Monday quote

As far as Paul is concerned, grieving the Holy Spirit is related to lifestyle choices, while quenching is related to teaching and prophecy.

Daniel B. Wallace

Defining creationism

Creationism has a variety of definitions depending on who is using the term. Frequently it is used as a shorthand to Young Earth Creationism, sometimes to the consternation of those who hold to what they consider creationism but don't think the earth is young. Their complaint has some validity, but the cumbersome term Young Earth Creationism invites itself to be shortened. Biblical Creationism has been suggested as an alternative to Young Earth Creationism, especially considering that 6000 years is not really that young. I am not in favour of this. Though I think the Young Earth Creation position is biblical, it not as if other creationists all think their positions are unbiblical. Even if Old Earth Creationism turns out to be unbiblical it is premature to anticipate the outcome of the debate. Literal Creationism would be an alternative to Young Earth Creationism if it were not for the problem that literalism is frequently misunderstood to mean hyperliteralism.

I am not a great fan of eponyms though that is often the outcome. Descriptive labels are good. Perhaps the best labels are those invented by one's opponents so long the term is acceptable to its adherents.

Old Earth Creationism may include ideas such as Progressive Creationism and Gap Theory. I think it preferable to group the major positions logically, then discuss the variants within a general position.

Here are several positions. I have tried to describe the position as viewed by adherents, feel free to correct me if you think I have misconstrued your position.

Young Earth Creationism
Age of Earth
This is the position that God created the world ~6000 years ago, though some may hold to 10000 or 20000 years. The age is that of the earth, the age of the universe is variable, but it was made at the same time at the earth and the universe's age is the same as the earth's age when measured by earth clocks. It denies the big bang occurred.

Species Change
Young Earth Creationism rejects the grand theory of evolution, the idea that all of life came from a single ancestor through a variety of creatures over millions of years. While some claim that it holds to the fixity of the species, this is a less helpful definition due to consensus on how species are defined. Fixity of the genera would be more accurate. It claims that God created various kinds or types of animals so there is no common ancestor of all creatures.

Noachic Deluge
Young Earth Creationism holds that the Flood of Noah was global and is the cause of sedimentary rocks and much fossilisation of plants and animals.

Old Earth Creationism
Age of Earth
This position thinks that the age of earth is 4 billion years and the universe several billion years older. It subscribes to an ancient cosmology including the big bang theory and stellar evolution.

Species Change
Old Earth Creationism also rejects the grand theory of evolution, though they think that various flora and fauna appeared on earth at various times over the last several million years. This are often ascribed to ongoing creative acts. Species may go extinct and fossils are dated according to evolutionary geological scales. Radio-dating is accepted as reliable.

Noachic Deluge
Old Earth Creationism states that the Flood of Noah was local, that the geological strata antedate the Flood by millions of years, and most fossilisation was not a result of the Flood.

Theistic Evolution
Age of Earth
This position thinks that the age of the earth and universe is billions of years. It holds to big bang theory and stellar evolution.

Species Change
Theistic Evolution thinks that all species arrives on this earth according to Darwin's General Theory of Evolution. All living things are linked by common ancestry. They deny the fixity of species, genera, orders etc. as new species are always evolving. Some hold to chemical evolution of life, others argue that the first cell was divinely created.

Noachic Deluge
Theistic Evolution holds no specific view on Noah's Flood. It may be mythical. If it occurred it was local at not responsible for sedimentary rocks or fossils. It denies that all land animals except those on the ark were destroyed. It may deny that all humans, except Noah's family died.

Summary
Young Earth Creationism and Old Earth Creationism deny the Grand Theory of Evolution, that is universal common descent is not a correct description of the history of life. Their differences concerning the appearance of life on earth leads to significant differences in theology however.

Old Earth Creationism and Theistic Evolution deny the earth is only several thousand years old. Both think that the universe is billions of years old, stellar evolution is correct and radio-dating is reliable

Intelligent Design
Intelligent Design does not fully fit into this scheme. It has been accused of being clandestine creationism. I am not certain this is fair as creationism is often meant to mean young earth creationism, and many advocates of intelligent design deny a young earth.

Intelligent design only has a position on biological evolution. It has no position on the age of the earth or Noah's Flood.

Intelligent design argues that features in living things that have the appearance of design have been designed by an intelligent designer. That is, design is real, not apparent. Their arguments include information content in the genome, irreducible complexity of biochemical pathways, and statistical impossibility of evolutionary required genomic changes.

Geek test

My result for this test was Geekish Tendencies, the lowest geek score. Though I think the test was incorrectly weighted. (Points for anyone who gets the irony of that last sentence.)

I liked this question:

• I know how to count to 31 on one hand.

Well I am not certain I had thought about this before, but I worked out how I could.

Clue after the jump

Christ and Karma

Krister Sairsingh

Trinidadian Krister Sairsingh shares his testimony of coming to Christ from Hinduism. It is exciting and encouraging. Well worth the read. I found his discouragement with karma interesting:

The law of karma — that whatever wrong we do we will have to pay for in some other life — rules out the very idea of forgiveness. According to the law of karma, reincarnation is therefore necessary in order to pay for the sins of a previous life.  One's present life is determined by one's previous existence while one's future existence is shaped by one's present life. Each soul is held to be responsible for its own destiny. The law of karma offered a simple and attractive explanation of the mystery of suffering in the world. People suffer because of their own evil action. But reincarnation as a necessary working out of the law of karma was never good news to me — even though I knew it undergirded the whole fabric of my religious and moral world.

Reading Jesus' words in the gospels caused him more despair:

As I read the Gospels I became much more aware of my human failings, that I was a creature governed by unruly desires rather than the virtues of compassion and generosity. It dawned on me that I was often unkind to the numerous beggars who knocked at our gates. Whatever charity I showed was born not out of compassion and kindness but out of a desire to build up good karma, to secure a better birth in the cosmic wheel of existence. I began to see how hard I had tried to distance myself from the uncultured lower caste Hindus and how much I distrusted and despised Muslims. There was a feeling of desperation because I knew that I would have to suffer the consequences in some other life for all my evil actions. In some ways the teachings of Jesus even compounded the feeling of distress because he taught that we would be judged for our thoughts, attitudes and words, not just our deeds. I knew the depths of my prejudice and bigotry. Spiritual liberation — release from the cycle of birth and death — seemed humanly impossible. I could only conceive of a downward spiral. I felt there was no way out.

He seems aware of the darkness in the cellar of his soul. It is much darker than most people admit. Our good actions are often less good than we think, and our bad ones much worse than we realise. Karma made him aware of the necessity of judgment and the words of Jesus showed him how much worse the situation is. I laughed at the irony as I was reading this paragraph. It is as if he is told: "Karma is not good news because you are judged for your actions; it gets worse, you are judged for your thoughts and attitudes too."

I can smile because I know the solution, but how despairing it was Sairsingh. A good place to be in order to then grasp how good the Good News is. Who can deliver us from this body of death?

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:13-14)

Monday quote

We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

Stephen Schneider, global warming advocate, (interview for Discover magazine, Oct 1989).

Intellectual property is information

Property as property proper is matter. It is material. It has height, width, depth and weight (mass). One could extend this to other attributes of matter such as current, time and temperature. Thus energy could be considered property which can be bought and sold. Though something being matter does not mean it necessarily can be bought and sold, many things have no ownership, or shared ownership.

Property as matter is fixed in time and space. It can shift in time and space, but it occupies space such that its presence in one place precludes its presence elsewhere. (Exceptions are when something is considered as a whole but can be split up, like air and water).

Ownership of an item means that it is your possession or under your oversight. You get to determine how it is used (within the confines of legality).

The limitation of locality and the fact of ownership means that a person can take an item, or place a claim to an item that is not his. Such behaviour is considered theft. It would include taking a computer from work, tomatoes out of your neighbour's garden, or shifting a boundary marker.

Contrast this to what is referred to as intellectual property. I have suggested we use an alternative term to prevent equivocation on the word property; such as "concept", "conceptualisation", "idea", "abstraction", or perhaps a Greek or Latin derived neologism. I will use concept in this post.

Concepts are information. Information does not have qualities of matter. It does not consist of length (in the usual sense), mass, time, current, or temperature. Thus it is non-material. It is still a real entity, just not a material one.

Therefore concepts are not restricted by the laws of physics. Concepts can be duplicated. Concepts can be lost or destroyed. Greek fire is a concept that has been lost. There is no conservation of matter or energy law that corresponds to concepts.

This means that concepts cannot be stolen in the way that property can be stolen. If you give someone else your concept you still have it. Because you still have your concept you cannot say that it has been removed from you. You can still use your concept. The difference is that now someone else has access to the concept and can use it as well.

I used the example of an axe. If someone steals your axe then they have it and you cannot use it. But if someone sees your axe and makes his own then he has not stolen your axe, you still have it. He now also has an axe because he has used your concept: the idea of attaching a splitting wedge to a stick.

Concepts can be mildly to very complicated. Complexity does not correspond directly to usefulness. And less complex concepts are not always obvious before the fact. A less complex solution to a problem may replace a more complex solution because of simplicity and cost.

The distinction between property as matter and concepts as information is foundational. One that must be apprehended before discussion about what copyright might entail. A rule of thumb in distinguishing between property and concepts: If you give something away and no longer have it, it is material; if you give it away and still have it, then it is information. As George Bernard Shaw said,

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

2011 Top 10

I have only recently seen the cartoon Coffee with Jesus. It's theologically variable, and the commentary is somewhat wry. I found this strip insightful.

Click to read

Monday quote

Women. They are a complete mystery.

Stephen Hawking (1942–).

SOPA and intellectual property as property

The (American) National Review comments on the problems with policing the internet in relation to piracy. They rightly note the error of forcing internet companies to do their police work for them and (possibly) punishing them for failing to do so. (I do not know the wording of the act. We now have a similar act in New Zealand.)

We are in general skeptical of government efforts to foist off difficult tasks onto businesses and other private parties, who already are expected to act as tax collectors (especially of sales taxes), immigration inspectors, and more.

They are also sceptical of the determination of the authorities to deal with this problem given that they are not acting on similar abuses that are already illegal

Judging by the fact that pirated DVDs are openly for sale in practically every city of any consequence in these United States, we have our doubts about the police authorities’ seriousness in these matters.

Further they doubt it will be effective

the worst offenders would of course have no incentive to do so, their guilt being plain and undeniable. Instead, the full-time pirates would have a very strong incentive to simply switch to another website, or to a proliferation of websites, or to deploy any number of commonly available technological solutions to defeat government attempts to block them.

I concur with their concerns here. I also find the modern practice of punishing the innocent to decrease the possibility of crime less than satisfactory. Frequently such laws do little to address the law-breakers yet are onerous on the law-abiding. Moderns combine this with an unwillingness to give adequate punishment for crime. Straitjacket all men to prevent crime but minimise the guilt of those who still pursue it.

The problem with the article is that they diminish the real issue which is associating property with intellectual property

All conservatives believe in protecting property rights, and most conservatives support the protection of copyright as an extension of that principle.

This assumes that property is analogous to intellectual property.

We favor an Internet that is largely free of regulation and taxes; we also favor observing the Eighth Commandment.

While there are a few crusaders against the very idea of intellectual property, there are few questions of principle at stake here, most reasonable people having long ago made up their minds about property rights (generally for) and censorship (generally against).

Unfortunately they miss that this is precisely the debate we need to have.

Property is material. A shovel is an object that exists in space and time. So is a car, and a table. Intellectual property is not material, it is information. Whether we consider copyright for written work; or patents for processes, machines and molecular shapes; we are not dealing with an object fixed in space and time. Thus the claim that these things actually are property, albeit intellectual property is incorrect. Now one may argue that such things should be safe-guarded for various reasons, but we need to establish these reasons. Asserting an analogy to property is not enough. Is the analogy valid? A smile is more similar to the words of a book than the paper is, yet no-one thinks that smiles should be subject to copyright laws.

The extension of property rights to intellectual property rights is not obvious regardless of the number of conservatives (or liberals) who subscribe to it. The terms may share the word "property" but that does not prevent the latter being a misnomer.

To discuss intellectual property one must grasp this distinction. Failure to understand the distinction renders one's opinion of little value, not because his opinions do not matter in general, but because he doesn't have the intellectual concepts needed to address the issue. It is similar to discussing causing death without reference to intent: if you don't understand that there is a difference between murder, self-defence, and manslaughter, how can you address such things?

Persecution of the Nigerian church

Nigeria

Nigeria is the most populous African country; it has a large number of Christians. There have been significant conflicts between Muslims and Christians over the years, with an insistence on Sharia law by some Muslims.

A Muslim militant recently converted to Christianity. When about to murder a Christian, he is overcome with the enormity of his intented action. The militant

was poised to slit the throat of his Christian victim... when he was suddenly struck with the weight of the evil he was about to commit.

Dropping his machete, the man ran to the nearest church, asking a pastor for help.

The pastor referred him to a CAM-supported indigenous ministry, where "native missionaries are reaching remote villages with the message of Christ....

When the call came, the ministry leader was grieving the loss of several close missionary friends who were murdered in the Yobe State slaughter. He immediately met with the confessed killer and joyfully led him to Christ. He is discipling him in a secret location because of the extreme danger.

Unfortunately the man's children were targeted by group he defected from.

Upon discovering the man's conversion to Christianity, Boko Haram members invaded his home, kidnapped his two children and informed him that they were going to execute them in retribution for his disloyalty to Islam. Clutching his phone, the man heard the sound of the guns that murdered his children.

The same group stormed a church earlier this month. John Jauro recounts,

I was leading the congregation in prayers. Our eyes were closed when some gunmen stormed the church and opened fire on the congregation. Six people were killed in the attack and 10 others were wounded.

We need to remember and pray for our brothers who are persecuted thru-out the world, and we remember Jesus' encouragement that our kingdom is of another world.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11-12)

Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. (Revelation 2:10)

Monday quote

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are so confident while the intelligent are full of doubt.

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970).

Number of Christians by country

Interesting article from PewResearch. They give the number of Christians per country from 2010. I have a quibble about how they define Christian, thus the West may be over estimated as well as the number of Catholics in South America. The number in China is probably a little low. I don't think they should include groups that deny the deity of Christ, though this will not affect the numbers considerably.

The top 30 are

Country, Estimated Christian Population

United States 246,790,000
Brazil 175,770,000
Mexico 107,780,000
Russia 105,220,000
Philippines 86,790,000
Nigeria 80,510,000
China 67,070,000
Congo 63,150,000
Germany 58,240,000
Ethiopia 52,580,000
Italy 51,550,000
United Kingdom 45,030,000
Colombia 42,810,000
South Africa 40,560,000
France 39,560,000
Ukraine 38,080,000
Spain 36,240,000
Poland 36,090,000
Argentina 34,420,000
Kenya 34,340,000
India 31,850,000
Uganda 28,970,000
Peru 27,800,000
Tanzania 26,740,000
Venezuela 25,890,000
Canada 23,430,000
Romania 21,380,000
Indonesia 21,160,000
Ghana 18,260,000
Angola 16,820,000

Monday quote

And of course atheists will laugh at anything that confronts their unbelief. But laughter and derision are no substitute for logic and scientific reasoning and discourse.

Don Batten

Ridiculously expensive iPhone

Luxury phone goes for an obscene amount of money.

It has a gold casing with over 500 diamonds. The carrying case is made of platinum and gems.

I don't think I would (I hope I wouldn't) bother with this, even if I considered £6,000,000 small change. Why was this made? Who would want one?

Monday quote

I love the fact that God loves new beginnings; otherwise, why would He give us creatures so many opportunities to start fresh? New mornings, new months, new seasons, new years. He is good...

Douglas Wilson