Considerettes

Jeff Jacoby presents, in a style not unlike Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story”, a story about a scientist, and the school that he applied to, that will amaze you.

DID YOU hear about the religious fundamentalist who wanted to teach physics at Cambridge University? This would-be instructor wasn’t simply a Christian; he was so preoccupied with biblical prophecy that he wrote a book titled “Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John.” Based on his reading of Daniel, in fact, he forecast the date of the Apocalypse: no earlier than 2060. He also calculated the year the world was created. When Genesis 1:1 says “In the beginning,” he determined, it means 3988 BC.

So we have a young-Earth guy who seems really into this Christianity thing, and who is applying for a science job at a very prestigious university. Did he get the job?

Hire somebody with such views to teach physics? At a Baptist junior college deep in the Bible Belt, maybe, but the faculty would erupt if you tried it just about anywhere else. Many of them would echo Oxford’s Richard Dawkins, the prominent evolutionary biologist, who writes in “The God Delusion” that he is “hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. . . . It subverts science and saps the intellect.”

In today’s academic climate, things don’t sound promising for our intrepid physicist. Religion and science don’t mix, so they say.

But such considerations didn’t keep Cambridge from hiring the theology- and Bible-drenched individual described above. Indeed, it named him to the prestigious Lucasian Chair of Mathematics….

To find out who this guy was who beat all the odds to get hired, click here for the full column. (And if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may already know the answer. I covered it last month.)

Technorati Tags: science and religion, Cambridge, Christianity, young Earth, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, education

Popularity: 17% [?]

First they came for the TV stations, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t own a TV station. Then they came for the critical foreigners, but I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t a critical foreigner.

President Hugo Chávez said Sunday that foreigners who publicly criticize him or his government while visiting Venezuela will be expelled from the country.

Chávez ordered officials to closely monitor statements made by international figures during their visits to Venezuela — and deport any outspoken critics.

‘’How long are we going to allow a person — from any country in the world — to come to our own house to say there’s a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?'’ Chávez asked during his weekly television and radio program.

So if someone comes to his country and calls him “the devil”, that’s a deportable offense. But if Chavez does it in America, the world applauds. (Well, the UN at least.)

Closed circuit for Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, Cindy Sheehan, and other Chavez supporters: Can you say “stifling of dissent”? Can you recognize it when it’s really happening? Do you remember this ever happening before in history? Do you remember how it all ultimately turned out?

Hat tip The Liberty Papers via Q&O (who points out the similarity with North Korea).

Technorati Tags: Hugo Chavez, Venezuela, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, Cindy Sheehan, free speech, dictatorship, stifling of dissent

Popularity: 6% [?]

A work buddy of mine and fellow Christian has started his own blog “A Dim Light in a Dark Place”. Rather eclectic in nature (family, politics, faith, humor (especially his proposed bumper sticker for use in Atlanta)), so give it a look.

Technorati Tags: Chris Jamison

Popularity: 5% [?]

James Taranto’s analysis and humor on events of the day is not to be missed. On a daily basis, he writes Best of the Web Today for Wall St. Journal’s Opinion Journal. Today is definitely no exception, and the rest of this blog post will be his analysis of a NY Times op-ed piece from today. It’s something that needs to be said, and said loudly and often. When, instead of reading what the liberal media writes about the war, journalists actually go to Iraq and see what’s happening, the results are amazing. And now, James Taranto.

On Second Thought, Don’t Surrender
In an important and surprising New York Times op-ed piece, Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, both from the liberal Brookings Institution, describe a visit to Iraq, where they find that things are not as bad as–well, as New York Times readers have been led to believe. The piece is titled “A War We Just Might Win”:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated–many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

O’Hanlon and Pollack report that Sunni sheikhs in Anbar province “are close to crippling Al Qaeda and its Salafist allies,” that “the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate” in the northern cities of Tal Afar and Mosul, and that “the American high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners.”

They say the situation “remains grave,” especially on the “political front,” but they counsel against a quick retreat, as many Democrats on Capitol Hill have been advocating:

How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.

In a way, though, what is most telling about this piece is the introduction:

Viewed from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

For the sake of argument, let us suppose that the authors are right when they claim the Bush administration has “lost essentially all credibility.” Does this excuse the administration’s critics for being “unaware of the significant changes taking place”–especially when some of those critics have, for reasons of partisanship, ideology or just plain animus, actively campaigned to destroy the administration’s credibility?

In the critics’ defense, one may say that they have not, by and large, been in positions of responsibility; that if things have gone wrong in Iraq, the administration deserves the lion’s share of the blame.

On the other hand, those critics now include the leaders of both houses of Congress, as well as several politicians who would like to become president. For them, at least, it is a serious failure of leadership if they base their views on Iraq on their own disdain for President Bush, or the hope of exploiting voters’ disdain for him, rather than on reality.

Technorati Tags: James Taranto, Wall Street Journal, Opinion Journal, New York Times, Michael O’Hanlon, Kenneth Pollack, Iraq, George Bush

Popularity: 8% [?]

Going camping in the Smokey Mountains. The blog will be rather quiet until I get back.

Popularity: 7% [?]

…the US military.

TAJI, Iraq — U.S. forces have brokered an agreement between Sunni and Shi’ite tribal leaders to join forces against al Qaeda and other extremists, extending a policy that has transformed the security situation in western Anbar province to this area north of the capital.

The extremists struck back yesterday with a suicide car bomb aimed at one of the Sunni tribes involved in the deal, killing three militiamen and wounding 14.

Members of the First Calvary Division based at nearby Camp Taji helped broker the deal on Saturday with the tribal leaders, who agreed to use members of more than 25 local tribes to protect the area around Taji from both Sunni and Shi’ite extremists.

Our fighting men and women in Iraq are not some dumb, poor folks who got “stuck in Iraq” (thank you John Kerry), and they’re not just fighting men and women, either. They’re bringing peace (real peace, not the Saddam Hussein kind) to Iraq, one province at a time. It’s slow going, no question about that, but I do hope the American people will let the military have the time to do the job right, because it is getting done.

Similar agreements in Anbar province have been credited with putting al Qaeda and its foreign extremists on the defensive while bringing relative peace to some of Iraq’s most violent areas.

The Taji agreement, however, is the first involving both Sunni and Shi’ite sheiks, and the U.S. military hopes it will help temper the increasing influence of the Mahdi Army in and around Baghdad.

“A month ago, every single one of these people was shooting at us,” said Sgt. Richard Fisk as he walked through Falahat pointing out places where his troops had been hit by roadside bombs.

Capt. [Martin] Wohlgemuth said the tribal leaders approached the United States for support after a number of raids and detentions, coupled with increasingly brutal treatment of the local population by the group calling itself al Qaeda in Iraq.

The captain said that in some cases he has helped members of the new militia to get relatives released from U.S. and Iraqi custody, provided they were not linked to al Qaeda.

Things are getting better. But will Democrats notice come September?

Technorati Tags: military, Sunni, Shia, al Qaeda, Taji, Capt. Martin Wohlgemuth, Iraq, Taji

Popularity: 10% [?]

Arnold Kling exposes a new movie.

The Acton Institute has produced the most subversive movie I have ever seen. The Call of the Entrepreneur, which is being released on an agonizingly slow schedule, is a threat to tyranny everywhere, including here at home.

The movie’s message is that entrepreneurs are creators of wealth, Wall Street financiers are enablers of economic progress, and the villains of the world are people like the Communist leaders in China and American religious leaders who rail against capitalism.

Here’s the short description from the movie’s website:

A merchant banker. A failing dairy farmer. A refugee from Communist China. One risked his savings. One risked his farm. One risked his life. Why do their stories matter? Because how we view entrepreneurs - as greedy or altruistic, as virtuous or vicious - shapes the destinies of individuals and nations.

But there are probably too many impediments to it to be shown widely in this country. Kling explains:

But it has very little chance of being shown in public high schools in America. It is far too explicit. “Call of the Entrepreneur” features the Reverend Robert A. Sirico, including a full-frontal shot of his clerical collar. As producer Jay W. Richards points out, the movie uses “the G word.”

As a Jew, I am certain that I missed a number of the religious aspects of the movie. There were subtle references to Christian doctrine that went right past me. Perhaps there are Christians who would be more aware of the context and, based on their knowledge, might even take offense at the film’s stance. I imagine that passionate atheists would tend to be turned off. But I think that a typical high school student could be exposed to the religion in “Call of the Entrepreneur” without being permanently scarred or corrupted.

I would argue that “Call of the Entrepreneur” and “An Inconvenient Truth” are both religious films. However, unlike Al Gore’s movie about global warming, “Call of the Entrepreneur” steers clear of sensationalism, dogma, and misleading half-truths. It is ironic that public teachers and parents are happy to see “An Inconvenient Truth” in the classroom, but “Call of the Entrepreneur” would probably be greeted with protests if it were shown.

Kling’s being sarcastic, of course, but makes his point clear. The more we see government as savior, the less freedom we have. The more the entrepreneurial spirit is encouraged, the better it is for all of us, the poor included. Don’t give a man a fish, teach him to fish, and allow him to open his own fish business without excessive interference. That’s how freedom works.

Technorati Tags: Call of the Entrepreneur, Robert A. Sirico, Acton Institute, Arnold Kling

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Mark Steyn wonders…

How do you feel about the American hostages in Iran?

No, not the guys back in the Seventies, the ones being held right now.

What? You haven’t heard about them?

Odd that, isn’t it?

Very much so, especially since we’re planning on negotiating with them regarding their nuclear program. Read the whole thing.

Technorati Tags: Iran, hostages, Mark Steyn

Popularity: 9% [?]

Tip o’ the hat to Slashdot for the latest medical breakthrough using adult stem cells; treating cornea disorders.

Technorati Tags: adult stem cells, cornea, medicine, science

Popularity: 10% [?]

Hey, you want to start the campaign earlier than ever before? This is what you get. I have no idea why the candidates started so early this time around — I suspect Democrats wanted to capitalize on Bush fatigue as soon as possible — but the landscape now will almost certainly be nothing like the landscape before the first primaries. It just raises the bar to entry; those who are the richest and/or have the richest friends can stay in for the extremely long haul. Is that what we want to have as the first determiner of our presidential choices?

Fred Thompson’s waiting game may not be such a bad idea.

Technorati Tags: presidential campaign, Fred Thompson, debate fatigue

Popularity: 4% [?]

The 14th Georgia Carnival is up at “Georgia on My Mind”, and my post below about Christian fantasy fiction is one of the items mentioned. Enjoy posts from Georgia bloggers.

Technorati Tags: Georgia Carnival

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When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Danbury Baptists, attempting to clarify the roles of government and organized religion in the new United States, Jefferson wrote this:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

Taken out of context, the “wall of separation” line has been misused over the generations. And the context is not just the letter Jefferson wrote, but it is a specific answer to a specific question from the Baptsts. Here is their concern, with emphasis added:

But sir, our constitution of government is not specific. Our ancient charter, together with the laws made coincident therewith, were adapted as the basis of our government at the time of our revolution. And such has been our laws and usages, and such still are, [so] that Religion is considered as the first object of Legislation, and therefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of the State) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights. And these favors we receive at the expense of such degrading acknowledgments, as are inconsistent with the rights of freemen. It is not to be wondered at therefore, if those who seek after power and gain, under the pretense of government and Religion, should reproach their fellow men, [or] should reproach their Chief Magistrate, as an enemy of religion, law, and good order, because he will not, dares not, assume the prerogative of Jehovah and make laws to govern the Kingdom of Christ.

The Baptists were concerned specifically about the government imposing laws on religion that would tell them what to do with regards to their beliefs and the practice of them. Jefferson said government would not do that.

There could be no real question as to whether or not religion could have an effect on the government, since a chaplain and an opening prayer were part of Congress from the beginning. Jefferson himself used government money for the express purpose of evangelizing the American Indians. This from the man who wrote about a wall? By his words and his deeds, and in the full context of his words, it is clear that the wall he spoke of was one erected around religion to protect it and its followers from government intrusion, but the reverse situation was not addressed but, in fact, encouraged to a point.

I say this as a prelude to this news story coming from the BBC about an event in England that could occur here in the near future.

A gay man has won his case for unlawful discrimination after he was refused a youth official’s job by a Church of England bishop.

The employment tribunal said John Reaney, 42, was discriminated against “on grounds of sexual orientation” by the Hereford diocesan board of finance.

And what law was broken?

Under the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003, it is illegal to discriminate against people as a result of their sexual orientation, but the law does contain an exemption for organised religion.

The Church of England has a position on the moral status of homosexuality. It is based on their religious beliefs. But today in England, not even the established church is allowed to act on its beliefs if the government has said otherwise. That “exemption for organised religion” isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

This is the beginning of the end of religious freedom, when the government becomes the new arbiter of religious practice. And if you don’t think it could happen here, then you’re likely in for a surprise when the walls come tumblin’ down.

Hat tip: Go, Pundit, Go!

Technorati Tags: Thomas Jefferson, Danbury Baptists, religion, government, separation of church and state, England, John Reaney, Hereford, Church of England

Popularity: 10% [?]

Someone once said (I’m thinking C. S. Lewis, but if you know the quote, please note it in a comment) something to the effect that we don’t need more good Christian literature, we need more good literature by Christians. Does the trend mentioned in this news story portend more of the former or the latter?

Could the next Harry Potter be a devout Christian?

As the days tick down until Saturday, when a breathless world learns the fate of the teenage wizard, a new breed of fantasy fiction, with Potter-style stories, is emerging.

Like the Potter series, it has mystical creatures, macabre events, epic battles and heroic young protagonists.

But, unlike the Potter books, this genre has overt Christian tones: messiah-like kings who return from the dead, fallen satanic characters and young heroes who undergo profound conversions. What you won’t generally find: humans waving wands and performing spells.

Christian fantasy, which had been a slow seller, has caught fire recently, industry analysts say, ignited by the success of the Potter series, which has sent some Christian readers looking for alternatives.

What could come of this is a boatload of Narnia knockoffs, most with the same redemption allegory. Now, I’m not knocking the allegory itself, per se; there’s certainly nothing wrong with presenting the “old, old story” in a new way. But not everything written by Christians has to be a thin veneer overlaying the New Testament.

And there are a lot of good books written that happen to be written by Christians. In our house, Ted Dekker is a big name, not only for his incredible thriller and suspense novels, but because he went to the same missionary boarding school in Indonesia as my wife and was just a grade or two ahead.

The article notes that the Potter controversy continues (interestingly, Dobson has praises for the series), while the array of other options is on the increase. But with great popularity comes great mediocrity, and just because the author’s a Christian doesn’t mean it’s a masterpiece. But trust me, those masterpieces do exist, and we need more of them.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, books, Christian fiction, Harry Potter, Narnia, Ted Dekker, Dalat School, James Dobson

Popularity: 9% [?]

Pretty soon, you’re talking real money.

Technorati Tags: Congress, Jack Murtha

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General Pace sees a lot of good news coming out of Iraq — a “sea change” in the security situation, according to TIME — but when his report comes in September will the Democrats really listen? When Harry Reid declared the surge “a failure” before all the troops had even arrived and put into action, it tipped his hand as to how he’d vote 3 months later, regardless of outcome. He and his caucus have made up their minds. Don’t confuse them with the facts, now or in the future.

Technorati Tags: General Peter Pace, Iraq, Harry Reid, surge

Popularity: 9% [?]