Archive for February, 2009

I apologize for the self-promotion, but I know we have a big audience and I’d like to drum up an initial following for my newest blog. Castles of Air is about the art and science of software development. While this is admittedly a very specialized interest, I know we are blessed by a high proportion of nerds and smart people among our fans. I’ve been a developer for about a decade and a half now, because I’ve always felt that writing programs is an enjoyable hobby which also, luckily, is often worth good money. I also believe that working with computers is an excellent introduction to rigorous logic and everybody should learn at least the basics as an important part of their education. You know my strong feelings about science, and I approach programming from a scientific background as well. I expect to be writing several posts about how to approach debugging as a science, making hypotheses about where the problems might lie and testing those to prove them true or false. And of course, I think of the mind as a great big virtual reality machine for modeling the world. If all that doesn’t sound like it could possibly hold the slightest bit of interest for you, just get back to the regularly scheduled programming and forget I wasted your time. But if you are interested, please check out my new blog, bookmark it, follow it, save the RSS feed, or whatever you want to do.

In recent days, we’ve dealt with headier topics here (though no less incorrect) than one usually gets when responding to religious claims of one sort or another. But it’s been a long time since we’ve let our hair down, so to speak, and just smacked around some village idiots. So, in the spirit of mean-spirited fun, let us observe the recent inanities from Brannon Howse. Howse is the big cheese over at the beyond-right-wing house of delusion known as the Christian Worldview Network. I get their e-newsletters, and trust me, a more delirious exercise in concatenated crazy you will not find outside Arkham Asylum. It’s Christianity stripped down to its ugliest, basest form: ignorance, fear, and paranoia ooze from its every pixel. Recently, Howse wrapped up a nationwide church tour performing what he called “Code Blue Rallies,” in which he and a group of guest speakers basically got up behind a pulpit to display their tenuous grasp of reality in living color for all to see. The usual wackalunacy was trotted out: young-earth creationism, liberal bashing, you name it. If it’s on the McDonald’s menu of fundagelical stupidity, Howse served it up and super-sized it at his rallies. One of these, at Birchman Baptist Church in Fort Worth (Howse skipped that liberal cesspit Austin), was attended by newspaper columnist Bud Kennedy, who wrote a mildly snarky and generally bemused piece on the surreal experience for the Star-Telegram. Howse’s response to this was to go into full-on Christian persecution mode, whining on the radio show Crosstalk about how Kennedy’s little column was an especially egregious example of the “liberal media and their attempt to characterize and marginalize Christians.” Howse is mindful of the fact the Christian Worldview Network audience is made up of the sort of knuckleheads who move their lips when they read, and to whom the very word “liberal” is like Tard...
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This message is part of a continuing discussion with Chuck Colson.  For my initial email to him, see this post.  For Chuck’s replies: Chuck Colson’s post #1; Chuck Colson’s post #2; Chuck Colson’s post #3   To Chuck Colson: It has taken me a while, but I’ve replied to the major points in the three letters you sent to me regarding my review of The Faith.  Please visit the following links to see this three part reply. Part 1: Faith and certainty Excerpt: “To return to the original theme that I touched upon when I discussed your book, the main difference between your position and mine appears to be that you have chosen to take a position of unwavering certainty, and then you describe that as knowledge.  But it’s a highly subjective kind of knowledge, for your central point is that knowledge begins with something that (you acknowledge) you have arbitrarily decided to believe without reason.” Part 2: Prison Ministry statistics revisited Excerpt: “It’s not the soundness of your methodology that I’ve questioned here; it’s the results.  The study looked fine to me, and I certainly can’t go back and try to reproduce the results myself.   But I don’t need to.  The study you referenced already demonstrates that the program was counter-productive.  In fact, if you look at page 18, it’s stated explicitly: ‘Simply stated, participation in the program is not related to recidivism reduction.’” Part 3: Slavery and Christianity Excerpt: “While I would agree that you could not fault Christianity for a misapplication of the teachings in the Bible, we are not talking here about people who read clear injunctions against slavery and rebelled against them.  We are talking precisely about what it says in the Bible that clearly supports slavery.  For better or worse, Stringfellow seems to me to have been a sincere Christian who genuinely believed that he was acting...
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I’m currently in a correspondence with a person who is offering me the tired line that religion is helpful to people and not in conflict with science and has been involved in some worthy efforts. This morning, February 25, in the Austin American-Statesman, there were two articles—one on the front page of the National section, and one on the front of the Local and State—that covered dangerous errors in sex education in our schools and legislation undermining the relationship between a woman and her doctor, which also noted that our governor has once again spoken out against medical research that researchers believe could yield beneficial medical results. Make no mistake, these initiatives are designed purely to resonate among religious constituents. Are there nonreligious people who might (and do) support these same measures? Yes, I’m sure there are. Would there be enough people motivated outside of religious initiatives to make these “issues” important to legislators? I highly doubt it. The reason they are “issues” is because they are religiously supported agendas. And religion means numbers. I agree that religion is not in conflict with science—in any area where science is not in conflict with religion. However, as soon as science puts forward any assertion that does not correlate to religious claims, science comes under attack from religion, and bad things happen. The correspondent pointed out that Islamic nations long ago were among some of the most progressive thinkers in math and science. I have heard this, too. However, I wonder what sorts progressive thinking applied to apostates and heretics in these same ancient Islamic nations? Was a conversion to another religion (outside of Islam) taken in stride, do you think? I don’t claim that where religion doesn’t conflict with X, religion will automatically oppose X. But where religion perceives that X opposes religion, X will be castigated by religious adherents—often violently and...
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I imagine everybody’s good and fatigued by two solid weeks of playing philosophical word games with professional word gamers, so let’s dial it back and enjoy a more typical theist email. You don’t get the full effect of these two messages by “J” (full name withheld by me) because they originally arrived as giant unbroken paragraphs, and I’ll be breaking them up in order to respond. hey , while you’re so busy trying to get people to prove the existence of God to you on your little low budget talk show, why not prove to us that God does not exist. you can’t can you? it’s called a stalemate. there is no way for either side to prove anything concerning the subject. Perhaps you have misunderstood the meaning of the word “atheism.” What it means is that we don’t believe in the existence of any gods, not that we regard it as a certainty. I also don’t believe in, for example, Spider-Man – but I would never claim to conclusively prove that he doesn’t exists. Do you believe in Spider-Man? i know he exist because of the things i prayed for and other thing i have seen in my life. i have a bulging disc in my lower back which pressed relentlessly against my sciatic nerve. it caused me pain every single hour of everyday for months. i tried multiple medicines, physical therapy, and hot/cold compresses. nothing worked for long. one day my mother convinced me to get prayed for by my sister who had just gotten saved. {laugh if you like} my sister prayed for me over the phone from beaumont, tx to seattle, wa long distance and the very next day all that excruciating pain was gone. you could say it was all a coincidence or it would have stopped on it’s own that day anyway. you could also say what my atheist buddy travis said and claim it was the power of positive thinking. whatever. all i know is the day after i got prayed for, after MONTHS of severe pain, it was gone. There...
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