No Intelligence Allowed

I had the pleasure of meeting Ben Stein a few years back and was delighted to hear he was venturing into documentary film making. I was even more excited to hear he would be taking on science and essentially the problems I addressed in my last blog.

Ben Stein has a long list of credentials including lawyer, comedian, actor, political speech writer, economist, and professor. I'm not a Gore hater (hey, I have a Gore '08 sticker on the fridge), but if I have to hear him narrate one more documentary I just might have to take that sticker down. So it is incredibly refreshing to hear an intelligent, funny and wonderfully gifted voice will be addressing a very poignant topic that needs to be revealed.

Essentially this film looks like it is going to expose the discrimination against many scientist who bring up any questions against Darwinism. Stein explains this is a matter of freedom stating Freedom is not conferred by the state: as our founders said, and as Martin Luther King repeated, freedom is God-given. A huge part of this freedom is freedom of inquiry. This includes the ability to inquire whether a higher power, a being greater than man, is involved with how the universe operates. This has always been basic to science. ALWAYS. Ben Stein is bringing to light the issue of how science is defined and ultimately practiced.

I remember back to my days of evolutionary biology in college where my professors frequently mocked the idea of God and that it had no place in the realm of science. You don't have to go into a science classroom these days because leading atheists Dawkins and Hitchens are bringing this message to you by way of the Best Sellers list and prime time TV.

Additionally, Ben Stein is Jewish, so I hope this film will open the eyes of some Americans who immediately dismiss any critiques of who they perceive to be Right Wing Christian wing nuts. I'm looking forward to a full review when the movie comes out. I hope you will be encouraged to check it out. Watch the trailer here.

Thought for the day: If science can't even disprove the existence of unicorns, how can it disprove the existence of God?

The More You Know, the Less You Understand

I have been interested in philosophy ever since I first read Plato's Republic in my early teens. I then dabbled in existential writers like Camus, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Objectivist Ayn Rand. I was just shy of a minor in philosophy in college where I was especially enjoyed medieval and religious philosophies of Augustine, Algazali, Aquinas, Anselm and the list goes on...

So I was delighted to find a new podcast and website that has thoughtful and interesting information on relevant philosophy, science, ethics in relation to Christianity. Special thanks to my friend Jen, who introduced me to the group Stand to Reason. The founder of Stand to Reason is Greg Koukl. He has a talk radio program that comes weekly as a podcast and this blog will touch on his most recent podcast Science-Is God Out of Bounds? (Subscribe here!)

The podcast is formatted to have around an hour to address a relevant topic, in this episode its science and then an hour of listener calls. Recent podcasts include discussions on Christopher Hitchen's bestseller God is Not Great, How Christians Should think about voting for a Mormon, and Raising Children to be Adults.

Greg is addressing an article by Edward Larson called If its Supernatural it is not Science. Larson makes the statement that even if God did create the universe, its not science. Science as it is currently defined is to explain the material world by naturalistic explanations. Thus science by definition leaves no room for the supernatural.

Greg raises a point that this definition is problematic. He draws a good analogy in that if you find a man with a gun wound, knife stab, and head lopped off, you aren't going to say he died of natural causes. In fact, you will probably search for an agent that caused the death. Why is it that science limits itself arbitrarily to rule out certain agents as causes?

"Is it possible that there are some nonscientific enterprises like philosphy, theology and ethics that might contribute legitimate, defensible conclusions that represent problems for some scientific views? If truth is really the object of the scientific enterprise, scientists should welcome it from any source. So Greg propose that the definition of science should not limit its causes to only the material world.

Greg also addresses scientism. Scientism is a belief propelled by Carl Sagan and others that science is the source of all reliable information about the world. Plainly stated, only that which can be proved by science is true. Society is infected with scientism and you will find a good number of individuals who dismiss anything that is not science. Science is fact and everything else including philosophy and theology may or may not be true, but we will never know.

The limitations of the definition of science as previously stated make this view a rather dangerous one to hold. If science is the only way to truth then science itself is self-refuting because science is built on a series of truths that cannot be demonstrated by science but must be in place even for science to be valid.


Check out more science related articles here. I recommend Sagan and Scientism, Unbelievable Unbelief, and Science Isn't, Science Is.

Thought for the Day: If the wager is your life, what odds will you take?

Where in the world are all the Christians?

The media would still have you believe Christianity is a religion that is synonymous with the right wing whose main concern is running the US. The majority of the world's Christians; however, are not in the US. In fact there are Christians in every country of the world, countries that you may have not heard of like Djibouti and Tuvalu.

Christianity is the only truly global religion. You will find missionaries in New Mexico from Indonesia witnessing to the Navajos. You will find Nigerians starting churches across Europe. The Chinese church is sending thousands upon thousands to the Middle East.

The world continent by continent has an almost even distribution of Christians today. This has of course changed over history and even the last 100 years. I am throwing out all these stats without support, but hey this is a blog. Operation World has a wonderful podcast and presentation where I have pulled these pictures on their website. Check out the YLG podcast and presentation.

The majority of the world's mission force comes from non-Western countries. To my surprise, Mongolia sends the most missionaries per Christian- 1 missionary for every 222 Christians. The next greatest sending countries per Christian are Lebanon, Singapore, Niger, and Nepal. I think this should send quite a message to the much wealthier churches of the West.

In closing, Operation World has a great resource that outlines all the countries of the world in good detail and also how you can pray for all the countries more specifically. I would highly recommend getting this book.






Thought for the Day: When man works, man works. When man prays, God works.