We should probably talk about this before the wedding...

Click here.

A jedi buys a car

h/t Craig.

Don't look away

My father was the founder of the National Park in Rwanda, which is home to rare silver back gorillas. During the war here, just one silver back was killed. And when it happened, within 48 hours millions in funding was sent to ensure the rest of the gorilla population was protected. Why isn't the same done with our women? I'll tell you why, because in the eyes of the international community animals have more value than humans in this part of the world.

I told him what is happening here is a holocaust. I was very aggressive. I said, 'You are in the Congo, so what are you doing? You came to the hospital and like everyone you cry. Like everyone you leave. And like everyone, we never hear from you again.'

The world continues to look away. Don't.

Trippy

Singleness and marriage

Well, my decision not to blog on love, sex, marriage, singleness, dating etc has been well and truly blown out of the water... ;-)

Craig's blog is getting out of his control! But there are very interesting discussions to be found here and here.

He's back!!

I finally got around to updating my blogroll (both here and my RSS feeds), including deleting my brother's blog Christianity in a Democracy, and he starts up posting again.

Typical big brother. Always making a nuisance of himself!

Anyway, he's back with some thoughts on the upcoming federal election, so I suggest you go check it out.

RIGHT NOW!!

Nothing new under the sun

There really is nothing new under the sun.

“For if there is reason in the universe, if things have any cause and purpose, then there must be a God who embodies and expresses reason: for God is not to be thought of as an arbitrary despot.”

If God do all things at his pleasure,
Because he will, and not because it's good,
So that his actions will have no set measure,
Is't possible it should be understood
What he intends?
- Henry More, Philosophical Poems, 1647

"Just as reason in the universe implies a Divine Reasoner - and by the same token design in the universe implies a Divine Designer - so also reason within the creation entails the Creator's having a purpose, which is the good of his creation."

My Bloginality is ISTJ!!!

I'll sing Thy power to save

On this day in 1731, William Cowper was born in Great Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire, England. Cowper wrote one of my favourite hymns, "There is a fountain." Such beautiful words to be written by a "poor lisping, stammering tongue."

There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains

The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day
And there may I, though vile as he
Wash all my sins away

Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power
Till all the ransomed Church of God
Be saved to sin no more

E'er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply
Redeeming love has been my theme
And shall be till I die

When this poor lisping, stammering tongue
Lies silent in the grave
Then in a nobler, sweeter song
I'll sing Thy power to save

Click here to hear the hymn and read about William Cowper.

Hmm...

These are the kinds of arguments from Christians against Darwinism which I do not like at all.

Michael Craven, president of the Center for Christ and Culture, is writing in response to responses to his recent article on James Watson. Apparently evolutionists are outraged at Craven's suggestions that James Watson's apparent racism (I can't comment - haven't read the previous article) stems from his Darwinism. I'm not going to go through the whole thing, just mention one comment I found particularly amusing. Craven writes

Darwin’s theory of evolution does indeed have a “goal”—providing an alternative to the biblical explanation of origins. Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin was a noted intellectual, physician and writer who, long before Charles, theorized an evolutionary alternative to biblical origins. The senior Darwin strongly opposed Christianity going so far as to include “Credulity, Superstitious Hope, and the Fear of Hell in his catalogue of diseases.”

Exsqueeze me? Baking powder? Erasmus Darwin wants to replace the biblical account and that makes Charles Darwin's theory of evolution a deliberate alternative to the biblical account? Hello! Wrong Darwin!

And then he suggests Answers in Genesis as an appropriate place for seeking further information. Not good at all. I'd check out the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion instead. Real Christians who are real scientists doing good work on this issue.

And that's all I have to say about that. For now.

(As an aside, I'm amused by the slogan for the Creation Museum advertised on the Answers in Genesis site - "Prepare to Believe.")

Imposter Syndrome

• Do you secretly worry that others will find out that you're not as bright and capable as they think you are?
• Do you sometimes shy away from challenges because of nagging self-doubt?
• Do you tend to chalk your accomplishments up to being a "fluke," “no big deal” or the fact that people just "like" you?
• Do you hate making a mistake, being less than fully prepared or not doing things perfectly?
• Do you tend to feel crushed by even constructive criticism, seeing it as evidence of your "ineptness?"
• When you do succeed, do you think, "Phew, I fooled 'em this time but I may not be so lucky next time."
• Do you believe that other people (students, colleagues, competitors) are smarter and more capable than you are?
• Do you live in fear of being found out, discovered, unmasked?

If you answered yes to any of these questions — join the club!

Dr. Valerie Young

I answered "yes" to all of those questions...

10 Steps to Overcome the Imposter Syndrome

I'm a fraud!

I can definitely relate to this.

More on the Imposter Syndrome here.

Right to life

One of the topics we consider in the online Science and Religion course I tutor is bioethics. Abortion, in particular, provokes much discussion. A common viewpoint is that it's ok to abort a foetus if it hasn't developed the ability to feel pain. This, to me, is a very strange argument. Does it mean that murder of an adult is ok if it's not painful? I'm sure most people wouldn't go there (unless it was euthanasia).

Abortion is a tricky topic. I revolt against it with every fibre of my being, yet I wouldn't want to see it made illegal. I think it's disgusting that a woman might decide to terminate just because she doesn't want a baby at that time, but I have nothing but compassion for women who feel that they have no other choice.

But I just don't see why unborn babies should be treated so differently to adults. If it's ok to abort a baby who is disabled because the family won't be able to deal with them, is it then ok to euthanase a disabled adult or even child, because they family can't cope with the burden of caring for them? Surely nobody would argue this!

Anyway, just a few random thoughts I've been pondering while marking journals...

On marriage

Matt has written a very insightful (as well as very well edited and proofread!) post on marriage, inspired by the Stephen Sondheim musical Company.

Read it!

It's my life...

And it's rather stressful at the moment. This is what I've got to do over the next couple of months:

• Finish teaching for the session
• Mark 55 essays (in the next couple of days)
• Mark 47 journals
• Finalise tutorial participation marks for 47 students
• Conference proposals
• Alister McGrath's natural theology conference (due 15 November)
• Three Societies (BSHS, HSS, CSHPS) conference (due 3 December)
• Application for job in Cambridge (due 21 November)
• Finish thesis (by Christmas, just in case I get the job in Cambridge)
• Chapter 1 - Rewrite sections on natural philosophy and 17th century English theology
• Chapter 2 - Finish revising section on history of science treatments of natural theology
• Chapter 4 - Finish writing section on Henry More and write section on Ralph Cudworth
• Chapter 5 - Write entire chapter
• Chapter 6 - Finish draft
• Revise all chapters
• Write introduction to Part 2
• Write introduction to whole thesis
• Write conclusion
• Final editing and formatting

I think that's all. No wonder I'm stressed!

"My Father, Bertrand Russell"

Click here.

H/t Craig

Lame excuse for road rage

This article in today's Herald amused me. A man is claiming that he was "sexually assaulted" by a woman holding up her little finger at him. Sexually assaulted? By a woman in another car? With just a gesture? Even accusations of sexual harrassment require some kind of abuse of power. Assault? This is just crazy. And what does he do? Throws a water bottle at the woman's car. Clever.

"I just was angry and I threw it out the window, and I ended up hitting her car, and I get charged pretty much for being sexually assaulted by her, you know what I mean," he said.

Hmm.

And he tried to blame this ad campaign by the RTA.

I'm a sad pedant

John Gribbin says so. In his book about the founding of the Royal Society of London in the 17th century, he acknowledges that the people he is writing about would have regarded themselves as natural philosophers,

But as the old saying goes, if it looks like a duck, flies like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck. In modern terminology, the people who are the subjects of this book were scientists, and what they did was science; only the saddest pedant would object to my use of the word science in this context.

J. Gribbin, The Fellowship: The Story of a Revolution, Penguin Books, London, 2006, p. xiii.

Classic title, by the way. Very dramatic.

When submission is good

I've been thinking a lot about marriage lately (no points for guessing why that is!) and particularly about submission and headship. I'm not sure exactly where I stand on these issues, and perhaps I'll write in a bit more detail about those things when I'm not so busy, but in the meantime, I've figured out an example of when submission is unequivocally a good thing.

Submission of the thesis!!

Oh, how I'm longing for that day!

Charity or intolerance?

What the New Atheists Don’t See, by Theodore Dalrymple

Let us compare Hall’s meditation “Upon the Sight of a Harlot Carted” with Harris’s statement that some people ought perhaps to be killed for their beliefs:

With what noise, and tumult, and zeal of solemn justice, is this sin punished! The streets are not more full of beholders, than clamours. Every one strives to express his detestation of the fact, by some token of revenge: one casts mire, another water, another rotten eggs, upon the miserable offender. Neither, indeed, is she worthy of less: but, in the mean time, no man looks home to himself. It is no uncharity to say, that too many insult in this just punishment, who have deserved more. . . . Public sins have more shame; private may have more guilt. If the world cannot charge me of those, it is enough, that I can charge my soul of worse. Let others rejoice, in these public executions: let me pity the sins of others, and be humbled under the sense of my own.

Who sounds more charitable, more generous, more just, more profound, more honest, more humane: Sam Harris or Joseph Hall, D.D., late lord bishop of Exeter and of Norwich?

No doubt it helps that Hall lived at a time of sonorous prose, prose that merely because of its sonority resonates in our souls; prose of the kind that none of us, because of the time in which we live, could ever equal. But the style applies to the thought as well as the prose; and I prefer Hall’s charity to Harris’s intolerance.