Natural Revelation And the Sciences: Proceed With Caution

It has become customary in some circles today to think of true theories as some expression of natural or general revelation, but this represents an extraordinarily troubling mistake, even though the indentification of the two often stems from a sincere desire to affirm both science and the Bible. But here lies a significant problem which one can determine with a few well pointed questions.

1. What is natural revelation? Answer: Natural revelation refers to God's SELF-disclosure to all men by means of the image of himself He has left as an imprint on the created order.

2. What are the sciences? "Science" (shorthand for the sciences) refers to the man-made effort to subdue the earth, control his environment, and improve the lives of all through observation, induction, dedcution, theorizing, simulations (models) and algorithmic solutions to questions about nature and the behaviors of its elements (both biological and inanimate). Now one could surely add more to these definitions.

They are not comprehensive definitions, but they are sufficiently accurate for today's quick study. First, only God can reveal. No man (except for Christ) can offer genuinely revelation from God as its source, any more than a man might redeem himself or his friends. Not gonna happen. But the sciences display faithful efforts on the part of men to fulfill what Christians sometimes call the "dominion mandate."

In other words, natural revelation originates with God, while scientific theories (true, false or ugly) find their source in the human mind. The attributes of natural revelation are those consistent with God's word, and those of the sciences with the words of men. Theories can be false (and usually are). God's word -- both in nature and written down (inscripturated) remains infallible -- here are a few words to look up -- also infrangible, irrefragable ("cannot be broken"), necessarily (not contingently) true, universally known (for natural revelation but not written), legal and ethical in its contents, certain (not probable), inerrant, perspicuous (sufficiently clear), untestable (it says, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test"), unfalsifiable, transcendent, etc., etc.

None of the above attributes applies properly to scientific theories, which are fallible, falsifiable (some are anyway), immanent (not transcendent), uncertain, sometimes false, errant, limited in scope, not known universally (few understand Einsteins general theory of relativity), descriptive of nature (not having the goal to describe God), sometimes they are opaque (less than clear), contingently true only (no theory is necessarily true, or it would not be theoretical by definition), etc. etc.

Conclusion: natural revelation is not theoretical. No revelation is theoretical. God never theorizes. He KNOWS and declares with authority what we must believe and do. Einstein? not so much. Logic-speak for "mutally exclusive" -- requires us to say that revelation (natural and special) on the one hand, and the sciences on the other, belong to "complementary classes."

Therefore, referring to theories -- now matter how good they might be and even if proven true -- as natural revelation is a form of idolatry to be avoided under the second commandment. This is idolatry of an epistemic kind. Thus we must carefully avoid it to remain faithful in our thinking --- faithful to God and to the task of dominion He has given to us.

Both the Bible and the sciences are good. God commands men to interact with both. But we must think of each in light of what the Word of God tells us if we are to do either well. Here's today "moment of Zen" (A funny I found on the internet).

Recently scientists decided to assess the possible global impact of an asteroid collision with earth. Judging from their most recent test results, simulations involving a watermelon and a sledge hammer, it's going to be pretty bad.

The Evolution Debate: A Distinction You Should Know

I have often heard people connvinced of the truth of the theory of evolution say something like, "evolution is MORE than just a theory." In fact, in 1996 (I believe it was) the Vatican itself came out with a verdict which read in the headlines, "Evolution: more than a theory."

Aside from the questions raised regarding the truthfulness of evolutionary claims, most people do not have enough education in the philosophy of the sciences to realize they here commit a fundamental error. Theories do not relate to facts or data the way rifles relate to pistols. This is a wrong-headed way of thinking about the matter altogether.

Theories names ideas which have as their aim correlation and explanation. They seek to -- put crudely -- connect the dots in a coherent picture, which explains why relevant facts appear as they do. They are NOT lesser, more primitive kinds of facts, as though when something appears unlikely or problematic we call it a theory, but then once proven it becomes "a fact." Weak theories become strong or good theories when confirmed, they do not TURN INTO facts.

They NOW explain the facts MORE CLEARLY and COMPREHENSIVELY. Theories, in other words, do a different job than facts do. It is the job of troublesome facts (sometimes called counterinstances) to demand EXPLAIN ME -- I DOUBLE DOG DARE YOU.

It is the job of theories to make this happen. So evolutionary views, no matter if they turn out to be gospel truth or outrageous scams, will never be more than a theory. They might make good ones or else silly ones. But evolution cannot be a "fact," since facts are bits of data explained and interpreted by theories. Theories are abstract; facts are concrete (your little sister could throw one at you).

This may seem a belabored point about a simple distinction. But I assure you, you will soon enough find yourself explaining that theories relate to facts as GENERAL explanations of PARTICULAR concrete data (facts ma'am), just to be able to engage the dialogue with the uninformed evolutionist. Oh yes, they are out there.

So when I say, "Evolution is NOT more than just a theory," you understand that I am not making a claim against the putative TRUTH of the theory of evolution. I am simply pointing out the obviously theoretical character of all forms of evolutionism.

If I wish to favor the other side of the debate (Creationism) -- as I am wont to do -- I say things like, "Evolutionary theories refute themselves, are filled with epistemological voodoo (leaps and gaps), undermine the necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of science itself, imply doctrines inconsistent with accepted teachings in other fields of science, would render logic impossible, and employ theoretical virtues inconsistent with anything but Creationism in order to test or interpret them, etc. etc.

This means "evolution is a very poor theory" on my view of things. But even if I held it to be a god theory -- like say "force equals mass times acceleration," I would not call this a fact. It is a well substantiated theory. Or else one could call it simply a true theory. But F=ma is not a fact because I cannot chew it.

Coincidentally, though I cannot now recall the article's name, I was surprised to find a piece written precisely to this effect by one Stephen J. Gould -- a major protagonist for the "punctuated equilibrium" theory of evolution. This may be the only philosophical point we agree on in the entire cosmos for all I know.

But what I here suggest is this: my major claim for today's post is non-controversial -- or at least ought to be. Even Einstein thought this through -- he did'nt often make philosophical pronouncements like this -- he said that when people from widely differing viewpoints intersected at this or that point, here you are most likely staring the truth in the face (my paraphrase).

Enough heavy-duty brain squeezing. Here are my musings for the day.

Historical Insights And Other Miscellany

- The Chinese have always been big on astrology and cooking. How they got the "year of the Rat" from this mix is surprising. Why not the year of the Kentucky-fried Chicken (with exactly 12 herbs and spices)?

- Egypt’s biggest and longest lasting monuments, the pyramids, are actually huge tombs. Obviously, Egyptian merchants also sold a lot of bandages and glue.

- The Greek empire viewed its greatest asset as the intellectual strength of its people. But they were overcome by the Romans, a people who saw their greatest asset as the ability to beat other people senseless. Just who was more badly mistaken is up for grabs.

- The epic hero, Gilgamesh was supposed to be 2/3 divine and 1/3 human. This seems like math gone wild. I’m guessing he was also 4/19ths confused, and 13/41 angry (divided by the sqaure root of pi).

- Pharaoh Khafre (Cheops) built a monument called the Sphinx, with his head featured on a lion’s body. It was kinda like visiting a Statue of Liberty (built by slaves) AND the zoo at the same time.

- Babylonians built their own pyramids, called "ziggurats." Only these had steps all the way to the top. Obviously, Babylonians had an irrational fear of taking the elevator.

- Sometimes the French overdo things. When Gillette couldn’t get people a close enough shave, they came up with the Guillotine.

- John Kerry is a true American. The U.S. Constitution forbids congress to do anything establishing a religion; yet presidents for 200 years have assumed their office by swearing an oath on a Bible. This means Americans voted against religion, but that was before they voted FOR it.

- Washington crossed the Delaware. Arnold double-crossed Washington.

- If you order eggs benedict, avoid silverware. When you turn for coffee, they’ll stab you in the back.

- Once, there were actually four popes. They got along so badly they excommunicated each other. This suggests that Roman Catholics might be unusually good at hockey.

- Remember, if you drink and drive, you WILL spill perfectly good beer.

- When Martin Luther published his non-conformist 95 theses, he had to go to a Diet of Worms. If you think about it, that’s a pretty severe punishment.

- Fortune cookies are way too optimistic. They never forecast tragedies. When’s the last time your cookie read, "The plane you’re on will plunge from the sky when your cousin gets shipped to Iraq, and your Hi-def Teevee can only get the Oprah channel."

- [Letterman to Barrack Obama] "Now THAT’S an electable suit!"

- Some of Lincoln’s officers wrote him a letter complaining about the general’s (Ulysses.S. Grant’s) war time habits. The letter protested that he drinks way too much, he wins his battles, but at extreme cost to the army, and shows little regard for the opinions of other officers. Lincoln’s response didn’t take long: "Find out what brand Grant is drinking," wrote Lincoln, "and give it to the rest of my officers."

- The Spartans were a quizzical bunch. Phillip of Macedon – father of Alexander called "the Great") had conquered most of Greece, except for Sparta in the south. Now the Spartans, one of whose regions was "Laconia," were known for answering in very few words (where we get the English word "Laconic," meaning concise and brief). Phillip decided to call a council of all rulers in the area and invited them to meet. He also sent such a dispatch to Sparta, who promptly ignored it.

An annoyed Phillip then sent another letter to them saying, "You WILL send representatives to my meeting or you will face the consequences. If I get my military into your lands, you will see extraordinary devastation ....."

The Spartans sent back a timely response in a single word. "If." Phillip, recalling Spartan military history, decided it would be better just to let them alone (undoubtedly a wise choice).

- [Presuppositionalist saying:] "Evolutionists. They’re not just for breakfast anymore."

- Scientists keep saying that evolution is more than a theory. So I have upgraded it accordingly. Now I classify it as a full-orbed neurosis.

- Freudian slip: This happen when you say one thing, but mean your mother.

- Evolutionist: Evolution occurs so slowly that it is not observable. Creationist: Evolution occurs so slowly that its rate is best described as absolute zero.

- How to Mach evolutionists presuppositionally. Science could not proceed without laws, and everything evolves. But scientific laws are constants, by definition, and do not evolve. Therefore, there are no scientific laws (or other constants), and science must walk the Planck.

Of The Church, Authority And Councils: Hard Questions and Careful Answers

First Timothy's second chapter refers to the Church of the Lord Jesus as the "pillar and ground of truth." This, of course, becomes immediately controversial in our day, since many dispute the precise referent for the term "The Church." Second, it would, I believe, wax all the more conflict-bound were one to unpack the sense of this text against the biblical backdrop of the whole canon.

But first let's take a look at the notion of "authority." Parents have lawful authority, the Bible tells us, over their children. Nations have lawful authority over those who choose to live within their borders. And, the Church also has authority to teach and to do all that Christ commands.

Now the word "authority" refers to a set of rights and privileges communicated to a person by virtue of an oath -- which is called an "office." Offices mentioned in the Bible include prophets, apostles, evangelists, priests, kings, ministers, elders, huband-fathers, wife-mothers, and even firstborn children (the list is not exhaustive).

Now the question of interest for today is this: where does the buck finally stop on planet earth? All Christians can (and must) agree that the final authority must rest with God. But He has appointed Christ as Lord of all and Jesus remains at the Father's right hand (until all His enemies will be made a footstool for His feet).

So where does one turn for the answers he needs? Well, one might say, look to the Word of God. Pick up the Bible and read. But we all know that when this happens, we end up with numerous competing and often times simply false answers. The problem is with the reader, of course, and not the Bible. But the Bible was given to a covenant community, not a crowd of individuals who just happened to be standing at that moment in the same location (like so many grocery shoppers in a particular store who don't even know each other).

This means that the Bible has to be interpreted by some group in order to help individuals understand not only its teachings, but also the duties that their offices require of them. The Bible says that wisdom is found in the counsel of the multitude. This cannot mean just any multitude (group) since 100 fools are no better -- indeed they may be much worse -- than one only.

The Bible has in mind the counsel of a wise multitude (group), which it necessarily understands as those trained by the Bible itself to think in biblical ways. If you want to know math, you turn to TRAINED mathematicians. If you want to know Bible -- you turn to those TRAINED by the Word. This begins to explain what the Bible means by calling the Church the "pillar and ground of TRUTH."

Someone must interpret the Bible and that someone is a group. On earth, given what we know of men, one dare not rest final interpretive authority in the hands of but one man (Romanism). Wisdom is found in the counsel of the multitude. This is what Presbyterianism affirms - since this is the biblical form of worship and goverment appointed in the Word.

A presbytery -- a small (or else not so small) group of churches in close proximity to one another -- multiply their wisdom by holding councils from time to time, in order to handle this or that theological or practical difficulty. This is more than just knocking heads. It means prayerful dependence upon the Holy Spirit and careful scrutiny both of the Word of God and of the best examples in the past of other reformed Churches to see how THEY handled similar problems and what they did and how it worked out.

Wisdom is supposed to accumulate this way over time within the Church. Now when tasks get too difficult, or carry extraordinary import, a denomination may lay the task or question at hand with its more general body. This follows the biblical pattern set down by Moses, who appointed judges for lesser matters, and he resolved only the most difficult ones (which the lower courts passed onto him).

Now in times past, even larger ecclesiastical bodies -- larger than local presbyteries -- regional meetings sometimes being called "synods," or yet even larger ones, have met to consider weighty matters. The largest possible councils usually go by the name "ecumencial" or "catholic" church councils. The first seven of these in church history are generally accepted as yielding biblical truths accurately by most religious groups calling themselves "Christian." And most would agree that this has not happened for some time.

Now I have sneaked around studying different lists compiled by scholars on which councils declared what, when and why. Yes, I am nosey. But here is the point. There can be no higher authority on earth, it seems to me, than the universal -- international and multinational -- Church of Jesus Christ the Lord when it convenes lawfully to decide matters of mercy and justice. This has to be what is meant by "pillar and ground" of truth.

The authority of such a council is real, but not ultimate. It is not of a different kind of authority than that which a parent has over his children, but there is much more of it resting upon the Church. It is greater in degree, though not different in kind. Here is what the Bible says:

Deuteronomy 17:

If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within thy gates: then shalt thou arise, and get thee up into the place which the LORD thy God shall choose [this refers to the Temple in Jerusalem]; And thou shalt come unto the priests the Levites, and unto the judge that shall be in those days, and enquire; and they shall shew thee the sentence of judgment:

And thou shalt do according to the sentence, which they of that place which the LORD shall choose shall shew thee; and thou shalt observe to do according to all that they inform thee: According to the sentence of the law which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee, thou shalt do: thou shalt not decline from the sentence which they shall shew thee, to the right hand, nor to the left. And the man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest that standeth to minister there before the LORD thy God, or unto the judge, even that man shall die: and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel. And all the people shall hear, and fear, and do no more presumptuously.

Now the phrase "pillar and ground of Truth" clearly refers to the Temple by way of metaphor. And the Bible uses the Temple-Church metaphor throughout both testaments. In the heart of the Temple were two pillars, called Jakin and Boaz (which with translation is "righteousness and strength").

This means that the Church -- what Hebrews calls the "general assembly" -- meaning the genuinely "catholic" Church (which obeys His Word) -- carries the final Word on planet earth. And the Lord Jesus enforces its rulings. This is why God said to his judges -- "the Lord will be with you in judgement."

Now I have noticed that this makes identifying just what the Church has decreed very important. And so also does identifying which councils are genuinely ecumenical, and which are say mere regional. I have also noticed that no one's list seems to include the Westminster Assembly, which seems clearly to fit the bill.

Here is what the wikipedia says about the Westminster Assembly:

The Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643-1648) was appointed by the Long Parliament to restructure the Church of England. The Puritan faction in Parliament made five attempts to appoint an assembly between June 1642 and May 1643, but each time King Charles refused to sign the bill. A sixth bill was prepared and passed as an ordinance of the House of Commons; and, with the agreement of the House of Lords it became effective without the king's assent in June 1643.

The Assembly consisted of 30 laymen (10 lords and 20 commoners) and 121 divines or clergymen. The clergy were selected to represent four separate groups: The episcopalians (who supported an episcopacy) included such figures as James Ussher, bishop of Armagh. The episcopalian group usually did not attend the sessions, because the king had not authorized them.

The presbyterians (who supported an assembly-based structure found in Puritanism), the largest group, included figures such as Edward Reynolds, George Gillespie and Samuel Rutherford. A small group of Independents (of the various Congregationalist views) were present and had the support of Oliver Cromwell, and these included Thomas Goodwin.
The Erastian representatives, such as John Lightfoot, who favored the state's primacy over the ecclesiastical law.

With the abdication of the Episcopalians and the deaths of a few others, Parliament determined that an additional twenty-one ministers should be appointed, these to be known as superadded divines. The average daily attendance was between sixty and eighty members. The Assembly's first meeting was in the Henry VII Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey on July 1, 1643. It later moved to the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster. It met 1,163 times between 1643 and 1649, and was never formally dissolved by Parliament.

During the Interregnum, it met generally only for judicial matters to examine ministers who presented themselves for ordination or induction into vacant charges. The Westminster Assembly was an advisory arm of the Parliament who selected its members, proposed its topics for discussion and delineated its scope of work. Parliament provided an allowance of four shillings per day for each of the divines to defray theirexpenses. The first task given to the Assembly was revision of the Thirty-Nine Articles. The first ten weeks of the Assembly were expended in debating the first fifteen of the Articles.

The civil war between the forces of Parliament and the Royalists supporting Charles I was at a stalemate. Irish Catholics who had revolted in 1641 were threatening to join the Royalist side. Desperate for help, Parliament sent a delegation to the Scots seeking aid in their civil matter. Though the English sought to enter into a civil league for defense of civil liberties, the Scots quickly responded that the spirit of the contest in which they had been engaged (the Bishop's Wars) was of a religious character, in defense of religious liberty. Eventually the two sides forged a document intended to serve both causes, The Solemn League and Covenant.

In return for sending the Scottish army south to support the Parliament, the Scots obliged the English to reform the Church of England "for the preservation of religion in Scotland, the reformation of religion in England and Ireland according to the word of God and the example of the best reformed churches" and the extirpation of prelacy and popery. Six Scottish commissioners were appointed to travel to England to sit with the Westminster Assembly. The Parliaments of England and Scotland eventually required that all persons above the age of 18 in both countries swear to the oath of the Solemn League and Covenant.

On October 12, 1643, the Westminster Assembly received a directive from Parliament that the divines should forthwith "confer and treat among themselves of such a discipline and government as may be most agreeable to God's holy word, and most apt to procure and preserve the peace of the church at home, and nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland and other Reformed Churches abroad."

The Assembly abandoned work on the Thirty-Nine Articles and proceeded to create an entirely new set of documents. Over the next four years, the Assembly produced and forwarded to Parliament "The Directory for the Publick Worship of God", "The Form of Presbyterial Church Government", a "Shorter Catechism" and "Larger Catechism", and a creedal statement, "The Westminster Confession of Faith". The House of Commons insisted that the Assembly include scriptural proof texts with the Confession and the two catechisms. The divines also examined and approved the use of Rouse's metrical version of the Psalter in general worship.

All of these documents were debated fiercely. The Erastians, Presbyterians and Independents could never agree on church government. The Independents were thoroughly congregational in their view of church officials. They resisted the idea of church courts and held that members of each congregation should have all power and authority. They agreed that each congregation should choose their own minister, but they opposed regulation and correction of those choices by presbyteries. The Erastians believed in civil authority over the ecclesiastical. In their minds the civil magistrate, being Christian, should have jurisdiction instead of church courts. Sin was to be punished by civil courts, and ecclesiastical bodies should be forbidden from withholding sacraments or excommunication.

The completed work of the Westminster Assembly was eventually adopted with revisions in England , but was revoked during the Restoration in 1660. All of the documents were embraced by the Church of Scotland. Further, they formed the cornerstone of the Presbyterian Church and other reformed churches as they established themselves throughout Europe and America.

Okay, now the question for the day. How was this NOT an international, multinational, ecumencial council of the Church of Jesus Christ the Lord? How is it different -- other than that its standards are far more biblical and comprehensive than anything to date -- than the councils of Nicea, Ephesus, and the like. In other words, why is it not in anyone' s ecumenical council list?
I smell a Romanist, or else an Eastern Orthodox, list-making rat.

This council was lawfully called, it involved the three churches of the 3 nations of Scotland, England and Ireland (called kingdoms then), and it had the approvals of Parliament and over 100 ministers. Do its decrees then not carry international authority? What do we do with this?

Here am I, thinking out loud in unauthorized ways. My secular professors would in the strongest terms possible "disapprove," which means you can expect more of this in the near future.

Holy Laughter: Another Attempt to Make Christians Laugh

Think of this as intermission for your brain. I have been surfing the world wide web to find some funny ones. Some of these come from Steven Wright, and some I have plagiarized from others, tweaking them here or there as needed. And a few are my own (I keep working on the humor thing despite my previous, er, "mild success" at the endeavor. Hope springs eternal.

Here are a few of my favorites so far.

- Cross-country skiing is great fun, if you live in a small country.

- Some people are leaving their bodies to science. When I die, I'm leaving my body to science fiction.

- Last time I went to the movies I was thrown out for bringing my own food. My argument was that the concession prices were outrageous. Besides, I haven't had a barbecue in ages.

- I just got out of the hospital. I was involved in a speed reading accident. I hit a bookmark and flew across the room.

- I talk to my plants, but some of them never answer me. So I water them with ice cubes until they talk.

- [Driver's Ed teacher] Some day we'll all look back on this ... and plow straight into a parked car.

- I don't like the sound of my phone ringing, so I hid the phone in the fish tank. I can't hear it now, but I still know when I get a call. One or two stunned fish always float to the surface.

- Yesterday I went to a bookstore. I asked the clerk if she could direct me to the self-help section. She said she'd love to, but that would defeat the purpose.

- Yesterday I bought some batteries. But they weren't included, so I had to buy them again.

- Help wanted. Must be telepathic. You know where to apply.

- How many of you believe in telekinesis? Raise my hand.

- 43.65 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.

- Buckle up. It makes it much harder for aliens to snatch you from your car.

- Don't buy the gum. Research also shows that 4 out of 5 dentists surveyed abuse the laughing gas at the office.

- Cat Dictionary. Human beings [n. HU muhn BEE ings]: Mobile, warm-blooded furniture, capable of opening cans.

- Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, and a dark side; and it holds the universe together.

- Everyone has a photographic memory. But not everyone has film.

-I couldn't fix your brakes, so I made your horn louder.

- Software Rule #46: Never run life support equipment through windows 95. Patients do strange and acrobatic things.

- I'm experiencing deja vu and amnesia at the same time. I have the strangest feeling I've forgotten this before.

- Despite the cost of living, it's still quite popular.

- Friends help you move. Real friends help people move bodies.

- Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. But TEACH him how to fish, and he'll sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

- Give a man a book of matches and you warm him for a night; light him on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.

- The journey of a thousand miles begins with a cracked radiator and broken fan belt.

- I am not a vegetarian because I love animals. I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants.

- If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.

- Montana: At least our cows are sane!

- [Redneck kid] My hockey mom can beat up your soccer mom.

- We have enough youth. How about a fountain of smart?

- Californian geometry: the shortest distance between any two points is under construction.

- Time really is the best teacher; too bad it kills all the students.

- You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.

- I believe in gun control. Use both hands.

- Keep honking, I'm reloading.

- A cubicle is just a padded cell without a door.

- [Rejoinder] Actually, he's more of a party "mineral."

- All I want is a warm bed, a kind word and unlimited power.

- [Viking saying] Always remember to pillage BEFORE you burn.

- Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out - Chekhov.

- Any twelve people who can't get out of jury duty are not my peers.

- I'm improving. I now have a positive attitude about my destructive habits.

- Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.

- Deja Foo: The strange feeling you've met this idiot somewhere before.

- [what a calm psycho thinks] Don't panic. They'll all be Taken Care Of.

- [what a competitive psycho thinks] Don't try to outweird me. I get stranger surprises than you in my cereal boxes.

- D.N.A. -- the National Association of Dyslexics

- Dyslexics of the World -- Untie!

- Paranoid conspiracy rule #4: Every organization is actually headed by the secret agents of its enemies.

- Everyone thinks I'm psychotic, except for my friends deep inside the earth.

- Given enough coffee, I could rule the world.

- U.S. obituaries no longer refer to dead people. Now they name only electroencephalographically-challenged Americans.

- [Lawyer coaching defendant] Now remember, honesty is the best policy, and insanity the best defense.

- I'm single now because my psychic wife left me before we met.

- I like you, but I wouldn't want to see you working with subatomic particles.

- [Animal rights advocate] I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.

- Paranoid conspiracy rule #37: Never believe anything until it's been officially denied.

- I no longer fear hell -- I've worked in Retail.

- [Garden Grower's Association Slogan]: I think therefore I yam.

- [Comedian] I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal.

- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

- IRS: We've got what it takes to take what you've got.

- Illiterate? For help with this problem call 555- 1211.

Putting The FUN Back In DysFUNctional: Public Universities and the Post Hoc Fallacy

Today's featured error in reasoning, the Post Hoc fallacy, comes with a brief study in how professors at public universities typically apply it in one facet of the study of religions. And you guessed it, the intended victim is the Christian faith, not Urantianism or some obscure form of voodoo. Gee, what a surprise. I am shocked SHOCKED that men would so target the biblical faith. To accompish our scrutiny, we first need a brief introduction to an ancient Persian religion. I apologize in advance for this.

Zoroastrianism names an ancient Persian religion, which in certain ways bears similarities to both Judaism and Christianity. It also deviates from these in important ways. Zoroastrianism, for instance, represents a kind of metaphysical dualism -- where the good "god" (Ahuri-Mazda, "god of light") and the bad one ("Ahriman") share equally ultimate attributes. Here, the ping-pong game never ends. Good battles evil continuously and the problem of evil is the same as the problem of good (since one could not tell the two apart in principle).

C.S. Lewis has already well noted the logical difficulty with such religions -- i.e. metaphysical or ethical dualisms. You could never know WHICH was the good guy or which the evil (since presumably the evil guy would lie and say he was the good guy too). This is an unresovable form of what is often dubbed the "liar's paradox." Other internal contradictions attend such man-made notions, but this one -- courtesy of Mr. Lewis -- will suffice for now. I don't know whether or not you will have noticed, but C.S. Lewis was extremely bright. His critique applies equally well to all forms of polytheism too.

There was a movie series running on teevee for some time, called "The Highlander," which had as its tagline a very provocative phrase -- "In the end, there can be only ONE." This is exactly the case when it comes to the questions of ultimate norms -- God, Truth, Good, etc. If you have more than one "highest" cosmic feature -- they eventually compete for allegiance in principle. One always ends up superceding the other. If not, everything reduces to nonsense in that system for lack of unity (One-ness, or integration) -- since the competing parts (like Ahuri-Mazda vs. Ahriman) imply conclusions not consistent with those of their competitors -- destroying what might otherwise be the mutual consent of all the parts. If Ahuri-Mazda and Ahriman were actually two different persons, they would doubtless fail to get along, demanding contradictory behaviors of their adherents.

These would give rise to different and competing ethical and legal systems on earth, two different and competing cultures, one of which could not prevail over the other. This would mean war without end. Thus the ability to know the truth about anything, to distinguish good from evil behavior, and to have peace on earth eventually, means simply this: In the end, there can be only one. The God who is stronger will necessarily prevail, and so too his appointed representatives. This follows by good and necessary consequence from the nature of the cosmic situation in which we live (natural revelation tells us this).

Only religions which have the Good as the ultimate can distinguish which is the true ultimate voice in the cosmos. In Christianity this problem is resolved by the fact that God places His Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers, enabling them to distinguish the Truth from counterfeits, and provides them with general and special revelation to distinguish the true from the false by the ordinary means -- observation, hearing and induction and deduction (logic is an important, transcendent feature or aspect of natural revelation, since revelation of any kind depends upon logic).

Jesus said,"MY sheep hear my voice, and they follow me." John said, "Ye have no need that any man should teach you, for ye have an anointing from the Father." [Here, "any man" refers to people outside the church -- see context]. Here, the problem of evil ends on Judgment Day, where evil comes to a screeching halt, and all of Satan's minions get a big fat pink slip.

But if you attend a public university in the U.S., they will tend to notice the similarities between religions more than the differences. Do not assume that your professor can distinguish what is true from what is not because he has an advanced degree. The emphasis upon such similarities is mostly due to the influence on the academic world of the German school of biblical criticism, a man named "Rudolf Bultmann," and a particular sociological method of comparing religions called -- are you ready for this -- "religiongeschictliche" (said in English simply as "religion" -- the ordinary pronunciation -- with "Geh - SHIKT - Likk - uh" tagged on the end ). Say it fast ten times.

This method of interpreting the history of ideas tends to see ideological causes (idea B comes from Idea A) based on two criteria only. 1. Are the two ideas sufficiently similar and 2. Did idea B follow idea A in time. This renders such assumptions particularly susceptible to today's highlighted fallacy. It commonly goes by two different names, and why not, since Simon was also called Peter. The first label is -- Latin fans prepare yourselves -- "Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc." This is not easy to translate but runs something like "It comes after the thing, therefore it caused the thing." Americans abbreviate it as the "Post Hoc" fallacy, which others dub the "Non Causa Pro Causa ("Not the cause for the cause") fallacy.

I think it best to stick with the "Post Hoc" label since this seems the more commonplace of the options. In any case, the Bultmann doctrine provides a particularly acute example of this fallacy in its application -- very popular in world religion classes and history of Christianity courses -- to the doctrine of angels.

On the conventional view, Christians and Jews borrowed their conceptions of angels from the Zoroastrians. Do not expect your professor to attempt to PROVE this. They take it for granted in their lectures. This is because they can't prove it, and yet it is what they were taught by their professors. In German, when you wish to insult as silly some notion or other you call it "In der luft" (an idea that comes "from mid-air"), meaning that it has no real foundation.

Such is the notion that the Jews and Christians got their angelology from the Persians. First of all, the Bible straightway tells us that Moses got his theology from Sinai, not Iran or Iraq. Second, Neither Jews or Christians borrowed ideas about God to determine orthodoxy in their faiths. The known details of their councils (Jamnia, Nicea, Chalcedon, etc) do not feature them wondering "What would Socrates do?"

The Bible -- and we must remember that such persons are pre-eminently "people of the Book" -- from cover to cover indicates that its ideas came from the prophets and apostles, who did not consult the local customs and traditions (but usually upbraided them as lies and idolatry in the Name of the Lord) in determining what they should say to God's people. Moreover, in many cases it claims that such persons directly encountered angels -- see Abraham, Moses, Daniel, Joseph and Mary, Peter the apostle, the women at the tomb of Jesus post-resurrection, etc.

To assume that a group of men had actually met angels, but needed to ask the Persians about it first to get their doctrine straight would be little short of ludricrous. This means that the professor who assumes the kind of ideological borrowing mentioned earlier simply ASSUMES that there is nothing historical about the biblical narratives at those points where it describes interaction between men and angels. Keep this in mind. This is simple denialism (called "question-begging" in informal logic, and in Christian ethics it is dubbed "suppressing the truth in unrighteousness").

But we wish here to focus on the idea that the professor believes 1. Zoroastrianism provides ideas of angels consistent with those of more "developed" views of Judaism and Christianity, and 2. Zoroastrianism's ideas about angels predate those of more developed views of Judaism and Christianity 3. Therefore, the Jews and Christians must have borrowed their doctrines of angels from the former.

To this you need only say, "Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc" or else "Non Angelus, Pro Angelum" (their angels did not cause our angels) if you wish to be cute. In short, even if they could establish a positive correlation between two sets of ideas, this would be insufficient to show that one cultural idea CAUSED a similar notion i another culture. Though he dealt with a different (but analogous) notion of what a cause is, David Hume noted that the right sense of causation also includes the idea of necessity.

In terms of historical investigation (which treats particular causes rather than general ones more often than not) this means that to show that A caused B, you need eyewitness testimony (written down or otherwise) to show a causal connection between what are otherwise simple parallels -- which may have a common cause predating both their offspring, or else has two separate causes (one for each of their offspring), or it may turn out that the causal relationship is just the reverse of what we expect (i.e. they got their angelic conceptions from our ideas about them). Who is really borrowing from whom, eh?

If you pay close attention in that class where historians argue about which caused what -- and oh how they argue about which causes gave rise to which events or trends (this is actually historiography or philosophy of history), you will notice they challenge just the idea of causation taught by Bultmann (without naming it), and prove far more careful in assigning causes than your history of religions teachers. This means you can use what you learned in your advanced classes against the teachings offered in your earlier courses. This is academic Judo at its finest.

The universities -- a Christian invention of the 12th and 13th centuries -- are no longer in any way integrated enough in their teachings to bear that name -- they are diversities. Though you can still learn a great deal there that is worthwhile. I attended the California State Diversity at Hayward, where I learned how to say to my teachers, "Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc." I recommend you do the same.

You might also learn to find academic ways to say, "That is dead wrong" (i.e. In Der Luft). You might try, "In my opinion, that idea remains epistemologically inadequate and sub-Christian, propounding as it does several unwarranted premisses, apparently not related to their purported conclusions by logical necessity."

When the guy next to you whispers "What did you just say?" you tell them, "I just said that idea is false, foolish, fleshly and demonic." Ah, diplomacy. "Diplomacy," said one comedian, "is the art of saying 'Nice Doggy' until you can find a rock big enough to do the job." Presbyterians call that "Presuppositional apologetics."

Informal Logic and Solar Bird Fallacy

Equivocating sounds hard to do, but it isn't. One "equivocates" (say "Ee - KWIV - oh - kayts") when he uses the same word or phrase with a different sense in more than one instance, while pretending or thinking he has used them to convey the same meaning. Here is an example of a syllogism -- a set of propositions and a conclusion that is supposed to follow from them by logical necessity -- that equivocates on the word "light."

1. Feathers are light.
2. The sun gives off light.
3. Therefore, the sun gives off feathers.

Does the sun really give off feathers? Of course not; this is just a bit silly, yes? Then where did this syllogism go wrong? It's time for a little detective work. Get out the magnifying glass.

Proposition one is true, since feathers have a small mass and usually weigh less than other objects with which you might compare them. Proposition two is also true and is easily observable so to be. The "therefore" is the problem here, since the conclusion depends on the word "light" meaning the same thing in proposition one as it does in proposition two. But this is not the case.

In proposition one, "light" posits a word meaning the opposite of "heavy" or massive. In proposition two, however, the same word is used to mean the opposite of "dark" (not the opposite of "heavy"). This is a kind of cheating with language, which brings us to our next important point.

Many, if not most, of the errors encountered in informal logic classes have to do with the misuse of language. Logicians consider many errors in language use also t be errors in logic. This should give the teacher -- and the student -- pause to think about the relationship between logic and language. The phrase best describing this relationship is "mutual interdependence." Each needs the other to do its job well.

I'll not elaborate on this idea at the moment, but have here mentioned it to incite thinking about just what sort of thing logic is, and why it is important for Christians to familiarize themselves with its basics.

If you find yourself a bit stressed about the hoopla of it all, take a deep breath, relax, and just take it one bite at a time. By this I mean "lighten up," which is not to be confused with the command to give off feathers.

[Today's brief exercise in logic was brought to you by the Icarus Society. Don't just think. Fly.].

Just for fun: Here are a few other statements you can analyze for logical problems. What makes them erroneous and just where does the fault lie in the reasoning? [This is the kind of stuff you should find in logic texts but won't.].

1. Always go to other people's funerals, or they won't go to yours.
2. If a man speaks in a forest with no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?
3. There are three kinds of people: Those who can count and those who can't.
4. Down with protesting.
5. Logicians are pathological liars. Marc is a logician. Therefore, Marc is a pathological liar. And Marc was responsible for this syllogism.
6. I've had amnesia for as long as I can remember.

Teaching History By Doing: Panning For Gold With Students And Teachers

Teaching by doing has a long a glorious didactic tradition to its credit found in the Bible itself, where it is called "discipleship." This way of learning passed down through the Middle Ages (I know, I know -- middle of what?) as the "apprenticeship" model. Now employers and employees thought of this as on-the-job trainging, to be sure, and not so much as a didactic methodology (a bread and butter necessity). But the guilds were more self-conscious about this.

A brief aside I simply must get off my chest. History textbooks can easily leave students with the impression that medieval serfs stood around on Sundays saying "I can't wait until we get on to the Renaissance and Reformation. I so hate being stuck in the middle of everything, what with all our plagues and raiding bands. What we really need is more education, not monastic self-deprecation, and the feudal, socio-economic stratification of manorial life and suppression of our basic rights. After all, who does the king think he is anyway?"

Punchline: historians name each historical period somewhat arbitrarily (sometimes quite misleadingly), and the historical actors living at the times so named rarely had any idea of how they would later come to be viewed (The so-called "Enlightenment" being an exception to this rule). Since a man in the fifteenth century could have no idea what helicopters and the internet would look like, he could hardly see himself as "in between" this and that. Likewise, the ancient Greeks never refer to themselves as the stuff of which ancient history is "really about," or how great their emipre was compared to that of the Romans (Oh, the Romans! Besides aqueducts, paved roads, the arch, postal service and peace -- what did they EVER do for us?).

The Monty Python group has exploited this anachronistic (putting things in time frames not suited to their actual historical origins) labeling tendency of historians in extraordinarily funny ways. And as far as I can tell, the historians had it coming. Now return to reading about the gold rush or I will taunt you a second time.

The gold rush in the late 1840's -- here in the good ol' USA -- flooded the western states with hopefuls, seeking fortune if not fame. Few people actually made much money -- found much gold -- in this effort, partly due to the fact that the market for miners quickly flooded. A little supply and demand math here goes a long way. With a limited supply of gold and a virtually (it seemed at the time) unlimited supply of miners, many people found a little gold, and only a few encountered a lot of gold without special equipment or hired labor.

Nevertheless, the Gold Rush proved a boon to the economies of the fast-growing western states, as the labor pool spiked during just that decade preceding the Civil War (called the "Ante-Bellum" period). Ante-bellum means simply "pre-war," and "Bellum" (war) is our latin word for the day. When the Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus (a contemporary of the apostles) wrote a history of the Jewish people for the Romans, he penned one piece the Romans called the "Bella Judaica," or "Wars of the Jews." Okay, one more Latin term. If you wish to refer to gold in Latin, you say "aurum," which, you will have noticed is why the periodic table of elements lists gold as "Au." It abbreviates "aurum."

Similar words include "aura," (like a golden halo) and "aurora" as in "Aurora Borealis" -- a very interesting phenomenon visible as pretty lights over the Alaskan skyline at times.

Back to the history of the U.S. Gold Rush. In terms of gross profits, the real money was made, not in gold resources, but in a different industry -- or set of industries -- altogether. Some towns popped up (seemingly) almost overnight, and when the supply or prospect of gold faded, they became ghost towns -- those one might find on popular tours today -- as the crowds moved onto the next promising site.

The industries that soared economically were in fact those that served the needs and wants of the migrant gold-seeking populations, who moved west at a frantic pace. As one might imagine, these consisted both of legitimate and illicit goods and services. Bar tenders never lacked for work as thirsty miners filled towns rapidly. Levi-Strauss proved the economic titan of that part of the century as denim fell increasingly in demand by miners (and the capitalistic entourage which followed them) who needed clothes that could endure the harsh treatment miners' garb was bound to incur. Animal trappers also found denim durable, and it proved tempting to simply buy cheap denim rather than continuing to make their own clothes. Denim turned out to be the real gold. "Blue gold" -- Who knew?

The Gold Rush nonethless proved a valuable and historically significant phenomenon. That which drew the greatest number of metal hunters in one fell swoop earned the name "Pike's Peak Gold Rush of 1859." Here's the wikipedia overview (which is quite good as usual):

The Pike's Peak Gold Rush (later known as the Colorado Gold Rush) was the boom in gold prospecting and mining in the Pike's Peak Country of northwestern Kansas Territory and southwestern Nebraska Territory of the United States that began in July 1858 and lasted until roughly the creation of the Colorado Territory on February 28, 1861. An estimated 100,000 gold seekers took part in the greatest gold rush in North American history. The participants in the gold rush were known as Fifty-Niners after 1859, the peak year of the rush.

As the reader will recall, it was September of that very year when the southern states began to declare secession from the Union. This means that, among other important historical effects, the (U.S.) gold rushes tended to shift money and labor away from the east coast -- where the civil war would rage only a short while later. In other words, it probably shortened the length of the war (limited money and soldiers) by moving them west just in time to begin settling in areas less prone to have strong views on the war. As each territory grew quickly to statehood, however, it was required that it declare whether it would be a slave or free state.

The gold rushes were very much a part of the fabric of U.S. history, both as an impetus for developing territories into states quickly (settling the west), and for bringing the civil war to a decisive close earlier. Greed is by far the better vice than strife. Nobody wins a war, one side simply loses less. The toll in terms of debt and lives -- for both sides of the U.S. civil war -- was nothing less than horrific. But many won the gold rush game, especially the makers of jeans (and good for them; they should get something). Others bought or earned land for their families, and still others found gainful employment in areas more conducive to the practice of one's preferred religion than might otherwise be tolerated back east.

So to teach your students about the trends mentioned here, you might find it fitting to enlighten them on a school outting, where they can get experience panning for gold themselves, to learn what it was really like to prospect in the older days of yore. To that end, I have here posted today (below) a lesson plan for teachers -- borrowed from an Idaho State Educators group -- that explains the basics for students and teachers alike. Enjoy.

Gold Panning suggested grade levels: K- 4 view Idaho achievement standards for this lesson

Overview: Although there are numerous descriptions available on how to pan gold, washing gold by panning is such a simple process that with very little experience a panner can recover almost all the gold from a pan. By following the basic principles discussed below, anyone can develop his or her own technique. Experience generally improves speed and efficiency rather than percent of recovery.

The object is to process the material as rapidly as possible while at the same time retaining as much gold as practical. The extra time spent trying to recover the very fine gold is generally not worthwhile.The standard gold pan is 16 inches in diameter, 2 1/2 inches deep and made of sheet iron. However, smaller 8 to 14 inch pans are much easier to use, particularly for the beginner. Before using an iron pan, it is extremely important to remove all grease from the inside surface. Heating at a sufficiently high temperature (500 degrees Fahrenheit) not only burns off the grease but also has the added advantage of turning the pan blue. Gold, being light yellow, shows up much better with a blue or black background. Plastic gold pans in black and green also work quite well. In fact a pie tin will work if you have nothing else.

Procedure:

1. First fill the pan level full or slightly heaping with placer material.

2. Submerge the pan in water, preferably still water 6 to 10 inches deep.

3. Carefully and slowly stir the contents of the pan with both hands so as to totally saturate the material with water. It is extremely important at this stage to break up all dirt clods and dissolve the clay.

4. While the pan is held in a flat position under water, shake the pan in a circular or back-and forth manner. The purpose of the shaking is to stratify the contents of the pan in layers so that the heavier minerals are concentrated on the bottom and the lighter material moves upwards.

5. A 16-inch pan full of water-saturated gravel may weigh as much as 30 pounds or more. For this reason the work can be lightened if the pan is worked under water.

6. The pan is tilted so that the less dense material can be floated over the edge of the pan.

7. The gold and other heavy minerals will work downward and concentrate at the edge of the flat pan bottom.

8. Continue to shake the pan in a circular motion under water or with water in it. Then repeat the tilting action so as to wash or float off the light surface layers.

9. Finally the pan contents are reduced to the heavy mineral concentrates and any gold present can readily be seen. Many beginners worry that their style is faulty and that they are losing gold; however, if normal amounts of heavy minerals or black sands are recovered, then it is quite likely that the gold which has a much higher density would also be saved.

Capacity of the Gold Pan

Panning is the most arduous and lowest capacity method that may be used to wash gold from placer gravel. Because an accomplished panner can only wash 8 to 10 pans per hour, the method is not suitable for anything but high-grade gravels. Such high-grade material generally occurs only at bedrock or in crevices. A 16-inch gold pan level full of dry gravel will weigh approximately 22 pounds.

However the weight may be more or less depending on the amount of moisture and the size and type of material. Typically, one cubic yard of bank gravel weighs 33oo pounds. Depending on the type of placer material 150 to 180 pans are normally equivalent to one cubic yard. If a person is able to pan at the rate of 10 pans per hour, it is possible to pan about 1/2 cubic yard per day. Under exceptional conditions, such as an experienced panner working with clean gravel, it is possible to pan up to one cubic yard in a day.

Separation of Black Sands from Gold

Nuggets and small particles of gold of sufficient size should be picked out with tweezers and placed in a vial. There are several different methods or combinations of methods for separating the remaining fine gold from the black sand concentrate. Transfer the concentrates to a smaller pan and continue to manipulate the pan in the manner described above until the black sands are separated. This procedure should be done above another pan so that if gold is lost, it can be recovered. If the concentrates are dried, the black sands can be separated either by a magnet or by blowing. Magnetite commonly represents up to 90 percent of the heavy mineral concentrate.

Several drops of mercury can be placed in the concentrates and the remaining fine gold amalgamated. If the colors are very fine, the added time and effort to recover them may not be worthwhile. For example, the Snake River gold in southern Idaho is so fine that several hundred colors may only be worth one cent. Pans with copper bottoms may be used for the amalgamation process. First the copper bottom is abraded with emery paper and then, using a device other than your hand, coated with a clean shiny surface of mercury. Gold in the concentrates is picked up by contact with the mercury surface.

Only fine material should be used in the pan as coarse concentrates will grind off the mercury. As amalgam collects on the bottom of the pan, it should be scraped off with a scraper made of iron. You should always use extreme caution when working with mercury. Take particular care not to touch mercury with your hands or breathe its vapors.

Amalgamators

Rusty gold or gold partly coated by iron oxide does not amalgamate completely because the mercury cannot make complete contact with the gold. To remedy this problem, the heavy mineral concentrates with the gold must be agitated to clean the gold. Mechanical amalgamators are normally used to treat rusty gold. Most amalgamators consist of a cast iron container in which the concentrates are placed. A rock tumbler will work well for small samples.

Water, one or two percent mercury, caustic soda and steel balls are combined with the concentrates. As the container is turned slowly for several hours, the steel balls provide a grinding action to clean the gold. Finally the gold, amalgam and mercury are recovered by panning. A small concrete mixer serves very satisfactorily as an amalgamator. Such a device can handle 50 to 100 pounds of concentrate, one or two pounds of mercury and a few cobbles or steel balls together with water. Generally about an hour is sufficient to complete the amalgamation process.

Cleaning Amalgam

Amalgam is first separated from the black sands by carefully washing with a gold pan. The amalgam or impure mercury is then squeezed manually through a tight cloth such as canvas, chamois skin or buckskin. The process is best done under water to avoid losing mercury. The cleaned mercury still contains a small amount of gold which will increase its reactivity with gold. After squeezing, the stiff, pasty amalgam may still contain up to 75 percent mercury with the balance in gold and silver.

Separating Gold from Amalgam

Gold may be recovered from amalgam by several different methods. The selection of a particular method is based on convenience or the need to recover the mercury. If it is unnecessary to recover the mercury, the simplest method is to volatilize the mercury, by heating the amalgam. In this method, the mercury is placed on a clean iron surface and heated to 675 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature at which mercury vaporizes. Mercury vapor which may appear as a heavy white vapor, is extremely dangerous and should not be inhaled.
Potato MethodThe potato method is commonly used by prospectors because it is both simple and allows part of the mercury to be recovered.

The following procedure is used:

1. A large potato is cut in half.

2. On one half, a recess is hollowed out which is larger than the amount of amalgam.

3. The amalgam is placed on a clean sheet of iron such as a pan suitable for heating.

4. The potato is placed over the amalgam and then heat is applied below the sheet of iron.

5. After 15 to 20 minutes of heating, the mercury will be driven off into the potato and the gold will be left in the hollow of the potato.

6. The mercury can then be recovered by crushing and panning the potato.

[Comments: Leave it to the Idahoans to come up with metallurgic uses for the potato].

[If you want to start an interstate war, just tell the Idahoans that the Iowans said that "anything Idahoans can do with a potato we can do better with corn."]

Nitric Acid Method

The amalgam is placed in a beaker with a 1 to 1 solution of nitric acid and water which is heated until the mercury is dissolved. After the mercury is dissolved, the gold sponge can be washed in water. Finally the gold may be annealed in a porcelain crucible.

Retorting

Retorting of amalgam to recover gold requires the most elaborate equipment but allows all the mercury to be saved. A retort is basically a pipe-shaped device in which the amalgam is placed in the end that is heated to vaporize off the mercury. The mercury vapor then moves through a condenser pipe where it cools and condenses back to liquid mercury.

And now for a startlingly brief postscript. Remember (if you go out in the heat) to wear sunscreen and have your students wear big, pointy hats, like the cowboys -- or is it now the more gender neutral "cowpersons"? -- of old. If the weather allows it, you might consider having everyone wear denim to get the full, historical effect. And bring some beef jerky and plenty of water. But you should probably consider leaving desiree' the mule at home. Even proper historical nostalgia has its limits.

Taxing Thought For the Day: Were Matthew and Zachaeus Friends?

Today's post will be uncharacteristically brief. It concerns the way the gospel of Matthew was written. One of the early church fathers ("Irenaeus" by name) tells us that Matthew composed his gospel account by amalgamating the sermon notes of the apostle Peter. Given recent stylistic comparisons between the writings of Peter and the Gospel of Matthew -- a startlingly similar set of stylistic features attends both -- Irenaeus' testimony appears much the more credible.

But Matthew also would have had first-hand sources as well. Consider this: Matthew was a tax collector. So was Zachaeus, our tree-climbing early Christian friend of lesser stature. Matthew records both the account of his own conversion to Christ and that of Zachaeus. It is reasonable -- though not quite provable so far as I know -- to posit the notion that Zachaeus may have learned about Jesus by way of Matthew's faith-sharing "on the job."

The world of Israel was a small world indeed by modern comparison. The largest cities in the world could boast of having more than 50,000 residents (hardly a big feat today). The huge metropolises of yesterday -- very few in the ancient world had more than 100,000 citizens. This means that in every town it was mostly the case that "everyone knew everyone else" -- much more than some would have liked.

Thus, it is highly likely that Zack and Matt not only crossed paths, but probably knew each other quite well (it could hardly have been otherwise). Thus, it is worthwhile to read about Zachaeus' conversion to Christ in light of their likely on the job friendship. You might wish to read Matthew's own conversion from his pen and compare the two. Which features do they have in common and which not? One other question is noteworthy -- how did Matthew's occupational knowledge and training influence the material he included in his Gospel -- accounts about people managing or mismanaging money -- and other teachings about money (a topic most familiar to Matthew)? How would Matthew have viewed some of the teachings of Jesus differently -- or perhaps with special insight (given his knowledge of money handling and tax collecting)

I expect that anyone who takes the Gospels seriously may find the comparison enlightening. Happy hunting. Back then they may even have had a Christian saying --- there are only two things for certain --- life and taxes. But let's not push it.

Later, if the Lord wills, I'll come back to these questions and attempt a few answers of my own.

Oh, one last thing. I recently ran across a witticism from the pen of Ralph Waldo Emerson I cannot resist sharing. He said, "Every advantage has its tax."

Manetho, Sargon and You: How To Teach Ancient History For Christians

A rich man was once asked how to become wealthy. He responded wryly, "Find out what the poor people are doing," quipped he, "and do the opposite." Though overly simplistic and downright funny -- but not as funny as the "axis of evil" comedy tour on Comedy Central -- there is on occasion, some help in this advice. Remember I had mentioned that informal logic textbooks take this approach, teaching how NOT to reason as their didactic approach of choice.

I am persuaded that this informs the proper way to teach ancient history in certain regards. But first, a brief introduction to the landscape of ancient history.

One of the striking and prominent features of ancient history stems from the fact that all written records "spring up" across the Mediterranean, nay the whole ancient world, at almost exactly the same time -- as if on cue -- like so many actors taking the stage simultaneously to play their part in a vast drama. This needs explaining, and the most notable detail of the ancient history texts I have read is this -- they offer either no explanation or else really goofy ones (involving cave men, and hunting-gathering societies, which from the standpoint of historical investigation are no better than "Professor Plumb, in the library, with the candlestick").

So here is the approach I have adopted after many years of pondering what I did and did not like about the teaching of ancient history by pagans at the University I attended.

1. As mentioned, they need a satisfying and unifying explanation for the written records appearing ex nihilo at the year 3,000 B.C. This happens in Egypt, Sumeria, and anywhere else you find written records early (as with India and China).

2. The chronology used to set the pace for all ancient history in these texts is that of one "Manetho." His very late chronology structures the whole of the history of ancient Egypt, which many use to set the pace for the whole of ancient history. Gary North has already written one article showing basic flaws in Manetho's account. This is the only article on the topic I know of written by a Christian author. Clearly, we need a different way to structure the ancient chronology of Empires, but understandably, this cannot be the undertaking of any one person, since it requires significant expertise in several areas of ancient history.

But this is worth noting. The Bible, of course, has the answer. Christians need to restructure ancient chronology using the Biblical record. This would comprise a solution to the second problem with ancient accounts.

3. Ancient history was never easy, though I tended to score well since I was highly motivated. Part of the problem many students had -- I ended up tutoring some of my peers since the guy who asks alot of questions in class almost volunteers himself for the job -- like it or not. But I listened to their complaints (and they had many) with the difficulties of courses like Ancient Egypt, or Ancient Greece.

A. First, the teachers seemed unsure what to include and what to leave out (you can never in a single quarter or even semester hope to do much more than scratch the surface of the history of any single empire). So they overloaded us with burdensome details for which we did not have an adequate framework to "plug the details" into.

The Bible has the answer for this problem too. It teaches by principle and then by example. You can see this with Exodus, where first the principle is introduced "Do not light fires on the Sabbath," and then the text provides and example of a man violating this command and Moses handing out the penalty for the infraction -- which is called a precept. Precepts are principles stated and examples provided to SHOW how to apply the point.

For didactic methods (how you are supposed to teach) this means that you always reason from the more general -- or "bigger picture" -- to the more specific (the particular details). This has the effect that one has a framework -- an understanding of the larger picture FIRST so that when he learns the details, he has a way to catalogue them by placing within the larger picture in this or that location, so that they not only make sense -- since they fit the larger context -- but the student can judge the relative importance or significance of this or that detail.

This means he knows what to focus on and what to treat more lightly. This gives students a sense of control over their learning experience, whereas the reverse method leads to frustration and even exasperation on the part of some. Endless details with no set relationship to other details seem like only so much flotsam and jetsam in an endless sea of more interesting things.

The solution to this -- I have based on the decalogue of the Holy Bible. Consider this: God had an extraordinary number of ethical lessons to teach both Israel and the Church of the Newer Covenant. Try reading Leviticus if you don't believe me. But He first SUMMARIZED these in ten commandments, so that each person reading the Bible could have the overall ethical "big picture" and could -- as it were -- file any one knew ethical detail under one or more of the commandments. This is exactly the approach taken by the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms. Even their didactic methods are biblical (not just the content).

So I do this with ancient -- and not-so-ancient history -- whatever the lecture, you select exactly ten important timeline features and require the students simply to memorize these. Have the students write them down on 3 x 5 index cards to make flash cards out of these ten bits of raw data. They can this way be easily and quickly memorized and the students have fun quizzing each other (with supervision of course). You can even have a reward for the one who memorizes them the fastest or some such fun thing. Whatever you do, make it fun, and praise any effort of the students at all times.

The proverb says that "pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones." Here, pleasant words means "compliments" or "praise." Another of the proverbs indicates that this is exactly what motivates students and pleasant words increase learning. Make it happen. Your little ones -- and perhaps not so little -- thrive in an environment of praise for real effort. Solomon knows.

By structuring, let us say, the course entitled, The History of Early Christianity, you should pick as your chronology reference points the dates for Caesar Augustus (mentioned by Luke) -- or you could back up a little earlier and begin with Julius Caesar (your choice), then move forward to choose 9 more Emperors or note (you must include Titus who as commander Under Vespasian attacked and destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70 -- and finally you should conclude around the 5th or 6th centuries, perhaps with the Death of Justinian (A.D. 565). Others to include in your timeline would be the Emperors Domitian, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, the Christian author Quintus Septimius Florens Tertuallianus (a.k.a. Tertullian), Constantine (the battle of the Milvian Bridge -- 312 -- and the Edict of Toleration (313) figure prominently here, The council of Nicea (325) Theodosius (399-ish) and a few others. Your timeline might look a bit different than mine. Some might include Julian the Apostate -- others not.

That's fine. Just make sure you get 10 reference points of real signficance (any good text will have such a timeline in the back waiting for you to plunder it); you don't have to do all the research yourself first hand. Don't reinvent the wheel just because you are teaching ancient history. After the students memorize your chronological framework, you will find that the rest of the details come much faster and more easily for your students to grasp. When they ask "When this or that happened," you can simply mention the date and then tell them that it comes between two of the memorized dates -- say "this event happened before Odovacar slapped Rome, but after Theodosius outlawed all non-Christian religions in empire."

You will find your students "get it" on time every time. This is the biblical didactic approach and it works.

B. The history of the world is largely the history of the rise and fall -- or sometimes long, boring slump -- of empires. This is true not only of the ancient world, but even of the more recent history of nations. Only the most recent history has little to do with empires, but even here one could argue that the Soviets and Chinese have not just nations. As late as 1996, one nation gained its formal independence from Britiain and the nation of Australia still officially resides as a member of the British commonwealth.

God has been pleased in His Providence to govern history this way. This includes the older empires we all know and love -- Egypt, Sumeria, Akkadia, Assyria (no one really loved the Assyrians), Persia, Greece, Blah Blah Blah. More recently, we have the Byzantine Empire (which fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453), the Spanish and Dutch Empires, and most recently the British Empire which at its apex covered some 1/4 of the land mass of planet earth in square miles.

My suggestion: Go with the flow. Teach the history of empires, using my ten-point chronology approach. This way you can even learn history along with your students -- no one knows everything about even any one empire (the evidence pool grows with each new discovery). The history channel rules. You might use that as a great resource to help too.

4. The proper explanation for the written record's sudden appearance on the scene is of course the Noahic Flood. But you won't find this explanantion in any history text written by those commited to the denial that God acts in history to judge the wicked. Think about it just a little and you won't miss the motivation. Joe pagan writes a history text and forgets to leave out the part where God judges pagans. Oops. A simple oversight. Won't happen again (not!).

I have -- surprise! -- much more to say on the topic of ancient (and medieval, and modern) history in order to help homeschoolers raise up the sharpest tacks in the package. But this will suffice for today. So here are a few questions to contemplate.

1. Why do all the ancient written records show up magically all at the same time across the whole known world in ancient times?

Answer: Genesis 6-9 could not be more plain. God wiped out the wicked world of sinners in Noah's Day because they grieved him exceedingly by their many sins. This left no written record except those which Noah (who was a prophet) took with him on the ark. These were later incorporated (probably by Moses) into the current Genesis record. Writing existed very early on in Genesis, as did metallurgy and music (The clan of Tubal-Cain led the musicians, but we don't know if it was country or western).

Written records show up around 3000 - 3200 B.C. uniformly because this is when men or different areas had had time to scatter from the Tower of Babel and develop into communities around the world. Shortly after these "hunter-gatherer" -- and they were this actually (for Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord) -- societies had developed sufficient capital from business transactions to have enough leisure time for some to begin what we would today call "academic pursuits." The earliest written records we have are all business records. This is not a coincidence. Capitalism -- being biblical -- gives rise to education and writing is the foundation of formal learning. Writing, of course, makes doing (and remembering who paid what when they want a refund) business much more efficient and profitable. They key word is profit.

2. What is the historical evidence -- remember historical evidence is limited to written records -- is there for what happened before (roughly) 3000 B.C. ?

Answer: The Bible alone has credible sources for describing what happened prior to the universal development of post-Flood writing. Since no other writings of anything but mythology predate this time-frame, the Bible is the only historical game in town. It has no real competitors, and I strongly suspect God did this on purpose.

3. Why should one use a 10-point chronology to teach students (and why should students use them to learn) the history of any particular empire?

Answer: The Bible teaches that one should always reason and learn from the more general concept to the more particular details. It does this in several ways, one of which is by showing us how God teaches his people -- by teaching first a general rule and then by showing an example of the rule properly applied in a particular instance. This is also how Jesus taught his disciples (i.e. Do not worry [rule] -- consider the lilies of the field [concrete example]). God is utterly consistent, and is the Great Teacher.

Further, the Bible teaches ethics from cover to cover and yet God summarized all these details in ten basic points for us. When a man is fully trained, he is like his teacher. So if you want your students to be fully trained, you must do as the Master does. He does nothing arbitrarily and has excellent reasons for choosing the number ten for memorization purposes. We are to trust in God's wisdom found in the Bible, and thus should model our teaching and learning after His approach.

4. What are some great learning resources to help your students learn history?

Answer: make the greatest use of those methods which require children to learn by DOING -- not passively just sitting. This means by creating flashcards to memorize your chronologies, by taking notes on lectures (this is very important and I shall -- if the Lord wills -- come back to this point to help on HOW to do this most efficiently), by asking questions and by being required to answer questions accurately from last weeks (or better from yesterday's lessons).

You should always summarize your ten -- yes TEN -- main points at the end of each day to reinforce the lessons learned for that day. Biblical teaching rules.

5. Who was Manetho, and why should I care?

Answer: Manetho was a third-century (B.C.) Egyptian educator who put together a chronology of the dynasties of Egypt, which later Egyptologists (yes, this is an actual word) generally followed, and which set the pace for determining the dates of the dynasties of other empires. Although this is stil the best chronology going, Manetho's contains some real errors and Christians need to reform his chronology in order to get a more accurate timeline for ancient history. Put this on your "things to do" list next to the grocery list on your fridge.

Here is the wikipedia take on Manetho with a links for further study:

Manetho, also known as Manethon of Sebennytos, was an Egyptian historian and priest from Sebennytos (ancient Egyptian: Tjebnutjer) who lived during the Ptolemaic era, ca. 3rd century BC. Manetho recorded Aegyptiaca (History of Egypt). His work is of great interest to Egyptologists, and is often used as evidence for the chronology of the reigns of pharaohs.

6. How should we choose the timeline borders for what we ought to teach in any one course?

Answer: You should teach the history of empires, because this is the way God is pleased (so far) to rule the world. You should pay special attention to the interaction of these empires with, and their effects upon, the history of Israel, God's chosen people until A.D. 70 --and also their effects upon that which is thereafter simply called "the Church of Jesus Christ the Lord."

For instance, 1 Kings 4 tells us that all the nations of the world sent ambassadors to go up to Israel to hear Solomon's lectures -- called simply "the wisdom of Solomon" -- on everything from biology to ethics (these were either lectures or sermons of a sort and centered around the 3 thousand proverbs he wrote. Solomon also taught by principle and example, for he was wiser than all men).

This means records of such interactions surely existed in the ancient world, and you should keep your eyes open for developments in the evidence of historians that will confirm this. We konw this because nations kept careful records of their wealth and much wealth was exchanged between Solomon and the other kings (and queens, remember Candace of Ethiopia, a.k.a. the Queen of the South, visited Solomon to hear his wisdom also)

Remember also that very little of the evidence ever created in the ancient past makes it to the public eye thousands of years later. They didn't have the internet (or even typewriters, remember those ancient artifacts?). Preserving records was not an easy task even when they sought to do so on purpose. Anything written on ancient paper (i.e. papyrus) was not long for the world in the moist-aired Mediterranean. Airborn bacteria called "papyrus" by the name "breakfast" back then. This is why the New Testament exists today only in the form of copies (you had to copy important texts maybe every 20-40 years if it was to survive as a manuscript).

Moreover, if and when a conflict arises between the biblical chronology and secular sources, you are duty-bound to Jesus Christ the Lord of history to favor the biblical account. Don't worry, the pagans will catch up to you in about 50 years or so on this point, at which point we will learn that they knew it all along and were just testing us.

I suppose this is enough for today. More later (ITLW) on this topic -- FYI, this is Christian texting for "If the Lord Wills." But there will be no ROTFL-ing here.

P.S. For those teaching the history of the intertestamental period (roughly 445 B.C. to 4 B.C. or so), you should use F.F. Bruce's "The World of the New Testament" (if I recall the title correctly). He was not only a Christian author, but an excellent historian, such that the pagans even admit this while biting hard on their tongues. I said "or so" because the historical consensus among scholars favors 4 B.C. as the birth year of the Lord Jesus Christ. And, well, I think they're mistaken. It was 1 B.C. on my reading and they will, of course, snicker at this [shrug]. Yet, there is nothing great in this debate and the Bible can easily tolerate either view.

Minding Your P's and Q's: The Covenantal Nature of Logic

It may seem strange if one spends little time thinking about it, but the fact that one can write down truths (in propositional or symbolic forms) about the real world, then deduce other truths from these -- only to find that they yield heretofore unknown and accurate information about the world is surprising (to put it mildly).

This could well have been the stuff of a dream I once had after consuming too much popcorn late at night. But this is just what happens when one performs logical operations correctly, and works with true premisses about the world -- or at least CAN happen. Mathematicians in fact have coined a phrase to highlight this oddity. They call it the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics."

That is to say, the pagan world of mathematicians has no way of accounting for the correspondence between what happens on blackboards and what happens in the real world. Why should there be any correlation between these? Why should the force of a stone one skips across a pond actually prove equal to its mass multiplied by it's acceleration -- because Newton's math said so? F=ma is one of Newton's famous three laws. Students have to know this to get the answer right on the test. But why should stones care?

Well, as the very smart readers of this blog already know: the Bible has the answer. The answer consists in two important aspects of what I shall have to call "biblical metaphysics."

Now "metaphysics" sounds like a very important word. And perhaps it is. It refers to that branch of logical inquiry which wants to ask "What kind of universe is this anyway?" Some put it this way, "What is the furniture of the cosmos" or colloquially, "What sort of stuff is REALLY out there?" So in metaphsyics people ask questions about the nature of time and matter, the existence of God and angels, and they talk of these things like they knew what they were saying.
The first part of what we wish to know -- namely why are math and logic so effective in the real world when they appear to be man-made constructs of a sort (after all logicians choose which axioms to include or not in this or that system of math or logic) -- comes by way of understanding the covenantal nature of logic itself.

God relates to his creatures by way of covenants. This is hard to miss after reading through the Bible, even the first time. You would have to struggle considerably to not notice how many people make covenants with God in the Bible, or that Jesus made a "new covenant" with his people. In fact, the Bible should read for the first part "Old Covenant" (or better Older Covenant) and "New Covenant" (or better "Newer Covenant").

The Bible, in short, is a covenant document -- not really a testament -- though this is in some respects a good analogy. But the analogy -- like that used in Hebrews -- is not the thing itself, but a picture of it. Clearly, the Bible is far more than a testament -- it is an entire legal code. Testaments do not run 66 books long. Jerome's "Latin Vulgate" was the first to introduce the translation "testament" for the Greek word "diatheke" (covenant) in Hebrews.

Easton's Bible Dictionary explains: "[Diatheke] occurs twelve times in the New Testament (Heb. 9:15, etc.) as the rendering of the Gr[eek] diatheke, which is twenty times rendered "covenant" in the Authorized Version, and always so in the Revised Version. The Vulgate translates incorrectly by testamentum, whence the names "Old" and "New Testament," by which we now designate the two sections into which the Bible is divided." Oops. All those printing presses over all those years. Old printing press habits die hard.

Moreover, testaments come from dead people (in a sense, you read them once one is deceased on behalf of the bequeathing decedent) -- and yet Jesus is more alive than you are, I can assure you; Hebrews 9:17 reads: "For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth." It is not exactly a constitution (though that might also make a good analogy in some respects), and it is certainly not a declaration of independence; and it refers to itself most often as the Word or Law of the Lord.

So why the confusion here? Testaments are a kind of covenant document, but not all covenant documents are testaments (i.e. constitutions can be covenant documents, as are marriage certificates). Some obvious facts about the gospels themselves should show that this is only an inspired analogy. A testament is the LAST information given by a testator to those to whom he intends to leave his possessions. Jesus talked with the disciples after his death. This makes him no ordinary testator. And it shows that the Bible is an analogue for the idea of a testament, but it differs significantly from any other testament -- rendering the analogy false if one presses the analogy too far (beyond the intent of the author).

Note also that this same chapter of Hebrews refers to the Bible earlier as a "covenant" (diatheke), using exactly the same Greek term as that translated only a few sentences later as "testament." Obviously, it can -- in some respects (but not all) -- be understood as a kind of testament. That was the author's point -- analogy, not identity. And the differences between them highlight this point. Another obvious difference is this: the Bible wasn't finished until A.D. 70 -- long after (40 years later) the death and resurrection of the testator. No other testator keeps on writing his last will and testament after he dies, and then carries on lengthy post-mortem conversations to help other people finish writing the will.

Interestingly, the Bible never calls itself "The Bible." This also shows our proclivity for adopting uniformly names for the Bible which are either not biblical or else "partially" correct --as with the Vulgates use of testamentum, and the modern wholesale adoption of this analogy as the title of the New Covenant documents. The Bible calls itself the Law of the Lord. The fact that the Bible represents itself as a legal code has far-reaching implications for doing theology. Logic is especially important in handling legal documents since they often determine what the sentence will be against or for the persons (or parties) involved in a legal dispute.

All the metaphors of the Law of the Lord confirm this understanding of what it is from cover to cover. God is a Judge (which is nearly the precise meaning of "Dani-el"), Jesus is an advocate with the Father (i.e. a Lawyer or defense attorney); and the Spirit is a "paraclaetos" -- translated only as "paraclete: since the precise sense depends almost entirely on the context in every case of its usage. No one has suggested it yet, but "Lobbyist" -- a modern political analogy -- is not far from the mark in several instances of its usage. Lobbyists intercede for consistituents, making appeal to those with power to change their conditions. Romans indicates that The Holy Spirit acts similarly on behalf of the saints. But it's only an analogy.

It is God's covenant faithfulness, which not only established the orderly and rational cosmos, but since he MUST act to fulfill all his promises and threats, it is this, his covenantal consistency, that forms the foundation of all logic. Logic flows from God, and God is a God of covenants; therefore logic is essentially a covenantal enterprise. To reason wrongly about his commands and Word is therefore not simply a mistake; it is culpable (criminal). But please note, and I will come to this point at greater length later (if the Lord wills), there is a very important difference between logic per se and any one particular logical system.

The ability to communicate in terms of symbols (or verbal tokens) is usually called "language." But language is much more than the accumulation of all the presently known or used languages (i.e. Spanish, English, French and the like). So also "logic" refers to far more than symbol the total sum of course one might take at a university under the rubric of modal or propositional forms of logic. If there were such a word in English, these would be called "logics," not LOGIC. Logical systems are man-made; Logic is not. Languages are man-made, but Language is not. In any case, whether this helps or no, I must move on for now to the next point.

When I write "logic is a puzzle," there is a sense in which this is true. But the claim entails no punishments. One can hardly be thrown in jail for failing to come up with a six-letter word for grasshopper (where 4 down occupies the spaces). But when I write, "Logic is covenantal" (since this is true), it means that "If you do logic poorly regarding important matters, you may be punished severely for your errors." Bad logic regarding the Bible, for instance, could easily lead to heresy (and often has), blasphemy or other serious sins and crimes.

Now God is orderly, and therefore, logical, by nature. He does not will to be logical -- but His own perfect orderliness gives rise to what we experience as logic and consistency (laws) in the physical world. This is the nature of both wisdom and truth. These are perfectly unified (truth is one) and internally consistent. The contrary, INconsistency, thus remains the target for lawyers when examining one's testimony -- to find lies. Lies are inconsistent with one another, while truth is by nature mutually affirmative. It has the mutual consent of all the parts.

It is then because God is just, wise, and true BY NATURE -- that logic flows from Him. This metaphysical view of God has something of a lengthy name -- divine logical essentialism. It sits over against logical voluntarism, which sees logic as the outgrowth of God's choices rather than HIS NATURE.

Though I will not here critique it at any length, suffice it to say that logical voluntarism results in the absurdity that two different kinds of logic -- one for God and a different one for men -- occupies the real world. In light of the biblical doctrine of the full deity and true humanity of Christ, this would render him intellectually schizophrenic (were it true), in that it would force him to apply two different kinds of logic simultaneously at all times.

A third "logic of translation" for the other two would also need be present in his mind at all times. If this sounds unnaturally complex, you are understanding the point well. This position would also necessarily eliminate statements from the Bible like "Come let us reason TOGETHER says the Lord, though your sins are as scarlet they shall be like wool; though they are as crimson they shall be as snow."

God is interested in reasoning with men; this is what makes the appeal of the gospel of Christ eminently rational (logical). God reasons from the heart, and He does it in a way which makes it -- in the Law of the Lord -- clear and reasonable. This puts men "without excuse," since the Bible shows the kind of internal consistency sufficient to prove its case to rational creatures by a due use of the ordinary means we all possess.

Finally, on this note, it is interesting to point out that the Greek word "logos" (word) forms the root of the term we use "logic." The word that God spoke, which not only brought all things into existence, but it also ORDERED them in a highly rational fashion. John uses the phrase "En arche" matching the Septuagint's opening line for the beginning of the cosmos, to describe God the Son -- "en ho logos" (was the Word). This is as close to calling the Son of the Living God the Prime Mover of Logic ("Reason" with a capital "R") as you can get. With respect to His deity, Christ IS reason or logic -- in the same sense in which we call Him "The Truth."

Now because God's eternal power and divine nature (one aspect of which is Reason) have been made plain from what has been made (Romans 1:20-21), we see that the created ORDER -- there's that word again -- shows forth the logical character of the Creators' own nature, albeit imperfectly. Mankind, being the highest form of creation, shows God's image more accurately than the lower creation. This is why the command to learn from the lower creation forms a stinging rebuke to fallen men (i.e. Go to the ant, O sluggard, learn her ways and be wise).

The relevant point here is that men use logic with surprising insight (now and again), clearly showing their superiority of mind over the lower creation. Ants work very hard but haven't yet discovered propositional logic. In this way, the image the Creator. This conjoining of features which men share with the Creator uniquely -- language, logic, and the other intellectual, communicative and manipulative skills (the arts and sciences. etc) -- highlights this image of God in men. Not many mammals can write HTML source code.

Now it is this -- please pardon my syllable overload -- "triangulation" of rational agents which renders math and logic so "effective" in the real world. Here's how it goes. God, being inherently (not voluntarily) rational, created mankind in his own image, and the rest of the created order reflects this orderliness as well. This gives the minds of men a certain "correspondence" to the natural world since both are media of natural revelation -- a revelation of the rational Creator.

Thus, the rationality of a logician's mind -- expressed, let us say, on a blackboard in the form of something symbolic or propositional -- tends to (or might) have a correspondence to a world which was ordered by the same Creator who fashioned the logician's mind. In other words, because both man and the lower creation share a common RATIONAL Creator, they tend to "match."

One theologian put it this way: Logic is rational expression in the real world of the way God thinks and expects us to think, in order to think God's thoughts after Him. It is a reflection of God's own thinking. Now the lower creation -- ants and company -- shows forth wisdom too. But is not their own. It comes from the Lord. "For the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding."

This actually EXPLAINS then why math and logic can and do yield great insights from time to time into the way things are, and how to get along more efficiently in God's world. Here, the Christian worldview EXPECTS math and logic to be highly effective in the fulfilling of the dominion mandate. Their effectiveness is anything but unreasonable. It is divine, bequeathed to men, expected, and even commanded from men.

This interesting surprise to the pagan world of scholars (both logicians and mathematicians) stems from the fact that they do their reasoning within the framework of a worldview which cannot provide the foundations of logic and science, cannot explain why the most basic features of the world appear as they do, cannot -- though they are ever learning -- bring them to a knowledge of the Truth.

But the Bible has the answer, and it is not only rational, it explains why reason is possible at all. So here is your valid and sound syllogism for the day.

1. Something must be true (The denial of this proposition eliminates itself).

2. Either the Christian worldview is true, or something else is.

3. It is not the case that something else is true.

4. Therefore, we must conclude that the Christian worldview specifies that outlook which is true.
Bottom line: The contrary to the Christian worldview is (logically) impossible. For God always keeps covenant. Faithful is the Lord. Amen.