Category: Rants

Unto the Breach

For a long time now I’ve been promising to rant more on some of my favourite topics, or hobby-horses, if you will. Given the prominence of the debate on science and religion in education down south, I think I’ll start with the innocuous subject of evolution. There’s far too much to write about at one go, so I’ll start with a brief outline of things I’m going to argue for, and go on to discuss each point in further detail.

If you weren’t raised in a fundamentalist or conservative evangelical background, most of this stuff will seem wierd, tautalogical or incomprehensible. These rants aren’t for you. They’re for people like the man, utterly ignorant of science, who told me to my face: “If the world wasn’t created on October 22, 4004 BC, then Christ didn’t die and my faith is in vain.”

Here goes:

1. God exists, and created everything else, including this universe we live in. And, by the way, my faith is in Christ’s death and resurrection.

2. The first two chapters of Genesis are a scientific account of creation, but cannot be used to inform our physical models of creation.

3. The evolutionary model is the best one we have for explaining the physical process of creation, and cannot explain the origin of the universe.

4. The various creationist models, from strict Young Earth Creationism to re-creationism et al, are all fallacious, and some are pernicious and heretical. We’ll take a side trip to Noah’s Flood here as well.

5. The Intelligent Design movement is a rather lame attempt by YEC’s at a bait-and-switch. The problem is, their stuff lacks even the sophisitication of some of the more thoughtful Creationist models — it’s self-evidently fallacious, and is simply the old “God of the Gaps” horse dragged out to be flogged yet again.

6. The most powerful argument Creationists use is the aesthetic: who wants to have a monkey for an uncle? I shall present some illustrative images and metaphors that I believe show that the idea of evolution is beautiful and portrays the faithfulness and love of the invisible God in the visible world.

Update: more here.

So Fundamentally Bad

The National Review has an interview with one Peter Schweizer, who has a new book coming out called Do As I Say, Not As I Do: Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy. In the book he details case after case of prominent liberals who live precisely the opposite of what they preach. Barbara Streisand, who campaigns for reducing consumption, pays $20,000 a year to water her lawn. Michael Moore, who villifies capitalism and the stock market, has a portfolio that includes Halliburton, Boeing and HMO’s. Nanci Pelosi, who champions unions, will have none of them in her vineyards and hotels. Noam Chomsky, who rails against the rich’s tax shelters and the military-industrial complex, has his own Pentagon-funded tax shelter. Al Franken, who declaims vigourously on the bigotry of whites, has a worse hiring record with respect to minorities than Bob Jones University.

Yes, we are all hypocrites and I talk about that in the book. But liberal hypocrisy and conservative hypocrisy are quite different on two accounts. First, you hear about conservative hypocrisy all the time. A pro-family congressman caught in an extramarital affair, a minister caught in the same. This stuff is exposed by the media all the time. The leaders of the liberal-Left get a complete pass on their hypocrisy. Second, and this is even more important, the consequences of liberal hypocrisy are different than for the conservative variety. When conservatives abandon their principles and become hypocrites, they end up hurting themselves and their families. Conservative principles are like guard rails on a winding road. They are irritating but fundamentally good for you. Liberal hypocrisy is the opposite. When the liberal-left abandon their principles and become hypocrites, they actually improve their lives. Their kids end up in better schools, they have more money, and their families are more content. Their ideas are truly that bad.

Hat tip: Transterrestrial Musings.

Not a Tame Lion

The perennial “Narnia: Literal or Allegory” thread has re-surfaced on rec.arts.sf.written. People are going to great lengths to expose the hitherto-unknown revelation that Narnia is dangerous and subversive Christian propaganda, because (gasp) Aslan is a symbol of Christ, etc.

Cooler heads among the rasf denizens are getting tired of repeating over and over again: “There’s nothing symbolic or allegorical (or hidden) about it. Aslan is Christ, just manifested in a different world.” The books are clearly propaganda, but they are explicitly not allegorical. As one poster said:

[This] is why the Narnia books aren’t allegories — they are The Further Adventures of Jesus Christ and Friends! No hidden messsages here, it’s all right out in the open.

I think the former crowd are peeved to realize that the delightful stories they read as children are Christian.

And some Christians are afraid of Narnia, because:

Aslan is Christ, and as Lewis would have it a true Christ, but not a plaster saint; he’s a merry, vigorous, disruptive, exciting presence. He’s the Christ who associated with publicans and sinners, and had fun. He’s the Christ who got angry and took a whip to chase moneylenders out of the holy temple in Jerusalem. He’s the Christ whom it’s claimed thousands of people went to see, and, most likely, not quite to hear. He’s the Christ who cares about people individually and has the strength – or the power – to heal their ills. He’s not a tame Christ, not a Sunday School Christ.