Thursday, December 05, 2013
Discovering ID
Those unfamiliar with but interested in what Intelligent Design is all about can find out more information in a recently developed curriculum entitled "Discovering Intelligent Design: A Journey into the Scientific Evidence."
Jesus' Childhood Outside The Infancy Narratives (Part 5): Mark
Mark's gospel, like Matthew and Luke, has John anticipating Jesus' ministry before it begins (1:2-8).
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
America's coastal royalty
Victor Davis Hanson writes:
The densely populated coastal corridors from Boston to Washington and from San Diego to Berkeley are where most of America’s big decisions are made.
The rest is here.
Rabbits in precambrian
I mentioned this a few days ago, but I'd like to make a general observation:
Ever since Darwin published his bombshell, you've have professing Christians who are prepared to reinterpret the Bible by any means necessary, or deny the plenary inspiration of Scripture, to accommodate Darwinism. You have professing Christians who commit apostasy. You have professing Christians who feel tremendous intellectual pressure to accept Darwinism. They think the evidence is compelling if not overwhelming.
Now we have to be very cautious about how to interpret residual soft tissue in dinosaur fossils. This requires further study. It would be premature to lay too much weight on this argument. Perhaps there's a natural explanation for how soft tissue can last that long under those conditions.
Mind you, I don't know how that could be tested. Obviously it can't be tested directly. You can't treat samples in the laboratory, wait 60 million years, then check back on their state of preservation.
But my point is this: it does show you how extremely fragile Darwinism is in principle. If it's not naturally possible for soft tissue to survive that long under those conditions, then that fact alone is sufficient to single-handedly falsify Darwinism.
It's a requirement of Darwinism that some organisms go back millions of years. It's a requirement of Darwinism that some organisms precede other organisms by millions of yeas. To my knowledge, there's no give on that issue.
If dinosaur fossils with remnant soft tissue are conventionally dated to 60 million years ago (give or take), and if soft tissue will decay or disintegrate by several orders of magnitude sooner than that, then that falsifies Darwinism at one stroke. That's the only evidence you need. Doesn't matter how much putative evidence can be marshalled for Darwinism.
Whether or not that's a matter of fact remains to be seen. But it's worth noting how vulnerable Darwinism is to disproof, as a matter of principle.
Paul’s Use of the Old Testament in Romans 9.10–18
Abasciano is a leading Arminian NT scholar, reviewed by a leading Reformed NT scholar:
http://thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/review/pauls_use_of_the_old_testament_in_romans_9.10-18
http://thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/review/pauls_use_of_the_old_testament_in_romans_9.10-18
The tortoise and the hare
I. The scientific method
David Berlinski once said:
Where science has a method, it is trivial – look carefully, cut the cards, weigh the evidence, don’t let yourself be fooled, do an experiment if you can. These are principles of kennel management as well as quantum theory. Where science isn’t trivial, it has no method. What method did Einstein follow, or Pauli, or Kekulé? Kekulé saw the ring structure of benzene in what he called a waking dream. Some method.
My real view is that there is only one science, and that is mathematics, and that the physical sciences are really forms of experimental mathematics. The idea that there is out there a physical world which just happens to lend itself to mathematical description has always seemed to me to be incoherent. There is only one world – the universe, in fact, and it has the essential properties of a mathematical model. For reasons that we cannot even begin to understand, that model interacts with out senses, and so without measuring devices, allowing us to pretty much confirm conclusions antecedently reached by pure thought.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GWum5O7pSlFVu8V5P5HciOnVxbSl5Jg67ZRwf1IZAGo/edit?pli=1
This claim is worth exploring. For one thing, questions of scientific method crop up in debates over the relation between theology and science. Do theological claims violate the scientific method? Is there a scientific method?
It's easy to find statements of the scientific method on the Internet. According to one source:
The scientific method has four steps
1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.
http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/appendixe/appendixe.html
Sounds very straightforward and uncontroversial. But if you study works on the philosophy of science, that summary proves to be deceptively simple and overly confident. If you consult Gary Gutting's entry on "Scientific Methodology" in the Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Science, the scientific method is very much up for grabs.
II. The Divine foot in the door
One reason debates over scientific methodology are significant is that atheists like to invoke "the scientific method" to preemptively disqualify theological claims. In a refreshing moment of candor, one exponent famously or infamously admitted that:
http://www.drjbloom.com/Public%20files/Lewontin_Review.htm
Lewontin is half right. Admitting the possibility of miracles, admitting the existence of an interventionist God, introduces an element of unpredictability into science. That's because personal agents exercise rational discretion, unlike inanimate natural process which are uniform–absent interference from an outside agent.
If, however, science is a quest for a true description or true explanation of natural events, and if an interventionist God does, indeed, exist, then like it or not, scientists have no choice but to bend to reality, however unwelcome that may be.
In addition, Lewontin overstates his case. Granting God's existence doesn't have the destabilizing consequences he imagines. God is not a gremlin who tampers with laboratory experiments to throw off the results. Christian theology typically has a strong doctrine of providence.
III. The tortoise and the hare
Is there a scientific method? One difficulty is the diversity of science. Given all the different branches of science, is there one method that captures what every scientific discipline does?
But another difficulty is the difference between two different kinds of scientists. On the one hand you have the plodders. They are patient observers and chroniclers of nature. They conduct tedious experiments. They proceed in steps.
This is not to be disdained. It produces a lot of useful science. It's how most scientific practitioners must proceed–given their intellectual limitations.
On the other hand, the greatest scientific minds tend to proceed in skips. They have flashes of insight. Physical intuition. They resort to analogies and thought-experiments. They have no method. They can't be emulated. Darwin was a tortoise to von Neumann's hare. Edison was a tortoise to Feymann's hare. To take some examples:
During my stay in London I resided in Clapham Road....I frequently, however, spent my evenings with my friend Hugo Mueller....We talked of many things but most often of our beloved chemistry. One fine summer evening I was returning by the last bus, riding outside as usual, through the deserted streets of the city....I fell into a reverie, and lo, the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. Whenever, hitherto, these diminutive beings had appeared to me, they had always been in motion. Now, however, I saw how, frequently, two smaller atoms united to form a pair: how a larger one embraced the two smaller ones; how still larger ones kept hold of three or even four of the smaller: whilst the whole kept whirling in a giddy dance. I saw how the larger ones formed a chain, dragging the smaller ones after them but only at the ends of the chains....The cry of the conductor: "Clapham Road," awakened me from my dreaming; but I spent a part of the night in putting on paper at least sketches of these dream forms. This was the origin of the "Structural Theory.(6)
During my stay in Ghent, I lived in elegant bachelor quarters in the main thoroughfare. My study, however, faced a narrow side-alley and no daylight penetrated it....I was sitting writing on my textbook, but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by the repeated visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation; long rows sometimes more closely fitted together all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke; and this time also I spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences of the hypothesis. (6)
http://dwb4.unl.edu/Chem/CHEM869E/CHEM869ELinks/www.woodrow.org/teachers/ci/1992/Kekule.html
http://www.fdavidpeat.com/bibliography/essays/divine.htm
Linus Pauling was lying in bed with a cold when he managed to build accurate models of protein structure, largely based on his unmatched feel for such numbers. And every chemist can learn from the incomparable intuition of Enrico Fermi who tossed pieces of paper in the air when the first atomic bomb went off, and used the distance at which they fell to calculate a crude estimate of the yield.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/05/24/what-is-chemical-intuition/?print=true
Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.
I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate - two to one [Note: Feynman mis-remembers here---the factor of 2 is the other way]. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, ``Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it's two to one?''
I don't remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass particles is, and how all the accelerations balance to make it come out two to one.
I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there's the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was ``playing'' - working, really - with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things.
It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html
- Salviati: If we take two bodies whose natural speeds are different, it is clear that on uniting the two, the more rapid one will be partly retarded by the slower, and the slower will be somewhat hastened by the swifter. Do you not agree with me in this opinion?
- Simplicio: You are unquestionably right.
- Salviati: But if this is true, and if a large stone moves with a speed of, say, eight, while a smaller stone moves with a speed of four, then when they are united, the system will move with a speed of less than eight. Yet the two stones tied together make a stone larger than that which before moved with a speed of eight: hence the heavier body now moves with less speed than the lighter, an effect which is contrary to your supposition. Thus you see how, from the assumption that the heavier body moves faster than the lighter one, I can infer that the heavier body moves more slowly...
- And so, Simplicio, we must conclude therefore that large and small bodies move with the same speed, provided only that they are of the same specific gravity.
Another possible action of the demon is that he can observe the molecules and only open the door if a molecule is approaching the trap door from the right. This would result in all the molecules ending up on the left side. Again this setup can be used to run an engine. This time one could place a piston in the partition and allow the gas to flow into the piston chamber thereby pushing a rod and producing useful mechanical work. This imaginary situation seemed to contradict the second law of thermodynamics.
http://www.auburn.edu/~smith01/notes/maxdem.htm
Newton looked at these two formulas for the distance a cannonball would travel horizontally and vertically, and he noticed that the distance the cannonball would fall in a given time interval t was constant, since a is constant. However, the distance the cannonball travels horizontally is dependent on its speed --- something he could control. So, if he changed the speed of the cannonball, he could change its trajectory, as illustrated below
Then Newton realized that if he chose just the right velocity, the trajectory of the cannonball would curve at exactly the same rate the Earth (being spherical) curves, and therefore the cannonball would always stay the same height above the ground. In doing so, he balances the inertia of the cannonball (which makes it want to continue traveling in a straight line, and therefore away from the Earth) against the acceleration due to the Earth's gravity (which pulls the cannonball toward the center of the Earth).
The result is that the cannonball orbits the Earth, always accelerating toward the Earth, but never getting any closer. That may sound like a strange statement, but remember acceleration is the change in velocity, which is both the speed and direction of an object. In this case, the cannonball's direction is changing, and therefore it experiences an acceleration even though its speed doesn't change. (You experience this kind of acceleration when you go around a corner at constant speed in a car.)
Newton figured out that the speed of the cannonball was related to the acceleration due to the Earth's gravity (a) and the radius of the orbit (r; measured from the center of the orbit; i.e., the center of the Earth) as follows:
One cool thing about this relation is that even though Newton figured it out for a cannonball orbiting the Earth, it applies to any object in circular motion. Because of inertia, objects always want to travel in straight lines; in order to make them curve into circular motion, they have to be accelerated somehow. For Newton's cannonball, the Earth provided the acceleration. For a ball on a string, the tension in the string provides the acceleration. For your car going around a corner, the engine, through the tires and the friction between the tires and the road, provide the acceleration. In all cases, the amount of acceleration you'll need is described by the above equation, and is dependent on how fast the object is moving, and how tight a circular path it needs to travel on.
http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/physics/astronomy/astr101/specials/newtscannon.html
Now imagine that a (very fast) train is travelling along the track in the direction from A toward B and it so happens that the lightning flashes at A and B hit the ends of the train. The question is: “Do the flashes hit the train simultaneously?” As far as our observer Mike is concerned, as he saw the flashes together the answer must be “yes”. If the flashes hit the ends of the train, the ends must have been at A and B at the moments of the flashes. But what of an observer N, Nina, inside the train, let us say at the mid point of the train?
The same definition of simultaneity applies in the train’s frame of reference. If the observer sees two flashes which have travelled equal distances at the same time they must have been simultaneous in that frame of reference.
So, do observers in the train also see the two lightning strokes A and B as simultaneous? Imagine that Nina happens to be opposite Mike, that is, also half way between A and B at the moment the flashes occurred (as determined in the embankment frame). See diagram M1. This is NOT the time at which Mike and Nina see the flashes. They see them a little after this moment when the light reaches them – we need to take into account the ‘look-back time’, that is, the time taken for light to travel from the flashes to the observer.
For Mike to see the events as simultaneous, the light must have come from A and B and met at his position. Remember that Mike is at rest relative to the embankment. Nina in the train, however, is racing away from A and towards B and so will see the flash from B first (diagram M2) because it will have less distance to travel. Note that we could not take a photo and see what is represented in the diagrams! (The camera only ‘sees’ the light when it enters the lens.) They must be seen as ‘reconstructions’ of what must have been. Diagram M3 shows the moment that Mike sees both flashes and diagram M4 shows the moment a little later again when Nina sees the flash from A.
http://www.vicphysics.org/documents/teachers/unit3/EinsteinsTrainGedanken.pdf
Isaac Newton conducted an experiment with a bucket containing water which he described in 1689. The experiment is quite simple and any reader of this article can try the experiment for themselves. All one needs to do is to half fill a bucket with water and suspend it from a fixed point with a rope. Rotate the bucket, twisting the rope more and more. When the rope has taken all the twisting that it can take, hold the bucket steady and let the water settle, then let go. What happens? The bucket starts to rotate because of the twisted rope. At first the water in the bucket does not rotate with the bucket but remains fairly stationary. Its surface remains flat. Slowly, however, the water begins to rotate with the bucket and as it does so the surface of the water becomes concave. Here is Newton's own description:-
... the surface of the water will at first be flat, as before the bucket began to move; but after that, the bucket by gradually communicating its motion to the water, will make it begin to revolve, and recede little by little from the centre, and ascend up the sides of the bucket, forming itself into a concave figure (as I have experienced), and the swifter the motion becomes, the higher will the water rise, till at last, performing its revolutions in the same time with the vessel, it becomes relatively at rest in it.Soon the spin of the bucket slows as the rope begins to twist in the opposite direction. The water is now spinning faster than the bucket and its surface remains concave.
What is the problem? Is this not precisely what we would expect to happen? Newton asked the simple question: why does the surface of the water become concave? One is inclined to reply to Newton: that is an easy question - the surface becomes concave since the water is spinning. But after a moment's thought one has to ask what spinning means. It certainly doesn't mean spinning relative to the bucket as is easily seen. After the bucket is released and starts spinning then the water is spinning relative to the bucket yet its surface is flat. When friction between the water and the sides of the bucket has the two spinning together with no relative motion between them then the water is concave. After the bucket stops and the water goes on spinning relative to the bucket then the surface of the water is concave. Certainly the shape of the surface of the water is not determined by the spin of the water relative to the bucket.
Newton then went a step further with a thought experiment. Try the bucket experiment in empty space. He suggested a slightly different version for this thought experiment. Tie two rocks together with a rope, he suggested, and go into deep space far from the gravitation of the Earth or the sun. One certainly can't physically try this today any more than one could in 1689. Rotate the rope about its centre and it will become taut as the rocks pull outwards. The rocks will create an outward force pulling the rope tight. If one does this in an empty universe then what can it mean for the system to be rotating. There is nothing to measure rotation with respect to. Newton deduced from this thought experiment that there had to be something to measure rotation with respect to, and that something had to be space itself. It was his strongest argument for the idea of absolute space.
Now Newton returned to his bucket experiment. What one means by spin, he claimed, was spin with respect to absolute space. When the water is not rotating with respect to absolute space then its surface is flat but when it spins with respect to absolute space its surface is concave. However he wrote in the Principia:-
I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as they are well known to all. Absolute space by its own nature, without reference to anything external, always remains similar and unmovable.He was not too happy with this as perhaps one can see from other things he wrote:-
It is indeed a matter of great difficulty to discover and effectually to distinguish the true motions of particular bodies from the apparent, because the parts of that immovable space in which these motions are performed do by no means come under the observations of our senses.
Leibniz, on the other hand, did not believe in absolute space. He argued that space only provided a means of encoding the relation of one object to another. It made no sense to claim that the universe was rotating or moving through space. He supported his argument with philosophical reasoning, but faced with Newton's bucket, he had no answer. He was forced to admit:-
I grant there is a difference between absolute true motion of a body and a mere relative change of its situation with respect to another body.For around 200 years Newton's arguments in favour of absolute space were hardly challenged. One person to question Newton was George Berkeley. He claimed that the water became concave not because it was rotating with respect to absolute space but rather because it was rotating with respect to the fixed stars. This did not convince many people that Newton might have been wrong. In 1870 Carl Neumann suggested a similar situation to the bucket when he imagined that the whole universe consisted only of a single planet. He suggested: wouldn't it be shaped like an ellipsoid if it rotated and a sphere if at rest? The first serious challenge to Newton, however, came from Ernst Mach, who rejected Neumann's test as inconclusive. However, he wrote in 1872 in History and Root of the Principle of the Conservation of Energy:-
If we think of the Earth at rest and the other celestial bodies revolving around it, there is no flattening of the Earth ... at least according to our usual conception of the law of inertia. Now one can solve the difficulty in two ways; either all motion is absolute, or our law of inertia is wrongly expressed ... I [prefer] the second. The law of inertia must be so conceived that exactly the same thing results from the second supposition as from the first.We quote from an 1883 work by Mach on Newton's bucket:-
Newton's experiment with the rotating water bucket teaches us only that the rotation of water relative to the bucket walls does not stir any noticeable centrifugal forces; these are prompted, however, by its rotation relative to the mass of the Earth and the other celestial bodies. Nobody can say how the experiment would turn out, both quantitatively and qualitatively, if the bucket walls became increasingly thicker and more massive -- eventually several miles thick.Mach's argument is that Newton dismissed relative motion too readily. Certainly it was not rotation of the water relative to the bucket that should be considered but rotation of the water relative to all the matter in the universe. If that matter wasn't there and all that there was in the universe was the bucket and water, then the surface of the water would never become concave. He disagreed with Newton's thought experiment based on two rocks tied together in completely empty space. If the experiment were carried out in a universe with no matter other than the rocks and the rope, then the conclusion one can deduce from Mach's idea is that one could not tell if the system was rotating. The rope would never become taut since rotation was meaningless. Clearly since this experiment cannot be performed it is impossible to test whether Mach or Newton is right.
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/PrintHT/Newton_bucket.html
Jesus' Childhood Outside The Infancy Narratives (Part 4): Luke And Acts
It's often noted that Luke's material on Jesus' childhood extends into chapter 3 of his gospel by means of the genealogy that appears there. Not only does Luke continue with some childhood material in chapter 3, but he even does so after first beginning his narration of Jesus' adult ministry. How likely is it that Luke would do that if he wanted people to view the infancy account as belonging to a different genre, not having much of a connection to Jesus' adult life, or some such thing? (The closeness of the infancy material to the prologue in Luke 1:1-4, which has such significant implications for genre and historical accuracy, is likewise problematic for critics of the infancy narratives.) Notice that Luke 3 doesn't just have a genealogy of Jesus, but also includes allusions to the virginal conception ("being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph" in 3:23; on the likely allusion in verse 38, see here).
Rap on rap
Recently, there was an NCFIC panel discussion on Christian (or Reformed) rap music which ignited a firestorm. One blogger has transcribed their comments:
I'll be using his transcript as a point of reference. Before commenting on the specifics, I'll mention a few preliminaries.
i) Let's me say at the outset that I thought the panelists' statements were intellectually atrocious. I won't be defending their statements..
Many Christians have taken offense at what was said. I'd just like to remind the offended parties that when you're offended, you're giving someone power over you. You're allowing them to control you to some degree. Letting them to push your buttons. Make you angry.
Disapproval is better than taking offense. You can disapprove of something without ceding self-control to a second-party.
ii) Some critics have accused the panelists of racism. Of stereotyping rappers. I'd just point out that, even assuming that that their attitude reflects racial stereotyping, it didn't originate with them. Unfortunately, there's an influential segment of the black community that indulges in self-stereotyping. It's a damaging stereotype, but it isn't primarily a case of outsiders projecting that onto young black men. Rather, there's a subset of the black community that's projecting and magnifying that image. To quote a prominent black linguist:
Anyone who grew up in urban America during the eighties won’t soon forget the young men strolling down streets, blaring this sonic weapon from their boom boxes, with defiant glares daring anyone to ask them to turn it down.Hip-hop exploded into popular consciousness at the same time as the music video, and rappers were soon all over MTV, reinforcing in images the ugly world portrayed in rap lyrics. Video after video features rap stars flashing jewelry, driving souped-up cars, sporting weapons, angrily gesticulating at the camera, and cavorting with interchangeable, mindlessly gyrating, scantily clad women.But we’re sorely lacking in imagination if in 2003—long after the civil rights revolution proved a success, at a time of vaulting opportunity for African Americans, when blacks find themselves at the top reaches of society and politics—we think that it signals progress when black kids rattle off violent, sexist, nihilistic, lyrics, like Russians reciting Pushkin...How helpful is rap’s sexism in a community plagued by rampant illegitimacy and an excruciatingly low marriage rate?The idea that rap is an authentic cry against oppression is all the sillier when you recall that black Americans had lots more to be frustrated about in the past but never produced or enjoyed music as nihilistic as 50 Cent or N.W.A. On the contrary, black popular music was almost always affirmative and hopeful. Nor do we discover music of such violence in places of great misery like Ethiopia or the Congo—unless it’s imported American hip-hop.By the eighties, the ghetto had become a ruleless war zone, where black people were their own worst enemies. It would be silly, of course, to blame hip-hop for this sad downward spiral, but by glamorizing life in the “war zone,” it has made it harder for many of the kids stuck there to extricate themselves. Seeing a privileged star like Sean Combs behave like a street thug tells those kids that there’s nothing more authentic than ghetto pathology, even when you’ve got wealth beyond imagining.The attitude and style expressed in the hip-hop “identity” keeps blacks down. Almost all hip-hop, gangsta or not, is delivered with a cocky, confrontational cadence that is fast becoming—as attested to by the rowdies at KFC—a common speech style among young black males. Similarly, the arm-slinging, hand-hurling gestures of rap performers have made their way into many young blacks’ casual gesticulations, becoming integral to their self-expression. The problem with such speech and mannerisms is that they make potential employers wary of young black men and can impede a young black’s ability to interact comfortably with co-workers and customers. The black community has gone through too much to sacrifice upward mobility to the passing kick of an adversarial hip-hop “identity.”On a deeper level, there is something truly unsettling and tragic about the fact that blacks have become the main agents in disseminating debilitating—dare I say racist—images of themselves. Rap guru Russell Simmons claims that “the coolest stuff about American culture—be it language, dress, or attitude—comes from the underclass. Always has and always will.” Yet back in the bad old days, blacks often complained—with some justification—that the media too often depicted blacks simply as uncivilized. Today, even as television and films depict blacks at all levels of success, hip-hop sends the message that blacks are . . . uncivilized. I find it striking that the cry-racism crowd doesn’t condemn it.For those who insist that even the invisible structures of society reinforce racism, the burden of proof should rest with them to explain just why hip-hop’s bloody and sexist lyrics and videos and the criminal behavior of many rappers wouldn’t have a powerfully negative effect upon whites’ conception of black people.http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_3_how_hip_hop.html
Just to clarify–in case clarification is necessary–I'm not suggesting that Christian rappers or Reformed rappers are analogous to gangsta rappers. I'm just making the point that this harmful stereotype is indigenous. It's not something middle-aged white guys invented.
iii) Let's spend a little more time on that image. Needless to say, street gangs aren't a black distinctive. Various ethnicities have street gangs. I once saw a movie (The Warriors) which showcased, in surreal terms, a multiethnic rainbow of New York city street gangs.
To some degree this may be intensified by boys raised by single mothers. But I wouldn't be surprised if the militancy of gangsta rap isn't heightened by the "war on drugs," where the inner city is the battlefield, and police in paramilitary regalia spearhead the crackdown. That might well provoke a counterinsurgent attitude.
I'd also note that this goes back to an older debate in the civil rights community. On the one hand you had the nonviolent philosophy of Martin Luther King. On the other hand, you had the more confrontational approach of Malcolm X or the Black Panthers. King's tactical and strategic philosophy proved to be more realistic, although there are times and places where that would be ineffectual.
iv) I don't know much about rap music. I don't listen to rap music. Life is short, and I make snap decisions about where to invest my time.
From what I've heard of it, I don't care for rap music. That's an aesthetic judgment. So I practice studied avoidance.
From what I've heard of it, I don't think of rap music as music. I don't mean that as a put down. But to judge by what I've heard, the musical element seems to be secondary or incidental.
From what I can tell, rap music is basically lyric poetry. To be real music, as I define music, it would have to have a melody, and preferably harmony.
From what I've heard, rap music is basically spoken verse, with a bit of musical accompaniment. I don't know if the accompaniment is for the benefit of the rapper, like a metronome, to help him maintain the structured flow. Or if it's for the benefit of the audience. Or both.
If, in fact, rap music is a subgenre of lyric poetry, then it has the potential to be a high art form, like Shakespeare or Homer. I'd evaluate it mainly on rhetorical rather than musical grounds.
But my classification could be mistaken. That's my initial impression.
v) Now for some of the panelists:
Dan HornI would be very against reformed rap. Let me tell you why. Words aren't enough. God cares about how we deliver the message. And there's two aspects of the delivery. The purpose of songs is to instruct. It's also to praise God, it's also to worship. But its to instruct and to admonish. We’re given the words because we’re a word-based religion, the emphasis needs to be on the words.
This is incoherent. He begins by saying "words are not enough," but proceeds to say we're a word-based religion, the emphasis needs to be on the words. So his criticism is self-contradictory.
And I would argue with the rap [sic], with the heavy beat, with those things that the physical distraction is so much that the focus is no longer on the words.
Of course, Baroque music, like Handel and Vivaldi, is very rhythmical.
And music should be about helping us to remember concepts that we need to remember. And help us to carry forward. Music is a wonderful tool as a memory aid.
I disagree with his philosophy of vocal music. I think the function of vocal music is to translate a verbal medium into a nonverbal medium, where sound is a metaphor for ideas and feelings.
And rap is about drawing attention to the rapper, drawing attention to how his skill is different than anybody else’s skill.
I don't see anything wrong with people using their God-given talents. What about a talented preacher?
Scott Aniol When it comes the art form of hip-hop, very few will disagree with the cultural milieu out of which it grew. What it was intended to express by those who created the art form.
Actually, I think it's easy to detach the form (lyric poetry) from the content.
Geoff BotkinYes, amen to that. “Do not be conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” And what concerns me about this this so-called “art form” - it's a picture of weakness and surrender on the part of people who think they're serving God. And they're not. They’re serving their own flesh. They’re caving into the world. They are disobedient cowards. They're not really willing to engage in the fight that needs to be engaged. Scott, thank you for saying that. If we are reformers we are going to change and fully redeem and replace the world. We're not going to make ourselves friends of the world and enemies of God. And so this is what concerns me about anytime Christians, in a cowardly way, follow the world instead of changing it and confronting it. And confronting the antithesis. And we need be doing this in every every possible art from - including film, including other kinds of music. And so, Scott, just to summarize: Reformed rap is the cowardly following of the world instead of confronting and changing it.
That's a screed instead of an argument. He gives us no reason to share his assessment.
Joe Morecraft But I think what we are all saying is that some forms of music cannot be separated from the culture out of which they come.
That's worth considering. But as it stands, it's just a general assertion. He hasn't proven it. And even if it were true, he'd have to show how that applies to the specific case of Christian rap.
That’s an important thing to bear in mind. When we have young men or women the church let's say the young men start wearing an earring. I say, “What's the purpose of the earring? The pierced ear?” And they'll say, “Well I just like it.” or “I think it's nice,” or “it’s the fashion,” and I say, “Do you know why it is the fashion? Do you know who you're identifying with when you wear this earring? You're not identifying yourself with the godly men in the church but with an entirely different culture out there. And same thing with certain forms of music.
I admit that as a middled-aged man, I find the sight of young men with earrings slightly jarring. But I know that's just my dated cultural conditioning. When I came of age compared to their decade, their generation. I bracket my reaction. I don't judge anyone on that basis.
There's a genuine problem when teenage boys cultivate an effeminate appearance. But earrings are part of the pirate iconography–at least in Hollywood films. So even from a cultural standpoint, that, by itself, doesn't send a gender-bender signal.
Likewise, I've noticed lately that some young men are wearing their hair longer. I notice that because that's how boys my age wore their hair back in the 70s. We've come full circle.
And I think also that we must not use music in the worship of God where the words get lost in the music. And all people hear is the music.
As I've said before, I think that reflects a defective understanding of vocal music (see above).
And I think the music by which we sing must fit the majesty of the words, and the dignity of the words.
The Psalter ranges from highbrow to lowbrow.
You remember what it says the Old Testament? The purpose of music is to raise sounds of joy. That is to help us in our joyful praise of God.
Surely he can't be serious. Is the Psalter always joyful? The Psalter ranges from elation to despair, vengeance, abandonment. Serenity and violence.
Or is it basically the tune that we’re after?
Since the rap music I've heard is pretty tuneless, I find that criticism ironic. But I'm judging by a very small sample.
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
Through atheist eyes
Here is a reddit thread where atheists including several apostates weigh in on Calvinism. Warning: bad language.
That said, it's interesting to see them admit the following:
[joshTheGoods] As an aside, Calvinism is IMHO the most honest sect of Christianity.
[deleted] I agree with your aside there. While I'll never understand the hold christianity has on them, the Calvinists truly try to understand their religion philosophically through the scriptures and I've had some interesting debates.
[deleted] To be fair, this ["predetermination"] does make some kind of sense...
[tomjen] The problem with Calvinism isn't that it doesn't make sense. It does (leaving aside the god part).
[SenorStabby] Have you ever heard of compatibilism? It's pretty reasonable
[P3chorin] I don't know, it seems logical to me. Christians usually believe, even if they believe in free will, that God is omniscient. Therefore, God knows that atheists/agnostics/whatever have a personal block in believing in him, and therefore he is damning them for being what he made them.
[WizardCap] I don't know if sense it the word you'd want to use here, but I do agree that it's consistent. You'd expect some type of omni-begat creature to already have the entire course of the history and future of the universe in mind, ergo, it would already know how everything works out.
Ufology and miracles
Fred Butler Pls explain how the hysterical claims of UFO activity in this video http://bit.ly/1g2LvoY differ frm those regarding modern miracles.
Here we go again. MacArthurites resent being compared to Hume and secular debunkers, yet they keep doing it. Do they live in a bubble?
i) Fred's ufological parallel is a standard tactic which atheists deploy against Biblical miracles like the Resurrection. Imagine an atheist saying "Please explain how hysterical claims of UFO activity differ from those regarding the Resurrection?" If fact, you don't have to imagine it. Atheists do it.
ii) BTW, notice that Fred refers to modern miracles in general. MacArthurites often say they don't deny modern miracles, just charismatic miracles.
This is a dilemma for MacArthurites. How do they deal with reported charismatic miracles? One way is to mount a preemptive strike by discrediting testimonial evidence. Comparing it to stories of alleged alien abductees.
Problem is: testimonial evidence for charismatic miracles isn't essentially different from testimonial evidence for modern miracles generally. So, in order to launch a first strike against modern charismatic miracles, consistent MacArthurites must preemptively discredit testimonial evidence for all modern miracles to thereby discredit the subset of charismatic miracles. But in that case, their claim to believe in modern miracles is disingenuous.
iii) Fred imagines that he can discredit modern miracles without discrediting Biblical miracles by appealing to the presuppositional authority of Scripture. But there are two problems with that move:
a) As I've argued on more than one occasion, the cessationist argument is essentially evidentialist rather than presuppositional.
b) In addition, take a passage like 1 Cor 15:6: Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
Paul isn't appealing to apostles or prophets in that verse. That's part of his overall argument, but not here. Here, Paul is appealing to the evidentiary value of ordinary, uninspired, fallible observers. But in that event, Fred can't erect a wall between 1 Cor 15:6 type witnesses and ostensible witnesses to modern miracles.
Bergoglio’s Gig: De-centralize
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Why did the Vatican remove the pope’s document? |
According to Magister, these distinctives offer: “More autonomy for the national episcopal conferences. And more room for different cultures. The two points on which ‘Evangelii Gaudium’ most distinguishes itself from the magisterium of the previous popes”.
[By the way, some of you may have noticed that The original file has been removed from the Vatican website and replaced with the graphic nearby, leaving only the difficult-to-navigate .pdf file available. I don’t know why they did this, but fortunately, I have saved the original .html document and republished a .pdf version of it here. All the links seem to be intact.]
(JB note: Interestingly, the original article seems to have re-appeared. It would be interesting to compare the two versions to see what edits the Vatican made.)
Magister seems to have gotten to the heart of what Bergoglio is trying to accomplish.
Jesus' Childhood Outside The Infancy Narratives (Part 3): Matthew
Critics often isolate the infancy narrative chapters of Matthew and Luke from the remainder of the two gospels to a large extent. Supposedly, the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke leave little trace in the remainder of the two gospels or are even contradicted by what follows. So, it's important to note how the two gospel authors proceed after giving us their infancy material.
Michael Kruger: ‘The Question of Canon’
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Dr. Michael Kruger:
‘The Question of Canon’
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Given the nature of this work, it addresses questions presented by both the liberal/critical scholarship that deals with the canon issue, and also those issues brought up by Roman Catholic apologists to suggest that Rome somehow had the “authority” to fix the canon of the New Testament.
Hurtado says:
Kruger’s main thesis is that the dynamics that led to a NT canon involved phenomena from the earliest stages of the circulation of writings that came to form that canon. That is, the formation of a NT canon wasn’t a result solely of later and “external” forces, but instead there were factors at work from the earliest period.
These include the way that Paul invested his letters with his apostolic authority, such that they have been described as apostolic “surrogates”, conveying to his churches his teachings on matters when he was unable to make a personal visit (just note, e.g., the tone of 1 Cor. 14:37-38! or Gal 1:6-9!). Likewise, note the explicit purpose-statement of the author of the Gospel of John (20:30-31), which implies a strong desire that the writing may function in confirming the faith of readers.
Kruger also argues that, although a closed canon of NT writings took a few centuries, in the earlier period there was already indication of a concern to distinguish between writings that were to be taken as “scripture” and those that should not be so regarded. So, again, a quasi-canonical dynamic seems to have been at work early on.
Kruger offers what he calls an “intrinsic model” as a complement to the emphasis on the final stages of can formation in much current NT scholarship. I find his analysis to offer a nuanced and cogent picture that more adequately captures the historical complexity that led to “the New Testament.”
The Adam Quest
A forthcoming book with a range of contributors:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Adam-Quest-Scientists-Wrestling/dp/1400205646
The chapters by Kurt Wise, Todd Wood, and Fazale Rana ought to be the most useful.
Even though I disagree with the overall position of Conway Morris, he's an astute critic of naturalistic evolution, with many interesting facts at his fingertips.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Adam-Quest-Scientists-Wrestling/dp/1400205646
The chapters by Kurt Wise, Todd Wood, and Fazale Rana ought to be the most useful.
Even though I disagree with the overall position of Conway Morris, he's an astute critic of naturalistic evolution, with many interesting facts at his fingertips.
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