A Few Notes About Mitt Romney

I just happened to catch a few words on the radio the other day from Sandy Rios on the Chicago radio station WYLL. Sandy has been a fairly listenable conservative voice for years, sort of a kinder gentler Laura Ingram. She did spend a few years in Massachusetts at the time when Mitt Romney was governor and the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay unions. She won't be supporting Romney.

In light of all the buzz among conservatives and Christians over Romney's well written speech regarding religion and politics, including and endorsement from endorsement from Wayne Grudem, and generates a lot of interest from Christians it is interesting to hear a different take.

The gist of Sandy Rios' objection is simply that she doesn't trust Romney. She believes he will say things to please conservatives, but will then do things in such a way as to virtually guarantee the opposite outcome. On abortion and gay marriage, his actions speak louder than words. In short, in her view, the Massachusetts court directed its ruling toward the legislative branch, but Romney, claiming he had "no choice", saw to it that marriage licences were changed from "husband" and "wife" to "party A" and "party B" and ordered officials to begin performing same-sex marriages at risk of losing their jobs if they did not comply.

What is Heresy?

The flap over Rob Bell allegedly being called a heretic by Mark Driscoll raises an interesting question. What is heresy and how is it defined?

The late Harold O. J. Brown has suggested that after the Reformation, the term "heresy" is essentially meaningless. Why? Because the term seems to have referred to the notion of "going one's own way", that is: at a time when there was one unified church, those who departed from the teaching of that one unified church were heretics. Once the church ceased to be unified, "going one's own way" could no longer be termed heresy - there was no longer a singular arbiter of what was orthodox. In actuality, the term lost some of its meaning after the separation of the Eastern and Western churches in 1054. Can a Roman Catholic call an Orthodox a heretic with any real authority? It becomes a "he said/he said" conflict.

Yet the term is still used, probably too often. I do not think the term is meaningless, nor do I think Driscoll was entirely off base in saying Rob Bell was straying into heretical territory. Here's why.

Some Random Quotes

My wife and I went to a Farmer's market recently and I found someone selling books at a table, used books of various kinds. I bought two. Both were $2.00. They were by J.P. Moreland and they were on Christian apologetics. I guess it was good that I got a deal. But it was discouraging in another way. When I buy a quality book, I keep it. When good books that challenge the mind are casually discarded, it makes me wonder who let them go and why.

On the way home, I leafed through the book "Love Your God With All Your Mind." At the beginning of each chapter there were various quotes from different figures. Three in particular aroused some old passions in me.

"False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and succeed only in winning a straggle here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion." - J Gresham Machen

PBS Indoctrination - Some thoughts

So the PBS Nova presentation on the Dover Intelligent Design case was about what I expected.

The defendants looked like dishonest idiots. The ACLU Lawyers looked like knights in shining armor. Michael Behe was conspicuously absent, PBS claimed he "refused" to be interviewed, which was false. They highlighted the "establishment clause", well, half of it. "No law respecting the establishment of religion." They left out the part about prohibiting the free exercise of it. The usual stuff.

But all that is what we've come to expect. I did note Behe had a response at the Discovery Institute site which pertains directly to the decision of Judge John Jones.

"The Court’s reasoning in section E-4 is premised on: a cramped view of science; the conflation of intelligent design with creationism; the incapacity to distinguish the implications of a theory from the theory itself;"

PBS Indoctrination on Origins Continues

PBS has a long history of presenting a pretty one-sided view of the evolution vs. design controversy. From Carl Sagan, ("the cosmos is all there ever was and all there ever will be") to Donald Johanson to Steven Jay Gould, folks who believe everything about origins must be explained by purely natural processes in order to be "scientific" explanations get lots of airtime and those who don't get the "dunce" treatment.

This Thursday the trend continues with a program on NOVA this Thursday about the Dover Pa. case in which a single statement about Intelligent Design which did not mention anything religious was found to be an unconstitutional promotion of religion.
World Magazine reports that the program is less than a stellar example of objective reporting:

"Because no cameras were allowed in the courtroom during the trial, NOVA created dramatic reenactments of the proceedings with actors quoting lines from the case transcripts. Filmmakers also interviewed attorneys, school board members, scientists, and local teachers and parents. Conspicuously absent: interviews with fellows of the ID-advancing Discovery Institute, several of whom testified at the trial."

The article claims that Intelligent Design advocates wanted to be included but PBS would not allow for a bit of checks and balances:

"...negotiations over interview procedures broke down when Apsell (Nova Executive Producer) refused to allow a Discovery Institute representative to record the exchanges for public release should NOVA use any statements out of context..."

Seems like a reasonable request to me. Consider the CBS Westmoreland lawsuit, the Dan Rather forged documents episode, the NBC staging of exploding gas tanks... Journalists these days have a reputation not much higher than that of lawyers and politicians. People do not trust them. PBS made a counter offer:

"Apsell instead offered to provide Discovery officials with complete footage of the interviews provided they signed away any right to make it public. "

So, if Michael Behe were to catch PBS in an outright lie, he would be bound not to tell anybody about it? That's an option?

So PBS will go forward with its "report", with not a single representative of ID, apparently, presenting their side of the story. It will, no doubt, give all the impression of being an objective, factual, news program, but will likely be an all-out indoctrination that materialist views of origins are "science" and anything that suggests nature might not be all there is has to be "unscientific", "religious", and therefore a matter of mere "belief" severed from fact and reason.

Your tax dollars at work.

Red Letter Inconsistency

Interesting exchange between Stan Guthrie and Tony Campolo in CT under the banner When Red is Blue. Guthrie makes his case that the term "Red-letter Christians" seems to refer to those who hold two problematic views. One is that the "red letters", that is the words of Jesus in some translations of the Bible implies that Jesus' words are somehow more canonical than other portions of scripture. The other is that the "red-letter" Christians seem to decry the entanglement of the "religious right" in politics, but then turn and embrace political views that are almost entirely in agreement with the views of the left. Writes Guthrie...

If you believe ending poverty requires more government spending and a higher minimum wage; if you believe in a manmade global warming crisis; if you oppose school vouchers; if homosexual marriage is no big deal (and in fact a civil right); and if you are tired of talking about the 50 million unborn human beings lost to abortion since 1973, then you know which lever to pull.

Guthrie's critique may or may not be 100% correct, but Campolo's response was a bit of a surprise.

Rethinking Robert Webber - Part 4

Robert Webber grounds authority in the apostolic teaching, and most Christians would of course agree. The apostles were given authority by Christ, and all other authority derives from that. Here Webber veers ever so slightly into the “tradition is equal to written scripture” view.

"Authority in the early medieval era, like in the ancient church, was rooted in the apostolic tradition and succession….while the apostles were the original authority in the church, a writing of Augustine or another Father of the church, or a creed or council that extended or expounded an idea in keeping with apostolic teaching enjoyed a kind of apostolic authority." P177

I do not mean to read too much into that. His view is likely not equivalent to what Catholicism is often accused of by Protestants. One has to nuance one’s objections in this regard. The problem with tradition is not that it exists, but centers around the question of when it begins to bend the scripture, when it begins to add to or take away from what the apostles clearly wrote. And Augustine was one who indicated quite strongly his own writingw were not as authoritative as scripture.

Webber makes much of tradition though, and finds the horrible culprit to be convicted in recent evangelical thought to be reason.