Mixed magisteria for science teachers

April 28, 2011 • 5:21 am

If you were a science teacher, wouldn’t you jump at the chance to attend this biology workshop in San Diego, all expenses paid?

This course will examine the incredible diversity of animal and plant life on our planet. We will investigate both (a) organisms that meet common challenges in similar ways, yet are not closely related; and (b) organisms that meet different challenges yet are closely related. Genetic diversity—the amount of genetic variation that occurs within and between populations—will guide our analysis of the relatedness of various plant and animal species. Finally we will consider why plant and animal diversity should be conserved. We will study these themes in an inquiry-based learning format that will take advantage of the wealth of biodiversity available in San Diego.

Sounds good, no?  And there are huge perks:

  • Participants will receive complimentary room and board at on [sic] the campus of Point Loma Nazarene University.
  • In addition, participants will receive a stipend of $1,000.
  • If desired, two units of graduate university credit will be given upon successful completion of the program.
  • Travel expenses will be reimbursed, with prior approval, for those coming from outside Southern California.

What a deal! Free room and board, free tuition, travel expenses reimbursed, and a $1K stipend on top of that! Too good to be true?

Yep, for the course is infused with Jesus; in fact, the whole point is to unite science and evangelical Christianity.  For “Biology by the Sea” is sponsored not only by Point Loma Nazarene University (a Christian college), but by BioLogos.  So those teachers are gonna get a dose of Jesus with their biology, including “theological discussions and scriptural reflections.”  And although BioLogos‘s official position is that the earth is old, and some sort of evolution happened, the course won’t criticize old-earth or young-earth creationists—or others who believe in insane “scientific” woo.  Note how many times this course description uses the word “respect” (my emphasis):

The course content has implications for how one views creation. The class will consider this in a manner that celebrates God as Creator and recognizes that Christians hold different views about how creation has actually taken place. Although BioLogos and Point Loma Nazarene University biology faculty hold the view that God created all of life through a gradual process over time, course faculty will respect the wide range of views held by Christians about Creation.

Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU) is a fully accredited evangelical institution in the Wesleyan tradition. The faculty are deeply committed Christians. All hold Ph.D.’s and most have post-doctoral research experience. Importantly, all have considerable teaching experience with Christian young people holding diverse viewpoints about how God created, be it gradually over a long period of time, or suddenly in six 24 hour days. Although the Biology faculty hold to an old earth / gradual creation point of view and believe that there are not significant conflicts between mainstream science and biblical Christianity, they are respectful of all views.

The Biology by the Sea program exists for teachers to study animal and plant diversity in the context of a Christian university. It is heavily grounded in worship and Bible study which celebrates creation and God as Creator. Regular worship services are led by PLNU’s worship leader and its Bible studies are led by a pastor who is also a faculty member of PLNU. Although the program teaches from an evolutionary creation point of view, participants from other perspectives are welcome and are encouraged to attend. As with all PLNU biology courses, individuals of all creation viewpoints are respected.

“Respect” means, of course, “we won’t challenge your views, even though science shows that they’re dead, flat wrong.”

Young-earth creationism, or any sort of scientifically insupportable view of creation, is not worthy of “respect.”  It is worthy of contempt—particularly in a science course.  Of course, one needn’t shout forced laughter into the faces of those participants who think that the earth is 6,000 years old, or that all the fish they look at did not evolve but were created instantaneously at some time in the past, but these misguided folks should be politely informed that they’re wrong: that those fish have millions of years of common ancestry with other fishes, and that marine vertebrates began evolving over 500 million years ago.

And why are science teachers taking a course on biology anyway if they don’t accept evolution? It can’t be to learn about evolution, for the University and BioLogos apparently won’t challenge anti-evolution views. No, they will respect them. In fact, who can teach science properly if they don’t accept evolution in the first place?

This is a boondoggle, pure and simple—one designed to show the compatibility of science and faith: even a type of faith that is diametrically opposed to science.  I can only wonder if some of the money behind this course ultimately comes from a major donor to BioLogos—the Templeton Foundation, who gave them over two million dollars for their work.

The course also erodes any credibility BioLogos has in its stated mission to unite evanglical Christianity and good science:

BioLogos represents the harmony of science and faith. It addresses the central themes of science and religion and emphasizes the compatibility of Christian faith with scientific discoveries about the origins of the universe and life.

If the course must mix science and superstition, the least it can do is not enable creationism.  Yes, “Christians hold different views about how creation has actually taken place,” but most of them are wrong, can be proven wrong, and should, at least implicitly, be demonstrated to be wrong in a course like this.  Nothing in biology makes sense in light of creationism.

“Respect” my tuchus!

Two cats to us cheer us all

April 28, 2011 • 3:58 am

Two of our regular readers and commenters have provided photos yesterday.

One that will hearten us all was sent by our official Japanese correspondent and blogger Yokohamamama (Amy). Her son Koshi found a tiny bedraggled kitten in the street and begged to bring him home.  Of course she said “yes”, and I took this Skype screenshot of Amy with the newly acquired “Momo” (if female) or “Momotaro” (if male); both names mean “peach,” and “Momotaro” is the famous peach boy of Japanese legend.

It has conjunctivitis, but is going to the vet immediately for medication.  Since Amy can’t keep cats in her apartment, any readers in Japan who want a lovely orange kitten can apply on her website.

And from Ireland, Grania Spingies, who works for Atheist Ireland, sent a picture of George, a very limber cat.  His story:

George has a double-storey house with two bedrooms, a plush three-piece lounge suite and a staff of two named Nicola & Eoin who are in charge of serving his meals, keeping his water clean, providing random entertainment, opening doors for him, closing doors for him, checking to see that the heating is on to warm his floor in winter, brushing his coat when he is in the mood and answering any other requests he may have.

A cat like George sleeps anywhere he pleases.

So you might well ask why George chose to get into the smallest “bed” in the house.
Probably just to show that he could.

If you turn this upside down, George looks like a rabbit.

Murders: God vs. Satan

April 27, 2011 • 5:28 am

These calculations by Steve Wells are a year old, but I just became aware of them and decided to post them. It’s a list of people whom God killed, as recounted in the Bible. The Biblical figures go all the way from the 42 youths killed by a God-sent bear in retribution for their joking about Elisha’s bald head, to the 14,700 Israelites killed for complaining about God’s killing.

There are two sets of calculations: those reported in the Bible itself, and estimates when the Bible doesn’t give figures:

Estimate from Bible: 2,476,636

Estimate from Bible and other sources:  24,634,205

What is Satan’s toll?  Ten!

It appears that Satan only killed 10 people: the seven sons and three daughters of Job. And he only does this because god allowed it as part of a bet! Technically the blood is on god’s hands for these as well.

Data thus show conclusively that God is between 200,000 and 2,000,000 times more murderous than Satan.

h/t: Juan

Mother eagle died

April 26, 2011 • 6:33 pm

UPDATE:  The moderators at EagleCam have decided to remove the eaglets to safer quarters:

DGIF biologists have decided that it is in the best interest of the eaglets to remove them from the nest and relocate them to the Wildlife Center of Virginia. The removal operation will take place at 10 a.m.  JAC: The removal appears to be taking place now according to one commenter: 9:15 EST. 

These biologists are the best judges of what to do, for they have experience about what happens to single-parented eagles.  In one hour you can see the removal live. It will be a sad occasion for us, and, perhaps, even sadder for the father, who will be returning to the nest with food, only to find that his offspring have disappeared.  If animals can feel sadness, this would be the time.
Thanks to all for watching EagleCam and checking in here.  I’ll try to find a replacement; one FalconCam looks propitious.

__________

A number of readers have posted comments about the death of the female eagle at EagleCam. She was hit by a plane landing at Norfolk International Airport early this morning, and was apparently carrying a fish back to the nest.

The father eagle is still feeding the young, but it’s not certain that a single parent can supply their needs. The Fish and Wildlife folks will decide tomorrow morning whether to remove the eaglets and raise them by hand, let the father continue to feed them, or perhaps farm the eaglets out to “foster nests” that already contain eagle chicks.

I’m deeply saddened by this, as I’m sure most of us are who have spent so much time watching this pair produce eggs and chicks.  It’s hard, too, not to anthropomorphize the situation and wonder if the male misses his mate (they’d been together for several years).  As for me, I can’t yet bear to look at the site, so what I’m reporting is what readers have told me.

Nature is red in tooth and claw, and at least the mother was spared the slow and painful death that befalls most animals in the wild.  But somehow an airplane doesn’t seem fair.

More tonsorial discrimination

April 26, 2011 • 2:14 pm

I have previously complained about the differential price of haircuts in salons, so that women are invariably charged more than men, even for a similar hairstyle or for similar degrees of effort.

Now reader Matt has found another example of this discrimination: for eyebrows!

Two bucks more to wax a woman’s eyebrows? That’s insane.  And don’t they know about this?:

Waxing is waxing, for crying out loud!

From God’s mouth to Biologos‘s ear

April 26, 2011 • 5:56 am

I was intrigued by a banner on the BioLogos website called “Ephesians 4:7-16, Moving the Science/Faith Discussion Forward.”  How could a part of the Bible advance a discussion that for two centuries has gone nowhere?

It turns out that the banner links to an article by Pete Enns, Biologos‘s Senior Fellow for Biblical Studies, called “Evolution and Our Theological Traditions: Calvinism“.  It’s part of a continuing series that, apparently, is aimed at getting us to see the Bible as a historical document that shouldn’t be taken literally—except, of course, for selected parts, including those about Jesus.

Referring to the reaction of nineteenth-century scholars at Princeton’s Theological Seminary to the “higher criticism” of European scholars, a criticism aimed at unravelling the Bible’s historical construction, Enns says this:

There are in their writings, however, progressive trajectories that are promising for the current state of Evangelicalism regarding how Scripture and science can be in conversation.

Bible in Context

The distinctive mark of a Calvinist approach to the Bible, as we saw in earlier posts about John Calvin, is that the Bible reflects its historical contexts. God did not “write the Bible” as an abstract treatise, hurtled down to earth from an Olympian height, nor as a Platonic ideal kept at a safe distance from the human drama. (The Dutch Reformed theologians were particularly adamant about that, and we will look at them at a later post.)

Rather, Scripture is God’s gracious revelation of himself and his actions in the concrete, everyday world of ancient Semitic and Hellenistic peoples. And for this reason, the study of Scripture as an historical phenomenon is neither optional nor peripheral for the church. Rather, although at times very challenging, it is a wonderful, vital, and indispensable responsibility for students of Scripture. Through such study, by God’s spirit, we, as students of Scripture, come to learn more deeply and more broadly who God is and what he has done.

This sounds all humble and stuff, but is really incredibly arrogant, for here Enns claims absolute understanding of how God is manifest in the Bible.

There’s only one proper reaction to this kind of exegesis: How do you know?  As Biblical scholarship continues to kick the props of divinity out from under scripture, people like Enns continue to assert that the Bible is still God’s word—of a sort.  That is, the Bible wasn’t meant to be taken literally, but God’s word is still in there.  But where? In which parts? Which parts are fictitious, written by men, and which part are “God’s gracious revelation of himself?”

How do these people know?  The answer is that they don’t.  It’s all subjective choice, choice informed by the advance of modern secular reason that makes things like the Flood and Creation untenable.  Well, we don’t have much historical evidence for Jesus, either, and none for his divinity. And of course Adam and Eve didn’t exist, but BioLogos still wants to find some truth in that story.  Maybe God just appointed one man and one woman as his agents on Earth.

It is this purely subjective decision on how to interpret the Bible that renders all the varied schools of theology untenable.  The evidence, as it stands, shows that the whole document, and all its attendant theology, are purely man made.  That won’t wash for the faithful, so various schools have arisen battling about the particular sense in which Scripture is God’s word. (See Biologos‘s fight with Ken Ham, for instance.)

If you’re going to maintain that parts of the Bible remain divinely written or inspired, then you’re taking yourself out of the ambit of empiricism and reason. You’re making a purely subjective decision based on revelation.

And that’s why science organizations that endorse some brands of theology, while decrying others, are making a serious mistake. Who are they to decide what is “good” theology?  What they mean by “good”, of course, is not “theology that gives us a more accurate sense of the divine,” but “theology that best comports with our desire to sell evolution to the public.”

Kitteh contest: Moe and Jimmy

April 26, 2011 • 5:23 am

Reader Peggy originally entered her cat Moe (whom I show first), but then decided to add her other cat, Jimmy:

Both of my cats, Jimmy and Moe, are wonderful cats, but I picked Moe for the contest (I still can’t believe he didn’t win) because he has undergone such a transformation since I first met him.  He showed up in my backyard 4 years ago when he was about 9 months old.  He was scraggly and scrawny like a typical stray cat.  He adored my cat Jimmy, but seemed terrified of me.  I fed him (and so did my neighbors) and after a couple of months I was able to catch him so he could be neutered. For about a year after that he was just an annoying outdoor cat who would get in fights and get soaking wet and would sit on my porch or in the backyard looking totally pathetic, but he would not come in the house.  He vocalizes a lot and whenever I was outside he would follow me around, yakking nonstop, but if I tried to pet him he would scratch me. After about a year he started tentatively to enter the garage.  Later he came in the house as long as I didn’t try to interact with him, but we became good friends from that point on.  Over the past few years he has mellowed considerably and now, although still a little bit grouchy at times (and no longer a fan of Jimmy), is a total sweetie-pie, as you can see from his photo.


Mo et son ami:

Greg Paul: the science of religion

April 26, 2011 • 5:21 am

I learned of this site from Brother Blackford, and it’s worth bookmarking. Gregory Paul, whom we’ve encountered before for documenting a negative correlation among countries between societal health and religiosity, has put together a collection of his scholarly and popular articles.  His site is The science of religion, and includes articles on sociology, theology, religion, and evolution.

If you’ve read Paul, you know that he’s a big booster of science but no fan of religion.  The site, and his pieces on the sociology of religion, deserve a look.