Category Archives: Commentary

What IS “Intelligent Design,” Really?

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What IS “Intelligent Design,” Really?

Straw Men Aside, What Is the Theory of Intelligent Design, Really?

Casey Luskin August 10, 2013 6:33 AM

– See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/08/what_is_the_the075281.html#sthash.VWT5PwWb.dpuf

DebatingDD.jpegFirst, let’s discuss what the theory of intelligent design is not.

Part A: What Intelligent Design Is Not

Many critics of intelligent design have promoted false, straw-man versions of ID, typically going something like this:

Intelligent design claims that life is so complex, it could not have evolved, therefore it was designed by a supernatural intelligence.

Of those many ID critics who have promoted this false definition, some know it is a falsehood: I call them “Type I” critics. Others, whom I call “Type II” critics, actually believe the false version to be true but only because they have been misled by Type I critics. Of course it’s not always easy to distinguish the two groups. In the Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling, for example, Judge Jones adopted the plaintiff’s false version of intelligent design — making him, according to my paradigm, a Type II critic, even though ID had been explained to him repeatedly in the courtroom what ID really is. Since Judge Jones knew how ID proponents define their theory, but nonetheless mischaracterized it, does this make him a Type I critic instead? Who can really know?

In any case, there are two main components of this definition, both false:

1. ID is NOT merely a negative argument against evolution

The first problem with the critics’ definition is that it frames ID as merely a negative argument against evolution. In fact, ID offers a strong positive argument, based on finding in nature the type of information and complexity that, in our experience, comes from intelligence alone. I will explain this positive argument further in Part B of this article. Those who claim ID is nothing more than a negative argument against evolution are misrepresenting ID.

2. ID is NOT a theory about the designer or the supernatural

The second problem with the critics’ definition of ID is that it suggests the theory is focused on studying the designer. The claim is that it specifically invokes supernatural forces or a deity. But ID is not focused on studying the actual intelligent cause responsible for life, but rather studies natural objects to determine whether they bear an informational signature indicating an intelligent cause. All ID does is infer an intelligent cause behind the origins of life and of the cosmos. It does not seek to determine the nature or identity of that cause. As William Dembski explains:

Intelligent design is the science that studies signs of intelligence. Note that a sign is not the thing signified. … As a scientific research program, intelligent design investigates the effects of intelligence, not intelligence as such.1

Similarly, Michael Behe explains that we can detect design even if we don’t know anything about the identity or nature of the designer:

The conclusion that something was designed can be made quite independently of knowledge of the designer. As a matter of procedure, the design must first be apprehended before there can be any further question about the designer. The inference to design can be held with all the firmness that is possible in this world, without knowing anything about the designer.2

Behe even suggests that “[i]ntelligent design does not require a candidate for the role of the designer.”3

ID limits its claims to what can be learned from empirical data, meaning that it does not try to address questions about the identity or nature of the designer. While the empirical data allow us to study natural objects and determine whether they arose from an intelligent cause, such data simply may not allow us to determine the identity or nature of the intelligent cause.

– See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/08/what_is_the_the075281.html#sthash.VWT5PwWb.dpuf

Footnote 22 — Michael S. Horton, A Place For Weakness

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Footnote 22 — Michael S. Horton, A Place For Weakness: Preparing Yourself For Suffering (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006); digital edition; p. 23 of 194 – Location 163/172 of 2557.

“For at least a century and a half, American evangelism has spent great effort and money on public relations campaigns for Christianity …Famous athletes, politicians, entertainers, and other icons of popular culture are regularly trotted out as icons of grace.  Have you ever seen a janitor interviewed for his testimony?  … Would Paul have made a very good spokesman for “muscular Christianity” or for the other images of success so widely praised among us?

“We seem obsessed at times with convincing the world that we are cool, which especially in this culture means healthy, good-looking, prosperous, and even better, famous.  Not only can one remain cool in Christ; it is this personal relationship with Jesus Christ that, far from calling us to die, gives us that little bit extra to ‘be all we can be.’  [This worldview suggests that]  …Jesus came to recruit a team of all-stars and coach them to the Super Bowl of Better Living.”

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And Jesus answered them,“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”  —  Luke 5:31-32, ESV

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.  —  2 Corinthians 12:9-10, ESV

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,

‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’

20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.  30 And because of him[e] you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”  —  1 Corinthians 1:18-31, ESV

Memories From Another Life: Hot Brown

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Memories From Another Life: Hot Brown

Lexington Road Trip: Lunch at Ramsey’s Diner

From Alan Cornett’s Pinstripe Pulpit — Posted on August 9, 2013
Read more at  http://pinstripepulpit.com/lexington-road-trip-lunch-at-ramseys-diner/

Ramsey's doorThe great thing about going to Lexington is that my two favorite places are just around the corner and across the street from each other. When one is famished from browsing at Black Swan Booksyou will find that Ramsey’s Diner is only a quick walk away.

Ramsey’s Diner opened around the same time I started at the University of Kentucky, although I didn’t eat there until a fellow editor at the student daily The Kentucky Kernel took me there for lunch during my senior year. I’ve been devoted to Ramsey’s ever since. They’ve blossomed into a local Lexington chain while maintaining their quality. I’ve eaten at most of their locations across town, but for my now rare trips to Lexington I prefer the original.

Ramsey’s menu is anchored by a meat and three menu, and I’m a particular fan of their chicken fried steak. But the vegetables are the real stars here. Ramsey’s does an excellent job of sourcing locally grown fresh vegetables. When I was there it was their annual “Corn Daze” when corn is in season and featured in all its culinary forms.

Living in an agricultural region of the South, it’s frustrating that more restaurants won’t do this. The food is far fresher, the taste better, the local economy stronger. It shows respect for the customers they serve and the community they profit from. Ramsey’s has it right.

These days I get to Ramsey’s so seldomly, maybe twice a year, I can’t resist ordering my favorite thing on the menu: the Hot Brown. The Hot Brown is a Kentucky tradition, and hard to find outside the Commonwealth. It also happens to be the world’s most perfect food, a combination of bread, ham, turkey, mornay sauce, cheese and bacon.

Sophomore Spirituality – Gary Henry

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Sophomore Spirituality – Gary Henry

Second-Stage Spirituality 

From Gary Henry’s WordPoints – read more at http://wordpoints.com/blog/second-stage-spirituality-august-3/

“And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know” (1 Corinthians 8:2).

WHEN WE’VE JUST GOTTEN PAST THE BEGINNING STAGE OF SPIRITUAL LIFE, THERE IS A PARTICULAR DANGER THAT WE FACE. It is the danger always encountered in the second stage of any endeavor: THE DANGER OF THINKING THAT WE KNOW MORE THAN WE DO. If we don’t deal with this danger in the proper way, we will find ourselves blocked from any further progress.

The greatest barrier to gaining greater knowledge is the illusion of knowledge, the mistaken notion that we already know much, when in reality we know very little. This barrier is often met by the “sophomore” in any field of learning. This is the individual, hardly more than a beginner himself, who looks down on others who are just starting out. The sophomore has gone far enough to have just a little wisdom (sophos, wise), but he’s a fool (moros, foolish) for failing to see how far he has yet to go.

One measure of our attitude with respect to knowledge is the amount of listening we do compared to the amount of talking. If those who know us best observe that we’re more eager to talk than to listen, then we’ve probably overestimated how much we know. It’s good to have learned a thing or two, but it’s not good to see every person we meet as a potential audience. Solomon said, “A fool has no delight in understanding, but in expressing his own heart” (Proverbs 18:2). And James advised, “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak . . .” (James 1:19).

There is so much more of God than any of us have ever experienced, even in our moments of greatest maturity. His bounty is beyond what any of us have ever sought from Him. Let us not be so proud of what we know that we keep ourselves from learning what we still need to know. If the truth be told, most of us are not yet even in the second stage of spiritual understanding. There are many leagues yet to travel before we leave the first! Let us be humbled at the thought of our ignorance. And having been humbled, let us have a grander vision of what there is yet to know about our great God. The half has not yet been told.

“If you have lived far from God, you may think you are very near him when you finally start a life with him. The peasant thinks he has been to court because he saw the king pass by one day” (Francois de Fenelon).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

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This is a fabulous site, chock-full of excellent nuggets on a variety of spiritual topics — visit often!

Hymn Voted Out of Hymnal for Using the Phrase “Wrath of God”

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Hymn Voted Out of Hymnal for Using the Phrase “Wrath of God”

‘Wrath of God’ Keeps Popular Worship Song Out of 10,000-Plus Churches

‘In Christ Alone’ blocked from new PCUSA hymnal over atonement language.
Abby Stocker  —  posted 8/1/2013 12:27PM
Excerpts follow — read more at http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2013/august/wrath-of-god-in-christ-alone-blocked-pcusa-hymnal.html
The “wrath of God” has kept one of today’s most-popular worship songs from being sung in many Presbyterian churches.

A Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) committee desired to add “In Christ Alone” to the denomination’s new hymnal, Glory to God, set to be released this fall. But it firstrequested permission to avoid theological controversy by altering the modern hymn’s lyrics from “Till on that cross as Jesus died/the wrath of God was satisfied” to “Till on that cross as Jesus died/the love of God was magnified.”

However, authors Keith Getty and Stuart Townend rejected the proposal. So the committee voted six to nine to bar the hymn.

“The song has been removed from our contents list, with deep regret over losing its otherwise poignant and powerful witness,” committee chair Mary Louise Bringle told The Christian Century. The “view that the cross is primarily about God’s need to assuage God’s anger” would have a negative impact on worshippers’ education, according to Bringle.

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In a widely-circulated response to the PCUSA that the Gettys called “spot on” on their Facebook page, Timothy George argued that although debating doctrine through hymns is not a new phenomenon, failing to recognize God’s capacity for wrath can effectively trivialize God’s power. “God’s love is not sentimental; it is holy. It is tender, but not squishy,” he wrote. “It involves not only compassion, kindness, and mercy beyond measure … but also indignation against injustice and unremitting opposition to all that is evil.”

Russell Moore observed in the Washington Post that singing about doctrines such as God’s wrath serves as a direct reminder of God’s mercy to Christians.

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Read more at http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2013/august/wrath-of-god-in-christ-alone-blocked-pcusa-hymnal.html

NYT: Some Mormons Search the Web and Find Doubt

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NYT: Some Mormons Search the Web and Find Doubt

Some Mormons Search the Web and Find Doubt

By   —   Published: July 20, 2013 

EXCERPTS FOLLOW — READ MORE AT  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/us/some-mormons-search-the-web-and-find-doubt.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

PLAY VIDEO

A Mormon Doubts: Hans Mattsson was once a high-ranking leader for the Mormon church in Europe. He joins others who are experiencing a crisis of faith and finding few answers from their church.

In the small but cohesive Mormon community where he grew up, Hans Mattsson was a solid believer and a pillar of the church. He followed his father and grandfather into church leadership and finally became an “area authority” overseeing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout Europe.

When fellow believers in Sweden first began coming to him with information from the Internet that contradicted the church’s history and teachings, he dismissed it as “anti-Mormon propaganda,” the whisperings of Lucifer. He asked his superiors for help in responding to the members’ doubts, and when they seemed to only sidestep the questions, Mr. Mattsson began his own investigation.

But when he discovered credible evidence that the church’s founder, Joseph Smith, was a polygamist and that the Book of Mormon and other scriptures were rife with historical anomalies, Mr. Mattsson said he felt that the foundation on which he had built his life began to crumble.

Around the world and in the United States, where the faith was founded, the Mormon Church is grappling with a wave of doubt and disillusionment among members who encountered information on the Internet that sabotaged what they were taught about their faith, according to interviews with dozens of Mormons and those who study the church.

“I felt like I had an earthquake under my feet,” said Mr. Mattsson, now an emeritus area authority. “Everything I’d been taught, everything I’d been proud to preach about and witness about just crumbled under my feet. It was such a terrible psychological and nearly physical disturbance.”

Mr. Mattsson’s decision to go public with his disaffection, in a church whose top leaders commonly deliberate in private, is a sign that the church faces serious challenges not just from outside but also from skeptics inside.

Greg Prince, a Mormon historian and businessman in Washington who has held local leadership positions in the church, shares Mr. Mattsson’s doubts. “Consider a Catholic cardinal suddenly going to the media and saying about his own church, ‘I don’t buy a lot of this stuff,’ ” Mr. Prince said. “That’s the level we’re talking about here.”

He said of Mr. Mattsson, “He is, as far as I know, the highest-ranking church official who has gone public with deep concerns, who has had a faith crisis and come forward to say he’s going to talk about it because maybe that will help us all to resolve it.”

Every faith has its skeptics and detractors, but the Mormon Church’s history creates special challenges. The church was born in America only 183 years ago, and its founder and prophet, Joseph Smith, and his disciples left behind reams of papers that still exist, documenting their work, exposing their warts and sometimes contradicting one another.

“The Roman Catholic Church has had 2,000 years to work through the hiccups in its history,” said Terryl L. Givens, a professor of English, literature and religion at the University of Richmond and a Mormon believer. “Mormonism is still an adolescent religion.”

Mr. Givens and his wife, Fiona, recently presented what they called “Crucible of Doubt” sessions for questioning Mormons in England, Scotland and Ireland. Hundreds attended each event.

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Read more at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/us/some-mormons-search-the-web-and-find-doubt.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

The Atlantic: When Is a Royal Baby a Fetus?

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The Atlantic: When Is a Royal Baby a Fetus?

When Is a Royal Baby a Fetus?

Technically, right up until the moment he’s born. And yet we’ve called him a baby the whole time. What media coverage of the recent pregnancy and birth has to do with abortion politics.
by  — JULY 24 2013, 9:12 AM ET

An excerpt:


Lefteris Pitarakis/AP Images

Moral philosopher James Q. Wilson wrote that humanity “has a moral sense.” Whether that moral sense is grounded in evolution, the image of God, or some other foundation, it sometimes leads us to act better than we speak. There are surprising moments, in other words, when our pre-conscious emotional and moral wiring responds to a situation in a way our more studied judgments would not permit.  A usually callous employee comforts a just-fired coworker in genuine sympathy. A man who hasn’t acted chivalrously in all his days instinctively holds a door open for a pregnant woman. A teenager roaming in one of those teenage-mall herds apologizes to a passer-by whom her friends have just mocked.

This week, as the U.K.’s Prince William and Kate Middleton were expecting their child at any moment, the impending birth received a galaxy’s worth of media coverage. That the child would be heir to the throne was a motivating factor in all this attention, to be sure. I was interested not only for this reason but for a less-noticed one: Countless media reports bore news about the “royal baby.”

Why was this noteworthy? Because this term, to get exegetical for a moment, was not used to describe the future state of the child—once born and outside of the womb, that is. No, the American media used this phrase “royal baby” to describe the pre-born infant. It’s not strange for leading pro-life thinkers like Eric Metaxas and Denny Burk to refer to a fetus as a “baby.” It’s not strange, either, for people to refer to a child they’re expecting as a “baby,” regardless of where they stand on the issue of abortion. It is strange, though, for outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post and Boston Globe–which purport to be neutral on the issue–to use this seemingly explosive phrase without so much as a qualification. And why is this strange? Because it codes a pro-life position into their description of the unborn child.

I am a Christian who believes deeply in the sanctity of life, so for me, this language choice is revealing. The two most common arguments made today by thoughtful pro-choicers  are as follows: a) the being in the womb has no distinct personhood when in the mother’s body, as it is only a fetus and not yet a person (as seen in this ruling of a 2004 Houston court), or b) the fetus has some hard-to-define measure of personhood, yes, but a sufficient degree less personhood than the mother such that the mother may conscionably, though sometimes painfully terminate it (as in this New York Times essay). The linchpin of both of these arguments is location, closely related todependence. If the fetus is born, it is outside the womb and relatively independent of the mother. If the fetus is unborn, it is inside the womb, part of the mother’s body, and therefore dependent on the mother and subject to her decisions.

These arguments—which really are basically one and the same—have persuaded many people. The result, virtually enshrined into media law, is this: Pre-born beings are to be called fetuses, and post-birth beings are to be called babies. Here’s the New York Times referring to aborted babies as fetuses in the Kermit Gosnell trial, for example; NPR follows the same logic, as does CNN. Fetuses, it seems, are essentially subhuman. Outside of the mainstream media, the rhetoric builds from this impersonal foundation. Not only are pre-born children subhuman; they are considered “clumps of cells,” in fact, or pre-human “seeds.” In both the mainstream media and the pro-abortion movement, fetuses are future humans being knit together in a woman’s body. They are not humans while in the womb. To kill them is not to kill a human, but something not-yet human.

How strange was it, then, that leading news sources referred to the fetus of William and Kate as the “royal baby.” There were no pre-birth headlines from serious journalistic sources like “Royal Clump of Cells Eagerly Anticipated” or “Imperial Seed Soon to Sprout.” None of the web’s traffic-hoarding empires ran “Subhuman Royal Fetus Soon to Become Human!” No, over and over again, one after another, from the top of the media food chain to the bottom, Kate’s “fetus” was called, simply and pre-committedly, a baby. Why was this? Because, as I see it, the royal baby was a baby before birth. The media was right; gloriously, happily right.

Like all babies-in-womb, in the months before Kate gave birth, the royal heir was spinning around, jabbing mom at inopportune moments, reacting in sheer physical bliss to the soothing sounds of dad’s voice, getting hungry, becoming sad and even agitated when voices were raised in marital conflict, sleeping, sucking its thumb, enjoying certain kinds of music, waking mom up in the night in order to do more spinning around/kicking, and eating hungrily what mom ate.

Thoughts for Both Sides of the Abortion Debate

How, if at all, does this “royal baby” phenomenon impact the current cultural debate over abortion? Here are a few thoughts for both sides of the abortion debate, pro-life and pro-choice alike.

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Read more at: http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/07/when-is-a-royal-baby-a-fetus/278056/

Truth IS Stranger Than Fiction

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Truth IS Stranger Than Fiction

Reblogging an interesting item sent to me by a friend who may prefer to remain anonymous.  Straight from the annals of “truth is stranger than fiction,” ponder this satirical take on WWII, cleverly deriding pretentious post-modern views of “reality,”  particularly the modern refusal to acknowledge real evil — since “everyone knows”  that any notion of plots to obliterate the family by redefining marriage, to destroy western and Christian culture by secularization and/or by demographic and militaristic growth of Islamist philosophy, etc. are just too far-fetched for even a TV series, much less real life!  (NB: blog excerpts omit language which some readers might find offensive).

“….the worst offender here is the History Channel and all their programs on the so-called ‘World War II.’  Let’s start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Secret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesn’t look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apopleptic rage when he doesn’t get his way, check. All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons.

I wouldn’t even mind the lack of originality if they weren’t so heavy-handed about it. Apparently we’re supposed to believe that in the middle of the war the Germans attacked their allies the Russians, starting an unwinnable conflict on two fronts, just to show how sneaky and untrustworthy they could be? And that they diverted all their resources to use in making ever bigger and scarier death camps, even in the middle of a huge war? Real people just aren’t that evil. And that’s not even counting the part where as soon as the plot requires it, they instantly forget about all the racism nonsense and become best buddies with the definitely non-Aryan Japanese.

Not that the good guys are much better…. It’s pretty standard “shining amazing good guys who can do no wrong” versus “evil legions of darkness bent on torture and genocide” stuff, totally ignoring the nuances and realities of politics. The actual strategy of the war is barely any better…. one example: in the Battle of the Bulge, a vastly larger force of Germans surround a small Allied battalion and demand they surrender or be killed. The Allied general sends back a single-word reply: “Nuts!”. The Germans attack, and, miraculously, the tiny Allied force holds them off long enough for reinforcements to arrive and turn the tide of battle. Whoever wrote this episode obviously had never been within a thousand miles of an actual military.

Probably the worst part was the ending. The British/German story arc gets boring, so they tie it up quickly, have the villain kill himself (on Walpurgisnacht of all days, not exactly subtle) and then totally switch gears to a battle between the Americans and the Japanese in the Pacific. Pretty much the same dichotomy – the Japanese kill, torture, perform medical experiments on prisoners, … and the Americans are led by a kindly old man in a wheelchair.

Anyway, they spend the whole season building up how the Japanese home islands are a fortress, and the Japanese will never surrender, and there’s no way to take the Japanese home islands because they’re invincible…and then they realize they totally can’t have the Americans take the Japanese home islands so they have no way to wrap up the season.

So they invent a completely implausible superweapon that they’ve never mentioned until now. Apparently the Americans got some scientists together to invent it, only we never heard anything about it because it was “classified.”  In two years, the scientists manage to invent a weapon a thousand times more powerful than anything anyone’s ever seen before.  Then they use the superweapon, blow up several Japanese cities easily, and the Japanese surrender. Convenient, isn’t it?

…and then, in the entire rest of the show, over five or six different big wars, they never use the superweapon again. Seriously. They have this whole thing about a war in Vietnam that lasts decades and kills tens of thousands of people, and they never wonder if maybe they should consider using the unstoppable mystical superweapon that they won the last war with. At this point, you’re starting to wonder if any of the show’s writers have even watched the episodes the other writers made.

I’m not even going to get into the whole subplot about breaking a secret code (cleverly named “Enigma”, because the writers couldn’t spend more than two seconds thinking up a name for an enigmatic code), the giant superintelligent computer called Colossus (despite this being years before the transistor was even invented), the Soviet strongman whose name means “Man of Steel” in Russian (seriously, between calling the strongman “Man of Steel” and the Frenchman “de Gaulle”, whoever came up with the names for this thing ought to be shot).

So yeah. Stay away from the History Channel. Unlike most of the other networks, they don’t even try to make their stuff believable.”

Entire entry at http://squid314.livejournal.com/275614.html

Harvard PhD, New York Times journalist ridiculed for expressing creationist beliefs

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Harvard PhD, New York Times journalist ridiculed for expressing creationist beliefs

The Guardian: Andrew Brown’s Blog

Virginia Heffernan’s creationism is wrong but makes good sense

The tech writer understands that the biblical account is a story. It’s just one that she prefers over the stories told by science

God and Adam's hands about to touch in a detail from the Creation of Adam by Michaelangelo

‘In popular culture, arguments about evolution are not clashes of facts against stories. They are the clash of two competing stories.’ Photograph: World Films Enterprises/Corbis

A US writer, Virginia Heffernan, has just outed herself as a creationist. As she is currently earning a living writing on technology for Yahoo! News, this is a brave thing to do and has been greeted with obloquy, bemusement, and patronising explanations about the difference between facts and stories. Now of course evolution is true. Evolution is a fact: it happens. It’s also a predictive theory: it explains why things happen and have happened in ways that allow us to find out more about the world. It is something that I find fascinating, but there are lots of things that fascinate me, from fly fishing to philosophy, which I don’t expect the rest of the world to take an interest in.

In that respect, evolution is different. It has come to mean an explanation for everything, including all sorts of questions which were once, and rightly, treated as philosophical or ethical. Even more, it has come to be taken up as a banner in the American culture wars. In that context it is unattractive. If you want to know why an educated American might decide evolution is untrue, spend some time at the website Why evolution is true, run by the Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne. The science there is great, but the tone of voice is something else: hectoring arrogant mansplaining with sputtering outbursts of extraordinary viciousness. If you don’t much care whether the science is true, this would convince you that there must be something wrong with it.

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Read more at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2013/jul/18/virginia-heffernan-creationism-nothing-wrong

My husband is not my soul mate.

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Worth reading

Hannah's avatarThe Art in Life

It might seem odd that on this, our one-year anniversary, I am beginning a post with the declaration that my husband is not my soul mate. But he isn’t.WegmannWedding161

I wouldn’t want to imagine life without James. I enjoy being with him more than anyone else in this world. I love him more than I ever thought you could love someone, and I miss him whenever I am not with him. I wouldn’t want to married to anyone else other than James, which is good, because I plan on being married to him forever, and he has to let me die first.

But I reject the entire premise of soul mates.

WegmannWedding294Do you remember those awesome Evangelical 90’s/ early 2000’s where Jesus was kind of like our boyfriend and we all kissed dating good-bye because we just knew that God was going to bring us THE ONE and then life…

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