Context and Fairness - The Gospel Coalition Keruffle

I've been following the controversy over a post on the Gospel Coalition site about distorted views of sex and a relation to views of male/female roles.  I find it interesting that the progressive Christians who are all about "contextualization" have been up in arms about a post they refused to read in context.

The context concerns the novel Fifty Shades of Grey which apparently contains several explicit sequences detailing sexual bondage, sadism and masochism.  So Jared Wilson published a post from a complimentarian perspective which was intended to speak against bondage, sadism and masochism.  The loud and angry response to the post by many egalitarians and progressives suggested instead that his complementarian position somehow promoted the rape and subjugation of women.  (More)

Information - The Immaterial Reality

In much of the debate between ID and Evolution advocates, the focus is on the mathematical complexity of the genetic code.  ID advocates point out that the sequences of chemicals arranged to carry the information that makes life possible are so detailed and vast that no amount of time could account for the unguided arrangement of even the most basic chemical structures of proteins.  Steven Meyer's recent tome suggests that the random combination of chemicals necessary for even the basic building blocks of the genetic code are so unlikely to have arisen by random processes as to be equivalent to finding a single marked atom blindfolded in an area equivalent to size of the known universe.  ID does not then merely resort to a "God of the gaps" argument where "design" wins by default, as his critics charge, nor is it merely an argument about "chance".  Rather, the suggestion is that the order of the genetic code is analogous to virtually everything else that we know to have been designed, therefore design is the best explanation.  (More)

Conservatism - Judeo Christian Foundations

Two key ideas are essential to the existence of a functioning democracy.  One is the notion that there is a higher law that all - from the highest office-holder to the lowest citizen - is subject to.  The other is that belief that every individual has "inalienable rights" that are "endowed by their creator” and as such are not granted by nor taken by the state.  The twin anchors of the rule of law coupled with the security of basic human dignity provide for the necessary checks on human corruption to make democracy viable.  Our US Constitution was intended to limit the powers of centralized government on one hand and to prevent the chaos of mob rule on the other. There was intended to be a balance between law and freedom.  

This is why those who wish to denigrate the “Christian” roots of our form of government not only miss the mark historically, but enable the continued erosion of Western civilization and hasten the death of Constitutional democracy.  Jefferson, Franklin and Washington need not have all been explicitly “Christian” by evangelical standards to understand that Laws that are not based on unchanging universal truths are inevitably malleable tools in the hands of tyrants, and that individual rights dependent only on the whims of those in power have no lasting relevance at all.  Without a generalized belief that there was an eternal and good Creator who stood behind the very concept of Law and in whose image individuals are made, the balance between form and freedom is impossible to articulate, much less maintain.  If foundational standards change and shift the definition of “rights” must also change.  (More)

It's Immaterial

There was much consternation on the blogosphere a month or so ago over the Gallup poll t hat showed that in this country very few believe in evolution.  46% believe God created humans in pretty much the present form, 32% believe God somehow guided evolution and only 15% believe evolution occurred with no help from a deity.

The lament seems to be that somehow science education has failed or worse, the false science of Creationists has poisoned the minds of too many of the undereducated folks in flyover states.  I find that hard to accept.  For decades evolution has been taught virtually unchallenged in public education and major science programs on popular and public TV have also pushed the standard Darwinist viewpoint, while one would be hard pressed to find a "creationist" view tolerated on virtually any mainstream media outlet without considerable qualification.  In addition, Intelligent Design views are almost universally disdained in mainstream media and academia while in the courts ID is lumped in with creationism as an enemy to be vanquished.  (More)