a cause outside itself, how can we trust any lab results? How do we know matter/energy is not emerging in the middle of such experiments, thus skewing the results? Another answer I've been told is "We don't know, but we know it wasn't God!"  Uh, okay.

Love and Hate

In response to my posting on negative perceptions of evangelical Christians, this comment was left by Anonymous:

I don't think anyone can deny that while evangelicals preach love, they are more prone to hate. Especially anything that falls outside of their beliefs, which given how backward many of them are, is a ton! I respect all religions and know that there are good evangelicals out there, I just haven't met any. Having lived in Georgia, I have been told that eating ethic food such as Lebanese or Indian is against the will of God, that yoga is spiritually dangerous, that Harry Potter fosters witchcraft. For among these reasons, while I respect all religions, I can't respect a religion that hates so much and denies science and hates anything it considers outside. Their message on Homosexuals is completey against their message of love, and their repression of women through their beliefs on contraception is rediculous and backwards. Their hating has turned me into a hater 

Clearly this person has bad feelings about experiences with evangelicals. I have no doubt that Christians have some amount of blame in that. We are called to give a reason for the hope that we have with gentleness and respect, and we don't always do things that way.

I want to take a closer look at the comment.

Evangelical Christians are Ignorant, Uneducated, and Illogical

Conservative or evangelical Christians are anti-science, stupid, hateful hypocrites. The evangelical community consists of liars and the deluded, mindless followers of the liars who deny science.

That's the message I see day in and day out in everything from Facebook updates from people who are listed as my friends to tweets and television broadcasts from celebrities such as Bill Maher, and so many others.

Consider this recent tweet from actor Michael McKean (@MJMcKean) to film critic Roger Ebert:

RT @ebertchicago Evangelical professors in trouble for doubting Adam and Eve//"evangelical think tank"=priceless!

The idea of an evangelical think tank is funny? I think it is safe to say McKean hasn't bothered to attend a conference of the Evangelical Theological Society or the Evangelical Philosophical Society, or check out Glenn M. Miller's Christian Think Tank.

Now, I might have the same opinions and so rudely state them, complete with sarcasm and derision and mocking of others, if I based my opinions on what I was told by sources with a demonstrable anti-evangelical bias such as the New York Times, Newsweek, Time, on CNN, MSNBC, Leftist books, radio and websites, depictions in primtetime television, and if my main exposure to "evangelicals" consisted of the likes of some of the more showy personalities on TBN.

But to judge evangelicals by watching a few minutes of TBN is like judging all athletes based on watching a few minutes of WWE.

There are serious evangelical thinkers whose work isn't difficult to find.

How many of these people, who do not hesitate to insult and dismiss a significant minority population of the nation*, have ever sat through a single service in an evangelical church? Anyone can listen to services online, though doing so does not allow one to mingle with the people attending the services, so one can still listen to the services while still assuming that everyone in attendance is a freak. How about listening to something from Chuck Swindoll or John MacArthur? How about reading just one issue of First Things, Touchstone, or the Christian Research Journal (go ahead and highlight the factually incorrect statements, the logical fallacies, and the unsubstantiated claims and tweet them)? How many of these people have ever bothered to read or listen to anything by any of the following when addressing what they believe and why, and what it means for how they live:

William Lane Craig
J.P. Moreland
Gary Habermas
Chuck Colson
Francis Beckwith
Greg Koukl
R.C. Sproul
Hugh Hewitt
Nancy Pearcey
Joni Eareckson Tada
Francis Schaffer
Josh McDowell
Frank Turek
Dinesh D'Souza
William Dembski
Hugh Ross
Peter Kreeft
Paul Copan
Max Lucado
N.T. Wright

All of these writers have their critics, of course, but will any of these famous people who so casually shout their disdain for the intellectual capacity of evangelicals please name which one of those listed is or was uneducated, illogical, or stupid? Which of them are hypocrites, hateful, or reject the scientific method as a way of gaining knowledge? Don't merely make assertions based on what someone else tells you; go to the source.

"Evangelical" is certainly not antintellectual, antireason, or antiscience. What makes someone an evangelical Christian? Generally, our beliefs can be boiled down to what is found in these three creeds, and we believe the Bible to be the authority in how to have a relationship with Jesus Christ and be His disciples, we believe in serving others, and we believe in making disciples through proclaiming and defending the Gospel. We don't leave our faith in the pews six and a half days out of the week or only mention it during certain holidays, at our weddings, or at funerals - rather, we try to live by our faith in every aspect of our lives. How does any of that imply we don't think?

I'm an evangelical because of thinking, not because a lack of thinking. The Bible, and the leaders from whom I've learned, have encouraged people to use their minds – to be reasonable and use sound judgment, to discern truth from error; I'm to love God with all of my mind. Christianity is the only major religion that depends on events that either happened in history or they didn't; we are called to believe because those things happened, not to just believe blindly, or because of a feeling.

I have taken comparative religion courses. I graduated from a secular university after attending schools teaching anything but evangelical teachings for my entire formal education. It's not that evangelicals have ignored or irrationally dismissed what our critics have said. I'm barraged with assertions and claims that run counter to my beliefs many times every day, whether in the media or via social networking or anywhere out in public. Every Easter and Christmas season, we can expect another round of television broadcasts and features in periodicals that claim to debunk some core Christian belief or popular Biblical account.

Dear critics and mockers, we hear you and read you constantly. You're unavoidable. We've studied other faith traditions and claims. We have read the arguments of atheists. We've heard your claims of alleged fatal contradictions in the Bible, forgery and plagiarism, your assertion that miracles could never have happened, your claims that the God of the Bible is cruel, evil, or otherwise lacking. We've heard it all, and we'll keep hearing it.

We have thought things through, and we have arrived at a reasonable faith.

I don't automatically think that all Wiccans, Muslisms, observant Jews, people who identify as Christians but not evangelical, secular humanists, atheists, agnostics, New Agers, Buddhists, Hindus, or others are stupid or ignorant, or that they don't think. Why are there so many people like McKean that dismiss evangelicals as thoughtless?

Go ahead, Mr. McKean - why don't you try calling up Greg Koukl while he is doing his radio show, and expose him for the thoughtless man he must be. I'd love to hear that. Better yet, ask to join him in studio. I challenge you, and anyone else who thinks that evangelicals are not serious, careful thinkers, to do some reading and listening, attend some classes at a school like Biola, or otherwise see what serious evangelicals have to say. You might be a little more respectful, and enjoy some diversity while you're at it.

= = =
*About 40% of Americans have identified as born-again or evangelical Christians. (Anyone who follows the true Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is born-again and a Christian, so the terms are redundant.) And yet how often have we heard that these Christians are just like the Islamofascist terrorists? The mocking of such Christians and their beliefs demonstrates the comparison to be ridiculous and slanderous, as I have yet to see Christians rioting, doing suicide bombings, and doing decapitations on webcams in response to the mocking.

Time For Education to Evolve

Maybe you've heard of a recent poll about how a significant percentage of the American population "rejects evolution". I'm wary of polls, especially in the matter of origins, because the same words mean different things to different people. Anyway, it reminded of this piece I wrote many years back:

= = = = =

Every once in a while, the elites in the scientific circles give a "reminder" to the elites in the academic circles, and the drive-by media barely touches on the story. The portrayal of the story comes across as simply something along the lines of "Don't teach religion in science classes" and that "Evolution is true, and anything that sounds a little different is bogus."

This is happening again right now.

The problem is that the news media stories are too short to fully describe the situation and to define terms. This latest round referred to a report that seemingly stressed how we need to educate students in a way that will allow them to effectively fight mutating diseases, and that's why we have to present a unified philosophical naturalism in science curriculum in order to do that.

When the term "evolution" is used, it needs to be defined.  Are we talking microevolution?  Are we talking macroevolution?  Are we talking philosophical naturalism, which is a philosophy?  We we taking about homo sapiens emerging from  less advanced hominids?  Are we talking about living organisms arising from nonliving materials?

When using the term "creationism", do they mean young-earth Biblical creationism?  Do they mean the idea that something outside the universe could have been responsible for some things within the universe - Biblical God or not?  Defining "intelligent design" as synonymous with Biblical creationism does a disservice to students. While Biblical creation could be considered a form of intelligent design, not all intelligent design constructs fall within a straightforward interpretation of Biblical descriptions of origins.

The term "intelligent design" should not be banned from serious consideration in public schools.  We engage in intelligent design all of the time these days, such as with genetic engineering. Nor should the reality of "irreducible complexity" be ignored. While presenting macroevolution as true, the schools should at least boldly own the fact that "since" it is true, irreducibly complex organisms and systems must have therefore evolved via punctuated equilibrium, and that this phenomenon happened many, many times. All the interconnected parts must have emerged fully developed (or at least developed enough to provide a beneficial function) in an instant. So what if that would make philosophical naturalism seemed far-fetched? These are science classes, not philosophy classes, and we need to be true to the empirical evidence, right? Finally, both the major disputes between various evolutionary hypotheses and the serious unanswered questions about some or all of these constructs should also be presented.  After all, aren't we trying to inspire the students to move science forward?

I recall biology and life science curriculum up through high school to be mostly about the present-day functions of organisms and organs, life cycles, reproduction, and so forth. I hardly recall any teachings about mutating diseases. That belongs in higher education, it would seem. However, the reality of mutating diseases is in no way contradictory to supernaturalism, creationism, intelligent design, or irreducible complexity. In fact, mutating diseases fall right in line with many of their constructs. So, in theory, it would be entirely possible for a student to graduate from higher studies a creationist and still be effective at fighting mutating diseases.

So really, the latest hubbub seems to be pointless to me. And since I believe in separation of state and school, we really shouldn't need to spend so much time debating what should be taught in the schools.  Send your own children to the schools you think best. Keep your hands off of my children.

Newspaper Editors Don't Trust Science

(Note: LATimes.com only allows visitors to access a certain number of articles per month for free.) The Leftist goal of portraying conservatives and Christians as ignorant, uneducated, and illogical (despite Leftism being based on emotion rather than logic) is evident in today's Los Angeles Times, in an article by John Hoeffel headlined "Conservatives' Trust in Science Has Declined Sharply".

I'm a conservative and I trust science. Most conservatives do. We must define what we mean by "science", however. People like me believe the scientific method is helpful in discerning things about the physical universe. What people like me do not trust without verification, and for good reason, is how findings by scientists are reported, especially in the Left-leaning media. Also, when a scientist makes statements that relate to metaphysics, the supernatural, or philosophy (such as expressing a worldview of philosophical naturalism), we rightly question the statement rather than trust it.

Here's how the article opens:

As the Republican presidential race has shown, the conservatives who dominate the primaries are deeply skeptical of science — making Newt Gingrich, for one, regret he ever settled onto a couch with Nancy Pelosi to chat about global warming.

Really? If we don't believe there is man-made global warming that we are able to (and better off if we do) fight through drastic restrictions on human freedom and centralization of power in government… we're "skeptical of science"? It shouldn't be news that conservatives are skeptical of political Leftism.

A study released Thursday in the American Sociological Review concludes that trust in science among conservatives and frequent churchgoers has declined precipitously since 1974, when a national survey first asked people how much confidence they had in the scientific community. At that time, conservatives had the highest level of trust in scientists.

The "scientific community" even if it were to be unified, does not equal science. This smacks of identity politics, like when the MSM reports that someone who doesn't think a brideless pairing forms a marriage is "anti-gay".

Confidence in scientists has declined the most among the most educated conservatives, the peer-reviewed research paper found, concluding: "These results are quite profound because they imply that conservative discontent with science was not attributable to the uneducated but to rising distrust among educated conservatives."

So why wasn’t the headline "The More Educated the Conservative, the Less Trust of Scientists"? That would have been more accurate. But notice how terms scientists, the "scientific community" and science are all being used interchangeably in this article. It's like saying that someone does not approve of President Obama’s job performance, or believe what he says doesn't trust the Constitution.

To highlight the dramatic impact conservative views of science have had on public opinion, [report author Gordon] Gauchat pointed to results from Gallup, which found in 2012 that just 30% of conservatives believed the Earth was warming as a result of greenhouse gases versus 50% two years earlier. In contrast, the poll showed almost no change in the opinion of liberals, with 74% believing in global warming in 2010 versus 72% in 2008.

You see, "belief" in "global warming" = science.

Chris Mooney, who wrote "The Republican War on Science," which Gauchat cites, agreed. "If you think of the reasons behind this as nature versus nurture, all this would be nurture, that it was the product of the conservative movement," he said. "I think being educated is a proxy for people paying attention to politics, and when they do, they tune in to Fox News and blogs."

In other words, conservatives don't just believe whatever the New York Times, TIME, and MSNBC say.

The study also found that Americans with moderate political views have long been the most distrustful of scientists, but that conservatives now are likely to outstrip them.

Moderates are typically less educated than either liberals or conservatives, Gauchat said. "These folks are just generally alienated from science," he said, describing them as the "least engaged and least knowledgeable about basic scientific facts."

And yet, we didn't have a headline that said "Moderates Less Educated".

Gauchat, who has been studying public attitudes toward science for about eight years, has applied for a National Science Foundation grant to investigate why trust in science has waned.

Maybe it is because of the influence of grants?

He plans to ask a battery of questions, including some focused on scientific controversies, such as those over vaccines and genetically modified foods, to try to understand what makes conservatives and moderates so distrustful.

Yes, you see, it isn't Leftists who are making any of that noise about vaccines and genetically modified foods. Oh no… it is those churchgoin’ conservatives and those uneducated moderates. Yessiree.

"cognoscenti" at 5:55 AM March 29, 2012 commented:

It's funny (ironic?) in Google News today, this LAT story is highlighted and directly beneath it is a Reuters story of how a lead cancer researcher found 47 of 53 popular scientific research 'findings' couldn't be replicated. No wonder people have lower faith in science with stories like this, Climategate, hockey stick graphs, etc etc. When scientists make up results to either gain grants, patents or notoriety for their cause the truth eventually comes out.

The same peson later added:

The one thing that bothers me about the IPCC reports over the last 10 years regarding AGW is the slow redaction of pieces of it, bit by bit. Like the claim that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 which turns out to be completely false. Or wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods. These loose 'facts' were all a result of the lack of peer-reviews and an eagerness to push an agenda.

"moristheflorist" at 6:53 AM March 29, 2012:

A lot of this distrust might be due to the sorry state of science journalism

(see graphic: http://larvatusprodeo.net/files/2011/05/phdcomics-science-news-cycle.gif)

"basswork" at 9:02 AM March 29, 2012 gets it right:

Such comedy. The headline would suggest that conservatives mistrust science in general. But no, it's anthropenic global warming that is at issue. And by people who have studied the issue more carefully than most, including presumably those who write about it in the media.

In fact, believers in AGW behave much like religionists, smiting all heretics who dare question the popular doomsaying dogma.

Why not write about liberals who believe in feng shui, not inoculating their children and that government provided services are free?

For a reasoned argument against AGW read here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304636404577291352882984274.html

"nikkkko" at 10:10 AM March 29, 2012 wrote:

It’s not just science, that conservatives have a problem with. They have a problem with any fact or rational idea that conflicts with their views.

Pot, meet kettle. (A bunch of Leftists just remembered they were meaning to light up.)

The majority in this party do not believe in evolution, and many of those believe the earth is 4000 years old.

Conservatives are not the GOP, but I think it is safe to say that the majority of Republicans and conservatives do believe in "change over time" if that is what is meant by "evolution". But if you mean by "evolution" that everything that exists - including all of the woundrous biological diversity and irreducibly complex natural systems, sunsets and surfing, our sense of right and wrong, the mind of Einstein, the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and great sex – are the result of nothing more than the mindless interactions of molecules that emerged from nothing without the aid of God, then no, most people don't believe that.

And Young Earthers think it is at least 6,000 years, often 10,000 years or more.

APA Needs Head Examined

The American Psychological Association, or at least a group within it, has come out in support of neutering marriage. The excuse they give for their political move is essentially their support for a placebo effect. You can find out how I feel about that and how my childhood is to blame over at The Opine Editorials.