First contact by 2040? Nope.

Is anyone out there? Well, the odds are against it
unless divine agency is postulated.

The Search for Extra-Terrestial Intelligence (SETI) project has been going on for 54 years now. No intelligent life  - or life at all - has been found off earth, but the universe is vast and the project is young. 

Now SETI's Seth Shostak says,

"I think we'll find E.T. within two dozen years using these sorts of experiments," Shostak said here Thursday (Feb. 6) during a talk at the 2014 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium at Stanford University. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life] 

"Instead of looking at a few thousand star systems, which is the tally so far, we will have looked at maybe a million star systems" 24 years from now, Shostak said. "A million might be the right number to find something." 

Shostak's optimism is based partly on observations by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope, which has shown that the Milky Way galaxy likely teems with worlds capable of supporting life as we know it. 

"The bottom line is, like one in five stars has at least one planet where life might spring up," Shostak said. "That's a fantastically large percentage. That means in our galaxy, there's on the order of tens of billions of Earth-like worlds."

I am sure, though, that this bold prediction is wholly unrelated to the fact that the article later says that, "getting enough funding to keep scanning the skies is a constant problem."

So let's just say we are right on the edge of success and with millions more dollars we'll succeed! But of course, that's just coincidental. 

The faith that life necessarily exists off earth is called the "theory of mediocrity" because it holds that conditions on earth are simply average and that life-producing conditions are therefore abundant in the universe. But even SETI advocates admit that there is an indescribably-huge leap from the formation of life to the rise of life that is at least human-level intelligent. 

The first evidence of microbial life on Earth, for instance, dates from 3.8 billion years ago — just 700 million years after our planet formed. But it took another 1.7 billion years for multicellular life to evolve. Humans didn't emerge until 200,000 years ago, and we've become a truly technological species in just the last century or so.

Science writer Mark Thompson explains that even a 14-billion-year-old universe may not be old enough to result in planets teeming with life, especially intelligent life.

It seems that the evolution of stars precluded the formation of rocky planets much before the appearance of Population I stars. If that is the case, and adding a generous margin for error, it looks like the first planets like Earth would have formed no earlier than 8 billion years ago. 

If that is true, then it may well be that we are not necessarily the first life, but perhaps amongst the first intelligent life (as we know it) to evolve.

Furthermore, there is no teleology, or inevitability, in evolution theory. No outcome is inevitable, there are no such things as "higher" life forms. There is only survival, or not. Hence, technological, inventive beings are not bound to form at all.. There is no "progress" in the development of life in the first place and no evolutionary outcome is inevitable in any way.

That's why Harvard biologist Ernst Mayr pointed out that since life first appeared on Earth, there have been an estimated 50 billion species. And yet only one, us, has developed high intelligence. Mayr says that such intelligence does not obviously offer a species survival advantage (consider the cockroach) and hence may be so rare that homo sapiens-level intelligence may be a "one off" in the universe.

The ponderous word overlaying all this is "if." If life exists at all in earth or elsewhere simply because of the chance compounding of chemicals in bio-capable worlds, then it is very difficult to confidently conclude that human beings are remotely likely to encounter any kind of life off earth. 

Why? Because the odds are so supremely unlikely that life formed here on earth by chance that for life to also have formed elsewhere would be like winning a million-dollar lottery a million times in a row, according to Astronomy magazine editor Robert Naeye. 

I posted a summary of just some of the odds in, "The Massive Improbability of Life." That is one reason that Robert Griffiths, who won the Heinemann prize in mathematical physics, stated, 

"If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn't much use."

But suppose there are between 200-500 billion intelligent species in the universe. Does that sound like a lot? It's only one per galaxy. 

In 2011 I put together a slide show on this topic. It is below and just below it is a video from the SciAm site that is a good overall summary of the current scientific state of thinking.

 

Ancient Jews and dancing bears

There is an old saying that the remarkable thing about a dancing bear is not how well it dances, but that it dances at all.

So why, exactly, would the ancient Hebrews be the sole people of their day who understood things that scientists have only recently confirmed? The remarkable thing is not that they got so much right, but that they got anything right at all, because no one else of their day did.

Click here.

This, too.

Tips for Being an Effective Apologist

A Clay Jar: Tips for Being an Effective Apologist

"Atheism And Its Problem Of Evil"

Atheism And Its Problem Of Evil | William M. Briggs



As usual, William Briggs dissects the problem with precision and clarity. Read the whole thing.

Bottoms up!

Famous Methodist Terrorists

Saw this on FB and decided to confirm it on my own. Yep!

But this is not news, eh?

 

Mission focus

Here is the focus of the Conference for the coming year. Good areas, and I especially appreciate that it all fist on a single sheet of paper.

Deliberate witnessing planning

Below is a scanned PDF of the handout used at the evangelism training at Brentwood UMC on Jan. 18, 2014, sponsored by Bishop Bill McAllily. The presenter, as indicated, was Dr. Derrick Lewis-Noble. 

When I receive the Word format document of this handout, I will post it, too, or post a link to download it. You should be able to save the PDF below by using the "download" link in the bottom bar or by following the link below to the Scribd page. 

Long Handout Evangelism Training Jan 18 2014

Women speaking in church and Holy Communion

I have had occasion recently to engage in theological reflection on three questions:

On what basis do we Methodists ordain women or even allow women to read Scripture or lead prayers in worship?

Is Holy Communion required to be offered weekly?

Is unleavened bread required for Communion?
 

1. Women speaking in church.

Paul's wrote in 1 Timothy 2:11, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man... ."  

 

The key to understanding the passage is the word "to have authority over" (in Greek, authentein). 

 

This is the only verse in the whole New Testament where authentein is used. The word appears nowhere else in the whole Bible. Everywhere else in the New Testament refers to the authority of church leaders, a different word is used, exousia, which means "authority" in our usual sense of the word. See here.

 

So why did Paul use authentein in 1 Timothy when everywhere else he uses exousia? Since Paul was extremely well educated, we must conclude that he used this different word on purpose, knowing full well the difference of meaning and intending to communicate that different meaning.

 

And the meaning of authentein is, bluntly, sex. In the use of the day, authentein was a distinctive word used to describe the activities of temple prostitutes. 

 

In Corinth, on the hill of Acropolis, the Greeks had erected the great Temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.  There were, at any one time, up to one thousand prostitutes serving the temple.  Among the Greeks, it was considered a supreme act of worship to the goddess Aphrodite for a man to engage in sexual relations with these priestess-prostitutes. Evidently such practices were finding their way into the early church.  Clement of Alexandria even complained about certain groups among them who had turned the agape feast into a drunken sex orgy.  Interestingly enough, he refers to those engaging in those activities as authentai.

 

This should provide considerable illumination to the passage.  Rather than advocating a position of subservient inferiority for women in the church, the passage would more accurately be related, "I do not allow a woman to evangelize through prostitution and sexual seduction, as the pagans do; these women must be silent."

 

Much more detail here, although it is not a casual read:
http://godswordtowomen.org/kroeger_ancient_heresies.htm

This is a key excerpt, pointing out that if Paul was so resistant to women's active role in the church, then it is an odd position for him to take since elsewhere in his ministry, he,

... brought Priscilla as well as her husband Aquila to Ephesus to serve in a teaching capacity (Acts 18) and made significant use of women in his ministry.  He hails several [women] as fellow-laborers in the gospel (Rom. 16:1-15; Phil. 4:2f.) and asks the church to give submission to such as these (I Cor. 16:16).  He stated furthermore that in Christ there is neither male nor female and that before the Lord there is neither man without the woman nor woman without the man (Gal. 3:28; 1 Cor. 11:11f.).  How can this attitude be reconciled with the text in I Timothy? 

It is reconciled by understanding that Paul was forbidding recently-converted, pagan women from bringing pagan, sexual worship into the Church, but not from reading the Scriptures aloud as part of Christian worship. 

 

2. The Lord’s Supper - is weekly required?

The obvious question is, "Required by whom?" It can only be required by either the Lord or mortals. If required by the Lord, then yes, it is required. But is required simply by other church people, then it is not required except by tradition; certainly there is no divine commandment in that case. 

There is no command by Christ to take Communion every week. Jesus said, “Do this, as often as you drink it [the Communion cup], in remembrance of me,” but did not specify how often that had to be. It is reasonable to conclude that he left the frequency up to his followers. Nor is there anywhere in the rest of the New Testament where the apostles mandated a particular frequency for taking Communion. 
 

Of course, there is no biblical argument to be made against weekly Communion. Yet neither is there sound biblical certification mandating weekly Communion. Some advocates point to Acts 20:7-12 as proof that the early church took communion weekly, but the passage does not say that; it is an eisegetical reading (deciding what you want the passage to say before you read it). That the early church took the Lord’s Supper every Sunday is a reasonable but by no means certain reading of the text. 
 

In short, Jesus himself seems to have left the frequency of Communion up to his followers, and that should be good enough for us.

 

(Some Methodists do argue in favor of weekly Communion, though not on the basis of divine mandate. See here: http://um-insight.net/blogs/teddy-ray/why-weekly-eucharist%3F/)

 

3. Use of unleavened bread in Communion

In New Testament Greek there was a specific word for unleavened bread, azumos. But Matthew 26.26 states that, “As they were eating, Jesus took artos,” which is the word used for common household leavened bread. 

 

Jesus did not use unleavened bread at the Lord’s Supper. We know this for two reasons:

1. The Bible says he did not, which I just explained, 
    
2. The Lord’s Supper is not an imitation of Passover, in which the Jews eat unleavened bread. The Lord’s Supper is not the same as a seder, or Passover ritual meal. Even though Jesus and the disciples had celebrated the seder that night, it is clear from the narrative that Jesus, in the Last Supper, was not part of the seder meal nor intended to be. Jesus moved beyond the Covenant of Sinai, commemorated by the seder, in inaugurating the New Covenant foretold by Jeremiah; in fact, Jesus specifically said so in explaining the wine, the “cup of the New Covenant.”

The Baptist Bulletin addressed the question this way:

The Last Supper took place during the Jewish Feast of Unleavened Bread, so Jesus and the disciples may have eaten that easily accessible, plentiful unleavened bread that night. But whether or not this use would indicate a requirement for Communion in our day is in question. Nowhere in the New Testament are we specifically commanded to use unleavened bread. Also, the Feast of Unleavened Bread was a Jewish observance. Should we be bound to something in the Dispensation of the Church that might compare with other Jewish ceremonial customs and laws we do not observe? There seems to be no account of the early New Testament church where unleavened bread mattered.

Using unleavened bread for Communion is neither required nor forbidden. See also:

http://biblebased.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/must-we-use-unleavened-bread-in-the-lords-supper/

Oh, we Methodists do use real wine in Communion. Welch’s grape juice is, in fact, non-alcoholic wine.

2014 Liturgical Calendar

Also:

UMC 2014 Music and Worship Planning Calendar

2014 Lectionary, Sundays and Special Days Only

I don't believe in a State Patrol like that!

A parable:

The highway patrol I believe in would never do anything like this!

I wish there were no speed limits on the interstate highways. The highest speed limit there is in Tennessee in 70 mph. Someone once told me that if the limit was raised to 80, people would drive 90.

"That's okay," I replied, "as long as they move over when I want to pass." I lived and drove for three years in Germany, where there are no speed limits on almost all the autobahn. I am quite comfortable driving 130 mph or more and am undisturbed at the idea of other drivers doing so, too. It's not a race, it's just transportation.

However, I have not been driving in excess of the speed limit because I know that the Tennessee Highway Patrol is lurking out there. I have been quite sure that eventually I would get radar tagged and arrested, maybe even as unpleasantly as the young man in the photo above. So I have been as law-abiding a driver as you can find.

But recently it has come to me that I have been a sap. I think now that I can drive as fast as I want on the interstate. Because, after all, I am a good driver. I am not hurting anyone. I am not making anyone else drive fast. So now if I want to drive 130, I will.

Wait, you protest. The THP is still out there and they are still going to slap cuff on you when they catch you!

I am unworried about that because, you see, I have decided that I just do not believe in a highway patrol like that. The highway patrol I believe in is kind, loving, merciful, gracious and just wants me to be happy. And if it makes me happy to drive 130, then the THP is quite okay with that and will bless it. The THP likes me the way I am. And if the way I am is at 130 mph, the THP, being compassionate and caring, likes me still.

I think we need to move beyond all that talk about the law and punishment. We need to focus on how we can find self fulfillment in doing what comes naturally to us. I feel that is best. And I know the THP does not object because (as I said) I am a good driver and I feel that is right.

Don't you think so, too?

"The saddest sign there is"

From American Digest, the American Sign Language sign for "abortion." No further commentary needed.

Be more antagonistic this year

Meaning in 3-D - The American Interest:

That little baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying so cutely in the manger is the biggest trouble maker in world history, and the shocking claims that Christianity makes about who he is and what he means irritate and antagonize people all over the world.

A Return to Gospel Love over Sentiment | umc holiness

A Return to Gospel Love over Sentiment | umc holiness:

The main characteristic of the liberal wing of the UMC is an over-reliance on emotionalism and emotional appeals rather than fact-based, rational assessments. They confuse their personal feelings with Christian love.

Jesus, Mary, the virgin birth and you and me

I wrote this in 2004 and published it on my first blog, which is no longer online

The Gospel of Matthew chapter 1, verses 8-25:

   This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.    But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”    All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” —which means, “God with us.”    When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

The birth of Jesus to a virgin mother was big news last week, being the cover stories of both Time and Newsweek. However, both stories were really unserious, superficial treatments, heavily biased against the Gospels accounts of Jesus's conception to the virgin Mary. Time's story was less offensive since it did give a small voice to defenders of Christian orthodoxy, but Newsweek's story was wholly prejudiced against this ancient claim of Christian faith and made no attempt to disguise that fact. Its writer cavalierly dismissed the whole idea and even indicated that the Crusades - which began a thousand years after Christ - made the notion of the virgin birth is untenable. He didn't explain what the connection was, though. Time's and Newsweek's stories quote at length a handful of scholars who say the virgin birth of Jesus was simply an invention of the early church, intended to impress the pagan cultures with how similar Jesus was to their heroes. But if that's true, it's a stunningly inept invention. It's ridiculously brief and bereft of details, especially of the lewd and lascivious kind that the Roman world loved so much. In fact, the entire Christmas story of the two Gospels is so sparingly told that it can be well summarized in one good paragraph. As a work of fiction the two Gospels' accounts are unimpressive, but if the Gospels' writers are relating truthful history then no details seem lacking. The Reverend Mark D. Roberts, who earned his BA and Ph.D. from Harvard, respondedto the articles,

You can count on the fact that when major Christian holidays approach, secular 'news' sources will publish stories that seem to undermine the whole point of the holidays.

My own principal objection to the two magazines' stories is less what they say (all of which I studied in seminary) than their disdain for the case for orthodoxy. Time did not fairly present the affirmative case for the virgin birth and Newsweek did not present it at all. In fact, Newsweek actually calls the biblical narrative "dubious on almost every score" and insists that claims of faith and facts of history are contradictory. By the end of either story a reader can only conclude that this ancient doctrine is fit for nothing but the middle of a baloney sandwich. As Dr. Roberts explains, these stories therefore serve to,

... stoke the fires of unbelief. When read by a non-Christian person, they may confirm the suspicion that Christian orthodoxy has no grounding in actual historical events. Thus the story of Jesus is not the story of God’s entry into human experience, but simply one story among many religious and philosophical options. After all, if the baby Jesus was really God in the flesh, then all people ought to take him seriously whether they’d like to or not. But if the account of his miraculous birth was fabricated by early Christians ... then non-Christian folks can feel free to continue to ignore Jesus.

Let me briefly review the nativity story to place the discussion in its broader context. Mary was a young woman, probably 17 to 20 years old, when she became engaged to Joseph. After the engagement but before the marriage, the angel Gabriel appeared to her. The first chapter of Luke records,

[T]he angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end." 

"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?" 

The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:30-35).

It is true that stories of unusual conceptions were not uncommon in the ancient Mediterranean world. The Newsweek article points out, accurately, that Augustus Caesar was said by Roman cultists to have been miraculously conceived.

Atia, Augustus' mother, was said to have fallen asleep when Apollo, taking the form of a serpent, impregnated her. That there was physical contact is suggested by [Roman biographer] Suetonius' assertion that afterward Atia "purified herself, as usual after the embraces of her husband." The baby, Suetonius writes, "was thought to be the son of Apollo"; on the day of his birth a senator in Rome "declared that the world had got a master" ...

In all such Gentile stories, though, the encounter between the human parent and the god (or goddess) is presented like that between Atia and Apollo: a physical union similar to or often identical with what ordinarily happens between mortal husbands and wives. But the Gospels do not describe such an encounter between Mary and the Holy Spirit. The Spirit simply "overshadows" Mary. There is no hint of a union between God and Mary. Jesus comes to exist as an unborn child simply because God wills it, not from anything God does to Mary. Compare what Gabriel tells Mary - "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you" - with how Genesis tells of the creation of the world:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters (Gen 1:1-2 NIV).

The Romans thought that to impregnate Augustus's mother that Apollo became a serpent - the Freudian image is surely so obvious I need not elaborate - but the Jews and the early church simply affirmed that God's power hovered or overshadowed creation and creature to enact God's will. The Newsweek writer admits that "scholars of antiquity have yet to find another example that precisely mirrors" how Mary became with child. In fact, there is no other ancient example that even roughly approximates the Gospels' story. Bewildered, overawed but faithfully obedient, Mary replied, "I am the Lord's servant, may it be to me as you have said." Whatever the Holy Spirit did to make her conceive, we are not given a syllable of further explanation.

When Joseph learned that his fiancee was pregnant, he decided to send her away without disgracing her publicly. After Joseph had made up his mind, he dreamed of an angel. The angel filled Joseph in on how Mary’s pregnancy came about. One clue that Matthew is relating facts and not fiction is his citation of Isaiah to buttress his claim of the virgin birth of Jesus. In that passage, the Judean King Ahaz was having some severe national-security problems which Isaiah, prophesying for the Lord, told him will soon be favorably resolved. Ahaz was skeptical and even declined God's offer of proof.

Then Isaiah said: ... Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.

Matthew quoted this passage but used the Greek translation of Isaiah, hence Matthew says a "virgin shall conceive" rather than the more probable meaning of Isaiah's Hebrew words, "a young woman." The kicker is that no first-century Jew understood Isaiah's prophecy as predicting anyone, Messiah or not, would be born to a virgin, and Jews today don't read it that way. In fact, the face reading of the passage is self-evidently against such an understanding, for Isaiah described a woman who was already pregnant at the time Isaiah spoke to Ahaz. (Some scholars think Isaiah was referring either to his own wife or Ahaz's wife, but we do not know.)

Hence, it makes no sense to claim that Matthew made up the virgin birth of Jesus, and then associated Isaiah's prophecy with the fiction, because the Jews of his day didn't think Isaiah's prophecy referred to the Messiah at all. In fact, making the connection is stupid if it is false because, as New Testament scholar N. T. Wright points out, "The only conceivable parallels are pagan ones," which would have repelled the Jews whom Matthew, more than any other Gospel writer, wanted to reach. Claiming Jesus was born of a virgin was foolish to claim falsely, but mandatory to point out if true, even if the fact worked against Jesus's acceptance by most Jews. Wright asks. "Why, for the sake of an exalted metaphor, would they take this risk – unless they at least believed them to be literally true?"

Matthew likely attempted to connect Mary's virgin status with Isaiah's prophecy to salvage Jesus's birth story from being scorned by devout Jews, who would have been repulsed by it. Again, no sensible case for inventing the story can reasonably be made; its inclusion makes sense only if it is true. There are actually many intellectual and historical reasons to affirm the literal truth of the Gospels' affirmation that Mary was a virgin when God became incarnate inside her womb as the baby who would be born the Son of the Most High, but here is another point made by the Rev. Tod Bolsinger :

[T]he most important reason for asserting the Virgin Birth is not historical ... but theological. The Virgin Birth is God’s way of personally entering his creation. The Creator that brought the universe into being, personally entered creation to bring restoration. God did not choose a human being, imbue that person with his Spirit and stick him on the cross ... . God himself did the job. God did not just send his Spirit, God himself saved us, was with us.

We also need to be aware that confessing Christ born of the virgin Mary is not an entry into saving faith. Believing this doctrine may result from, but never causes, justification before God. Note that both Matthew and Luke affirm the birth, then move on and never bring it up again. The central affirmation of all the New Testament is that Jesus is Son of God, not specifically son of a virgin. Peter’s confession of who Jesus is - "You are the Christ, the son of the living God!" - makes no reference of Jesus's virgin mother. The center of Christian faith is that Jesus was raised from the dead, not born of a virgin. Even so, Jesus's conception by the power of the Holy Spirit brings forth a perfect union of his being of God and being of humanity. Jesus is nowhere presented as a hybrid product of divinity and humanity. Jesus is not a half-and-half person. Jesus is affirmed as fully human and fully God. Unlike the semi-divine figures of pagan myths, Jesus was not a demigod with a human side corrupting his divine being. Neither was Jesus simply a human being with an exceptionally rich spiritual life. Jesus was Immanuel, fully God, fully with us, fully human.

 

The massive improbability of life

I only took bonehead biology. Nonetheless, it occurs to me that as severely improbable as the uncaused appearance of life is in the primeval earth, how much more unlikely would it be that a single cell organism would both: 

(a) randomly become organized from non-living compounds into a living organism, and

(b) also be capable of mitosis, or reproduction. That is an incredibly complex process and the first cell had to get it right the first time. 

That self-replicating life just spontaneously popped into being is to square improbabilities to the point of incredulity. No wonder that MIT mathematician Murray Eden is quoted in the article that the chance emergence of life from non-life is impossible. 

More here: http://apologetics-notes.comereason.org/2013/12/life-itself-shows-fingerprints-of.html

See also, "A Chemist Tells the Truth." 

How do you get DNA without a cell membrane? And how do you get a cell membrane without a DNA? And how does all this come together from this piece of jelly? We have no idea, we have no idea. 

Also:

• BONDING: You need 99 peptide bonds between the 100 amino acids. The odds of getting a peptide bond is 50%. The probability of building a chain of one hundred amino acids in which all linkages involve peptide bonds is roughly (1/2)^99 or 1 chance in 10^30.

• CHIRALITY: You need 100 left-handed amino acids. The odds of getting a left-handed amino acid is 50%. The probability of attaining at random only L–amino acids in a hypothetical peptide chain one hundred amino acids long is (1/2)^100 or again roughly 1 chance in 10^30.

• SEQUENCE: You need to choose the correct amino acid for each of the 100 links. The odds of getting the right one are 1 in 20. Even if you allow for some variation, the odds of getting a functional sequence is (1/20)^100 or 1 in 10^65.

The final probability of getting a functional protein composed of 100 amino acids is 1 in 10^125. Even if you fill the universe with pre-biotic soup, and react amino acids at Planck time (very fast!) for 14 billion years, you are probably not going to get even 1 such protein. And you need at least 100 of them for minimal life functions, plus DNA and RNA. 

Let's take a look at that 10^125:1 odds of getting a single protein working by chance. Just to eyeball the number, here it is: 

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

This is a 10 followed by 125 zeroes. Excel spreadsheet writes it as 1E+126.

Now bear with me: The area of the earth in square inches is 790,453,002,240,000,000 (790 quadrillion-plus). In Excel, that is rendered 7.90E+18 (to two decimal places). 

How many earths would it take to equal 10^125 square inches? 

It would take 1.27E+108 earths.  That looks like this:

1,270,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planet earths.

Now imagine that all of these earths are covered completely with Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies, which are close enough to a square inch in size to work for illustrations purposes. One single cookie is missing its chocolate outer coating. One. Single. Cookie.

Your task is to find that odd cookie. You can pick up, examine and return one cookie per second, and we will assume there is no time between cookies and that you will never need to take a break for any reason.

How long will elapse before you have examined half the cookies? The answer is 1.59E+118 years. 

The universe is said by scientists to 14.5 billion years old. So to have only a 50 percent chance of finding the defective cookie, at random, turning over one per second, you would need to spend 1.09E+108 times as long as the universe has been in existence. 

These calculations knock flat the idea that “given enough time” anything can happen by random chance. There just has not been enough time, by quadrillions of quadrillions of years, for even a half-chance to get one functional protein by chance, and you need at least 100 proteins for even the simplest unicellular organism. Plus DNA and RNA, which have their own probability issues. 

So since "random chance" simply does not work, what's the answer to how life began?

Why life could not have emerged without God

Why life could not have emerged without God

“Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.”

–Charles Darwin, the founder of evolutionary biology, as quoted in his autobiography.

And more - read the whole thing.

Truthbomb Apologetics: Video: Is Jesus Really the Only Way to Heaven? by Chad A. Gross

Truthbomb Apologetics: Video: Is Jesus Really the Only Way to Heaven?

If same-sex marriage is okay, why not polygamy?

Ronald G. Lee -- The Truth About the Homosexual Rights Movement

A homosexual man takes the lid off what is really going on inside the gay-rights movement. As for gay-friendly churches, he writes:

Although to this day McNeill, like all gay Christian propagandists, avoids the subject of sexual ethics as if it were some sort of plague, his life makes his real beliefs clear. He believes in unrestricted sexual freedom. He believes that men and women should have the right to couple, with whomever they want, whenever they want, however they want, and as often as they want. ... 

The reason that the homosexual rights movement has managed to pick up such a large contingent of heterosexual fellow-travelers is simple: Because once that taboo is abrogated, no taboos are left. I once heard a heterosexual Episcopalian put it this way: If I don't want the church poking its nose into my bedroom, how can I condone it when it limits the sexual freedom of homosexuals? That might sound outrageous, but if you still believe that the debate is over the religious status of monogamous same-sex relationships, please be prepared to point out one church somewhere in the U.S. that has opened its doors to active homosexuals without also opening them to every other form of sexual coupling imaginable. ...

And there is no danger of ever hearing a word from the pulpit suggesting that bar-hopping is inconsistent with believing in the Bible. 

Here is my question to Methodist ministers officiating same-sex "marriages" or supporting those who do: Is there any marriage taboo left? Suppose a man and two women came to you wanting you to "marry" the three of them. That such "marriages" are not permitted under state law is not relevant, since you or your ideological allies have performed same-sex ceremonies in states where they are not recognized.

So: a polygamous "marriage" (or if you prefer, ceremony of union or blessing): Would you do it? If not, why not?

Jesus was selfish?

But the trick is discerning what it is that actually helps the poor. Too often we wind up treating them like pets rather than people who are, and should be related to, as responsible moral agents on their own.

And unfortunately, churches are frequently targets of what I call the "professional poor," people who make most of their actual living in scamming charitable givers. In fact, the actual majority (by far) of the supplicants who come to my church are that category.

It's no wonder that many people are tapped out and suffer from compassion fatigue.

In the biblical model of helping the poor, the primary responsibility always rested with blood kin, then with the clan, then with the synagogue (later, church), but was never seen as the responsibility of the government. We have utterly reversed that today so that most people see primary responsibility for assistance resting with faceless government agencies.

But whenever someone wants to lower government spending to leave more money in the hands of private citizens, with which they could then increase personal assistance to the needy, well then then we are told we hate the poor and have no compassion.

So Colbert's cute quote wears a little thin. Paying taxes does not equal Christian compassion.

Four stages of inviting

Most people go through four stages of inviting people to church, I think. Here are 4,000 words worth of visuals.

Stage 1: Church members who figure that everyone in town knows where the church is and can come if they want to. It's sort of like Yogi Berra said about declining attendance at ball games, "If people don't want to come out to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?"

Stage 2: Members become willing to invite, but don't want the existing nature of the congregation to change. So they invite only people with whom they are already comfortable - people they already know and who are are similar to them in education, income, lifestyle and age.

Stage 3: Members who realize that similarity with people they invite is much less important than whether the other persons are connected with a church already. These are members who want to be "fishers of people" but are not very interested in fishing in aquariums, or fishing for members of other churches. They know that unchurched people are whom Jesus said to take the Gospel.

Stage 4: At this stage, church members enthusiastically offer Christ with anyone whom the opportunity presents. If the others turn out to already be connected, that's great, and if not, they are invited.

Church rebirth, part one

Very thought-provoking, these.

The watch characteristics of the thriving church:

Christian Faith and Making War Notes

Westview symposium on CBS affiliate

Here is the segment the local CBS affiliate broadcast last night of Westview UMC's symposium on "Christian Faith and Making War," regarding the potential war with Syria. We held it Sunday at 5 p.m.

I hope to have content of the session posted here in the next day or two.

Prayer for this time of looming war

I wrote this prayer for Westview's Sunday-evening prayer service on the eve of Congress' return to session to debate and vote the resolution of war against Syria.

Any other church that wishes to use it, feel free. I do not ask for author credit, but I do ask that if you modify it please do not indicate authorship.

Prayer for our country

Leader: Almighty God, you rule all the peoples of the earth.

All: Inspire the minds of all women and men to whom you have committed    the responsibility of government and leadership in the nations of the world. Give to them the vision of truth and justice, that by their counsel all nations and peoples may work together. Give to the people of our country zeal for justice and strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will. Forgive our shortcomings as a nation; purify our hearts to see and love the truth.

We pray especially for these persons in positions of authority:

President Barack Obama, for wisdom, resoluteness, clarity of purpose, and insightfulness of vision.

Hear our prayer, O Lord, for our president.

Secretary of State John Kerry, that our relations with other nations may be honorable and just.

Hear our prayer, O Lord, for the secretary of state.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, that should war come it may be fought justly and the lives of the innocent be protected.

Hear our prayer, O Lord, for the secretary of defense.

General Martin Dempsey and all leaders of our military, that our service men and women may be sent into battle prepared and soundly led.

Hear our prayer, O Lord, for the leaders of our armed forces.

Speaker of the House John Boehner, that the House of Representatives be led wisely and that debate be unhindered by partisan purposes.

Hear our prayer, O Lord, for Speaker Boehner.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, that deliberations of senators be bold,  for the common good of all in justice.

Hear our prayer, O Lord, for Senator Reid.

All members of the Congress, for sober decision of great responsibility, especially the representative of this district, [name of your district's House member] and Senators [names of your state's senators].

Hear our prayer, O Lord, for Representative [name] and Senators [names].

We plead with you, O Lord, to rest your Spirit upon the nation of Syria, that the innocent suffer not, that right be established in justice and peace. Be very present with all affected there by the sword of war and with the refugees dispossessed by violence. We raise up to you especially our brothers and sisters in Christ in that war-torn land.

Hear our prayer, O Lord, for the people of Syria. Be the fortress for your children there.

Holy Lord, you commanded us to pray for our enemies. So we raise to you Bashar al-Assad, who does not know your liberating grace and love. We pray God that he and others leaders of his regime will come to acknowledge you alone as saving Lord, placing their whole trust and confidence in your redemption through Christ Jesus, and set aside implements of destruction, that your justice may be better established upon the earth.

Hear our prayer, O Lord, for Bashar al-Assad.

Hear our prayer, O Lord, and let our cry come unto thee.

In humility we bow before you, O Lord, for you alone are our Savior and Redeemer, our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. In the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

Syria and Just War Symposium, Sept 8 - Agenda

Here is my proposed agenda - a lot to fit into an hour and a half, I admit, but this is only an introduction to the topic.

1. Explanation of the question: Christian faith in relation to making war
        a. Why this question is uniquely a problem of Christian faith
        b. Scriptural evidence
        c. The tension between keeping peace and maintaining justice
2. War and its context
        a. War as a political act
        b. “Intentional lethality”
3. Templates for considering the question of going to war:
        a. Realpolitik
        b. Holy war
        c. Just War Theory
4. Four points of the compass in addressing war v. peace:
        a. Moral-philosophical
        b. Ideological
        c. Prudential
        d. Consequential
5. Just War Theory
        a. Just cause for and beginning of war
                i. “Only resort”
                        1. Self-defense against violent aggression
                        2. Protect innocent third parties, but
                                a. The Peace of Westphalia, 1648
                                b. The UN Charter
               ii. Establish a more just peace
              iii. Prevent a greater evil than the war itself entails
              iv. Reasonable prospect of success
               v. Recognized authority
        b. Just conduct of war
                i. Proportionality of means to achieve the just end
               ii. Discrimination of violence
              iii. Forbidden acts (Hague, Geneva conventions and other protocols)
              iv. Responsibility of moral action
        c. Just ending of war
               i. Enduring peace
              ii. Restraint of the victor
             iii. Reconciliation among warring parties
6. The context before us: civil war in Syria
        a. Demographics of Syria and what they mean
        b. The Assad regime
        c. The insurgents
7. Stated purposes of the proposed war with Syria:
        a. The president’s written request to Congress -- Syria’s use of chemical weapons:
                i. “Threatens the national security interests of the United States”
               ii. “Constitutes a threat to international peace and security.”
              iii. Use of force necessary to
                       1. prevent/deter proliferation of WMDs within Syria or across its borders
                       2. Protect the US and other nations from WMD threat
       b. Prior declarations by the administration about use of force
               i. Not to bring about regime change
              ii. Punish Assad regime for chemical weapons use
             iii. Deter other nations from using WMDs in the future

Christian Faith and Making War - a Symposium and Prayer Service

 

As you know, President Obama has asked the Congress to authorize him to order military strikes against Syria. Congress will take up the issue when it returns to session this coming Monday. Because of this fact, Westview UMC announces:

Christian faith and Making War - Symposium at Westview UMC, Sunday, Sept. 8 at 5 p.m. Prayer service for our government, our nation and the people of Middle East to follow at 6:30. 

7107 Westview Drive, Fairview, Tenn.

Christian traditions have a long history of theology about war and peace going back to the formative years of the church. At 5 p.m. Sept. 8, the day before Congress returns to session to debate going to war with Syria, Westview UMC will hold a symposium on what Just War Theory is and what it means.

The purpose is to help people learn and use faith-based tools and the insights of church thinkers over the centuries to decide their own positions on this looming war. This and the prayer service afterward will be non-partisan. We will be devoted toward "faith seeking understanding," and imploring the grace and wisdom of God to guide our Congress, our president, our national policy and to rest also upon all the people of Syria, especially those already suffering from the war there.

I will send out more information as the date approaches. I hope that you will come be part of this time to be united in our baptism and seek the presence of God in the extremely serious decisions our government will take next week.

Just for the record, I am a retired U.S. Army artillery officer with extensive military operations experience, including service at the Pentagon as a plans officer. I hold a degree in philosophy from Wake Forest University, a divinity degree from Vanderbilt and I am a graduate of the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College.

All persons, regardless of religious affiliation, are invited to the symposium and the prayer service. Westview UMC is located at 7107 Westview Drive, Fairview, Tenn. 

Just War Theory and Syria Strikes, Part One

Can we frighten this man into killing
people only conventionally?

I am framing this inquiry in the context of Just War Theory (JWT henceforth), a theological inquiry in Christianity going back at least to Saint Augustine, 354-430. It's most robust treatment was by St. Thomas Aquinas, 1225-1274, whose exposition was so thorough that it still forms the basis of modern theory.

Today my main points are that going to war requires at least three questions to be answered in the affirmative, below. In this post I'll only address the first for brevity's sake and leave the other two for later.

1. Is there just cause for the war?

2. Is the war authorized by proper authority?

3. Is it wise to wage the war?

Is there just cause for war?

Just Cause of war is the fundamental question, of course. I remember reading a (probably apocryphal) story of a South Seas island native chieftain who after a large battle between the US Marines and the Japanese in WW2 asked the American commander who was going to eat the vast quantities of flesh of the slain soldiers.

The Marine general explained that neither the Japanese nor Americans killed people for food.

"What barbarians you are!" the chief replied, "To kill for no good reason!"

Historically, Western thought on war, heavily influenced by Christian theology, has held that war cannot be separated from larger concerns of nations, and in fact is one part of national relationships. "Politics is the womb in which war develops," said German officer and theorist Carl von Clausewitz. More famous is his observation that, "War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means."

JWT has generally held that the political just cause for war is pretty narrowly expressed: either to defend one's own nation from actual or imminent attack, or to protect innocent third parties from deadly aggression or oppression. Some years after the American Civil War, Union General William T. Sherman put it simply: "The only just aim of war is a more just peace," which is a political goal. Absent its political orientation, warfare becomes just what the South Seas chieftain said, an exercise in pointless killing.

Not all JWT theorists agree that a nation may strike pre-emptively even in the case of clearly imminent attack, but since no one in the Obama administration claims that Syria poses any kind of military threat to the US, I'll not address the self-defense tenet here.

The question then becomes one of protection of the innocent, and whether chemical weapons are sui generis so that American warmaking on their users is justifiable for that reason alone. That is, in a civil war in which everyone agrees that at least 100,000 people on all sides have died, untold numbers of whom were murdered outside the laws of war but by conventional means, is the use of chemical weapons by itself a just cause for the US to wage war on Syria, a nation not at peace with itself but with which the US is now at peace?

If the answer is no, then war making against Syria cannot morally be done. If the answer is yes, as the administration clearly claims it is, we move to the next crucial inquiry of JWT - the war we wage must be justly conducted.

I'll shape this discussion around the JWT tenet of proportionality. The doctrine of proportionality is simply stated that the means of conducting the war must be proportionate to the goal for which the war is waged. Another way of looking at it is that while the just ends desired do not justify any means to attain them, they absolutely justify some means. The tenet of proportionality, then, is to assess what the justified means are, then employ those means and not the unjustified ones.

Which leads directly to the question: what exactly is the goal here? The president, secretary of state and others, in multiple remarks and interviews, have specifically announced three key objectives:

A. There is no intention of effecting regime change in Syria.

B. The strikes are to punish Assad's regime for using chemical weapons.

C. The strikes are intended to deter Assad (and others) from using such weapons in the future.

Are these just objectives of war? If so, it is apparently just to "punish" Assad for using chemical weapons, but not just to remove him from rule. Why?

In fact, is punishment itself a just aim of war? This tends to slide the war into a legal enforcement mode, which indeed the president has more or less confirmed in his insistence that Assad has violated "international norms." We thus circle back to the previous paragraph: why is it just to punish Assad but leave him in power - when it was his criminal exercise of power that is at the heart of the violation?

The question of means

"Without killing," wrote Clausewitz, "there is no war." Conducting war is a matter of intentional lethality. In the proposed war against Syria, then, this is the question of means: What constitutes a level of violence inflicted upon the Assad regime that is effective deterrence against using WMDs by the regime again or, in future years, deters other bad actors in the region?

The centering question of the doctrine of proportionality is using the violence necessary to achieve the war's objectives while not using excessive violence to do so. To employ too little violence is as disproportionate as to employ too much. It is unjust to wage war ineffectively even for a just cause.

Hence, campaign planning for the upcoming strikes will necessarily involve a massive amount of guess work on what level of lethality and destruction needs to be inflicted upon Syria to ensure the Assad regime never uses chemical weapons again. But that is a heavily psychological calculation for which an answer is practically impossible!

The reason is that we do not know the calculations Assad used to to order the chem-weapons attack in the first place. What was going through his mind when he gave the order? We don't know, although the intercepted messages the Obama administration says it has should offer some clues. Even so such messages, originated mostly by subordinates and oriented toward action rather than rationale, are many levels removed from what Assad was thinking, and since making him fearful of re-use is a stated goal of the president, our own calculations' margin of uncertainty is bound to be very vast.

As for deterring leaders of other nations, assessing what example to make of Syria to deter them is like entering a dark room blindfolded, in the dead of night in a dense fog, to look for a black cat that may not even be there. Does anyone really expect that the Iranian government will abandon its goal of attaining nuclear capability just because the United States mounted a bombing campaign against Syria that the president has already promised would be "brief and limited?"

All of these things mean that the proportionality calculus has no answer. It is like a math question to solve the value of X in which both the variables and constants are also unknown. We do not know how much death and destruction to inflict upon Syria to persuade the regime to refrain from using a single class of weapons in the future, and have no realistic prospect that we even can know. And this is a problem cubed for deterrence of other national regimes.

So the question: Even stipulating that the use of chemical weapons is a just cause for the proposed war, can the war be justly waged when we have no way of assessing, within reasonable margins of error, what waging it will require to achieve its stated goals?

When I was assigned to the Pentagon during the planning for Operation Desert Storm, the first ground war against Iraq in 1991, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Carl Vuono emphasized that in our planning we needed to remember two simple concepts: "Hope is not a method and wishes are not plans." Good advice now, too.