HughHewitt.com: “And stay in touch with SmartChristian’s coverage of GodBlogCon I. Memo to the Phoenix team: We need a date. Memo to MarkDRoberts, John Mark Reynolds, and Tod Bolsinger and a ‘Catholic blogger top be named later’: Would you folks combine with me on a presentation in interview format as it would bring two author-pastors, an academic (and a ‘Catholic to be named later’) with a talking? Rather than a ‘keynote,’ I’d rather use my propensity to ask off-the-wall questions to push the ideas forward.

It would be an honor. I am ready, willing, and, God willing, able.

I cannot wait!

“

MSNBC - Arizona brushes up logo of outdated bird

The old Cardinal logo was a roundhead bird derisively referred to as a “parakeet.” The new version has decidedly more evil eyes and a menacing expression.

This is good news for Cardinals fans. A team does not need better players, what it needs is a better, meaner logo. I tremble when I think of my beloved Packers seeing this helmet when they enter the field. Will they be able to even play? Will the terror cause Farve to retire early? Does anyone actually think an evil eyed and menacing cardinal would scare anyone nearly as much as, oh let’s say, a bear or a lion, however cheerful looking? Our cat Athena reports that a menacing cardinal tastes as good as a supine parakeet. However, if this makeover works, then the Cardinal Rule should be applied more broadly. Organizations do not need to do better, just look better. For example, the LA Times would be much more relevant, if it renamed itself the LA Still-Relevant-Times.

Imagine if Custer and the Seventh Cavalry had been wearing tougher looking uniforms instead of boring blue. One can only imagine what would have happened if Custer had come to Little Big Horn as a member of the Raider Nation. The American Indians would have run away and Custer might have been President instead of fertilizing the earth with his genius. All of human history could have been changed. France, a tougher looking France, might have won a few wars. They needed to swap the Eiffel Tower as a symbol and go for a meaner looking hunk of cheese. If their troops were to borrow Packer Cheese-heads, then the next German invasion might be stopped before Paris without British and American help.

This applies to the present make over of the Democrat party. They need to lose the friendly Donkey symbol and go for a Balaam rebuking Biblical ass. This tough creature needs to have hooves of iron and a mean scowl. Placed on a natty jacket patch, even Howard Dean will look imposing. Imagine Dean yelling with the new logo on his shirt. For more entertainment, imagine Dean’s head in a football helmet. Who needs better ideas when you can simply have better marketing?

MSNBC - Democrats blast Iraq war policy in Rice debate

“I don’t like impugning anyone’s integrity, but I really don’t like being lied to,” Dayton said, “Repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally.”

Once again my sources in Washington were able to bring us further details on this story.

Mark Dayton was angry, but he was also afraid. He felt betrayed by Dr. Rice. However, finding that holiday weight gain was making his tailored suit uncomfortable was even more irritating. Crouched beneath the desk in his Senate office, he realized that he could not stay in that position long. His belt and abs were betraying him. Where could he go? After fleeing the city during the last dangerous period, when his foes were out to get him and his own family had feared for his sanity under the great pressure that was the lot of the Senate’s most courageous maverick, the right wing press had a field day. They had mocked him for running, little knowing the danger in which he lived. Just today, in the elevator, he had noticed a shifty glance in his direction from the young man near him, a young man he had not seen before in that elevator. He had pressed his anti-bugging device in his pants pocket, but he knew that it was no protection against invisible rays or mind control devices.

However, he had to stay in Washington, even his most trusting friend told him that. The press would not let him leave again. He was, of course, not afraid for himself, but he was a target. A target for every hater and right wing crack pot in the world. His staying placed the entire city in danger, but so it would have to be.

Mark Dayton had taken on Dr. Rice on the floor of the Senate. He had boldly called her bad names. Dayton had become red in the face and been firm, a blow no one could safely ignore. His vast national following, Dayton’s Army, would threaten Rice too much. He knew how this White House worked. He had seen the very, very angry looks some Republicans had given him. His life, Mark Dayton’s life, so critical to the progressive cause was in danger. Rice would be angry. She would call him names in private. People would hear those names and might act. Like Beckett in the Cathedral, any apology would come too late. His desk had been armor plated and under it he was safe, but he had not counted on being heavier. He hugged Scruffy the stuffed bunny tightly to his chest. He had to stay calm and in command. His staff demanded it. He ceased chewing on his thumb and cleared his throat. His secretary stopped pacing. Just one sound from under his desk could bring such calm!

“I am o.k.” he called to his worried advisors. He would endure the pain, for which a just society would give him combat pay, in order to stay alive and working in his role as the Scourge of the Senate. Tomorrow, well tomorrow, he was going to call the President, “a nasty fellow who is often wrong.” Bold? You bet. He was Mark Dayton and that was his way.

Evangelist Says Offerings Lost in Mail: “Those employees said the ministry routinely used donations to pay for Hanegraaff’s personal expenses and luxury items, including a board-approved 2003 Lexus sports car and smaller items, such as repairs to his children’s computers and birthday flowers for his mother.”

This is a deeply disturbing story to all Christians. However, we should follow the same policy I outlined in the case of James Dobson. The minister gets the benefit of the doubt until the investigation is over. Here is hoping that this story is not true.

Stories like this make me glad to work at Biola University, a place with almost one hundred years of financial frugality, and a global impact in the area of Christian thought. If you have a choice and are unsure about a ministry, it is always wise to give to ministries that are EFCA members and have a long track record of ministry. When I started Torrey, this fine track record was one reason I was happy to be at Biola.

Times Online - Comment

But for many decades America’s share of the world’s economic output has been in decline. Think of a see-saw. America at one end is now easily outweighed by any substantial grouping at the other, and most of those powers are on friendly terms with each other. America’s modesty in 1945 understated its muscle, just as Bushite vanity overstates it today. He has over-reached. His country is overstretched, losing economic momentum, losing world leadership, and losing the philosophical plot. America is running into the sand.

The Times, which should know how to chronicle a nation in decline, has seen fit to publish an article on the end of American greatness. Of course anyone older than forty can recall that in the seventies, these same sort of people were proclaiming an end to American power as well. This Times writer is wrong, like a long list of doom sayers before him. The USA may be entering its most glorious period. Of course anyone who proclaims doom always sounds smarter than the optimist. Reagan was thought a dope, I think, partly because he believed in American greatness. Sit and read back issues of Time or Newsweek, or the London Times, boys and girls to see how his “hubris” and notions of “victory” were mocked by the self-proclaimed wise of the age.

Sometimes writers fall into the traps of the perfectly useful metaphor that nations have a “life span” like animals. Of course, no human institutions last forever. Human frailty promises that any institution will eventually fail. However, it is foolish to to think that nations must decline or that there is a set limit to their time on Earth. The USA may collapse. Its power may fade soon, but it will not do so because it is aging. It is not aging for ideas never age and America is an idea. When the idea of republican government is passe, when there is a more free economy and political state on the planet, and when that state builds a world-class army, navy, and air force, then will be the time to worry. What state will do these things? China? It is a revolution waiting to happen with an economy at war with the ideology of the state. Japan? This is a state that soon have the oldest population in human history. Europe? There is no Europe. There is only a collection of second-tier powers, with aging populations, economies burdened by growing rule making, and no defense system. My favorite candidate would be India, but one does not have to be in India long to see that this nation, deeply divided between haves and have nots in a way America cannot dream, has its own deep problem. It always has a rival in Pakistan which might lob an atom bomb on it at any moment, something the USA has much less reason to plausibly fear.

There are five reasons to think the doom sayers are wrong and that the optimists are right. America will remain the greatest power on the planet.

First, American military might is not stretched thin. We have no draft. We are not going to have a draft. We have not tooled our economy for war and yet we still, with harldy an effort by most of us, have liberated two nations. Our losses are small. If America has the will, we will win in Iraq. There is no plausible path to victory for the terrorists there as they represent no alternative idea of government. We still have troops in old Europe. All of those troops will soon leave, their mission accomplished. It too sixty years, but America did it. I remember reading that we did not have the resources or will to do that job as well. The vastly larger economy and population of the present American state will easily do what their fathers did in the fifties and sixties with much less raw power. As it is, we fight the War on Terror with the noble sacrifice of our brave young men and women, but do so with hardly a ripple in our economic growth.

If the American people or government felt the need, and it does not, we could put ourselves on war footing as we did in the Second World War. How many planes, tanks, and ships does the Times writer project that we could build if we desired to do so? A nation in decline, like ancient Rome or Tsarist Russia, cannot project power when fully mobalized. The Tsar lost World War I, because Russia could not win it. The British lost the Empire, because they were bled white by World War I and II. The also were trying to occupy a nation, India, many times their size. Unless the USA tries to occupy India or China (!), we seem to be in good shape. The Times writer keeps forgetting that our goal is not to occupy Bosnia or Iraq. We wish to help them get to their feet. If they refuse to behave for their own good, then we can leave at any time that the cost seems too high.

If our goal was to be a colonial power, then the Times writer might have a point. However, we have limited territorial ambitions. We seek long term control of no nation. We utterly control the air and the sea. We could bring Iran to her knees in days. Of course, if threatened we also have the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. No one can rival our ability to project power.

Second, the American economy continues to grow. Of course, we have declined since the Second World War relative to the rest of the world. The world economy is growing and this is partly because of the fairly free trade practices of the USA. The writer is making the mistake of thinking economics a zero sum game. It can be better to have twenty-percent of a huge pie, than all of twinkie. The main issue is whether the economy is growing. It is. We have (for our size) on of the fastest growing free markets in the world. We hope other nations do well. China, as a larger nation by population, might become economically greater than us in theory. However, they lack the political structure to accomodate sustained growth. It is easy to remember when Japan was going to out strip the USA. No one says that now and Japan had a more stable government structure than China. China is not free and the lack of freedom will doom her. Declining empires have economies that are actually in decline, not relative decline.

Third, America has a growing population. We have many young people, unlike the dying European states. Young people bring fresh ideas and energy. Mexican immigrants, in the fourth generation, will be scientists and leaders. Where will England, France, and Japan find her next generation of leaders? In this sense, India and China are more a threat than any place else. However, their population growth cannot be as easily absorbed by their economies. We need our new workers, India dreads them.

Fourth, America has good ideas. Who has a more stable written constitution? Who has a more stable and fair legal system? We contine to produce great literature, art, and film. Our scientists produce millions of great idea a year. While we do not wish to have all the good ideas, it is still the case the America has a disproportionate amount of them. Republican government is the hope of mankind. What is better? Free markets lift up the poor. Who has another way? Our university system is the envy of the world, even with all its problems. Where is a better one growing? Oxford and Cambridge bemoan their own decline and are the only two top schools Britain can boast. There are no great schools in the Islamic world. Asian schools cannot compete with American schools for top flight research professors. Though we may decline even here in relative terms, American schools are not declining. Education is not a zero sum game either. As we grow, it is our hope that other nations have systems that grow as well.

Finally, America is one of the most religious nations on the planet. There is no sign that this is going to change soon. We are believers and have the power of belief. Our national faith, Christianity, remains robust. We have a healthy civil religion, which tolerates our large religious minority groups and helps them thrive. Our form of Christianity is at peace with republican government and free markets. I can think of no other nation on earth which has a unifying religious belief that is peace with modernity.

This translates into belief in all our institutions. We believe in our national ideals. We are not burned out like the Dutch on nationalism. We still have a large majority that believes in the Constitution and the flag. Americans are optimistic about our future. Can France say the same? If we are at times decadent, then it does not take much to change us from it. The Times writer has confused our love of comfort with softness, but in doing so he makes the mistake that Sauron made of the hobbits. We are comfortable, because it is sensible to prefer comfort to hardship when you can have it, but we are fierce fighters in a pinch. If needs must, we can still rouse ourselves to great deeds.

I love Britain which is the nation of much of ideological roots. However her own decline from great power status has caused her too often to look, almost hopefully, for it in everyone else. Britain declined because her great power status was in the end based on denying liberty to others. America will not decline because our great power status is not based on this error. We are great, because we are free and desire, imperfectly at times, to have others be free as well.

MSNBC - Fear not, these CRACKPOTS can be saved: “Since I am a compassionate and tolerant person”. . .

You know what follows will be neither.

Here is an idea:

Let’s use public schools to convince people their parent’s moral values are wicked. Let’s teach really young kids about “sexual identity.” Since most parents did not send their kids to government schools to have an ill educated, over worked, public employee instill philosophical notions, thinking instead Little Janet might be taught some basic math and science (though Harvard seems to think she cannot learn it anyway), this might cause a fuss.

So we shall have cartoon characters teach this moral lesson. It worked with Joe Camel. Of course, all right thinking people attacked Joe Camel, because he was used to sell “smoking” and we know that is bad. Our cartoons, hi-jacking characters having nothing to do with the topic at hand, have to do with something all right thinking people know is good.

Now when the bigots, I mean Christians, oppose our plan to propagandize their kids during tax payer funded time, we can laugh at them for thinking Sponge Bob is gay! Win, win! It is especially good if we can get some Christian figure to sound like he believes Sponge Bob is gay!

Lost will be the question of why schools should fund moral teaching rejected by the majority of votes in the last election. No. Instead, we can mock as CRACKPOTS any discussion of whether little children should be taught that the religious beliefs of their parents, the Pope, the President, and most Americans are wicked.

Lost are the right questions.

HT to Evangelical Outpost for the obvious point that no one should attack imaginary figures. Any sentence with “that Sponge Bob” in it is bound to be taken less than serously.

Comment: An earlier version of this post was too harsh. I deleted some of it.

Sloan stepping down, becoming Baylor chancellor: “Baylor University’s embattled president announced Friday that he will step down and become the school’s chancellor, a post with no administrative responsibilities.”

This is sad news. Anyone who is been in Christian colleges knows how to read this story. Sloan pretty plainly wanted to stay. At least a plurality of the faculty wanted him gone. Sloan was a true believer, unlike the Uncle Tony crowd who thinks being a Baptist is exhaused by nattering about soul liberty. Sloan wanted a college that was Christian and outstanding within his tradition, a Baptist Notre Dame. He failed. The Board forced him out to get “peace.” What they will get is either more fighting, if they hire someone with Sloan’s vision, since the faculty will taste blood or they will give up on the Sloan vision and hire some mediocrity to lead Baylor back down the road to being a shadow University of Texas campus.

Those interested in a good education could apply now to Torrey and Biola. We are Christian. We mean it and our leadership does too.

HughHewitt.com: “And how to explain the difference in treatment within the blogosphere accorded to Harvard’s President Lawrence Summers and Focus on the Family’s James Dobson? The New York Times ran a story yesterday on Dobson’s criticisms of this music video. I have been unable to find Dobson’s remarks except as chopped up by the Times, but today’s acid editorial by the Los Angeles Times must have a copy as it concluded that Dobson concluded that Spongebob’s ‘a menace.’”

First, no evangelical is ever allowed to denounce anything in pop culture. That is the first media rule. Since we all know, in a breath taking piece of stereotyping not seen since we danced Jim Crow, that all evangelical leaders are prudes and irrational no one ever asks if such concerns are valid. If an evangelical says it, then we know it is false and hopelessly reactionary. At this point, Michael Jackson’s best p.r. hope is for some evangelical to denounce him. The LA Times would then find some way to praise the King of Pop.

Second, evanglicals will by and large run away and hide when one of their own is outed for denouncing a pop culture icon, especially a cartoon. Nothing makes an evangelical young person or academic more nervous than that their carefully cultivated apologetic that “God can be cool!” will be blown away by a Jim Dobson in a minute. Such Uncle Tony award winners (to grasp the Uncle Tony award see here and here. . . put simply an Uncle Tony is a traditional Christian who enables the left in order to be taken “seriously” by the left), quickly pile on folk like Dobson to make sure they save their cultivated reputations. But to paraphrase William Shatner in his new album most of these folk are “never was” taking on “were and will be again.” Dobson has done heroic labor for the Kingdom. He deserves the benefit of the doubt until we know we he said and whether what he said is defensible.

I would like to offer our third Uncle Tony Award to the best example of an overly heated, before the evidence was out, distancing of a person from Dobson over Sponge Bob. Mail hopeful Uncle Tony hopefuls here.

What if he said it? How bad is it? What he said needs to be taken in context of “harm done.” The president of Harvard has the power to harm the self-esteem of his students. Does Dobson really have the power to finish off a cartoon sponge? If so, then Hewitt is right and he is the most influential man in America. If he did cause the Sponge to thrown in the, well, sponge, what harm? The Republic will stand without Patrick and Bikini Bottom, though my kids would be sad for at least ten minutes.

Compare that to Harvard’s president and his weird ramblings about women. Dobson is unlikely to kill Sponge Bob, the creators are busy doing that for him, but the President of Harvard may keep some girls and young women out of math and science. Call me crazy, but that seems worse than life without a Crabby Patty. If Dobson said what he is accused of saying, then he is at worst being overly dramatic and a bit culturally tone deaf. However, ABC goes on making Desperate Housewives which is gulity of the same problems and gets ads not vitriol. If the President of Harvard said what he said, without strong evidence to support it, then he was wrong aobut something important.

Finally, Sponge Bob was a creative and very funny cartoon, a PG South Park, that made fun of everything and everyone. It was parody that the whole family could enjoy! It always had a spam-like quality, given low animation standards and jokes borrowed from elsewhere, but it did not take itself too seriously. Sadly, Sponge Bob jumped the shark when they made the Spong Bob movie. If the creative energy that went into landing David Haselhoff for the movie goes into attacking traditional families, traditional families are safe for another century.

Adrian Warnock’s UK Evangelical Blog: And the winner of the first ever “warnie” blogger award is…..: “The first ever ‘Warnie’ blogger award goes to Dr John Mark Reynolds for a great all round blog which deserves much more attention than it currently gets. Covering the war on terror, philosophy, creation, Star Trek and a host of other subjects I love it. Dr Reynolds is a professor of philosophy and I can’t recommend his blog enough.

Please do mention his award on your own blog, and submit your own blog for the next ‘Warnie’ award ceremony which will happen as and when I feel that a worthy candidate has arrived.

You will hear more of Dr Reynolds blog in the future, why not be a part of expediating the rise to blogging stardom that I suspect is inevitable.”

(The following is my acceptance speech at the Warnock “Warnie” awards ceremony held at the Bird and Baby. Sadly, my fashion statement for the evening was widely panned. . . “Tweed a Trite and Over Done Warnie Wear” was the headline in the Sun. . . but the walk down to Narnia (as the walk to get the award is often called by winners) was a thrill. I have removed the usual throat clearings, but hope my nervous energy is conveyed.)

Ahem.

I would like to thank the members of the Warnock UK Evangelical Blog Academy for presenting me this award. When a man begins blogging, sitting in his jams on a winter morning, he does not think of where it might lead him. Then one day he wakes up and his betters have said, “Well done.” When I think of Jolly Blogger, Evangelical Outpost (I love you Marvin!), and all the other greater blogs that are out there, my own efforts seems small. That is the great thing about the Warnie awards. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

Since my first-born is named “Lewis,” getting an award named for the brother of Saint Jack, is especially moving to me. Since reading Adrian Warnock’s blog and receiving this award, I also feel much closer to him.

This is the first blog award I have ever won. Having won it, my career is likely to jump the shark. Already, I feel compelled to move the blog to another city, add a cute kid, go on a vacation (Eidos visits London!), or grow in blogging by starting to say nice things about Tony Campolo. There is indeed no place to go but down from here. However, like Glaucon, when I go down I hope there is good company.

Someday when the blogging gods, Hewitt and Warnock and Carter, are thinking about the bad old days of blogging when anyone could write a blog and everyone was doing so I hope they remember me and say, “At least he never blogged any of his own poetry.” Tip a glass and think of me.

I would like to thank all the people who got me here: To my parents, who made it possible for me to enter text by providing me with hands. To my wife, Hope, who sometimes lets me use my laptop to blog in bed. Greater love hath no wife than that she allows a Dell in her bedroom. To my son Ian who often brings me a glass of Diet Coke. To my daughter Jane, Scruffy the Bunny to all, who does cute things when the well of my inspiration becomes the desert of my discontent. To my son Lewis Dayton who will only be impressed when Stephen Lawhead reads my blog and so keeps me humble. To my daughter Mary Kate who looks at me and then kindly says, “It is more important to be beautiful on the inside than the outside.” To Phillip Johnson for allowing me to steal all the ideas on this blog. (I see from the flashing pint of bitter that my time is up, but just a few more please! No. Really!) To Frank Pastore, just because it allows me to show I know someone who is not a geek. To J.P. Moreland who brought me to Biola and Disneyland. Finally to Paul Spears and Fred Sanders. . . you know guys friends are friends forever, but I won the Warnie!

But the greatest thanks must go to Hugh Hewitt, my guiding blog guide. Like Beatrice was to Dante (only a guy, not an Italian, still alive, a Republican, and not so beautiful), he acts as the inspiration for so many of us in Christian blogging. Beatrice inspired the Divine Comedy. Hewitt inspires, well, this blog. Make of it what you will, but I lift this Warnie in the air right now and say, “This Warnie is for you, Hugh.”

So to the members of the Warnock Academy, I accept this award. My Anglophilia, a disease long raging, only grows. Thank you England. God save the Queen and God save Mr. Warnock from another speech such as mine.

(All kidding aside: this was really a thrill. I am thankful and hope I can help the Cause of God blogging in any possible way. Thank you, Mr. Warnock! My wife now thinks I may not just be wasting my time.)

MSNBC - Rice, Democrats duel over Iraq strategy

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., confronted Rice with her own words to argue that as Bush’s national security adviser, she had contradicted herself on Saddam’s weapons capabilities.

“You sent them [U.S. troops] in there because of weapons of mass destruction. Later, the mission changed when there were none,” Boxer told Rice.

(From a secret source following the hearings.)

Following her sometimes blistering assault on Dr. Rice, Senator Barbara Boxer was heard pressing the nominee even further on her central point in a hallway. “It is not enough,” said Boxer teetering on the highest heels seen on a government leader not from North Korea, “to act rationally. It is not enough to act on evidence and make statements based on what you know at the time. By golly, you have to be right! We expect nothing less than omniscience in our political leaders.”

Rice coughed politely and looked a bit embarrassed. Seizing on what she took to be her opponents weakness, the battling bantam Boxer buffeted Rice with a series of fast balls, “Think of all the historic tragedies that could have been averted if people followed the Boxer Doctrine in decision making.”

Rice looked puzzeled, “The Boxer Doctrine?”

Boxer’s voice cut through the chatter in the hall with her usual nails-on-chalk-board sound. Her mind sqeaked like a marker on a white board, but her voice still had that old fashioned tone. “You have not heard of it? It is the notion that one should never act based on faulty intelligence. I put it this way: it is not intelligent to have bad intelligence. I came up with it myself.”

Rice tried to respond, “But in an imperfect world, don’t we have to act on the intelligence we have?”

Boxer began to speak slowly as if training a very slow child, “Yes. And this doctrine if followed would have avoided so many tragedies. Like, well, take the whole World War I thing. It turns out the War was useless for a country like Russia. They ended up losing and having a whole Revolution. Shouldn’t they have known? And World War II. Don’t get me started. If the Boxer doctrine had been applied, we would known that Germany was not making an A-bomb. There were entire missions that wasted young men’s lives based on bad intelligence. We could have saved those young attractive lads lives if we had known everything. And Vietnam. We lost there in the jungle. People just did not want us there. Shouldn’t we have known that? After all the Soviet Union was going to fall in 1989 anyway. Why bother?And let me tell you some of those young men were also pretty good looking. I know, I was there at the time. Not in Vietnam, but hanging out and making a difference. We all were. And don’t get me started about sports. The Patriots won last year for crying out loud. They were the better team, so why did they have to play the whole gosh-darned season. We should have known who was going to win with better intelligence”

Boxer tossed her tipped hair with girlish glee. “If you aren’t right, you are wrong. Can you deny it? Guessing is not good enough so like follow Democrat strategy and attack when you know WMD are there. After all, if we waited until a nation used them, then we would have public opinion with us in taking out the rest! And there would be no chance we would ever be wrong! We would know they were there, right? Huh? Huh? Huh?”

Rice gurgled helplessly. Boxer was triumphant and moved in for the kill with a bearing that made many a man thankful for his wife, “The entire affair with that young couple Romeo and Juliet should never have happened. ‘Don’t kill yourself,’ I cried at the screen, ’she is not dead.’ But because Romeo jumped to conclusions two young people ended up without the right to choose. There is almost no end of the uses of the Boxer doctrine.”

Rice, “Isn’t that a fictional account?”

“Whatever,” Boxer snapped, her face stretching dangerously, her skin thin in so many ways. She gave her final blow to Rice as she tottered down the hall, “The right is not right. And that is wrong.”

HughHewitt.com: “Here is the story on Harvard President Larry Summers’ assertion that innate differences between the sexes could help explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers. Bottom line: It isn’t playing well with the feminist left, and probably won’t play well with every parent in America who had hoped that their daughter would have every opportunity that their son did.

If the president of a Christian university made the statement that Summers made, or a Bush Cabinet secretary, how long would they last in their job? How long will Summers last?”

Hugh has asked a good question. I think that the president of a Christian university might survive such a statement, if he or she had firm control of the board, but only barely. However, I cannot imagine one saying it. Why? There is a double standard for traditional Christians. Traditional Christians who favor a male priesthood on sacramental grounds like the Romans or traditional family structures like the Southern Baptists have been given an extra burden by the mainstream media on issues of gender. Because the MSM does not understand religion, the only reason they can imagine for a male priesthood is bigotry. As a result, a Christian college president has had to carefully determine what he or she believes about these issues. In that sense, the double standard has done some good. Therefore, it does not seem possible, that one would say what Summers did. We are light years ahead of practical, compassionate application of the best of tradition with the best of equality. Conservative Christian leaders are very clear when they speak about gender. They have to be. Most important, Christian colleges are people centered, not giant multi-billion dollar businesses. Most Christian college presidents know from personal experience the damage that such statements can do to actual students. Why? They have practical experience dealing with them. It is demanded by their faith commitment to mentoring and personal training.

My own University President, Clyde Cook, is a model of this sort of properly compassionate conservative leadership. He defends the traditional faith and over his long tenure has kept Biola University true to her mission. However, as a man with a great interest and professional expertise in inter-cultural studies, he has a real passion for diversity and for being sensitive to the issues of less fortunate groups in the nation. I have heard him become passionate about these things away from the lights or a public pulpit. As part of his traditional faith, and without becoming politically correct (another kind of stereotyping), he expresses deep concern about the lack of opportunity in our culture for some groups. He is always, publicly and privately, on the side of the less fortunate or groups that might have been victims of historic and present discrimination. He has a heart for getting women and minority persons into positions of leadership. There is no way, out of his sheer compassion, that he would say anything that might keep women from any field. What good would that do? Even if what Summers said were true (and I have seen no evidence for it), it would be misunderstood by undergraduates and applied in crude ways to individuals. Christian college presidents like Dr. Cook are required by the nature of their jobs and by their own faith to think first of people. I know it sounds ideal, but it is true. Of course no leader is perfect, and one never agrees with everything an administration does, but I have never known my own president to act in this manner.

If he did, Biola would hold him accountable. Morality matters, and charity towards all, at Biola University. Let’s see if Harvard University cares about her students as much.

The Three Essentials for Education: Part Two- Right Questions

Find an educational enthusiast and you will meet someone with more faith than a fighting fundamentalist at a tent meeting. Whatever his system, he believes it contains the answers to all of life’s problems. Just do what he says and his version of educational Cortaslim will solve your problems. Find the cure, the right way of doing education, and problems will be done.

To the contrary, my own experience suggests that having the right questions is more important than having the right answers. My answers must always be tentative. I try to have faith seeking understanding and not understanding seeking faith.

Dogma, if by dogma one means certainty, should have no place in my life. There are things I think are true based on best reason and best experience. They seem good, true, and beautiful. However, I must always acknowledge that I could be wrong. Certainty is not ever present this side of Paradise. I hold all my answers loosely, but keep to my questions passionately.

This does not make for a lack of zeal or boldness. To the contrary, I have great zeal for the quest for truth. I grow excited by open thought and can enjoy reading blogs and books with ideas contrary to my own. If my ideas are the correct ones, they will be strengthened. When I was younger anti-creationist work (before ID and the internet) provoked me. It challenged my certainty. What could I say to some of the arguments?

Over time, I allowed good arguments “from the other side” to change me. I became a theistic evolutionist. This was a good process. Sadly for my skeptical friends, I continued the process. I became skeptical about organized skepticism and began to be appalled by the group think demanded. The process went full circle and now I have returned, due to my questioning, to a skeptical approach to Darwinism. It is possible, though I think it unlikely, that the process will keep going. I still read anti-ID books more often than ID ones. The road is long! In the meantime, I can argue for my point of view and for an open discussion. The fact that I may be wrong does not mean that I must assume I am. Until sight is better, I must walk in the light I have and uncover darkness boldly. It is easy to be sure where darkness is even when tentative about knowing the final source of light.

(Footnote: I use Darwinism to refer to the philosophical assumptions first made plain by the genius Charles Darwin. Evolutionary biology as science has moved on from Darwin, but still maintains the important philosophical assumptions. For example, Darwin helped banish divine agency from Biology. This is still an assumption of mainstream evolutionary biology today whatever mechanism they believe gets the job done. Evolutionary biologists argue about mechanism, but they don’t argue about divine teleology as a part of Biology. In that sense, they are Darwinists. I favor an open philosophy of science and not the Darwinian closed one.)

As a result of loving questions, I think analytic philosophy has some valuable ways of looking the world and at intellectual problems. People who ignore those tools (like logic) usually get into trouble in the real world. Philosophy has my great respect because I have never experienced any censorship in it. Ideas are all welcome if argued for well. Plantinga can attack evolutionary reasoning in philosophy. His ideas receive fierce criticism, but there is no censorship and few attacks on his professional ability. This is the part of the analytic tradition I respect: learning to ask clear questions and follow them to the end wherever it leads.

Oddly, this dry and very disciplined discipline has come under attack. It has become popular to attack “foundationalism” in epistemology and analytic philosophy in general. I think this is a mistake. Foundationalism is not dead in philosophy and there are few viable alternatives that are that different (at least in the ways people think matter in the popular discussion).

However, I have found that the attack on philosophy or certain theories of knowledge is generally not really about philosophy. It is often lead by people who do not want imperial philosophy to claim everything for itself or certainty about things they know to be uncertain. They believe a more “post-modern” understanding will set them free from so-called “reason” which would deny any place to the arts as a knowledge tradition.

Modern philosophy often seems to elevate “science” as the only way of “knowing.” Sensible folk don’t want to be that exclusive. Philosophy, as the discipline most associated with the rise of this imperial science, is blamed for cutting us off from the human things.

Some philosophers are guilty of this. We all sometimes act as if everything could be cleared up if put in proper logical order. Some modern philosophy has gone all the way and restricted all truth to science and its handmaiden analytic philosophy. (At least, some claim that this has been done.) This need not be the case.

No classical philosophy, such as my own Platonism, has done such a thing. Plato was the consummate writer and poet. He believed in Divine Revelation and in philosophy. Each had its place. It is not philosophy (or science) that is the problem, but people who claim too much for both. You can be analytic without putting the universe into a tiny box.

Every human should be able to learn from a poet. No person should be deaf to the deep truth, every bit as important as that of science, in Bach. Of course, the way to escape imperial science is not to denigrate science or pretend it is not effective and beautiful in its own sphere. It is simply to push it back to its limits. Analytic philosophy (in the popular sense) and science are two ways to truth. They work, but they have limits.

To give but one example, for an old Platonist like myself, music must always remain the highest means of communication. Much of it is almost mathematical in its intellectual rigor. The best of it is full of passion, but it requires great physical labor to play it or listen to it well. It combines every part of a human, the soul and the body. Of course, good science can at moments do the same, but only at times. A good philosophical discussion sometimes approaches music in this wholeness, but not as often as music. No human can ever play music well or hear it played well without experiencing this sublime “wholeness.” There is much, therefore, to be learned from music.

If you read internet skeptic sites you are often reading the last gasp of the “closed” view of knowledge. You have heard the rant: science is a knowledge tradition and religion is a belief. The humanities are rarely praised, but made marginal. Science is everything.

Christianity does better or it should. Since it believes in Divine Revelation, told first in a story, it cannot close itself off from Mystery. It cannot limit the quest for knowledge to philosophy or science, however it might praise them.

We helped create modern science and philosophy. We believe in reason, but we cannot close reason off into mere propositions and facts. The world is higher and more mysterious. There are indeed more things in heaven and earth than can ever be dreamed of in any philosophy or system. We are therefore always expectant, always excited. We never are sure and so our eagerness never abates. We believe in order to understand and this sets us free to doubt and question everything.

The truth is that knowledge comes to us from poetry, music, Divine Revelation, analytic philosophy, and science. All are good tools in the appropriate place. I am no scientist, but I love science. The beauty of what it can do and the tentative steps toward truths science makes demand my respect. I am no musician, but I married one. She has slowly taught me the beauty that can come to hearing the questions, and tentative answers, found in the giants of her field. At times, for very short periods, she has taught me to enter into the music and find the wisdom there.

In some rare, but wonderful days, I can combine many quests for truth. I lead a class in asking hard questions about a great work of literature and then go home and work on a logical problem for my book on Plato. The evening may contain a concert and then end in prayers. When my soul is in good order, all of it becomes one. Mystery is not destroyed by proper philosophy, science, or art. Instead, I am lead from the propositional truths each suggests ever more mystery.

Truth is not merely propositional, but it contains propositions. Each truth leads to another and also to experience. Propositional truth and experiential truth can never war in a classical philosophy of life. Traditional Christians are neither modern nor post-modern. We are classical, pre-dating and enfolding the best of both.

This give hope that a resolution can come between those who love the humanities and those who love science. Both need to hear the wisdom of the other. Both can learn to do so without plunging into non-reason or ugliness. Both can do so by asking human questions and listening. I think I have experienced, a Divine Answer to those questions. This does not end my yearning, but merely spurs me to reason even more with the Divine Logos who under girds the world.

William Shatner gives me a headache. Long, long ago he was the captain of the star ship Enterprise on the only real Star Trek series. The show was over before I was old enough to watch it, but it was a staple on Saturday night. You had to endure a few minutes of Lawrence Welk and then Shatner would boldy go where no man has gone before.

Shatner made some very bad movies and sings on one of the worst records ever made.

There are two ways of looking at Shatner. He has gone from a promising Shakespearian actor to making Priceline commercials and becoming the Object of Worship in an internet cult. You can point out that the commercials are funny and that he is working long past an age when most people have retired. He is always trying something new as his very complete web site shows. You can mock him as hundreds of web sites do, but he always comes back. The jokes about hair and girth were funny when he was younger and still trying to be a sex object. Now that he has grown comfortable being old, they just don’t seem funny any more. “Hah! Look at the old man! Isn’t he fat! And bald!” is not exactly clever.

Shatner has “it”. . . that strange star power that makes even his bad stuff compelling. This year I saw a Hallmark special that was pretty bad, but Shatner owned the set when he was speaking. How does he do it? He is not afraid to be different and in a world of thousands of sounds, his voice and odd delivery cuts through.

Then there is his new CD: Has Been. It was on my Christmas must-buy list. (You cannot go to Steamers all the time, though if you are not there now, you wish you were.) Why? I heard the music was shockingly . . . good. And so it is. Shatner always has been a sound. Now he is a compelling record. I have turned this CD on twice in a room full of people used to ignoring background music. It stopped every other sound in the room both times. Most people mock it, but then they start listening.

The cd is full of mockery, of Shatner of course, but also of a culture that lets him exist and pays him well. The title song points out that most of the people mocking him as a “has been” are “never have beens.” With the mockery, comes a big dose of truth about death and life. It is also full of hope as Shatner intones that “has been” may be again. The sound is unique, like nothing else you can hear, and oddly authentic. It is post-post-modern mocking the mockers and at times refreshingly old fashioned.

Tonight Shatner earned a Golden Globe. He did it by playing what people expect to see, twisting it, doing it in a manner that cannot be forgotten, and allowing himself to grow old. There is hope for us all if we do the same.

This Dan Brown book is a prequel to the other one. You know. The one that has been on the best seller list for almost as long as the made up scholarship in it has existed.

At least we know one thing: either Brown is now a better writer or he got a better editor for the Famous Book. Angels and Demons has few of the strengths and all of the weaknesses of its younger relation. It has all the two-dimensional characters from the famous book plus even more stereotyping! Italians behave like Italians! Women are props, except when Brown is carefully showing that they are not props. Brown tells even bigger howlers about the Roman Catholic Church in this one. For example, it is pivotal to his plot that Darwinism and “science” be bothermose to Rome. One supposes Brown has paid no attention to the history of science and the repudiation of the “warfare” metaphor for Church-science history on which his book depends, but confusing the Vatican with ICR is just too much. It is as serious a blunder as thinking Republicans are just like Democrats, because they are both American poltical parties. The prequel also has even more improbable events and plot holes.

Having said all of that, Brown is fun to read in a beach book sort of way. The pages turn with little mental effort. One even supposes that pretending in the forward that the stuff he is making up is true is also good for sales. However, the sad reality is that some people take his fiction seriously. That is too bad. He hates the Roman Church and he is willing to tell lies in order to make his point. Such hatred is sad to watch.

Yahoo! News - Report: U.S. Conducting Secret Missions Inside Iran: “The United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reported Sunday.”

One can only hope that this is true. Something must be done about Iran and that something will end up including some sort of military action. This action might be support for anti-government forces in Iran or it might include more direct intervention. The present government of Iran cannot be allowed WMD. However, this is where the failure to find WMD in Iraq hurts.

I believe the war was justified for several reasons. One reason is that, at the time, Bush was justified in thinking there were WMD in Iraq. He was wrong (as were all us, including opponents of the war, who believed they were there). Being wrong is no sin and one has to make the call with the information one has. Bush had powerful data that Iraq had WMD. Countries like France and Russia agreed. He had to act or risk Sadaam giving those powerful tools to even worse folk. However, one cannot pretend that being wrong does not hurt. Foes of the USA now have a lever to attack our nation each time we see a problem in the world. We will claim (as every one else does again) that Iran has WMD or WMD programs. Iran will deny it and point to our error in Iraq. We will lose this argument in the court of public opinion.

That is why Bush must (and will) ignore the court of public opinion. Bush acted rationally in Iraq to go get WMD he believed were there and he will do so again in Iran. One can hope that he need not use direct force as Iran is much larger and stronger than Iraq ever was. We are in a world-wide war against terror. Countries that harbor terrorists, as Iran does openly, must be punished. If we do not, the cost will be much higher later. We do not need a Middle East North Korea.