What is Man?

One of my cherished childhood authors is George MacDonald. My parents read many of his books to me, including The Princess and the Goblins and its sequel, The Princess and Curdie, At the Back of the North Wind, and Sir Gibbie. George MacDonald was a 19th century Scottish minister and prolific author, credited with well over sixty books and numerous poems.

In reading MacDonald’s writings, I would describe their primary characteristic as pictures of the love of God. He writes, “Everywhere is God. The earth underneath us is his hand upholding us; the waters are in the hollow of it. Every spring-fountain of gladness about us is his making and his delight. He tends us and cares for us; he is close to us, breathing into our nostrils the breath of life, and breathing into our spirit thoughts that make us look up and recognize the love and care around us.” It is said that when he was first taught the doctrine of unconditional election, he wept, even though assured that he was one of the elect. It offended his perception of God’s love.

Unfortunately, in defending God’s love, he swung to the opposite conclusion: That no one would be eternally damned. What then was the fire of hell for? McDonald writes, “Salvation is a process of evolution toward Christ-likeness.The wrath will consume what they call themselves; so that the selves God made shall appear.” What was the purpose of the cross? For Macdonald, it was the epicenter of a great battle in which Christ destroyed the “disease of cosmic evil,” the cause of sin. "Did he not foil and slay evil by letting all the waves and billows of its horrid sea break upon him, go over him, and die without rebound—spend their rage, fall defeated, and cease?” His view of the cross was a saving from sin but not from the penalty for sin. The cross did not appease the wrath of a holy God or satisfy a judgment. His erroneous doctrine violates the plain reading of scripture in two ways: First, by denying that Christ’s death was substitutionary, one must also deny man’s guilt before God. Secondly, by denying the reality and eternality of hell, one must also deny God’s justness. The sum of these two errors makes pointless the sacrifice of Christ. Why go to the cross if there is no penalty? Why pay the penalty if there is no punishment?

I’ll cover each of these individually, but for now I want to point out this most pitiable fact; that George MacDonald, a man infatuated with the love of God, missed the greatest example of love that was ever illustrated to mankind.

Isaiah 53:5 – But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.

1 John 4:10 -  In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation [satisfying sacrifice] for our sins.

His error is that he substituted man’s thoughts for God’s Word. He reasoned emotionally and did not accept the plain scriptures. MacDonald wrote that men corrupt God’s message when they do not “interpret the great heart of God… by their own hearts.” There is his error. “The heart is deceitful above all things… Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

I use Gmail to manage my primary domain. It doesn’t host a webpage, but I use it for e-mail. Google Apps allows me to use Gmail’s slick interface with that domain name. For example, I can enter “mail.whatisman.com” into a browser and it logs me into a Gmail app.

I’m certainly a fan of Windows and the Office suit in general, but during the beta testing of Windows 7 I reinstalled the OS 3 times, twice for the beta and once for the release candidate. When Windows 7 came out, I installed it on our two laptops and desktop, plus on a couple of family member’s computers. The process went pretty smoothly and the only real annoyance was backing up and restoring Outlook emails, contacts, filters, and account settings. With the advent of Gears, allowing offline access to Gmail, I ditched Outlook. [Incidentally, Outlook 2010 is pretty slick. With the integration of Windows Live, I may end up giving outlook another try.]

One of the annoyances I found with using an online solution like Gmail is that none of the system links to the default mail program work. Word 2007 – 2010 allows one to save and email a doc, but it can’t pull up a browser and open Gmail for me. Likewise for shell links like right-clicking a file and selecting the “send to” option.

Enter Affixa.

This free program links Gmail with the operating system. It’s pretty easy to set up, too. It’s not perfectly integrated, but it will put an email in your drafts with the file attached. I’m not complaining, it’s way better than no link at all. It will also dump large attachments that Gmail refuses into a drop.io account and place a link to them in the email. I wish it could integrate with Dropbox, though.

Here’s a screenshot of the control panel. The program normally runs in the background via a system tray icon.

Got an interesting email today:

I asked this friend, “Did you write the above message? Your name is on it, so it’s a reasonable inference that you wrote it. How can you prove to me you wrote it, though? You can compile external evidence: Where you were 48 minutes ago, examples of your writing style, external witnesses, etc. While we make the reasonable inference that Bible was ultimately authored by God, because He claims responsibility for it, we also have external evidence. History, archeology, a consistent message, personal testimony, etc. all testify to the accuracy of a book authored by an infallible source.

Anyway, here’s my response in kind:

EDIT: I updated this diagram the day after it was posted in response to Boz’s critique.

I read an interesting quote by Adam Savage, of Mythbuster’s fame. He said the following in a Popular Mechanics podcast:

Like I said, the newspapers talking about evolution versus creationism is very much an attack on science as a type of religion—believing that the scientific method is some type of religious belief. And it’s not! That kind of attack absolutely is damaging science exploration across the whole country. I do think that’s a significant problem. And until we can get our head out of the sand and realize that science isn’t about truth—…

While Adam is a proponent of molecules-to-man evolution, he makes a couple of good points in this quote. He says that the scientific method isn’t “some type of religious belief.” He’s right, too. The scientific method (which is limited to operational science and cannot operate experientially in the area of origins) is a tool. Even so, religious belief does factor into the scientific method.  Religious belief is the bias that inherently determines how one interprets the results of the scientific method. These results can provide evidence for vastly different presumptions, whether they be of supernatural creation or or evolutionary naturalism. The problem is that evolutionary naturalism is a religion, a dogma as faith based as any religion. Consider this statement that the famous evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky quoted in The American Biology Teacher journal: “Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow.” Or Michael Dini of Texas Tech University, who refused to give letters of recommendation to students who would not verbally proclaim factuality of evolution. Which brings one to the second part of Adam’s quote.

The second part of the quote, “science isn’t about truth,” is likewise correct. This doesn’t make science useless; far from it!The results of scientific endeavors have greatly benefited the quality of our lives. The point of facts is that scientists don’t know everything, and therefore science deals in theories, both weak and strong, but never in facts, and no matter how strong a theory is, it is always subject to change. Consider the following exchange:

Naturalist: Creation is not science because a creationist’s views were set by the Bible and, therefore, are not subject to change.

Creationist: The reason scientific theories change is because we don’t know everything, isn’t it? We don’t have all the evidence.

Naturalist: Yes, that’s right.

Creationist:But, we will never know everything.

Naturalist: That’s true.

Creationist: We will always continue to find new evidence.

Naturalist: Quite correct.

Creationist: That means we can’t be sure about anything.

Naturalist: Right.

Creationist: That means we can’t be sure about evolution.

Naturalist: Oh, no! Evolution is a fact!

The fact is that science and the scientific method cannot confirm our origins for either creationist or evolutionary naturalist. All it can do affirm what we already believe. For the Christian, that belief is based on the authority of the scriptures and the eye witness account of creation contained therein. For an evolutionary naturalist, there is only the belief that no supernatural force exists… for science does not tell truth.

During research a for a project I’m working on, I ran across the blog of a woman who had recently become an atheist. Her joy at this recent “conversion” illustrates in crystal clarity the true philosophy of atheism.

I finally and irrevocably cast out the pretend demon god that controlled my mind. I am discovering life without the surveillance cameras that were implanted in my brain at a very young age. For in him, I NO LONGER live and move and have my being. I AM FREE!

My brain belongs to me!

For the first time in my life; my heart, mind, thoughts, acts, vision, passion, strength, weakness, virtue, failure, limits and talent all belong to me.

TO ME!

It is all mine!

MINE, MINE, MINE, MINE, MINE, MINE!

This strikes a chord with me because, in the past, I pondered becoming an atheist for the same reasons that this lady expresses. It just seemed like freedom. I could do everything I ever wanted to do. I could create that long term art project I’ve always wanted to do. I could sleep in on Sundays. I could stay in the military. All the things that I put aside for the sake of the World After this World, I could pick up again. No more evangelizing, no more Bible reading, no more quiet time, no more scripture memorization, no more restrictive moral compass. I could engage in baser behavior, curse, look at pornography, watch any movie I wanted, all without guilt.

Interestingly, there were a couple of caveats. I would have to become more crafty and conniving… I new that in a world where I was in control, everyone else was too, and my idea of morality might not apply to anyone else. Why be meek when the best way to get what you want is to force it? If everyone else played that game, I’d have to play it as well. The other point was that I never actually thought about not believing in God, I merely wanted to de-personalize him, reduce him to something abstract and unknowable. He could exist as long as he didn’t tell me what to do. [Some might say that this qualifies my thoughts as agnostic and not atheistic, but since it is impossible to prove the non-existence of  a supreme being, I do not believe that a philosophically viable form of atheism that pure is attainable.]   

For me, the ultimate end of atheism was to be my own god, deciding for myself what was right and wrong, good for me or bad for me. In Genesis 3:1,5 we see this desire expressed by the serpent: “He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden? For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God…’"

But here is the problem.

“You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God… I will make myself like the Most High.’ But you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit.” (Isaiah 14:13-15)

It just doesn’t work forever. If you manage to get everything you want, it’s still so temporary. I’m halfway to decay. And after that, what? I had a professor tell me once, “I hope that if there’s a good place, I go to it, and if there’s a bad place, I don’t, but I don’t think there’s anything after death.” I’m not satisfied with a purposeless, self-gratifying existence, one dominated by “MINE, MINE, MINE, MINE,” for (hopefully) 75 years or so, and then nothing. But even worse, if the biblical God is a reality, the grave is the beginning of eternity. For those who reject Jesus Christ, a never-forever life, all to one’s self, for those who accept His Gift, an ever-forever life, all to Him.

I’ve got Windows 7 Pro on my older desktop PC. It installed with only one hitch. The Linksys WMP54G PCI wireless network adaptor doesn’t work on 64bit Windows 7, at least not using the drivers on the Linksys website. I hooked up my Verizon MiFi card, waited for the drivers to auto-install, and got online. Windows immediately installed drivers for the card and I was go. The desktop is an older AMD Athlon 64 4200 with 2 gigs of RAM and a nVidia 6800gt. It runs fine. Interestingly enough, I installed the upgrade version over Windows 7 RC1 with no activation problems. It was the student copy digital download which I burned after converting to ISO. 

I’ve ordered a 160 gig, 2.5” 5400 rpm drive for Christina’s laptop. It’s 20% faster, has 4x the cache, and 2x the space. I’ll put her old 80 gig XP drive in my external enclosure and use a hack to do a clean install. This way, I don’t have to worry about losing her data, and if she’s not happy with the Windows 7 experience, I can just pop her old HD back in.

On Wednesday Wired magazine published an article about the World Science Festival. The article highlighted an appearance by string theory expert Brian Greene and entertainer Alan Alda. In the interview, Alda said the following:

One of the things I like with science is that it’s based on uncertainty, on never quite knowing, and gaining a little glimmer of understanding every time.

I liked this quote, though I suspect the meaning I see in it might not reflect what the speaker intended.

The reason that I mention this quote is an article on the Science Discovery website that details a paper published this week in the Journal of Morphology. 

From the article:

“It’s really kind of amazing that after centuries of studying birds and flight we still didn’t understand a basic aspect of bird biology," said John Ruben, an OSU professor of zoology. "This discovery probably means that birds evolved on a parallel path alongside dinosaurs, starting that process before most dinosaur species even existed.

"This is fundamental to bird physiology," said Devon Quick, an OSU instructor of zoology who completed this work as part of her doctoral studies. "It’s really strange that no one realized this before. The position of the thigh bone and muscles in birds is critical to their lung function, which in turn is what gives them enough lung capacity for flight." However, every other animal that has walked on land, the scientists said, has a moveable thigh bone that is involved in their motion – including humans, elephants, dogs, lizards and – in the ancient past – dinosaurs.

The implication, the researchers said, is that birds almost certainly did not descend from theropod dinosaurs, such as tyrannosaurus or allosaurus. The findings add to a growing body of evidence in the past two decades that challenge some of the most widely-held beliefs about animal evolution.

“For one thing, birds are found earlier in the fossil record than the dinosaurs they are supposed to have descended from," Ruben said. "That’s a pretty serious problem, and there are other inconsistencies with the bird-from-dinosaur theories."But one of the primary reasons many scientists kept pointing to birds as having descended from dinosaurs was similarities in their lungs," Ruben said. "However, theropod dinosaurs had a moving femur and therefore could not have had a lung that worked like that in birds. Their abdominal air sac, if they had one, would have collapsed. That undercuts a critical piece of supporting evidence for the dinosaur-bird link.

It concludes:

Frankly, there’s a lot of museum politics involved in this, a lot of careers committed to a particular point of view even if new scientific evidence raises questions," Ruben said. In some museum displays, he said, the birds-descended-from-dinosaurs evolutionary theory has been portrayed as a largely accepted fact, with an asterisk pointing out in small type that "some scientists disagree. Our work at OSU used to be pretty much the only asterisk they were talking about," Ruben said. "But now there are more asterisks all the time. That’s part of the process of science."

I highlighted those sentences in the last block quote because of Brian Greene’s statement in the Wired article:

Greene: We try never to preach that science comes from on high and should be taken uncritically. Feel free to mull over every morsel, ask questions, and spit it back out if it doesn’t make sense.

Wired.com: What about those places, such as young earth creationism, where some people just will not accept something for which all the evidence points in one direction?

Greene: However well-intentioned your goals, you’re never going to bring everybody into the fold. And that’s okay. There are people in whom there’s no willingness for rational thought and evidence-based thinking to dictate what they believe to be true.

In other words, it’s ok to take science critically as long as you come to the same conclusion as the rest of “the fold.” That doesn’t sound like science “based on uncertainty, on never quite knowing.” As for the rejection of evidence? According to Ruben, this problem isn’t just limited to “young earth creationism.” It’s also endemic to the very institutions that are tasked with feeding the public with with science information.

I’ll close with this nugget from PBS courtesy of National Geographic, two of the largest shepherds of public science knowledge:

Notice the title, “Path to Birds” and the “timeline.” But the subtext includes the following oxymoronic statement: “This family tree is not a chronological progression.”

Go figure.

My brother Nathan, who is both a redneck and a very clever person, told me this joke:

A redneck from Georgia walked into a bank in New York City and asked for the loan officer. He told the loan officer that he was going to Bakersfield on business for two weeks and needed to borrow $5,000 and that he was not a depositor of the bank. The loan officer told him that the bank would need some form of security for the loan, so the Redneck handed over the keys to a new Ferrari. The car was parked on the street in front of the bank. The Redneck produced the title and everything checked out. The loan officer agreed to hold the car as collateral for the loan and apologized for having to charge 12% interest.

After the redneck left, the bank’s president and its officers all enjoyed a good laugh at the redneck from the south for using a $250,000 Ferrari as collateral for a $5,000 loan. An employee of the bank then drove the Ferrari into the bank’s underground garage and parked it.

Two weeks later, the redneck returned, repaid the $5,000 and the interest of $23.07. The loan officer said, “Sir, we are very happy to have had your business, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we found that you are a multimillionaire. What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow $5,000?”

The Georgia redneck replied, “Where else in New York City can I park my car for two weeks for only $23.07 and expect it to be there in perfect condition when I return?”

Yesterday mom called me to look at her computer. At first it seemed like an easy fix. A window kept popping up on the screen at random intervals. I figured it was a stuck key. After checking up on the internet I found out that the particular window popping up, “arrange favorites,” was activated by CTRL-B in Internet Explorer. I asked mom and she said that it was also randomly bolding letters in MS Word, also activated by CTRL-B. Well, that had me scratching my head… I have never seen two buttons stick like that at the same time. Mom also said her Lenovo had been doing this for some time, but last night it started doing it constantly,to the point where IE was unusable.

I pulled off the keys and cleaned under them, though at this point I suspected it was something hardware related. That didn’t fix it, so I figured I’d go for broke and pulled off the keyboard completely and disconnected it from the motherboard. It STILL did it. So now I tried the software side of thing. Safe mode: still doing it. Virus and ad-ware scan, nada. I decided to see if there were keyboard drivers on Lenovo’s website and while I did this, mom’s computer stopped having random key-presses. I set my tablet down and her computer started doing it again. WHAT in the WORLD?!!! I started moving the laptop around to see if there was something loose, disconnecting peripherals, etc. Still doing it. I propped my computer back up in front of hers. The key presses stopped. Hmm. I started looking around and I saw this strange clear green electronic device on the table. It had a couple of infrared emitters and a tiny red LED. I moved it away from the laptop and the problem stopped.

I suddenly remembered that the Lenovo Y510 has an infrared port in front. To test my theory, I got a remote from the living room and and aimed at the laptop. “Arrange Favorites” popped up. Whoa! I looked this up today on Lenovo’s website and apparently even some bright incandescent lights can cause it. The port interprets infrared noise as keystrokes. The synopsis: While mom was in the living room, the remotes would occasionally get a good bounce and hit the infrared port. The green thing was a personnel tracker the hospital uses. She accidentally brought it hope, and when she set it on the table next to her laptop in the kitchen it had line of sight to her infrared port. Every time it transmitted, it activated CTRL-B. How wacky is that?

I was trying to figure out how to embed flash video on my blog and I got sidetracked while trying to convert YouTube clips… I needed software that would download flash from YouTube, let me cut it, and then export it as either flash (.flv) or other formats, like .avi for Facebook.

Well, I found this really nifty free software called “Any Video Converter.” The neat thing about it that it converts to just about any format. There’s a pro version that’s the most comprehensive, it will even convert to .3gp, which a lot of cell phones use, but the free version does everything I need. Hey JC, there’s a MAC version too.

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