BERKELEY – Religion and science, faith and empirical experiment: these terms would seem to have as little in common as a Baptist preacher and a Berkeley physicist. And yet, according to Charles Hard Townes, winner of a Nobel Prize in Physics and a UC Berkeley professor in the Graduate School, they are united by similar goals: science seeks to discern the laws and order of our universe; religion, to understand the universe’s purpose and meaning, and how humankind fits into both.
Where these areas intersect is territory that Townes has been exploring for many of his 89 years, and in March his insights were honored with the 2005 Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities. Worth about $1.5 million, the Templeton Prize recognizes those who, throughout their lives, have sought to advance ideas and/or institutions that will deepen the world’s understanding of God and of spiritual realities.
Townes first wrote about the parallels between religion and science in IBM’s Think magazine in 1966, two years after he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his groundbreaking work in quantum electronics: in 1953, thanks in part to what Townes calls a “revelation” experienced on a park bench, he invented the maser (his acronym for Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission), which amplifies microwaves to produce an intense beam. By building on this work, he achieved similar amplification using visible light, resulting in the laser (whose name he also coined).
Even as his research interests have segued from microwave physics to astrophysics, Townes has continued to explore topics such as “Science, values, and beyond,” in Synthesis of Science and Religion (1987), “On Science, and what it may suggest about us,” in Theological Education(1988), and “Why are we here; where are we going?” in The International Community of Physics, Essays on Physics (1997).
Townes sat down one morning recently to discuss how these and other weighty questions have shaped his own life, and their role in current controversies over public education.
Q. If science and religion share a common purpose, why have their proponents tended to be at loggerheads throughout history?
Science and religion have had a long interaction: some of it has been good and some of it hasn’t. As Western science grew, Newtonian mechanics had scientists thinking that everything is predictable, meaning there’s no room for God – so-called determinism. Religious people didn’t want to agree with that. Then Darwin came along, and they really didn’t want to agree with what he was saying, because it seemed to negate the idea of a creator. So there was a real clash for a while between science and religions.
But science has been digging deeper and deeper, and as it has done so, particularly in the basic sciences like physics and astronomy, we have begun to understand more. We have found that the world is not deterministic: quantum mechanics has revolutionized physics by showing that things are not completely predictable. That doesn’t mean that we’ve found just where God comes in, but we know now that things are not as predictable as we thought and that there are things we don’t understand. For example, we don’t know what some 95 percent of the matter in the universe is: we can’t see it – it’s neither atom nor molecule, apparently. We think we can prove it’s there, we see its effect on gravity, but we don’t know what and where it is, other than broadly scattered around the universe. And that’s very strange.
Who created us? U.S. vs. UC Berkeley beliefs
A Nov. 18-21, 2004 New York Times/CBS News poll on American mores and attitudes, conducted with 885 U.S. adults, showed that a significant number of Americans believe that God created humankind. UC Berkeley’s Office of Student Research asked the same question on its 2005 UC Undergraduate Experience Survey, results for which are still coming in. As of June 8, 2,057 students had responded.
Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin of human beings?
NYT/CBS
UC Berkeley
1. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process
13%
56%
2. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms, but God guided this process
27%
31%
3. God created human beings in their present form
55%
13%
4. Don’t know
5%
N/A
So as science encounters mysteries, it is starting to recognize its limitations and become somewhat more open. There are still scientists who differ strongly with religion and vice versa. But I think people are being more open-minded about recognizing the limitations in our frame of understanding.
You’ve said “I believe there is no long-range question more important than the purpose and meaning of our lives and our universe.” How have you attempted to answer that question?
Even as a youngster, you’re usually taught that there’s some purpose you’ll try to do, how you are going to live. But that’s a very localized thing, about what you want with your life. The broader question is, “What are humans all about in general, and what is this universe all about?” That comes as one tries to understand what is this beautiful world that we’re in, that’s so special: “Why has it come out this way? What is free will and why do we have it? What is a being? What is consciousness?” We can’t even define consciousness. As one thinks about these broader problems, then one becomes more and more challenged by the question of what is the aim and purpose and meaning of this universe and of our lives.
Those aren’t easy questions to answer, of course, but they’re important and they’re what religion is all about. I maintain that science is closely related to that, because science tries to understand how the universe is constructed and why it does what it does, including human life. If one understands the structure of the universe, maybe the purpose of man becomes a little clearer. I think maybe the best answer to that is that somehow, we humans were created somewhat in the likeness of God. We have free will. We have independence, we can do and create things, and that’s amazing. And as we learn more and more – why, we become even more that way. What kind of a life will we build? That’s what the universe is open about. The purpose of the universe, I think, is to see this develop and to allow humans the freedom to do the things that hopefully will work out well for them and for the rest of the world.
How do you categorize your religious beliefs?
I’m a Protestant Christian, I would say a very progressive one. This has different meanings for different people. But I’m quite open minded and willing to consider all kinds of new ideas and to look at new things. At the same time it has a very deep meaning for me: I feel the presence of God. I feel it in my own life as a spirit that is somehow with me all the time.
You’ve described your inspiration for the maser as a moment of revelation, more spiritual than what we think of as inspiration. Do you believe that God takes such an active interest in humankind?
[The maser] was a new idea, a sudden visualization I had of what might be done to produce electromagnetic waves, so it’s somewhat parallel to what we normally call revelation in religion. Whether the inspiration for the maser and the laser was God’s gift to me is something one can argue about. The real question should be, where do brand-new human ideas come from anyway? To what extent does God help us? I think he’s been helping me all along. I think he helps all of us – that there’s a direction in our universe and it has been determined and is being determined. How? We don’t know these things. There are many questions in both science and religion and we have to make our best judgment. But I think spirituality has a continuous effect on me and on other people.
That sounds like you agree with the “intelligent design” movement, the latest framing of creationism, which argues that the complexity of the universe proves it must have been created by a guiding force.
I do believe in both a creation and a continuous effect on this universe and our lives, that God has a continuing influence – certainly his laws guide how the universe was built. But the Bible’s description of creation occurring over a week’s time is just an analogy, as I see it. The Jews couldn’t know very much at that time about the lifetime of the universe or how old it was. They were visualizing it as best they could and I think they did remarkably well, but it’s just an analogy.
Should intelligent design be taught alongside Darwinian evolution in schools as religious legislators have decided in Pennsylvania and Kansas?
I think it’s very unfortunate that this kind of discussion has come up. People are misusing the term intelligent design to think that everything is frozen by that one act of creation and that there’s no evolution, no changes. It’s totally illogical in my view. Intelligent design, as one sees it from a scientific point of view, seems to be quite real. This is a very special universe: it’s remarkable that it came out just this way. If the laws of physics weren’t just the way they are, we couldn’t be here at all. The sun couldn’t be there, the laws of gravity and nuclear laws and magnetic theory, quantum mechanics, and so on have to be just the way they are for us to be here.
‘Faith is necessary for the scientist even to get started, and deep faith is necessary for him to carry out his tougher tasks. Why? Because he must have confidence that there is order in the universe and that the human mind – in fact his own mind – has a good chance of understanding this order.’
–Charles Townes, writing in “The Convergence of Science and Religion,” IBM’s Think magazine, March-April 1966
Some scientists argue that “well, there’s an enormous number of universes and each one is a little different. This one just happened to turn out right.” Well, that’s a postulate, and it’s a pretty fantastic postulate – it assumes there really are an enormous number of universes and that the laws could be different for each of them. The other possibility is that ours was planned, and that’s why it has come out so specially. Now, that design could include evolution perfectly well. It’s very clear that there is evolution, and it’s important. Evolution is here, and intelligent design is here, and they’re both consistent.
They don’t have to negate each other, you’re saying. God could have created the universe, set the parameters for the laws of physics and chemistry and biology, and set the evolutionary process in motion, But that’s not what the Christian fundamentalists are arguing should be taught in Kansas.
People who want to exclude evolution on the basis of intelligent design, I guess they’re saying, “Everything is made at once and then nothing can change.” But there’s no reason the universe can’t allow for changes and plan for them, too. People who are anti-evolution are working very hard for some excuse to be against it. I think that whole argument is a stupid one. Maybe that’s a bad word to use in public, but it’s just a shame that the argument is coming up that way, because it’s very misleading.
That seems to come up when religion seeks to control or limit the scope of science. We’re seeing that with the regulation of research into stem cells and cloning. Should there be areas of scientific inquiry that are off-limits due to a culture’s prevailing religious principles?
My answer to that is, we should explore as much as we can. We should think about everything, try to explore everything, and question things. That’s part of our human characteristic in nature that has made us so great and able to achieve so much. Of course there are problems if we do scientific experiments on people that involve killing them – that’s a scientific experiment sure, but ethically it has problems. There are ethical issues with certain kinds of scientific experimentation. But outside of the ethical issues, I think we should try very hard to understand everything we can and to question things.
I think it’s settling those ethical issues that’s the problem. Who decides what differentiates a “person” from a collection of cells, for example?
That’s very difficult. What is a person? We don’t know. Where is this thing, me – where am I really in this body? Up here in the top of the head somewhere? What is personality? What is consciousness? We don’t know. The same thing is true once the body is dead: where is this person? Is it still there? Has it gone somewhere else? If you don’t know what it is, it’s hard to say what it’s doing next. We have to be open-minded about that. The best we can do is try to find ways of answering those questions.
You’ll turn 90 on July 28. What’s the secret to long life?
Good luck is one, but also just having a good time. Some people say I work hard: I come in on Saturdays, and I work evenings both at my desk and in the lab. But I think I’m just having a good time doing physics and science. I have three telescopes down on Mt. Wilson; I was down there a couple nights last week. I’ve traveled a lot. On Sundays, my wife [of 64 years] and I usually go hiking. I’d say the secret has been being able to do things that I like, and keeping active.
Irving Kristol pictured below: In 1980 I read the books HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? by Francis Schaeffer and WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by both Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I saw the film series by the same names. In those two books Daniel Bell was quoted. In HOW SHOULD WE […]
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______________ C.S.Lewis started off as an atheist then a Christian who clung to some secular beliefs then finally a much orthodox Christian near the end of his life!!!! C.S. Lewis and evolution by Peter Barnes Credit: genvesselhttp://www.flickr.com. C.S. Lewis There would be a strong case for the assertion that C.S. Lewis (1898–1963) has been […]
_________________ On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URLhttp://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto __________________________ There are 3 videos in this series and they have […]
_____________ Discussion (1 of 3): Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas Uploaded on Sep 22, 2010 A discussion with Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas. This was held at Westminster Chapel March, 2008 Is Goodness Without God is Good Enough? William Lane Craig vs. Paul Kurtz Published on Jul 29, 2013 Date: October 24, 2001 […]
___________ Home / Reasons to Believe / Answering the New Atheists Answering the New Atheists By KerbyAnderson On Sunday, January 30 th, 2011 · no Comments · In Reasons to Believe Kerby Anderson counters the claim by popular new atheists that Christianity (along with other religions) is blind, irrational and without any evidence. Kerby demonstrates that […]
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__________________ INTERESTING QUOTES: Note: Although we believe these quotes are authentic, we have not specifically verified the authenticity of each and every one. If you find that any quote is in error, please let us know and we will correct it. CATEGORIES: A) EVOLUTION AND ATHEISM B) INTELLIGENT DESIGN C) PROBLEMS ABOUT FOSSIL EVIDENCE OF EVOLUTION D) DISTORTIONS USED BY DOGMATIC […]
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__________ Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God In the 1970’s and 1980’s I was a member of Bellevue Baptist in Memphis where Adrian Rogers was pastor and was a student at ECS from the 5th grade to the 12th grade where I was introduced to […]
I have thought about this issue of prayer a lot lately and here is a fine article I read lately on the issue at this link.
C.S Lewis’s surviving BBC radio address
Uploaded on Mar 19, 2008
The lone surviving reel of audio with Lewis’s voice on it. He deals with prayer and evolution (Evolution on the second installment). Recorded during WW ll these talks eventually became “Mere Christianity”
C.S Lewis’s surviving BBC radio address: Part 2
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C.S.Lewis had a mentor and it was J.R.R.Tolkien.
Interview with JRR Tolkien in 1968 and Adam Tolkien in 2007
93. Paul Churchland Channels Daniel Dennett – Beyond Belief 2006
Below is a classic essay by C. S. Lewis on the relationship between work and prayer. See the related essay titled “The Efficacy of Prayer” in C. S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night and Other Essays.
Even if I grant your point and admit that answers to prayer are theoretically possible, I shall still think they are infinitely improbable. I don’t think it at all likely that God requires the ill-informed (and contradictory) advice of us humans as to how to run the world. If He is all-wise, as you say He is, doesn’t He know already what is best? And if He is all-good, won’t He do it whether we pray or not?
This is the case against prayer which has, in the last hundred years, intimidated thousands of people. The usual answer is that it applies only to the lowest sort of prayer, the sort that consists in asking for things to happen. The higher sort, we are told, offers no advice to God; it consists only of “communication”…with Him; and those who take this line seem to suggest that the lower kind of prayer really is an absurdity and that only children and savages would use it.
I have never been satisfied with this view. The distinction between the two sorts of prayer is a sound one; and I think on the whole (I am not quite certain) that the sort which asks for nothing is the higher or more advanced. To be in the state in which you are so at one with the will of God that you wouldn’t want to alter the course of events even if you could is certainly a very high or advanced condition.
But if one simply rules out the lower kind, two difficulties follow. In the first place, one has to say that the whole historical tradition of Christian prayer (including the Lord’s Prayer itself) has been wrong; for it has always admitted prayers for our daily bread, for the recovery of the sick, for protection from enemies, for the conversion of the outside world, and the like. In the second place, though the other kind of prayer may be “higher” if you restrict yourself to it because you have got beyond the desire to use any other, there is nothing especially “high” or “spiritual” about abstaining from prayers that make requests simply because you think they’re no good. It might be a pretty thing (but, again, I’m not absolutely certain) if a boy never asked for cake because he was so high-minded and spiritual that he didn’t want any cake. But there’s nothing especially pretty about a boy who doesn’t ask because he has learned that it is no use asking. I think that the whole matter needs reconsideration.
The case against prayer (I mean the “low” or old-fashioned kind) is this: The thing you ask for is either good – for you and for the whole world in general – or else it is not. If it is, then a good and wise God will do it anyway. If it is not, then He won’t. In neither case can your prayer make any difference. But if this argument is sound, surely it is an argument not only against praying, but against doing anything whatever?
In every action, just as in every prayer, you are trying to bring about a certain result; and this result must be good or bad. Why, then, do we not argue as the opponents of prayer argue, and say that if the intended result is good, God will bring it to pass without your interference, and that if it is bad, He will prevent it happening whatever you do? Why wash your hands? If God intends them to be clean, they’ll come clean without your washing them. If He doesn’t, they’ll remain dirty (as Lady MacBeth found) however much soap you use. Why ask for the salt? Why put on your boots? Why do anything?
We know that we can act and that our actions produce results. Everyone who believes in God must therefore admit (quite apart from the question of prayer) that God has not chosen to write the whole history with His own hand. Most of the events that go on in the universe are indeed out of our control, but not all. It is like a play in which the scene and the general outline of the story is fixed by the author, but certain minor details are left for the actors to improvise. It may be a mystery why He should have allowed us to cause real events at all, but it is no odder that He should allow us to cause them by praying than by any other method.
Pascal says that God “instituted prayer in order to allow His creatures the dignity of causality.” It would perhaps be truer to say that He invented both prayer and physical action for that purpose. He gave us small creatures the dignity of being able to contribute to the course of events in two different ways. He made the matter of the universe such that we can (in those limits) do things to it; that is why we can wash our own hands and feed or murder our fellow creatures. Similarly, He made His own plan or plot of history such that it admits a certain amount of free play and can be modified in response to our prayers. If it is foolish and impudent to ask for victory in war (on the ground that God might be expected to know best), it would be equally foolish and impudent to put on a [raincoat] – does not God know best whether you ought to be wet or dry?
The two methods by which we are allowed to produce events may be called work and prayer. Both are alike in this respect – that in both we try to produce a state of affairs which God has not (or at any rate not yet) seen fit to provide “on His own”. And from this point of view the old maxim laborare est orare (work is prayer) takes on a new meaning. What we do when we weed a field is not quite different from what we do when we pray for a good harvest. But there is an important difference all the same.
You cannot be sure of a good harvest whatever you do to a field. But you can be sure that if you pull up one weed that one weed will no longer be there. You can be sure that if you drink more than a certain amount of alcohol you will ruin your health or that if you go on for a few centuries more wasting the resources of the planet on wars and luxuries you will shorten the life of the whole human race. The kind of causality we exercise by work is, so to speak, divinely guaranteed, and therefore ruthless. By it we are free to do ourselves as much harm as we please. But the kind which we exercise by prayer is not like that; God has left Himself discretionary power. Had He not done so, prayer would be an activity too dangerous for man and should have the horrible state of things envisaged by Juvenal: “Enormous prayers which Heaven in anger grants.”
Prayers are not always – in the crude, factual sense of the word – “granted.” This is not because prayer is a weaker kind of causality, but because it is a stronger kind. When it “works” at all it works unlimited by space and time. That is why God has retained a discretionary power of granting or refusing it; except on that condition prayer would destroy us. It is not unreasonable for a headmaster to say, “Such and such things you may do according to the fixed rules of this school. But such and such other things are too dangerous to be left to general rules. If you want to do them you must come and make a request and talk over the whole matter with me in my study. And then – we’ll see.”
The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God is that there really are lots of ways of repaying your debt to goodness—by setting out to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come. Goodness comes in many forms, not just medicine and science. Thank goodness for the music of, say, Randy Newman, which could not exist without all those wonderful pianos and recording studios, to say nothing of the musical contributions of every great composer from Bach through Wagner to Scott Joplin and the Beatles. Thank goodness for fresh drinking water in the tap, and food on our table. Thank goodness for fair elections and truthful journalism. If you want to express your gratitude to goodness, you can plant a tree, feed an orphan, buy books for schoolgirls in the Islamic world, or contribute in thousands of other ways to the manifest improvement of life on this planet now and in the near future.
DANIEL C. DENNETT is the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He is the author of Content and Consciousness; Brainstorms; Elbow Room; The Intentional Stance; Consciousness Explained; Darwin’s Dangerous Idea; Kinds of Minds; Brainchildren; Freedom Evolves; Sweet Dreams; and Breaking the Spell.
There are no atheists in foxholes, according to an old but dubious saying, and there is at least a little anecdotal evidence in favor of it in the notorious cases of famous atheists who have emerged from near-death experiences to announce to the world that they have changed their minds. The British philosopher Sir A. J. Ayer, who died in 1989, is a fairly recent example. Here is another anecdote to ponder.
Two weeks ago, I was rushed by ambulance to a hospital where it was determined by c-t scan that I had a “dissection of the aorta”—the lining of the main output vessel carrying blood from my heart had been torn up, creating a two—channel pipe where there should only be one. Fortunately for me, the fact that I’d had a coronary artery bypass graft seven years ago probably saved my life, since the tangle of scar tissue that had grown like ivy around my heart in the intervening years reinforced the aorta, preventing catastrophic leakage from the tear in the aorta itself. After a nine-hour surgery, in which my heart was stopped entirely and my body and brain were chilled down to about 45 degrees to prevent brain damage from lack of oxygen until they could get the heart-lung machine pumping, I am now the proud possessor of a new aorta and aortic arch, made of strong Dacron fabric tubing sewn into shape on the spot by the surgeon, attached to my heart by a carbon-fiber valve that makes a reassuring little click every time my heart beats.
As I now enter a gentle period of recuperation, I have much to reflect on, about the harrowing experience itself and even more about the flood of supporting messages I’ve received since word got out about my latest adventure. Friends were anxious to learn if I had had a near-death experience, and if so, what effect it had had on my longstanding public atheism. Had I had an epiphany? Was I going to follow in the footsteps of Ayer (who recovered his aplomb and insisted a few days later “what I should have said is that my experiences have weakened, not my belief that there is no life after death, but my inflexible attitude towards that belief”), or was my atheism still intact and unchanged?
Yes, I did have an epiphany. I saw with greater clarity than ever before in my life that when I say “Thank goodness!” this is not merely a euphemism for “Thank God!” (We atheists don’t believe that there is any God to thank.) I really do mean thank goodness! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today. It is a worthy recipient of the gratitude I feel today, and I want to celebrate that fact here and now.
To whom, then, do I owe a debt of gratitude? To the cardiologist who has kept me alive and ticking for years, and who swiftly and confidently rejected the original diagnosis of nothing worse than pneumonia. To the surgeons, neurologists, anesthesiologists, and the perfusionist, who kept my systems going for many hours under daunting circumstances. To the dozen or so physician assistants, and to nurses and physical therapists and x-ray technicians and a small army of phlebotomists so deft that you hardly know they are drawing your blood, and the people who brought the meals, kept my room clean, did the mountains of laundry generated by such a messy case, wheel-chaired me to x-ray, and so forth. These people came from Uganda, Kenya, Liberia, Haiti, the Philippines, Croatia, Russia, China, Korea, India—and the United States, of course—and I have never seen more impressive mutual respect, as they helped each other out and checked each other’s work. But for all their teamwork, this local gang could not have done their jobs without the huge background of contributions from others. I remember with gratitude my late friend and Tufts colleague, physicist Allan Cormack, who shared the Nobel Prize for his invention of the c-t scanner. Allan—you have posthumously saved yet another life, but who’s counting? The world is better for the work you did. Thank goodness. Then there is the whole system of medicine, both the science and the technology, without which the best-intentioned efforts of individuals would be roughly useless. So I am grateful to the editorial boards and referees, past and present, ofScience, Nature, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, and all the other institutions of science and medicine that keep churning out improvements, detecting and correcting flaws.
Do I worship modern medicine? Is science my religion? Not at all; there is no aspect of modern medicine or science that I would exempt from the most rigorous scrutiny, and I can readily identify a host of serious problems that still need to be fixed. That’s easy to do, of course, because the worlds of medicine and science are already engaged in the most obsessive, intensive, and humble self-assessments yet known to human institutions, and they regularly make public the results of their self-examinations. Moreover, this open-ended rational criticism, imperfect as it is, is the secret of the astounding success of these human enterprises. There are measurable improvements every day. Had I had my blasted aorta a decade ago, there would have been no prayer of saving me. It’s hardly routine today, but the odds of my survival were actually not so bad (these days, roughly 33 percent of aortic dissection patients die in the first twenty-four hours after onset without treatment, and the odds get worse by the hour thereafter).
One thing in particular struck me when I compared the medical world on which my life now depended with the religious institutions I have been studying so intensively in recent years. One of the gentler, more supportive themes to be found in every religion (so far as I know) is the idea that what really matters is what is in your heart: if you have good intentions, and are trying to do what (God says) is right, that is all anyone can ask. Not so in medicine! If you are wrong—especially if you should have known better—your good intentions count for almost nothing. And whereas taking a leap of faith and acting without further scrutiny of one’s options is often celebrated by religions, it is considered a grave sin in medicine. A doctor whose devout faith in his personal revelations about how to treat aortic aneurysm led him to engage in untested trials with human patients would be severely reprimanded if not driven out of medicine altogether. There are exceptions, of course. A few swashbuckling, risk-taking pioneers are tolerated and (if they prove to be right) eventually honored, but they can exist only as rare exceptions to the ideal of the methodical investigator who scrupulously rules out alternative theories before putting his own into practice. Good intentions and inspiration are simply not enough.
In other words, whereas religions may serve a benign purpose by letting many people feel comfortable with the level of morality they themselves can attain, no religion holds its members to the high standards of moral responsibility that the secular world of science and medicine does! And I’m not just talking about the standards ‘at the top’—among the surgeons and doctors who make life or death decisions every day. I’m talking about the standards of conscientiousness endorsed by the lab technicians and meal preparers, too. This tradition puts its faith in the unlimited application of reason and empirical inquiry, checking and re-checking, and getting in the habit of asking “What if I’m wrong?” Appeals to faith or membership are never tolerated. Imagine the reception a scientist would get if he tried to suggest that others couldn’t replicate his results because they just didn’t share the faith of the people in his lab! And, to return to my main point, it is the goodness of this tradition of reason and open inquiry that I thank for my being alive today.
What, though, do I say to those of my religious friends (and yes, I have quite a few religious friends) who have had the courage and honesty to tell me that they have been praying for me? I have gladly forgiven them, for there are few circumstances more frustrating than not being able to help a loved one in any more direct way. I confess to regretting that I could not pray (sincerely) for my friends and family in time of need, so I appreciate the urge, however clearly I recognize its futility. I translate my religious friends’ remarks readily enough into one version or another of what my fellow brights have been telling me: “I’ve been thinking about you, and wishing with all my heart [another ineffective but irresistible self-indulgence] that you come through this OK.” The fact that these dear friends have been thinking of me in this way, and have taken an effort to let me know, is in itself, without any need for a supernatural supplement, a wonderful tonic. These messages from my family and from friends around the world have been literally heart-warming in my case, and I am grateful for the boost in morale (to truly manic heights, I fear!) that it has produced in me. But I am not joking when I say that I have had to forgive my friends who said that they were praying for me. I have resisted the temptation to respond “Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?” I feel about this the same way I would feel if one of them said “I just paid a voodoo doctor to cast a spell for your health.” What a gullible waste of money that could have been spent on more important projects! Don’t expect me to be grateful, or even indifferent. I do appreciate the affection and generosity of spirit that motivated you, but wish you had found a more reasonable way of expressing it.
But isn’t this awfully harsh? Surely it does the world no harm if those who can honestly do so pray for me! No, I’m not at all sure about that. For one thing, if they really wanted to do something useful, they could devote their prayer time and energy to some pressing project that they can do something about. For another, we now have quite solid grounds (e.g., the recently released Benson study at Harvard) for believing that intercessory prayer simply doesn’t work. Anybody whose practice shrugs off that research is subtly undermining respect for the very goodness I am thanking. If you insist on keeping the myth of the effectiveness of prayer alive, you owe the rest of us a justification in the face of the evidence. Pending such a justification, I will excuse you for indulging in your tradition; I know how comforting tradition can be. But I want you to recognize that what you are doing is morally problematic at best. If you would even consider filing a malpractice suit against a doctor who made a mistake in treating you, or suing a pharmaceutical company that didn’t conduct all the proper control tests before selling you a drug that harmed you, you must acknowledge your tacit appreciation of the high standards of rational inquiry to which the medical world holds itself, and yet you continue to indulge in a practice for which there is no known rational justification at all, and take yourself to be actually making a contribution. (Try to imagine your outrage if a pharmaceutical company responded to your suit by blithely replying “But we prayed good and hard for the success of the drug! What more do you want?”)
The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God is that there really are lots of ways of repaying your debt to goodness—by setting out to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come. Goodness comes in many forms, not just medicine and science. Thank goodness for the music of, say, Randy Newman, which could not exist without all those wonderful pianos and recording studios, to say nothing of the musical contributions of every great composer from Bach through Wagner to Scott Joplin and the Beatles. Thank goodness for fresh drinking water in the tap, and food on our table. Thank goodness for fair elections and truthful journalism. If you want to express your gratitude to goodness, you can plant a tree, feed an orphan, buy books for schoolgirls in the Islamic world, or contribute in thousands of other ways to the manifest improvement of life on this planet now and in the near future.
Or you can thank God—but the very idea of repaying God is ludicrous. What could an omniscient, omnipotent Being (the Man Who has Everything?) do with any paltry repayments from you? (And besides, according to the Christian tradition God has already redeemed the debt for all time, by sacrificing his own son. Try to repay that loan!) Yes, I know, those themes are not to be understood literally; they are symbolic. I grant it, but then the idea that by thanking God you are actually doing some good has got to be understood to be just symbolic, too. I prefer real good to symbolic good.
Still, I excuse those who pray for me. I see them as like tenacious scientists who resist the evidence for theories they don’t like long after a graceful concession would have been the appropriate response. I applaud you for your loyalty to your own position—but remember: loyalty to tradition is not enough. You’ve got to keep asking yourself: What if I’m wrong? In the long run, I think religious people can be asked to live up to the same moral standards as secular people in science and medicine.
Irving Kristol pictured below: In 1980 I read the books HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? by Francis Schaeffer and WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by both Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I saw the film series by the same names. In those two books Daniel Bell was quoted. In HOW SHOULD WE […]
______ Discussion (2 of 3): Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas ______________ 7News : Web Extra: Ricky Gervais on God Published on Mar 23, 2014 He’s not shy about sharing his opinion with 5 million social media followers so Ricky Gervais was happy to clear a few things up for us too. ______________ The Bible and […]
______________ C.S.Lewis started off as an atheist then a Christian who clung to some secular beliefs then finally a much orthodox Christian near the end of his life!!!! C.S. Lewis and evolution by Peter Barnes Credit: genvesselhttp://www.flickr.com. C.S. Lewis There would be a strong case for the assertion that C.S. Lewis (1898–1963) has been […]
_________________ On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URLhttp://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto __________________________ There are 3 videos in this series and they have […]
_____________ Discussion (1 of 3): Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas Uploaded on Sep 22, 2010 A discussion with Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas. This was held at Westminster Chapel March, 2008 Is Goodness Without God is Good Enough? William Lane Craig vs. Paul Kurtz Published on Jul 29, 2013 Date: October 24, 2001 […]
___________ Home / Reasons to Believe / Answering the New Atheists Answering the New Atheists By KerbyAnderson On Sunday, January 30 th, 2011 · no Comments · In Reasons to Believe Kerby Anderson counters the claim by popular new atheists that Christianity (along with other religions) is blind, irrational and without any evidence. Kerby demonstrates that […]
________ The Great Debate: Dinesh D’Souza v. Michael Shermer (part 1) Uploaded on Apr 26, 2011 In this debate on what are arguably two of the most important questions in the culture wars today — Is Religion a Force for Good or Evil? and Can you be Good without God? — the conservative Christian author […]
__________________ INTERESTING QUOTES: Note: Although we believe these quotes are authentic, we have not specifically verified the authenticity of each and every one. If you find that any quote is in error, please let us know and we will correct it. CATEGORIES: A) EVOLUTION AND ATHEISM B) INTELLIGENT DESIGN C) PROBLEMS ABOUT FOSSIL EVIDENCE OF EVOLUTION D) DISTORTIONS USED BY DOGMATIC […]
___ _________ Jesus’ Resurrection: Atheist, Antony Flew, and Theist, Gary Habermas, Dialogue Published on Apr 7, 2012 http://www.veritas.org/talks – Did Jesus die, was he buried, and what happened afterward? Join legendary atheist Antony Flew and Christian historian and apologist Gary Habermas in a discussion about the facts surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. […]
__________ Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God In the 1970’s and 1980’s I was a member of Bellevue Baptist in Memphis where Adrian Rogers was pastor and was a student at ECS from the 5th grade to the 12th grade where I was introduced to […]
Harvard Historian Richard Pipes writes the following in his book Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime:
“The Communists attacked religious beliefs and practices with a vehemence not seen since the days of the Roman Empire. Their aggressive atheism affected the mass of citizens far more painfully than the suppression of political dissent or the imposition of censorship.”1
It wasn’t only the Communists that had no concept of human rights or the value of the individual. A person only had value as he could add value to the State. Robby Kossmann, a German zoologist who later became a medical professor, expresses a proto-Nazi view in his 1880 essay “The Importance of the Life of an Individual in the Darwinian World View”:
“[T]he Darwinian world view must look upon the present sentimental conception of the value of the life of a human individual as an overestimate completely hindering the progress of humanity. The human state also, like every animal community of individuals, must reach an even higher level of perfection, if the possibility exists in it, through the destruction of the less well-endowed individual, for the more excellently endowed to win the space for the expansion of its progeny. . . . The state only has an interest in preserving the more excellent life at the expense of the less excellent.”2
What is man if there is no God? How did he come into being?
Marvin Minsky of MIT “believes that humans are nothing but meat machines that carry a computer in their head” also made of meat. Minsky, who is an atheist and works in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), “claimed that people should give their money to AI research rather than their churches, as only AI would truly give them eternal life.”3
But what is the source of intelligence in a matter-only world? These AI machines are not building themselves. Intelligent beings design and build them. What is the origin of the intelligence of the designers that can impute organized information in the form of complicated program to a mechanical device? How does he know that his intelligence is intelligent and the decisions he makes have a moral basis? Anyway, who or what is there who could challenge his or anybody’s view of morality? Who’s to say that these transhuman AI machines won’t turn on their creators like they did in the Terminator films? Were these machines moral or immoral in their attempts to eliminate humans? If so, who says?
Even atheists like Minsky have recognized that human rights cannot be founded on materialistic, evolutionary, and atheistic assumptions given their beliefs about the nature of reality and the stuff that makes up that reality.
Committed atheist and evolutionist Richard Rorty (1931-2007) knew that the operating assumptions of his worldview could not account for human rights when the struggle for survival eliminates the weak with no regard for an overarching morality that can’t be found in the stuff of the cosmos. There is nothing outside of nature evaluating what happens in nature. So how then does the atheist account for human rights and human dignity when, according to Joni Mitchell, “we are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon”?4
Nancy Pearcey writes that Rorty says the concept of human rights “came from ‘religious claims that human beings are made in the image of God.’ He cheerfully admits that he reaches over and borrows the concept of universal rights from Christianity. He even calls himself a ‘free-loading’ atheist: ‘This Jewish and Christian element in our tradition is gratefully invoked by free-loading atheists like myself.’”5
So here we have an atheist borrowing the necessary elements from a worldview he denies with his entire being because he knows that he can’t live consistently with the full implications of his atheism.
He’s not the only one. Rodney Brooks, also of MIT, shows in his book Flesh and Machines “that a person is nothing but an automaton—‘a big bag of skin full of biomolecules’ interacting by the laws of physics and chemistry. It is not easy to think this way, he admits. But ‘when I look at my children, I can, when I force myself, . . . see that they are machines.’”
And yet he goes on to say, contradicting the atheistic worldview he supports with all his being, but “‘[t]hat is not how I treat them. . . . They have my unconditional love, the furthest one might be able to get from rational analysis.’ If this sounds incoherent, Brooks admits as much: ‘I maintain two sets of inconsistent beliefs.’ In other words, he has to take a secular leap of faith” into a realm that he does not believe exists in order to give his world meaning.
Minsky also must leave behind the operating assumptions of his anti-God worldview in order to live a life where life matters and has meaning. “In The Society of Mind he writes, ‘The physical world provides no room for freedom of will.’ And yet ‘that concept is essential to our models of the mental realm. [And so] we are virtually forced to maintain that belief, even though we know it’s false.’”6
What happens when the next generation of atheists who are less connected to a Christian worldview from which Rorty, Minsky, and Brooks have been borrowing from in order to maintain some sort of moral sanity become more consistent with their matter-only, meat machine, “big bag of skin full of biomolecules” worldview?
The day may come when the new-new atheists will drop any pretense of inconsistency and fully embrace the view that humans are nothing but organic machines, carbon units that have no more regard for the lives of other people than the graphite found in a pencil.
Footnotes:
1. Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 1994), 337. [↩]
2. Quoted in Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 2. [↩]
3. Anne Forest, God in the Machine: What Robots Teach us About Humanity and God (New York: Dutton/Penguine Group, 2004), 43. [↩]
4. The interesting thing about Joni Mitchell’s song “Woodstock” is that she can’t escape religious imagery by using phrases like “child of God” and “get ourselves back to the garden,” presumably a reference to the Garden of Eden. [↩]
5. Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2015), 225-226. [↩]
6. Nancy Pearcey, “Intelligent Design and the Defense of Reason,” Darwin’s Nemesis: Phillip Johnson and the Intelligent Design Movement, ed. William A. Dembski (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 237 [↩]
In conjunction with WORLD Magazine, Patrick Henry College presents its interview with Nancy Pearcey as a part of the Newsmaker Interview Series with Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief at WORLD and Distinguished Chair of Journalism and Public Policy at PHC. For more information on Patrick Henry College, visit our website here http://www.phc.edu.
______________ I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds- The Beatles The Beatles: The Beatles […]
________________ I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. The Beatles: The Beatles and their album St. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club […]
__________________ I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. The Beatles are featured in this episode below and Schaeffer noted, ” Sergeant Pepper’s […]
_______________ I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. Great Album The Beatles are featured in this episode below and Schaeffer […]
_______________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: _____________________ Why am I doing this series FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE? John Fischer probably expressed it best when he noted: Schaeffer was the closest thing to a “man of sorrows” I have seen. He could not allow himself to be happy when most of the world was desperately lost […]
Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 ___________________________________ Today I will answer the simple question: IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE AN OPTIMISTIC SECULAR HUMANIST THAT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN GOD OR AN AFTERLIFE? This question has been around for a long time and you can go back to the 19th century and read this same […]
____________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: ______________ Francis Schaeffer has written extensively on art and culture spanning the last 2000years and here are some posts I have done on this subject before : Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” , episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence”, episode 8 […]
Love and Death [Woody Allen] – What if there is no God? [PL] ___________ _______________ How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason) #02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer 10 Worldview and Truth Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100 Francis […]
___________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: ____________________________ Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro) Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1) Dr. Francis Schaeffer […]
________________ Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro) Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of […]
Woody Allen Should Have Quoted Pascal: “Magic in the Moonlight”
I am no Roger Ebert and don’t watch that many movies, but in my opinion, for what it’s worth, Woody Allen’s 2014 film “Magic in the Moonlight” is one of the last year’s most theologically profound movies. The theological point, however, may easily be missed without careful attention to the story’s irony.
On the surface, unlike Allen’s other theologically profound movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “Magic in the Moonlight” seems to be a light hearted Shakespearian type comedy. Someone might also see similarities with “My Fair Lady.” I did, anyway. However, anyone knowledgeable about modernity as a cultural ethos (the theme of my The Journey of Modern Theology) cannot miss the emphasis on reasonand its limitations.
The main character (played by Colin Firth) is a 1920s celebrity magician whose side line is exposing mediums and psychics as frauds. (Another echo of reality—Houdini.) He is obsessed with Enlightenment-inspired rationalism (positivism) and seems personally offended, on behalf of humanity, by belief in the supernatural. He quotes Nietzsche several times during the movie—on the subject of the death of God and the demise of religion.
However, in the process of attempting to expose a charming young medium as a fraud, he falls in love with her. There are two main problems with this (for him). First, he’s already engaged to someone and their relationship is rational. That is, they are made for each other. Second, his love for the young female medium is completely irrational; they have nothing in common and breaking up with his fiancée to marry her is an offense to reason.
At the end of the movie the magician and the medium get together but only in spite of reason and common sense—as made abundantly clear through a conversation between him and his aunt.
This all-too-brief description of the movie cannot begin to do justice to its charm. The acting is wonderful, the dialogue brilliant, and the scenery amazing.
Toward the end of the movie I couldn’t help blurting out “Do you love by reason?” (Fortunately I was watching the movie at home on DVD because that might have been a problem in a movie theater!) That’s a famous quote from Blaise Pascal, the 17th century mathematician and Christian apologist (and many other things). If I am not mistaken, that question appears in Pensees immediately following the more famous quote “The heart has reasons the reason knows not of.” (For you purists who demand documentation for everything, I apologize. I don’t have time to look it up right now. Take my word for it if you can—Pascal wrote both.)
This seems to me to be the whole point of the movie—other than entertainment through a good story well acted out. The magician resists falling in love with the fake medium with all his mind. But, in the end, he goes against reason and falls into the mystery of inexplicable love. (At the end of the movie I felt sorry for his love interest—in the same way I feel sorry for Eliza Doolittle at the end of “My Fair Lady” every time I see it.)
I think it would not be too much of a stretch to interpret “Magic in the Moonlight” as an anti-rationalism movie. Not anti-reason, but a movie exposing the silliness of extreme rationalism. Call its motif “Pascalian” (to invent a term). Pascal did not reject “the principles of reason;” he only rejected the rationalism he saw budding in Descartes and other Enlightenment philosophers. Pascal anticipated postmodernity by criticizing the omnicompetence of reason.
I’m sure I’m going far beyond anything Woody Allen intended when I say that the movie points to love as a signal of transcendence. The floating candle at the séance may have been faked, but the absurdly irrational love for the medium wasn’t. That’s the point of the movie and I think it’s possible to go the next step and say that the capacity of the human heart to love beyond reason points toward a reality beyond the material and observable. It is reasonable to be open to that revealing itself (or Himself) to us.
_______ Woody Allen’s New Film Is Called ‘Irrational Man’ Posted on Friday, January 30th, 2015 by Angie Han 85 SHARES TwitterFacebook Woody Allen‘s latest film finally has a release date and a studio. Irrational Man will be distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, as were Allen’s last six films.Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Parker Posey, and Jamie […]
__________________ Top 5000 Irrational Man (2015) 24 July 2015 (USA) Not yet released (voting begins after release) On a small town college campus, a philosophy professor in existential crisis gives his life new purpose when he enters into a relationship with his student. Director: Woody Allen Writer: Woody Allen Stars: Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Jamie […]
___________ Sony Acquires Woody Allen’s IRRATIONAL MAN – AMCi Published on Feb 5, 2015 Sony Pictures Classics has acquired the North American rights to Woody Allen’s next film “Irrational Man”. This marks the eight collaboration between Allen and the studio. Few details are known about the film to date but it is said that it […]
Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 ___________________________________ Today I will answer the simple question: IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE AN OPTIMISTIC SECULAR HUMANIST THAT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN GOD OR AN AFTERLIFE? This question has been around for a long time and you can go back to the 19th century and read this same […]
Love and Death [Woody Allen] – What if there is no God? [PL] ___________ _______________ How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason) #02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer 10 Worldview and Truth Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100 Francis […]
______________________ Woody Allen: “the whole thing is tragic” July 20, 2012 Mr. Allen, do you truly believe that happiness in life is impossible? This is my perspective and has always been my perspective on life. I have a very grim, pessimistic view of it. I always have since I was a little boy; it hasn’t […]
___________ Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Naturalistic, Materialistic, World View Francis Schaeffer and Gospel of Christ in the pages of the Bible Francis Schaeffer’s term the “Mannishness of Man” and how it relates to Woody Allen and Charles Darwin!!! Schaeffer noted that everyone has these two things constantly pulling at them. First, it is […]
____ Woody Allen’s past movies and the subject of the Meaning of Life examined!!! Out of the Past: Woody Allen, Nostalgia, the Meaning of Life, and Radio Days Kyle Turner Jul 25, 2014 Film, Twilight Time 1 Comment “I firmly believe, and I don’t say this as a criticism, that life is meaningless.” – Woody […]
__________ I wrote on this yesterday and will continue to write on it for a while. Below is a very fine article by Mike Huckabee on the subject. American people have to take up the slack for absentee president. (Photo: Philippe Wojazer, AFP/Getty Images) 3237CONNECT 21TWEETLINKEDIN 35COMMENTEMAILMORE Woody Allen said that “80% of success is […]
40 songs from Past Woody Films plus song I suggested for Woody Allen’s new film from Pee Wee Spitelera (Clarinetist at Al Hirts’ Club, New Orleans) ___________ Woody Allen – Songs from Woody Allen’s Films Published on Oct 7, 2013 Woody Allen – Songs from Woody Allen’s Films Upload the album here :http://bit.ly/17BenPD iTunes […]
A major way to test a philosophy or worldview is to ask: Is it logically consistent? Internal contradictions are fatal to any worldview because contradictory statements are necessarily false. “This circle is square” is contradictory, so it has to be false. An especially damaging form of contradiction is self-referential absurdity — which means a theory sets up a definition of truth that it itself fails to meet. Therefore it refutes itself….
An example of self-referential absurdity is a theory called evolutionary epistemology, a naturalistic approach that applies evolution to the process of knowing. The theory proposes that the human mind is a product of natural selection. The implication is that the ideas in our minds were selected for their survival value, not for their truth-value.
But what if we apply that theory to itself? Then it, too, was selected for survival, not truth — which discredits its own claim to truth. Evolutionary epistemology commits suicide.
Astonishingly, many prominent thinkers have embraced the theory without detecting the logical contradiction. Philosopher John Gray writes, “If Darwin’s theory of natural selection is true,… the human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth.” What is the contradiction in that statement?
Gray has essentially said, if Darwin’s theory is true, then it “serves evolutionary success, not truth.” In other words, if Darwin’s theory is true, then it is not true.
Self-referential absurdity is akin to the well-known liar’s paradox: “This statement is a lie.” If the statement is true, then (as it says) it is not true, but a lie.
But, of course, no intellectual consideration matters once the naturalists can hear the giant maw of the school system sucking it down. After a while, everyone believes what doesn’t make sense, and no one knows why or cares.
In conjunction with WORLD Magazine, Patrick Henry College presents its interview with Nancy Pearcey as a part of the Newsmaker Interview Series with Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief at WORLD and Distinguished Chair of Journalism and Public Policy at PHC. For more information on Patrick Henry College, visit our website here http://www.phc.edu.
______________ I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds- The Beatles The Beatles: The Beatles […]
________________ I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. The Beatles: The Beatles and their album St. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club […]
__________________ I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. The Beatles are featured in this episode below and Schaeffer noted, ” Sergeant Pepper’s […]
_______________ I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. Great Album The Beatles are featured in this episode below and Schaeffer […]
_______________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: _____________________ Why am I doing this series FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE? John Fischer probably expressed it best when he noted: Schaeffer was the closest thing to a “man of sorrows” I have seen. He could not allow himself to be happy when most of the world was desperately lost […]
Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 ___________________________________ Today I will answer the simple question: IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE AN OPTIMISTIC SECULAR HUMANIST THAT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN GOD OR AN AFTERLIFE? This question has been around for a long time and you can go back to the 19th century and read this same […]
____________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: ______________ Francis Schaeffer has written extensively on art and culture spanning the last 2000years and here are some posts I have done on this subject before : Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” , episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence”, episode 8 […]
Love and Death [Woody Allen] – What if there is no God? [PL] ___________ _______________ How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason) #02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer 10 Worldview and Truth Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100 Francis […]
___________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: ____________________________ Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro) Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1) Dr. Francis Schaeffer […]
________________ Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro) Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of […]
And one of my points, based on this very sobering chart from one of my Cato colleagues, is that America’s educational performance took a turn in the wrong direction when the federal government became more involved starting about 40-50 years ago.
Well, the same unhappy story exists in the higher-education sector. Simply stated, there’s been an explosion of spending, much of it from Washington, yet the rate of return appears to be negative.
Let’s take a closer look at this issue.
Writing for the New York Times, Professor Paul Campos of the University of Colorado begins his column by giving the conventional-wisdom explanation of why it costs so much to go to college.
Once upon a time in America, baby boomers paid for college with the money they made from their summer jobs. Then, over the course of the next few decades, public funding for higher education was slashed. These radical cuts forced universities to raise tuition year after year, which in turn forced the millennial generation to take on crushing educational debt loads, and everyone lived unhappily ever after. This is the story college administrators like to tell when they’re asked to explain why, over the past 35 years, college tuition at public universities has nearly quadrupled, to $9,139 in 2014 dollars.
That’s a compelling story, and it surely has convinced a lot of people, but it has one tiny little problem. It’s utter nonsense.
It is a fairy tale in the worst sense, in that it is not merely false, but rather almost the inverse of the truth. …In fact, public investment in higher education in America is vastly larger today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was during the supposed golden age of public funding in the 1960s. Such spending has increased at a much faster rate than government spending in general. For example, the military’s budget is about 1.8 times higher today than it was in 1960, while legislative appropriations to higher education are more than 10 times higher. In other words, far from being caused by funding cuts, the astonishing rise in college tuition correlates closely with a huge increase in public subsidies for higher education. If over the past three decades car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than $80,000.
Unfortunately, little of this money is being used for education.
…a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions. Even more strikingly, an analysis by a professor at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty members in the C.S.U. system grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 — a 221 percent increase.
This is great news, but only if you’re a bureaucrat.
But if you think education dollars should be used to educate, it’s not very encouraging.
Now let’s zoom back out to the bigger issue. Professor Richard Vedder from Ohio University is even more critical of handouts for the higher-education sector. Here’s some of what he wrote for National Review.
America’s colleges and universities are terribly inefficient and excessively expensive, foster relatively little learning and ability to think critically, and turn out too many graduates who end up underemployed. These and related problems have grown sharply in the half century since the Higher Education Act of 1965 heralded a major expansion of the federal role in higher education.
Rich correctly points out that the federal government has made matters worse.
Washington is far more the problem than the solution to the current afflictions of American higher education. …Tuition has skyrocketed in the era since federal student-loan and grant programs started to become large in the late 1970s. Colleges have effectively confiscated federal loan and grant money designated for students and used it to help fund an academic arms race that has given us climbing walls, lazy rivers, and million-dollar university presidents — but declining literacy among college students and a massive mismatch between students’ labor-market expectations and the realities of the job market.
And you won’t be surprised to learn that federal handouts have backfired against low-income students.
…the primary goal of the federal student-aid programs was to improve access to college for lower-income persons. Here, the record is one of total failure: A smaller percentage of recent college graduates come from the bottom quartile of the income distribution today than was the case in 1970, when federal student-assistance programs were in their infancy.
To close on a semi-optimistic note, Prof. Vedder highlights some intriguing incremental reforms advanced by Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, including the notion that handouts should be linked to performance.
…he seems to embrace the idea that colleges should have “skin in the game”: They should face financial consequences for admitting, and then failing to graduate, students who default on loans and have marginal educational backgrounds indicating that they were clearly ill prepared for truly higher education. …Users and providers of university services need to feel the pain associated with academic non-performance. Growing federal involvement in higher education has brought rising prices, falling quality, and student underemployment. While it is perhaps politically impossible to radically change the federal student financial-aid programs now, the Alexander move is an important first step to rethinking how we finance higher education.
Ultimately, though, we won’t solve the problem unless the federal government’s role is abolished, which is yet another reason to shut down the Department of Education in Washington.
P.P.S. Some people have their fingers crossed that there’s a “tuition bubble” that’s about to pop. I hope that’s true, and it may be happening in a few sectors such as law, but I don’t think the overall higher-education bubble will pop until and unless we end government subsidies and handouts.
________ Dan Mitchell quotes from Milton Friedman video on his blog!!! Wise Words on Regulation and Consumer Freedom from Milton Friedman December 26, 2014 by Dan Mitchell It’s time to correct a sin of omission. In five-plus years of blogging, I haven’t given nearly enough attention to the wisdom of the late (and great) Milton Friedman. […]
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___________ Milton Friedman rightly pointed out that the crisis of the Great Depression was not a failure of the free market system but of government and Dan Mitchell concurs!!! Statist Policy and the Great Depression September 17, 2014 by Dan Mitchell It’s difficult to promote good economic policy when some policy makers have a deeply flawed […]
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________ Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute has noted, “I’m all in favor of bringing federal government spending back down to about 18 percent of GDP, which is where it was when Bill Clinton left office.” The Rise (and Upcoming Fall) of the Welfare State in the Western World November 12, 2013 by Dan Mitchell I […]
I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. It is sad to see our federal government spend away our children’s future but when some of the states are doing that […]
I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. Government Stupidity Defies Satire When a $50 Light Bulb Wins an Affordability Prize March 16, 2012 by Dan Mitchell I’ve written about the […]
I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. Two More Excellent Political Cartoons April 26, 2011 by Dan Mitchell I praised Michael Ramirez a few days ago for his clever political cartoons, […]
Music video by Bill & Gloria Gaither performing Victory in Jesus (feat. Cynthia Clawson, Reggie Smith, Joy Gardner and Mike Allen) [Live]. (P) (C) 2012 Spring House Music Group. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is a violation of applicable laws. Manufactured by EMI Christian Music Group,
I love researching the history or origins of many things, and yesterday the idea came to me to find out the history of some of my old favorite songs. I am posting this blog, because in my search I found that others have this same passion and were having a hard time finding the answers. I hope this blog helps everyone in the search of answers for their questions as well. If you have any information not listed and would like to contribute you may contact me at charlottemae2000@yahoo.com.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
“Victory in Jesus”
Eugene Monroe Bartlett, Sr. is considered one of the founding fathers of Southern Gospel Music. He was born on Christmas Eve in 1885 near Waynesville, Missouri. Bartlett relocated to Sebastian County, Arkansas with his parents. Bartlett dedicated his life to Jesus at an early age. Bartlett attended the Hall-Moody Institute in Martin, Tennessee, and William Jewell College, Liberty, Missouri. Bartlett lived in the south and enjoyed a reputation as a fine music teacher. Based in Arkansas, he traveled the entire southern portion of the country holding singing schools for anyone interested. These and similar schools trained aspiring musicians in vocal technique, sight reading, and conducting and were influential in the development of church music as a whole for much of the remainder of the century.
Eugene M. Bartlett, Sr. meet and married Joan Tatum in 1917. They were parents to two sons, Gene Bartlett, Jr., a nationally known writer of contemporary church music and Charles Bartlett Minister of Music in a large Texas church.
Eugene M. Bartlett, Sr. was a very successful business man, and decided to invest his money in which he founded the Hartford Music Company in Hartford, Arkansas sometime in 1918. Within the first year of business he sold more than 15, 000 copies of his hymnbook. Many writers, singers and musicians received their first opportunity in gospel music at Hartford Music Company including Albert E. Brumley who wrote “I’ll Fly Away” and “Turn Your Radio On.” Bartlett’s mission was to publish hymns and teach singers to sight read. He hired instructors to teach voice, piano, piano tuning, rudiments, harmony and stringed instruments. He also was editor of the music magazine, Herald of Song. His son Eugene, Jr. was also a hymnist and composer. When he was not instructing, Bartlett was an avid composer of hymns and gospel songs.
Though almost all of his songs have sunk into oblivion among the Christian body today, “Victory In Jesus” remains one of the most popular and widely known songs of the church. In 1939, a stroke rendered Bartlett partially paralyzed and unable to perform or travel. He spent the last two years of his life bedridden. Amid such bleak circumstances, he wrote his final and most beloved song, “Victory in Jesus,” an optimistic number that has been sung by millions in worship services and recorded by gospel’s biggest names. The three verses and refrain enthusiastically tell of one’s own personal salvation experience from beginning to end. It’s said that Bartlett missed traveling and teaching, but he could still study the Bible, a study from which he gave us this wonderful song during a time when much of the earth sat on the brink of World War II. The song first appeared that year in “Gospel Choruses,” a paperback songbook published by James Vaughan in Lawrenceburg, Tenn.
Only two years after his stroke, Bartlett died January 25, 1941. He is buried at the Oak Hill Cemetery in Siloam Springs in Benton County. Throughout his 56 years of his life, Bartlett composed more than 800 songs. Since the early 1960s, “Victory in Jesus” has become popular among evangelical congregations, Quartets, and many hymnals have included it within their published pages. Bartlett was inducted into the Gospel Music Association’s Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1973.
Victory in Jesus Lyrics
I heard an old, old story,
how a Savior came from glory,
How He gave His life on Calvary,
to save a wretch like me;
I heard about His groaning,
of His precious blood’s atoning,
Then I repented of my sins
and won the victory.
Oh victory in Jesus, my Savior, forever!
He sought me and bought me
with His redeeming blood;
He loved me ere I knew Him,
and all my love is due Him-
He plunged me to victory
beneath the cleansing flood.
I heard about His healing,
of His cleansing pow’r revealing,
How He made the lame
to walk again and caused the blind to see;
And then I cried, “Dear Jesus,
come and heal my broken spirit,”
And somehow Jesus came
and brought to me the victory.
Oh victory in Jesus, my Savior, forever!
He sought me and bought me
with His redeeming blood;
He loved me ere I knew Him,
and all my love is due Him-
He plunged me to victory
beneath the cleansing flood.
I heard about a mansion
He has built for me in glory,
And I heard about the streets of gold
beyond the crystal sea;
About the angels singing
and the old redemption story-
And some sweet day I’ll sing up there
the song of victory.
Oh victory in Jesus, my Savior, forever!
He sought me and bought me
with His redeeming blood;
He loved me ere I knew Him,
and all my love is due Him-
He plunged me to victory
beneath the cleansing flood.
Other songs:
Everybody Will Be Happy Over There
Camping in Canaan’s Land
Just a Little While
sources:
Find A Grave Memorial# 13737445
Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music edited by W. K. McNeil
Livros – 25 Most Treasured Gospel Hymn Stories – Kenneth W. Osbeck
Anderson p. 200
Baxter, pp. 82-84
Sing Unto the Lord p. 116
Everybody Will Be Happy Over There (Live)
Published on Nov 22, 2012
Music video by Bill & Gloria Gaither performing Everybody Will Be Happy Over There (Live). (P) (C) 2012 Spring House Music Group. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is a violation of applicable laws. Manufactured by EMI Christian Music Group,
Camping in Canaan’s Land [Live]
Published on Jun 22, 2012
Music video by Dailey & Vincent performing Camping in Canaan’s Land (feat. Bill & Gloria Gaither) [Live]. (P) (C) 2012 Spring House Music Group. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is a violation of applicable laws. Manufactured by EMI Christian Music Group,
Just a Little While [Live]
Published on Dec 21, 2012
Music video by Bill & Gloria Gaither performing Just a Little While (feat. Guy Penrod, Rex Nelon, J.D. Sumner and Brock Speer) [Live]. (P) (C) 2012 Spring House Music Group. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is a violation of applicable laws. Manufactured by EMI Christian Music Group,
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Beyond Belief: Carolyn Porco On Science & Religion, Part 1
Uploaded on Dec 4, 2006
At the Beyond Belief conference, astronomer Carolyn Porco describes the spirituality inherent in the scientific view of the Universe.
________________
Dr. Carolyn Porco is the leader of the Cassini Imaging Science team and the Director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) at the Space Science Institute in Boulder,
and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.
Harry Kroto
__________________________
There are 3 videos in this series and they have statements by 150 academics and scientists and I hope to respond to all of them. Wikipedia notes Carolyn C. Porco (born March 6, 1953) is an American planetary scientist known for her work in the exploration of the outer solar system, beginning with her imaging work on the Voyager missions to Jupiter,Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in the 1980s. She leads the imaging science team on the Cassini mission currently in orbit around Saturn.[1] She is also an imaging scientist on the New Horizons[2] mission launched to Pluto on January 19, 2006. She is an expert on planetary rings and the Saturnian moon, Enceladus.
She has co-authored more than 110 scientific papers on subjects ranging from the spectroscopy of Uranus and Neptune, the interstellar medium, the photometry of planetary rings, satellite/ring interactions, computer simulations of planetary rings, the thermal balance of Triton’s polar caps, heat flow in the interior of Jupiter, and a suite of results on the atmosphere, satellites, and rings of Saturn from the Cassini imaging experiment.[3] In 2013, Cassini data[4] confirmed a 1993 prediction[5] by Porco and Mark Marley that acoustic oscillations within the body of Saturn are responsible for creating particular features in the rings of Saturn.
A frequent public speaker, Porco has given two popular lectures at TED[8][9] as well as the opening speech for Pangea Day, a May 2008 global broadcast coordinated from six cities around the world, in which she described the cosmic context for human existence.[10] Porco has also won a number of awards and honors for her contributions to science and the public sphere; for instance, in 2009, New Statesman named her as one of ‘The 50 People Who Matter Today.’[11] In 2010 she was awarded the Carl Sagan Medal, presented by the American Astronomical Society for Excellence in the Communication of Science to the Public.[12] And in 2012, she was named one of the 25 most influential people in space by Time magazine.[13]
Porco speaks frequently on the Cassini mission and planetary exploration in general, and has appeared at renowned conferences such as PopTech 2005[32] and TED (2007, 2009).[8][9] She attended and was a speaker at the Beyond Belief symposium on November 2006.[33][34]
Porco’s 2007 TED talk, “The Human Journey,” detailed two major areas of discovery made by the Cassini mission: the exploration of the Saturnian moons Titan and Enceladus. In her introductory remarks, Porco explained:
So the journey back to Saturn is really part of, and is also a metaphor for, a much larger human voyage.
In describing the environment of Titan, with its molecular nitrogen atmosphere suffused with organic compounds, Porco invited her audience to imagine the scene on the moon’s surface:
Stop and think for a minute. Try to imagine what the surface of Titan might look like. It’s dark: high noon on Titan is as dark as deep Earth twilight on the Earth. It’s cold, it’s eerie, it’s misty, it might be raining, and you are standing on the shores of Lake Michigan brimming with paint thinner.
That is the view that we had of the surface of Titan before we got there with Cassini. And I can tell you that what we have found on Titan, though not the same in detail, is every bit as fascinating as that story is, and for us, for Cassini people, it has been like a Jules Verne adventure come true.
After describing various features discovered on Titan by Cassini, and presenting the historic first photograph of Titan’s surface by the Huygens lander, Porco went on to describe Enceladus and the jets of “fine icy particles” which erupt from the moon’s southern pole:
…we have arrived at the conclusion that these jets may, they may, be erupting from pockets of liquid water near, under the surface of Enceladus. So we have, possibly, liquid water, organic materials and excess heat. In other words we have possibly stumbled upon the holy grail of modern-day planetary exploration, or in other words an environment that is potentially suitable for living organisms. And I don’t think I need to tell you that the discovery of life elsewhere in our Solar system, whether it be on Enceladus or elsewhere, would have enormous cultural and scientific implications. Because if we could demonstrate that genesis had occurred – not once but twice, independently, in our Solar system – then that means by inference it has occurred a staggering number of times throughout our Universe in its 13.7 billion year history.
_______________
Porco is fascinated by the 1960s and The Beatles and has, at times, incorporated references to The Beatles and their music into her presentations, writings, and press releases. The first color image released by Cassini to the public was an image of Jupiter, taken during Cassini’s approach to the giant planet and released on October 9, 2000 to honor John Lennon’s 60th birthday.[59] In 2006, she produced and directed a brief 8-minute movie of 64 of Cassini’s most spectacular images,[60] put to the music of the Beatles, in honor of Paul McCartney’s 64th birthday. And in 2007, she produced a poster showing 64 scenes from Saturn.[61][62]
Porco is also interested in dance and fascinated with Michael Jackson. In August 2010, she won a Michael Jackson costume/dance contest held in Boulder, Colorado.[63]
Quotes of Porco’s were used in the production of “The Poetry of Reality (An Anthem for Science)”, “A Wave of Reason”, “Children of Africa (The Story of Us)”, and “Onward to the Edge!” by Symphony of Science.
Carolyn (at right) re-enacting the famous Beatles photograph at Abbey Road with the other members of the Cassini Imaging Team.
The Beatles are featured in this episode below and Schaeffer noted, ” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world.”
How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)
________________
Her comments can be found on the 2nd video and the 100th clip in this series. Below the videos you will find her words.
50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)
Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2)
A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)
“It seemed to me, if there were any answers to be found at all, they were going to be found in the facts, and understanding the greater theater in which human life has unfolded. And I was right about that. Being a scientist, and staring immensity and eternity in the face every day is about as meaningful I think, and grand and awe-inspiring as it gets. We, especially we astronomers, confront the big questions of wonder every day and the answers to these questions in the aggregate have produced, and this is absolutely with no hype,…the greatest story every told. And there isn’t a religion, I think, that can offer anything better. And as Jules Verne said, reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.”
Below is a letter I recently wrote to Dr. Porco challenging her views on evolution while including a lot of details about her favorite rock group.
________________________________
Francis Schaeffer 1912-1984
__________
March 26, 2015
Dear Dr. Porco,
YOU HAVE SAID that religions use the conceptional device “that people need to feel connected to something greater than they are and this is the idea that God is omnipotent, omniscient and immortal and He made me in his image and through that connection to find meaning and purpose and ultimately to find they too will be immortal and the issue is that people fear death. I THINK THE SAME SPIRITUAL FULFILLMENT THAT PEOPLE FIND IN RELIGION CAN BE FOUND IN SCIENCE.”
There are many ways to respond to that but I am going to do it in a very lengthy but entertainingly way I hope. I read a lot of your material and wanted to talk to about two passions in your life. Francis Schaeffer talked about the views of the Beatles and Charles Darwin a lot and since you have taken an interest in music and science I thought you would be interested in these thoughts of Schaeffer. Another interesting thing about Charles Darwin is that he left the Christian faith of his youth just like you did.
“Sgt. Pepper’s” became my personal sound track of liberation back then…Genie, my wife of 44 years… grew up in the Bay Area and as a teen had the distinction of seeing the Beatles three times (!) live and the Rolling Stones four times (!) live.
Meanwhile, I was growing up in Switzerland in a mission(L’Abri Fellowship), and my “almost famous” rock-n-roll high point came when I got a job helping with theLed Zeppelin’slight show at the Montreux Jazz/rock festival.I met Jimmy Page and noticed he was reading one of my dad’s first books, ESCAPE FROM REASON. (No kidding.)
This was back in the days when Dad was a sort of hippie guru for Jesus catering to Beats, hippies and dropouts hitching across Europe.Eric Claptonhad given Page the book as it turned out. I was trying to be “cool” that day on the light show crew… and I wasn’t too pleased to find my brief escape into the rock world from the world of my Dad’s evangelical mission was no escape from my God-world at all. He’d been giving lectures on Bob Dylan, and drug guru Timothy Leary had been a guest at L’Abri. And now I got to briefly “hang out with the band” and Dad got there first, or at least one of his books did! Sheesh! It’s hard to be cool!
On the front cover are all the famous “Lonely Hearts” of the world who also could not find answers to life with reason and rationality, resorting to the existential leap into the dark (e.g ., Marlene Dietrich, Carl Jung, W.C. Fields, Bob Dylan, Marilyn Monroe, Sigmund Freud, Aleister Crowley, Edgar Allan Poe, Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, Marlon Brando, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Lenny Bruce). They are all viewing the burial scene of the Beatles, which, in the framework we are using here, represents the passing of idealistic innocence and the failure to find a rational answer and meaning to life, an answer to love, purpose, significance and morals.They instead were leaping into the irrational, whether it was by drugs, the occult, suicide, or the bizarre.
William Lane Craig observed that BERTRAND RUSSELL wrotethat we must build our lives upon “the firm foundation of unyielding despair.” and also that Francis Schaeffer noted:
Modern man resides in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God.But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to, since he does not believe in God. Modern man is totally inconsistent when he makes this leap, because these values cannot exist without God, and man in his lower story does not have God.
Charles Darwin had a very interesting reaction late in his life to the possibility that we live in an absurd universe and that was he blamed science for causing him to lose his aesthetic tastes and I read that in his biography ( Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters.). I am going to quote some of Charles Darwin’s own words and then include the comments of Francis Schaeffer on those words. I have also enclosed a CD with two messages from Adrian Rogers and Bill Elliff concerning Darwinism.
“I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did….My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive….The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”
Francis Schaeffer commented:
This is the old man Darwin writing at the end of his life.What he is saying here is the further he has gone on with his studies the more he has seen himself reduced to a machine as far as aesthetic things are concerned.I think this is crucial because as we go through this we find that his struggles and my sincere conviction is that he never came to the logical conclusion of his own position, but he nevertheless in the death of the higher qualities as he calls them, art, music, poetry, and so on, what he had happen to him was his own theory was producing this in his own self just as his theories a hundred years later have produced this in our culture.
Unlike Darwin many people today still hang on to their love of music and the arts. Schaeffer points out in his book The God Who Is There, pages 68-69, “The very ‘mannishness’ of man refuses to live in the logic of the position to which his humanism and rationalism have brought him. To say that I am only a machine is one thing; to live consistently as if this were true is quite another…Every truly modern man is forced to accept some sort of leap in theory or practice, because the pressure of his own humanity demands it. He can say what he will concerning what he himself is; but no matter what he says he is, he is still a man.”
YOU SAID that “I think we can replace the God concept…it is just a matter of developing a socially appealing way to get the word out to everybody. That brings me to religion and whether or not if anything doing with scientific inquiry could ever offer the social embrace that religious organizations do.” At this point you suggested showing the young people what “Awe and Wonder” knowledge of the universe can give. That reminds me of this next letter from Charles Darwin.
Francis Schaeffer noted thatin Darwin’s 1876 Autobiography that Darwin he is going to set forth two arguments for God in this and again you will find when he comes to the end of this that he is in tremendous tension. Darwin wrote,
“At the present day the most usual argument for the existence of an intelligent God is drawn from the deep inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons.Formerly I was led by feelings such as those just referred to, …to the firm conviction of the existence of God and of the immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, ‘it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind.’ I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body; but now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become COLOUR-BLIND.”
Francis Schaeffer remarked:
Now Darwin says when I look back andwhen I look at nature I came to the conclusion that man can not be just a fly!But now Darwin has moved from being a younger man to an older man and he has allowed his presuppositions to enter in to block his logic, these things at the end of his life he had no intellectual answer for. To block them out in favor of his theory. Remember the letter of his that said he had lost all aesthetic senses when he had got older and he had become a clod himself. Now interesting he says just the same thing, but not in relation to the arts, namely music, pictures, etc, but to nature itself. Darwin said,“But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colour-blind…”So now you see that Darwin‘s presuppositions have not only robbed him of the beauty of man’s creation in art, but now the universe. He can’t look at it now and see the beauty.The reason he can’t see the beauty is for a very, very , very simple reason:THE BEAUTY DRIVES HIM TO DISTRACTION. THIS IS WHERE MODERN MAN IS AND IT IS HELL. The art is hell because it reminds him of man and how great man is, and where does it fit in his system? It doesn’t. When he looks at nature and it’s beauty he is driven to the same distraction and so consequently you find what has built up inside him is a real death, not only the beauty of the artistic but the beauty of nature. He has no answer in his logic and he is left in tension. He dies and has become less than human because thesetwo great things (such as any kind of art and the beauty of nature)that would make him human stand against his theory.
Schaeffer later asserted, “We cannot deal with people like human beings, we cannot deal with them on the high level of true humanity, unless we really know their origin-who they are. God tells man who he is. God tells us that He created man in His image. So man is something wonderful.” (Escape from Reason: A Penetrating Analysis of Trends in Modern Thought)
Many young people turned to Eastern Religions in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Francis Schaeffer asserted, “But this finally brings them to the place where the word GOD merely becomes the word GOD, and no certain content can be put into it. In this many of the established theologians are in the same position asGeorge Harrison (1943-) (the former Beatles guitarist)when he wrote MY SWEET LORD (1970). Many people thought he had come to Christianity. But listen to the words in the background: “Krishna, Krishna, Krishna.” Krishna is one Hindu name for God. This song expressed no content, just a feeling of religious experience. To Harrison, the words were equal: Christ or Krishna. Actually, neither the word used nor its content was of importance,” HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? (page 191 Vol 5).
________
In the film series HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Francis Schaeffer shows the Beatles visiting Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India.
“Mr. Darwin…considers that the theory of Evolution is quite compatible with the belief in a God; but that you must remember that different persons have different definitions of what they mean by God.”
Francis Schaeffer commented:
You find a great confusion in Darwin‘s writings although there is a general structure in them. Here he says the word “God” is alright but you find later what he doesn’t take is a personal God. Of course, what you open is the whole modern linguistics concerning the word “God.” is God a pantheistic God? What kind of God is God? Darwin says there is nothing incompatible with the word “God.”
Besides looking to Eastern Religions the Beatles tried to escape from reason by turning to drugs.In the book HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE?, Schaeffer observed,“This emphasis onhallucinogenic drugsbrought with it many rock groups–for example, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Incredible String Band, Pink Floyd, and Jimi Hendrix. Most of their work was from 1965-1968.The Beatles’ SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEART S CLUB BAND (1967) also fits here.This disc is a total unity, not just an isolated series of individual songs, and for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. As a whole, this music was the vehicle to carry the drug culture and the mentality which went with it across frontiers which were almost impassible by other means of communication.”
When the Beatles released their album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in the late spring of 1967,fans and critics alike were quick to find references to drugs throughout the LP. The album’s deliriously decorated jacket featured marijuana plants in the garden behind which the Beatles stood. The lyrics of With a Little Help from My Friends, Lovely Rita, and A Day in the Life all referred to marijuana, mentioning getting “high” and taking “some tea,” as well a desire to “turn you on.” And tuned-in listeners easily connected the feelings, sensations, and visions people typically experience while on hallucinogenic drugs to the dreamlike imagery of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Some clever listeners even pointed out that the song’s title shares the initials of the hallucinogen LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide).
The Beatles had no doubt contributed to the perception that Sgt. Pepper was indeed a piece of hippie propaganda for hallucinogenic partying. Around the time the album was released, Paul McCartney revealed in a Life magazine interview that he had been using marijuana and LSD. McCartney even went on to extol the virtues of LSD, claiming that it had brought him closer to God and would yield world peace if only politicians would try it. Soon after, John Lennon, George Harrison, and the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein also admitted that they had used LSD. Later that summer, the Beatles endorsed the legalization of marijuana by signing their names to a full-page advertisement in the London Times.
Despite these public proclamations about his drug use, John Lennon steadfastly denied that Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was about drugs. Lennon instead consistently claimed that the song was a response to a picture painted by his almost four-year-old son Julian. The oft-repeated story goes that Julian had brought the picture home from school and told his father that it was of his friend, Lucy, who was up in the sky with diamonds. Lennon’s mind had then wandered toward the Lewis Carroll books Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass that he had long admired and recently been re-reading. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was born when Lennon took images from Julian’s picture and combined them with elements of Carroll’s stories and poems.
A third explanation for the song’s meaning and origin was provided by Lennon many years after it was written, just a few weeks before he was killed. While reflecting on each of the songs in his discography, Lennon said this about Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds:
“There was also the image of the female who would someday come save me—a “girl with kaleidoscope eyes” who would come out of the sky. It turned out to be Yoko, though I hadn’t met Yoko yet. . . . The imagery was Alice in the boat. And also the image of this female who would come and save me—this secret love that was going to come one day. So it turned out to be Yoko, though, and I hadn’t met Yoko then. But she was my imaginary girl that we all have.”
Despite the fact that some people do not think that LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS was about drugs, the fact remains that it was probably considered so through the years by most drug users!!!!!!
SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEART S CLUB BAND not only dealt with drugs but also with death. In the TELEGRAPH in Nicky Browne’s obit it was noted that “Paul McCartney told interviewers that he took LSD for the first time with Tara Browne.” Wikipedia records, “The HonourableTara Browne (4 March 1945 – 18 December 1966) was a young Londonsocialite and heir to the Guinness fortune and was the son of Dominick Browne, 4th Baron Oranmore and Browne, a member of the House of Lords since 1927 who later became famous for having served in that house longer than any other peer…According to some sources, Tara was the inspiration for the Beatles song “A Day in the Life“. He sat in on the making of the Beatles record ‘Revolver’.
On 17 January 1967 John Lennon, a friend of Browne’s, was composing music at his piano whilst idly reading London’s Daily Mail and happened upon the news of the coroner’s verdict into Browne’s death. He worked the story into the song “A Day in the Life“, later released on the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The second verse features the following lines:
He blew his mind out in a car, He didn’t notice that the lights had changed, A crowd of people stood and stared, They’d seen his face before, Nobody was really sure, If he was from the House of Lords.
According to Lennon, in his 1980 interview with Playboy magazine, “I was reading the paper one day and I noticed two stories. One was the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash.”
A side note about Tara Browne is that in Paris his social circle was the likes of Samuel Beckett, Salvador Dali, and Jean Cocteau. Samuel Beckett had a lot to say on this issue of man’s significance as William Lane Craig has noted:
If each individual person passes out of existence when he dies, then what ultimate meaning can be given to his life? Does it really matter whether he ever existed at all? It might be said that his life was important because it influenced others or affected the course of history. But this shows only a relative significance to his life, not an ultimate significance. His life may be important relative to certain other events, but what is the ultimate significance of any of those events? If all the events are meaningless, then what can be the ultimate significance of influencing any of them? Ultimately it makes no difference.
This is the horror of modern man: because he ends in nothing, he is nothing.
Twentieth-century man came to understand this. Read WAITING FOR GODOT bySamuel Beckett. During this entire play two men carry on trivial conversation while waiting for a third man to arrive, who never does. Our lives are like that, BECKETT IS SAYING: WE JUST KILL TIME WAITING–FOR WHAT, WE DON’T KNOW. In a tragic portrayal of man, Beckett wrote another play in which the curtain opens revealing a stage littered with junk. For thirty long seconds, the audience sits and stares in silence at that junk. Then the curtain closes. That’s all.
French existentialistsJean-Paul SartreandAlbert Camusunderstood this, too. Sartre portrayed life in his play No Exit as hell—the final line of the play are the words of resignation, “Well, let’s get on with it.” Hence, Sartre writes elsewhere of the “nausea” of existence. Man, he says, is adrift in a boat without a rudder on an endless sea. Camus, too, saw life as absurd. At the end of his brief novel The Stranger, Camus’s hero discovers in a flash of insight that the universe has no meaning and there is no God to give it one. The French biochemistJacques Monodseemed to echo those sentiments when he wrote in his work Chance and Necessity, “Man finally knows he is alone in the indifferent immensity of the universe.”
Thus, if there is no God, then life itself becomes meaningless. Man and the universe are without ultimate significance.
IN LIGHT OF THESE STATEMENTS BY SARTRE, CAMUS, BECKETT, and MONAD HOW CAN YOU STILL ASSERT THE FOLLOWING:
“It is possible to regard death as a natural event and even perhaps a wondrous state that takes place in the wonderful story in what we see around us in the universe. That can be taught to be a comforting thought. We know exactly what it is like to be dead because it is exactly the same state we were in before we were born.”
IN SPITE OF ALL THIS MANY SECULARISTS HAVE ADOPTED WHAT I CALL “EVOLUTIONARY OPTIMISTIC HUMANISM” and even in the 19th century Charles Darwin in his autobiography was touting THE SAME PRODUCT AS I SEE YOU ARE TODAY!!!
“It seemed to me, if there were any answers to be found at all, they were going to be found in the facts, and understanding the greater theater in which human life has unfolded. And I was right about that. Being a scientist, and staring immensity and eternity in the face every day is about as meaningful I think, and grand and awe-inspiring as it gets. We, especially we astronomers, confront the big questions of wonder every day and the answers to these questions in the aggregate have produced, and this is absolutely with no hype,…the greatest story every told. And there isn’t a religion, I think, that can offer anything better. And as Jules Verne said, reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.”
YOUR QUOTE DEMONSTRATES WHAT I CALL “OPTIMISTIC HUMANISM.” It is truly a “romantic” point of view of secularism.
“Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is,”
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER COMMENTED:
Now you have now the birth of Julian Huxley’s evolutionary optimistic humanism already stated by Darwin. Darwin now has a theory that man is going to be better. If you had lived at 1860 or 1890 and you said to Darwin, “By 1970 will man be better?” He certainly would have the hope that man would be better as Julian Huxley does today. Of course, I wonder what he would say if he lived in our day and saw what has been made of his own views in the direction of (the mass murder) Richard Speck (and deterministic thinking of today’s philosophers). I wonder what he would say. So you have the factor, already the dilemma in Darwin that I pointed out in Julian Huxley and that is evolutionary optimistic humanism rests always on tomorrow. You never have an argument from the present or the past for evolutionary optimistic humanism.
You can have evolutionary nihilism on the basis of the present and the past. Every time you have someone bringing in evolutionary optimistic humanism it is always based on what is going to be produced tomorrow. When is it coming? The years pass and is it coming? Arthur Koestler doesn’t think it is coming. He sees lots of problems here and puts forth for another solution.
WHAT EVOLUTIONISTS LIKE YOURSELF ARE LEFT WITH IS ONLY THE HOPE OF “biological continuity and increased biological complexity” AS DARWIN AND SCHAEFFER POINT OUT BELOW. YOU HAVE SAID CONCERNING “Enceladus, “That was tremendously exciting to find, because not only do we think there’s liquid water there, not only is there an enormous amount of excess heat, but we also have organic materials. That, I mean, that is the trifecta that we’re looking for, the three main ingredients for a habitable zone.”
Why are you searching so hard for intelligent life? The answer is pretty clear. We were created in God’s image and we will feel empty until we reunite with him. YOU SAID IT YOURSELF AND I QUOTED IT IN THIS LETTER ALREADY and that is you as a secularist are competing with this view that God created in his own image for a special purpose. The message of the movie CONTACT is basically about mankind trying to reach out to other beings so we can ask them the big questions. The scientist Blaise Pascal summarized it up best when he said, “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.” Just today I heard this radio commentary from Eric Metaxas on the SETI PROGRAM.
It’s been fifty years and E.T. still hasn’t called. So maybe it’s time we give him a call? Although some don’t think that’s such a great idea.
When we step out at night and look up at the stars, we can’t help wondering: Is there someone else out there? And if there is, would these extraterrestrials be benign and curious like the musical aliens in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” or would they be malicious and hostile like the Klingons of “Star Trek”?
Well, ever since stargazer Frank Drake conducted his first scan of the heavens in 1960, that’s the question he and other scientists have been asking. Drake, the chairman emeritus of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence or SETI, was one of the first to point a radio telescope toward space and listen for the tell-tale signals of intelligent life.
Like astronomer and “Cosmos” host Carl Sagan, Drake developed an equation for estimating the number of civilizations on other planets in our galaxy. And like Sagan’s estimates, his were astronomical: Billions of planets should have life, he reasoned, and of those, millions ought to have evolved intelligent beings. And so the researchers at SETI turned their radio dishes skyward, and listened.
Of course, as I write in my book “Miracles,”Carl Sagan (and hence Drake) got it wrong. The probability for life is astronomical all right—astronomically IM-probable, since we now know there are more than 150 absolutely-necessary and rare conditions that must be met to sustain life. So it’s no wonder that instead of a cacophony of radio signals from intelligent life somewhere out there, all we’re hearing is the silence of the stars.
But some scientists insist that just because we haven’t heard from E.T. doesn’t mean he’s not out there. So now they’re proposing a radical new strategy. It’s called “Active SETI,” and as Joel Achenbach explains in The Washington Post, its goal would be to “boldly announce our presence and try to get the conversation started.”
Rather than just listening for signals from space, scientists would beam messages at stars that they considered good candidates for life and they’d wait for potential civilizations orbiting those stars to respond. Maybe within a few hundred years, we would finally discover we aren’t alone in the universe.
But not everyone likes that idea. A petition signed by 28 influential scientists warns of the potential danger of Active SETI. They’ve seen the movie, or the movies, I should say, and they know it doesn’t end well for us earthlings. Their concern is whether these ETI’s will be benign or hostile: good point.
Frank Drake himself thinks Active SETI is a waste of time. We’ve been leaking radio signals into space since before the days of “I Love Lucy,” he points out. Anyone in our galactic neighborhood with an antenna already knows we’re here.
Hearing all of this talk of aliens, I can’t help but think of Walker Percey’s brilliant book, “Lost in the Cosmos.” In it, he observes that the more we learn about the universe, the lonelier we become. And he’s right. Even the most rational scientists have poured untold treasure, time, and talent into the hunt for extraterrestrial neighbors—with nothing to reward their efforts.
One thing we do know, we humans long to know we’re not alone. And the good news, as Christians know, is that we’re not! We aren’t “lost in the cosmos,” but we are the centerpiece of a grand plan that culminated in a visitation by Someone from beyond our universe.
“…it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. To those who fully admit the immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful.”
Francis Schaeffer commented:
Here you feel Marcel Proust and the dust of death is on everything today because the dust of death is on everything tomorrow. Here you have the dilemma of Nevil Shute’sON THE BEACH.If it is true that all we have left is biological continuity and increased biological complexity, which is all we have left in Darwinism here, or with many of the modern philosophers, then you can’t stand Shute’sON THE BEACH.Maybe tomorrow at noon human life may be wiped out. Darwin already feels the tension, because if human life is going to be wiped out tomorrow, what is it worth today? Darwin can’t stand the thought of death of all men.Charlie Chaplinwhen he heard there was no life on Mars said, “I’m lonely.”
You think of the Swedish Opera (ANIARA) that is pictured inside a spaceship. There was a group of men and women going into outer space and they had come to another planet and the singing inside the spaceship was normal opera music. Suddenly there was a big explosion and the world had blown up and these were the last people left, the only conscious people left, and the last scene is the spaceship is off course and it will never land, but will just sail out into outer space and that is the end of the plot. They say when it was shown in Stockholm the first time, the tough Swedes with all their modern mannishness, came out (after the opera was over) with hardly a word said, just complete silence.
Darwin already with his own position says he CAN’T STAND IT!! You can say, “Why can’t you stand it?” We would say to Darwin, “You were not made for this kind of thing. Man was made in the image of God. Your CAN’T- STAND- IT- NESS is screaming at you that your position is wrong. Why can’t you listen to yourself?”
You find all he is left here is biological continuity, and thus his feeling as well as his reason now is against his own theory, yet he holds it against the conclusions of his reason. Reason doesn’t make it hard to be a Christian. Darwin shows us the other way. He is holding his position against his reason.
These words of Darwin ring in my ear, “…it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress…” . Schaeffer rightly noted, “Maybe tomorrow at noon human life may be wiped out. Darwin already feels the tension, because if human life is going to be wiped out tomorrow, what is it worth today? Darwin can’t stand the thought of death of all men.”IN OTHER WORDS ALL WE ARE IS DUST IN THE WIND. I sent you a CD that starts off with the song DUST IN THE WIND by Kerry Livgren of the group KANSAS which was a hit song in 1978 when it rose to #6 on the charts because so many people connected with the message of the song. It included these words, “All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
Kerry Livgren himself said that he wrote the song because he saw where man was without a personal God in the picture. Solomon pointed out in the Book of Ecclesiastes that those who believe that God doesn’t exist must accept three things. FIRST, death is the end. SECOND, chance and time are the only guiding forces in this life. FINALLY, power reigns in this life and the scales are never balanced. The Christian can face death and also confront the world knowing that it is not determined by chance and time alone and finally there is a judge who will balance the scales.
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Kansas, circa 1973 (Phil Ehart, Kerry Livgren, Steve Walsh, Rich Williams, Robby Steinhardt, Dave Hope) (photo credit: DON HUNSTEIN)
____________________________________________
BothKerry Livgren and the bass player Dave Hope of Kansas became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgren first tried Eastern Religions and Dave Hope had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was shocked and elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981 and that same interview can be seen on You Tube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. DAVE HOPE is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.
(Aldous Huxley, pictured above, was an English literary author who is renowned for his novel,Brave New World, which was published in 1931. Apart from writing novels, he also wrote a few travel books, poems, plays and several essays on religion, art and sociology)
HOW DID THE BEATLES SEARCH END UP AND WHY WAS ALDOUS HUXLEY PUT ON THE COVER OF “SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEART S CLUB BAND”? Below is an excerpt from Francis A. Schaeffer‘s 1972 paper on the trends seen in secular society concerning drug use:
The philosophic basis for the drug scene came from ALDOUS HUXLEY'S
concept that, since, for the rationalist, reason is not
taking us anywhere, we should look for a final experience, one
that can be produced "on call," one that we do not need to
wait for. The drug scene, in other words, was at first an ideol-
ogy, an ideology that had very practical consequences. Some of
us at L'Abri have cried over the young people who have blown
their minds. But many of them thought, like Alan Watts, Gary
Snyder, Alan Ginsberg and Timothy Leary, that if you could
simply turn everyone on, there would be an answer to man's
longings. It wasn't just the far-out freaks who suggested that
you could put drugs in the drinking water and turn on a whole
city so that the "pigs" and the kids would all have flowers in
their hair. In those days it really was an optimistic ideological
concept...
The Beatles are a sort of test case.First they were just a
rock group, then they took to drugs and expressed that in such
songs as Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. When
drugs didn't pan out, when they saw what was happening in
Haight-Ashbury, they turned to the psychedelic sounds of
Straivberry Fields, and then went further into Eastern religiousexperiences. But that, too, did not work out, and they wound
up their career as a group by making The Yellow Submarine.
When they made this movie, some people said, "The Beatles
are coming back." But of course that was not the case. It was
really 'the sad end of their ideological search as a group. It's
interesting that Erich Segal, the man who wrote the film script
for THE YELLOW SUBMARINE, then wrote LOVE STORY.
About the film:
In 1973, six guys in a local band from America’s heartland began a journey that surpassed even their own wildest expectations, by achieving worldwide superstardom… watch the story unfold as the incredible story of the band KANSAS is told for the first time in the DVD Miracles Out of Nowhere.
_____________________________ Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 3 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 3 of 3: ‘Is Woody Allen A Romantic Or A Realist?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, Crimes and Misdemeanors, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras.http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/antons@mail.ubc.ca ______________ I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times […]
Friendly Fire with John Whitehead—Rob Boston (Part 1) Uploaded by RutherfordInstitute on Aug 20, 2007 An interview with Rob Boston, Assistant Director of Communications, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Part 1. ____________ Above you see Rob Boston discuss the teaching of intelligent design in the class room. He was against it. Obama’s […]
_____________________________ Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 3 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 3 of 3: ‘Is Woody Allen A Romantic Or A Realist?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, Crimes and Misdemeanors, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras.http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/antons@mail.ubc.ca ______________ I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times […]
________________ Kansas – Dust In The Wind “Live” HD Rolling Stones: “Satisfaction!” U2 Still Haven’t Found (with lyrics) Carl Sagan appears on CBC to discuss the importance of SETI [Carl Sagan Archives] __________________________________________________ On December 5, 1995, I got a letter back from Carl Sagan and I was very impressed that he took time to answer […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
On March 17, 2013 at our worship service at Fellowship Bible Church, Ben Parkinson who is one of our teaching pastors spoke on Genesis 1. He spoke about an issue that I was very interested in. Ben started the sermon by reading the following scripture: Genesis 1-2:3 English Standard Version (ESV) The Creation of the […]
At the end of this post is a message by RC Sproul in which he discusses Sagan. Over the years I have confronted many atheists. Here is one story below: I really believe Hebrews 4:12 when it asserts: For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the […]
In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]
Nancy Pearcey is professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University, where she directs the Center for Christian Worldview. Her books include Total Truth,Saving Leonardo, The Soul of Science (with Charles Thaxton), and several she authored with Chuck Colson. On March 1, David C. Cook published her new book, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes.
You studied the violin in Germany and went to Iowa State on a music scholarship. How did playing the violin help you to find truth? People think apologetics is for a stereotypical, intellectually oriented person, but Francis Schaeffer showed that ideas permeate culture through art, literature, movies, and music. Cultural apologetics appeals to the whole person.
Did you have a teenage rebellion? I gave up my Christian background when I was in high school. We were regular churchgoers, but I wanted to know whether Christianity is true. None of the adults in my life could answer that question. A Christian professor told me, “It works for me!” A seminary dean said, “Don’t worry, we all have doubts sometimes.”
Your rebellion was going to the library and reading widely. I literally started pulling books off the philosophy shelf—because I thought if Christians can’t answer my questions, maybe the philosophers can. Because I had a strong Christian background, when I gave it up I understood immediately there is no purpose to life, no foundation for ethics or knowledge. I even fell into skepticism, moral relativism: I was the one in my group of friends in high school arguing there is no right or wrong.
I’ve read that when you were in college, your parents were visiting Francis Schaeffer’s haven in Switzerland, L’Abri, and you went there just to meet them. It was very clear from the questions I asked that I was not a Christian, and for L’Abri staffers that was an appeal, so they invited me to stay. The form of Christianity I had known was anti-intellectual, anti-cultural, cold, and impersonal. L’Abri was the opposite. After a month I fled because I was afraid I would make a decision out of less than genuine conviction. I continued reading on my own and eventually became intellectually convinced that Christianity is true. A year and a half later I went back and got grounded in my understanding of the Christian worldview. It’s where I got the more personal/practical side of being a Christian.
How would students today have an experience like that? It’s hard. In Finding Truth I cite a survey done at evangelical schools: Only half of the professors said they could give a Christian perspective in their field. Most of them get their higher degrees at secular graduate schools where they don’t have a realistic opportunity to develop a Christian worldview. They probably had to fly under the radar screen because if they did express a Christian perspective, they might be penalized.
Where should students start? The first step is find the idol: What’s in place of God as the ultimate reality? In Romans, Paul says we all have evidence of God from the created order, but we suppress that evidence by creating God substitutes. Our personal idols might be things like success or relationships, but reason can also be an idol. The philosophy of materialism says matter is the ultimate reality, the source and cause of everything else.
‘An idol is something in creation, something lower than God, it will always lead to a lower view of the human person.’
Once we identify the idol, what then? Spell out some of the negative consequences—because an idol is something in creation, something lower than God, it will always lead to a lower view of the human person. For example, MIT robotics professor emeritus Rodney Brooks calls a human being “a big bag of skin full of biomolecules” interacting by the laws of physics and chemistry. He is a materialist. Can Rodney Brooks live with that? He doesn’t treat his children as machines. He says, “They have my unconditional love, the furthest one might be able to get from rational analysis.” If rationality is defined by a materialist worldview, then it is irrational to love your own children—so Brooks is admitting that his own worldview is too small.
But couldn’t an evolutionist say Rodney Brooks’ love for his daughter makes enormous sense in terms of the genetic imperative: He’ll protect his daughter, and his genes will advance through the millennia. Many thinkers don’t take that step. Francis Schaeffer used the metaphor of two stories in a building; materialists say the lower story is real, but they have an upper story where they put things they can’t deny in their personal experience: free will, their love for their children, consciousness.
Compartmentalizing? Steven Pinker said when he’s in the laboratory he treats people as complex data processing machines, but when he goes home “we go back to talking about each other as free and dignified human beings.”
After we find the idol, what then? Test the idol against the real world. A low view of humanity is a form of reductionism, which means reducing something from a higher level of complexity and value to a lower level of complexity, like saying religion is just an expression of emotional need, or love is just a chemical reaction, or human beings are just complex biochemical machines—some things won’t fit in its box.
Let me ask about a current idol: How would you respond if you were running for president and a reporter asked, “Do you believe in evolution?” I’d say sure I do—depending on what you mean by evolution. Most textbooks define it as “change over time.” Who doesn’t believe living things change over time? Where people disagree is the cause of the change—is all of it due to natural processes, like natural selection? In public schools you should teach the scientific reasons for and against, and critical thinking: To be truly liberal would be to teach all of the potential answers so students can think critically.
The BioLogos Foundation is the new kid on the block in the Darwinist debate. What do you think of its work? When people accept evolution, it almost always ends up affecting their theology, their view of the human person. Generally they end up giving up the Fall and the reality of sin, because after all we are moving upward, we are advancing. Sin means we just aren’t evolved enough and haven’t quite transcended the biological instincts that drive us. And what happens then? How do you define salvation? If we are not truly fallen and if our sin is redefined as “just not evolved enough,” is it a matter of moral evil or just metaphysical limitation?
Any reason for hope? Those who are truly Christian are becoming much more committed. In most of America, you can no longer sit on the fence. More people are saying, If I’m a Christian then I’m going to be a committed Christian. I’ll know what I believe and why I believe it.
Marvin Olasky
Marvin is editor in chief of WORLD News Group and the author of more than 20 books, including The Tragedy of American Compassion. Follow Marvin on Twitter @MarvinOlasky.
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Interview with Nancy Pearcey; 23 February 2015
Published on Feb 23, 2015
In conjunction with WORLD Magazine, Patrick Henry College presents its interview with Nancy Pearcey as a part of the Newsmaker Interview Series with Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief at WORLD and Distinguished Chair of Journalism and Public Policy at PHC. For more information on Patrick Henry College, visit our website here http://www.phc.edu.
______________ I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds- The Beatles The Beatles: The Beatles […]
________________ I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. The Beatles: The Beatles and their album St. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club […]
__________________ I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. The Beatles are featured in this episode below and Schaeffer noted, ” Sergeant Pepper’s […]
_______________ I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. Great Album The Beatles are featured in this episode below and Schaeffer […]
_______________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: _____________________ Why am I doing this series FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE? John Fischer probably expressed it best when he noted: Schaeffer was the closest thing to a “man of sorrows” I have seen. He could not allow himself to be happy when most of the world was desperately lost […]
Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 ___________________________________ Today I will answer the simple question: IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE AN OPTIMISTIC SECULAR HUMANIST THAT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN GOD OR AN AFTERLIFE? This question has been around for a long time and you can go back to the 19th century and read this same […]
____________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: ______________ Francis Schaeffer has written extensively on art and culture spanning the last 2000years and here are some posts I have done on this subject before : Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” , episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence”, episode 8 […]
Love and Death [Woody Allen] – What if there is no God? [PL] ___________ _______________ How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason) #02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer 10 Worldview and Truth Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100 Francis […]
___________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: ____________________________ Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro) Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1) Dr. Francis Schaeffer […]
________________ Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro) Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of […]
I want to hold out for a great love. I want to go to my wedding night knowing that he’s the only man that I’ve every been with.
Rebecca St. James is one of the most powerful and beloved figures in Christian music, and is well known for her decision to wait until marriage for sex. She’s written books about waiting, hit songs about waiting, and even a book about married life after waiting.
With a career that started when she was only 13 years old, she’s been belting out mega-hit songs and inspiring young people for over twenty years. Few people are this consistently talented and admirable over such a long period; she’s a star by any measure.
Mini Biography
Born: July 26, 1977 to father David (a concert promoter) and mother Helen. Her birth name is Rebecca Jean Smallbone.
Age 8: While attending a children’s church group meeting in Australia, she makes a conscious decision to give her heart to God, a moment that she will remember clearly for the rest of her life as “the best decision I ever made.”
Age 9-11: Attends Pacific Hills Christian School in Australia.
Age 12: Writes her first song while still in the eighth grade. Her father, well equipped as a concert promoter to showcase her talent, gets her a gig as the opening act for contemporary Christian music artist Carmen.
Age 13: Releases independent album Refresh My Heart in Australia under the stage name “Rebecca Jean.” Soon after, her father receives a job offer in the US and moves her family to the United States.
Age 15: Signs a contract with with ForeFront Records, who wants her to adopt a stage name. The suggest “Rebecca St. John” but she doesn’t like it (because she has a relative named John). She likes the idea of “St. James,” since James was the name of her grandfather who recently passed away. She calls her grandmother and asks for advice on stage names. Her grandmother immediately suggests “James,” confirming Rebecca’s impulse.
Age 16: Releases her first major label album, the self-titled Rebecca St. James.
Age 17: Releases a secondary EP titled Extended Play Remixes
Age 18: Releases second major album (God). Unlike her previous albums, this one focuses more on rock. Critics like it, and it peaks at #168 on the Billboard 200 and #6 on Billboard’s Contemporary Christian chart.
Age 19: Nominated for Grammy for Best Rock Gospel Album. To promote her new album, she releases a devotional book called 40 Days with God: A Devotional Journey. Her album God will go on to sell 500,000 copies.
Age 20: Releases a holiday album called Christmas which hits #14 on Billboard’s Contemporary Christian chart.
Age 21: Releases third studio album, Pray. Album hits #168 on teh Billboard 200 and #5 on the Contemporary Christian Chart.
Age 22: Pray wins the Grammy for Best Rock/Gospel Album (the album will eventually sell over 500k copies). Releases song titled “Yes, I believe in God” in memory of the Columbine shooting.
Age 23: Releases fourth album Transform, which hits #14 on the Contemporary Christian Chart. Includes the hits Wait for Me and Reborn. Makes a cameo in Left Behind: the Movie. Re-releases her original devotional book with new layout and five new devotions.
Age 24: Releases new album Worship God to rave reviews. It hits #94 on the overall Billboard 200 (her highest rank yet). Also records a DVD full of interviews that she includes with the album.
Age 25: Writes a book called Wait for Me: Rediscovering the Joy of Purity in Romance, which promotes waiting until marriage for sex, cementing her as a key spokesperson for abstinence. Her book goes on to sell 100,000 copies and spawn a journal and study guide. Releases her first compilation project titled Wait For Me: the Best From Rebecca St. James. includes two new songs including “I Thank You” which peaks at #2 on Billboard’s Hot Christian Songs chart, but fails to make the overall Billboard 200.
Age 27: Releases her first live album, Live Worship: Blessed Be Your Name which features 7 new songs and 2 studio recorded songs. Writes and releases new book, SHE: Safe, Healthy, Empowered: The Woman You’re Made to Be. Stars in the stage musical Hero! as a modern-day Mary Magdalene. Also participates in the pop/prock VeggieTales album (by covering the VeggiTales Theme Song).
Age 28: After a break from recording music, returns to studio to record new album If I Had One Chance to Tell You Something. New single “Alive” hits #3 on the Christian Billboard Chart. Goes on Tour with fellow Christian superstars BarlowGirl. Also records the official theme song for the National Day of Prayer. Her longtime label ForeFront Records releases album titled The Early Years that covered ten songs from her early releases. Makes her major film role debut as Colleen in Unidentified.
Age 29: Takes a musical hiatus, while her record company releases lots of successful remixes and compilations.
Age 31: Releases a new devotional book, Pure: A 90-Day Devotional for the Mind, Body, & Spirit.
Age 32: Stars in the film Sarah’s Choice, which was praised by Christian movie critics. Releases a new song titled You’re Alive and a new book, Loved: Stories of Forgiveness. Also wraps up filming on a new movie titled Rising Stars.
Age 33: Boyfriend Jacob Fink proposes on Christmas Day 2010 at her family farm. Parts ways with ForeFront records and releases a ninth album I Will Praise You. She and Jacob Fink are married at the Juniperro Serra museum in San Diego, California just 3 months before her 34th birthday. While he personal life is soaring to new heights, she also stars in two movies: The Frontier Boys and Suing the Devil.
Age 34: Writes and releases new book, “What Is He Thinking?” that is declared a “must-read for every girl who is wondering where all the good guys have gone” by radio host Sean Hannity.
Video: Rebecca St. James explains why she waits
Note: She’s about 31 years old in this video, a year or so before she meets, falls in love with, and marries Jacob Fink.
The Poison – The All-American Rejects Avril Lavigne and Tyson Ritter from All American Rejects Talk Almost Alice The All-American Rejects – Dirty Little Secret Tyson Ritter, the leadsinger of the All-American Rejects has admitted that he was a jerk for the last couple of years when he lived a sexually impure life by sleeping […]
The Poison – The All-American Rejects Avril Lavigne and Tyson Ritter from All American Rejects Talk Almost Alice The All-American Rejects – Dirty Little Secret I got to see the All-American Rejects in concert on 12-13-12 in Little Rock and I have written about it several times already. Tyson Ritter, the leadsinger of the All-American […]
Katy Perry and the material from the Prism Album!!!! Part 4 Katy Perry On Bonnie McKee, John Mayer & New Album, “Prism” in 92.3 NOW Interview Published on Aug 13, 2013 Katy Perry talks to 92.3 NOW’s Ty Bentli in NYC about her new music, working with Bonnie McKee and not dating Robert Pattinson. __________________________ […]
Katy Perry and the material from the Prism Album!!!! Part 3 Katy Perry – Roar (Official) Last Friday Katy Perry and Russell Brand’s divorce rumors came true when Brand reportedly filed for divorce in Los Angeles citing, “irreconcilable differences.” TMZ met up with Perry’s father, Keith Hudson, as he was out shopping and when they […]
APOLOGETICS, THEN AND NOW Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason Dr. Schaeffer’s sweeping epic on the rise and decline of Western thought and Culture _______________________ I love the works of Francis Schaeffer and I have been on the internet reading several blogs that talk about Schaeffer’s work and the work below was […]
Katy Perry and the material from the Prism Album!!!! Part 2 Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Neil Patrick Harris Interviewed at ‘The Smurfs 2′ World premiere From Wikipedia: Katy Perry From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search “Katy Hudson” redirects here. For the album, see Katy Hudson (album). For the Australian fashion designer, see […]
Katy Perry and the material from the Prism Album!!!! Part 1 Katy Perry – Roar (Official) Katy Perry on Her Strict Evangelical Upbringing: ‘I Didn’t Have a Childhood’ By Alison Matheson, Christian Post Correspondent May 5, 2011|2:37 am Pop star Katy Perry isn’t shy when it comes to flaunting her body and strutting her […]
GRACE UNPLUGGED Add To My Top 10 Prodigal Daughter Content +4 Quality None Light Moderate Heavy Language Violence Sex Nudity What the Ratings Mean 24 Release Date: October 04, 2013 Starring: AJ Michalka, James Denton, Kevin Pollak, Michael […]
“We don’t have forever” by Francis Schaeffer from 1980 The Scientific Age Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode 8 – The Age of Fragmentation NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN Francis Schaeffer- How Should We Then Live? -8- The Age of Fragmentation Joseph Rozak· https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEmwy_dI2j0_______________________ I love the works of Francis Schaeffer and […]
_____________ Francis Schaeffer’s Double-Edged Ethic by Peggy J. Haslar The Scientific Age Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 _______________ Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason Dr. Schaeffer’s sweeping epic on the rise and decline of Western thought and Culture _______________________ I love the works of Francis Schaeffer and I have been on the […]
The Daily Hatch 