LEE STROBEL: TARNISHED 'ICONS'

A few months back, I took Lee Strobel to task for his book 'The Case for a Creator', which not only parroted the official Discovery Institute set of talking points in a user-friendly fashion for folk in the pews, but purported to be an objective journalistic investigation of the facts regarding evolution vs. intelligent design (ID)

Well, as you might imagine, not everyone in the pews is going to wade through an entire book on such as that, no matter how slick and accessible, so Illustra Media (an arm of the Discovery Institute) produced a video summarizing Strobel's 'investigation', and these are now available in segments on YouTube.

The above video (which is in two parts) is a response to Strobel's production, which only breaks down the various misinterpretations, misleading arguments and downright lies featured on the video but (in the second part) has all the footnotes/sources one can want.

You should not only check out the video if interested, but look at some of the other source material they've made available, including some wonderful evolution stuff sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. By the way, I should mention, that if you are an educator, you can probably get free DVD's of HHMI productions like the one shown on ExtantDodo's page.

ExtantDodo, much kudos!

BEHE ON COLBERT

I got this by way of Dr. Katti's site. It's...amusing, if you can forget for one moment how this fellow (who home-schools all his children) has basically cast his lot with the DI's attempt to wreck science education in this country. Look for a very sly remark from Colbert about the usefulness of, say, wood or wire, etc.

UNFORGIVEN

It seems as if, to some Christians, God deserves all the credit for the things that are right with the world, and we deserve all the blame when things go wrong. So, to such folk, the collapse of the bridge in Minnesota is another example of God's will, and we should all follow William Munny, Clint Eastwood's character in his film Unforgiven, who remarks, "We all got it coming, kid."

OK, reality check. This stuff makes me shake my head. The fact is, the problem of evil (theodicy) and the question of free will may be related, but you just can't invoke either one either to condemn all of humankind willy-nilly, or to justify an individual's death or suffering, or (conversely) argue that God is 'off the hook' and not responsible for death and suffering. I have no interest in any position, Christian or otherwise, that demeans either our conception of God (a cosmic tyrant?) or the image of our own human dignity.

To that end, I would like to commend this short but deeply insightful book by Leslie Weatherhead, a English Methodist pastor who addressed the problem of evil in the world and God's will during the Blitz. The distinction he makes between God's intentional, circumstantial and ultimate will is useful, to put it mildly.