BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

Nullifying the Word of God for the sake of academic reputation...

This is a post showing how (it seems to me) shame over the Bible's history of Creation has led to the (maybe) decline of Covenant Theological Seminary. But first, a short back-story...

Some time back I had a man in my congregation who had grown up Baptist and was pursuing graduate studies in science. One weekend he was home visiting his childhood church and he came under the influence of John Armstrong who--whether through preaching or conversation, I don't know--convinced him to stop graduate studies in science and begin graduate studies in theology. Being PCA at the time, I encouraged him to go to the PCA's Covenant Seminary over in St. Louis and he matriculated there a year or so later.

Watching him across the years is part of the reason I've warned people to avoid Covenant. There's more to say than this, but two things are worth highlighting... 

Fungus, yeast, and children...

National Geographic breathlessly announces: "Even after centuries of effort, some 86 percent of Earth's species have yet to be fully described, according to new study that predicts our planet is home to 8.7 million species. That means scientists have cataloged less than 15 percent of species now alive—and current extinction rates mean many unknown organisms will wink out of existence before they can be recorded."

So let me get this straight...

From Dark Ages, Galileo speaks of literal interpretation of Scripture...

(Tim) It's central to our chronological conceit to reassure ourselves the Middle Ages were the Dark Ages crammed full of religious bloodshed, religious oppression of scientific progress, and the Plague. So we've all learned the lesson to keep church and state separate to the end that we won't have as many wars or as many people die in those wars.

Doing well are we? Paganism is the state religion almost everywhere and more people were sacrificed on the altars of paganism's idols (Communism, Zionism, Feminism, etc.) this past century than ever died from all the religious wars of the Medieval world combined.

But what of science? Our modern morality play smugly assures us the Enlightenment busted truth loose from the religious ignoramuses who had oppressed the great minds across many centuries. Finally we know it's not wrong to take the Pill, unborn babies aren't persons and can't feel the knives, the iPhone is cool, washing hands saves lives, you can make babies in the lab, you can end the war by blowing up the women and children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Earth isn't the center of the Universe.

"Poor Galileo! If only he'd lived today when every man finally knows religion has nothing to say to the state or the high priests of Science. The Bible's true when it talks about spiritual things--not political or sexual or scientific things. It's no history book or textbook on cosmology. It tells you how to feel--not what to think. Poor Galileo! He had it right and the church tried to shut him up. Stupid ignorant church. Stupid Dark Ages...

Merry Christmas: science isn't all it's cracked up to be...

(Tim, w/thanks to Pastor Curell) The scientific method is coming in for some hard knocks, recently, as efforts to replicate a number of critical studies fail. Some would prefer to put it that "replication is proving difficult," but after reading some of the stats, "failure" seems the right description. In discipline after discipline, scientists doing experiments over again find themselves unable to replicate earlier findings that minted academic superstars and set the standard for medical practice, for instance.

Some of the inability to replicate is likely attributable to the very old problem we all fall into of looking for proof that we're right. The problem is too widespread, though, for that alone to be the answer. Thus the New Yorker subtitled its article reporting on this crisis under its Annals of Science: "The Truth Wears Off: Is There Something Wrong with the Scientific Method?"

After reviewing hundreds of papers and forty-four meta-analyses, Australian National University's Michael Jennions found "a consistent decline effect over time, as many of the theories seemed to fade into irrelevance. ...Jenions admits that his findings are troubling, but expresses a reluctance to talk about them publicly."

Global warming: everyone who's anything agrees...

(Tim) It wasn't until my thirties that I learned scientists lie, too. They just use different techniques. So no surprise tonight when I read that someone hacked the servers of a global warming advocacy group called the Climatic Research Unit of University of East Anglia and posted thousands of their e-mails, papers, and other correspondence on a Russian server for all the world to read. It's caused big problems:

Global warming alarmists are scrambling to save face... The messages ...reveal correspondence between British and American researchers engaged in fraudulent reporting of data to favor their own climate change agenda.

Summing up the damage the documents have done, climatologist Patrick J. Michaels said: "This is not a smoking gun, this is a mushroom cloud."

The report...

Hitchens + Dawkins = Ditchkins

(Tim, thanks to James) Alright, alright; I'll say something good about Stanley Fish. Check out two posts (one and two) he recently did for the New York Times' web site in review of Terry Eagleton's Reason, Faith, and Revolution. To whet your appetite, here's an excerpt from the first post...

Darwinists throw their own monster's ball...

The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)

(Tim) If our Lord tarries, this coming Thursday, February 12th, will be the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. As her holy day approaches, Annie Laurie Gaylor of Madison's Freedom from Religion Foundation is plastering buses and billboards with intellectual cheesecake for fellow misanthropes. Real creative stuff like, "Imagine No Religion" and "Praise Darwin - Evolve Beyond Belief."

The president of the Skeptics Society (which publishes Skeptic magazine), Michael Shermer, isn't waiting for the holy day to celebrate. He assures fellow homo sapiens that his cult's high priests have a "pretty good outline" of the origin of life. But then he goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid like...