I’ve listed some resources here related to topics I expect we’ll cover.

Reclaim the High Ground: To restore our strategic influence in our culture, both intellectually and ethically

Basic Discipleship of the Mind: What it means, why it’s crucial for strong Christianity, and how to grow in it.

A sample of ministries taking an intentionally strategic approach to connecting resources to local churches and fellowships:

• The Truth Project
• Reasonable Faith Chapters
• Discover God Initiative

There are many apologetics ministries that equip individuals and minister to groups. These are some that are actually equipping churches for ongoing discipleship of the mind.

Articles

• Apologetics: Why Your Church Needs It
• Apologetics “No Longer An Option”

Books

• Love Your God With All Your Mind by J.P. Moreland
• Kingdom Triangle: Recover the Christian Mind, Renovate the Soul, Restore the Spirit’s Power by J.P. Moreland
• The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll
• Fit Bodies Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don’t Think and What to Do About It by Os Guinness
• Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge by Dallas Willard

Keep up with the Thinking Christian blog: subscribe to the RSS feed.

If this is helpful, would you think about partnering with the overall missions strategy work my wife and I do through Campus Crusade for Christ? Thank you — our work depends on your prayers and support.

Tweet This Post

That link will expire in about two weeks. Here is a permanent pdf version.

Tweet This Post

Wilberforce (1759-1833) is well known as one of the most influential Christian leaders of the past several hundred years. A British politician converted to Christ in his mid-20s, he devoted the rest of his life to two grand passions, one of which was abolishing slavery. His decades of persistence against slavery were met with partial success in 1807 when Britain’s slave trade was abolished by Parliament; and with final success (as far as Britain and her colonies were concerned) in 1833 when Parliament voted £20 million to be given to slaveowners in compensation for freeing all slaves. The outcome of that vote was assured just three days before Wilberforce’s death. (This story is told in Michael Apted’s 2007 film Amazing Grace.)

A man with such credentials has my attention: he understands what it means really to believe God’s word. Wilberforce’s second grand passion was to lead his country men to the same understanding. Speaking of himself in the third person, he explains in the Introduction why he wrote Real Christianity:

The main object which he [the author] has in view is, not to convince the Sceptic, or to answer the arguments of persons who avowedly oppose the fundamental doctrines of our Religion; but to point out the scanty and erroneous system of the bulk of those who belong to the class of orthodox Christians, and to contrast their defective scheme with a representation of what the author apprehends to be real Christianity.

Now, where do you suppose someone like Wilberforce, a man of social action and of worship, would begin his discourse on real Christianity? Moreland noted how striking this was. Wilberforce did not begin with prayer or piety, though he made both central in his life; nor did he begin with service, though he was such a great example of using one’s gifts to improve the world in Christ’s name. He began with the life of the mind, with apologetics, even.

View their [English Christians'] plan of life and their ordinary conduct; and not to speak at present of their general inattention to things of a religious nature, let us ask, wherein can we discern the points of discrimination between them and professed unbelievers? In an age wherein it is confessed and lamented that infidelity abounds, do we observe in them any remarkable care to instruct their children in the principles of the faith which they profess, and to furnish them with arguments for the defence of it? They would blush, on their child’s coming out into the world, to think him defective in any branch of that knowledge, or of those accomplishments which belong to his station in life, and accordingly these are cultivated with becoming assiduity. But he is left to collect his religion as he may; the study of Christianity has formed no part of his education, and his attachment to it (where any attachment to it exists at all) is, too often, not the preference of sober reason, but merely the result of early prejudice and groundless prepossession. He was born in a Christian country, of course he is a Christian; his father was a member of the church of England, so is he. When such is the hereditary religion handed down from generation to generation, it cannot surprise us to observe young men of sense and spirit beginning to doubt altogether of the truth of the system in which they have been brought up, and ready to abandon a station which they are unable to defend. Knowing Christianity chiefly in the difficulties which it contains, and in the impossibilities which are falsely imputed to it, they fall perhaps into the company of infidels; and, as might be expected, they are shaken by frivolous objections and profane cavils, which, had they been grounded and bottomed in reason and argument, would have passed by them, “as the idle wind,” and scarcely have seemed worthy of serious notice.

Wilberforce instructed me in a further reason for discipling our minds, one I should have included in my list last Monday: accountability and stewardship before God.

It were almost a waste of time to multiply arguments in order to prove how criminal the voluntary ignorance, of which we have been speaking, must appear in the sight of God. It must be confessed by all who believe that we are accountable creatures, and to such only the writer is addressing himself, that we shall have to answer hereafter to the Almighty for all the means and occasions we have here enjoyed of improving ourselves, or of promoting the happiness of others. And if, when summoned to give an account of our stewardship, we shall be called upon to answer for the use which we have made of our bodily organs, and of the means of relieving the wants and necessities of our fellow creatures; how much more for the exercise of the nobler and more exalted faculties of our nature, of invention, and judgment, and memory; and for our employment of all the instruments and opportunities of diligent application, and serious reflection, and honest decision. And to what subject might we in all reason be expected to apply more earnestly, than to that wherein our eternal interests are at issue? When God has of his goodness vouchsafed to grant us such abundant means of instruction in that which we are most concerned to know, how great must be the guilt, and how aweful the punishment of voluntary ignorance!

But let us not suppose this will come without some effort; and why should it, anyway?

And why, it may be asked, are we in this pursuit alone to expect knowledge without inquiry, and success without endeavour? The whole analogy of nature inculcates on us a different lesson, and our own judgments in matters of temporal interests and worldly policy confirm the truth of her suggestions. Bountiful as is the hand of Providence, its gifts are not so bestowed as to seduce us into indolence, but to rouse us to exertion; and no one expects to attain to the height of learning, or arts, or power, or wealth, or military glory, without vigorous resolution, and strenuous diligence, and steady perseverance. Yet we expect to be Christians without labour, study, or inquiry.

This all sounds eerily like 21st century America. Friends, we have some work to do

Tweet This Post

You may be within reach of an AFR station (listed here, PDF file), but if not, you can listen live (click “AFR Talk”). Either way you can phone in and join the conversation. Otherwise you can listen later.

Tweet This Post

1. Knowing God — which is of first importance — means knowing. Jesus said “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). This is relational knowledge, which to a great extent depends on knowing true facts about God: his nature, his character, how he has revealed himself.
2. The first Great Commandment is to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:34-40).
3. Personal transformation begins with the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1-2).
4. From the same passage, spiritual worship—which could also be rendered rational service—is tied to the renewal of our minds. Service and worship are both connected to the life of the mind.
5. The word “disciple” means follower-learner. We cannot be disciples of Christ without both following and learning. If I may repeat what I said last week, it is no accident that one of Jesus’ main activities on earth was teaching.
6. God’s primary revelation to humans is in the form of a book. It’s such an obvious fact, we might miss what it implies: books are for studying.
7. Study and learning are directly commanded in Scripture, 2 Timothy 2:15.
8. Knowledge is good in itself.
9. Truth is good in itself. Truth can be known in part without thinking Christianly, but whatever ignores, sets aside, or denies God’s revelation cannot approach the fulness of truth God calls us to know and to follow.
10. Thoughtful error must be countered with thoughtful truth (1 Corinthians 10:3-5; Jude 3-4).

C.S. Lewis put that final point this way in The Weight of Glory.:

“To be ignorant and simple now — not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground — would be to throw down our weapons and betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”

(Are there more than ten reasons? Is there more that could be said? Sure! I’m using this short-post format as a break from my usual longer articles.)

Tweet This Post

That’s not because it’s some rule he set up, like “If you’re going to move with the basketball you have to dribble it.” It’s more like, “If you add 2 and 2 you have to get 4.” If you really see who God is, there is no avoiding the response of worship. Consider these passages from the 89th Psalm:

Psalm 89:1-4

I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever;
with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.
For I said, “Steadfast love will be built up forever;
in the heavens you will establish your faithfulness.”
You have said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one;
I have sworn to David my servant:
‘I will establish your offspring forever,
and build your throne for all generations.’”

Psalm 89:8-11

O Lord God of hosts,
who is mighty as you are, O Lord,
with your faithfulness all around you?
9 You rule the raging of the sea;
when its waves rise, you still them.
You crushed Rahab [Egypt] like a carcass;
you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours;
the world and all that is in it, you have founded them.

God rules the earth. He sets up thrones. He founded the heavens and the earth, and they are his. He is mighty over the seas and the nations. He rules over the “hosts,” the angels of heaven. He is full of steadfast love and faithfulness. He has enemies — those who stand against his sovereign purposes — and he will rise up against them.

We, on the other hand, are his subjects. He rules over us. His kingship is one of goodness, love, and faithfulness, but it is decidedly his kingship and not ours. To see him in that position is to recognize that, though we have freedom to choose our steps, we are not in charge of our destinies. We are his creatures, created by him, in many ways the smallest of the small, in an unimaginably huge cosmos. And next to his holiness, we in our imperfection and sin are smaller yet.

To believe this is to see that he is a God of immense goodness, power, and worth. It is to see oneself as very small next to him. Psalm 8 recognizes this, yet adds a twist:

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

We are small, yet not contemptible in his sight. We are flawed, yet he loves us. We rebel against him, yet he died for us.

Who can see this and not worship? The rebellious: those who rise up against a ruler they cannot manage, who hate that there is another who determines their destinies; whose view of the good is dark and twisted. Every one of us, in other words; for we have all risen up against God, we have all hated him, we have all had darkened hearts. But in that condition we do not see all of the truth of God; we do not see that it is both true and good that God is who he is, and that we are who we are.

God offers light and sight to those who will embrace what it reveals. It is a gift of his grace, not of their worthiness. Yet for those who see, to see is to worship.

Tweet This Post

The question is whether it is legitimate to regard evidence against evolution as evidence in favor of ID. Evolutionists often complain that positive arguments for ID are lacking, and that ID offers nothing but negative arguments against evolution. I’m going to refer to that as The Complaint. It is indeed true that ID makes part of its case (though certainly not all of it) on the basis of arguments against naturalistic evolution, so ID proponents must take The Complaint seriously. Is there something inherently wrong with ID arguing its case this way? Can a negative argument against evolution really be a positive argument for ID? Or is negative argumentation conceptually flawed from the start?

I’m going to begin with the simplest level of analysis and work upward from there to a fully realistic level. This argument becomes complex later on. I have placed a tree-diagram representing the whole of it at the end of the third post in this series. You may skip ahead and use it to guide you through if you like.

I begin by noting that at this time there are only two possible explanations for biological origins on the table: either some intelligence was guiding it, or there was no such intelligent guidance. If the first is true, then some form of Intelligent Design is the true explanation. If not, then the only explanation currently on offer is undirected random variation coupled with natural selection, which I will refer to here as Naturalistic Evolution, or NE.

At the end of the movie Expelled, Richard Dawkins speaks of the possibility that life on earth was designed, and opines that ID could explain earth’s life if the designers were some alien creatures. That raised some hearty chuckles from ID proponents, but in our laughter many of us missed what else he said: that those aliens, if they existed, must have come about by Darwinian processes. For Dawkins there is only one route up “Mount Improbable” (the term he used for life’s increasing complexity in his book The Blind Watchmaker). That one route is the gradualistic path of natural selection acting on random variations.

If he is in fact right about there being only one naturalistic route to biological complexity, then there are only two options open for consideration: Intelligent Design in some form (which of course is not an option Dawkins would consider), and NE. These are fully dichotomous: if one is true, the other is false, and vice-versa. Mainstream evolutionary scientists insist that NE is fact, and that we know it is fact. One helpful way to express their certainty is to express it in terms of probabilities: their view is that p(NE)=1 and p(ID)=0.

For this analysis I define evidence E for theory T as any information that, if true, increases the probability that T is true. I distinguish evidence from proof: it is that which adds to the probability of T, not that which proves T. Evidence is not unidimensional or unidirectional; there can be evidences for and against T, and each piece of evidence E must be considered in light of its own virtues and faults, in context of all other evidences for and against T. Further, there is a time factor factor involved. E is evidence for T if p(T) at T2 is greater after the introduction of E than at T1, before the introduction of E. This before/after relationship could be logical rather than chronological; whether E existed or was known at T1 is not as important as whether it was included in the probability analysis at T1.

There are many mainstream scientists who insist, as Michael Ruse has, that “Evolution is fact, FACT, FACT!” In other words, the matter has been settled, and regardless of any possible future evidence,  p(NE)=1. There is no possibility that ID is true: p(ID)=0. I can’t fathom how they can take that position. Evidence has to have some capability of influencing a theory, doesn’t it? Or is evolution true regardless of evidence? That’s hardly science.

Since “fact, FACT, FACT!” in that form is therefore fallacious reasoning and also bad science, I’ll proceed by entertaining the possibility that there is at least conceivably some evidence E that could reduce our confidence in evolution (even by the smallest fraction) such that  p(NE) < 1. That’s not assuming much. It’s a lot more reasonable than insisting that NE is true no matter what evidence might surface.

Now, if Dawkins is right that NE is the only possible naturalistic route up Mount Improbable, the probability equation for origins must include only the terms stated so far here; thus, p(NE) + p(ID)= 1. These are the only options on offer. If the probability of either term is 1, then the probability of the other is 0; if the probability of either term increases or decreases by some degree n, then the probability of the other term decreases or increases by n. 1 – p(NE) = p(ID), and 1 – p(ID) = p(NE).

ID theorists argue that certain features of the natural world are inconsistent with NE. The Cambrian Explosion is one of them. It is hard to explain on NE terms how it came about. This is an example of a negative argument against NE. This post is not about whether that argument is true or not; it is about whether, if there is merit to the argument, it counts legitimately as an argument in favor of ID.

And it seems to me that given a binary, dichotomous relationship between ID and NE, it must; for p(NE) + p(ID)= 1. Suppose for the sake of argument there is some merit to ID’s concerns about the Cambrian Explosion. The effect of that must be to reduce confidence in NE by some non-zero amount. Now suppose also that before this argument was presented, the universal consensus was that p(NE)=1. To the extent that the Cambrian Explosion argument has merit, confidence in NE must be reduced by some degree n, with the result that p(NE) = 1- n, and p(ID) = n. (The degree of change, n, depends on how successful the argument actually is.) Increased confidence in ID (its increase in probability) must be numerically identical to the decrease in confidence in NE, because the sum of the two probabilities must equal 1.

Therefore any evidence E that reduces the probability of NE as an explanation for origins increases the probability of ID as an explanation.

That brings us to the end of the first stage of this argument. To recap:

1. The Complaint is that ID’s negative argumentation against NE is somehow illegitimate, unscientific, or otherwise weak or wrong.
2. ID and NE are mutually exclusive.
3. On Richard Dawkins’ view, NE is nature’s only available method for developing biological complexity.
4. Therefore on that view, ID and NE fill the entire probability space for origins: p(NE) + p(ID)= 1.
5. And therefore any successful negative evidence against NE is successful positive evidence for ID:

That is the simplest view of the argument, and it seems pretty cut-and-dried if random variation coupled with natural selection (NE) is nature’s only option for building biological complexity, as Dawkins thinks.

But when I have written of this before, some have objected to my considering only two possibilities: ID (in some form) and NE. “How do we know these are the only two possibilities?” they ask. “Science marches on, and who knows what we might discover? Why do we assume that ID is the only alternative to NE? How could we know that?”

That question takes us to the second section of this article.

Tweet This Post

Now we must examine the possibility of more than two options. As I said last time, this argument becomes complex. I have placed a tree-diagram representing the whole of it at the end of the third post in this series. You may skip ahead and use it to guide you through if you like.

Recall that ID stands for origins being brought about by a designer. If there is a third option it cannot involve a designer, for that frame is already filled by ID; it must be another naturalistic explanation. At this point there is no naturalistic explanation on offer besides NE, so it must be an unknown naturalistic explanation. I will refer to it as the Unknown Naturalistic Theory, or UNT.

If we are to grant the entirely reasonable assumption that science could develop some other, new naturalistic explanation for the development of life and its complexity, then the probability equation we started with must be expanded:

p(NE) + p(ID) + p(UNT) = 1

We have no way of assessing UNT’s probability, but we can deal with that by considering two possibilities.

A.
p(NE) + p(UNT) = 1;
  p(ID) = 0

B.
p(NE) + p(ID) + p(UNT) = 1;  
0 < p(ID) < 1;
0 < p(UNT) < 1

I will deal with A in this post and save B for the next in this series.

A is a mathematical restatement of, “We won’t claim we’re absolutely certain that NE explains life’s origins; but we’re certain that whatever the explanation is, Design had nothing to do with it.” Often coupled with this statement is something to this effect: Science has made continuous progress in finding naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena. Attempts to use God (or some other Design process) to explain natural phenomena have consistently had to give way to naturalistic explanations. Therefore we think it’s reasonable to conclude that science will eventually demonstrate that the origin and complexity of life have fully natural explanations, whether NE or some other theory not yet conceived of.

The question there is, what evidence is adduced for this opinion? There is one kind of evidence that is offered, and another kind that is not even in the picture. What is offered is the history of science, and what is inferred from that is an extrapolation to the future of science. What is not even in the picture is evidence from nature. No matter what evidence E might surface in nature at any time in the future, E can only count as evidence for naturalism (NE or UNT), for p(ID) = 0, world without end, Amen. The probability of naturalism today, T1, is 1; the probability of naturalism tomorrow T2 will be 1, and the probability of naturalism at T3, T4, T5 … to infinity is 1. And this we are assured of, regardless of what evidence E might be introduced at some time Tn in the future.

That is either begging the question, simply stating ID is wrong and that’s that, regardless of what evidence should ever appear! or else, if it is not begging the question, it is placing enormous load on the evidence that has been offered on its behalf: the history of science. We must recall that science has not had uniformly increasing success in explaining what we observe in the world. It has gotten nowhere with explaining realities like consciousness, reasoning, purpose, meaning, free will, moral responsibility and even the origin of the first life. (Claims to the contrary abound, but as I — and many others — have argued elsewhere, they are philosophically uninformed.)

But even if that were not the case, extrapolation in a matter like this is hardly more than an expression of faith. To extrapolate without a supporting theory is bad statistics and bad science, and the only theory that could support this particular extrapolation is one that begs the question: the theory that all of life’s features will someday be explainable naturalistically.

So version A above is unsuccessful. To introduce p(UNT) into our probability equation that way is logically fallacious. We’ll have to pUNT (I’ve been saving up for that pUN) to version B and see whether it works. That will be the topic of the next post.

Tweet This Post

So far I have shown that if NE and ID are the only explanations on the table for discussion, The Complaint is unjustified. I have also begun to address the possibility that NE and ID are not the only options; we have to consider that some currently unknown naturalistic theory (UNT) could surface someday as a third possibility. Using probability math, I have expressed two ways UNT could enter into consideration:

A.
p(NE) + p(UNT) = 1;
p(ID) = 0

B.
p(NE) + p(ID) + p(UNT) = 1;
0 < p(ID) < 1;
0 < p(UNT) < 1

And I showed in the last post that A is question begging.

But there is a non-question-begging way to introduce UNT into analysis, and that is B. It doesn’t assume ID is false and naturalism is true. So on first appearance it seems more hopeful, for those who would want to justify The Complaint. Could they be right, under B? Let’s take a look at this.

First, let’s recall that The Complaint has to do with how ID theorists use evidence against evolution in favor of ID. So let’s introduce our term E now. We’ll assume that at time T1 our confidence in NE was perfect: p(NE) = 1. But now we consider E, and find that it is evidence against NE, so that at time T2, our confidence in NE is reduced by n: p(NE) = 1 – n at time T2.

We can substitute 1 – n for p(NE) in our equation from B:

(1 – n) + p(ID) + p(UNT) = 1

Which is equivalent to

p(ID) + p(UNT) = n

Both terms on the left side of this equation are greater than 0 and less than 1. The question that The Complaint addresses is, can we rightly conclude that p(ID) varies directly with n? If p(ID) increases when n increases then negative evidence against evolution is positive evidence for Design.

It’s possible, mathematically, for p(ID) not to vary directly with n. It could happen in either of two ways:

Mathematically it’s possible that p(ID) is constant. In that case p(UNT) varies directly with n. Whatever evidence E appears that counts against NE, counts equally in favor of UNT. That’s really just a special case of what I argued in the previous post, however: no matter what evidence comes in at any future time, it cannot under any conditions count in favor of ID. All evidence is evidence for one naturalistic explanation or the other. For the deliverer of The Complaint to resort to that as support would plainly be question-begging.

It’s also mathematically possible that p(ID) varies inversely with n. That would require p(UNT) to vary directly with n, with some multiplicative factor such that when n increased, p(UNT) increased even faster. But that would be strange, to say the least, especially since UNT is by definition unknown. To assume that its probability varies with n that way is to assume that we know something quite unexpected and remarkable about the unknown. For The Complaint to rely on that would be nothing but special pleading.

But it’s worse than that, in reality, for in fact we do know something about UNT: it hasn’t been thought of yet. Richard Dawkins says it doesn’t even exist. So while we can’t eliminate the possibility of UNT completely, we can safely set its value near zero. And the closer p(UNT) is to zero, the more likely it is that p(ID) varies directly with n.

So how shall we assess The Complaint now? We have to allow that it is conceivably legitimate, but only if p(UNT) varies directly but multiplicatively with n. Only if we resort to special pleading, in other words. My conclusion is that negative evidence against evolution can legitimately be taken as positive evidence for ID.

This has been an extended argument with multiple branches. I have attempted in my ham-handed way to illustrate it through the following diagram, which may be useful as a guide to you in re-reading and re-evaluating these three posts. Or (since my space was limited, and so is my experience with these things) it may not be that helpful.

Tweet This Post

Please pass this around, because we (the apologetics community) really need to hear from you:

• Is apologetics relevant in your church?
• Would most of your church members answer that question the same way you just did?
• Are apologists meeting your church’s needs?
• Do you get the sense that we (apologists) are there for you and for your church?
• Does it seem that most apologetics ministry something that takes place in its own world separate from church-level Christianity?
• What could apologists do to serve your needs better?

We really appreciate your input. Thank you!

Tweet This Post

The Faith and Reason blog at USA Today tells us Tim Tebow is going to be featured in a commercial during the Super Bowl. Tebow, who just finished up his senior year of football at the University of Florida, is a natural for appearing on Super Bowl Sunday—many consider him the best college quarterback in the land, if not the best player in any position. (I’m not a Gator fan, by the way!)

What’s raising a ruckus is first, that he is an outspoken evangelical Christian, and second, that the ad is to be sponsored by Focus on the Family. The ad’s content has not been made public in detail, but the sponsor has made it known that it’s a pro-life message. Here’s how Cathy Lynn Grossman at Faith and Reason described the problem:

What’s not to love? What’s the issue here? How about…

I love my family more than you love your family” [sic] v. My love is as good as yours.

Or

God honors my choices, not yours.

That’s the subtext of the Tebow ad, an affront to anyone who would make a different choice, say those who strenuously object to CBS’ plan to air it. They see Focus on the Family — known for its stands against gay marriage, reproductive rights education beyond promoting abstinence, and opposition to legal abortion — delivering it’s [sic] views to a massive family audience on Super Bowl Sunday.

An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year — an event designed to bring Americans together,” said Jehmu Greene, speaking for a a coalition of women who oppose the ad.

Is the Super Bowl the place for this or not? I really wouldn’t want the game turned into a battleground for worldviews. Thirty-second spots just aren’t the right medium for the kind of interaction that solves problems: the reasoned, mutually respectful sort. There might be good reasons to think twice about taking the culture war to a new battlefield. As genuine and as uplifting as Tebow’s story may be (and it genuinely is), someone else could surely concoct a commercial that feels as uplifting from the other side of the issue. Where does that get us?

But last I heard, CBS is going to run the ad anyway. If there are objections to it, here’s hoping they’re not raised for the wrong reasons—like the ones suggested in the excerpts I quoted above. I seriously doubt Tebow (and his mother, who reportedly also is involved in the spot) plans to communicate the first message there (“I love my family more…”). If he did it would be wrong, certainly, but from what I know about him, that’s just not going to happen. The suggestion that he would do that amounts to an advance scare tactic and nothing more.

What about, “God honors my choices, not yours,“ though? That would be wrong, too. It would be wrong in the same way as “Christians hold the truth” is wrong. If the message is to be, “I’ve got God in my hip pocket,” or “God is on my side,” that would be offensive not only to some sectors of a national audience, but to God himself.

I don’t expect them to make God a part of this ad. That’s just a guess, based on the media buzz I’ve seen so far. But since the Faith and Reason blog brought it up, I want to spend some moments on it anyway.

Suppose the message is, “I choose to honor God with my choices.” That’s different. That’s recognizing where honor belongs. It’s recognizing that God doesn’t pick one man or woman’s side over any others.

Note what happened when an angel of the Lord came to Joshua (Joshua 5:13-15):

When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, “What does my lord say to his servant?” And the commander of the Lord’s army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.

This Commander didn’t take Joshua’s side, but that’s not to say there were no sides in the battle. There was the Lord’s side, and there was opposition to the Lord’s side, and of course those who wanted to take the true and victorious side joined with the Lord. Joshua signified that by taking off his sandals in worship before this Commander (who many commentators think may have been the pre-incarnate Christ).

Make no mistake, there are sides in the battle for morality and for life. There is great confusion, though, as to how these sides are formed and named. There are those who think that morality is their own choice (or their community’s or culture’s choice). There are others who think morality is something we all grow into (biologically and/or culturally) and we don’t really have much choice over what we value or honor. For either group, there is morality but there is no moral authority, except in perhaps in history and culture (expressed by law and custom). There are other views besides these, but these are dominant in our culture.

If either of those were actually the case, then it would make sense to ask, “Who are you to say my morality is wrong?” And I think many people think that we are all operating out of that authority-free attitude toward morality. This, I believe, is why they can’t understand anyone saying someone else’s morality was wrong. For them, there’s no basis for saying that, and they think that’s what everyone should think. (That view often turns ironic, of course, when it bleeds over into saying “it’s immoral of you to say that someone else’s morality is wrong.” But I’ll just mention that in passing and leave it aside.)

The issue, as Brad Bright says, is God. If there is a God who is holy, good, and just, then there are sides. There is a right side and a wrong one. The wrong one is whatever opposes God, and the right one is the one that seeks to follow his ways. None of us could ever succeed in enlisting God to our own side, but anyone can enlist to join God on his side. Anyone can learn what God says is right and wrong, and if they speak of right and wrong, they do it not on their own authority but on God’s. If that is “an affront to anyone who would make a different choice,” it’s not just a person-to-person affront. It’s a confrontation with true, transcendent authority.

Anyone can honor God’s choices. I have a feeling that if this commercial says anything about God, choices, and honor, that’s what it’s going to say. We’ll see.

Tweet This Post

Today I’m starting a series of short posts presenting basics of what this means and how to grow in it. The first question is“what does it mean to think Christianly?” Here are ten quick answers. Thinking Christianly means….

1. Recognizing the truth of God in Jesus Christ as the reference point. Charles Colson has rightly said that the answer to the question, “What is Christianity?” is that it is “the explanation for everything.” Of course he did not mean that everything is explained in the Bible, but that the Bible reveals the framework of truth overarching all of reality. To think otherwise is to think other than Christianly.
2. Being a disciple of Jesus Christ. The word “disciple” means “follower-learner;” and it is no accident that one of Jesus’ primary activities on earth was teaching.
3. Subjecting oneself to the discipline of study (1 Timothy 3:15). It’s not always easy. Easy discipleship was never promised us.
4. Developing in the knowledge of God through Scripture primarily, but also through human teachers and through reflection on personal experience.
5. Developing extra-biblical knowledge. If we can learn from the ants (Proverbs 6:6-11), then obviously the world has much to teach us! The men of Issachar were commended (1 Chronicles 12:32) for understanding their times. Paul made reference to two Greek poets in Acts 17 and Titus 1:12. Thinking Christianly is not just thinking biblically in the sense of knowing and thinking about the Bible. It is much wider in its application than that.
6. Honoring questions. Letting the questions work in you; letting them bother you. Being willing to let questions remain questions until answered, and knowing which ones to chase to the ground until you have the answer. Nothing is more disastrous to Christian thinking than, “We shouldn’t ask that question…”
7. Learning how to think well. This means understanding how to think widely, by gaining a breadth of knowledge; to think deeply by spending reflective time on some limited, focused areas of importance; and to think accurately by developing mental tools for excellence in thinking, especially logic.
8. Learning to connect biblical principles to other spheres of life, such as work, law, education, politics, arts, media, and so on.
9. Starting from where you are, whatever your background, education, or aptitudes may be, and…
10. Taking the next steps of growth from there.

What are those next steps? Why is this even important? I’ll be writing more on this in the future.

(Note: don’t let the short-post format mislead you: I’m not trying to communicate that thinking Christianly is a matter of ten easy steps. I’m designing this series in this format as a change of pace from my other posts, which are typically much longer.)

Tweet This Post

I have argued in the past that there are only two possible explanations for biological origins on the table: either there was some intelligence guiding it, or there wasn’t. If the first is true, then some form of Intelligent Design is the right explanation. If not, then the only explanation on offer is unguided neo-Darwinian evolution (hereafter NDE).

At the end of the movie Expelled, Richard Dawkins speaks of the possibility that life on earth was designed, and opines that it might have been if the source of that design were some alien creatures. Many ID proponents found that a funny position for him to take, but in our laughter many of us missed what else he said: that those aliens, if they existed, must have come about by Darwinian processes. For Dawkins, at least, there is only one route up what he calls “Mount Improbable,” and that is the gradualistic road of natural selection acting on random variations.

So if he is right, then there are only two options on the table: Intelligent Design (in some form), or NDE. Now, these are dichotomous: if one is true, the other is false. Mainstream evolutionary scientists insist that NDE is fact, and that we know it is fact. One helpful way to express this certainty is to express it in terms of probabilities: p(NDE)=1 and p(ID)=0.

Because there are no other options on the table or even on the horizon, it would appear that the probability relationship must include only the terms stated so far here. That is, p(NDE) + p(ID)= 1. If the probability of either term is 1, then the probability of the other is 0; if the probability of either term increases or decreases, then the probability of the other term decreases or increases by like measure.

ID theorists argue that certain features of the natural world are inconsistent with NDE. The Cambrian Explosion is one of them. It is hard to explain, strictly on NDE terms, how it came about. This is an example of a negative argument against NDE. This post is not about whether that is true or not; it is about whether, if there is merit to the argument, it counts legitimately as an argument in favor of ID.

And it seems to me that given the binary relationship between ID and NDE, it must; for p(NDE) + p(ID)= 1. Suppose there is some merit to ID’s concerns about the Cambrian Explosion. The effect of that must be to reduce confidence in NDE by some non-zero amount. Supposing also that before this argument was made, the universal consensus was that  p(NDE)=1. To the extent that the Cambrian Explosion argument has merit, that confidence would be reduced, and the result would be that p(NDE) < 1, and p(ID) > 0. (How much those probabilities change depends on how successful the argument actually is.) Confidence in ID (its increase in probability) would be numerically identical to the decrease in confidence in NDE, because the sum of the two probabilities must equal 1.

Thus a negative argument against NDE is a positive argument in favor of ID.

But when I have written of this before, some have objected to my considering only two possibilities: ID (in some form) and NDE. “How do we know these are the only two possibilities?” they ask. “Science marches on, and who knows what we might discover? Why do we assume that ID is the only alternative to NDE? How could we know that?”

We can deal with that this way. Let’s grant that there could be Unknown Possibilities, and call them UP. In that case we would have to say, p(NDE) + p(ID) + p(UP) = 1. That certainly ought to cover all the possible explanations.

There must be some number between 0 and 1 that expresses the probability of Unknown Possibilities — p(UP) — explaining biological origins. How shall we assign that probability? How slippery is that number? Does it always adjust to p(NDE), such that p(NDE) + p(UP) always equals 1? It seems to me some participants in this debate or so opposed to ID, that’s what they would insist: “ID is not the answer. If NDE turns out not to be the answer either, then there must be some other unguided, naturalistic explanation for life.” That’s equivalent to saying p(NDE) + p(UP) always equals 1, and p(ID) always equals 0.

But treating unknown possibilities that way is nothing more than a “no-design of the gaps” argument. It starts with ignorance with respect to the unknown possibilities and moves to an assumption that if NDE is not the answer, then UP is. It does so with no knowledge: “unknown” means unknown, after all. That’s not very impressive reasoning, and in fact I can’t think of any scientific or logical reason to accept it.

What if we take a more balanced view, then? What if we admit the possibility of UP, and we do so in a way that avoid the “no-design of the gaps” error. In that case the most reasonable way to proceed would be to assign p(UP) some more definite value, like, perhaps, 0.2. The number we choose really doesn’t matter, in view of the point I’m trying to make here, which is that a negative argument against NDE can be a positive argument for ID. We could simply call p(UP) an unknown constant and make the same argument we made above, adding K into the equation for that constant. My central point above remains identical to what it was before:

p(NDE) + p(ID) + K = 1. If the probability of either non-K term is 1, then the probability of the other is 0; if the probability of either term increases or decreases, then the probability of the other term decreases or increases by like measure. A negative argument against NDE is still a positive argument for ID.

Tweet This Post

An intriguing and thoughtful view of Biblical meaning, authority, and inerrancy, at Sunday Study.

A “life of risk for God” from the Lyndons. Recently I told my family that one thing I have learned in 30 years of Christian ministry, that I wish I had understood at the start, is the value and joy of taking risks. If I had it to do again I would take more chances, fail more often, and see God work in more amazing ways as I trusted him for more difficult challenges.

We’ve talked about the definition of faith here before. Biblically Driven takes a multi-faceted look at what faith means.

Prosper and Be In Health explores some gray areas and finds them to be, well, gray; and that’s okay.

The church? Or “Doctor Living Stone?” Good biblical insights from the Beretta blog.

Crossroads points out that the Robertson-Haiti “fiasco” isn’t as one-dimensional as many have thought.

BibleSEO.com talks about the biblical doctrine of man. I just saw a Truth Project episode on the same topic Thursday. Next to the doctrine of God, it is without a doubt the most important thing we need to know about reality. As for the doctrine of God (and other teachings), there is a good case built for studying theology at Pastoral Musings.

Tweet This Post

Fish and Cans: Christian Carnival (some number)

Tweet This Post

GAiN has already distributed several hundred thousand meals in Haiti this week. Please help them continue their work.

You could even help with the work in GAiN’s U.S. distribution center, as our church has done many times. This is a church-friendly, family-friendly project that makes a huge difference for needy people not just in Haiti, but around the world.

Tweet This Post

First he linked to Michael S. Roth on critical thinking, who notes how often it gets confused with simply being critical. We learn to be debunkers rather than detectors of true meaning. Part of what Roth has to say is,

In the 18th century there were complaints about an Enlightenment culture that prized only skepticism and that was satisfied only with disbelief. Our contemporary version of this trend, though, has become skeptical even about skepticism. We no longer have the courage of our lack of conviction.

Carter’s other related link was to Taylor Mali, who makes the point even more eloquently in his poem, “Totally like whatever, you know?” which includes,

I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I’m just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

You must, like, if you want to that is, I mean, it would be okay with me if you read? (or better yet, watched and heard?) the entire poem, like, you know, not only to understand the question marks? but also for the hilariously painful truth it reveals. And for the excellent advice he closes with.

Neither Roth nor Mali was first to say this, by the way.

Tweet This Post

Tweet This Post

Do you actually, literally, believe this? The complete lack of any physical evidence for this amazing claim doesn’t trouble you? Do you reject all of science, and if not, how do you disentangle the bits you accept from the bits that are contradicted by your religious beliefs?

Good grief. If this is a thinking Christian position, I shudder to think what an unthinking one might be like….

What shall we make of a criticism like this? I could give a directly worded statement of my position regarding the Flood, which I have done. But that’s not all that Geoff was getting at in this comment. We need to tear apart his premises, some of which are unspoken; for it is often the unspoken premises that most severely undermine good thinking, since we tend to let them enter unprocessed and unfiltered. Here are some of them:

• The Noachian flood is “an amazing claim.”
• There is absolutely no physical evidence for it.
• To believe in the Noachian flood is to reject at least some science.
• That rejection is based on “religious beliefs.”
• There must be some mysterious principle by which I “disentangle” the parts of science I accept and the parts I do not accept.

Let’s examine that last one before proceeding. Science itself, like all of knowledge, involves considerable disentangling, does it not? Consider for example the Tree of Life as constructed under Darwinian principles. On what principle should the branchings be determined? Morphology or genetic similarity? If the latter, then which genes? Different methods yield different results. Don’t these different results require some disentangling? Disentangling is a fact of life, even within science or a single branch of science. Therefore the hoot of derision we hear in Geoff’s, “how do you disentangle…?” is either misdirected or misinformed, or else it’s based on some principle that says that in this case it’s a different kind of problem altogether.

Of course it is the last of those: Geoff obviously thinks disentangle “religious beliefs” from scientific knowledge involves something of a different sort than what happens within science. Let me now suggest that Geoff probably takes these as additional though unspoken premises:

• Science produces knowledge on the basis of physical evidence.
• If there is no physical evidence for the Noachian flood, then there is no evidence for the Noachian flood.
• “Religious belief” is not really knowledge.

The first statement in this set is true but incomplete. Science certainly produces knowledge on the basis of physical evidence, but not only on that basis. Its knowledge is also the product of interpretation, which is filtered through worldview. Uniformitarianism, for example, is an interpretive lens through which historical geology is viewed. It’s not the only one that’s possible. Now, I happen to think uniformitarianism is generally a trustworthy lens, except as it exists as a scaled-down version of methodological and/or philosophical naturalism, which exclude a priori any possibility that the flow of natural history could have experienced some non-linearizing intervention. There are multiple lines of converging evidence to support (not prove, but support) uniformitarianism. There is no physical evidence whatever for naturalism. It is purely a worldview lens.

The last statement in this latter set is just wrong. There are, to be sure, religious beliefs that are false and therefore do not qualify as knowledge. But I don’t think that’s all Geoff probably means, reading between the lines of what he said. There is a rather common view of religion and knowledge that I suspect Geoff would buy into: that religious “belief” and actual knowledge really have little to do with each other, except that where their subject matters overlap, religious “belief” must always yield to actual knowledge. I can “believe” anything I want, but if there’s some actual knowledge out there that my “belief” conflicts with, my “belief” yield to “knowledge.”

But that’s not what religious belief is, at least not in the case of Christianity, the only religious belief system I have in mind here now. I believe that Jesus Christ lived, and died, and rose again. Why do I believe this? Because I know it to be true. How do I know it? On the basis of evidences, reasoning, logic, and so on. I believe that there was a vast flood that destroyed almost all of humanity. How do I know this? On the basis, again, of evidences, reasoning, logic and so on.

The evidence set I’m relying on for both of these is, of course, not primarily scientific, but that doesn’t mean it is not knowledge. I have written at great length on my reasons for believing in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection: reasons based in evidence leading to knowledge. Some say it’s false and therefore not knowledge; I say (and have supported with evidence) that they are wrong: it is true and it is therefore knowledge. Knowledge that I believe; belief that is knowledge.

The Flood is a belief I hold based on evidences as well. The evidence set for it is more complex and involved than that regarding Jesus Christ. It has to do with reasons (reasons!) to believe that God has produced a trustworthy record for us in Genesis. I could go into more detail on this, but I think it would detract from my main point here.

So let me state that main point in full now. (I have been heading toward it but I have not articulated it yet.) Geoff mocks my position here, apparently on the basis of some apparent stupidity revealed by my having to disentangle religious beliefs from scientific knowledge. That’s not what’s going on at all, though. Yes, there is some disentangling to be done, and it’s not all simple or obvious, which is also often the case within science itself, as I have shown. What I am disentangling, though, is not “belief” and “knowledge.” It is knowledge and knowledge.

Do I reject all of science? Heavens, no! But I will doubt—and possibly reject—any part of “science” that is clearly contradicted by other solid knowledge I have. And where there is disentangling to be done, whether it is all within science or whether it involves multiple disciplines of knowledge, I will recognize the questions and confusions for what they are and refrain from jumping to dogmatic conclusions. I am not the least bit embarrassed to claim that as a thinking Christian position.

Tweet This Post

Pat Robertson also responded by suggesting that the earthquake had something to do with Haitians having made a pact with the devil in their practice of voodoo. One’s immediate response is to denounce that kind of statement as judgmental, condescending, and assuming too much freedom to speak for God. I think all of those reactions are appropriate.

The error he made was not, however, in suggesting that God would never punish a nation for gross sin and idolatry. He did it with Sodom and Gomorrah, he did it with almost the whole human race in the flood, and he has warned us of further judgment yet to come. We fallible humans know that crime cannot be glossed over, for it would be unjust, and it would encourage crime to proliferate still more. God, who is all-wise and perfectly good, also practices his justice by giving crime (sin) its due. Only if one’s sin is forgiven through Christ is there freedom from this consequence.

Theoretically, then, if Haiti has made a pact with the devil, then it is possible that God has expressed his judgment on that. But I am not at all sure their sin is greater than America’s, India’s, Russia’s, Morocco’s, or any other country’s. I am really not sure that Robertson knows that God has directed this disaster toward Haiti as a particular punishment for their sin. Above all I cannot see how this meets a terribly wounded country’s need for pastoral help and love.

Robertson could have done far better to echo Jesus’ words following disasters at his time (Luke 13:1-5):

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

It was a warning to the smugly self-righteous. Do we suppose the Haitians are worse sinners than us? Or do recognize that we all stand equal before God, in like danger of perishing unless we turn to God through Christ? There is a true way to life and freedom, but it is the way of confession, humility, and trust.

(See further from Stand to Reason)

Tweet This Post