Rick Santelli, Space Week, the creation/evolution standoff and boogeymen

This morning, 11/14/2014, approximately 8:30 am EST, I had CNBC on, and financial commentator Rick Santelli, speaking on the recent drop in oil prices and its effect on oil traders, said, roughly (as it was verbal, and a one time only broadcast, I wrote it down from memory as best as I could immediately), this: When highly educated people have any boogymen at all, avoid everything that comes out of their mouth, for the most part. About a week ago, my 8 year old grandson brought home from school his weekly report, which was poorer than normal. As an incentive to better work, he couldn't watch cartoons for the next week. There are other channels he is allowed to watch, one of which is Science Channel. In coordination with the attempted landing of a vehicle on a comet, they have been holding Space Week. This featured a number of programs on the end of the universe. I expect the normal bias to the scientific status quo on such programs, which they have assuredly delivered. I could not help but notice the number of times one of their guest astrophysicists used the word "perhaps" or another word indicating theory, possibility, and not fact. From logic class in college, one thing I remember is that if one has a group of connected if/then statements, and one is invalid, the whole argument if invalid. These people are much brighter than I am, (and were even before my brain started declining a few years ago), and probably know this (although, being natural science majors, they may have never had to actually study logic), but the problem is that they treat the intellectual Christian position as a boogeyman, to use Santelli's term, above. In the programs I saw, they once brought up the 1840's Bishop Usher position of the earth being 6000 years old. That is an easy dismissal of Christian thought, although, since I was never a part of an organizational church of the fundamentalist flavor, I have never known a highly educated person who held that position, except for one person who was an accountant and was going around giving a presentation on that view, done at a level at appeared directed to middle school students. I saw this on a college campus; I threw him a difficult question and he sidestepped it. The students sat there and said nothing, possibly in kindness to the person who arranged for his presentation. Of course, the opposite goes also. I remember seeing a TV program upholding the 6000 year "theory" which had a person who called himself a pastor speaking. In it, he (I don't remember his name), in somewhat addressing the difficult scientific questions concerning his thesis, said that he was a pastor, not a scientist. Then why don't you get a scientist who is a Christian? Unspoken answer: he doesn't have any, that there is another point of view, and the Christians who have training in the natural sciences are all over there. When I heard Santelli say that sentence above, it suddenly occur that both groups avoid the difficult questions like boogeymen, in part because the explanation goes over the head of almost all of us. To keep repeating in isn't, depending on the side, either scientific or apologetic teaching, it's public relations. At this point, its marketing almost in the same ilk as the Chevy commercial of about 20 years ago which featured cars at night in time lapse photography going around a freeway interchange, looking like a bunch of comet tails, and ending with an overweight woman dancing by a Chevy, i.e. no facts in the commercial except for stating the brand name. Scientists are in a sense scared of their inability to persuade a large portion of the population of their position, and the short earth creation folks the same. If I was thinking politically, I could have taken off in that direction with almost every national leader who has ever held power, but, as the political saying goes, all politics is local, and, therefore, eventually passing to another passing point.

Book Review: Science Creation and the Bible by Carlson and Longman

Book Review:

            Richard F. Carlson and Tremper Longman III, “Science, Creation, and the Bible”, Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011.

            Richard F. Carlson is a professor of physics who also hols a masters degree in theology.  Carlson edited “Science and Christianity: Four Views” in 2000.  Tremper Longman III is a long time theology professor, who has written a number of texts in the field.  The publisher, IVP, has for decades specialized in books with the goal of being simultaneously faithful to the historic Christian faith and correct intellectual understanding with regard to a variety of issues, with particular emphasis on those points which are commonly seen in either secular intellectual culture or popular Christian culture as being in conflict.                                                                                              Certainly current understanding of the origins of the universe and life, and what appears in the Bible as commenting on creation of the universe and life fits into that description.  Possibly there is no subject which has more misunderstanding, both among believers and among those in mainline scientific circles.  No doubt, this is in part due to very public statements of Christian leaders who have built a public platform to speak, combined with minimal education with regard to specifics of modern science.  Key in this is the question:  How do we believers understand Genesis 1 and 2 in light of the discoveries of the scientific community over the last 200 years?  Carlson and Longman are both highly experienced in dealing with this question, one from the side of physics, which is now the premier jumping off point from the scientific side of the question, the other from the side of Christian theology.  The authors maintain the the question is answerable while maintaining orthodox Christian belief, but it is not a simple answer, and cannot be answered simplistically while desiring to be the “salt and light” believers are commanded to be towards the unbelieving world.  Therefore, any believer desiring to answer this question in 25 words or less, possibly even 25 minutes of less, will be disappointed.  Carlson give a complex, nuanced explanation which is connected to both science, especially physics, and that part of theology that deals with the literary and cultural contexts of the various parts of scripture. 

            For those who have not been exposed to this discussion according to the state of the art over the last couple of decades, the creation discussion is connected to the origin of the universe, not the biological discussion, which is only even mentioned in one sentence.  This book is slightly shorter than the normal published book at 141 pages, but none of it, in my opinion, is filler.  The whole book builds up aspects of the discussion as to why the authors hold the view that they present at the conclusion.  This is not an easy reading book, but still understandable to an average person willing to intellectually engage in some nuanced subject matter.

Simple Church Minute 39--preaching repentance

39—preaching repentance

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            On another day, I mentioned how what we in the current church call witnessing is close to what the early church called preaching, and what we call preaching is what they called oratory or speaking.  For instance, Acts chapter 18 verse 24 refers to Apollos speaking in the synagogue.  Further, in the early church, first believing in Jesus was a way of life.  If one was Jewish, it separated one from the Jewish community; if one was not, with faith in Jesus came accepting a morality the Gentile world found strange. Either way, repentance and baptism was not an end all, but the beginning of a new way of living.   Second Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17 referred to believers as a new species*; the world had seen nothing like it.  After a couple of centuries of the Christian faith spreading across the Roman Empire, even at a time when Christianity was still officially illegal, many of the powerful hired Christians to watch their children and money, because of their reputation for honesty.

            Shortly after the apostolic era, more and more, oratory worked into the church, as opposed to every member ministry.  Oratory preaching developed an audience-performer dynamic, which changed in some detail over the centuries, but always largely encouraged passivity among the audience.

            In the 1700’s, George Whitefield introduced an innovation to preaching—changing the emphasis from what God is doing among believers as a group to speaking specifically to those in the audience who were not believers, to guide them toward salvation.  He also originated outdoor meetings for evangelistic preaching.  Charles Wesley, John’s brother, was the first to write hymns for invitations to receive Christ.  All these changes emphasized the individual and de-emphasized the church in the sense of believers as a group.  A later evangelistic trend was pragmatism—if it seems to work, keep doing it.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on organic church*, see http://www.simplechurch.com/ or (local website).

On the recording, at this time, it says, “house churches.”  While that phrasing is OK, to say “organic church” is better.  I comment on that in blip 94.  Also, on the recording, I said, "new creation," which is the most common rendering of that phrase in English Bibles, but I have since become convinced that "new species" is both better yet, and connotes the shock value to our society that what the world saw then was experiencing.