Faith Well Grounded

I was over at a sport's forum, where I sometimes go and check up on my favorite team news. When I logged in recently I had a private message awaiting me from someone I do not know, and with whom I have never had interaction. As far as I can tell, the private message was nothing more than a Buddhist apologetic, via an Einstein quote (which is Ok by me for what it's worth). Since I enjoy any opportunity to set Christianity on the "truth-scale" against any worldview, I responded and invited a dialogue.

In comments here lately I have professed the fathers of modern science as working within a creationist framework. This is in response to the claim that ID is not science, and my making the point that the recent definition of science that bars the supernatural as a potential cause is just that-- recent. The fathers of modern science worked within a creationist's framework, and you can't separate their science from this framework. You just can't-- especially when they went through great pains to prevent us trying.

In my recent defense of Dr. Michael J. Behe, I revisited the court transcripts of the Dover trial and it struck me that there was a lot of philosophy being doled out in the name of the law. Now, please bear in mind that this post isn't written to answer whether it's right for the bench to be used to choose between philosophies. This post is written to point out that Judge Jones' philosophy was just bad.

This is the promised follow-up to the peer review blog post found here. It's a copy of the senior adviser's review of his submission to a science journal, and Behe's response (copied and pasted from http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_correspondencewithsciencejournals.htm). I thought it interesting.

ID scientists have often been disparaged here by commenter(s) because of their lack of peer review. The subject was a major part of yesterday's post, so I thought I'd continue the theme and let one of the founding scientist/authors of ID speak to it, in his own words. The material I will be quoting can be found on Michael Behe's author's page at arn.org (http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_correspondencewithsciencejournals.htm. It's fairly dated, but that shouldn't affect the subject matter at all.

In a blog here late last year, it was floated that Michael Behe can't be trusted because he lied under oath (Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board). Since I have little connection with seeking ID taught in schools, I kind of let it drop there, doing little more than asking the commenter for more details and getting none.

This is my last post on the Bloodthirsty God posts for a while. This time, I want to go right to Leviticus, where we begin to see the blood sacrifices spelled out for us.

I used to envision the sacrifices going something like this:

Joe Israelite brings a sacrificial animal from his flock, gives it to the priest and sits and waits for the priest to do the dirty work. Once the bloody work is done, Joe Israelite goes home, maybe whistling a Yiddish tune because he feels so clean and forgiven.

...or just a more consistent atheist?

Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through with the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet you act as if there were some sort of rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.

-Death

Well, I’m back. I’m hoping to be able to post more often, and I apologize for the lay-off to anyone out there who may enjoy reading my posts. As excuse, my college-age ministry has been taking quite a bit of time. But anyway...

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.

We had communion at church this morning and, being in the Christmas spirit, it had a profound effect on me. The long and short of it is that Jesus was born to die-- just like the rest of us. We seem to lose that in the Christmas season. Jesus is the baby, away in a manger, and He rests there eternally in the Christmas mindset for some people, just like He does in the mind of Ricky Bobby the racecar driver.