A CHALLENGE

I just sent a note to another blogger who has some serious, thoughtful objections to Paul's teachings in the New Testament. (Hey, join the club!)

She goes on to write that she just doesn't know if she can continue to believe that the Bible is infallible, and this shakes her faith in Christianity itself. That's an understandable reaction, and I admire her candor. Some of my readers have wondered how I could maintain any faith in Christianity, given the obvious imperfections of the Bible. I'll provide y'all with the same thought experiment that I shared with her:

"....my faith does not depend on any teaching that the Bible is either inerrant nor infallible. Let us go further than that, though, for the sake of a rhetorical point. Let us pretend that the Bible is not merely fallible, but irredeemably wicked. If all the Bibles in the world were confiscated and burned, would that mean the end of Christianity?"

I invite reader responses.

ANOTHER SPECIES OF DENIALIST

Some (but not all) creationists are evolution deniers: never happened, they say. And some (but not all) global warming skeptics are global warming deniers: no evidence that's happening, they say. These positions, to put it mildly, are so contradicted by a wealth of evidence that there is little point in treating those who hold them as anything other than misinformed fanatics. They will inevitably end up calling you names for threatening their belief systems.

In contrast, other creationists admit billions of years of evolution, they simply remain skeptical that the Darwinian model is sufficient to explain all of life's diversity. And, of course, there are global warming skeptics who admit that global warming occurs, but they remain unconvinced as to the seriousness of the situation, or the role of human activity in promoting it, etc. I happen to think these guys are wrong, too, but I think I can have a meaningful discussion with most of them that doesn't degenerate into name-calling.

Now here's another species of denialist: the HIV-causes-AIDS skeptic, a contrarian viewpoint that has won the approbation of some well-known scientists, such as the eccentric Nobelist Kary Mullis.* There's been a fascinating and often ferocious exchange here on Tara Smith's site. A person interested in debating denialists on the question of how a matter should be investigated will find some food for thought there.

* I'm being kind. A believer in astrology who has a troubled history with women, Mullis also believes he has had an encounter with an extraterrestrial that looked like a glowing raccoon.

COME SPY WITH ME

Well, any hopes that I might've held about a sea change in politics seem a bit dashed right now. As the WaPo reports, significant numbers of Democrats helped pass FISA, the Orwellian upgrade to the present domestic spying program sought by Bush:

“The intelligence community is hampered in gathering essential information about terrorists,” said Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas.

Yeah, I know, that darn Bill of Rights keeps getting in the way.