Mark Byron

Lost Causes Best Not Searched For

We had a social-media fed perfect storm of incivility in Charlottesville this weekend. Start with a high-minded removal of Lee and Stonewall Jackson statues and giving their namesake parks PC names. Add white-nationalist outrage of the move in a town easy road-trip distance for the DC-based press to cover. To that, add locals who want to counterprotest the alt-right invasion and good liberals from elsewhere wanting to do likewise.

To polish off the witch's brew, add a touch of skinhead-style attitude on the part of the more militant of the crimson-necked crowd and a few of their excitable anti-fascist counterparts. Throw in a redneck mimicking the jihadi tactic of pedestrian-smashing as a low art and serve warm.

Good TV. Lousy cultural moment.

The city isn't to blame, other than possibly going overboard and trying to cancel the rally (that gives a heckler's veto that is far too common on campuses these days). Removing the statues, put there to celebrate white supremacy and to mourn the Lost Cause, is a good thing to do on balance.

Lee and Jackson seem to have been honorable guys with bad taste in sides, supporting their state and looking the other way at the "peculiar institution" of slavery in the process. Arlington National Cemetery was built on Lee's estate as payback for his efforts in the war, and Jackson was a prof at VMI before leading a lot of his former students into battle. White the two generals were not-bad guys in a bad cause (Lee and Rommel are in similar boats as great tactical generals on the wrong side of history), the anti-black folks in the Jim Crow era that put a lot of such statues up were far less honorable.

White a lot of folks look at Confederate kitsch (Dukes of Hazard is the classic example) as rebelling against overbearing authority than backing up slavery (the Don't Tread on Me Gadsden Flag is methadone for some stars-and-bars fliers, although I've seen two Old Glory-Confederate-Gadsden trifectas around mid-Michigan as of late), that's not the message that will be sent to those whose ancestors were being enslaved by the bearers of that flag.

I recall a conversation I had with a coworker at Invervarsity Christian Fellowship's Cedar Campus conference center a quarter-century ago. He had a Confederate flag in his cabin not from a love of white-nationalism or the KKK but of that rebel kitsch that appeals to mildly rebellious youth of all ages.

The college-aged young man needed a quick education of the broader meaning of that flag and the unsavory message it will send to black folks and white foes of discrimination. Is an anti-racism unsaved person going to see the young believer's faith as worth-emulating with that flag in the mix? He took it down.

I have little love for the modern alt-right, who mix a toxic ethnocentrism with a bird-flipping attitude. I have a bit less disdain for other "white nationalists" who skip the 'tude but keep the Superfund-site worldview. The PC does get a bit thick at times and the left throws a lot of useful culture out with some unsavory aspects of our nation's past, but this isn't the answer.

In Christ there is no Greek or Jew, slave or free, sayeth Paul. He didn't mention Black or Hispanic, but he would have if they were in the first-century mix, and not to say "but those spear-chuckers and wetbacks, go ahead and dis them to your heart's content." At least that's not in any of the translations I've seen of Colossians 3:11.

Those pro-statue protesters have a right to speak. We've had ideological cousins of theirs for all my life, and the best way to handle them seems to be to let them say their piece without massive counter-protests that give them bigger platforms then they deserve. Had the antifas let this one go on without massive counter-protests, we'd have had no wall-to-wall coverage yesterday. That's blaming the victim in the case of the pedestrian fatality, but the nationalists got a truckload of coverage they wouldn't have had otherwise.

As is, we have the story-line of militant rightists clashing with militant leftists, with the anti-liberal Fox News crowd giving sympathy to the rednecks, at least until the pedestrian demolition derby. That makes more savory conservatives like my mom lean towards reflexively support the rednecks when they don't really deserve the support

Eileen said that if this starts devolving into Civil War 2.0 (buggy as all get out, but 2.1 won't be much better) between the white nationalists and the antifas, she's a conscientious objector. So am I.

Turkey's Usual Suspect

An interesting subplot in Turkey that I'm starting to catch up on is the story of Fethullah Gulen, a Pennsylvania-based Turkish Islamic scholar. He's on President Erdogan's manure list and is being blamed for last night's coup attempt.

Here's a worrying bit of rhetoric from the government today on that front-

Fetullah Gulen, who Turkey blames for the failed coup, lives in the US. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said any country that will "stand by" Mr Gulen "won't be a friend of Turkey and will be considered at war with Turkey".

What's now being reported is that Turkey is shutting off access to Incirlik [Air Force Base] - and so stopping the US jets conducting sorties against IS.

Gulen's problem seems to stem from being popular and independent of the government.

Gülen teaches a Hanafi version of Islam, deriving from Sunni Muslim scholar Said Nursî's teachings. Gülen has stated that he believes in science, interfaith dialogue among the People of the Book, and multi-party democracy.^[12] He has initiated such dialogue with the Vatican^[13] and some Jewish organizations

He's also not a believer in using violence to advance Islam, preferring a peaceful jihad against the sins of the world. 

Nursi seems to be an interesting critter who died in 1960. He was Kurdish with backgrounds in both mainstream Sunni and the more mystical Sufi tradition-

He proposed educational reforms to the Ottoman Sultan AbdulHamid aiming to put the traditional Madrasah (seminary) training, Sufism (tasawwuf) and the modern sciences in dialogue with each other

The science-and-faith dialog has echoes of Modern Orthodox Jewish thought (or post-WWI evangelical moves away from fundamentalist anti-intellectualism), while the Sufi-Madrasa interface brings echoes of John Wimber's "radical middle" Baptist-Pentecostal fusion. It sounds like someone who the west "could do business with" as Thatcher said of Gorby.

It also looks like someone who can ruffle feathers. Having a Kurd as a primary influence isn't going to sit well with Turkish centralizers, being devoutly Muslim will ruffle secularists and being independent-minded will both rub against the my-way-or-the-highway tendency of Erdogan. In addition, a popular movement outside of an autocrat's control will make the autocrat nervous, even if the movement isn't much of a direct threat to the regime; witness the Chinese crackdown on independent Christian "house" churches and the Falung Gong movement of hyper-spiritualized Tai Chi.

The last three years have seen Gulenists ousted from government positions, as Erdogan is seemingly worried over a popular Islamic firth column ("parallel state" being the government's phrasing) being a rival for the affections of the more-religious half of the Turkish population. To that end, the Gulenist main paper was shut down by the government in March. Gulen has been in exile since 1999.

If the Turkish government truly wants Gulen's head on a platter as a cost for friendship, then we're in for a very rough road ahead, for he seems to be one of the good guys, or at least nowhere near as big of a bogey-man as the heated rhetoric of the last few years would indicate; at least I've not seen anything now or in the recent past to justify the apparent paranoia.

 

Preferential Options Don't Trade on the CBOE

The biggest critique of Kasich's faith is when he uses it from a economically-liberal vantage point. Evangelical conservative David French took issue with this line of Kasich's-

I had a conversation with one of the members of the legislature the other day. I said, ‘I respect the fact that you believe in small government. I do, too. I also know that you’re a person of faith.

Now, when you die and get to the meeting with St. Peter, he’s probably not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small. But he is going to ask you what you did for the poor. You better have a good answer.

The big bone of contention for French was for Kasich getting Ohio to go along with accepting federal funding to expand Medicaid as part of "Obamacare" and to do so quoting scripture from a liberal perspective 

The ACA is a Rube Goldberg mess that started with a noble goal of getting health care coverage to the working-poor, but did multiple contortions to try to appear to be "revenue-neutral", messing up the private insurance system in the process.

However, we're stuck with it as long as that old man (a day older than I) has his keister in the Oval Office. What Kasich was largely faced with is the question "Should we accept federal help getting health care to the working poor?" Obamacare was going down with or without Ohio's consent on Medicaid expansion, leaving the Medicaid expansion part as the primary marginal decision for a state government.

The parallel question, shorn of the pork-barrel effect of free-money from Washington is "should the Federal government be paying for health care for the working poor in the first place?" Modern conservatives tend to want the Federal government to deliver the mail, protect our shores and stay the hell out of everything else (to borrow from WI governor Lee Dreyfus), so the reflex response on the right to the question is "Hell, no!"

However, I don't recall any Biblical commands to maximize GDP.

My core theology of economics (if I can grab a 2003 post) has two aspects; (1) we're supposed to help the poor and (2) we're selfish sinful critters save the Holy Spirit's intervention. Free markets are a good way to harness greed in a productive way in that sinful world, but a certain amount of government is beneficial in both pursuing the general public good and helping the needy. That begs for "limited government" but exactly how limited is an open question.

Should that include covering most of the health-care tab for folks making under $25K/year or so? You can make a case for that, especially if shorn from an Obamacare context. A Catholic-style preferential option towards the poor would be poised to answer in the affirmative. That's one that has a number of scriptures to back it up, although the scriptures on caring for the poor adress voluntary charity rather than the forced-charity of taxes.

However, we also need to take into account that the taxes and regulations needed to get it done damage to the economy and that the good generated needs to weighed against the damage done in the process of doing the good works. That type of marginal utility analysis is more art than science and has a lot of room for debate.

Modern conservative thought has a preferential option for low taxes and a free market. That makes Kasich's invoking that other preferential option (although not by name) sound somewhat sanctimonious to a modern conservative. It may well be sanctimonious and a bit of a Liberal Theocrat to borrow from French's title, but religious conservatives are used to having those terms tossed at them unfairly on a regular (probably daily for a public conservative) basis.

If you're doing your best to follow God's will and follow His word, you're going to get flak, sometimes friendly fire from fellow believers. I'm not sure if I would have made the same decision as Kasich, but I can see the logic behind it and respect it.

Is Anyone Managing the Cosmological Lottery?

Astronomy has had a busy decade or two, with one of the more interesting developments being discovering planets around other stars, exoplanets as the lingo goes. The bigger and closer a planet is to its star, the easier it is to see, so the early sample set of exoplanets has seen a lot of "hot Jupiter" gasballs up close to their stars, with smaller, Earth-like planets far enough away to not have water boil but not so far to have H₂O freeze up being few and far between so far.

However, even with that caveat that more Earth-like planets in stellar Goldilocks zones should be forthcoming as telescopes develop over time, there seems to be a shortage of Earth 2.0 candidates-

The scientists also have similar concerns about the galactic and cosmological inputs of their model but nonetheless they suspect that their final numbers are accurate to within an order of magnitude. With the estimated errors taken into account, the researchers conclude that Earth stands as a mild violation of the Copernican principle. Our pale blue dot might just be special after all. “It's not too much of a fluke that we could arise in a galaxy like the Milky Way, but nevertheless, it's just enough to make you think twice about it,” says Jay Olson from Boise State University, who was not involved in the study. Both he and [Uppsala U's Erik] Zackrisson think the Copernican principle could be saved by some unknown caveat to the findings. “Whenever you find something that sticks out…” Zackrisson says, “…that means that either we are the result of a very improbable lottery draw or we don’t understand how the lottery works.”

One of the features of modern science is that outside forces like deities are ruled out, so that cosmology and biology are left to evolve via purely natural random forces internal to the physical universe. Biological evolution by random DNA and RNA tweaks is something of a long shot and random cosmological evolution generating a livable Earth is proving to be somewhat problematic as well.

Is there a lottery at all? To mash-up Einstein, might God be playing with loaded dice in creating the Universe?

Zackrisson's musing of "how the lottery works" likely was intended to note the relative ignorance we have of comparative exoplanetology; we're just figuring out what's out there and are merely taking educated guesses of questionable value when speculating what typical and various atypical solar systems should look like. With a rather small sample set compared with the size of the Universe, we're just scratching the surface of exoplanetology, so any attempts at tweaking the parameters of the Drake Equation are using ballpark figures at best.

To the theist, Zackrisson's lottery begs the question of whether something or Someone is supervising the ping-pong balls of the galactic lottery.

Historically, folks have chalked up unknown processes to the supernatural, a "God of the gaps." As science improves, those gaps get smaller, as a lot of miracles and demonic influences of yore get explained by physical processes. However, there are still quite a few gaps left, like how did life start, how did the Big Bang start and how did the various counter-intuitive cosmological events like inflation happen, how did Earth get in a place and time for life to develop and is it a one-off, and how did macroevolution, going from one species to another with dozens of genetic changes that helped, occur.

Science is still working on those. Some might be explained by natural processes, but others might not. At some point, seeing the universe as an open system rather than a closed one (Sagan's "the cosmos is all there is") might be scientifically viable. At this point, scientists exile themselves from the tribe for saying so, but it might not stay that way if the gaps refuse to close and/or point to external sources.

Tearing Down the Tortilla Curtain

Pope Francis has a way of making headlines, even when he isn't trying to. He got in the news on his way back from Latin-American trip, calling out anti-immigrant wall-building without bridge-building as un-Christian and leaving the door slightly ajar on contraception in light of the Zika virus. 

On the first part, he was asked about The Donald's proposed Tortilla Curtain and he tried to sidestep the question and talk more in theory. After conceding that we're all political animals as Aristotle noted, he tacked the Wall-

And then, a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the gospel. As far as what you said about whether I would advise to vote or not to vote, I am not going to get involved in that. I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that. We must see if he said things in that way and in this I give the benefit of the doubt.

At minimum, such wall-builders are being selfish and uncharitable, seeing the immigrants as an unlawful menace rather that people looking for a better life. True, there is a subset of the illegal immigrants that are worrisome, but casting the whole lot as a evil horde shows a lack of compassion. I think that's what Francis was after here.

Compassion isn't Donald Trump's strong suit, making a buck and making himself look good is. Judging ones ultimate salvation is above any mortal's pay grade, but calling BS on ungodly behavior is proper if done in a loving manner.

With a nativist-friendly and Catholic-unfriendly South Carolina voting this weekend, Trump likely would love a fight with Francis, since Francis is broadly seen in a negative light with ethnically-evangelical blue-collar folks for whom Catholic-bashing is a popular parlor game.

Jesus was a Jewish liberal on a lot of the issues of His day, being more egalitarian than your average first-century Holy Land-denizen.  Peter's successor as the Bishop of Rome winds up reminding us of that, much to the discomfort of the more mercenary and ethnocentric among us.

Over and Under Reacting to ISIS

Common sense seems to be in short supply these days....but that's nothing new.

On the nativist side of things, we have The Donald putting out the unwelcome mat for Muslim, even talking about barring US-citizen Muslims from returning from overseas; that might make sense for jihadis but not as a general rule. That makes so much hash out of the First Amendment, it's scary. Southern Baptist policy guy Russell Moore make this salient point-

Make no mistake. A government that can shut down mosques simply because they are mosques can shut down Bible studies because they are Bible studies. A government that can close the borders to all Muslims simply on the basis of their religious belief can do the same thing for evangelical Christians. A government that issues ID badges for Muslims simply because they are Muslims can, in the fullness of time, demand the same for Christians because we are Christians.

Any precedent that gets applied to Muslims in a nativist administration can get turned onto any religious group a government doesn't like. That's why the First Amendment is in the spot that it's in.

That's not to say that there isn't a problem with militant variants of Islam. It's not representative of the whole, but it takes fewer hermeneutical twists to get to let's-get-ready-to rumble mode than other faiths. That's not polite to say in liberal company, but true nonetheless.

Liberals don't want Muslims harassed just for being of the wrong faith; AG Lynch seemed to be more concerned with shutting down any anti-Muslim backlash after San Bernadino than in the shooting itself.

Part of that is to demonize folks who may have a not-irrational fear of closet jihadis for political point, but there is also a legitimate humane response to stop bullying of minorities. As one who put up with a lot of teasing as a middle-schooler, I have quite a bit of empathy towards put-upon minorities, so that liberal impulse does resonate despite ISIS' PR gains as of late.

Hillary Clinton had an interesting reply to the issue,

Hillary Clinton explained on Sunday that she won't use the term "radical Islam" because it "sounds like we are declaring war against a religion."

"It doesn't do justice to the vast number of Muslims in our country and around the world who are peaceful people," Clinton said in an appearance on ABC's "This Week."

"Radical" isn't all that useful in and of itself, just designating something far from the norm. Emergent leader Shane Claybourn, who'd likely be in Hillary's corner rather than The Donald's had a book subtitled-"Living as an Ordinary Radical". That kind of radical missional attitude would likely get praise from the liberal camp, but the militant radicalism of ISIS-style Sunni Islam is what is at issue.

On one level, Clinton is right; it's not a great label. However, it's one that resonates with the average voter. Sufi Muslims with their mystic take on Islam would be somewhat radical, but they're peaceful by and large, but that theological fine point isn't on our political agenda.

"No. 2, it helps to create this clash of civilizations that is actually a recruiting tool for ISIS and other radical jihadists who use this as a way of saying, 'We are in a war against the West -- you must join us,'" she said.

She herself goes with  "radical jihadists", (moderate jihadists are short on ammo), which avoids appending Islam to the end, but hearkens to it by borrowing the Arabic for "struggle" to describe them. 

This is a clash of cultures. The back-to-basics impulse in Islam goes back to an era where it was expanding by force and fighting the infidels, where there was no separation of mosque and state, just one overarching theocracy. A more housebroken version of that Salafi theme works on rooting out sinful stimuli in folks' lives, but a more militant one wants to revert back to that holy autocratic past, rooting out such haram stimuli from both the private and public square.

The Arab world seems ill-prepared to take on Western-style liberal democracy, leaning either towards tribal monarchs, military strongmen or jihadist preachers, although the line between the last two is often very loose, as some Baathist elements are more than happy to hook up with ISIS. That's a harsh reality that neither liberals nor neocons want to face up to.

The clash is against a militant variant of Islam, of which ISIS is the flavor of the month. Certain variants of Islam, including Salafi and Wahhabi strains, lend themselves to a jihadist take, so mosques from those schools of thought will likely get more of an eagle-eye than less strident variants. There's a lot of geopolitics at play in that area, as Saudi Arabia actively promotes the Wahhabi take with its petrodollars; politely reining in Wahhabism will mean ticking off the Saudis a bit.

Islam is a tertiary issue. Back-to-basics Islam is a secondary issue, for it often is a gateway drug to jihadist views. Militant Islam is the primary issue. 

Nativists need to turn off the automatic setting on the machine gun and pick at the parts of Islam that are truly at issue. Violent segments of a faith are fair game for police action.

Liberals have to be willing to note the religious nature of the jihadis. While Islam doesn't have a corner on the market for religiously-inspired violence, it's got a huge market share, and one would ignore that at one's peril.

Before Abraham Was, Starlight Is

One of the oddities of general relativity is that the faster you go, the slower time moves. That's not much of an issue for most day-to-day things, but time slows to a crawl as you approach the speed of light. Things with mass can't get to c; they get heavier as they get faster, becoming massive as they get close to c and can't quite get that fast.

Photons have no mass. Thus, they don't have that issue and can hit the universal speed limit. This Ethan Siegel Starts With a Bang post elaborates on what that implies

When you move at the speed of light, this means the following:

• You absolutely cannot have a mass; if you did, you’d carry an infinite amount of energy at the speed of light. You must be massless.
• You will not experience any of your travels through space. All the distances along your direction of motion will be contracted down to a single point.
• And you will not experience the passage of time; your entire journey will appear to you to be instantaneous.

This has some interesting theological analogies. One of Jesus' nicknames is the Light; one of the least PC passages of the Bible, is "I am the Way, the Truth and the Light; no one comes to the Father but through me."

Light doesn't experience time. God introduced Himself to Moses as I Am (Yahweh in Hebrew, which gets morphed to Jehovah), and Jesus implied His divinity with the phrase "Before Abraham was, I Am."

A photon coming from 10,000 light years away could say that, it's older than written history (and chucks a young-earth timeline out the window, but bear with me) but has been in the now that whole time. Not to say that a photon is God, but the Light and mundane light is timeless.

Let me grab a passage that came just before the except above-

All our formulas to describe what it’s like for an observer gives us answers with infinities in them when it comes to asking what happens at the speed of light. But infinities don’t always mean physics is wrong; they often mean that physics does something unintuitive.

Theology is often equally unintuitive, as God works in a seemingly infinite scale from outside the cosmos. We also have paradoxical doctrine like the Trinity, where a single God has three persons but is still one or that Jesus was both human and divine in one package.

God's timelessness is one of those counter-intuitive concepts. However, science points to such a timelessness in the photon, the elemental unit of light, which is His nickname.

Smart Luck

I like keeping tabs on science news, even though I have to put the Creation Museum folks on hold as astronomers and paleontologists talk about million and billion-year time lines. However, God does get His two cents in through the back door when scientists realize how much of a long-shot the universe is, just right to have us be here.

The trick for the old-earth scientist is that they can't give God the credit, lest they get laughed out of the faculty lounge.

Thus, the ghost (as the Get Religion folks would call it when spiritual stuff gets ignored) in this closing paragraph of a Thanksgiving piece on those convenient truths that made human life possible all but howls.

In response to this dilemma some cosmologists turn to the so-called Anthropic principle, which posits that the apparent fine-tuning for life is a selection bias: If it weren’t this way, we wouldn’t be here to observe it. Others turn to the multiverse—the idea that our cosmos is just one of many in which an infinite number of alternative laws are possible. The fact we find ourselves in this one, improbable as it is, is merely a result of the fact that we could only have come into being in such a universe as this. Regardless of how we choose to explain the apparent fine-tuning of the cosmos, it is certainly a reason to be thankful.

To remix the Church Lady, "Could it be...God?"

You can't prove the existence of multiverses as of yet, so in their own way, the scientist buying into that school of cosmology has faith in things he can't see or prove via experiment. Other scientists have pointed out that theories that can't be proven veer off into metaphysics and struggle to fit into the conventional framework of testable science.

The multiverse concept allows for this universe to be a long shot, since if we're a one-in-a-gazillion long shot and their are multiple gazillion universes, we were bound to happen somewhere. Without the multiverse, they're left with stupefying dumb luck getting us here ...or some sort of smart luck.

However, that smart luck requires something smart to guide it. That's secular scientist's inconvenient truth to go with all those convenient ones, one that points to an intelligent designer if they want avoid chalking it up to an incredible long-shot.

President Data?

Here's a somewhat loopy but interesting article on a wish for future computer overlords rather than the venal meatware politicians we're currently stuck with. Here's a passage that struck me with some very religious overtones-

When I asked [futurist Zoltan] Istvan, currently touring America in his Immortality Bus, what American politics would look like in 100 years, he answered that “There won’t be an America in 100 years. I’m sure of that fact. That’s why I formed the World Transhumanist Party, whose mandate is to become the first democratically [elected] political party to run a world government.” When I asked him if he would want to be replaced by an AI politician, Istvan’s response was upbeat and matter-of-fact.

"Yes, absolutely," he said. "I would love to see a truly altruistic entity running our government. Right now, all politicians, including myself, are motivated by self-interest. This is just how humans are. So wouldn’t it be nice to have something like a super-intelligent AI running things and it be entirely after our best interest?"

What would a "truly altruistic entity" look like? Sounds like God to me. However, this TAE would have to be created and programmed by mere mortals. "A just machine to make decisions, programmed by fellas with compassion and vision" went the third verse of Donald Fagen's IGY.

Fagen's had his tongue firmly in his cheek with that song, lovingly looking at the 1950's cloyingly optimistic World of the Future with a quarter-century (at the time) of cynicism. On the other hand, our futurist seems to be serious.

Who are those fellas going to be? Vision for new gadgets and new apps isn't in too short supply in the tech industry, but compassion isn't always their strong suit. Any compassion that gets programmed into our TAE is going to reflect the world-view of the programmer. That will make it only as altruistic as the programmers are.

The TAE god we make will be made in our image. Any effort to model the "better angels of our nature" will be a flawed model, only as good as the programmer's wisdom and godliness.

A super-de-duper-computer might be faster and better at math than a human brain, but that doesn't mean it will be wiser. I've seen a number of pieces worrying about self-driving cars and how it will go about dealing with no-win Kobayashi Maru situations; if the car has to choose who to mow over, what algorithms will it use to pick the person to harm?

If we're wetting our pants over the idea of having a computer figure out how to drive a car, are we anywhere near having it drive a country? We trust the generic 16-year-old with a driver's license, but are somewhat pickier (one would hope) about who is in charge in Washington.

Futurists have a concept of a Singularity, where supercomputers get to design even better computers and getting quickly to a point where they get godlike computing power that leaves humans in the dust. They might have seemingly infinite computing power, but wisdom and mercy might well be in short supply. Will that man-made god be more like Yahweh or Cthulhu (running on a platform of "why settle for the lesser evil?")?

Progress might lead us to better computers, but that doesn't mean they'll be wiser ones. However, many folks put their faith in Progress to a point that it hits the writer of the piece as religious-

The conception of progress put forward by some of the more radical transhumanists doesn’t sound merely religious—it sounds specifically Christian: history progressing toward a rupture point where man is born anew, made immortal and limitless in a time after time. Instead of asking whether transhumanism is based on good science, it might be more useful to question the rigorousness of it as a theology.

That's not an orthodox take on Christianity, although there are some on the New Agey left that see mankind growing in knowledge to become God in time, where the Singularity becomes a Omega Point of the universe becoming infinitely wise and becoming God.

Not quite. You can't make something infinitely wise from finite pieces. It also ignores human nature, which would likely be passed down to the computer offspring. Garbage in, garbage out, and the garbage of human nature goes in to the supercomputer our heroes want to take charge.

However, a lot of folks see mankind as perfectible. That was the fallacy of Communist thought and seems to be the major blind spots in transhumanist thought. In the Star Trek universe, Khan was a transhuman ruler; even with that suave Spanish accent, he's not my choice for president.

Pluto and the Apostles' Creed

Those aren't topics that generally go together, but they came to mind as the coverage of the New Horizons' flyby of the "dwarf" planet shed some light on the most distant of the traditional nine planets.

Occasionally, you'll get passages like this one that would give young-earthers hissy-fits

Some planetary scientists have interpreted this lack of craters to mean that the surfaces are incredibly young, geologically speaking. Frosty plains that sprawl near Pluto’s mountain ranges could be just 100 million years old — a fraction of the dwarf planet’s multibillion-year lifetime, says Jeffrey Moore, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, who heads New Horizons’ geology team.

Just 100 million. That busts the 24/6 creation story wide open, since we're only dealing with less than 10,000 years in most classic Old Testament-extrapolated time-lines. Throw in the "multi-billion year lifetime" and you're seeing some serious cognitive dissonance in folks like me who both take the Bible at face value and have a strong interest in science.

Our church here in Midland has been walking through the Apostles' Creed since our old pastor moved on to take a teaching position in Kansas at the end of June, with the children's pastor and the music minister tag-teaming the sermon we saw last Sunday.

They were covering one of the latter sections in that one, on Judgment Day and the small-c catholic church, but it's worth going back to the beginning of the creed-

I believe in God the Father Almighty,

Maker of heaven and earth:

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord

Note that it doesn't obsess about the time-line here. God made it all, 'nuf said. A 20th or 21st century version might try an elaborate further in response to the longer time-lines posited by modern science, but the folks in the late 4th century (390AD is the ballpark date on it) didn't see the need to include such embellishment.

Nor do they say a word about the Bible and how to read it, including whether you can take the days of Genesis as eras or not, which would give some wiggle-room to mesh the Bible with modern science.

The Apostles' Creed says nothing about tax policy, same-sex marriage or whether the nuclear deal with Iran is a good idea.

I recall an interview a few months back with Rachel Held Evans, a noted liberal-leaning evangelical who's become Episcopalian as of late-"Every Sunday morning, I stand in my Episcopal church and join in a chorus of voices publicly affirming the Apostle’s Creed." Not that I'm going to defend Evans' stands on things like same-sex marriage and other heterodox issues, but that one can have some disagreement with orthodox thought and still "say the Apostles Creed without crossing their fingers behind their backs."

There's more than enough food for thought here to keep me writing for a while. I'm drawn to a more basic "mere Christianity" since I don't have a particular systematic theology set to call my own. However, you need to find some place to call your church home. CS Lewis himself noted that that such Apostles Creed basics are a hallway, not a room in itself, and that you have to get out of the hallway eventually and pick one more detailed set of theology.

Some of those theologies are going to be wrong. Chances are, every one of them will be wrong to one extent or another. However, there are some core issues that we dare not get wrong, which is what the early Church was trying to codify.

Non-fuctioning Gaydar

I don't have a big history of dealing with same-sex attracted people. I can only think of two cases where I interacted with someone that I knew was gay.

One was back when I briefly lived in San Antonio, sharing an apartment with a (heterosexual) high school friend of mine. Dave had a friend who was (1) gay and (2) needed a ride. I was fine with giving a ride for a friend of a friend, saying something like "as long as you don't make a pass at me, we're just fine." to the guy's face. No problem, I wasn't his type anyway.

That was before becoming "born-again" but I'd have the same approach today.

The other one was at the flower shop my mom worked at. One of her co-workers was gay, but he was also arguably the best floral designer in town. It was a non-issue at work, even with the boss being an old-school Nazarene lady; it was a "poorly kept secret" that wasn't discussed. Had their been same-sex weddings when he was on board (he's retired now), he'd have been just the person to finesse the issue with, letting the old-school folks pass on servicing it.

He was a nice guy who got along well with my Vineyard pastor when the pastor would up rooming with him in the hospital after Pastor Milton had a heart attack. Had the issue not been discussed at the dinner table over the years, he would have been just another middle-aged guy on the occasions I saw him while visiting the shop.

Other than that, I can't recall dealing with any gays. I surely have dealt with some others, but they don't come with ID badges; the guys who are so "flaming" that they'd set off the smoke detector are largely things of fiction, at least in small towns. Had I spent more time in bigger cities, I might have run into more situations. Given the number of students I've taught, I undoubtedly have taught a few, and have probably worked with a few as well, but it has yet to be a work issue, since is isn't an issue in processing health insurance paperwork or learning about business principles.

Had it become an issue, they'd still be children of God, worthy of respect. Not necessarily approval for their sex lives, but respect. They'll have things to answer for with God, but we all will, which would be the subject of a non-workplace related conversation if the conversation happened at all.

Since I'm unlikely to work as a baker, a florist or a photographer, I don't see myself being ask to service a same-sex wedding. Other commercial transactions don't generally have sexual overtones; the preferences of a customer at McDonalds that matter are whether they prefer to supersize it or not.

Logos and THE Logos

Our church-away-from-church in Colorado had an interesting, but not atypical, banner up on the front wall behind the altar area.

Top Left-A Holy Bible open book

Top Right-A cross

Bottom left-A dove

Bottom Right-A crown

They iconography would easily point to the cross representing Jesus, the dove representing the Holy Spirit and the crown representing (in a bit more of a stretch than the other two gimmies) God the Father.

If that imagery holds up, the Bible is not only on a par with the Trinity but the lead item of it, since we read things from top to bottom and right to left in our culture.

It comes before the cross.

It comes before and is above the Holy Spirit. That's a very Baptist take on things,

It comes well before God's Kingdom. More missional folks, especially in your emergent church quadrant, would want to put the Kingdom well before the Bible.

The iconography essentially put the Bible in as the senior member of the Godhead.

John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word..." come quickly to mind. In that sense, the Word predates the cross.

John continues on- "...and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning." That's something you could proof-text to justify things.

However, verse 14 throws cold water on that-

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Mr. Logos is Jesus per John. Is the iconography doubling up on Jesus in the top row? Or do we have a Quadity with the Bible as the fourth member?

Catholics sometimes seem to have their own Quadity with Mary as the quartet-maker; the old joke has Michelangelo doing his basso-profundo Jesus impersonation atop the Sistine Chapel while a lady is doing her Rosary down below-"Shuddap, I'm talkin' to ya mother!" That's an exaggeration of where Mary sits, well below the Godhead in real Catholic doctrine, but she seems to have a higher ranking at times.

Do evangelicals have their own Quadity, with the Bible promoted to the four-hole? It seems that way very, very often.

It's Less Fallible Than You Are

A lot of heated arguments have revolved around whether the Bible is infallible or not. Some of the heat is over how best to interpret the Bible rather than the actual words on the page, but other fights are over whether to take its council at face value or not.

The way I try to look at it is that the basic text of Scripture has stood two millennia of time as our best record of how God interacted with first Israel and then the world at large. Folks who discount that tend to get themselves into theological trouble, even if they say they don't want literalism and legalism getting in the way of bringing Jesus to the world.

We tend to be cocky, thinking that if we want to do X and tradition would have us do Y, then tradition must be wrong and out of date. "If loving X is wrong, I don't want to be right" to twist an oft-covered song a bit. However, X might well be wrong and the traditional view might well be right, especially if we don't have enough information of the downsides of X or the advantages of Y to make a well-informed decision.

The Bible forms a large core of our cultural and theological tradition. Going away from it tends to get you in trouble in the long haul.

Even if there might be a few verses that might be poorly translated or a few others that might not feel inspired to you, it would be safer to assume that they are legit and useful than to assume that you know better than that.

Is it infallible? It's at least less fallible than last night's burrito burp. Overruling it leaves you in less-charted, often dangerous, territory.

I'll Have One Genesis, Hold the Flood Please

Can you read the early part of Genesis as a fable and still be a good Christian? Yes, but you're seemingly drawing to an inside straight in trying to do so, since you're likely to start taking the other parts of the Bible on an a-la-carte basis as well, throwing out any passages that don't fit your vision of God.

If we look at Genesis, we have the story of creation, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. We then fast forward to Noah and the ark and Ham¹ laughing at his naked and drunk dad. We then fast forward to Abraham.

Once we get to Abraham, we're in known history, where we can place him in the Middle East. The rest of Genesis is on more solid footing, at least a "period piece" of that era.

Adam and Noah are harder to vouch for, since they seemingly don't seem to have a firm spot in history. They also run counter to modern science, unlike Abraham, Isaac, Jabob and Joshua.

Thus, Adam and Noah are easy targets to toss under the bus, as they run counter to a naturalistic mindset.

I'm not familiar with Michael Gungor’s music, but he's bagged a Dove aware for his work. He's in the news for sending those two to the pavement for a good curb-stomp-

I have no more ability to believe, for example, that the first people on earth were a couple named Adam and Eve that lived 6,000 years ago. I have no ability to believe that there was a flood that covered all the highest mountains of the world only 4,000 years ago and that all of the animal species that exist today are here because they were carried on an ark and then somehow walked or flew all around the world from a mountain in the middle east after the water dried up. I have no more ability to believe these things than I do to believe in Santa Clause or to not believe in gravity.

Interestingly, that post from his website comes from February, but World just got around to noting it last week and I first saw something on it from this piece that ol' blog pal Kevin Holtsberry posted on Facebook.

Gungor's seeminglt hanging out with a emergent crowd, headlined by Rod Bell, and having a more emergent-style theology that doesn't want orthodoxy getting in the way of orthopraxy.  Bell was read the Riot Act in evangelical circles for his univeralist-flavored take on salvation in Love Wins, so Gungor's overly-generous orthodoxy would tend to get more red flags that otherwise.

The first thing that hit me in this piece is that he isn't fighting that lack of ability to believe. I'm reminded of the guy asking Jesus for healing-"I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"

In and of itself, that statement isn't sending Gungor to Hell. Believing in Jesus as your Lord and Savior does the trick for salvation, not having the right take on Genesis. 

However, Adam and Noah do come into play in the New Testament narrative. Paul invokes Adam in Romans 5 and 1 Timothy 2, so giving Adam the bum's rush would lean you towards having Paul get chucked to the asphalt as well. It takes the steam out of the idea of Original Sin if the guy who kicked it off is just a fairy tale.

Jesus Himself mentioned Noah in Matthew 24. The writer of Hebrews has Noah and Abel in the Faith Hall of Fame in chapter 11. It's hard to take that HoF seriously if the charter members are just mythical.

Gungor has this interesting statement on his take

If you try to find some value in them as stories, there will be some people that say that you aren’t a Christian anymore because you don’t believe the Bible is true or “authoritative”. Even if you try to argue that you think there is a truth to the stories, just not in an historical sense; that doesn’t matter. ... You become part of ‘them’. The deniers of God’s Word.

This analogy comes to mind-Genesis-bashing is a gateway drug to an a-la-carte approach to Christian theology. It might not be that bad in and of itself, but it can tend to take out the tentposts that hold things down.

Seeing the stories Adam and Noah as truthy but not literally true won't bring down that tent of faith in and of itself, but if one kicks out too many tentposts, it will fall.

¹Here's a bit of irony; the biggest defender of the story of Noah these days is Ham, Ken Ham of Creation Museum fame. They're working on a Noah's Ark theme park a few miles down the road from the museum. It's the left that would say "Cursed be Ham" these days, if they knew enough of Genesis to trot that pun out.

Not as Together as They Were

I’ve got little ill-will towards The Gospel Coalition folks. I’m a bit too squishy on my Reformed theology to be fully at home there, but on those issues where we don’t have predestination food-fights in progress, they’re solid evangelical thinkers. Old blog friend Joe Carter is hanging his hat there these days, so I have at least one friend in that house.

The folks who put on Together for the Gospel shindigs aren’t as together as they were, shedding folks on separate edges. A pair of Sovereign Grace pastors, CJ Mahaney and Joshua Harris, resigned from TGC recently in the middle of a sexual-abuse scandal that saw those two accused of covering up the misdeeds of another pastor. In addition, Tullian Tchividjian resigned under pressure, taking his musing to a new web site.

Interestingly, Tchividjian's (who’s Billy Graham’s grandson and James Kennedy’s successor at Coral Ridge Presbyterian) brother Boz runs a ministry to "survivors" of such clergy abuse and was calling for TGC to prune themselves of Mahaney a year ago almost to the day. That would make family reunions a bit awkward.

The folks running clergy-abuse survivors groups tend to lean to the left, but that doesn't seem to be the case for Boz as far as I can tell. Doing an interview with Slate and with center-left evangelical Rachel Head Evans points to someone who is comfortable with more liberal settings, but his grandpa would work with people who weren't perfectly evangelical in order to get the Gospel preached. Interestingly, Boz's GRACE ministry got ran off of a gig with Bob Jones University when he was doing a bit too good of a job getting to the bottom of an abuse case there; BJU disassociated themselves from his grandpa for working with mainline and Catholic groups in his crusades.

Brother Tullian might also have been stylistically a bit to the center to be a fit with TCG. While Coral Ridge is part of the conservative PCA (rather than the liberal-listing PCUSA), Tchividjian isn't a big culture warrior, creating a contrast with Kennedy that displeased some of the Coral Ridge folks. That might also contrast a bit with TCG as well; while TCG isn't as politically charged as Kennedy was, they are firmly on the right politically and aren't afraid of a good rhetorical fight.

Tchividjian also might well have not been a good fit for TGC in that he might not feel the need to establish his Reformed credentials; for the folks in non-Reformed denominations, those fine points are part of active debate where they get "Calvinist" uttered as a sneer-word by their more Arminian colleagues. A minor blowup over fine points of sanctification might have flowed from Tchividjian being a bit more evangelical than he is Reformed just as his grandpa was more evangelical than Fundamentalist back in the day when the former term was being popularized.

I've seen some pieces from the center-left that cast the neo-Reformers, of which TGC is a (if not the) major linchpin, as modern-day Fundamentalists. While there two groups theologies differ (that's another post), there is a tendency to theologically nit-pick in common. Bob Jones U ran off his brother and grandpa, and the folks who are loosely cast as BJU's heirs seemingly ran off Tullian as well.

TGC is still on my bookmark list, and not in a "let's see what those [insert pejorative] are saying today" way, but the pruning here and in other cases recently do have have things becoming a smaller tent than in years past.

Fear and Trembling in Las Vegas?

I'm something of a mugwump on the Reformed-Arminian food fights, since I appreaciate some of the points of each side and have trouble with each side as well.

The one that troubles me on the Arminian side is the idea that someone could lose one's salvation, that it's an ongoing process rather than a one-time say-that-prayer-and-you're-in event.

For me, that gives me something of a death wish, wanting to die sooner rather than later in order to lock in my salvation. I recall having to leave a service four years ago after just getting let go from Sullivan U rather than have suicidal thoughts, that my less-than-fruitful life wasn't worth the risk of screwing up somehow and not making the works grade.

However, I think the works that Reformed folks are worried about are much more an outgrowth of a saving faith more than a requirement for it. There doesn't seem to be a grading curve for salvation, so some positive change and some positive effort to expand the Kingdom is more than enough. No change and no effort would indicate someone who hasn't really gotten the message in the first place.

That "working out your salvation with fear and trembling" shouldn't cause a death wish, for so many verses point to faith being the primary issue. John 3:16 didn't say that we have eternal life if we score a 70 or better for the course.

Play Too Many Right Bowers and You Get Euchre-Wrist

I'm struggling to fully understand the Catholic emphasis on communion; it's one of the things that divides the capital-C Church into Catholic and Protestant camps.

It's not the only one. Veneration of Mary, having saints intercede with you in prayer (that's a more accurate description that "praying to saints") and (rarely used by modern popes) papal infallibility are the classic ones that you hear evangelical critics trot out, more-so than transubstantiation.

However, I can wrap my mind around designating one guy as head honcho and having him clarifying doctrine when the need arises; it runs counter to our American/Anglospherian democratic impulse, but letting doctrine be put to a vote is even more dangerous as exhibited by some of our more liberal denominations.

I can also wrap my mind around having dead believers alive in Heaven willing to put their two cents in for you with God; that seems more understandable than putting all folks into a spiritual suspended animation until Judgement Day.

I also can intellectually understand the idea that Jesus is in the communion elements in some mystical way that runs askew to secular logic. However, there seems to be something far more than that going on with the Eucharist. As I'm envisioning it, Communion is not just sharing something with your fellow parishioners, but having a spiritually tangible presence of God (the Real Presence is the common shorthand for that) that connects the partaker with God and His Church more than just a modern docudrama of the Upper Room.

It's important enough where it's part of every service and taken to the folks unable to make it to church. Some Protestant churches (Anglicans and Campbellites come to mind as well as a number of Vineyard churches) do communion on a weekly basis, but there doesn't seem to be quite the focus on communion as there is with the Catholics.

I'll ask the Catholic members of the Peanut Gallery... what am I missing? I'm sensing that there is something more caught than taught, more in the realm of a hands-on Holy Spirit than in some catechism, but there also might be some theology that this low-church evangelical doesn't quite grok.

Warded Off With a Samurai Night Special

We noted that the disciples were instructed to carry swords in my well-received Would Jesus Pack Heat post. Someone out Utah way (note that since almost all Mormon guys are priests, the church pastor gets the inflated title bishop) took an East Asian spin on that West Asian custom.

A Samurai-wielding Latter Day Saints bishop and others in Millcreek, Utah, came to the aid of a woman who was being attacked and chased by a former co-worker, authorities say.

[Kent] Hendrix was in the shower at approximately 7 a.m. on Tuesday when his teenage son alerted him about a woman's screams for help, ABC 4 in Utah reported. Hendrix, a fourth-degree black belt, put on some clothes — and grabbed the 29-inch steel samurai sword he has owned since he was 17.

Don't tease this guy about his undies. We're lucky Utah didn't pull a page from the UK and think about banning such Samurai Night Specials.

Table d'hote Catholics

In ecumenical circles, being "in communion" indicates that two factions are close enough in theology to let one side's folks take communion with the other. That's a factor when church have closed communion.

Following that over to the Catholics, taking the Eucharist assumes that you're in communion with Catholic teaching. Folks who aren't on the same page with the Church can thus be seen to be out of communion, thus giving us the term "excommunicate." Note that it doesn't take some sort of grand statement from the Pope or a bishop to do that; publically giving the middle-digit salute to Church doctrine will do that for you.

What about your "cafeteria Catholics" who want to pick and choose which doctrines they like and pass on the ones that they don't like? Here's archbishop of Detroit Allen Vigneron's take on that-

Asked by the Free Press about Catholics who publicly advocate for gay marriage and receive Communion, Vigneron said Sunday: "For a Catholic to receive holy Communion and still deny the revelation Christ entrusted to the church is to try to say two contradictory things at once: 'I believe the church offers the saving truth of Jesus, and I reject what the church teaches.' In effect, they would contradict themselves. This sort of behavior would result in publicly renouncing one's integrity and logically bring shame for a double-dealing that is not unlike perjury."

Vigneron said the church wants to help Catholics "avoid this personal disaster."

In restaurant-speak, the inverse of a-la-carte is table d'hote; that's the package deal, take it or leave it, no substitutions. Folks are supposed to buy into orthodox doctrine; when you disagree with traditional doctrine, the wise person will consider that it might well be the well-hacked view of history might have more insight that what last night's burrito might be telling them.

Vigneron is plugging for more table-d'hote Catholics, rather than the folks the media seem to love who want a side of same-sex marriage and to hold the natural family planning.

Dueling Magesteria

My Free Methodist church has a "Pray for Pope Francis" sign up last week. Meanwhile, Al Mohler avoided the Easter rush and got his Catholic-bashing in early, going off on a justification-by-faith-ALONE rant.

Neo-Reformers seem to have extra ammo against Catholics going back to Luther and Calvin; Wesley was a couple of centuries removed from the Reformation and left a bit less of an anti-Catholic streak in modern Wesleyans. That's not to say that Wesleyans can't site Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura, but they are less likely to take a whack at the Ho' of Babylon in the process.

I don't have a justification by faith essay at the ready, but I do have a Sola Scriptura one that's been in my craw; it's a bit of bait-and-switch at Mohler's expense, but Baptist Catholic-bashers will often cite the Catholic reliance on extra-bilblical tradition as one of their favorite charges, moreso than Sola Fide.

Sola Scriptura has two problems from an honest evangelical perspective. The first is that it grants a mythic status to the folks who created the canon, that a human agency created an unquestionable book. Embarrassingly for Catholic-bashers, it was a Catholic grouping that did the work; the canon-makers get respect that their modern descendents don't.

Secondly, few people actually go by the scripture alone; there is a way of viewing scripture that is factored into the mix. Catholics have their body of authoritative teachings, the magesterium. So do most Protestants, especially the neo-Reformers, except they bend over backwards not to say so.

Case in point; young-earth creationism. Somewhere along the line, a particular reading of Genesis was required, and a more poetic use of day to be an era is precluded.

Another case in point; free will versus predestination. Both sides can quote scripture to defend their view and both would generally claim to be going only by the Bible. Heinlein's alter ego Jubal had them tied in the 4th quarter a half-century ago; they've since gone to overtime.

Each church has its own magesterium; the Catholics are at least honest about it.

First the Twinkie, then the Rat Zinger

I hit Facebook this morning without looking at the news; one 'booker was wondering who the next Pope would be. That seemed off, since the current Pope wasn't on his last legs as best I remembered.

Well, I hit the news pages just now, and we have the news story of the year; Pope Benedict is stepping aside at 85. He's been in "frail" health and had been warned off of a lot of travel; that wouldn't be an issue in the past, but John Paul II set the standard for a globe-trotting, visable presence for the Church, and Bene16 wasn't up to that anymore.

This is the first papal resignation since 1415. He gave the Catholic church a solid eight years at the helm, holding his own coming after a unique historical package that was a near-imposssible act to follow.

One More Baptist Calvinism Fight

I interviewed for a finance teaching position at Louisiana College back in 2007; I may have been fortunate not to have taken a position there, for the Calvinism wars have broken out with the school brass siding with the free-will camp.

I don't remember that being as big of an issue in Southern Baptist circles at the time, but it has become so since then. I went to a SBC church in Lexington from 2007-09, and the issue was live there, as the music minister was a bit too Reformed for some folks' tastes and the pastor had an eclectic taste in evangelical thinkers that included some neo-Reformed folks.

I'm uneasy with both hard Reformed and hard Arminian thought. Despite going to a Free Methodist church here in Midland, I'd have to pick the Reform side of the aisle if forced into one camp. I'm not up for an in-depth post on that right now, but I respect both camps.

I'm not sure if the theological pruning would have extended to the business school, but being in the middle of a scuffle where both sides have solid theological points to bring to the table would be tough to live through. It was tough going through the internal struggles at Victory Baptist in the late 00s, and would have been tough seeing seemingly good colleagues let go for being on the wrong side of that debate.

Israel sin Synagogue

The Israeli election always seems to have a new party or two show up on radar, and two new ones could factor into the governing equation. Likud has 31 seats and a centrist Yesh Atid has 19; coupled with a Jewish Home pro-settlement party's 11, and the trio has 61 seats, just enough to make a majority.

The interesting aspect of Yesh Atid is their desire to see everyone serve in the military and end seminary exemptions. A lot of the haredi ("ultra-Orthodox" is the common pejoritive for them) men spend most of their lives as Torah-students, living on government stipends and avoiding the otherwise-universal requiment to serve. The secular-leaning folks in Yesh Atid are moving to at least make them do their stint in the military.

That would make them poor matches for some of the religious parties like Shas, who champions the poorer Jews who have Arab-country heritage rather than European/US heritage. A center-right but secular coalition could be free to ignore those parties and make Israel a bit less easy to be a devout rabbi-in-training keeping the world at bay.

It might also have some effect on ongoing issues over accepting non-Orthodox Jews as immigrants and citizens; most American Jews are to the left of the Orthodox leaders in Israel who sign off on whether a person is Jewish enough to immigrate to Israel, which is an friction point between Conservative (center-left) and Reform (hard left) Americans Jews and Israel.

Gather at the River... On Steroids

I just got done reading up on Jesus' baptism this morning; I knew that in Orthodox circles that Epiphany was essentially both the end of the 12 days of Christmas when the Wise Men hit town and the date of Jesus' baptism as well.

I somehow just found out that this is the case in the Western church as well via this IMonk post; the baptism gets placed in day 8 of Christmas in Catholic custom and the week after Epiphany in Anglican custom.

That gives some interesting contrast to this story out of India, where a big Hindu baptismal shindig is taking place-

Several million people have been bathing at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers at Allahabad in India, on the opening day of the Kumbh Mela festival.

At least 10 million pilgrims are set to do so by the end of the day.

The event, every 12 years, is billed as the biggest gathering on Earth. More than 100 million people are expected to attend the 55-day festival.

Hindus believe a festival dip will cleanse sins and help bring salvation.

It's an interesting irony that you have Hindus converging on Allahabad, poly-wanna-cracker-theists going to God's City in (I assume) Urdu. It's also ironic that the timing is right after Christians note their Savior's baptism; the one guy who didn't need any sins cleansed did it anyways to create solidarity with His Church-to-be. This is also an extra-special version of Kumbh Mela that happens every twelfth 12-year cycle, so this every 144 year even is rather gross.

The Hindus do need salvation and forgiveness of sins, but only if they have the Savior to provide that salvation would a dunk in the Ganges do any good. It would be interesting to see if any Indian Christians use this as a witnessing tool, pointing out where true forgiveness and salvation comes from rather than a periodic respite from the karmic grind.

[Update 10AM-here's one prayer guide for the 2001 version; "Authorities limit direct Christian witnessing during the Kumbh Mela, but Christians will be on site in Haridwar [the 2001 site], praying for Hindu pilgrims and ready to pray with anyone who desires prayer."]

Just a Giglio

An interesting lack of research on the part of the Obama re-innaugral team; they had Louie Giglio of Passion conference semi-fame slated to give the benediction at the ceremony... until folks on the left noticed that he had had a sermon against homosexuality late last century. Giglio isn't one of your usual suspect theocons, but he is (as best I can tell) an orthodox evangelical, which should have raised a pink flag for your research team.

The one thing that comes to mind is that opposition research is done on your opposition. Giglio showed up on Obama radar for his work on the world slave trade, so they might have forget to check the guy's theology to see if it'd tick off their base, since he seemed like an ally on that issue.

Giglio seems to be a good guy, just not a PC one. Politically incorrect preachers need not apply, it would seem.

Brown Dwarf... Shouldn't That be a Small Person of Color?

I like learning about astronomy, especially in this era when new discoveries are popping up on almost a daily basis. Here's the lastest of the list, where they've discovered a free-agent planet that was not orbiting a star.

Astronomers have spotted a "rogue planet" - wandering the cosmos without a star to orbit - 100 light-years away. Recent finds of such planets have suggested that they may be common, but candidates have eluded close study.

The proximity of the new rogue planet has allowed astronomers to guess its age: a comparatively young 50-120 million years old.

That last sentence makes being a Bible-totin' evangelical with a sci-fi geek inside problematic, for you need to tell the Answers in Genesis people to stuff a cork in it while you ponder the universe. Either the scientists are off with their ages, or the young-earthers are off on theirs.

One can split the difference in astronomy by making the days of Genesis eras; God's still in charge, but you can read modern science without having to flag an astrophysicist 15 yards for Time-Line Interference every time a reference to a time frame in millions of years or higher shows up. It doesn't violate inerrancy, it just violates a very literal version of it; a 24/6 creation is problematic since the sun and moon don't show up on day one.

Anyways, back to the science. The new rogue planet Palin-2012a- no, CFBDSIR2149-0403 is its designation- is big as planets go-

The team believe it has a temperature of about 400C and a mass between four and seven times that of Jupiter - well short of the mass limit that would make it a likely brown dwarf.

What remains unclear is just how the planet came to be - the tiny beginnings of a star, or planet launched from its home? Study co-author Philippe Delorme of the Institute of Planetology and Astrophysics of Grenoble, said that the latter implied a great many planets like it.

We may find that the line between a big planet and a brown dwarf will be hard to draw. On one level, Jupiter is a brown dwarf, for it radiates more energy than it takes from the Sun; it just doesn't quite have the size to start the internal nuclear fusion that marks a star. Many systems have multiple stars; it isn't too big of a stretch to see a super-Jupiter not-quite-star get kicked out of the nest and go rogue in intersteller space.

The Jupiter-sized rogues will be harder to see at a distance, so their might be quite a few rogue planets, but since they don't radiatate much energy and don't do eclipses of their star to be detected via the changes in light, it may take far better telescopes to pick up the smaller ones.

Interesting times.

 

Sorry, Wrong Deity

Interesting Get Religion piece over the weekend on a Unitarian outreach to atheists. This passage was what pulled the chatty-ring-

Many people who come to All Souls as atheists have not rejected God but their fourth-grade concept of God, he said.

“I say to them, ‘Tell me what God you don’t believe in, and I’ll probably tell you I don’t believe in that God either.’”

That brought back memories of this 2007 post, where discussion of The Golden Compass' Magesterium pointed out that the God that the writer was railing against didn't exist. Richard Heyduck had a good insight that fits all too well in this setting-

The description of the god at which Pullman aims does not fit the God of Christianity (though it does, unfortunately, fit the god some Christians have claimed over the centuries). The god of the books is closest to the god of medieval Christianity at its worst. The only attribute of Pullman’s god is omnipotence - and that omnipotence is pretty shoddy, reduced in reality to a mere exercise of authority.

The real God is omnipotent - but that omnipotence is always expressed in, through and around other characteristics, including holy love. It’s for this reason that Pullman’s picture of god and ‘Christianity’ has no place for Jesus. Jesus is not only the opposite of Pullman’s atheism but also of Pullman’s god.

It’s good to remember that one of the things for which the early Christians were persecuted was atheism - they didn’t believe in the right gods. (That’s why when you converse with someone who says, “I don’t believe in god,” it’s always a good idea to figure out which god they don’t believe in. There are more gods that I don’t believe in than that I do.)

People who reject God (sadly, that includes quite a few UUers) may be rejecting a false version of God. Introducing them to the real God is important, since they may be bashing a straw deity that has little resemblance to the Great I AM.

P.S.- Thankfully, they haven't done any sequals to the movie. Five years out, and you'd think that the second installment would be out if they were going to run with the series.

A Repentant Life

For the more Reformed among us, we have the anaversary of Luther's 95 Theses today; one wag suggested a John Wesley mask to scare the Hell out of Reform-minded folks if you're trick-or-treating.

We're only five years away from 500 years, since he tacked those up in Wittenberg in 1517.

The first three are worth looking at again.

When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said "Repent", He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

We're always having to turn towards God, as we get pointed away from Him all to easily. Even if you're driving the straight and narrow, you still need to keep your hands on the wheel and the ship between the navigational beacons.

The word cannot be properly understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, i.e. confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.

That's not a huge dis of clergy; you need to do more that just say your sorry.

Yet its meaning is not restricted to repentance in one's heart; for such repentance is null unless it produces outward signs in various mortifications of the flesh.

Gross, man. These days, we call that cutting; it gets you a trip to the psychologist.

Not quite... we're talking more about a denial of fleshly cravings rather than some midevial scorging. "No thanks, we're trying to cut down" is more like it, cutting down to zero is the goal on some things, while others (like food for the overweight) need to be moderated.

 

Jesus isn't on the Ballot

Good post from Kevin DeYoung on voting; while he's on the Gospel Coalition web site, this is one where Reformed-Arminian food fights don't factor in. Here's the money statement-

...we should realize that if we vote at all we are voting for less than our ideal candidate. As long as Jesus isn’t on the ballot every Christian is voting for someone less than our perfect candidate.

We've got two candidates with flawed theologies (don't we all, when it comes down to it), one being a former pastor of an heterdox Christian offshoot and the other steeped in a Liberation Theology-style black mainline milieu. Neither would be the first choice of most of the Peanut Gallery to pastor their church, but we're hiring them to run the country, not pastor our church.

Stones for Abraham are a Dime a Dozen

Great Rhymes With Orange strip today. Guy's at the Pearly Gates

"But I'm a Legacy!"

"That's not how our admission process works."

Matthew 3:9 got there two millennia ago; here's Jesus dissing the Jewish elders of the day-

⁹ And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.

God has no grandchildren. Plenty of children, but no grandchildren. God's looking for people who know and follow Him, not folks who know people who know Him.