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Michael Spencer’s post today at his blog, internetmonk.com, prompted a good little discussion on the nature of blogging, fisking and the discussion of theology, which often (usually) trespasses into areas of personal faith and belief. Because theology (man’s attempts to understand God) impacts in a very real way how we interact with God and accept how God wants to interact with us, discussions about theology should never be thought of as purely intellectual exercises.

As I pointed out in a comment on that post, when we are confronted with some different thinking on a theological issue, it provokes us to think the issue through in light of our own theological framework. Often that process appears as a challenge or a critique, which of course it is. From the standpoint of the reader, you can choose to critique something based on a theological framework (e.g. “it’s not Reformed, so it’s wrong”), or you can challenge yourself and your theology in the process. Often my responses to things start out, “I don’t think so, because…” This could sometimes be seen as being “critical,” which is a no-no in some circles, or it could be understood as thinking out loud from another perspective. When I think of it, I do try to indicate that’s what I’m doing. Sometimes.

This week I have been provoked in a good way by a couple of posts on i-monk on the localization of Jesus. The first post was titled Where’s Jesus?: Thoughts on a Locally Available Christ (a brilliant title) and asked the question, “Where can you get your Jesus?.” As the title implies, the post discusses the concept of trying to make Jesus - or see Jesus as - more present in one place than another. Examples include the “Real Presence” at Communion and concepts like God “showing up” at a certain church. While not denying that there is truth in some of these concepts, Michael proposes:

Presenting Christianity as a system of localized appearances of Jesus distorts many things that we want to continually affirm: Jesus as the one mediator, Jesus as the ascended Lord of the universe, Christ who is in the midst of his church and present with all of his people. Maintaining the Biblical balance between “Jesus on the table,” “Jesus in my experience” and “Jesus at the right hand of the Father is a crucial task for worship leaders, pastors and teachers.

In a follow up post, he discusses what he calls a sacramental view of reality. While not everyone would agree with his thinking or his language, what he presents is a great tool for examining how we see God’s presence in our lives, and how we function as churches. It would be nice, would it not, if we spent less time in church talking about how we could make our lives better, and spent more time recognizing the presence of God around us?

My friend Ken writes a couple of posts dealing with similar issues here and here.

On that note, I’ll sign off. Stay tuned for an upcoming post discussing another of the i-monk’s thought-provoking articles, this one on transactionalism, entitled Out of Business With God.

I am very tempted to refer you all here and just be done with the whole thing, but as I have promised to complete my critique of Dawkins’ Delusional argument (yes, I admit it’s a cheap shot, but then I was raised watching Johnny Carson and David Letterman), I will continue with my thoughts on the central argument of The God Delusion as laid out by Richard Dawkins.

I left off discussing his 3rd point and the Cosmological Argument, my point being that his argument so far (leading to the question of “Who designed the Designer?”) fails to deal with the real issues. I did not mention one other key problem with his 3rd point. While the Cosmological Argument proposes that “everything that begins to exist has a cause,” this only applies to material things that began to exist.

When we are dealing with the proposal that there exists a pre-existent Creator-being who is outside of the natural world He created, including being outside of time itself, a different set of rules obviously apply. And, since time is a part of the created universe, there is no basis for claiming that such a Creator had a “beginning” as we understand it. There is, therefore, no logical inconsistency in holding that a physical universe had a beginning, but that a spiritual Creator did not. This may at first seem to be nothing more than a logical “sleight of hand” but upon serious consideration, it is nothing of the sort. That being said, let us move on.

The proverbial crane vs the skyhook

Dawkins’ point three includes the proposition that “only a crane can do the business of working up gradually and plausibly from simplicity to otherwise improbably complexity.” The crane, again, refers to a purely natural process, a process which exists entirely within the material universe, and the skyhook refers to a non-material process, such as a non-material, intelligent Designer-being. Dawkins believes the neo-Darwinian hypothesis that evolution must be a slow, gradual process from simplicity to complexity.

I find it very interesting that Dawkins throws this in his argument, as it’s a point which is not only questionable based on available information, it is debated by some fellow non-design evolutionists. The fossil record at the moment indicates periods of plateaus followed by relatively sudden extinctions and appearances of new species, such as what is known as the Cambrian Explosion. Here’s Dawkins on the importance of gradualism:

Evolution is very possibly not, in actual fact, always gradual. But it must be gradual when it is being used to explain the coming into existence of complicated, apparently designed objects, like eyes. For if it is not gradual in these cases, it ceases to have any explanatory power at all. Without gradualness in these cases, we are back to miracle, which is simply a synonym for the total absence of explanation. Dawkins, R. (1995) River Out of Eden, Basic Books, New York, p. 83.

Stephen J. Gould, on the other hand, had this to say:

The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and “fully formed.” (Gould, Stephen J., “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History, Vol. 86, No. 5, May 1977, p.14).

Each, of course, have there own naturalistic explanations of the data, and I don’t mean to misstate their positions. The point is merely that there are issues with the concept of gradualism, and it isn’t necessarily the given that Dawkins would want us to believe.

Also, recent discoveries would indicate that “simple to complex” isn’t necessarily correct. From TheScientist.com, Melissa Lee Phillips writes:

The genome of the sea anemone, one of the oldest living animal species on Earth, shares a surprising degree of similarity with the genome of vertebrates, researchers report in this week’s Science.

The study also found that these similarities were absent from fruit fly and nematode genomes, contradicting the widely held belief that organisms become more complex through evolution. The findings suggest that the ancestral animal genome was quite complex, and fly and worm genomes lost some of that intricacy as they evolved.

She also writes:

Previous studies have shown gene loss in flies and worms, but this work shows that loss “was highly substantial, even more significant than we expected before,” said Eugene V. Koonin of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in Bethesda, Md., who was not involved in the work.

Now, the question arises, “Even if gradualism is the correct viewpoint, why is it essential that it be a natural process and not the result of a ’skyhook?’” The answer is that it isn’t essential. It is, rather, a presumption from his overall argument that there is no Designer. In other words, it appears merely to be circular reasoning. There is no reason why a Designer could not choose to design a process which operates gradually. I think even the most ardent Fundamentalist Creationist would agree with the concept that God designed processes which does not require Him to personally raise up every stalk of corn, or what have you. Whether animals “poofed” into existence or resulted from an amazingly complex designed process, design is still design.

I think that’s quite enough for point #3. Points 4-6 follow from the “crane v skyhook” argument, so I am hoping to be able to sum all of this up in one more post. Keep your fingers crossed (but don’t hold your breath…).

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is not due out until February 2008, and for that matter it doesn’t even seem to be done filming yet, but it is sure causing a lot of stir. Starring Ben Stein, the movie is a documentary addressing the alleged anti-ID (anti-anti-Darwinian?) bias in the American scientific and education communities.

As I’ve written before, some of the anti-theist scientists interviewed for the film claim they were misled about the type of documentary it was, and fear how they will be edited for the film.

Producer Walt Ruloff recently gave a podcast-interview to Rob Crowther at Intelligent Design The Future, which addresses some of the questions and may perhaps cause even more stir. Some of the points made in the interview:

• Those interviewed were provided both a full disclosure and release to sign, as well as provided the questions asked, before the interviews.
• The responses will not be edited.
• One of the leading genomic researchers in the country stated that a growing percentage of their research is pointing in directions that they can’t publish, or risk losing their funding.
• 20% to 30% of their findings are being shelved

You can listen to part 1 of the interview here, and part 2 here.

Considering that a reported 85% of the population already question the materialistic evolutionary metanarrative, this film could very well threaten the status quo, and cause some examination of the Government’s funding process. A little skepticism is a good thing. I do hope, however, that the film’s producers stick to the facts. All it will take is some minor bits of misinformation to threaten the film’s conclusions. Although, that didn’t seem to hurt Al Gore or Michael Moore.