Katrina
August 31, 2005
I sit here at my keyboard, fairly numb and unsure as to what to write; maybe that’s why it’s taken me a couple of days to even say a word. Not having TV, I’m getting my news from the internet, and the reports that keep coming in are, in a word, astounding. I don’t know if my sense was that, in 2005, with our ability to know the weather in advance, with the technology that we have, and the building codes, and the pervasive media that alert us to every event (yeah, and many non-events) taking place in our world, we could not sustain a disaster such as we are seeing unfold in the deep South. Hurricanes bring loss of life, to be sure, but fairly minimal, generally, a guy electrocuted here, a couple foolishly trying to “ride out the storm” there. But on a widespread scale? I’m numbed by it, unable to know what to say, or how to say it. It is just absolutely unbelievable to hear the mayor of New Orleans talk about 1000′s dead, about it being 3-4 months before people will be able to return to their homes.
I’m not at all sure that anything I’m saying has much of a point, honestly; I wonder how long it’ll be before I’m able to say anything intelligent about devastation of this magnitude. I’m almost too numb to know how to pray, but I’ll try anyway, of course. About all I’ve got by way of commentary right now is, ‘even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus’…
Maggie Weighs in on Education
August 31, 2005
Everything you know about education policy is wrong.
At least, that’s the conclusion Maggie Gallagher reaches in reviewing the new book Education Myths, by Manhattan Institute thinker Jay Greene. Read the column for yourself, and learn why spending more money, having certified teachers, and reducing class size are red herrings; learn as well why teachers, contrary to popular opinion, are not underpaid. Stimulating!
Update on “Fantasy Obsession”
August 31, 2005
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post on how fantasy football serves to warp one’s approach to the New National Pastime: NFL football.
For the 2 of you who care, I feel it incumbent upon me to give a brief report on the team I was able to secure at our annual Armchair Football League auction. In a word…wow, baby, wow!
Carson Palmer will quarterback the Killer Bz. Listed as a “sleeper” in every fantasy football publication, he came on late last year and justified his selection, 3 years ago, as the #1 pick in the NFL draft. He will lead the way. But it gets better…
Running the ball for the Killer Bz will be Priest Holmes, backed up by Larry Johnson. I will have a difficult time choosing weekly who to put in the #2 back slot, between Mike Anderson, who has claimed the coveted Denver Bronco starting spot, and LaMont Jordan, who appeared alongside Palmer in every publication as a great sleeper candidate this year. I was even able to pick up Willie Parker, who will start Week 1 for the Steelers, with my last selection.
Surely, with a backfield like that, I must be weak at WR, right? That’s where you’d be wrong, Rozelle-breath! He might be a jerk, but Terrell Owens is money in the bank, for the Philadelphia Eagles and, now, for the Killer Bz. He will be flanked by Hines Ward, a #1 guy in some leagues. Backing up these are the always dependable Rod Smith, the up-and-coming Lee Evans, and a couple of sleepers, Michael Jenkins and Tyrone Calico.
Is this team weak anywhere, you ask? Not at tight end; last year, Peyton Manning threw 11 TD’s to Colts’ TE’s; now, with Marcus Pollard in Detroit, shouldn’t Dallas Clark catch most of those? I’ll benefit if he does. Throw in Jeff Reed, the Steeler kicker, and the Grits Blitz defense of the Atlanta Falcons, and, well, I told my mates that I’d be happy to pitch in for a second-place trophy, because I have every intention of claiming my third “Happy Feller Plaque”…
Update: He didn’t respond directly to this post, but the president of our denomination, the Evangelical Free Church of America, who reads this blog from time to time, sent me an email reply with the (quite impressive!) list of the players on his fantasy football team. Bill, you’re my kind of guy.
Is this a great denomination, or what???
Plan 9 From (Lower) Space – The Monk Strikes Again!
August 29, 2005
Michael Spencer, the “Internet Monk”, may be my favorite fellow blogger, and he’s got another provocative post, created in the style of C.S. Lewis, entitled
What if the current “church growth” buzz was playing into the hands of the likes of Scrawlwart and Beeblerot?
The Turtle and the Fencepost: On Science, the Search for Truth, and the Teaching of ID in the Public Schools
August 26, 2005
“But Intelligent Design isn’t science!”
This is the argument that we are commonly hearing from Darwinists these days, as proponents of Intelligent Design seek “equal treatment” in public schools around the country. No less than George W. Bush has weigned in on the side of the presentation of ID, while Screamin’ Howie Dean has derided the idea, using language similar to the above.
The problem, and the rub, in a nutshell, can be boiled down to this: are we interested in teaching “science”, or are we interested in teaching truth? Perhaps this analogy will be helpful:
Walking through the countryside one beautiful August afternoon, a man happens upon a turtle basking in the bright sunshine, situated precariously atop a fencepost. “My, what an odd sight,” the man exclaims, “to see a turtle perched thusly! I wonder what is up with this! Answers, I must have them!” 
And so the man sets about the process of discovering the facts of the situation, formulating a working hypothesis, and testing this hypothesis. “I must be scientific,”, he says, “and thus, I must produce a naturalistic answer to this dilemma. I must rule out any hypothesis which would depend upon untestable speculation; I cannot fall back on a ‘God hypothesis’, or invoke any ‘higher power’; this is the domain of ‘religion’.”
Satisfied that there exists such a naturalistic explanation, he first considers what he calls tentatively refers to as the “Growing Tree” hypothesis, which involves a tree rapidly growing on the spot, underneath this turtle, who in his infancy, managed the vigor to climb atop the fledgling sapling. Growing into a shape roughly approximating a fencepost, the tree suddenly dies, sheds not only leaves but limbs, all with the turtle still straddling its trunk at the top. But why would the vigorous young turtle have stopped movement? How could he have survived without food (or, better, via what mechanism was food provided?)? Could a tree grow this rapidly? This hypothesis the man rejected. Moving rather quickly on from this hypothesis, he found promise in what he began to think of as the “storm scenario”, and specifically, upon the “Tornado Hypothesis”, which suggested that, through a freak happenstance of nature, a localized tornado picked up the turtle and gently deposited him on the fencepost. Could a localized tornado accompish this? There certainly exists plenty of anecdotal evidence of happenings seemingly as strange as this one. He began to test and hypothesize, and hypothesize and test, and eventually, committed to “science”, having ruled out a priori the possibility of an intelligent agent accomplishing the turtle relocation, the man happily skipped away, confident that he had gained a measure of certainty as to the answer of the puzzling turtle dilemma.
Later on this same sunny late summer day, a second man happens upon the same turtle, still in the same position atop the fencepost. “My, what an odd sight,” the second man exclaims, “to see a turtle perched thusly! I wonder what is up with this! Answers, I must have them!” He, too, began to hypothesize about just how it was that the terrapin found his way to this peculiar piece of wooden real estate. He considered scenarios similar to the “Growing Tree” and “Tornado” Hypotheses, but found them unlikely and unconvincing. Could there be another explanation for this peculiar phenomenon, one calling for a step outside the realm of naturalistic causes? Seeing no person around, it would require a leap of faith to accept the possibility that a human agent had a hand in this, but nonetheless, open to this possibility, he arrived eventually at what he called the “Some Schmuck Put it There” Hypothesis.
Some thoughts:
1. This, effectively, is the scenario that we find going on in this debate. The scientific community (or, should I say, many, but not nearly all, members of it) are arguing against the teaching of ID because, in their words, “it’s not science”—because ID involves the introduction of an outside agent, and the existence of such an agent (as they rightly assert) is non-falsifiable.
2. Regarding the “Tornado Hypothesis”, the so-called “Anthropic Principle”, which seeks to establish the reasonability of ID on the basis that the earth is “just so”, calibrated perfectly for the existence of life, human and other, involves far more complex and intricate calibrations. In other words, a natural explanation for a turtle appearing upon a fencepost is far less difficult to account for than is a natural explanation for the development of life in the universe.
3. The argument put forward to defend Darwinism, in order to account for such things as the “Anthropic Principle”, often involves the postulating of “multiple potential universes” (that’s my own layman’s term; forgive its possible imprecision), with the idea being that, given a virtually unlimited number of universes that might have made some sort of start, eventually one would exist in which these “just-so” conditions would come to pass. Perhaps…but is this science, or metaphysics? Scientists do, at times, lapse into just this, metaphysical speculation to cover up the gaps—the very thing that is so derided about ID proponents.
4. The main point of my post is this: when it comes to the turtle on the fencepost, what should really matter: an explanation-in-a-parenthesis, the parenthesis of “what can be tested through the scientific method”, or truth? Shouldn’t it be about seeking the best explanation for the existence of the turtle perched up there? Isn’t that what ultimately matters most? And yet, truth is not what matters most to many “scientists” engaged in the debates about teaching ID in public schools, at least not if their own words are to be believed. What matters is “science”—as they choose to define it. ID proponents want to get at the truth of why we exist—and if the evidence leads us to believe that an intelligent, supernatural power designed life, so be it. The “scientists” want to rule out this possibility a priori; then, having ruled God out by definition, they want to confidently assert that they can say where life came from. This is a bait-and-switch; it is, ultimately, disingenuous. Let the debate be about finding the truth.
And so, just as if you are walking the countryside, and happen upon a turtle perched upon a fencepost, you conclude that “he probably had some help getting there”, so, as we look at the significant evidence of design in nature all around us, we ought to at least allow ourselves—and the children we teach in our schools—to consider the possibility that it was!
Vote for President NOW!!!
August 23, 2005
Yeah, you heard me right; Patrick Ruffini has a straw poll going here:
August Straw Poll: The Big One
If you’re going to vote for the former first lady, don’t bother going; this poll is for people who are planning to vote Republican (which is me, depending on who gets the nomination). It’s a two-part poll. You vote among the candidates on the main ballot, and then you answer what you’d do if one of the “fantasy candidates” ran. Here are the candidates:
MAIN BALLOT
George Allen
Sam Brownback
Bill Frist
Newt Gingrich
Rudy Giuliani
Chuck Hagel
Mike Huckabee
John McCain
George Pataki
Mitt Romney
Tom Tancredo
FANTASY CANDIDATES
Keep My Vote the Same
Jeb Bush
Dick Cheney
Condoleezza Rice
Fred Thompson
The tally as of right now has Rudy running first among the main candidates, with my choice, George Allen, running a semi-distant second. Switch it to the “fantasy candidates”, and Condi is running away with it (this, of course, from the bigoted Republican party. Suggestion: any conversation into which a liberal tosses the word “bigot” or “homophobe”, or variations of those words, should be met with derisive laughter.).
Now, for my own personal evaluation:
Candidates I Would Vote For:
George Allen
Sam Brownback
Mike Huckabee – Actually, he might be my first choice, ahead of George Allen, if I think about it. Great man.
Jeb Bush – I doubt he’s electable, because of his last name. Seriously.
Candidates I Might Vote For, Depending on How They Answered Certain Questions:
Bill Frist
Chuck Hagel
John McCain (yes, you heard me)
Mitt Romney
Tom Tancredo
Condi Rice (abortion, Condi? Where stand ye?)
Fred Thompson
Candidates I Would Not Vote For Under Any Circumstances (And the Reason):
Newt Gingrich – You have got to be kidding, right? We lose all semblance of moral high ground with this vote.
Rudy Giuliani - A liberal Democrat who’s tough on crime (and showed good leadership post 9/11). But a liberal Democrat nonetheless. Not a chance under the sun I vote for this man. Zero.
George Pataki – A duller version of Rudy Giuliani.
Dick Cheney – Look in the dictionary under “hopelessly unelectable”, and tell me if you don’t see Dick Cheney’s picture (right beside Newt’s, by the way).
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Osborne: A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God
Schlossberg: Idols For Destruction
