On Ben Stein and Chuckie D.

On Friday, my incredible wife indulged her science geek husband. We went to see the new documentary "Expelled" starring Ben Stein. All pot-stirring aside, this movie is a great wake-up call to anyone who thinks the scientific community is always open to new evidence.

First, let me just point out that there is currently a movement among scientific circles that suggests very strongly that there is order in the universe that could not have arisen without someone or something controlling it. Essentially, order does not arise on its own from chaos as Darwin suggested, so people have lately been questioning Darwinian dogma, much to the chagrin of other scientists. This movement is commonly known as "Intelligent Design" or ID for short.

Now, for a science-minded Christian, the concept of ID is nothing new...the Book of Genesis says God created the universe, and it's the job of the scientist to determine what He did, how He put it together and maybe even how He did it in the first place. No issues here.

However, once you propose such an idea to an atheist scientist and challenge his neo-Darwinist religious dogma, he or she goes on the attack. You don't even HAVE to mention a deity...the attack on Darwin's ideas alone is tantamount to heresy in atheistic circles.

Basically, the prominent scientists featured in "Expelled" have been excluded from academia because they have in some way, shape or fashion promoted ID. Not promoted religion per se, but promoted the idea that SOMEthing had to put it all together. And really, when you look at the universe in enough detail, there's no other conclusion.

I highly recommend this film to everyone. Not just Christians, not just scientists, but everyone. Don't just blindly believe what the public schools fed you in Biology class...think about the possibilities other than Darwin's outdated theory.

Oh yeah, and my favorite part is near the end and features prominent atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. When questioned about how order may have come out of chaos, Dawkins is clearly spitballing...he rambles out all kinds of speculations and finally concludes that IF a superior intellect did influence life on our planet, then it couldn't have been God...it must have been aliens.

Um..yeah. So the clear implication is that an atheist scientist will let his atheism cloud his science and he will choose the incredibly improbable concept of extraterrestrial life over the much-documented, much-discussed (and very REAL) Creator of the universe.

Got Bias?

On Sheep and Men

My in-laws have a small sheep ranch out near Albany. Out there, I’ve seen the miracle of birth during lambing season, I’ve learned that sheep poop gets EVERYWHERE and that sheep are about the DUMBEST animals on the face if the planet.

No, seriously. They are REALLY dumb. Someone recently told me a story of a ewe who jumped up onto a 55-gallon drum and got stuck...she simply couldn’t get down off of a barrel. Apparently, this stupid wool-ball sat there balanced on this barrel with her legs dangling until she starved to death. Not too smart, eh?

Sure, we’re pretty smart creatures...arguably the smartest ones on the planet. To quote Douglas Adams :

"On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons."

But seriously, when it comes down to it, God has put us in charge of this planet and everything on it. We’re the stewards of this world until He comes again.

So this begs the question in my mind: if we’re so smart and sheep are so dumb, why does Christ refer to us as His sheep? In the secular world, people who blindly follow someone or something are sometimes referred to as "sheeple." Atheists will derisively refer to Christians as sheep, citing the stupidity, timidity and flock behavior of domestic sheep. So, given this, why are we sheep?

It doesn’t sound like something one would WANT to be, but I for one don’t mind being a sheep in the Christian sense.

Let's first look at the sheep.

Sheep (Ovis aries) are quadrupedal ruminants. They are fully herbivorous, and have cloven hooves. People raise them for their wool and meat and are often used in biological experimentation. Oh yeah, and by human standards, they’re dumber than a box of rocks.

Now, as far as sheep are concerned, they know exactly what they need to know to get by: find food, find water, reproduce, care for lambs, eliminate waste and avoid potential predators. If you set a sheep loose in a pasture, they will live their lives happily as long as they have what they think they need. Oh, sure some lambs will be taken by coyotes, some ewes will leave lambs behind, mother ewes may die, some rams will butt their children to death...but the sheep as a whole don’t usually care too much.

However, the sheep rancher (or shepherd) has a lot invested in these stupid wool-balls and he doesn’t want to lose livestock. He’ll inoculate them against disease, provide food and water for them, guide them to where they need to go, keep the lambs near their mothers and bottle-feed lambs who lose their mothers.

Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd...the best ever. He doesn’t want to lose any "livestock," so to speak: He doesn’t want to lose a single human being to the evil one. We go through our lives in our "pasture" doing exactly what we think we need to do, but the Good Shepherd knows what we need MUCH better than we do. Like an earthly shepherd cares for his livestock, Jesus guides us, feeds us (spiritually and physically), "innoculates" us against evil...and honestly, He is God...He is much wiser than I could ever be.

Now, the analogy only goes so far...for example, Christians shouldn’t just blindly follow religious leaders. We should instead learn everything we can about the Lord through scripture and prayer and judge everything in light of scripture.

Still, I’d rather trust the Good Shepherd over any human being, no matter how smart they think they are. After all, they are sheep too, whether they like it or not...they just may be in the wrong pasture.

Martian Death Flu

Years ago a very funny smart alec by the name of Dave Barry wrote an article about the flu. Here’s an excerpt:

"We have the flu. I don’t know if this particular strain has an official name, but if it does, it must be something like ’Martian Death Flu’. You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish you had another setting on your electric blanket, up past ’HIGH,’ that said ’ELECTROCUTION.’"

My recent (and rare) bout of flu is nothing like what Mr. Barry describes, but I can sympathize.

Now, I have a list of questions that I want to ask God once I go to heaven. Among these questions are: Why are we here? Why do people insist on hating each other? What the heck is up with the platypus?

I have a new addition to this list: Why are there viruses? I mean, in all my years of studying science, I have never found even one positive effect of a virus. As one scientist put it, a virus is "bad news packed in protein."

Perhaps the answer lies in one of the "Deadly Sins"...pride. We as human beings have delved the depths of the ocean, walked on the moon and probed the outer reaches of our solar system. Some scientists have even been so proud as to supplant the Lord with worship of science.

We are, as a whole, a VERY prideful species of beings.

The fact that we can, at any time, be laid low by a barely microscopic chunk of genetic material is very humbling to even the staunchest atheist. As a Christian, I know that I can take the lesson that this little virus teaches me and apply it to the rest of my life, thus being even more of a witness for the Lord.

Too bad more people don’t see it this way.

Attack of the Mushroom-head Spandex Mutants!

Alright, I love a good bike ride as much as the next guy. I think those Tour de France racers are awesome. I'll do a 15 mile bike ride over a 2 mile run any day, and I've done stuff on my bike that makes my wife cringe in fear for my well-being.

Just wanted it to be clear where I'm coming from. With that said...

I have noticed over the years that certain bike riding people have caused mutations to their own bodies and minds. No, I'm not talking about soft-tissue injuries and broken bones...I'm talking widespread physical and mental changes and alterations. I call them the Mushroom-headed Spandex Mutants, or MSMs. In fact, I notice such a deviation from the normal Homo sapiens sapiens, that I'm even thinking of renaming them Homo sapiens spandexicus.

The mutations in these people are thought to be caused by the unique combination of spandex, car exhaust, human sweat, adrenaline and testosterone exacerbated by a few good falls to the pavement. Geneticists are still examining the genome, so we're not quite sure yet.

It isn't hard to view these species in their natural habitat. In fact, anyone who lives near mountains can spot them. Some notable characteristics:

- protective helmet permanently fused to the cranium, giving the MSM's head a distinct mushroom shape.
- brightly-colored spandex fused to the dermis, often replaced by outright shedding rather than the gradual sloughing of epidermis in Homo sapiens sapiens.
- blatant disregard for traffic laws and personal safety shown as they ride near the edge of a crumbling road as 55-80 mph traffic passes. This characteristic suggests a significant dampening of the normal human intellect, possibly due to spandex poisoning.
- spandex-enhanced androgeny that, along with the helmets, masks most secondary gender characteristics from cursory observation. Occasionally, tertiary gender characteristics are seen (pink spandex, for example), but they cannot be used as a reliable indicator of gender.

While solitaries are sometimes seen, they are usually pack creatures with a clear societal structure. The alpha individual is usually at the head of the pack on the trek uphill. While these colorful mutants can be seen just about anywhere there's a hill, I have personally seen them:

- the road around Crater Lake, a road characterized by a crumbling shoulder and high dropoffs
- riding along Hwy 22 in Oregon in the middle of smoke from the Black Butte fire
- Hwy 285 and just about every other dangerous narrow mountain road in central Colorado
- Interstate 90 @ Snoqualmie pass, despite Washington state laws restricting bike travel on the Interstate

Forget bird-watching...go check out your local MSMs!

Just be careful not to hit them with your car....

SHARE THE ROAD!

Devolution of Evolution

My wife and I recently went to see Stanford Professor and author Joan Roughgarden give a presentation on her new book, Evolution and Christian Faith. As a Christian who studies and teaches science, I was very interested in what she had to say.

I will preface my comments by stating that in her presentation and her book, Dr. Roughgarden demonstrates VERY clearly that she is a sincere Christian and a dedicated scientist. Her views and her book are an attempt to rectify differences between her faith and her science and to bring harmony to what is often a very vitriolic debate.

However...

What I see in her book and heard from her personally suggests to me VERY strongly that she is looking at the Bible through evolution-colored glasses. She attempts to use scripture to bolster evolutionary theory, but the verses she chooses and the connections to evolution are a bit of a stretch. For example, she uses the Biblical account of the creation of flora and fauna to demonstrate the evolutionary "tree of life" commonly found in Intro Bio textbooks. She speaks of Biblical accounts referring to Christians being of "one body" and concludes that Christ Himself alluded to common evolutionary ancestry.

It seems very clear to me that Dr. Roughgarden is unwilling to give up any what she has been taught and has taught about evolution, even if a literal interpretation of the Bible says differently.

I recognize this clearly because that is where I used to be in my faith. As my depth of understanding of scripture has changed, so too my view of the sciences has changed. Rather than simply accepting evolutionary theory as taught in the secular Universities, I default to the Biblical account. Unless a scripturally sound compromise is presented, I cannot believe otherwise.

The root for Dr. Roughgarden's difficulty, I wager, is described on page 10 of her book where she concedes that her depth of understanding of the Bible is far from her depth of understanding in evolutionary theory. As she points out, she has been teaching evolutionary biology and ecology for thirty years and has made a lifelong study of the subject.

This is a very large investment of herself and it is fully understandable that she is loathe to recant what she has promoted for three decades. What she needs to realize is that you cannot compromise on scripture simply because it doesn't agree with your worldview. God's law is based on love and it is just, but it is absolute.

No "ifs" "ands" or "buts" about it.

Science & the LORD

So this school year I was hired as a science teacher at a small Christian school. Most of my secular colleagues would gape incredulously at this, as they and pretty much the ENTIRE scientific world are pretty sure the two are mutually exclusive.

I beg to differ.

In fact, my love for science and the study of God's universe only serves to strengthen my faith.

"But...but...but...." I can hear them stammering, "but what about the theory of evolution? It's been PROVED and has supplanted the need for 'god' in modern times!"

Proved, eh?

Try reading the thoughts of Michael Behe who has pointed out that evolutionary theory, while it can be made to make sense on the "macro" level, cannot stand up under biochemical analysis.

Oh, and by the way...Dr. Behe is not a Christian...

Try reading the thoughts of Francis Collins, a VERY highly educated scientist who turned to Christ from atheism in his study of the human genome.

Even better, take a look at the recent news regarding Homo habilus and Homo erectus. For quite a while, scientists, teachers and professors have been insisting that H. habilus was the evolutionary precursor of H. erectus. But now...OOPS! they were wrong.

Stir into the mix the fact that several of the "icons" of Darwinism (the Miller experiment, Haeckel's embryos, mammalian fetus "gills") are based on faulty assumptions, incorrect procedures or outright falsehood.

Don't get me wrong, folks...I am not bashing science. Quite the opposite. Current evolutionary theory is the absolute best that secularists can come up with given their assumption that there is no God.

But what a limitation!

Frankly, I prefer my knowledge that everything that we see and know came about by the divine workings of an omnipotent loving God. Knowing that God can do ANYTHING opens up SO many more doors in scientific exploration!