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Ronnie Lane – Ooh la la (live @ BBC 1974)

ROD STEWART & THE FACES – ANGEL

Rod Stewart -The Faces – Stay With Me – Live 1972

I have read over 40 autobiographies by ROCKERS and it seems to me that almost every one of those books can be reduced to 4 points. Once fame hit me then I became hooked on drugs. Next I became an alcoholic (or may have been hooked on both at same time). Thirdly, I chased the skirts and thought happiness would be found through more sex with more women. Finally, in my old age I have found being faithful to my wife and getting over addictions has led to happiness like I never knew before. (Almost every autobiography I have read from rockers has these points in it although Steven Tyler is still chasing the skirts!!).

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Francis August Schaeffer (January 30, 1912 – May 15, 1984^[1])

building of king solomon’s temple

The Judgment of Solomon, 1617 by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640)

Steel mezzotint engraving by John Sartain
of the 1863 painting by Christian Schussele

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Adrian Pierce Rogers (September 12, 1931 – November 15, 2005)

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Larry Joe Speaks  (August 20, 1947 to April 7, 2017)

On April 16, 2017 is the day we celebrate Easter which is about Christ’s resurrection from the dead!!!

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April 16, 2017

Rod Stewart

Dear Rod,

I read your book  ROD:THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ROD STEWART  and in that book you said your father’s recipe for contentment in life was a JOB, a sport and a hobby. This letter is about the issue of labor and what a job can mean to a man. Today I want to start off talking about your life’s work and your accomplishments.

Wikipedia notes:

Sir Roderick David Stewart, CBE (born 10 January 1945)^[1] is a British rock singer and songwriter. Born and raised in London, he is of Scottish and English ancestry. Stewart is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold over 100 million records worldwide.^[2] He has had six consecutive number one albums in the UK and his tally of 62 UK hit singles includes 31 that reached the top ten, six of which gained the #1 position.^[3] Stewart has had 16 top ten singles in the US, with four reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. He was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to music and charity.^[4]

You have been tremendously blessed in your talents and your life work has brought you much in financial rewards and notoriety in your field. With that in mind in today’s letter I want to compare you to King Solomon and look at what both you and Solomon have accomplished in the area of LABOR (or his life’s work).

As  you know in these series of letters I am looking at  the 6 L words that  Solomon pursued in the Book  of Ecclesiastes and today I am looking at LABOR (Solomon’s life work). Now that we have looked at some of your accomplishments, let us take a look at SOLOMON. I consider you a very successful man in your field and in that sense you are similar to SOLOMON, and by comparing you two I am in no way trying to belittle your accomplishments. However, I do want to point out some of SOLOMON’s own words of analysis concerning his legacy from Ecclesiastes (which is Richard Dawkins favorite book in the Bible).

SOLOMON was remembered for his WISDOM and his success with the LADIES, but he was also remembered for his LABOR (his life work). For Solomon that basically came down to the labor he commissioned in his building campaigns through out his kingdom plus the effort he put forth building his own palace and the temple in Jerusalem.

Below are the comments of Francis Schaeffer on SOLOMON and the Book of Ecclesiastes:

Leonardo da Vinci and Solomon both were universal men searching for the meaning in life. Solomon was searching for a meaning in the midst of the details of life. His struggle was to find the MEANING OF LIFE. Not just plans in life. Anybody can find plans in life. A child can fill up his time with plans of building tomorrow’s sand castle when today’s has been washed away. There is a difference between finding plans in life and purpose in life. Humanism since the Renaissance and onward has never found it. Modern man has not found it and it has always got worse and darker in a very real way.

We have here the declaration of Solomon’s universality:

1 Kings 4:30-34

English Standard Version (ESV)

30 so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt. 31 For he was wiser than all other men…and his fame was in all the surrounding nations. 32 He also spoke 3,000 proverbs, and his songs were 1,005. 33 He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall. He spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of reptiles, and of fish. 34 And people of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth, who had heard of his wisdom.

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Here is the universal man and his genius. Solomon is the universal man with a empire at his disposal. Solomon had it all.

Ecclesiastes 1:3

English Standard Version (ESV)

3 What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?

Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.”
After wisdom Solomon comes to the great WORKS of men. Ecclesiastes 1:14, “I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is [p]vanity and striving after wind.” Solomon is the man with an empire at this disposal that speaks. This is the man who has the copper refineries in Ezion-geber. This is the man who made the stables across his empire. This is the man who built the temple in Jerusalem. This is the man who stands on the world trade routes. He is not a provincial. He knew what was happening on the Phonetician coast and he knew what was happening in Egypt. There is no doubt he already knew something of building. This is Solomon and he pursues the greatness of his own construction and his conclusion is VANITY AND VEXATION OF SPIRIT.

Ecclesiastes 2:18-20

18 Thus I hated all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun, for I must leave it to the man who will come after me. 19 And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the fruit of my labor for which I have labored by acting wisely under the sun. This too is vanity. 20 Therefore I completely despaired of all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun.

He looked at the works of his hands, great and multiplied by his wealth and his position and he shrugged his shoulders.

Ecclesiastes 2:22-23

22 For what does a man get in all his labor and in his striving with which he labors under the sun? 23 Because all his days his task is painful and grievous; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is vanity.

Man can not rest and yet he is never done and yet the things which he builds will out live him. If one wants an ironical three phrases these are they. There is a Dutch saying, “The tailor makes many suits but one day he will make a suit that will outlast the tailor.”

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Many have tried sexual exploits just like Solomon did, and many have thrown their efforts into business too. Sadly Solomon also found the pursuit of great works in his LABOR just as empty. In Ecclesiastes 2:11 he asserted, “THEN I CONSIDERED ALL THAT MY HANDS HAD DONE AND THE TOLL I HAD EXPENDED IN DOING IT, AND BEHOLD, ALL WAS VANITY AND A STRIVING AFTER WIND, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”

Many people through history have reminded me of Solomon because they are looking for lasting meaning in their life and they are looking in the same 6 areas that King Solomon did in what I call the 6 big L words. He looked into learning (1:16-18), laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and LABOR (2:4-6, 18-20).

Then in last few words in the Book of Ecclesiastes he looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture: “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”

I started writing this series of 7 letters to you concerning Solomon and the meaning of life after the death of my good friend LARRY SPEAKS. During the last 20 years of his life Larry would hand out CD’s of Adrian Rogers’ message WHO IS JESUS? and I wanted to share one of the points that is made in that sermon that particularly applies today since it is EASTER:

Simon Peter gave THREE LINES OF EVIDENCE, three witnesses; and we use these same three witnesses when we share Jesus today. Let’s look at Acts chapter 10:

39 And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, 40 but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, 41 not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. 43 To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

I THE PERSONAL WITNESS OF THE SAINTS (Acts 10:39)

The apostles were a diverse group, yet they were united in their witness. Among them:
John was young, observant and sensitive.
Peter was a rough, hard-working fisherman.
Simon the Zealot was a political activist.
Nathaniel and Thomas both tended to be skeptical and inquiring.
Matthew was a hardened, political businessman.
Andrew was gentle and compassionate.
Philip was a calculating thinker.
James was a straight shooter.
They were eyewitnesses of the virtuous life of Jesus.
Acts 10:34 & 38
Matthew 17:1-5
They were eyewitnesses of His vicarious death.
Acts 10:39
Deuteronomy 21:23
They were eyewitnesses of His victorious resurrection.
Acts 10:40-41
II THE PROPHETIC WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES (Acts 10:43) (We looked at this in a previous letter.)

III THE PERSUASIVE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT (Acts 10:44)

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Today is Easter and I listened to one one my favorite Easter Songs “O Praise the Name.” Let me encourage you to look it up on You Tube.  Christ died NOT for his own sins because he was sinless, but for ours (Romans 10:9) so we could receive the free gift of grace (Ephesians 2:8). Through your LABOR you can NOT earn salvation.

Romans 10:8-13 English Standard Version (ESV)

8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); 9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, Little Rock, AR 72221

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This is the third portion of my 5-15-94 letter to Stephen Jay Gould and last week I posted the second portion and next week I will post the fourth portion.

SECTION #2 If there is no Afterlife, how can there be any lasting meaning to our lives? Should people be asking themselves these types of Questions???

Albert Camus:The fundamental question about life is meaning, anything else is secondary and until that question of meaning is dealt with I really cannot for what the answers are for the other queries.George H. Smith – Religions are successful, not because they provide the correct answers, but because they ask important questions—Questions that concern every human being. What is the nature of the universe? Is there a purpose, or plan, to human existence? …PESSIMISM FROM AGNOSTICS?Nathaniel Brandon: But twentieth-century philosophy has almost totally backed off from the responsibility of offering such a vision or addressing itself to the kind of questions human beings struggle with in the course of their existence. Twentieth-century philosophy typically scorns system building. The problems to which it addresses itself grow smaller and smaller and more and more remote from human experience. At their philosophical conferences and conventions, philosophers explicitly acknowledge that they have nothing of practical value to offer anyone. This is not my accusation; they announce it themselves.During the same period of history, the twentieth century, orthodox religion has lost more and more of its hold over people’s minds and lives. It is perceived as more and more irrelevant. Its demise as a cultural force really began with the Renaissance and has been declining ever since.But the need for answers persists. The need for values by which to guide our lives remains unabated. The hunger for intelligibility is as strong as it ever was. The world around us is more and more confusing, more and more frightening; the need to understand it cries out in anguish.The ENCYCLPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY on page 471 “When Fred Hoyle in his book THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE turns to what he calls ‘the deeper issues’ and remarks that we find ourselves in a ‘dreadful situation’ in which there is ‘scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has ourselves in a ‘dreadful situation’ in which there is ‘scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance.’ He is using the word ‘significance’ in this comic sense.”

On Sunday April 11, 1920 in Chicago there was a debate on this question: Has life any meaning? The following 3 quotes were taken from that meeting:Percy Ward -How can life have any meaning at all, when all living things, along with the world on which they live, are doomed to destruction? What meaning can there be to life, when its dominant law is age-long and world-wide struggle for existence? What possible meaning can there be to life, when the chief experience of living things is suffering and pain? Percy Ward – “To what end is comic evolution moving? All this life which rises, step by step, from moneron to main is impotent effort; the road to nowhere. Imagine an artist devoting his entire life to the painting of a wonderful picture; and then, when his picture is completed, tearing it to ribbons, what could be the meaning of such a painter’s behavior? Arthur J. Balfour – “Man, so far as natural science by itself is able to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe, the heaven-descended heir of all the ages. His very existence is an accident, history a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets…Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish, the uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a long space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. Imperishable monuments and immortal deeds, death itself, will be as though they had never been.”SHOULD TRUE HUMANISTS BE OPTIMISTS OR NIHILISTS?????????Paul Kurtz –

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“The universe is neutral, indifferent to man’s existential yearnings. But we instinctively discover life, experience its throb, its excitement, its attraction. Life is here to be lived, enjoyed, suffered, and endured…Again–one cannot ‘prove’ this normative principle to everyone’s satisfaction. Living beings tend instinctively to maintain themselves and to reproduce beyond ultimate justification. It is a brute fact of our contingent natures; It is an instinctive desire to live.”

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J.P. Moreland – “2 Objections to optimistic humanism: #1 There is no rational justification for choosing it over nihilism. As far as rationality is concerned, it has nothing to offer over nihilism. Therefore, optimistic humanism suffers from some of the same objections we raised against nihilism. Kurtz himself admits that the ultimate values of humanism are incapable of rational justification!!!!!!  #2 Optimistic Humanism really answers the question of the meaning of life in the negative, just as nihilism does. For the optimistic humanist life has no objective value or purpose; It offers only subjective satisfaction, one should think long and hard before embracing such a horrible view. If there is a decent case that life has objective value and purpose, then such a case should be given as good a hearing as possible.  

R.C. Sproul:Nihilism has two traditional enemies–Theism and Naive Humanism. The theist contradicts the nihilist because the existence of God guarantees that ultimate meaning and significance of personal life and history. Naive Humanism is considered naive by the nihilist because it rhapsodizes–with no rational foundation–the dignity and significance of human life. The humanist declares that man is a cosmic accident whose origin was fortuitous and entrenched in meaningless insignificance. Yet in between the humanist mindlessly crusades for, defends, and celebrates the chimera of human dignity…Herein is the dilemma: Nihilism declares that nothing really matters ultimately…In my judgment, no philosophical treatise has ever surpassed or equaled the penetrating analysis of the ultimate question of meaning versus vanity that is found in the Book of Ecclesiastes

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J. Kerby Anderson– “The cynicism and skepticism in the arts, politics, commerce, and the media all testify to the futility of trying to find wisdom and meaning in a world without wisdom based on ‘the Fear of the Lord’ is folly.

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Ravi Zacharias – “Having killed God, the atheist is left with no reason for being, no morality to espouse, no meaning to life and no hope beyond the grave.”Arthur Ashe – (born in 1943, won U.S.Open in 1968, and Wimbledon in 1975) “If I am just remembered as an exceptional tennis player then my life really was not much.”The next two quotes by Kai Nielson and the next quote by J.P. Moreland were taken from a debate held at Ole Miss on March 24, 1988. This debate was later published by Prometheus Books by the title DOES GOD EXIST?
Does death ultimately take away the love we feel for others?Kai Nielson – “If you love someone, whether there is a God or not, that love can go on. It remains intact. It might even be more intact, because if death ends it all, the love relationships between people in life are all the more precious because that is all there is in that respect. So that’s perfectly intact, God or no God. Indeed, as I have just argued, it may even become more important.”

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Clarence Darrow – “I love my friends, but they all must come to a tragic end. Death is more terrible the more one is attached to things in the world.” Do we need a lasting purpose to our lives?Kai Nielson – “There are all those intentions, purposes, goals, and the like that you can figure out and can have. They are what John Rawls called life plans. You can have all these purposes in life even though there is no purpose to life. So life doesn’t become meaningless and pointless if you were not made for a purpose.”

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Francis Schaeffer – “The struggle for modern man is to begin with himself and find a meaning in life. Not just plans in life. It is nothing to have plans in life. Anybody can find plans in life. A child can fill up his time with plans of building tomorrow’s sand castle when today’s have been washed away. There is a difference between finding plans in life and purpose.”J.P.Moreland – “James Rachels says that we don’t need purpose in the sense of an over arching objective purpose to life, but we can have purpose in life, as Nielson says. And he means by that ‘subjective satisfaction,’ things that we find worthwhile to us. Now if this is true, what’s the difference, let’s say between becoming a doctor and feeding the poor and sitting around pinching heads off rats or being a Sisyphus and pushing a rock up and down a hill, or giving your time to flipping tiddlywinks? There is no difference since each of these options could be satisfying and worthwhile to someone.”Marvin Kohl – (Taken from an article in FREE INQUIRY, Spring 81 issue, article entitled, “The Meaning of Life and belief in God” ) “….Belief in beneficent providence is untrue. It is untrue because there is no evidence to warrant the claim that there is a benevolent force behind nature. Not only does the secular humanist deny that we have knowledge about a friend behind the universe; He also denies that we have knowledge about divine or cosmic purpose. The argument in its essential form is simple and, I believe, decisive. Purposes can only be correctly assigned to sentient beings; And since man does not have knowledge that God or other sentient beings govern the universe, He cannot on a cognitive level maintain that the universe has any purpose…The facts also indicate that many, like lady Katharine (Bertrand Russell’s Christian daughter who was quoted earlier in the article), are given insight about the meaning of life, about  the chief end of human living, when they believe God makes a disclosure about his own nature and purpose and gently embraces them in his absolute love. In short, it appears to be true that belief in God has had and still has the power to give comfort and consolation to millions of devout believers. Largely because of this, two important claims cannot be easily, if at all, dismissed. They are: (1) that in addition to other basic human needs, there is a need for psychological security, which includes the need to believe in God, or at least believe that the cosmos is guided by a loving purpose; and (2) that this need is often successfully met if a man genuinely recognizes that his goal for living is in, and given to him by, God.”Aldous Huxley – “Science does not retain the sovereignty over metaphysical pronouncements…Science does not have the right to give to me my reason for being and my definition for existence, but I am going to take science’s view because I want this world not to have meaning because it frees me to my own erotic and political desires.”

He fought every ‘ism’ in the book

One of the most important cultural figures of our time never wrote about anything without showing his deep moral concerns

By Michael Ruse,
The Globe and Mail
Thursday, May 23, 2002; Page R9

In 1980, the then-governor of the State of Arkansas, one Bill Clinton, was thrown out of office after just one term. Chastened, Mr. Clinton mended his fences and regained office in 1982, a position he held until 10 years later when he was elected President of the United States of America. The governor during the interregnum was a man whose unsuitability for office was equalled only by his surprise at gaining it. He had no hesitation in signing into law a bill that demanded that the children of the state be taught, in their biology classes, what its supporters referred to by the oxymoron “Scientific Creationism,” and what is better known to the rest of us as the unfiltered, early chapters of the book of Genesis—six days of creation, 6,000 years ago, Adam and Eve miraculously up from the mud, and a worldwide flood a few years later when God grew disappointed with the product.

At once the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sprang into action, challenging the validity of this law. It would be hard to imagine a more direct and blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state. Genesis had to be shown to be religion and not science.

At the same time, the alternative world picture—the world picture that claims that organisms including humans are the end products of a long slow process of evolution—had to be shown to be science. But, who could speak for science at this time? One person above all stood out on everybody’s list: Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University.

Prof. Gould was a provocative and much-regarded paleontologist. At the same time, he was one of the best-known science writers in America. Every month, a whole generation of readers eagerly took up the magazine Natural History, turning to Prof. Gould’s column “This view of life,” ready to be amazed, amused, annoyed, and above all appreciative of his fascinating disquisitions on the world of organisms around us.

There was no one better able to explain evolutionary thinking and to defend the scientific approach. Thus it was that, at the end of 1981, Prof. Gould flew south to Arkansas to testify for the ACLU. And thus it was that I forged a friendship with one of the most remarkable people I have ever been privileged to know, for I too was a witness in Arkansas against the Creationist law, for the ACLU. At the time I was a professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ont., and, like Prof. Gould, I also had been called to testify on behalf of the science that we both loved.

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Steve Gould died earlier this week of cancer at his home in Manhattan. His last book, a collection of essays, was published at the beginning of this month. I Have Landed uses as its title a comment made in the diary of Prof. Gould’s immigrant grandfather, on arriving in 1904 at Ellis Island. Now, it refers poignantly to Stephen Jay Gould’s own life as his pen is laid down for the very last time. More precisely, as his manual typewriter, on which he composed everything, falls silent.

But what a flight. As a scientist, Prof. Gould is best known for the theory of “punctuated equilibrium,” formulated by him and his student Niles Eldredge. The theory is based on the claim that the history of life is not one of smooth unbroken change, progressing always in an orderly and controlled matter, but is rather one of continency and sharp breaks, as life moves in jumps from one form to another.

With this, Prof. Gould also mounted a decades-long attack on the dominant evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin, that supposes that natural selection is the main cause of change and that the result is the highly adapted nature of all organisms. Again and again Prof. Gould challenged this view, arguing in his most notorious essay that much of life has no function, no purpose, and is at best a by-product of other forces, as are the functionless areas at the tops of columns in medieval churches—”spandrels” that simply are, without intent or end.

Earlier this year, Prof. Gould published his magnum opus The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, in which he gave a full and detailed defence of his thinking. Moving from history to science, from science to literature, from literature to religion, and then back from religion to history, he laid out his vision of the history of life and of its causal processes. Whether or not this vision endures, no one can deny the synthetic grasp of the author and the greatness of his imagination and intent.

But there are many good and even great scientists. For me, what made Stephen Jay Gould a man above the ordinary was his ability to take science and to explain it to regular people. In person, he could be difficult and at times uncomfortably arrogant. Too often, he lost patience with questioners. But when writing, he was a man transformed. Never a hint of condescension. Never a hint of triviality. Never a hint of false modesty or trying to impress because he was an important man, more talented than most.

Prof. Gould would take an object or an idea and draw it out, turn it over, cut it into parts, rebuild it, and all the time explain and connect and instruct. Why is the zebra striped, and is it a white animal with black stripes or a black animal with white stripes—and who cares and why? How do animals (and plants, for that matter) go from A to B? Flying, walking, swimming, floating on air, slithering on the ground, swinging through the trees, and more. But why did they never invent the most efficient mode of transport of all, the wheel? (Or did they?) What was the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin up to at the time of the Piltdown Hoax? Could it be that one of the most revered figures of the 20th century was himself involved in the greatest fraud of the century? (You can imagine the squawks that that particular column brought on!) And so the ideas flowed forth and excited all who turned to his pages.

What made Prof. Gould one of the most important cultural figures of our time was that he never wrote on anything—starting with the snails on which he wrote his doctoral dissertation—without showing his deep moral concerns. For him, there was no sterile distinction between fact and value. The practice of science for Steve Gould was a truly moral enterprise—using our talents to make out the nature of reality—and the product of science was likewise a force for good or ill. Throughout his life, he fought against racism and sexism and every other vile “ism” in the book.

Born into a totally secular Jewish family, he had no formal faith, but for me he was the epitome of the truly religious man. He would appreciate the irony—he knew more of the New Testament than most Christians—if I (a fellow non-believer) say that Stephen Jay Gould was the servant who used his talents wisely and found favour with his Lord.

I do not want to end on a pompous or formal or sad manner, for above all else Steve Gould was fun. By the end of the third day of the Arkansas Creation Trial, it was clear that the ACLU and its evolutionists were on the way to a smashing victory. We started to relax, and that night at dinner we dined well and not particularly wisely.

An angelic junior member of the law firm that was advising us broke into the beautiful hymn, Amazing Grace. Prof. Gould was a keen singer of oratorio and no voice was louder than his. We came to the line that speaks of worshipping God for 10,000 years. An idea a little too close for comfort. We drew to embarrassed silence, looking at each other. Then we started to laugh. It was a good moment.

Michael Ruse is Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. Previously, he was professor of history and philosophy of science at Ontario’s Guelph University.

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Gould grumbles about creationist ‘hijacking’

by Don Batten

‘Eminent biologist hits back at the creationists who “hijacked” his theory for their own ends’.

So says the headline of an article by Steve Connor, Science Editor in The Independent(UK), April 9, 2002, referring to the imminent release of Professor Stephen Jay Gould’s new book, a 1,400 page treatise called The Structure of Evolutionary Theory.¹ Gould is a high-profile professor of zoology from Harvard University, well-known for promoting the controversial view that the fossil record contradicts the slow-and-gradual transformation idea of classical Darwinism. More recently, he has become more famous for revealing Darwin’s Real Message, but at the same time trying to pacify ‘religious’ people by asserting that religion and science have ‘non-overlapping magisteria’ (NOMA).² The following quotes are from Connor’s article.

‘Professor Gould accuses creationists of having exploited the sometimes bitter dispute between him and his fellow Darwinists …’

I guess we’re ‘guilty as charged’ on this one. It seems that Gould would have it that only evolutionists be permitted to use the arguments of evolutionists. Only those ‘in the club’ can legitimately discuss these things, it would appear.

Ever since Darwin, evolutionists have almost universally maintained that the supposed change from one basic type of organism to another occurred slowly, gradually, in tiny steps. The fossils did not support this idea, and Darwin blamed incompleteness of the record. Others repeated this excuse, right up to the present day, including Richard Dawkins, the ‘archbishop of atheism’ at Oxford University in the UK.³

Gould and Niles Eldredge, a former student of Gould, actually faced up to the fossil record and decided it did not support the gradualist dogma.⁴ They argued strongly against some of the classical claims of gradual transformation. In doing this they were inadvertently agreeing with creationists. Naturally, creationists used their admissions.

In 1977 Gould wrote,

‘The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. … to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.’⁵

In 1980 Gould said,

‘The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.’⁶

It would be difficult to find franker admissions to the lack of evidence for gradual transitions in the fossil record.

Now it is a powerful and legitimate debating tactic, employed by all, to use the admissions of ‘hostile witnesses’. Clearly, Gould is not a creationist and has no sympathies whatsoever with us. He appeared on behalf of the evolutionary thought police, the ACLU (which incongruously contains the word ‘liberties’ in its title), at the 1981 trial over the teaching of origins in schools in Arkansas. Both he and Eldredge have used quite intemperate, insulting language in referring to creationists, especially since 1981. See a refutation of Eldredge’s latest anti-creationist foray.

We make no apology for using the admissions of evolutionists about the true nature of the fossil record. Other evolutionists have also admitted the problems. See, for example, Are there any Transitional Fossils?

‘Professor Gould says creationists have unwittingly misinterpreted or deliberately misquoted his work…’

Recognizing the non-gradualist nature of the fossil record, in 1972 Gould and Eldredge published a radical new theory of evolution that supposedly fitted the observations of the fossil record. They described the fossil record as representing long periods of equilibriumor stasis (things staying much the same), which are punctuated by the relatively sudden appearance of new forms. Hence they dubbed their new theory ‘punctuated equilibrium’ (PE). Fossils showing transitions from one form to another are missing, and to establish the need for the new theory of evolution, Gould and Eldredge argued very forcibly against supposed examples of gradual change in the fossils. For example, Eldredge had studied trilobites at length, looking for the classical gradual transformations, but without success—one of the many dead ends that evolutionary thinking has led to. (Nor did he solve the problem of how possibly the most sophisticated eye of all time could have evolved supposedly right at the beginning of complex animal life—see Trilobite Technology.)

Of course Gould and Eldredge are wedded to materialist philosophy (and self-servingly make this a defining characteristic of ‘science’—see The rules of the game), so the data cannot for them mean that evolution did not occur. It’s ‘a fact’.

They reasoned that evolution must have happened in such a way that transitional fossils are absent or very rare. They proposed that the changes must have occurred in small populations and relatively rapidly. The latter has to be understood in terms of the supposed mega-years of the evolutionary view—that is, the changes occurred over thousands of years, which, compared to the hundreds of millions of years of the fossil record, is a ‘rapid’ change. This new theory supposedly accounted for the origin of new species; it was claimed to not be about the origin of radically different body plans (such as phyla). Nevertheless, if PE and its proposed mechanisms are an accurate description of the basic mode of operation of evolution, as Eldredge and Gould originally argued, then it must also account for the origin of basic body plans, because evolution supposedly accounts for all the variation in living things. However, on several occasions Gould has suggested that some basically different mechanism must operate to account for fundamentally different body plans.

In this regard Gould spoke favourably of the ideas of Richard Goldschmidt,⁷ a German palaeontologist from the mid-1900s who also faced up to the lack of transitional fossils, and listed a number of complex structures that couldn’t have been built by small advantageous steps. Goldschmidt agonized over the big picture of the fossil record—where the major categories of living things, the phyla, appear fully formed, without any evidence of a graded series of transitions from some common ancestor of all. Goldschmidt proposed a ‘hopeful monster’ theory, where the major body plans were seen as arising suddenly, by some sort of macromutation. This was popularly portrayed as being like a bird emerging out of a reptile egg—a ‘hopeful monster’ theory.

Undoubtedly some creationists have misconstrued Gould’s work, conflating Gould’s writings on speciation and macroevolution, and then characterizing PE as a ‘hopeful monster’ theory. But some evolutionists have ‘misunderstood’ Gould too. Maybe this is not surprising, since Gould’s article had the term in its title, and he said:

‘I do, however, predict that during the next decade Goldschmidt will be largely vindicated in the world of evolutionary biology.’

However, I know of no mainstream creationists deliberately misquoting his work; that is something else. Evolutionists often make these sweeping claims, without substantiation.

For a detailed review of Gould and Eldredge’s PE, and how it has fared, see ‘Punctuated Equilibrium: Come of Age?’, originally published in TJ (the in-depth journal of Creation). This will demonstrate to any fair-minded reader that we have not misconstrued or deliberately misquoted Gould’s work.

‘”I had no premonition about the hubbub that punctuated equilibrium would generate,” Professor Gould said. Some “absurdly-hyped popular accounts” proclaimed the death of Darwinism, with punctuated equilibrium as the primary assassin, he says.

‘“Our theory became the public symbol and stalking horse for all debate within evolutionary theory. Moreover, since popular impression now falsely linked the supposed ‘trouble’ within evolutionary theory to the rise of creationism, some intemperate colleagues began to blame Eldredge and me for the growing strength of creationism.”

“Thus, we stood falsely accused by some colleagues both for dishonestly exaggerating our theory to proclaim the death of Darwin (presumably for our own cynical quest for fame), and for unwittingly fostering the scourge of creationism as well,” he said.

‘Not every scientist, however, would agree that Professor Gould was innocent in the dispute…’

Perhaps this explains the vitriolic denunciations of creationists since the 1981 Arkansas trial—Gould endeavouring to close ranks with other materialists, to repair the breach, to prove that he is just as caustic in his criticism of creationists as any of his colleagues in a competition to be ‘more anti-creationist than thou’. There is nothing like a common enemy to bring solidarity.

Gould protests about popular accounts that used PE to proclaim the death of Darwinism, but these accounts often simply reflected the enthusiasm Gould portrayed for his ideas on PE as an alternative to standard Darwinism. He was indeed proclaiming the death of orthodox (neo-) Darwinism. In recent years Gould and Eldredge have moderated their claims from PE being a new theory to replace gradualism to being an additional concept to be added to the grab bag of evolutionary tools used to ‘explain’ all and sundry observations. Evolutionist Levinton recognized this change, saying in response to Gould and Eldredge’s review of PE⁸ published in 1993:

‘Gould and Eldredge have devolved their claims of punctuation from an “alternative” to being “complementary” [to gradualism].’⁹

Also, Ernst Mayr, whom Gould critiqued as a representative of gradualism, dismissed Gould’s ideas as merely a variant of his own theory of allopatric speciation (i.e. geographical isolation leading to reproductive isolation).

The addition of PE to the evolutionist’s tool kit makes evolution even more untestable than ever as a pretender to be a scientific theory. Darwin predicted gradualism in the fossils. After 110 years of pretending that the fossils would be found, evolutionists were forced by Gould and Eldredge (mainly) to face up to the evidence. The transitional fossils had not been found. This contradicted the most basic prediction of Darwinism. It should have meant the death of the idea, if it were truly a scientific theory. However, Darwinism is part of the atheist / materialist worldview. Richard Dawkins, a vigorous critic of Gould, said that Darwinism made atheism intellectually respectable.¹⁰ On this point they undoubtedly agree. Karl Popper, the philosopher of science, said, ‘Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical [i.e., religious] research programme…’.¹¹ As a well-known current philosopher of science, Michael Ruse, said,

‘Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. … Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.… Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.’¹²

This is especially significant because Ruse had also testified with the ACLU in the same trial as Gould, and at that time dismissed the idea that evolution was religion.

Consequently, Darwinism will not die while ever there are atheists wanting to be ‘intellectually respectable’. Darwinism / evolution has come to mean simply ‘naturalistic (that is, Creator-less) origins theory’. Since in the minds of Dawkins, Gould and co. there is no Creator in the real world, then ‘evolution’ (naturalism) is a fact.

Gould and Eldredge provided an escape route from the evidence against the normal gradualist concept of evolution—PE. As they said in their 1993 review, they gave ‘theoretical space’ to stasis and abrupt appearance. Long argued by creationists as evidence against evolution, stasis and abrupt appearance now became the evidence forevolution by PE! So how can evolution be refuted in the minds of its proponents? It can’t. If a series of fossils showing transformation can be found,¹³then this is claimed as evidence for ‘evolution’ (gradualism), but if such cannot be found, then this is also claimed as evidence for ‘evolution’ (PE). ‘Heads we [evolutionists] win; tails you [creationists] lose’!

Gould’s writings have encouraged many creationists. It’s nice that stasis and abrupt appearance, the actual data of the fossils, have been given ‘theoretical space’ by a prominent evolutionist. If it were not for the growth of the modern creation movement, many other evolutionists might have joined with Gould and Eldredge in facing up to the data. Initially some did, such as Vrba and Stanley. That’s much less likely since 1981. Darwinian fundamentalists like Dawkins (a non-paleontologist) continue to refuse to allow the fossil evidence to speak. As a biologist, Dawkins made his reputation on just-so story-telling for the slow-and-gradual neo-Darwinian myth. He probably also realizes that the information problem in living things is difficult enough to solve in neo-Darwinism, but it would be impossible with PE, so he fights the fossil experts such as Gould who would rock the boat (see also this critique of Dawkins’ attempt to solve the information problem).

It seems that the real data of the fossils has once again been pushed into the background. It just fits the Creation / Flood teaching of the Bible too well.

References

1. Connor, S., Eminent biologist hits back at the creationists who ‘hijacked’ his theory for their own ends, The Independent, 9 April 2002; Web version last accessed 18 April 2002. Return to text.
2. Gould provides nothing original in this idea—18^th century ‘Enlightenment’ philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that religion and science were two separate domains that must be kept apart. Return to text.
3. Dawkins actually occupies the Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science, but he uses his position not to promote understanding of real operational science at all, such as physics or chemistry, but instead to flagrantly promote atheism. See also critiques of Dawkins at Countering critics’ attacks on creationist ‘design’ arguments. Return to text.
4. Eldredge, N. and Gould, S.J., Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism. In: Models in Paleobiology, T.J.M. Schopf (ed.), Freeman, Cooper and Co., San Francisco, pp. 82–115, 1972. Return to text.
5. Gould, S.J., Evolution’ erratic pace. Natural History 86(5):14, 1977. Return to text.
6. Gould, S.J., Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging? Paleobiology 6:119–130 (p.127), 1980. Return to text.
7. For example, Gould, S.J., The return of hopeful monsters. Natural History 86(6):22–30, 1977. Return to text.
8. Gould, S.J., and Eldredge, N., Punctuated equilibrium comes of age. Nature 366:223–227, 1993. Return to text.
9. Levinton, J., Scientific correspondence. Nature 368:407, 1994. Return to text.
10. On this point alone it is strange indeed that various bishops in the Anglican Church in England have sided with the atheist Dawkins in advocating the teaching of evolution only to children in schools in the U.K. Do these bishops want the education system to turn out atheists? Return to text.
11. Popper, K., Unended Quest p.151, 1976 (Fontana, Collins, Glasgow). Return to text.
12. Michael Ruse, professor of philosophy and zoology at the University of Guelph, Canada (National Post, May 13, 2000, pp. B1,B3,B7). Return to text.
13. Some transitional series of fossils are expected in creationist thinking, as animals and plants adapt to different environments in the post-Flood world, but the transformations seen will be limited to within the created kind, or ‘baramin’, e.g. horses. Transformations between major categories in design will not be found. Return to text.

McLean v. Arkansas

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McLean v. Arkansas
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas
Full case name	McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education
Date decided	January 5, 1982
Citations	529 F. Supp. 1255
Transcripts	McLean v. Ark
Judge sitting	William Overton
Case holding
The Arkansas Balanced Treatment Act of 1981 requiring schools balance the teaching of evolution with the teaching of creation science violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution

McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 529 F. Supp. 1255 (E.D. Ark. 1982), was a 1981 legal case in the US state of Arkansas.^[1]

A lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas by various parents, religious groups and organizations, biologists, and others who argued that the Arkansas state law known as the Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act (Act 590), which mandated the teaching of “creation science” in Arkansas public schools, was unconstitutionalbecause it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Judge William Overton handed down a decision on January 5, 1982, giving a clear, specific definition of science as a basis for ruling that creation science is religion and is simply not science.^[1] The ruling was not binding on schools outside the Eastern District of Arkansas but had considerable influence on subsequent rulings on the teaching of creationism.^[2]

Arkansas did not appeal the decision and it was not until the 1987 case of Edwards v. Aguillard,^[3]which dealt with a similar law passed by the State of Louisiana, that teaching “creation science” was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, making that determination applicable nationwide.^[4]

Act 590 had been put forward by a Christian fundamentalist on the basis of a request from the Greater Little Rock Evangelical Fellowship for the introduction of legislation based on a “model act” prepared using material from the Institute for Creation Research. It was opposed by many religious organizations and other groups.

Contents

• 1Parties
• 2Background
• 3Arkansas Act 590
• 4McLean v. Arkansas ruling
• 5References
• 6Further reading
• 7External links

Parties[edit]

The plaintiffs in the suit, who opposed the “balanced treatment” statute, were led by the Reverend William McLean, a United Methodist minister.^[5][6]

The other plaintiffs were:

• Bishop Kenneth Hicks, of the Arkansas Conferences of the United Methodist Church;
• The Right Reverend Herbert A. Donovan of the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas;
• The Most Reverend Andrew Joseph McDonald, Catholic Bishop of Little Rock;
• Bishop Frederick C. James of the African Methodist Episcopal Church or Arkansas;
• The Reverend Nathan Porter, individually and as father and next friend of Joel Randolph Porter;
• The Reverend George W. Gunn, minister of the Pulaski Heights Presbyterian Church in Little Rock;
• Dr. Richard B. Hardie, Jr., minister of the Westover Hills Presbyterian Church in Little Rock;
• The Reverend Earl B. Carter, minister of the United Methodist Church, and program director of the North Arkansas Conference of the United Methodist Church;
• The Reverend George Panner, minister of the United Methodist Church, and program director of the Little Rock Conference of the United Methodist church;
• Dr. John P. Miles, minister of St. James United Methodist Church in Little Rock, and vice-chair of Americans United for Separation of Church and State in Arkansas;
• Rev. Jerry Canada, minister of the United Methodist Church, and editor of The Arkansas Methodist;
• The American Jewish Congress and American Jewish Committee, two national Jewish organizations;
• The Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the national federation of Reform Jews;
• Frances C. Roelfs, a biology teacher at Springdale High School in Springdale, Arkansas;
• Charles Bowlus, individually and as father and next friend of Cordelia Ann and Christopher Felix;
• Lon Schultz, individually and as father and next friend of Andrea Schultz;
• The Arkansas Education Association, a teachers’ union;
• The National Association of Biology Teachers;
• E. E. Hudson, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Arkansas Technical University;
• Mike Wilson, of Jacksonville, Arkansas, an attorney and member of the Arkansas House of Representatives who voted against the act;
• National Coalition For Public Education and Religious Liberty (National PEARL).

The defendants were the Arkansas Board of Education and its members, in their official capacity, the director of the Department of Education, in his official capacity, and the State Textbooks and Instructional materials Selecting Committee. The Pulaski County Special School District and its directors and superintendent were named in the original complaint but were voluntarily dismissed by plaintiffs at the pre-trial conference on October 1, 1981.

Background[edit]

Various state laws prohibiting teaching of evolution had been introduced in the 1920s. They were challenged in 1968 at Epperson v. Arkansas which ruled that “The law’s effort was confined to an attempt to blot out a particular theory because of its supposed conflict with the Biblical account, literally read. Plainly, the law is contrary to the mandate of the First, and in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.”^[7] The creationist movement turned to promoting teaching creationism in school science classes as equal to evolutionary theory.

Arkansas Act 590[edit]

Arkansas Act 590 of 1981, entitled the “Balanced Treatment for Creation Science and Evolution Science Act,” mandated that “creation science” be given equal time in public schools with evolution.

Creation science was defined as follows: “Creation science means the scientific evidences for creation and inferences from those evidences. Creation science includes the scientific evidences and related inferences that indicate:

1. Sudden creation of the universe, energy and life from nothing;
2. The insufficiency of mutation and natural selection in bringing about development of all living kinds from a single organism;
3. Changes only with fixed limits of originally created kinds of plants and animals;
4. Separate ancestry for man and apes;
5. Explanation of the earth’s geology by catastrophism, including the occurrence of worldwide flood;
6. A relatively recent inception of the earth and living.

Evolution science was defined as follows: “Evolution-science” means the scientific evidences for evolution and inferences from those scientific evidences. Evolution-science includes the scientific evidences and related inferences that indicate:

1. Emergence by naturalistic processes of the universe from disordered matter and emergence of life from nonlife;
2. The sufficiency of mutation and natural selection in bringing about development of present living kinds from simple earlier kinds;
3. Emergency [sic] by mutation and natural selection of present living kinds from simple earlier kinds;
4. Emergence of man from a common ancestor with apes;
5. Explanation of the earth’s geology and the evolutionary sequence by uniformitarianism; and
6. An inception several billion years ago of the earth and somewhat later of life.

The Act was signed into law by Governor Frank D. White on March 19, 1981.

McLean v. Arkansas ruling[edit]

Judge William Overton‘s ruling handed down on January 5, 1982, concluded that “creation-science” as defined in Arkansas Act 590 “is simply not science”. The judgment defined the essential characteristics of science as being:

1. It is guided by natural law;
2. It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law;
3. It is testable against the empirical world;
4. Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and
5. It is falsifiable.

Overton found that “creation science” failed to meet these essential characteristics for these reasons:

1. Sudden creation “from nothing” is not science because it depends upon a supernatural intervention which is not guided by natural law, is not explanatory by reference to natural law, is not testable and is not falsifiable;
2. “insufficiency of mutation and natural selection” is an incomplete negative generalization;
3. “changes only within fixed limits of originally created kinds” fails as there is no scientific definition of “kinds”, the assertion appears to be an effort to establish outer limits of changes within species but there is no scientific explanation for these limits which is guided by natural law and the limitations, whatever they are, cannot be explained by natural law;
4. “separate ancestry of man and apes” is a bald assertion which explains nothing and refers to no scientific fact or theory;
5. Catastrophism and any kind of Genesis Flood depend upon supernatural intervention, and cannot be explained by natural law;
6. “Relatively recent inception” has no scientific meaning, is not the product of natural law; not explainable by natural law; nor is it tentative;
7. No recognized scientific journal has published an article espousing the creation science theory as described in the Act, and though some witnesses suggested that the scientific community was “close-minded” and so had not accepted the arguments, no witness produced a scientific article for which publication has been refused, and suggestions of censorship were not credible;
8. A scientific theory must be tentative and always subject to revision or abandonment in light of facts that are inconsistent with, or falsify, the theory. A theory that is by its own terms dogmatic, absolutist, and never subject to revision is not a scientific theory;
9. While anybody is free to approach a scientific inquiry in any fashion they choose, they cannot properly describe the methodology as scientific, if they start with the conclusion and refuse to change it regardless of the evidence developed during the course of the investigation.

The creationists’ methods do not take data, weigh it against the opposing scientific data, and thereafter reach the conclusions stated in [the Act] Instead, they take the literal wording of the Book of Genesis and attempt to find scientific support for it. The Act took a two-model approach to teaching identical to the approach put forward by the Institute for Creation Research, which assumes only two explanations for the origins of life and existence of man, plants and animals: it was either the work of a creator or it was not. Creationists take this to mean that all scientific evidence which fails to support the theory of evolution is necessarily scientific evidence in support of creationism. The judgment found this to be simply a contrived dualism which has no scientific factual basis or legitimate educational purpose.

The judge concluded that “the Act was passed with the specific purpose by the General Assembly of advancing religion,” and that it violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

The test that Overton developed on the basis of Michael Ruse‘s testimony was later criticized by the philosopher of science Larry Laudan who argued that rather than call Creation Science “non-science” it would have been more cogent to show that it was “bad science”.^[8] Chandra Wickramasinghe was the single scientist testifying for the defense of creationism.^[9] He hypothesized on panspermia and on “the possibility of high intelligence in the Universe and of many increasing levels of intelligence converging toward a God as an ideal limit.” ^[10]

References[edit]

1. ^ Jump up to:^a b McLean v. Arkansas, 529 F. Supp. 1255 (E.D Ark. 1982).
2. ^ Understanding the Intelligent Design Creationist Movement: Its True Nature and Goals. Archived May 19, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. (pdf) A Position Paper from the Center for Inquiry, Office of Public Policy Barbara Forrest. May 2007.
3. ^ Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987).
4. ^ Creationism/ID, A Short Legal History Archived August 23, 2014, at the Wayback Machine. By Lenny Flank, Talk Reason
5. ^ Scott, Eugenie (June 30, 2004). Evolution vs. Creationism. Greenwood Press. pp. 1590–1628 Kindle ed. ISBN 978-0-313-32122-1.
6. ^ Frank Spencer, ed. (1996). History of Physical Anthropology: An Encyclopedia (Garland Reference Library of Social Science) (illustrated ed.). Routledge. p. 297. ISBN 978-0-8153-0490-6.
7. ^ Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968).
8. ^ Laudan, L. (1982). “Commentary: Science at the Bar-Causes for Concern”. Science, Technology and Human Values. 7 (41): 16–19.
9. ^ Phy-Olsen, Allene. Evolution, Creationism, and Intelligent Design
10. ^ Fry, Iris. Emergence of Life on Earth: A Historical and Scientific Overview, Rutgers University Press, February 1, 2000

Further reading[edit]

• Overton, W. R. (1982). “Creationism in Schools: The Decision in McLean vs. the Arkansas Board of Education”. Science. 215 (4535): 934–943. doi:10.1126/science.215.4535.934. PMID 17821352.
• Overton, W. R. (1985). “Memorandum opinion of United States District judge William R. Overton in McLean v. Arkansas, 5 January 1982″. In Gilkey, L. Creationism on trial. New York: Harper & Row.

External links[edit]

• Text of McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 529 F. Supp. 1255 (E.D. Ark. 1982) is available from:  CourtListener  Justia  Google Scholar  Talk Origins 
• McLean v Arkansas Documentation Project—although much of the transcript of the case was lost, including evidence from Francisco Ayala, this project seeks to preserve and disseminate copies of surviving transcripts.
• Additional Copy of Transcripts—another site providing a copy of the surviving portions of the transcript, including 71 additional pages (Part 1, Part 2) not available on the other site.
• Ten Major Court Cases about Evolution and Creationism
• Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture entry on McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education

showvteCreation science / Intelligent design vs. evolution

showvteCreation science

Categories: 

• United States district court cases
• Creation science
• United States creationism and evolution case law
• 1982 in United States case law
• 1982 in religion
• American Civil Liberties Union litigation
• 1982 in Arkansas
• 1982 in education

On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said:

…Please click on this URL http://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

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(Harry Kroto pictured below)

Stephen Jay Gould is the scholar I will look at today. In  the third video below in the 147th clip in this series are his words “If I were  a bacteria I would be quite satisfied that I was dominating the planet…I don’t know why consciousness should be seen as any state of higher being especially if you use the evolutionist primary criterion of success measured by duration” and I have responded directly to this quote in any earlier post.

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)

This is the third part of the letter to Stephen Jay Gould, but the second part was posted last week on my blog and the fourth will posted next week.

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Related posts:

Taking on Ark Times Bloggers on various issues Part F “Carl Sagan’s views on how God should try and contact us” includes film “The Basis for Human Dignity”

April 8, 2013 – 7:07 am

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FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 51 THE BEATLES (Part C, List of those on cover of Stg.Pepper’s ) (Feature on artist Raqib Shaw )

March 19, 2015 – 12:21 am

  The Beatles in a press conference after their Return from the USA Uploaded on Nov 29, 2010 The Beatles in a press conference after their Return from the USA. 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 […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney, Raqib Shaw, Ringo Starr | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 50 THE BEATLES (Part B, The Psychedelic Music of the Beatles) (Feature on artist Peter Blake )

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I remember the first time I went to a Operation Mobilization (OM) conference in 1979. We first drove from Memphis to Toronto with Rev. Earl Stevens and his wife of First Evangelical Church for the North American OM Conference.

Then we attended the European conference in Belgium  and we first flew to Paris and rode in the back of a truck across France to Belgium. My good David Rogers and I were the only ones from the Bellevue Baptist youth group to go with OM that summer to go on missions in Europe. David went to Austria and I went to Manchester, England. David later served several years with OM.

Also during our trip David’s father was elected President of the Southern Baptist Convention. I was sitting next to David when he took the call from his father that he had decided to place his name into the election.

It was a key time in the Southern Baptist Convention. When Dr. Rogers decided not to run for a second term in the summer of 1980 it was Bailey Smith who answered the call.

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Bailey and Sandy Smith

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Sandy’s brother Tom Elliff pastored First Baptist Church in Dell City after Bailey did.

Ron with Tom Elliff, pastor of First Baptist Church Dell City, OK, three weeks before Ron’s homegoing

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Sandy’s brother Bill Elliff is pastor at Summit Church in North Little Rock, Arkansas

(L-R) Bill Elliff, Tom Elliff, Michael Catt, Ken Jenkins, Mark Bearden, Tally Wilgis

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Son Steven Smith pastor of Immanuel Baptist in Little Rock, Arkansas

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Josh Smith pastor in Texas

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Ron with the late Dr. Adrian Rogers, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN

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Francis and Edith Schaeffer pictured below:

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Milton and Rose Friedman pictured with Ronald Reagan:

My heroes in 1980 were the economist Milton Friedman, the doctor C. Everett Koop, the politician Ronald Reagan, the Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer, the evangelist Billy Graham, and my pastor Adrian Rogers. I have been amazed at how many of these men knew each other.

I only had once chance to correspond with Milton Friedman and he quickly answered my letter. It was a question concerning my favorite christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer. I had read  inthe 1981 printing of The Tapestry: the Life and Times of Francis and Edith Schaeffer on page 644 that Edith mentioned “that the KUP SHOW (ran byIrv Kupcinet ) in Chicago, a talk show Francis was on twice, once with the economist Milton Friedman, whith whom he still has a good correspondence.”  I asked in a letter in the late 1990’s  if Friedman remembered the content of any of that correspondence and he said he did not.  Although I had an immense appreciation for Milton Friedman’s economic views sadly he took his agnostic views with him till his death in 2004.

JUDY GARLAND IRV KUPCINET Kup’s Show 1967

Published on Dec 3, 2013

1969 edit of Judy Garland’s 1967 appearance on Chicago based “Kup’s Show.”

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The closest connection I have had to Francis Schaeffer personally was that my mother once met his good friend Audrey W. Johnson (1907-84) who was the founder of BIBLE STUDY FELLOWSHIP. My mother worked for Maryann Frazier who was the longtime Bible Study Fellowship teacher in Memphis.

Miss Johnson showed Mrs Frazier a picture of her hugging Francis and Edith Schaeffer and since she was taller than both of them she called them “my two small friends.”

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Dr. C. Everett Koop was picked by Ronald Reagan to be Surgeon General (pictured below)

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After being elected President of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1979, Adrian Rogers met with Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

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This was the average sanctuary crowd when I was growing up at Bellevue Baptist in Memphis.  Now take what you see and multiply it by three, because they had three morning services.  This photo was taken sometime in the early 1980’s

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On 3-16-15 I found the first link between my spiritual heroes: Adrian Rogers and Francis Schaeffer!!!!! In this article below I read these words:

“If Schaeffer had still been alive, we would have had him come,” Richard Land said. He noted that Schaeffer was “close” to Adrian Rogers and “admired” by Bailey Smith, two conservative SBC presidents. Edith Schaeffer and Patterson’s wife Dorothy were close friends and travelled together in the early 1980s speaking on the importance of the home.

My family joined Bellevue Baptist in 1975 and every summer our pastor Adrian Rogers would come back from the annual Southern Baptist Convention meeting in June and he would share on the following Wednesday night about some of the troubling things that were happening in the Southern Baptist Seminaries because of the leftward swing in the theology. I knew that this was a big issue with him and I knew that Francis Schaeffer had fought the same battle in his seminary days 40 years earlier. HOWEVER, I DID NOT KNOW THAT THEY KNEW IT EACH OTHER AT THIS TIME IN THE 1970’S!!!!!!!

The same time in the 1970’s and 1980’s that I was a member of Bellevue Baptist in Memphis where Adrian Rogers was pastor, I also was a student at Evangelical Christian School from the 5th grade to the 12th grade where I was introduced to the books and films of Francis Schaeffer. At ECS my favorite teacher was Mark Brink who actually played both film series to us (WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? and HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE?) during our senior year and believe it or not after I graduated I would come back and join some of his future classes when the film was playing again because I couldn’t get enough of Schaeffer’s film series!!!!

During this time I was amazed at how many prominent figures in the world found their way into the works of both Adrian Rogers and Francis Schaeffer and I wondered what it would be like if these individuals were exposed to the Bible and the gospel. Therefore, over 20 years ago I began sending the messages of Adrian Rogers and portions of the works of Francis Schaeffer to many of the secular figures that they mentioned in their works. Let me give you some examples and tell you about some lessons that I have learned.

I have learned several things about atheists in the last 20 years while I have been corresponding with them. FIRST, they know in their hearts that God exists and they can’t live as if God doesn’t exist, but they will still search in some way in their life for a greater meaning. SECOND, many atheists will take time out of their busy lives to examine the evidence that I present to them. THIRD, there is hope that they will change their views.

Let’s go over again a few points I made at the first of this post. My FIRST point is backed up by Romans 1:18-19 (Amplified Bible) ” For God’s wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness REPRESS and HINDER the truth and make it inoperative. For that which is KNOWN about God is EVIDENT to them and MADE PLAIN IN THEIR INNER CONSCIOUSNESS, because God has SHOWN IT TO THEM,”(emphasis mine). I have discussed this many times on my blog and even have interacted with many atheists from CSICOP in the past. (I first heard this from my pastor Adrian Rogers back in the 1980’s.)

My SECOND point is that many atheists will take the time to consider the evidence that I have presented to them and will respond. The late Adrian Rogers was my pastor at Bellevue Baptist when I grew up and I sent his sermon on evolution and another on the accuracy of the Bible to many atheists to listen to and many of them did. I also sent many of the arguments from Francis Schaeffer also.

Many of these scholars have taken the time to respond back to me in the last 20 years and some of the names included are Ernest Mayr (1904-2005), George Wald (1906-1997), Carl Sagan (1934-1996), Robert Shapiro (1935-2011), Nicolaas Bloembergen (1920-), Brian Charlesworth (1945-), Francisco J. Ayala (1934-) Elliott Sober (1948-), Kevin Padian (1951-), Matt Cartmill (1943-) , Milton Fingerman (1928-), John J. Shea (1969-), , Michael A. Crawford (1938-), (Paul Kurtz (1925-2012), Sol Gordon (1923-2008), Albert Ellis (1913-2007), Barbara Marie Tabler (1915-1996), Renate Vambery (1916-2005), Archie J. Bahm (1907-1996), Aron S “Gil” Martin ( 1910-1997), Matthew I. Spetter (1921-2012), H. J. Eysenck (1916-1997), Robert L. Erdmann (1929-2006), Mary Morain (1911-1999), Lloyd Morain (1917-2010), Warren Allen Smith (1921-), Bette Chambers (1930-), Gordon Stein (1941-1996) , Milton Friedman (1912-2006), John Hospers (1918-2011), and Michael Martin (1932-).

THIRD, there is hope that an atheist will reconsider his or her position after examining more evidence. Twenty years I had the opportunity to correspond with two individuals that were regarded as two of the most famous atheists of the 20th Century, Antony Flew and Carl Sagan. I had read the books and seen the films of the Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer and he had discussed the works of both of these men. I sent both of these gentlemen philosophical arguments from Schaeffer in these letters and in the first letter I sent a cassette tape of my pastor’s sermon IS THE BIBLE TRUE? You may have noticed in the news a few years that Antony Flew actually became a theist in 2004 and remained one until his death in 2010. Carl Sagan remained a skeptic until his dying day in 1996.Antony Flew wrote me back several times and in the June 1, 1994 letter he commented, “Thank you for sending me the IS THE BIBLE TRUE? tape to which I have just listened with great interest and, I trust, profit.” I later sent him Adrian Rogers’ sermon on evolution too.
The ironic thing is back in 2008 I visited the Bellevue Baptist Book Store and bought the book There Is A God – How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, by Antony Flew, and it is in this same store that I bought the message by Adrian Rogers in 1994 that I sent to Antony Flew. Although Antony Flew did not make a public profession of faith he did admit that the evidence for God’s existence was overwhelming to him in the last decade of his life. His experience has been used in a powerful way to tell others about Christ. Let me point out that while on airplane when I was reading this book a gentleman asked me about the book. I was glad to tell him the whole story about Adrian Rogers’ two messages that I sent to Dr. Flew and I gave him CD’s of the messages which I carry with me always. Then at McDonald’s at the Airport, a worker at McDonald’s asked me about the book and I gave him the same two messages from Adrian Rogers too.

Francis Schaeffer’s words would be quoted in many of these letters that I would send to famous skeptics and I would always include audio messages from Adrian Rogers. Perhaps Schaeffer’s most effective argument was concerning Romans 1 and how a person could say that he didn’t believe that the world had a purpose or meaning but he could not live that way in the world that God created and with the conscience that every person is born with.

Google “Adrian Rogers Francis Schaeffer” and the first 8 things that come up will be my blog posts concerning effort to reach these atheists. These two great men proved that the scriptures Hebrews 4:12 and Isaiah 55:11 are true, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” and “so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

I noticed from audio tapes in the 1960’s that Francis Schaeffer was a close friends with former Southern Baptist Seminary Professor Clark Pinnock from New Orleans. My friend Sherwood Haisty actually got to hear Clark Pinnock speak in 1999 although Dr. Pinnock did take a liberal shift later in his life.

Francis Schaeffer ‘indispensable’ to SBC

by David Roach, posted Thursday, October 30, 2014 (4 months ago)

NASHVILLE (BP) — The late Francis Schaeffer was known to pick up the phone during the early years of the Southern Baptist Convention’s conservative resurgence. Paige Patterson knew to expect a call from Schaeffer around Christmas with the question, “You’re not growing weary in well-doing are you?”

Francis Schaeffer & the SBC 

Patterson, a leader in the movement to return the SBC to a high view of Scripture, would reply, “No, Dr. Schaeffer. I’m under fire, but I’m doing fine. And I’m trusting the Lord and proceeding on.”

To some it may seem strange that an international Presbyterian apologist and analyst of pop culture would take such interest in a Baptist controversy over biblical inerrancy.

But to Schaeffer it made perfect sense.

He believed churches were acquiescing to the world, abandoning their belief that the Bible is without error in everything it said. A watered-down theology left the SBC with decreased power to battle cultural evils. To Schaeffer the convention was the last major American denomination with hope for reversing this “great evangelical disaster,” as he put it.

Thirty years after Schaeffer’s death, Baptist leaders still remember how he took time from his speaking, writing and filmmaking schedule to quietly encourage Patterson; Paul Pressler, a judge from Texas with whom Patterson worked closely during the conservative resurgence; Adrian Rogers, a Memphis pastor who served three terms SBC president; and others.

By the early 1990s, conservatives had elected an unbroken string of convention presidents and moved in position to shift the balance of power on all convention boards and committees from the theologically moderate establishment. But at the time of Schaeffer’s annual calls, the outcome of the controversy was still in doubt.

“I strongly suspect that he was afraid I would not hold strong,” Patterson, now president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas, told Baptist Press. “He had seen so many people fold up under pressure that he assumed we probably would too. So he would call and ask for a report.”

A worldwide ministry

Schaeffer was born in 1912 in Germantown, Pa., and was saved at age 18 through a combination of personal Bible reading and attending a tent revival meeting. Within months of his conversion he felt called to vocational ministry and eventually enrolled at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, where he studied New Testament under J. Gresham Machen and apologetics under Cornelius Val Til.

Schaeffer withdrew from Westminster before he graduated to attend the more fundamentalist-leaning Faith Theological Seminary in Wilmington, Del. In keeping with early 20th-century fundamentalism, Schaeffer emphasized separation from the world and personal holiness. Among the practices he opposed were theater attendance and dancing. Schaeffer retained his fundamentalist commitments through 10 years of pastoring in the U.S. and then service as a Presbyterian missionary in Europe.

In the early 1950s, however, a crisis of faith led Schaeffer and his wife Edith to begin engaging culture with the Gospel rather than shunning it. They founded a retreat center in Switzerland called L’Abri — French for “the shelter” — where he studied culture from a Christian perspective and engaged young people with the claims of Christ.

L’Abri grew and was featured in TIME magazine in 1960. Soon Schaeffer emerged as a popular author and speaker, explaining how western civilization had departed from a Judeo-Christian worldview and setting forth Christianity as the only solution to societal ills.

Schaeffer “wakened the cultural consciousness of the evangelical community,” Bruce Little, director of the Francis Schaeffer Collection at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, told BP. The Schaeffer Collection includes all of the apologist’s personal papers and has been digitized by the North Carolina seminary.

“He thought that man’s dilemma was that man was fighting against the evil of the day, but he wasn’t winning,” Little, who also serves as senior professor of philosophy at Southeastern, said. “Schaeffer thought the answer to this is found in the Scriptures.”

From a Christian worldview perspective, Schaeffer wrote and spoke about such topics as the environment, abortion, art, literature, music, intellectual history and denominational decline. In the 1970s and 1980s, audiences packed auditoriums across America to hear him speak. He died of cancer in 1984.

Southern Baptist connections

Schaeffer’s interest in engaging culture made him particularly appealing to Southern Baptist conservatives. He helped provide them with a “battle plan” to fight cultural evils and what they perceived as theological drift in their denomination, Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, told BP.

“The one thing I heard growing up in Southern Baptist churches that was just plain wrong went something like this,” Land, former president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said. “We’re Southern Baptist. That means we don’t get involved in anything controversial. We just preach the Gospel.”

As a corrective to that notion, Schaeffer “made it very clear to us that the Bible is true seven days a week, 24 hours a day and its truth is to be applied to every area of life,” Land said.

Along with theologian Carl F.H. Henry, Schaeffer was the key intellectual influence on leaders of the conservative resurgence, Land said. When conservatives started to be elected as the executives of Baptist institutions, Henry spoke at Land’s inauguration at the Christian Life Commission (the ERLC’s precursor), R. Albert Mohler Jr.’s at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky and Timothy George’s at Beeson Divinity School in Alabama.

“If Schaeffer had still been alive, we would have had him come,” Land said. He noted that Schaeffer was “close” to Rogers and “admired” by Bailey Smith, two conservative SBC presidents. Edith Schaeffer and Patterson’s wife Dorothy were close friends and travelled together in the early 1980s speaking on the importance of the home.

Clark Pinnock, a former New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary professor who mentored conservative resurgence leaders before taking a leftward theological turn in his own thinking, served on Schaeffer’s staff at L’Abri.

Another Southern Baptist to feel Schaeffer’s personal influence was James Parker, professor of worldview and culture at Southern Seminary. After reading works by Schaeffer and spending two months at L’Abri during his doctoral studies at Basel University in Switzerland, Parker decided he wanted to open a center for evangelism and discipleship like Schaeffer’s.

In 1992 Parker founded the Trinity Institute, a nonprofit study and retreat center near Waco, Texas, where he tutors individuals in the Christian faith and hosts conferences exploring the integration of Christianity to all areas of life.

Schaeffer was “a paradigm for the engagement of the mind for the faith, and so that was quite inspirational and encouraging to me,” Parker told BP.

Pro-life issues

The pro-life cause was one area in which Schaeffer strongly influenced evangelicals, including Southern Baptists. With his book and accompanying film series “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” — coauthored with C. Everett Koop, who went on to become U.S. surgeon general — Schaeffer helped convince Southern Baptists that they had to protest abortion.

In a 1979 interview with BP editor Art Toalston, then-religion editor of the Jackson Daily News in Mississippi, Schaeffer said the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion was “completely arbitrary medically” in its assumption that “a human being is a person at one moment and not another.”

He added that the ruling “doesn’t conform to past rulings at all. It invalidated the abortion laws of almost every state in the union. In all these states, the people as a whole felt that abortion was wrong. But the Supreme Court says it’s right.

“Not having a Christian absolute that says the Supreme Court’s ruling is wrong because it breaks the ethic God has revealed, people took what the law says to be right,” Schaeffer said.

Prominent Southern Baptist conservatives, including W.A. Criswell of First Baptist Church in Dallas and Carl Henry, were not always pro-life, Land explained, but shifted their views as they saw the massive loss of life caused by abortion — a tragedy that Schaeffer highlighted.

Whatever Happened to the Human Race? was and is “devastating” to the abortion movement, Land said. “How anybody can read that book and not be motivated to take part in pro-life marches is beyond me.”

Finishing well

Little of Southeastern Seminary understands firsthand why Schaeffer was so influential. He remembers listening to him speak at Liberty University in April 1984, the month before he died. By that time Schaeffer was so weak that he was living on milkshakes and sometimes had to be carried to speaking engagements on a stretcher.

During a question-and-answer session, one student “stood to his feet and said, ‘Dr. Schaeffer, it seems to me that the church is in the 10th round. It’s bloody. It’s beaten. It’s on its knees. Is there any hope we can win?'” Little recounted.

“I can see Schaeffer now,” Little continued. “He leaned forward, brought the mic to his mouth and said, ‘Son, if you do it to win, you’ve lost already.'” Whether they win or lose, Christians fight the culture wars, Schaeffer said, “because our risen Lord has commanded us.”David Roach is chief national correspondent for Baptist Press, the Southern Baptist Convention’s news service.Get Baptist Press headlines and breaking news on Twitter (@BaptistPress), Facebook (Facebook.com/BaptistPress) and in your email (baptistpress.com/SubscribeBP).__________Pictured below Dr. C. Everett Koop and Billy Graham

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Ronald Reagan with Billy Graham:

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The Bible and Archaeology – Is the Bible from God? (Kyle Butt 42 min)

Adrian Rogers on Darwinism

How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (2 hrs)

Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR

Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION

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)

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Norman Geisler on Francis Schaeffer’s view that humans must be willing to live consistently with what they believe!!!!

December 23, 2014 – 11:53 am

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My correspondence with George Wald and Antony Flew!!!

May 12, 2014 – 1:14 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 41 Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Featured artist is Marina Abramović)

January 8, 2015 – 5:23 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 40 Timothy Leary (Featured artist is Margaret Keane)

January 1, 2015 – 4:14 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 39 Tom Wolfe (Featured artist is Richard Serra)

December 25, 2014 – 5:04 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 38 Woody Allen and Albert Camus “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide” (Feature on artist Hamish Fulton Photographer )

December 18, 2014 – 4:30 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 37 Mahatma Gandhi and “Relieving the Tension in the East” (Feature on artist Luc Tuymans)

December 11, 2014 – 4:19 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 36 Julian Huxley:”God does not in fact exist, but act as if He does!” (Feature on artist Barry McGee)

December 4, 2014 – 4:10 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 35 Robert M. Pirsig (Feature on artist Kerry James Marshall)

November 27, 2014 – 4:43 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 34 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Feature on artist Shahzia Sikander)

November 20, 2014 – 4:28 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 33 Aldous Huxley (Feature on artist Matthew Barney )

November 13, 2014 – 4:39 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 32 Steven Weinberg and Woody Allen and “The Meaningless of All Things” (Feature on photographer Martin Karplus )

November 6, 2014 – 4:42 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 31 David Hume and “How do we know we know?” (Feature on artist William Pope L. )

October 30, 2014 – 5:34 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 30 Rene Descartes and “How do we know we know?” (Feature on artist Olafur Eliasson)

October 23, 2014 – 5:01 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 29 W.H. Thorpe and “The Search for an Adequate World-View: A Question of Method” (Feature on artist Jeff Koons)

October 16, 2014 – 5:06 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 28 Woody Allen and “The Mannishness of Man” (Feature on artist Ryan Gander)

October 9, 2014 – 5:10 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 27 Jurgen Habermas (Featured artist is Hiroshi Sugimoto)

September 25, 2014 – 1:01 pm

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 26 Bettina Aptheker (Featured artist is Krzysztof Wodiczko)

September 25, 2014 – 4:00 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 25 BOB DYLAN (Part C) Francis Schaeffer comments on Bob Dylan’s song “Ballad of a Thin Man” and the disconnect between the young generation of the 60’s and their parents’ generation (Feature on artist Fred Wilson)

September 18, 2014 – 3:57 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 24 BOB DYLAN (Part B) Francis Schaeffer comments on Bob Dylan’s words from HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED!! (Feature on artist Susan Rothenberg)

September 11, 2014 – 4:18 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 23 BOB DYLAN (Part A) (Feature on artist Josiah McElheny)Francis Schaeffer on the proper place of rebellion with comments by Bob Dylan and Samuel Rutherford

September 2, 2014 – 8:42 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 22 “The School of Athens by Raphael” (Feature on the artist Sally Mann)

August 11, 2014 – 2:19 pm

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 21 William B. Provine (Feature on artist Andrea Zittel)

June 12, 2014 – 2:52 pm

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 20 Woody Allen and Materialistic Humanism: The World-View of Our Era (Feature on artist Ida Applebroog)

May 12, 2014 – 4:35 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 19 Movie Director Luis Bunuel (Feature on artist Oliver Herring)

May 1, 2014 – 11:53 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 18 “Michelangelo’s DAVID is the statement of what humanistic man saw himself as being tomorrow” (Feature on artist Paul McCarthy)

April 25, 2014 – 8:26 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 17 Francis Schaeffer discusses quotes of Andy Warhol from “The Observer June 12, 1966″ Part C (Feature on artist David Hockney plus many pictures of Warhol with famous friends)

April 18, 2014 – 7:37 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 16 Francis Schaeffer discusses quotes of Andy Warhol from “The Observer June 12, 1966″ Part B (Feature on artist James Rosenquist plus many pictures of Warhol with famous friends)

April 11, 2014 – 6:14 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 15 Francis Schaeffer discusses quotes of Andy Warhol from “The Observer June 12, 1966″ Part A (Feature on artist Robert Indiana plus many pictures of Warhol with famous friends)

April 4, 2014 – 5:58 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 14 David Friedrich Strauss (Feature on artist Roni Horn )

March 28, 2014 – 2:50 pm

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 13 Jacob Bronowski and Materialistic Humanism: The World-View of Our Era (Feature on artist Ellen Gallagher )

March 21, 2014 – 7:18 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 12 H.J.Blackham and Materialistic Humanism: The World-View of Our Era (Feature on artist Arturo Herrera)

March 14, 2014 – 9:07 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 11 Thomas Aquinas and his Effect on Art and HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Episode 2: THE MIDDLES AGES (Feature on artist Tony Oursler )

March 4, 2014 – 9:04 pm

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 10 David Douglas Duncan (Feature on artist Georges Rouault )

February 28, 2014 – 5:16 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 9 Jasper Johns (Feature on artist Cai Guo-Qiang )

February 21, 2014 – 6:51 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 8 “The Last Year at Marienbad” by Alain Resnais (Feature on artist Richard Tuttle and his return to the faith of his youth)

February 13, 2014 – 7:59 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 7 Jean Paul Sartre (Feature on artist David Hooker )

February 4, 2014 – 2:00 pm

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 6 The Adoration of the Lamb by Jan Van Eyck which was saved by MONUMENT MEN IN WW2 (Feature on artist Makoto Fujimura)

January 31, 2014 – 5:43 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 5 John Cage (Feature on artist Gerhard Richter)

January 21, 2014 – 8:07 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 4 ( Schaeffer and H.R. Rookmaaker worked together well!!! (Feature on artist Mike Kelley Part B )

January 14, 2014 – 8:52 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 3 PAUL GAUGUIN’S 3 QUESTIONS: “Where do we come from? What art we? Where are we going? and his conclusion was a suicide attempt” (Feature on artist Mike Kelley Part A)

January 7, 2014 – 11:06 pm

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 2 “A look at how modern art was born by discussing Monet, Renoir, Pissaro, Sisley, Degas,Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, and Picasso” (Feature on artist Peter Howson)

January 1, 2014 – 4:27 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 1 HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? “The Roman Age” (Feature on artist Tracey Emin)

December 10, 2013 – 2:38 pm

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Francis Schaeffer pictured below

Dan Jarrell Change Point Church (seen below)

DAN JARRELL

Kerry Livgren

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Letters to Mick Fleetwood

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-I have read over 40 autobiographies by ROCKERS and it seems to me that almost every one of those books can be reduced to 4 points. Once fame hit me then I became hooked on drugs. Next I became an alcoholic (or may have been hooked on both at same time). Thirdly, I chased the skirts and thought happiness would be found through more sex with more women. Finally, in my old age I have found being faithful to my wife and getting over addictions has led to happiness like I never knew before. (Almost every autobiography I have read from rockers has these points in it although Steven Tyler is still chasing the skirts!!).

_

April 30, 2018

Mick Fleetwood

Dear Mick,

I read your autobiography PLAY ON and I came across the passage that I found very interesting:

Living on the road help keep me from facing the cold hard facts of life, I was dire straights financially, I wasn’t doing my job as a father to my daughters and the band that bore my name was in flux. I didn’t worry if no one showed up for the Zoo shows because in my mind if I was playing I HAD A PURPOSE. My band however was embarrassed for me.

I know that you have been searching your whole life for the meaning of life and the secret of satisfaction and with the help of King Solomon and Kerry Livgren of the rock group KANSAS I wanted to pass along their conclusions.

I thought of you recently when I listened to a cassette tape of a sermon by Dan Jarrell of FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock entitled THE PLEASURE IS MINE on ECCLESIASTES 2:1-26 (4-21-96). It was hard for me to obtain a cassette tape player but I searched through my attic and found one hidden away.

As you know the Book of Ecclesiastes was written by King Solomon at the end of his life and he was discussing LIFE UNDER THE SUN. I think it is easy to compare your life to Solomon since you both are pursuing satisfaction in this life UNDER THE SUN without God in the picture. 

Francis Schaeffer noted that Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.” This phrase UNDER THE SUN appears over and over in Ecclesiastes. The Christian Scholar Ravi Zacharias noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.”

Here is a portion of the sermon by Dan Jarrell below:

You and I grew up with Mick Jagger singing “I CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION.” You think of the lyrics of that song and what Jagger and the ROLLING STONES did. They summarized this philosophy that no matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard I seek it, no matter what I attempt to do, no matter which avenue I go down, there is no personal satisfaction in it for me. Personal satisfaction eludes me because I try and I try and I try but I can’t get no, no, no, no, hey, hey , hey. I just can’t get no satisfaction.

That is the idea  Mick Jagger and the rest of the ROLLING STONES and an entire generation that cut it’s teeth on rock and roll never got past the frustration of that song. We tried, and we tried and we tried. We tried DRUGS, and ALCOHOL. We tried SEX in a permissive moral society. We tried EDUCATION. We tried CORPORATE ACHIEVEMENT. We tried MATERIAL DECADENCE. We tried EMPIRE BUILDING. We have even tried HUMANISTIC SPIRITUALITY. We tried anything that would move us toward satisfaction, but the result of it all is no lasting satisfaction. Even our greatest pleasures lose their luster. Life is a vapor!!!! GONE WITH THE WIND!!!

I suppose the wisdom of ECCLESIASTES could have been the inspiration for the ROLLING STONES song that marked our generation if it were not for one significant detail. You see Solomon tried and he tried and he tried but the conclusion of his song was I FOUND THE KEY TO SATISFACTION. All the things he tried didn’t get him there but those experiences led him full circle to a conclusion that he began his reign with and apparently he ended with as well.

I really believe if MICK JAGGER or if any of us for that matter would listen to Solomon’s wisdom he will teach us a different song to sing, a new chorus that will mark a new generation.  Solomon will show us the key to satisfaction and he warns us of counterfeits. This is the way to go but beware of this that the vapors of life are there and pursue that and you will be CHASING THE WIND.

WHAT WAS SOLOMON’S ANSWER?  Ecclesiastes chapter 2 gives us that answer. This chapter is a discussion of life’s frustrations. Let me start with the conclusion of chapter 2 and then we will go back and look at life’s frustrating moves toward that conclusion. 

Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

²⁴ There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God. ²⁵ For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?

There is some disagreement on the translation of this particular phrase “There is nothing better for a man” The NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE translates it as a comparison. The idea is if you think of all the good things that a man could enjoy there is nothing better for a man or a woman than to eat or to drink and tell themselves their labor is good. In other words, it is good for us. 

The Hebrew seems to indicate we may want to translate it this way. “There is nothing in a man to eat and drink and tell himself his labor is good.” In other words, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR US, FOR THAT IS FROM THE HAND OF GOD. In other words, it is either a comparison or a simple statement. Either way this is the sense of the passage. 

Either way you translate it, it says nothing is so good for us other than a satisfied life but nothing is as impossible for us because it is not in us to be satisfied for who can eat and enjoy life without him?  The answer is NOBODY CAN!!!! So you come down to the idea that if one seeks satisfaction they will never find it. In fact, every pleasure will be fleeting and can not be sustained, BUT IF ONE SEEKS GOD THEN ONE FINDS SATISFACTION. That is my sermon in a nutshell. That is the conclusion. 

__

Just like Dan Jarrell I also loved the song I CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION by the Rolling Stones.  Then in  1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me that Kerry Livgren the writer of that song and a member of Kansas had come to the same conclusion that both Solomon and the ROLLING STONES had. I remember mentioning to my friends at church that we may soon see some members of Kansas become Christians because their search for the meaning of life had obviously come up empty even though they had risen from being an unknown band to the top of the music business and had all the wealth and fame that came with that. Furthermore, Solomon realized death comes to everyone and there must be something more.

Livgren wrote:

“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.”

Take a minute and compare Kerry Livgren’s words to that of the late British humanist H.J. Blackham:

“On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit. If there is a bridge over a gorge which spans only half the distance and ends in mid-air, and if the bridge is crowded with human beings pressing on, one after the other they fall into the abyss. The bridge leads nowhere, and those who are pressing forward to cross it are going nowhere….It does not matter where they think they are going, what preparations for the journey they may have made, how much they may be enjoying it all. The objection merely points out objectively that such a situation is a model of futility“( H. J. Blackham, et al., Objections to Humanism (Riverside, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1967).

_____________________________________

Both Kerry 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 youtube 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.

Those who reject God must accept three realities of their life UNDER THE SUN according to Solomon.  FIRST, death is the end and SECOND, chance and time are the only guiding forces in this life.  FINALLY, power reigns in this life and the scales are never balanced. In contrast, Dave Hope and Kerry Livgren believe death is not the end and 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.

Solomon’s experiment was a search for meaning to life “UNDER THE SUN.” Then in last few words in the Book of Ecclesiastes he looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture: “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”

Actually the answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221

______________

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I had the district privilege to correspond with Milton Friedman and I have read about every book he has ever written and watched almost every interview he has ever given and it is my conclusion that this interview below from REASON MAGAZINE was the most extensive. I don’t agree with everything that has come out of Milton’s mouth, but I must say that he changed my outlook on life.  Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher were two of my heroes and I know that you can learn a great deal from their lives and their economic philosophies. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were both were influenced by Milton Friedman. I suggest checking out these episodes of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?”  and “Created Equal”  and  From Cradle to Grave, and – Power of the Market.

Best of Both Worlds: An Interview with Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman reminisces about his career as an economist and his lifetime “avocation” as a spokesman for freedom.

Brian Doherty from the June 1995 issue – view article in the Digital Edition

Milton Friedman needs little introduction. His career as one of the world’s preeminent economists and advocates of freedom has won him many accolades, best-selling books, and a Nobel Prize.

It has also brought him much satisfaction. Now, in what he is acutely conscious are probably the last years of his life, he and his wife and longtime writing partner Rose Friedman are working on their memoirs.

I met Friedman in January in his elegant high-rise San Francisco condo, with an absorbing view of both the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay. His study is filled, but not cluttered, with his own books and economics reference works. While some Great Men in his position in life might refuse nuisances like interviewers entirely, Friedman is friendly and mostly forthcoming, speaking with the slow assurance of a lifelong professor and teacher very comfortable with explaining things. He welcomed me cordially but with a distinct set of limits, both in time and in subject matter. He has a large project to finish, and not much time to finish it in; and he refuses to psychoanalyze himself, largely avoids indulging in discussion of personalities, and wants to save some stories for his memoirs.

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Friedman is used to discussing policy, but except for his assessment of the new Congress’s potential, we wandered far afield into reminiscence; assessment of his intellectual development; and his thoughts on the history, significance, and successes of the intellectual movement for freedom that he has served so staunchly.

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Reason: You’ve long advocated many of the ideas the new Congress is pushing, such as balanced budget amendments and flat taxes. Do you think Congress will make your dreams come true?

Milton Friedman: I’m skeptical. The talk is good. But I expected so much out of the Reagan administration and was disappointed. I’m a great admirer of Ronald Reagan himself, and I suspect he would have gotten much more done if it hadn’t been for the Cold War and the problem of Nicaragua and El Salvador.

But nonetheless, there’s no doubt that while he talked about cutting down the size of government, he did not succeed. He did slow it down—you’ve got to give him credit for some achievements. But not the massive reduction that he hoped for and planned for. That makes me hesitant now.

Congress wants to talk in this direction. Would they really want to move in that direction? The most important reform would be term limits, six-year limits. Because from an economic point of view, one of the worst features of our system is that you have a new tax law every year or every two years. However bad the tax law is, if you didn’t change it for five years it would do less harm. Why do you keep changing it? Because that’s the most effective way to raise campaign funds. Lobbyists will pay you to put loopholes in; they will pay you to take them out.

If you can get a flat tax with no exemptions or deductions—the Armey plan I suppose would be fine—its main advantage would not be the greater equity of a flat tax or less interference in private incentives. It would be to end this business of changing the whole tax system every few years and keeping prosperous these hordes of tax lawyers.

Reason: You were involved in the development of the withholding tax when you were doing tax work for the government in 1941–43?

Friedman: I was an employee at the Treasury Department. We were in a wartime situation. How do you raise the enormous amount of taxes you need for wartime? We were all in favor of cutting inflation. I wasn’t as sophisticated about how to do it then as I would be now, but there’s no doubt that one of the ways to avoid inflation was to finance as large a fraction of current spending with tax money as possible.

In World War I, a very small fraction of the total war expenditure was financed by taxes, so we had a doubling of prices during the war and after the war. At the outbreak of World War II, the Treasury was determined not to make the same mistake again.

You could not do that during wartime or peacetime without withholding. And so people at the Treasury tax research department, where I was working, investigated various methods of withholding. I was one of the small technical group that worked on developing it.

One of the major opponents of the idea was the IRS. Because every organization knows that the only way you can do anything is the way they’ve always been doing it. This was something new, and they kept telling us how impossible it was. It was a very interesting and very challenging intellectual task. I played a significant role, no question about it, in introducing withholding. I think it’s a great mistake for peacetime, but in 1941–43, all of us were concentrating on the war.

I have no apologies for it, but I really wish we hadn’t found it necessary and I wish there were some way of abolishing withholding now.

Reason: You’ve also had some history of advising candidates and presidents. How did you get involved in the Goldwater campaign?

Friedman: Through Bill Baroody at the American Enterprise Institute. The American Enterprise Institute was originally the American Enterprise Association, and had established a board of academic advisers to advise them on their publications. I had been a member of that I think since its inception, and Baroody arranged sometime in the early ’60s a number of dinners at his house at which Goldwater was present. Baroody was the brain trust for Goldwater. I was also at some of those dinners, so I got to meet Goldwater. And then when the campaign came along, Baroody asked me to serve as economic adviser. I didn’t go on the campaign trail. I sat at home and wrote memos.

Reason: Were you impressed with Goldwater’s acumen?

Friedman: It depends on what you mean by acumen. There’s no doubt whatsoever that he’s a man of principle and strong character. His IQ is perfectly reasonable but it’s not outstanding among the various politicians I’ve met, and that shows why IQ is not a good measure. The highest IQ was Richard Nixon’s and he was a terrible president

While I was never a governmental official, I was a member of an economic advisory group that Nixon appointed of which Arthur Burns was chairman. I saw Nixon from time to time when he was president, until he imposed price controls. I saw him only once after that.

Reason: Did you stop giving him advice?

Friedman: I kept giving him advice from Newsweek, but not personally.

Reason: Do you have a clear memory of how your political philosophy formed? Was it any specific teacher you encountered, book you read, or experience?

Friedman: I’m sure it was a combination of all of those. I was exposed as an undergraduate at Rutgers to two very strong influences: Homer Jones, who was a student of Frank Knight’s from Chicago, and Arthur Burns. They both had a considerable influence on me as an undergraduate in my thinking and my writing.

But it would be hard to say what philosophy that left me with. One of the things I regretted all my life is that when I graduated from Rutgers and came home, I wrote out a statement of my beliefs. I put that away in a drawer somewhere in my mother’s home and I’ve never been able to find the damn thing! I’d love to have it! So I can’t really tell you what I believed at that time.

But obviously my ideas were not very well formed. I was an innocent youngster and what I was impressed by, of course, was the Great Depression, and the belief that somehow or another there ought to be something that can prevent any such thing from happening.

Thanks to Homer, I was offered a scholarship at the University of Chicago and I went to Chicago and studied with Frank Knight, Jacob Viner, Henry Schultz, and so on. The atmosphere in Chicago in 1932 was very lively and active and encouraging. Of course, I got a very good grounding in economic theory and statistics as well.

Next year, I managed to get a fellowship to Columbia. I spent a year at Columbia mainly to study with Harold Hotelling, who was a mathematical economist and statistician.

Then I went back to Chicago for one year and was a research assistant to Henry Schultz. There were a group of students in Chicago who were very, very important. George Stigler, Allen Wallis, Rose Director, and myself. We ate almost every lunch and dinner together. We spent all the time discussing economics, both economic theory and economic policy. And we were very close for the rest of our lives. George died about two years ago. Allen, I’m glad to say, is still alive.

In the 1930s, both Rose and I at separate times went to Washington and worked on the New Deal, but we were technical statisticians and economists, not anything that had any policy role.

Throughout my career, I spent most of my time on technical economics. This policy stuff has been a strict avocation. If you really want to engage in policy activity, don’t make that your vocation. Make it your avocation. Get a job. Get a secure base of income. Otherwise, you’re going to get corrupted and destroyed. How are you going to get support? You’re only going to get support from people who are ideologically motivated. And you’re not going to be as free as you think you’re going to be.

One of the most important things in my career is that I always had a major vocation which was not policy. I don’t regard what I’ve done in the field of monetary policy as on the same level as what I’ve done about trying to get rid of the draft or legalizing drugs. One is a technical byproduct of scientific work, and so that’s the only sense in which my vocation has affected my policy. But by having a good firm position in the academic world, I was perfectly free to be my own person in the world of policy. I didn’t have to worry about losing my job. I didn’t have to worry about being persecuted.

I think you’ll make a mistake if you’re going to spend your life as a policy wonk. I’ve seen some of my students who have done this. And some of them are fine, and some of them, especially those who have gone to Washington and stayed, are not.

Reason: How did you come to enter the world of policy writing?

Friedman: What really got me started in policy and what led to Capitalism and Freedom was, in an indirect way, the Mont Pelerin Society. The first Mont Pelerin Society meeting was in 1947 in Switzerland. Hayek arranged it. It was his idea.

Mont Pelerin was the first time that I came into contact with people like Hayek, Lionel Robbins, and the European contingent of that time. That widened my perspective about issues and policy.

The Mont Pelerin Society was people who were deeply concerned about issues. It was people with whom you shared a basic common belief, who at home were isolated. Its great contribution was that it provided a week when people like that could get together and open their hearts and minds and not have to worry about whether somebody was going to stick a knife in their back—especially for people in countries where they were isolated.

The reason the Society ever happened was that Hayek had written The Road to Serfdom, which attracted the attention of the Volker Foundation, and it was the Volker Foundation that financed the American participation in the Mont Pelerin Society. A Swiss group financed the Swiss and European participation.

In the middle ’50s, the Volker Foundation undertook a program of summer institutes for junior academics who were favorably inclined toward a free-market point of view or were interested in such issues. Capitalism and Freedom was based on a series of lectures that I gave at one of those seminars. Those seminars forced me to systematize my thoughts and present them in a coherent way. And they also provided a very good audience because the people who were there were lively, outspoken, didn’t hesitate to criticize. It was a very good audience. There was a lot of free time as well for discussions outside of the formal seminar. And I learned a great deal, not only from the students who were there, but also the fellow lecturers.

And then my wife, Rose, took the transcribed tapes of the lectures and reworked them and that’s what became Capitalism and Freedom.

Reason: Did you have any hesitation about publishing that book?

Friedman: None whatsoever. Why should I have had any hesitation? Remember, I was a tenured professor.

Another thing that helped form my policy orientation was when Hayek came to Chicago in 1950. He attracted quite a number of very able students, Sam Peltzman, Ron Hamowy, Ralph Raico, Shirley Letwin. There were quite a group of them. Hayek drew very high quality people. I was an adviser to their New Individualist Review and contributed articles to it. They were a very lively group that had organized discussion sessions and so on, which was part of the atmosphere.

I was persuaded at that time in the early 1960s that we were on the verge of developing a strong libertarian movement. These were libertarians, all of them, though Hayek would not have labeled himself a libertarian. As you know, he always avoided the termconservative, too. He would call himself an Old Whig. The others would have called themselves libertarians.

That’s how I was able to develop my own ideas. What shaped them was the interaction with all these other people at lunches and dinners and lectures.

Ayn Rand was receiving increasing attention at that time. I believed a big upsurge in the libertarian philosophy and views was pending. And to some extent it was. You had the Randian group, and the Murray Rothbard group. But the developing libertarian movement was repressed by the Vietnam War and what it led to. You’ve only got room for one big movement at a time.

Reason: Why do you think you had more initial success as a public proselytizer—you had a regular column inNewsweek—than other prominent libertarians?

Friedman: I really don’t know how to answer that. I was basically trained in economic science. I was interested in the history of thought and where it came from. I thought I was going back to some fundamentals rather than creating anything new. Ayn Rand had no use for the past. She was going to invent the world anew. She was an utterly intolerant and dogmatic person who did a great deal of good. But I could never feel comfortable with her. I don’t mean with her personally—I never met her personally. I’m only talking about her writings.

Rothbard was a very different character. I had some contact with Murray early on, but very little contact with him overall. That’s primarily because I deliberately kept from getting involved in the Libertarian Party affairs; partly because I always thought Murray, like Rand, was a cult builder, and a dogmatist. Partly because whenever he’s had the chance he’s been nasty to me and my work. I don’t mind that but I didn’t have to mix with him. And so there is no ideological reason why I kept separate from him, really a personal reason.

Reason: In seeing yourself as harkening back to 19th-century liberalism, you never became a system-builder like Rand or Rothbard….

Friedman: Exactly. I’d rather use the term liberal than libertarian.

Reason: I see you occasionally use the word libertarian.

Friedman: Oh, I do.

Reason: As a concession to accepted usage?

Friedman: That’s right. Because now liberal is so misinterpreted. So I am a Republican with a capital “r” and a libertarian with a small “l.” I have a party membership as a Republican, not because they have any principles, but because that’s the way I am the most useful and have most influence. My philosophy is clearly libertarian.

However, libertarian is not a self-defining term. There are many varieties of libertarians. There’s a zero-government libertarian, an anarchist. There’s a limited-government libertarianism. They share a lot in terms of their fundamental values. If you trace them to their ultimate roots, they are different. It doesn’t matter in practice, because we both want to work in the same direction.

I would like to be a zero-government libertarian.

Reason: Why aren’t you?

Friedman: Because I don’t think it’s a feasible social structure. I look over history, and outside of perhaps Iceland, where else can you find any historical examples of that kind of a system developing?

Reason: One could argue the same thing about minimal-state libertarianism: that historically it seems to not be stable.

Friedman: I agree. I wrote an article once arguing that a free society is an unstable equilibrium. Fundamentally, I’m of the opinion that it is. Though we want to try to keep that unstable equilibrium as long as we can! The United States from 1780 to 1929 is not a bad example of a limited-government libertarianism that lasted for a long time.

Reason: Is feeling like part of a larger movement important to you? Would you have been able to do the work you did had you not felt part of a community of like-minded scholars?

Friedman: I’ve been very fortunate in being part of two communities of scholars: the community of economists on the one hand, and the community of libertarians on the other. And that combination has been very productive so far as I’m concerned, but I can’t really tell you why. One thing is that it’s very hard for somebody on his own to be sure that he’s thought of all the angles. Discussion among people helps an enormous amount. And particularly able, good people.

If you have a person isolated in an environment unfriendly to his ideas and thoughts, he tends to turn bitter and self-directed. But the same person with three or four other people around—it doesn’t have to be a lot of people—will be in a wholly different position since he will receive support from the others.

You remind me of one incident where in a sense the two worlds interacted. Back in the 1960s, my daughter was an undergraduate at Bryn Mawr, and I was invited by Haverford, I think it was, to spend three days giving talks on mathematical economics. Absolutely no policy involved, pure mathematical economics. And because my daughter was at Bryn Mawr, I agreed.

After I had agreed, they asked if I would also be willing to give a chapel talk on political matters. I said sure and I gave a title, something having to do with freedom. Then I discovered that chapel at Haverford was compulsory. I wrote to the president and said that I was very much disturbed at giving a talk on freedom to a compulsory audience.

When it was time to go to the chapel, I asked the president, “How do they count attendance?” And he said, “At the beginning of the hour there are people going around in the balcony and looking down. Everybody has an assigned seat, and they count.”

When I got up to talk, I spoke up to the people in the balcony and said that those who were counting attendance, please let me know when they’re through because I don’t like the idea of speaking about freedom to a compulsory audience. I’m going to sit down and give the people who want to leave the chance to leave. And I did. Now, the students hadn’t really thought that I was going to do it and when I did, about one or two people got up to leave and the rest of them booed them because obviously, I was talking on their level. As a result, I’ve seldom had a student audience who were so completely on my side as that group, even though the political atmosphere at Haverford was very much to the left. That’s one of the greatest coups I’ve ever had as a public speaker.

Reason: Do you think you’ve become more radically libertarian in your political views over the years?

Friedman: The difference between me and people like Murray Rothbard is that, though I want to know what my ideal is, I think I also have to be willing to discuss changes that are less than ideal so long as they point me in that direction. So while I’d like to abolish the Fed, I’ve written many pages on how the Fed, if it does exist, should be run.

Murray used to berate me for my stand on education vouchers. I would like to see the government out of the education business entirely. In that area, I have become more extreme, not because of any change of philosophy, but because of a change in my knowledge of the factual situation and history.

I used to argue that I could justify compulsory schooling on the ground of external effects. But then I discovered from work that E.G. West and others did, that before compulsory schooling something over 90 percent of people got schooled. The big distinction you have to make is between marginal benefit and average benefit. The marginal benefit from having 91 percent of people in school rather than 90 percent does not justify making it compulsory. But if in the absence of compulsory education, only 50 percent would be literate, then I can regard it as appropriate.

Some issues are open and shut. Tariffs, property rights. No, not property rights, because you have to define property rights. But education is not open and shut. In Capitalism and Freedom we came out on the side of favoring compulsory schooling and in Free To Choose we came out against it. So I have become more radical in that sense. Murray used to call me a statist because I was willing to have government money involved. But I see the voucher as a step in moving away from a government system to a private system. Now maybe I’m wrong, maybe it wouldn’t have that effect, but that’s the reason I favor it.

Reason: Would you agree with the proposition that you have been the most successful and important proselytizer for libertarianism?

Friedman: I don’t think that I’ve had the most influence. I think the most influential person was Hayek. The effect of The Road to Serfdom was really critical. In another area, Bill Buckley has certainly been very important on national policy.

Buckley’s not a libertarian. But he’s also not a socialist. And if you look at the political scene, his National Review has had a tremendous influence in providing a base for collaboration between the libertarians on the one side and the free-market conservatives on the other. That was epitomized in its most obvious form by Frank Meyer when he was with National Review. They’ve helped that coalition to form and hold together and have influence; Bill Buckley played an enormously important role.

I might have more public influence than ideologues like Rand or Murray Rothbard, the libertarians in that strict sense. And I believe that the reason is because they have been so intolerant.

Reason: You wrote an essay in Liberty about the intolerance of Rand and Ludwig von Mises. You say you never met Rand….

Friedman: I was never to my knowledge in the same place as she was; I was in Chicago, she was in New York. I’m sure if I had been in New York, I would have met her. It was not because of any objection on my part. I think she was a fascinating woman and had a great influence. As I always have said, she had an extremely good influence on all those who did not become Randians. But if they became Randians, they were hopeless.

Reason: But you knew Mises personally. Did you see the intolerance that you find in his method also in his personal behavior?

Friedman: No question. The story I remember best happened at the initial Mont Pelerin meeting when he got up and said, “You’re all a bunch of socialists.” We were discussing the distribution of income, and whether you should have progressive income taxes. Some of the people there were expressing the view that there could be a justification for it.

Another occasion which is equally telling: Fritz Machlup was a student of Mises’s, one of his most faithful disciples. At one of the Mont Pelerin meetings, Fritz gave a talk in which I think he questioned the idea of a gold standard; he came out in favor of floating exchange rates. Mises was so mad he wouldn’t speak to him for three years. Some people had to come around and bring them together again. It’s hard to understand; you can get some understanding of it by taking into account how people like Mises were persecuted in their lives.

Reason: You don’t link yourself openly to certain aspects of the libertarian political movement….

Friedman: Well, you have to be more specific. Being very specific, I have not wanted to join the Libertarian Party simply because I have accumulated good working relationships with people in the Republican Party, and I think I can be more effective by being a Republican. That’s the only reason. There are no other cases in which I have had any problem with the libertarian movement.

Reason: You certainly have a respectability and presence that most people and organizations labeled libertarian don’t have….

Friedman: That’s because of one thing only: I won the Nobel Prize. What, are you kidding yourself?

Reason: Your status preceded your winning the Nobel.

Friedman: I did have some of it, yes. It’s because I have a firm root in something other than ideology. Because I was firmly based in a scientific academic discipline. I wasn’t simply a preacher or an ideologue or an unconnected philosopher.

But I think the libertarian movement is doing fine. I think that REASON magazine has been remarkably good; it has been very effective. It takes many kinds of people to make a movement. And one of the most important things are publications. In any activity you have manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers; and all three are essential and necessary. There are only a relatively small number of manufacturers of ideas. But there can be a very large number of wholesalers and retailers.

As I look around me I’m impressed by the fact that there’s increasing attention paid to libertarian ideas. If you look at the picture now, compared with 30 years ago, there’s no comparison. Now you’ve got much more. As far as journals are concerned, then we had the Foundation for Economic Education’s Freeman; for a while we had the New Individualist Review in Chicago, but that was about it. Bill Buckley established National Review, which is in a different corner.

(Page 6 of 7)

But look at the situation today. You have REASON magazine, you have Liberty magazine. You’ve got all of this stuff that spouts out from the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a half dozen other think tanks. In fact, I think there are too damn many think tanks now.

Reason: Why do you say there are too many?

Friedman: You don’t have the talent for it.

Reason: Do you consider yourself in the libertarian mainstream on foreign policy issues?

Friedman: I don’t believe that the libertarian philosophy dictates a foreign policy. In particular I don’t think you can derive isolationism from libertarianism. I’m anti-interventionist, but I’m not an isolationist. I don’t believe we ought to go without armaments. I’m sure we spend more money on armaments than we need to; that’s a different question.

I don’t believe that you can derive from libertarian views the notion that a nation has to bare itself to the outside without defense, or that a strong volunteer force would arise and defend the nation.

Reason: What did you think about the Gulf War?

Friedman: I always had misgivings about the Gulf War, but I never came to a firm decision. It was more nearly justified than other recent foreign interventions, and yet I was persuaded that the major argument used to support it was fallacious.

After all, if Iraq took over the oil, it would have to do something with it. If they don’t want to eat it, they’d have to sell it. I don’t think the price of oil would have been much affected. The more important consideration was the balance of power with Iran and Iraq. I have mixed feelings about that war; I wouldn’t be willing to write a brief on either side.

Reason: What would you regard as your most important accomplishment?

Friedman: It depends on what you mean. I wrote an essay on methodology in 1953. It was published in my book Essays on Positive Economics. I had been working on it for years before that, so it goes way back to the middle ’40s. It started to generate a lot of comments, but I decided I would rather do economics than talk about how economics are done. So I made a distinct point of not replying to any criticism of that essay. And I think that’s why it’s so commented on.

That methodology article has probably been reprinted more often and referred to more often than anything else I’ve written, though I would by no means regard it as the most important thing I’ve ever done.

In terms of sheer technical quality there’s no doubt in my mind that the best thing I ever did was The Theory of the Consumption Function which, from a scientific point of view, is a carry on from the methodology article. I regard the theory of the consumption function as a demonstration of applying the methodology I explained there. But also it has a neatness about it and a specific theorem which has generated an enormous amount of work since then. When things like that originally come out, the status quo says, “Oh, that’s a bunch of nonsense, we can’t possibly work with that,” but give it time. And by now it’s part of conventional economics.

In the realm of policy, I regard eliminating the draft as my most important accomplishment.

Reason: Have you retired from economics?

Friedman: Well, not from economics, but from that kind of work. There’s been a tremendous advance in specialization in economics, particularly in the econometrics area. I was just looking at recent working papers published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. These are clearly built on work of mine, going back to the 1970s. But there’s been a new development in econometrics that I haven’t kept up with. The techniques they’ve adopted here are all different from ours. I’m not an expert in them anymore; I really couldn’t deal with this material on the level on which they are dealing with it, although I can understand the thrust of what they’re doing.

I’m not making any pretense of trying to do any more basic, fundamental economics work. I believe that almost all important contributions of a scientist are made in the first 10 years after he enters the discipline. Not the first 10 years of his professional life; he may shift from one discipline to another. And I’ve been impressed as I’ve been going over my memoirs, that my basic contributions all have their roots in the early years of my work. I was reading over some preliminary professional papers in the 1950s, and I could see there the whole future of the next 30 years of work that I did; it was all outlined in there.

You add things to it, you change it, but the fundamental ideas come early. The 1940s–’60s was when I did my most important economic work, even though it wasn’t all published then.

(Page 7 of 7)

Reason: I read an article recently in the Washington Monthly that repeated all the silly ideas about inflation that you’ve been fighting your whole career. Are battles like this ever won?

Friedman: No. All battles are perpetual. You go back in the literature of economics, and you’ll find the same kind of silly statements 100 years ago, 200 years ago. And you’ll find the same sensible statements the other way.

Reason: Are those kind of mistakes still made among professional economists?

Friedman: If you look at the views of the profession as a whole, no. There’s a great deal of agreement among economists, contrary to what people may think. You won’t find much difference of opinion on the proposition that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs. You won’t find much difference of opinion on the desirability of free trade. And you won’t find any difference of opinion on the idea that you cannot have inflation without monetary expansion. There’s no doubt that there’s very widespread agreement about those simple ideas.

Reason: How do you make that consensus spread to the general public?

Friedman: You just have to keep on trying to do it. There’s no short cut. There’s no way in which you’re going to end the discussion, because new generations arise; every group has the same crazy ideas. I get a great many letters from people who think that the way to solve budget problems and fiscal problems is to simply print money and pay off the debt. And there’s almost no way of making those people realize just what a bunch of nonsense that is.

I’m inclined to think that there’s no field so rife with cranks as currency and money, but I’m sure there are other fields that are just as bad. I’m just ignorant of them.

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