Postmodern Areopagus

a reality show i can believe in

2009-07-07T04:45:00.001+08:00

Game show looks to convert atheists
Fri Jul 3, 2009 11:55am EDT
By Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - What happens when you put a Muslim imam, a Christian priest, a rabbi and a Buddhist monk in a room with 10 atheists?

Turkish television station Kanal T hopes the answer is a ratings success as it prepares to launch a gameshow where spiritual guides from the four faiths will seek to convert a group of non-believers.

The prize for converts will be a pilgrimage to a holy site of their chosen religion -- Mecca for Muslims, the Vatican for Christians, Jerusalem for Jews and Tibet for Buddhists.

But religious authorities in Muslim but secular Turkey are not amused by the twist on the popular reality game show format and the Religious Affairs Directorate is refusing to provide an imam for the show.

"Doing something like this for the sake of ratings is disrespectful to all religions. Religion should not be a subject for entertainment programs," High Board of Religious Affairs Chairman Hamza Aktan told state news agency Anatolian after news of the planned program emerged.

The makers of "Penitents Compete" are unrepentant and reject claims that the show, scheduled to begin broadcasting in September, will cheapen religion.

"We are giving the biggest prize in the world, the gift of belief in God," Kanal T chief executive Seyhan Soylu told Reuters.

"We don't approve of anyone being an atheist. God is great and it doesn't matter which religion you believe in. The important thing is to believe," Soylu said.

The project focuses attention on the issue of religious identity in European Union-candidate Turkey, where rights groups have raised concerns over freedom of religion for non-Muslim minorities.

Detractors of the ruling AK Party government, which is rooted in political Islam but officially secular, accuse it of having a hidden Islamist agenda, a charge it denies.

Some 200 people have so far applied to take part in the show and the 10 contestants will be chosen next month.

A team of theologians will ensure that the atheists are truly non-believers and are not just seeking fame or a free holiday.

anti-Japanese fervor alive and well in Taian

2008-09-15T23:56:00.002+08:00

While in Taian, Shandong Province this summer, i ran across this restaurant. A very interesting symbol to mark hatred of the Japanese.

this gets it right, I think....

2007-11-15T00:41:00.000+08:00

Better than i could have said it, a sympathetic letter from the Devil, which clarifies teh whole problem of meaning, right and wrong, and the choice we are confronted with.

understanding your purpose through your grievings

2007-10-10T03:23:00.000+08:00

Ok, that is going to come across as a bit different than what it is, but it is a really cool thought. In a lecture by Mary Poplin on her journey to faith from an atheistic world view, she makes this very cool observation: We understand the purpose of our lives not just through our giftings, but through our grievings. In other words, the things that make us grieve point us to what God has created us to do. In her case, she grieves for the poor education that children receive in school, and her purpose is to work towards improving that.

So what grieves you?

Some quotes on the internet in Singapore

2007-09-17T06:35:00.000+08:00

I don't get many opportunities to give media interviews lately on my pet topic, the internet in Asia, but Cyrus Farivar has recently given me a bit of space, first in Foreign Policy magazine, and then a radio interview for NPR. The point of both articles is the way in which newer technologies, such as video sharing sites, are creating opportunities to bypass normal media controls for political purposes.
I spent this last week trying to finish an essay for the Beijing Forum coming up in a couple of months, looking at some related issues. hopefully will finish today and get it in, since it was due tomorrow!

Putnam, Social Capital, Diversity, and religion

2007-08-18T01:56:00.000+08:00

Harvard's Robert Putnam (of Bowling Alone fame) has released a new study that is being much reported, on the impact of diversity on social capital. Putnam does really interesting work, and this newest study is more of the same. So that I can't be accused of misrepresenting the article, here is the abstract:
Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration.

Putnam is arguing that despite the long term benefits of diversity, there is a short term phenomenon of diversity lowering social capital, because people tend not to trust others across racial lines.

What i want to point out, though, are a couple interesting examples that Putnam gives of the diminishment of racial consciousness, and the breaking down of racial barriers. Where do you think that Putnam would find these? In the university, perhaps, where diversity is an absolute requirement, and every one of which has a "diversity office?" No? well, Putnam doesn't say it if he finds it there.

Instead, he finds it in two of the institutions that are usually accused of exactly the opposite. First, the military.
the United States Army today has become a relatively colour-blind institution.
Systematic surveys have shown that the average American soldier has many
closer inter-racial friendships than the average American civilian of the same
age and social class

Putnam attributes the success of the Army as being due to strict emforcement of anti-discrimination policies, but also suggests that "a new emphasis on shared
identities that cross racial lines may also have been important."

Second, evangelical mega-churches: In many large evangelical congregations, the participants constituted the largest thoroughly integrated gatherings we have ever witnessed. It remains true that most church-goers in America (53 percent) report that all or almost all of the people in their congregation are of the same race. However, younger people and those who attend evangelical megachurches (and Catholic parishes) report significantly more racial integration. It seems likely that this
undoing of past segregation is due, at least in part, to the construction of
religiously based identities that cut across (while not effacing) conventional
racial identities.

I find two interesting things here. First is just this issue, that these institutions that are considered the "guardians" of white privilege, or at least refuges of dangerous conservatism, are pointedly the most integrated of institutions in the US. Second, that Putnam points to the construction of larger social identity as at least a part of the explanation.

In the second chapter of Galatians, Paul said this:
Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Indeed, identity in Christ is very much a part of what Putnam calls "the construction of larger social identity", but it doesn't stop there.

I don't think i want, or need to, argue about the politics of all this. But I just wanted to point it out....

Er, um, (burp), really sorry about that!

2007-08-17T05:46:00.000+08:00

I should not make light of this story, as it is pretty sad, really. It seems that the folks in Papua New Guinea have finally admitted to eating Fijian missionaries over a hundred years ago.

Tech Support

2007-08-17T05:42:00.000+08:00

I used to use the example of Gutenberg in my technology and society classes, so this clip is really appropriate. makes me cringe, though, when i think of how often i must look like this to my tech support guys!

Growing Faith on campus

2007-05-03T21:46:00.000+08:00

Check out the NYT's piece on this today. They are on to something, but what i find intriguing is how they locate it within the traditional church structures and denominations. Interestingly, they don't interview leaders of evangelical groups, like Campus Crusade, Intervarsity, or some of the other groups which are largely leading this group. Instead, the speak to the campus chaplains, who are typically a marginal part of a campus' spiritual life.

Best line of all is this quote from the chaplain at Lehigh: “I suspect a lot of that has to do with uncertainty over the war.” What a joke. Could it be that the rise of the worship movement, the increasing intellectual confidence of evangelicals, and as Harvard's Gomes states, that a new generation is arriving at university who is not interested in leaving their faith at home? The point is, the ivy league institutions for decades have been secularized, and the students most interested in attending come from primarily secularized homes. That is changing.

Anyway, an interesting trend, even if the NYT misses some of the most interesting stuff.

on Simon Conway Morris

2007-04-25T04:00:00.000+08:00

So, i had read all this stuff about Simon Conway Morris, who is evidently the most brilliant young person ever. He was on campus as the recipient of the Trotter Award, given at Texas A&M to "in recognition of pioneering contributions to the understanding of the role of information, complexity and inference in illuminating the mechanisms and wonder of nature." Evidently, Morris is know for his forceful rejection of materialism and reductionism, which i am happy to hear.

But the lecture was quite disappointing. He is interesting, articulate, and humorous, but completely ignored any of the teleological issues associated with his work. He has certainly got some interesting things to say, but seemed unwilling to tease out the implications, at least in this discussion. some people even fed him some very easy intros, and he completely ignored them.

Very dismissive of intelligent design, but didn't explain why. Actually, i don't quite understand why an intelligent design perspective is incompatible with species generation through evolutionary processes. I dont' think there is anything in the ID movement that demands special creation, but i might be missing something. Anyway, i was going to ask, but sitting in the middle of the row, makes it difficult to get to the mic. I know, I know; should coulda woulda. Anyway, i found myself quite unsatisfied after his lecture.

They're baaaack......

2007-04-22T23:23:00.000+08:00

The folks from Church of Fools, that is. Actually, it isn't quite the same experience, but some of the people involved in Church of Fools have resurrected the vision over at St. Pixels.

The 3D church is gone, or hasn't reappeared yet, and so St Pixels exists primarily as an animated chat room at this point. No cool avatar floating around, saying hallelujah, but in s a few interactions with the site, i have found the commitment to one another pretty cool.

Just finished the first draft of an article on the whole CoF/St Pixels thing, which should go into an online journal at the end of May or early June. I am actually surprised there hasn't been more academic analysis of it, given all the press coverage it received. I am not entirely content with my analysis so far, but have another month to work on it a bit.

Intersections Conference

2007-04-22T23:12:00.000+08:00

I went to a conference in Waco last week, called the Intersection Conference. It was supposed to be a much bigger deal, like 600-700 Baylor students. Not sure what happened, whether it was just bad timing, or not enough promotion and marketing. Altogether, about 60 people came.

However, it was a great conference for me. Met some really interesting people, doing really interesting things. Plus, i was able to catch up to my spiritual mentor, Thom Wolf, and our dear friend Carol Davis. Was a terrific opportunity to share vision and hear how other people have responded to God's call to work within the "domains" to expand and enact God's kingdom.

I presented some things on China, the internet, and the higher education domain. It reminded me of some of the academic conferences i go to, where only about six or seven people come to each panel. however, the small size enabled us to connect in some terrific ways. I was very encouraged at the end of it, although the small number of participants was a bit disappointing.

The theme we came away with was "redeeming the structures." Look at the structures and institutions that exist, and rather than making "Christian" versions of them all, send God's people into those domains, institutions, and structures, and ask God to enable us to use those structures for redemptive purposes. One of the participants was formerly a top UN administrator in Timor Leste, and shared how he had to face the issues of corruption that emerge in those kinds of situations. Another brother shared how in establishing schools in the Arab world, had sought to reach out to radical Islamists, challenging them that their real enemy was Satan, poverty, repression, not the US and Israel (although Israel has certainly made their lives much, much tougher).

I do hope another opportunity arises to interact with the brothers and sisters.

What's up?

2007-04-22T23:10:00.000+08:00

Seems like not much, given the amount of my blogging lately. Actually, many things have been going on. Not really trying to kill the blog; i just don't have time to post anymore. I sometimes have time to read the news, but even that is pretty sporadic. Anyway, things are entering a slow time now, so i might be able to get back to blogging at some point.

The Economist on Religion in China

2007-02-14T23:53:00.000+08:00

I have been predicting this for a couple of years, and it seems that it is now being validated. Namely, that the government in China is beginning to not only lighten up on religious practice, but beginning to see from some of the social benefits that arise from the free exercise of religion, although there is still harsh treatment of religions that might provoke political unrest, such as Falungong. The Economist Feb 3 edition has a great article on this. Here is a key quote:
The resurgence encompasses ancient folk religions and ancestor worship, along with the organised religions of Buddhism, Taoism, Islam (among ethnic minorities) and, most strikingly, given its foreign origins and relatively short history in China, Christianity. In the face of this onslaught, the party is beginning to rethink its approach to religion. It now acknowledges that it may even have its uses.
I think that the reporting on this issue is running a couple of years behind. The article uses official statistics to report on the number of religious believers, which is clearly an underestimation (more on this later, hopefully). But, there is a marked change in official attitudes towards religious faith.

Holiday-itis

2007-01-03T06:55:00.000+08:00

When we lived in Singapore, I used to get quite upset with all of the various public holidays, because I usually felt like I needed to get things done. I thought it was probably because the holidays had no real meaning to me (Vesak Day, Hari Raya, etc). Since moving back to the states, I haven't had any holidays in my first six months (this university doesn't even close on Labor Day), so I thought that I would really enjoy the time off, since they shut the university down between Christmas and New Year (they say to give us time to enjoy our families, but it is really to save on utility bills). Anyway, then on the weekend, they announced that the university would also be closed today, Jan 2, for the national day of mourning for Gerald Ford.

Stressed me out when i heard, since i leave for China on Saturday, and have way too many things to do before that trip, but I thought, "ok, it is only one extra day, and your family should spend that day with you, since you will be gone for ten days later." So, i thought i could handle it. But today, getting some lunch ready, i finally realized how much it had stressed me out to be away from the office for so long (going on about 9 days now). It isn't that the office is a relaxing place, but i feel like i am doing something. When i am hanging out, playing games, watching football, whatever, there is always this little nagging doubt that i am not going to get everything done, and of course, i wake up in the middle of the night with a million things on my mind, then forget about them when i actually have the time to do something about it.

So what is wrong with me? Am I a workaholic, or just not confident that I will get the things done that need to get done? I know that rest is good, that it refreshes, blah blah blah, but i also feel better when i actually get things done. Not dissing the sabbath, mind you; i never actually work on Sunday. I think part of the problem is that I usually go into a holiday break feeling like there are too many things undone.

Anyway, we came up with something of a compromise. I spent a couple of hours revising a paper i was supposed to have worked on in 2006, and just getting a little bit done on it made me feel like it was ok to do something else. I really need to get my attitudes right, though.

Say hello to Saint Isidore

2006-12-06T00:32:00.000+08:00

Yes, it is finally settled. In addition to Bob Gates replacing Rumsfeld, and somebody else replacing John Bolton, the more important appointment has finally been made. In a long overdue appointment, characterized by all kinds of luminous competitiors, Isidore of Seville has finally been appointed as patron Saint of the Internet. From all i hear, it is probably a good appointment, as Isidore has significant experience as the patron of schoolchildren. Anyway, appropriately enough, Boston College's new data center has a stained glass window dedicated to the saint.

Lewis' home

2006-11-23T02:23:00.000+08:00

Here are Zach and Sean running in the front garden of Lewis' home in Oxford. 2004 also, i think.

2006-11-23T02:20:00.000+08:00

This is the Eagle and Child pub (bird and baby) that Lewis, Tolkein, and the other inklings used to go to in Oxford. Whenever i am in oxford, i stop by and have a pint in honor of their vision and their lives. me, zach, and sean, i think in 2004.

a quiet anniversary-CS Lewis

2006-11-23T02:05:00.000+08:00

today marks the 43rd anniversary of the death of three famous men. I only really care about one. CS Lewis has had an inestimable impact on my own faith. Although i didn't discover him until after becoming a christian, and I didn't really, really discover him until i taught a class covering all the genres he wrote in, including the fiction, the science fiction, the apologetics, the essays, etc, about twelve years ago. The class only had about four students, and I assigned an unmanageable amount of reading each week, so much that I even had trouble keeping up. I ran into one of the students a few years after that, and they told me that they still ranked that class as one of the best things they had ever done. If you have only read the Narnia books, or Mere Christianity, or even Screwtape letters, then do yourself an intellectual favor and read some of the others. My favorites? Gotta be Till We Have Faces, or The Great Divorce, Lewis's allegorical vision of hell. He so totally overturns our conception of hell, making it even worse than we could have imagined, by just imagining what it is like to be separate from God, locked in with only ourselves and our vanities. Some people dislike the science fiction trilogy; i still look to them as perhaps my favorite books by him, and really fun mishmashes of legend, theology, science, and whatnot.

Lewis was amazing. The coherence of his vision, and his ability to speak to the heart was incredible. Would to God that somehow, I could pull it altogether that way, with that focus, and with that impact.

We miss you, Jack....so far, no one on the horizon can even pretend to be anything like you. We know that you have found the fulfillment of the vision, the myth come true. But what a loss we feel.

my thoughts on robert gates

2006-11-09T10:36:00.000+08:00

see the post at Global Texan

movin' on up....to the star chamber

2006-11-04T04:16:00.000+08:00

And my parents never thought i would amount to anything. Today, I am proud to announce that I am part of a "star chamber." Very cool, huh!

Yes, a guy whom i have never met has done me the very cool favor of announcing that I am part of a group of individuals who "believe that their destiny is to judge and punish others while maintaining their own freedom to express their thoughts as they will." Puts me right up there with Stalin, Mao, and other arbiters of human freedom. I gotta admit, it is kinda addictive, enforcing my will on the masses. I might get used to that!

If you don't see the connection yet, here it is: I am on the executive committee of the Association of Internet Researchers, which is an incredibly thankless job that fills my inbox up with about 40 messages a day that I am supposed to sort through and make sense of. Admittedly, i am probably the weakest link in this strong chain, but hey, I am there.

Anyway, I wish that the situation was as it is described by Mr. Cornwell, that we arbitrarily decided we didn't like his opinions and shut him down. Since people rarely like my opinions, that would be really cool if i could do that. Frankly, we got tired of dealing with his trash behavior and his use of a community resource to pick fights that weren't worth picking. So, once we got a certain number of complaints from people asking why we were letting him use the list to pee on, we asked him repeatedly to quit. He wouldn't, so we unsubscribed him.

I also kinda wish that my star chamber-y powers meant a bit more. Unfortunately, we star chambers don't really have the kind of power we had in the good old days, when they could, you know, excommunicate you, condemn you to eternal destiny in hell, or at least cut off your head. In their present weakened forms, all star chambers can do is take you off a voluntary email list, so you can then go and start your own. What a drag....

Interview with Guo Liang

2006-10-18T21:47:00.000+08:00

Recently in Brisbane, I had the opportunity to take some time to interview Guo Liang, who has been a friend for a number of years. He is the deputy director at the Centre for Social Development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and recently visited our home here in College Station. Anyway, if you are interested in his thoughts on the internet in China, check out the interview here.

Religion and the American academy

2006-10-13T01:00:00.000+08:00

There is a fascinating new study out by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons on the religious beliefs/attitudes/loyalties of American professors, that has yielded some surprising results. You can see a brief news item, if you don't want to read the whole study, at the Chronicle of Higher Ed. The study doesn't give all the data, which would be fascinating to see, but here are some of the key findings.

American university professors are about twice as likely to be atheistic or agnostic than the population at large, but still these categories only account for about 23% of the professoriate (compared to about 11% of the population at large).
A surprising 20% of professors identify themselves as "born again."
There are dramatic differences across types of universities, in that the more "elite" your university, the more likely you are to be atheist/agnostic (but still not higher than 40%, and less likely to be "born again." (1% of the faculty at elite universities, vs 18% generally). (But how do they classify elite? is this ivy league? Research One? no clues in the paper)
perhaps not surprisingly, the largest number of atheists are in biology and in psychology (around 61%), showing the influence of Darwin and Freud, respectively. Not that those are the only thinkers that count, but that they have had inordinately large influence. I think it interesting, also, that a natural science and a social science are both represented (I have heard it said that a literature professor is more than two times more likely to be an atheist than a natural scientist, but the data isn't presented here). the high numbers of atheists here makes me think that they somehow skew the data of the other fields, but without seeing a more complete breakdown of the findings, it is difficult to tell.
a larger number of atheists/agnostics among mechanical engineering professors than I would have guessed (about 50%).
There are more believers in fields like finance, accounting, nursing, education, and art (?).
Only 6.1 percent of respondents said the Bible is the “actual word of God,” (a strict literalist interpretation) with 51.6 percent describing it as “an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts.” About 42 percent of respondents are of the view that the Bible is “the inspired word of God.”
the authors state that "while believers can indeed be found in the upper echelons
of academe, there is either less interest there or less space for more fervent forms of
religiosity." This is an interesting statement, and i would really like for them to explore that more fully.

There are lots of interesting questions about this study and its findings, that aren't answered in the article. For example, is the lower proportion of "born agains" at elite institutions due to other social and/or professional factors, such as comfort level, or the inordinately difficult work load required of work at those types of institutions? Is there something about the type of personality required to go to a top university that makes a person likely to be less religious?

The authors of the study aren't attempting to answer these kinds of questions, I think, as it seems that their intention is to get some sense of the "message" being sent to students about religion (as about politics, to be addressed in a follow up paper).

The takeaway, though, is that American universities are less secular than they seem, at least in the private thoughts of individual faculty members. Is this due to the silencing effect (spiral of silence) of the culture of the university, or that the atheists tend to have the louder voices? I would suggest it is both.

God in American Foreign Policy

2006-10-06T22:30:00.000+08:00

Yes, that sounds a bit strange, i admit. But it is the focus of an excellent article in the Economist from several weeks ago (I am behind in my reading, as well as my blogging). The article looks at the impact of "religious thinking" on American foreign policy, which is often bemoaned around the world, particularly in Europe. The point of the article, however, is to disabuse Europeans of the notion that this is a simplistic process, or that the results are somehow negative.

"God talk" in American foreign policy is not just confined to the "religious right," but pervades almost all American discourse, even among the secularists. By this I mean that even secularized Americans tend to think in terms of good and evil, and often put forth secularized versions of the idea of the "city on a hill," a phrase which should be familiar to anybody who has read the Sermon on the Mount.

In many ways, it is the lack of "god talk" which contributes to the negative perceptions of America. I am astounded at the disjunction between the lives I see of ordinary americans and the rubbish on our television and in the media. Thus, religious believers around the world have a false view of America as the prime purveyor of filth and "infidelity."

this leads to a provocative comment. I don't think the clash with the Islamic world that America is currently involved in is a result of America being a "christian" nation, whatever that might mean. It is much more a clash between the irreligion of American elites, with the religious devotion of the Islamic world. Think about it. What do Islamic jihadists complain about? It isn't that Americans are going to church, and I haven't seen any complaints about "values voters."

What is ironic is that i have friends who seem to think that it is the Christians who are pushing the conflict, when my perception is that the further America drifts from its religious roots, the more the conflict will deepen. I think there is support for this in Philip Jenkins book the next Christendom. The more America is seen to undermine religious faith, the deeper the conflict will remain, and as the economist points out, "America's foreign-policy elite is also one of the most secular groups in the country. Douglas Johnston, a former Defence Department official, calls religion “the missing dimension in statecraft”. Mr Bush's most controversial policy, the Iraq war, arguably rested on a failure to take religion seriously enough...many outsiders hate America not because of its religiosity but because of its highly secular pop culture. In Pakistan 60% of the public has an unfavourable view of the United States. But the proportion rises to 75% among people who think that America is insufficiently religious. America makes enemies, therefore, as much because it lacks morality as because it seems soaked in it. "

Anyway, a terrific article. Go ahead and read the rest of it.

Harvard realizes that religion is important

2006-10-05T22:07:00.000+08:00

Might seem a bit ironic, historically, but it seems that a few people at Harvard are arguing that students ought to actually understand the historic and social role of religion. In an attempt to update its core curriculum, they are proposing addition of a course related to religion. Here are some excerpts from the article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed:

New Plan to Overhaul Harvard Curriculum Singles Out Religion and American History for Study

A Harvard University panel released a proposal on Wednesday to revamp the university's core undergraduate curriculum in a way that differs sharply from both the current core requirements and a set of highly criticized reforms proposed two years ago. Students would be required to study religious faith and American history, among other elements of a more broad-based curriculum.
The new proposal, by a committee known as the Task Force on General Education, recommends that students take one course in each of the following areas: "Reason and Faith," "The Ethical Life," "Cultural Traditions and Cultural Change," "The United States: Historical and Global Perspectives," "Societies of the World: Historical and Global Perspectives," "Life Science," and "Physical Science."
A proponent of more-traditional curricula lauded the proposal. The university's new report "rejected the 'anything goes' distribution requirements in place across the country in favor of a more structured, rigorous, and cohesive core curriculum," Anne D. Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, said in a written statement issued on Wednesday.
Ms. Neal, who has been a frequent critic of the Harvard faculty, said the preliminary report showed that Harvard had taken "big steps to develop a unified concept of general education -- how to educate our students as responsible human beings and citizens."

"The courses are not introductions to disciplines," the report says of the core requirements it recommends. "They are exposures to major arenas of change and influence in the 21st century." General education, it says, should not be "a form of pre-professional training." Rather, it says, "our students should see how the ideas, facts, and perspectives they are learning in the college come to life in real-world scenarios."
He added: "If we're looking to help students prepare themselves to be ethical citizens for democracy and a global society -- characterized by rapid change and conflicts between reason and faith and by massive social change and changes in quality of life introduced by science and technology -- these are areas we want to make sure they have an understanding of."
Harvard has been trying to rewrite its core curriculum, which dates to 1978, for several years. Its first attempt, which was released in 2004, abandoned the idea of a core entirely and replaced it with distribution requirements. That proposal was criticized as vague and as failing to put forward a set of courses about ideas and principles that all undergraduates should study.
A new draft of that report -- which included similar proposals -- was unveiled in March 2005 but was never adopted following criticism from professors and others outside Harvard. The latest panel was assembled in June.
The current proposal maintains a core, but in an updated fashion, Mr. Menand said. The "Reason and Faith" requirement, for example, may be controversial. But Mr. Menand said it would help students "think about the role, historically, faith has played."

This is only a recommendation, and it might never play out at all. Even if it does, what constitutes this "faith and reason" course might be anything at all. But I am glad to see that the assumption that secularism was and is all that was needed for successful intellectual life is on the way out. I am glad to see, also, an acknowledgement that core courses should not be an introduction to a discipline as much as it is an introduction to an approach to scholarship. Might not seem to be much of a difference, but believe me, it is.

new book by philip jenkins

2006-09-11T06:28:00.000+08:00

I have written in the past about Philip Jenkin's book, the Next Christendom, which i consider absolutely indispensible in understanding global trends. Jenkins has a new book out, The New Faces of Christianity, which also looks great. Haven't gotten it yet, but have put in my order at Amazon. Will write on it when it comes in....

A new blog

2006-09-07T02:55:00.000+08:00

I have started a new blog, the Global Texan, which is where i will begin to post more on issues international and academic. This blog, postmodernareopagus, will probably focus a bit more on my own thoughts on Christianity and global culture. For those of you interested in more on global trends, world news, etc, you might want to bookmark the other one.

It is a bit weird to think of myself as a texan, but hey, i do have a Texas Drivers License!

all.....most.....done!!!

2006-09-07T02:50:00.000+08:00

For the last two months, i have been in the final stages of completing an edited book. The problem is that there are four editors, four proof readers/copy editors, 23 authors, and 18 chapters. We have multiple versions of every single chapter floating around, and people who have long ago forgot about what they were thinking when they wrote this or that.

Anyway, it is coming down to the wire. It should go to the publisher in the next week, and then i won't have to worry about it for, say, another three months, when the galleys come back, and we have to compile an index...that means i can turn attention to the other reviews, book chapters, and journal articles which have been neglected for the last two months.....

aarrrggghhhh!

$1.302 Billion and counting

2006-09-06T23:41:00.000+08:00

That is the amount that Texas A&M has raised as of July this year. Wow, that is some serious dollars. Wonder how they (we) will spend it?

talking to americans videos

2006-08-24T22:37:00.000+08:00

No doubt they are set ups, to make Americans look ignorant of the rest of the world (which admittedly is not hard to do), but these are quite funny videos of a Canadian comedian who talks to ordinary Americans, feeds them obvious falsehoods about Canada, then gets them to go along with it....They do, though illustrate some interesting things about Americans, besides their ignorance of their northern neighbor, and their tendency to make zealous proclamations out of their ignorance. It is a bit embarrassing when they get university professors to believe these things, though...

globalization and universities

2006-08-22T22:13:00.000+08:00

Newsweek online has an article about the globalization of universities that is really quite confusing. I am certainly glad to see the article, but i am a little unsure where the author is going. The article, I think, oversells how much universities are willing to put into this. The author, Richard Levin, the president of Yale, drifts into a discussion of research funding, and how that needs to be increased, without mentioning any means of internationalizing it. In fact, the discussion of the cost of internationalization of either the research or the student experience never comes up, while there is a quite pointed critique of government funding of health research. The conclusion to the article is primarily an argument that Americans shouldn't worry about international students, but without the corresponding push that Americans had better get serious about understanding the rest of the world, and part of that is to pay to send students abroad.
But, since i am now in the business of "internationalizing" universities, I am glad to see Newsweek take up the issue.

becoming american

2006-08-22T21:43:00.000+08:00

After only six years in Singapore, i hardly qualify as some sort of bi-cultural person, and have never felt that my own outlook or views were not American. However, after moving to Texas, we are watching our sons deal with a brand new culture. They have always been "Americans;" their passports prove it. But there is a host of cultural knowledge that they just don't have.
Sean came home from school yesterday with a bunch of worksheets. One of them was a blank piece of paper with a question at the top: "Write everything you know about baseball." Sean had written only one thing: "keep your eye on the ball." He got that from the last two months in the US, as we have given them hurry up lessons on baseball so they don't look like complete idiots. He knows much more than that, of course, and I don't know why he didn't write down the other things he knows.
I think what struck me about it was just that this was a school assignment, to write down things about baseball. Nothing about cricket, soccer, or swimming. If you ever needed evidence of schools as a primary means of socialization, this is it. I wonder, what is the point of the assignment? Is it to test his writing skills, and baseball just seems like something that everybody would know lots about? Or is it to fill time, and baseball seems like something that is a good thing to waste time? Or is it a covert attempt to spot young baseball talent? I don't know the point of the assignment, nor will I probably learn it. But what it does do is to remind me that my son doesn't have a clue about the most American of sports. I am reminded of those arguments about the GRE exam, or SAT, or ACT, or whatever, ultimately testing cultural knowledge instead of intelligence. You know what? I agree...
He is learning about American sports, but they still don't quite understand how you get points in American football. Our prayer is that they can feel comfortable in the US, while still understanding that there is a much bigger world out there, that knows absolutely nothing about baseball, and that is ok.

Science and Democracy in China

2006-08-22T21:34:00.000+08:00

Since the May 4th movement of 1919, science and democracy have often been seen as the twin components of modernization and progress in China. In the west, we tend to see them as quite separate concepts, but this article in the NYT on Xu Liangying, a retired scientist in China, helps to illustrate the way many Chinese intellectuals see the relationship. Unfortunately, when science is reduced only to technology, as it is currently, then science can become a servant of any master, including authoritarianism and fascism.

This article also shows why the tendency of many westerners to see science and religious faith as inherently about "different things" breaks down internationally. Here is a key passage:
In 1962, the [Chinese Academy of Science]asked him to do the translation for a new collection of Einstein’s philosophical essays and speeches.
The decision to publish Einstein was not made wholly out of admiration. “Mao Zedong wanted to be the revolutionary leader of the whole world,” Dr. Xu explained. As part of that plan, he said, “Mao planned to identify and criticize all the world’s scientists whose political or philosophical positions were anti-Marxist.”
Einstein was on the list courtesy of Andrei Zhdanov, an assistant to Stalin, who argued in 1947 that Einstein’s cosmological theories were reactionary and bourgeois. Marxist philosophy postulated an endless and unlimited universe, but according to general relativity, space-time could be curved around on itself like a sphere, and thus be finite even if it lacked boundaries. Moreover, it promoted theology by implying that the universe had a beginning.
Mr. Zhdanov’s argument resonated with Mao’s view that the universe should be in a state of eternal revolution. And for a brief while it resonated with Dr. Xu, who referred to the Soviet criticism as “a vibration on my mind.”

I doubt, given the current backlash against scientific dissent in the form of intelligent design, that this aspect of Einstein's theory will be brought up much in the US. During the last half century of Chinese intellectual life, careers and lives could be destroyed by incredibly arcane interpretations of things like this, and the smallest of implications could prove someone's counter-revolutionary tendencies, so you shouldn't read too much into it. Still, it is interesting to see the kinds of arguments that were used to oppose scientific progress. So show me how that medieval clericism was somehow more oppressive than this twentieth century Marxism....

more on kurzweil

2006-08-17T04:11:00.000+08:00

at the risk of beating this dead horse, I am going to point to this interesting response to kurzweil's "singularity." the author raises some interesting points, mainly the idea that we tend to be more optimistic about things that we don't know much about. In this case, he examine's Kurzweil's optimism regarding genetic therapies and drug delivery, something the author is an expert on, and finds Kurzweil hopelessly optimistic.

I only read blogs for the, um, "intellectual discourse."

2006-08-17T01:41:00.000+08:00

No, really. I am serious! Anyway, for any academics who read or write blogs, here is a great article in the economist about "economists who blog." The basic question is why someone, including non-economist academics, or whoever, would waste so much time, when they could be doing something productive. The answer, from a variety of smart people, is that blogs are a "natural extension of [our] day job-to engage in intellectual discourse," according to Harvard's Greg Mankiw.

I like the answer, and like it even more now that i have less time to actually think. Given that i am doing less thinking, and more meeting, and meeting, and meeting, and finding it hard to actually have a thought to post to the blog (you don't want to read about my meetings, do you? I didn't think so), I need a really good reason to carve time out of the day to read, think, and post.

Who ended slavery?

2006-08-14T21:45:00.000+08:00

A must-read essay by Michael Barone on the role of evangelicals in ending the slave trade. Barone points out that the "enlightenment" really had very little role in creating a moral argument against slavery, let alone a moral argument that could overcome the huge economic disincentive to abolish the trade.

Key quote:
The French philosophes' idea of a good society was one ruled by enlightened despots, i.e., despots governed by themselves, which their successors tried to put into place during the French Revolution.) English Evangelical Christians, like William Wilberforce and Granville Sharp, did--and accomplished their goal. So, in their wake, did Americans like William Lloyd Garrison, the Grimke sisters, and Frederick Douglass. Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 (much to its economic detriment) and the United States followed, at the earliest date permissible under the Constitution, in 1808 (though the economic detriment to the United States was much less).
Secular elites of our day, or for that matter their counterparts of a century or two centuries ago, like to think that all human progress is due to secular reason. But Christian belief in the moral equality of every person played a key role in inspiring the Britons and then the Americans who led the fight to abolish the slave trade and then slavery.

moblogging and me

2006-08-10T19:48:00.000+08:00

Ok, this is my first attempt at moblogging (mobile blogging). I am writing this on a blackberry, and figuring out what I can and cannot do. For one thing, I can't figure out how to do hyperlinks....
For those hardy souls who follow this blog, sorry for not keeping up more. I am trying to figure out how to keep up a blog in this new job, which keeps me very busy. For now check out the site redesign at http://international.tamu.edu/ipa/

20 years and counting

2006-08-03T22:27:00.000+08:00

That is the number of years that I have been happily married to Pam, aka peej, or "the wife of my youth." Happy Anniversary, babe! This pic is from Disneyland, 1986.

What Christian education should not be....

2006-07-14T21:41:00.000+08:00

I ran across this interesting article about Patrick Henry College in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It is a great example of recognizing what others are referring to as the "antiwitness" at the Christian university level. It is password protected, but if you can get into it, it is a good article. If you can't get behind it, the main point is that media often use Patrick Henry College as an example of what "evangelicals" are about, rather than any of the excellent Christian universities out there. Patrick Henry is itself exclusionary, recognizing no other Christian university as worthy of comparison.

It boggles the mind....

2006-07-13T23:36:00.000+08:00

I know, it is a globalized world, but this news is amazing. A Chinese automobile company, the Nanjing Automobile Group, has bought the assets and trademarks of an old British company, MG Rover company, and is setting up a factory in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Their business for Europe and North America will be based in Oklahoma City, where i used to work. This is good news for Oklahoma, which tends to be a bit over-nationalistic, but I must admit, it is surprising.

As we used to say in Oklahoma, "whodda thunk?"

Kristof on Christianity in China

2006-07-07T06:24:00.000+08:00

Never accuse me of intellectual property violations, but you can certainly accuse me of pointing out other people who will willfully break the NYTimes Select policy of keeping the interesting stuff away from the eyes of inquisitive people. Really, check out Nicholas Kristof's piece on Christianity in China.

Kristof has found the right story, and I am really glad that he spent the time with the house churches. But there are a couple of really, really glaring errors. For example, "During the first half of the 20th century, Western missionaries swarmed all over China, yet they converted fewer than a million Chinese and left only a minor imprint on the country." OK, we need to define "swarm" here. Given that there were probably a couple of thousand missionaries in a nation of about 400 million, that might be a bit misleading. Moreover the "minor imprint" would include founding almost every institution of higher learning, hospital, and orphanage in the country. And "fewer than a million" converts is nothing to dismiss, given some of the high profile of who those converts were, including Sun Yat Sen and Chiang Kai-shek (ok, maybe Chiang is a bad example). For a better sense of their long term impact, see Jonathan Spence's classic book To Change China.

But enough quibbling. It is a nice piece about the transformation of China, that ought to be considered as we think about the issues of globalization, trade ties, and all the other myriad forces changing Chinese society. Kristof ends with this: "More and more Chinese are making that choice, and their faith is reshaping China. One of the oddest legacies of the Communist dynasty may be that after 2,000 years Christianity gains a major foothold in China."

crackdown in Singapore

2006-07-07T06:03:00.000+08:00

OK, it isn't quite a "crackdown," but there is lots of activity in Singapore over blogs, most of it not good. First, Huichieh Loy's Singapore Angle blog has been transformed into a group blog, of "serious" bloggers. This is good news. Second, Mr Brown has been "suspended" by Today magazine for writing a really good article that was mildly satirical about Singapore politics. This is bad news, really bad news, so bad it even prompted reporters without borders to chime in. Third, the MDA has come out to officially say it, the Class License scheme covers blogs, meaning there is not even the slightest lifting of the veil of control over political communication in Singapore. This is bad, also.

After the recent election, i can't say that I was elated, but I was definitely encouraged by what seemed to be the more open environment in Singapore politics. (I even said it here, and even to the Danes!) But this is most disheartening. At this point, though, the Singapore government is at risk of alienating even those who have in the past given them the benefit of the doubt.

Moving in soon

2006-06-23T00:54:00.000+08:00

For those interested in the personal side of our lives, just a brief update. We close tomorrow on a new house, and are trying to figure out how we are going to fill it. It is about 50 percent larger than anything we have lived in before, and it is going to take a long time to fill it!
If you want the "virtual tour," check it out on this website. And no, we didn't pay the list price for it....Pam has told me that I will never get her out of this house, so i better make this thing work....

For those of you who are google earth or google maps users, they get the actual location wrong. They get the street right, but put the house number at the end of the cul-de-sac. It is 707 Putter Court, College Station, TX. We are the third house on the North side of the road (the smaller house, with the trees in the back yard), just to the left (southwest) of the one with the swimming pool. At the end of the cul-de-sac, you can see the school playground/park and Pebble Creek school, where the boys will go to school. To the Northeast, you can see the Pebble Creek Country Club (no, we can't afford it). We are in the Pebble Creek Development, though.

Shipping has arrived, and is somewhere in the North American continent, but we still are not sure where it is. Regardless, we expect to move into an empty house on saturday (that should take about ten minutes), and over the next several weeks, stuff will slowly trickle in. Hopefully, we can get beds by this weekend, but that isn't certain, and the refrigerator won't arrive till the middle of next week (it is ok, we already bought a cooler). The really cool thing, though, the wide screen, high def TV, will be there on Saturday morning! We will have no furniture, no beds, no food, but we will have the TV and the X-Box! That, and frozen pizzas, should carry us through.....Seems that my priorities are a bit out of whack....

the limits of my intellectual ability

2006-06-15T01:03:00.000+08:00

The scriptures say, "pride goes before a fall." This morning, the truth of this verse was revealed to me.

I have a PhD from one of the best universities in the world, i have debated philosophy, politics, economics, and theology (not necessarily in that order) at Oxford University, I have lectured at one of Asia's oldest and most revered institutions, I have debated on the most profound questions with atheists and theists alike; indeed, I have argued with brilliant people around the world. In all these circumstances, I have held my own. I haven't always won, but i have at least kept up. I have never, to the best of my memory, ever failed an exam. But today, I saw how empty all of this pomposity is. I have reached the limits of my intellectual ability.

My nemesis? The Texas State Drivers License exam. I scored a miserable 67% on this exam. For the first time that I can remember, I failed a test! Yes, i can take it again tomorrow, but what is the point? I have been shown for the incompetent, idiotic wreck that I am. What can account for this miserable performance? Was it that i guessed that items could stick out of the left side of your car six inches instead of three inches? Was it that i guessed the punishment for a minor driving without a license was a $2000 fine ? Or was it that I didn't know, and the shame of this overwhelms me, that a circular sign means that there is a train track ahead, and not a rural road, as I stupidly, shamefully guessed.

what is the point? i should resign now....

UPDATE: All is not lost....After an intense evening of studying the stopping distance of a car going various rates of speed, the penalties for various traffic offenses, and most importantly, the shape of traffic signs, I am happy to report that I passed the Texas written driving exam, and the driving portion. all that singapore parking paid off for the parallel parking test, and the conclusion of the examiner was that although I drive well, I am "poor with observation." And many readers of my blog would probably concur....

Hooray for the Danes!

2006-06-07T06:52:00.000+08:00

I didn't know if I would ever hear of this interview again, with a Danish reporter living in Singapore, but sure enough, here it is. I think it is Danish national radio, but not quite sure. It is a restatement of my thoughts on the role of the Internet in Singapore's 2006 election...Thanks to Singapore Election Watch for pointing it out....
Supposedly, my comments are somewhere in that hour and a half audio file, but i haven't found them yet....

temporary change of focus

2006-05-31T20:31:00.000+08:00

for the next several days, this blog will probably not address any issues of real significance, but i will use it instead to update on what is happening in our lives as we move from Singapore back to the US. probably won't be very interesting to anybody who doesn't know us, but it might be helpful for those who do!

We made a bid on a house in college station last week, but it looks like that has fallen through. So today we start the process over again, looking at houses and hopefully will find something to bid on. We are quickly running out of time, as the shipping should arrive in the US in the next two weeks or so, and we need to have a place to have it delivered to!

We also bought a new car, in addition to the one graciously provided by my in-laws. We did what we have wanted to do for many years, and bought an SUV (sport utility vehicle, but which Pam has taken to calling the SWEET (with a high pitch on the sweet) Utility Vehicle). Love it. It is a Honda Pilot, which we hadn't planned on getting. Mileage isn't too bad, and is actually as good as the older ford taurus we are driving. I thought long and hard about the implications of getting an SUV, but decided after driving a Mazda 323 for what, 13 years now?, it was time to get a seriously fun car. the boys love it, because it has a dvd entertainment system, xm radio, power moon roof, and once we figure it out, will also be able to plug in the new XBox 360 system into the dvd system (we think). And all this for one third less than we paid for our Mazda 323 in Singapore. gotta love it!

Went to one of the largest churches in college station this weekend, which shall remain unnamed. It will also remain un-attended. It was awful. Although the worship leader was ok, the congregation was absolutely dead during the worship time. I kept thinking, ok, well the pastor must be really good, but he just completely struck a wrong chord with us. the sermon was just lots of slogans strung together, primarily about politics. No critical thinking, no acknowledgement that sometimes, political decisions are multi-dimensional or at least complex, and no development of the scriptures. The text was out of Romans 13, about submission to government. But the real complexity of this issue was completely short-sighted. Yes, Paul was speaking about a corrupt Roman government, and he urged submission. Would he have done the same with the Khmer Rouge? then the thing about the German church not opposing Hitler? Well, sorry, but history shows that in fact, there was a significant christian opposition to Hitler.
Anyway, not to quibble with the sermon, but it is pretty clear that that is not the congregation for us.

In about three hours, i will cease to be employed in Singapore, and will have about a 20 hour period of being officially "unemployed," before I begin the new job in Texas. I am still excited about it, and now that I am coming to the end of the difficult process of re-establishing residence in the US, getting more excited. the past four weeks or so have just been crazy, filling out what seems like hundreds of forms, etc. Our visit to the DPS, or the texas drivers license office, has reminded me that rigid bureaucracy is not the exclusive purview of Singaporeans. Pam was able to complete the process, but me? Nooooo. I still have to come up with a social security card, for what reason I cannot tell. then i have to take both the written and driving tests because my oklahoma license expired three months ago. A valid Singaporean license is not good enough. So i am actually thinking of taking a day and driving to oklahoma to renew the expired license, so i can avoid the tests. But that would take longer than taking the tests.....whatever.

there is something very comfortable about being back in the US, though. This seems to be a great community, incredibly friendly. The grocery stores are enough to bring tears to your eyes. how many varieties of diet coke do you need, anyway?

enough for now.

finally in texas

2006-05-26T07:17:00.000+08:00

This has been an exceptionally quiet blog the last couple of months, primarily because i have just been too busy trying to finish up my commitments in Singapore, get ready to move overseas, and now, get settled into texas. We have finally arrived, and are now learning about our new city and beginning a new life. there are so many lifestyle changes that have to be accounted for; multiple cars, buying a house, etc. It has taken days just to figure out what all needs to happen, so i will probably continue to be distracted for at least another couple of weeks.
It isn't that there isn't lots to comment about, but I haven't even had time to read a newspaper through in about three weeks.

the end of punditry?

2006-05-11T21:15:00.000+08:00

for me, at least. I have done my last "official" media interview for Channel News Asia, which will be broadcast tonight at 10 pm. It is an interview on the role of the internet in Singapore's election.

Update:
I don't know if it was broadcast or not, but it did show up online here. there is streaming video available. A thirty minute interview truncated into one sentence, though.....

the internet in Singapore's election

2006-05-09T11:13:00.000+08:00

Trying to finish up a book chapter on the role of the Internet in Singapore's election. Basic point: in spite of government tightening of the scope of the internet, the technology played a significant role in this election. Not only were their very high profile podcasts (the Mr. Brown "persistently non-political podcast" series is brilliant), but also ordinary bloggers. No time to explicate the argument here, but just check out this chart:
Posts that contain Singapore Election per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

Singaporeans were clearly using the blogs to comment on the elections, a good and encouraging sign for more openness in Singapore's electoral environment.

overwhelmed

2006-04-29T09:20:00.000+08:00

Very light blogging lately, primarily because it is way too busy. trying to finish up tasks in Singapore, as well as prepare for an international move, it keeping me off the streets, and safe from any real thought, as well!

the gospel of Judas and pseudo-events

2006-04-10T01:45:00.000+08:00

Daniel Boorstin, in his book The Image, coined one of the best words for summing up contemporary media culture. Here is how he defined a Pseudo-event:

A pseudo-event, then, is a happening that possesses the following characteristics:
(1) It is not spontaneous, but comes about because someone has planned, planted, or incited it. Typically, it is not a train wreck or an earthquake, but an interview.
(2) It is planted primarily (not always exclusively) for the immediate purpose of being reported or reproduced. Therefore, its occurrence is arranged for the convenience of the reporting or reproducing media. Its success is measured by how widely it is reported. Time relations in it are commonly fictitious or factitious; the announcement is given out in advance "for future release" and written as if the event had occurred in the past. The question, "Is it real?" is less important than, "Is it newsworthy?"
(3) Its relation to the underlying reality of the situation is ambiguous. Its interest arises largely from this very ambiguity. Concerning a pseudo-event the question, "What does it mean?" has a new dimension. While the news interest in a train wreck is in what happened and in the real consequences, the interest in an interview is always, in a sense, in whether it really happened and in what might have been the motives. Did the statement really mean what it said? Without some of this ambiguity a pseudo-event cannot be very interesting.
(4) Usually it is intended to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

David Kopel has posted this great piece about the supposed furor over the gospel of Judas, and illustrates the way in which this really is a pseudo-event. (be sure also to read this post by a gnostic who sees the same thing). I swear, when you see a media frenzy like this, it just makes it clear how little much of the media understand about history and its relationship to Christianity. Clearly, this whole thing was planned to tap into a somewhat related phenomenon, the movie release of the DaVinci Code (btw, although Dan Brown wrote an atrocious piece of literature, if it could be called that, I completely agree with his victory in the plagiarism suit).

The only way this kind of thing could even get to be a pseudo-event is because many, if not most, reporters, including Christians, have any concept of Christian history. The complete ignorance over the spread of the early Church, how the canon was formed, or how the gospel accounts from the first century eventually prevailed over the later deviations from them, is what makes it possible for this to be reported as somehow "news." It is this ignorance that allows for the ambiguity that Boorstin refers to as the critical element of a pseudo-event. The current reporting focuses on the "meaning" or the implications of the document. What is the implication for the historic Christian faith? There is none. This in no way makes a bit of difference. We have always known, or at least had historical records about, the gnostic movement, and the various interpretations of the faith. The very Church councils which Dan Brown alleges to have "stolen" the faith were convened to figure out what God was communicating. Those councils are a big part of how we have come to interpret all the historical evidence.

I personally find the interpretation of Judas' actions in the gospel really interesting. Wow, talk about a spin job. You can see the prefiguring of gnosticism in some of Plato's work, and in contemporary forms of Buddhism. The idea that the body, or the material world, as a prison, is a long and distinguished doctrine, but historic Christianity cut it off at the knees through the doctrine of the incarnation. In saying that God became material, became a part of the physical universe, Christianity redeems the material world, and all of the pleasures that go with it. This is why theology 101 is really important.

There is one other interesting thing about all this. This document has been greeted with none of the traditional skepticism that the whole crucifixion and resurrection thing were later additions to the faith. The dating of this document from the second or third century, if anything, adds yet more historical evidence that by the time the second century rolled around, there was no doubt that Jesus did in fact live, get betrayed and executed, and resurrected. I guess it again demonstrates Boorstin's point:The question, "Is it real?" is less important than, "Is it newsworthy?"

The document is real, and newsworthy, but not because it presents us with a better understanding of either Judas or Jesus, but because it adds yet more historical weight to the way the life and death of Jesus Christ.

On the prayer study

2006-04-01T08:46:00.000+08:00

You might have seen reports on this recent study that concluded that "prayer doesn't work." When i read about this study, I cringed by the crass mechanical nature of the whole thing. Yes, it was a rigorous, controlled study. But look at the directions given to the pray-ers: "The congregations were told that they could pray in their own ways, but they were instructed to include the phrase, "for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications." I know a few, but only a very few, believers who would think that prayer like this could be meaningful.

What struck me is how, well, "magical" it was, as if we could just turn it on or off and expect it to work like a light switch. In some places, that is; i have lived a number of places where the light switches weren't quite so dependable. I find it incredible that a believing Christian could actually endorse that form of prayer. Does the study prove anything? To my mind, no, and it isn't just that i am ignoring contradictory evidence, but rather, because if this study had actually shown results, I would have been highly, highly suspicious.

Here is a more humorous take on the study, that sums up my own take on it....

NYT on "African Christianity"

2006-03-26T10:43:00.000+08:00

I think this article oversells the African side of the emerging Christian world, and downplays the Asian angle, but it still helps to make the case that, as Philip Jenkins argues, the future of the Chruch will be largely charismatic, and overwhelming to the modernist forms of the faith that we in the West have grown used to.
Theologically, I think these movements that rely on the prosperity doctrine will find themselves ultimately in serious trouble. Authority-wise, there are also problems. But, the dynamism and spirit of these movements is something seriously lacking in much of the West, where the gospel has been so domesticated.

What I did for my birthday

2006-03-25T15:47:00.000+08:00

Holding a leopard shark at Underwater World, Sentosa

The Big Question

2006-03-20T11:06:00.000+08:00

From the NYT:
This documentary, shot in 2003 on the set of "The Passion of the Christ," is an exploration of personal religious belief in which members of the cast and crew of that film, as well as people from the southern Italian villages where it was made, are asked to ponder the question, "What is God to you?" Mel Gibson, the director of "The Passion," who kicks off "The Big Question" with a recollection of how he returned to his Roman Catholic faith at 35, comes off as far less dogmatic than viewers of his controversial film might expect.

Would love to see it, but I have a feeling it won't make the big screens in Singapore....

Elliot on technology and knowledge

2006-03-20T09:44:00.000+08:00

Here are some magnificent lines from TS Eliot's "Choruses from the Rock"

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
0 perpetual revolution of configured stars,
0 perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
0 world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of ideas and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

On the Protestant Reformation

2006-03-20T08:50:00.000+08:00

for any reader out there who is not named Mike, please forgive this digression....

Thanks, Mike, for the quote from John Foxx on the Protestant Reformation:
1563 - John Foxe, Book of Martyrs, V. 355.:

Either the pope must abolish printing or he must seek a new world to reign over, for else, as the world stands, printing will abolish him. The pope and all the cardinals must understand this, that through the light of printing the world begins now to have eyes to see and heads to judge .... God hath opened the press to preach, whose voice the pope is never able to stop with all the puissance of the triple crown. By printing as by the gift of tongues and as by the singular organ of the Holy Ghost, the doctrine of the Gospel sounds to all nations and countries under heaven and what God reveals to one man, is dispersed to many and what is known to one nation is opened to all.

I will incorporate that into my class notes. Actually, I think it supports my contention that it was the printing press that led to the success of Luther's ideas where earlier reformers had failed, but I do think that we are suffering from a lack of definitions here. I responded earlier to your comment that it makes the culture "individualistic" as if you meant that term as a cultural anthropologist would, that they place undue emphasis on individual autonomy rather than group norms. My response is that a cultural difference is not an issue of human nature. Obviously, you meant it a bit differently, on the basis of the undermining of the authority of the Pope. That is exactly the meaning I had on it, but I do believe that a significant portion that Foxx's quote doesn't take account of is the way in which individual rulers sought to use the reformation to undermine the political authority of the Pope. Actually, i think you would find McGrath's discussion on the Reformation as bearing the seeds of atheism quite interesting, and it also supports your other question about the undermining of authority.

Thanks also to the link to Schaff's magisterial history of Christianity. I have often heard of the book, but never knew I could find it online!

I will address your other comments in the comments section of the McGrath post. It does get confusing when I am not sure where you are posting.

Bono at the National Prayer Breakfast

2006-03-18T12:10:00.000+08:00

I will never be as cool as Bono. But if I could deliver one speech like this one he gave to the National Prayer Breakfast, it would be enough. Check it out. Thanks, Bono, for challenging the right to live up to one tenth of their professed values, for challenging the left to see God, and for challenging me to let God "watch my back."

More on Kurzweil and human nature

2006-03-16T15:06:00.000+08:00

Mike T, in this post, has some interesting arguments that I wanted to address. I had actually crafted a great response, but my explorer crashed right at the very end (Note to Microsoft: you owe me, big time. yeah, i know, i just discovered this "save as draft" button). I decided to address it here because it relates to a much larger set of issues. Mike, I hope you don't mind that i am taking this out of the comments section, and I am sorry, but I don't have time to reproduce the entire response I made.

Mike argues: "But vis-a-vis technology not changing human nature, I think you are uncharacteristically conservative and wrong.
Think of McLuhan here.

The change from a manuscript to a printed book culture, he argues & I'm inclined to buy it, fostered a new individualism - since people had previously been mainly listeners (to scarce manuscripts being read out) and part of an audience - and now became readers able to study books in solitude - and thus quickly developed a point of view of their own. That was a key factor that led in historically pretty short order to the new more individualistic form of Christianity - Protestantism."

Whether or not my conservatism is characteristic or not, I think you are misreading McLuhan. The entire tradition of McLuhan and his variants, including Postman, Ong, and Ellul, argue that technology changes human societies, not human nature. McLuhan, by the way, was overrated. Ellul made a much better argument in his Humiliation of the Word, where he argues that where images invite rapid, non-critical response, text invites reflection and critique. To Ellul, this introduced a deterioration of human discourse, in that we replace thought with action. or to Postman, we replace thought with entertainment. Note that almost all of these guys thought that what had been previously was better than the junk we are saddled with now.

The privacy of the reading act was not new with the printing press. People had always been able to read alone and reflect (think of Augustine's conversion), and there is no evidence that I am aware of that the printing press introduced vast new audiences of new readers. What the printing press created was the ability to quickly disseminate ideas through the mass production of books. Earlier reformers like jan hus or wyclife had said similar things to Luther several hundred years earlier, but the fact that books were typically hand copied, and then you had to travel from town to town to convince local ecclesial authorities, meant that you would likely be arrested and thrown to the fire before you had a chance to really make a case. but when gutenberg perfected the movable type printing press, he created the opportunity to radically speed up the dissemination of ideas, as the books could be printed by the dozen, or hundred, or whatever, and rapidly spread throughout the countryside. Thus, Luther's ideas had gained some patronage before the local authorities had the chance to stop them, thus saving him the same fate of the earlier reformers.

On the protestant reformation, I think it is a mistake to say it is about individualism. It was ultimately not that, it was about political sovereignty. You could argue, as some have, that it ultimately created individualism. I don't buy it, but even if it is true, are you saying that individualism, a cultural characteristic, is somehow embedded in human nature? this means that non-individualistic cultures have a different human nature.

Human nature, I take to mean the whole vast complex of things we identify with being human, including our intelligence, our creativity, our love of beauty, and our sin nature. My view of human nature is grounded in my understanding of the scriptures, which says emphatically that I cannot change my human nature, but must rely on God to do so. But, even were I not bound to that intellectual commitment, there is no evidence at all that human nature has changed one iota in the last two to three thousand years of human media development.

Let me illustrate. In a previous life, I was a professor of rhetoric. I used to have my students read Book 2, chapters 12-15, out of Aristotle's Rhetoric, where he deals with the motives, values, and actions of different types of audiences (young men, old men, young women, etc). I would then challenge them to find one single thing that was no longer applicable, and you know what, no one ever did. Aristotle held that human nature was far more plastic than I believe, and yet it seems that through two thousand, five hundred years of "transformation" (from oral culture, to literate culture, to print culture, to electronic culture), there has been no real change in how humans think or act. So how can a change to the Internet, which is still primarily a textual media (although this is quicky changing), induce significant changes to human nature?

Mike goes on to say: "Now we're in a comparable phase with the Internet - in developing a multimedia mentality to supersede the literate mentality of the last millenia. What defines a multimedia mentality is that images - and especially film/video becomes as important as text in understanding the world. We don't just want to "read about it" we want to "see it and hear it for ourselves."

The mass media of the 20th century correspond to the manuscript phase of video/films - when we were all public viewers. The Internet corresponds to the book phase - when videos can now be downloaded and handled and edited with the same ease as a book, and we become truly private viewers."

I don't want to respond to this in too much depth because i think the analogy is deeply flawed. The experience of Western users of the Internet might indeed by private, but in much of the world, it is a very public event. Moreover, day by day the Internet is becoming less private and more public, hence, "ubiquitous computing."

What you are saying about a "multimedia mentality" is essentially what Postman and Ellul and others have referred to as an "image-based" culture. Both of them argued that it was inferior to a literature culture, and i think most of us would admit that even with the surplus of information media we have at our hands, few people are really more informed about issues of significance than people a hundred years ago. I have engaged one aspect of this issue in this article. (note to the publisher: I didn't post that article, so am not responsible for any copyright violation. Whew, settled that!)

"That is already helping to create a vastly more intelligent population - (think of the extraordinary speed with which the female sex has overtaken males academically in several leading industrial nations)."

OK, now here, we should park it awhile. I couldn't disagree more. Here are the problems. First, there is a confusion of information with intelligence. Information creates informed audiences, not more intelligent ones. Educational attainment (ok, try to avoid performing a Summers here), which I am presuming you refer to when you mean "females have overtaken males" is primarily a result of opportunities and socialization, and rarely, if ever about technologies of learning. Please, please produce one tiny bit of evidence which shows that human intelligence has improved. Moreover, the Internet has only been publicly popular since about 1995 (this is my job, after all), and yet the kinds of changes you are talking about have happened over decades, and is a result of a huge number of social factors, including changing sex roles, growing prosperity, more educational opportunities, etc. this isn't even post-hoc reasoning, it is pre hoc (cool, I coined new term!).

Mike goes on: "But it should fundamentally undermine all religions - not religion and the religious questions, but particular dogmatic religious systems of answering them - for all the great religions have been religions of the BOOK. And the book being language-based makes inevitably for locally-biassed religions.

This argument falls into the secularist fallacy, which basically argues that technological modernization will lead to secularization. So many problems here, it is hard to know where to begin. but let's start here. First, "religions of the book" is an Islamic term, and refers to the role of text in religious transmission, and referred solely to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Not buddhism, hinduism, etc. But,it isn't really accurate either. Technically, we would say Christianity is a "religion of the LETTER," as it was through the epistles that the faith started, and the gospels and epistles weren't put into "book" form until several hundred years later. But, I quibble. What Mike is really saying is that they are religions of TEXT. OK, in current evangelicalism, this is probably truer than I would like to admit. but, if you look at the role of art, ritual, liturgy, and music in Christian history, and particularly in different traditions, such as the Orthodox, it would be very difficult to maintain that text is the sole, or even primary means of transmission. Stained glass, for example, was invented to teach bible stories to illiterate people.
Moreover, to say that the religion has been transmitted through text is not to say that its essence is somehow embodied in text. Anything that has been transmitted through the last two thousand years, or even the last 100 years, has come down in text, or book, form. Science, medicine, technology, art (ok, maybe not art), philosophy, narrative, poetry, etc, have all come down through the printed text. Does that mean they are all doomed to the ash heap of history?

Moreover, you really need to explain how being text based makes it somehow "locally biased." I don't follow the logic here. do you really want to argue that the last two thousand years of christianity and Islam are somehow "locally biased?" Moreover, all the evidence argues that religious faiths are becoming more universal, not less. Check out Philip Jenkins on this.

Finally, Mike ends with this: The Internet and the video, however, are truly global media."

Again, there is a confusion of potential with actuality. It is a global network, to be sure. But the technological infrastructure does not mandate how it is used. Really, when was the last time you read a Korean, a Japanese, or a Slovenian website? Almost every study of how people use the Internet indicates that behavior is local. If anything, the Internet is creating a more fractured audience, split off from global engagement. My students in Singapore, although they can easily read websites out of the US, Britain, or even China and Taiwan, use Singapore-based sites whenever they can.

Mike, again I hope that you don't mind that i brought this out of the comments section. It is an interesting discussion, and i look forward to hearing more from you on it. I obviously agree with you that Kurzweil is worthy of being read. It doesn't mean that I need to buy into his obviously ill-informed comments on religion (p. 472-478: dembski as the voice of theology? come on! ), or his overly utopian predictions of extended intelligence.

Kurzweil's argument about human nature is embodied, I think, in this understanding of intelligence. He argues that if we extend our intelligence, we extend (change, transform, or whatever) our nature. "Biotechnology will extend biology and correct its obvious flaws" p. 323. Ultimately, Kurzweil thinks we will eventually avoid biology altogether "the transition to the nonbiological experience." Obviously, technology extends our capabilities. A hammer changes my ability to drive nails, and a computer extends my ability to write. But at its most critical points, our ability to love, to act rightly, to love God, to avoid sin, I don't see that technology adds anything at all to those essential issues.

New book out

2006-03-16T13:47:00.000+08:00

At the risk of being perceived as self-promoting, I want to announce the publication (finally) of a long anticipated book on media ecology (or the interplay between channels of communication and its content). My friend Casey Lum has edited this volume, and i have contributed a chapter on Jacques Ellul, the French sociologist and reformed lay-theologian. My chapter examines Ellul's ideas on media, technology, and society, and the implications of his ideas for more contemporary theory about the impact of media technologies. At least I think that is what it is about (I wrote it almost six years ago, talk about a slow publication cycle!).

Ellul, in my mind, is one of the most overlooked models of Christian scholarship out there. I don't agree with all of his theology (particularly his universalism), but have collected a nearly complete set of his books translated into English. I still entertain visions of writing more on ellul, but am finding it hard to get to it!

I haven't seen the entire volume yet (I am hoping it isn't another six years), but am really interested in reading the whole thing.

Here is the Amazon link.

It's the Spirit of Aggieland

2006-03-10T08:58:00.000+08:00

I have recently discovered that school spirit at some schools is much, much stronger than at others. I didn't think anybody could be more "fan"-atical than University of Oklahoma alumni, but I have found that that just isn't so. Sorry to all my long time OU friends, but it is official, I will be moving to Texas A&M University to direct the Institute for Pacific Asia. After almost six years in Singapore, it is very hard to think about leaving this great city, and our wonderful friends and colleagues here. However, we are very much looking forward to Saturday afternoon football games, cool fall mornings, long drives on the highway, all the barbecue we can eat, and having two cars!

The move is scheduled for late May, so things are getting a bit hectic. It isn't easy to move around the world, while in the middle of not one, but three different school schedules. As a result, posting might be a little light for awhile.

Dennett takes it on the nose....

2006-03-01T14:32:00.000+08:00

Daniel Dennett, a "hard core" Darwinist, has recently published a book attempting to put the nail in the coffin of religion once again. His premise, that once we understand why religion exists, we can get rid of it, attempts to create a narrative that religion emerged, believe it or not, out of biological necessity, or natural selection, or whatever....Regardless, it isn't true, it just served a useful purpose.

Unfortunately for Dennett, but fortunately for the rest of us, the NYT steps back from its usual treatment of Darwinism, and printed this absolutely brutal review of Dennett's book. The author, Leon Wieseltier, charges that Dennett tries to explain religion away, without having even a cursory understanding of religion. Even more, he accuses Dennett of a sloppy disregard for evidence, or even of ambiguity. Here is a great quote: "Dennett is the sort of rationalist who gives reason a bad name; and in a new era of American obscurantism, this is not helpful." Even if you have no interest in Dennett's book, the review is must read.

All this reminds me of something from McGrath's book The Twilight of Atheism. Atheism is waning as a philosophy, McGrath argues, because it has lost its moral reason to exist (there aren't as many religious tyrants to resist) and because it just isn't interesting anymore. There is nothing "heroic" about it, and certainly nothing that commands allegiance. Wieseltier exemplifies this, in showing how the atheism of people like Dennett is nothing but crude and unadulterated ignorance and bias. Honestly, after the last two hundred years, how on earth could Dennett believe that religious belief has not been subject to criticism?

Blow it outta the port....

2006-03-01T13:28:00.000+08:00

Although I disagree with Joe Carter on postmodernism, i couldn't agree more fully with this post on the whole Dubai Ports World and the US ports. We were aware of this sale because before DPW bought out P&O, the Port Authority of Singapore (PSA) was trying to buy it. PSA backed out when the price got too high, and DPW seemed willing to sacrifice itself in debt for the purchase. I just can't help but wonder, if PSA had not backed out, would there have been a tenth of this controversy?

China and the Internet

2006-02-28T10:40:00.000+08:00

Here is an "official" perspective on the whole China Internet issue:

Europe and scientific research

2006-02-28T10:03:00.000+08:00

According to Fareed Zakaria, the continent is in serious trouble. Why? a number of problems, including the welfare state, limited efforts at reform, changing demographics, and perhaps more important, the lack of investment in scientific and technical research. If European universities and researchers don't begin to make major long term investments and get serious about reform, then in about two decades, the average European will have about half the income of Americans. thanks for the tip to James.

Google in China

2006-02-25T06:56:00.000+08:00

Given that this whole issue, the internet in China, and particularly the political impact of that, is my area of study (what, six or seven internationally peer reviewed articles should qualify me as an expert), maybe it is surprising that I haven't posted on it. But, it is a much more complex issue than it is currently being portrayed in the press (no surprise there). Plus, there is much political hay being made here in Washington, which I take to be primarily just posturing (also not a surprise).
My opinion, were I to actually take the time to write it, which I won't, is that Google and Yahoo! have forgotten how to tell their story. Two or three years ago, they were telling a very interesting and compelling story about what they did and what it meant. At that time, everyone saw them as harbingers of freedom. What has changed?
two things. first, they grew up into real businesses, with real expectations. Google listed on the stock exchange, and once you are playing with the big boys, you have to play by their rules. Two, the Chinese government finally figured out that the way to control the internet was not by brute force, but by shrewdness. So, the businesses got into a new level of scrutiny, not just by human rights advocates, but also by shareholders. And, China developed a new layer of sophistication.
I am personally not overly concerned that the google.cn site doesn't produce pictures of the standdown with a tank. Is this that much worse than France's laws outlawing Yahoo! offering pictures of nazi paraphenalia, or any other form of "racism"? What is the difference? should we be calling Yahoo up before Congress for giving into those French dictators? Moreover, as many have demonstrated, google.com, which offers the full range of material, is available in China.
Look, people, every media company that has wanted to access China has had to come to grips with these issues. If you don't believe me, ask Rupert Murdoch. If Yahoo and Google are going to play, they are going to have to find some ways to provide their services under the auspices of China's rules. when I was a teacher in China, I did the same thing. I learned when to say what i wanted to say and when not to say it. If I wanted to remain in the country longer than six minutes, i certainly didn't broadcast on state run tv that I was a believer in God, and that china's one child policy was immoral and unsustainable, and that the CCP was thoroughly corrupted throughout, although i wanted to. I found that influence can be just as profound when it is quiet, and delivered in a wise way. Note the final line in the Liu Xiaobo essay, posted earlier today.....
Sorry, i have already posted more than I wanted to. for those who are interested in this issue, there are some absolutely critical sources. First, you have to be keeping up with Rebecca MacKinnon. Although we disagree on this issue, her analysis is very, very good, she knows China inside out, and she keeps the information flowing. Second, you should read this essay by James Delong. It is probably the closest to my own perspective that I have seen on the web. finally, you probably want to follow the debate on Pajamas Media on this issue.

"The internet is God's gift to China"

2006-02-25T06:23:00.000+08:00

A very interesting essay by the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who, since being released from prison, has found the internet to a place of freedom and a way to overcome governmental control.

the Bible in my own language

2006-02-23T09:06:00.000+08:00

I have always heard how much more meaningful it is when you read the bible in your own, heart language. Now, someone has actually started a translation just for me, jesus' parables in academic language....

Two by McGrath

2006-02-22T21:24:00.000+08:00

Have just finished two books by Alister McGrath, professor of historical theology at Oxford, which i picked up, interestingly, at Blackwell's in Oxford. The first, The Twilight of Atheism: The rise and fall of disbelief in the modern world, is perhaps the most interesting. McGrath argues in this book that atheism, as an intellectual force, and certainly as a social phenomenon, is on its way out. In spite of how it sounds, McGrath is anything but polemical, and is actually quite complimentary of atheism, its motives, and the best intentions of its proponents.

Of course, the focus is primarily on American and European thought, and the book is at its best when it explores the trajectory of atheism as a system of belief, and locates its rise, or the "golden age," in the particular historical circumstances of 18th and 19th century European church-state relations. The book also makes tremendous contributions to understanding that atheism is rarely about evidence, it is almost always about a moral objection. I think this is really critical. Atheism is usually not a process of an inevitable logical reasoning process; it is often a profound objection to the morality of a particular doctrine or theology. For example, the doctrine of eternal damnation seems to most modern people as immoral. That gives a certain weight to whatever logical arguments can be made.

The most significant weakness of this book, I think, is probably just because McGrath is a theologian, rather than a sociologist. The picture he paints of the decline of atheism deals primarily with ideas, and he rarely engages any sort of sociological or statistical analysis at all. This leaves me a bit dissatisfied, in that McGrath presents a pretty compelling case that atheism is just, well, boring, but barely mentions the explosion of social scientific research which makes his case all that more compelling. I am thinking of Philip Jenkins here on the next christendom, or Stark's work on secularization, or even Peter Berger on desecularization. There is a ton of research to draw on, and I do wish that McGrath had drawn on it.

All of that being said, however, the book is a standout, and should be read by anybody interested in the history of ideas, whether atheist or theist. The theist will find a fascinating exploration of the "trinity" of atheist thinkers (Feuerbach, Darwin, and Freud) and the specific historical dimensions that gave rise to the popularity of their thought. The atheist will perhaps be surprised by the argument that atheism is, in fact, not much more than an historically situated moment whose days are over, and input from a friendly but not hostile critic.

The second book is McGrath's most recent, and covers much of the same territory. Dawkin's God: Genes, Memes, and the meaning of life is a specific rebuttal of the theories of Richard Dawkins, atheist extraordinaire, whom has been referred to as "Darwinism's Grand Inquisitor." The book covers much of the same territory as the twilight of atheism, but its specific contribution is to focus much more fully on the issues of science and atheism. Here, McGrath is respectful of Dawkins' achievements, but brutally effective in undermining Dawkin's grand claims of what darwinism means. The book provides a great introduction to genetics, and the development of evolutionary theory (McGrath nowhere, by the way, argues against Darwinian evolution), and the meaning of it all. His key point here is that regardless of what Dawkins says, science does not validate atheism.

Interestingly, trained as a molecular biologist (PhD from Oxford), McGrath does not buy into the argument of people like Gerald Schroeder that recent scientific discoveries add weight to theism. He argues that science just can't speak to the issue of God's existence, but he also argues forcefully that there is no "conflict" between science and religion. The warfare metaphor, he argues, is a result, again, of the politics and passions of Victorian Britain, and needs to be relegated to its historical status rather than continually trotted out to serve political purposes.

This book is at its best when McGrath critically examines Dawkins incredibly overly simplistic portrayal of religious faith. It isn't just that Dawkins is "wrong," but that he is clueless. He has absolutely no idea what he is talking about when it comes to religious faith. He knows his science, no doubt about that, but then uses that to attack a straw man caricature that few religious believers would be able to recognize.

My biggest objection to this book? Well, annoyance, really. Since i got my PhD in rhetoric, it absolutely drives me insane when people refer to "rhetoric" as sophistic, sollipsistic nonsense. McGrath continually contrasts Dawkins' "rhetoric" to "argument" and "rationality." He isn't the only one to do this; everyone does. But, rhetoric is argument, and is about rationality. Of course, McGrath is not trying to make me feel better about my graduate training, but still, you would think as a professor of historical theology, he would know better.....

Anyway, both books are very, very good. they do have significant overlaps, in that they cover much of the same territory. Dawkins shows up in the first, and of course, is the whole story in the second. the "warfare" metaphor is mentioned in the second, but more fully developed in the first. You get the idea. If you are literary minded, go with the first; if you are more into science, go with the second. If you want the whole story, or into the philosophy of science, read both. McGrath has done a terrific job, and in neither book shortchanges his opponents.

German Kezboards

2006-02-14T02:40:00.000+08:00

One of those funnz things i hadnät realiyed before, but did zou know that a german kezboard is lazed out differntlz than an english one<- one of those interesting tidbits of information that zou find out when zou tzpe in a german airport....

Leaving Malta

2006-02-14T02:38:00.000+08:00

Finally finished all the meetings in Malta, and hired a taxi to take me around to see everything that I hadn't been able to see before. Absolutely phenomenal architecture, plus got to see Caravagio's 'Beheading of John the Baptist' and 'Saint Jerome'. Wow. Amazing. Will put some pics up on the flickr site when i get back to singapore.

Time in Malta

2006-02-12T19:53:00.000+08:00

My trip to Malta is drawing to a close. It is a beautiful island, with fascinating architecture. Haven't had too much time to look around, as have been stuck in a hotel conference room for the last three days. But i have made it to Valletta, seen the Upper Barracca Gardens, eaten lots of rabbit, and seen part of the celebration of St. Paul's shipwreck. I know, it seems weird to celebrate a shipwreck that happened almost 2000 years ago, but it is amazing how much revelry surrounds that.

Nothing quite so frustrating as being in a place you've never been, will probably never be again, surrounded by 2000 years of history, art, architecture, and culture, and be sitting in a conference room, talking about issues that are, well, boring...It is worse when you are in the Mediterranean, surrounded by blue skies, blue water, a strong breeze, and every ten minutes or so a sailboat goes by.

Hopefully, will get a chance this evening and tomorrow morning to look around a bit more. First priority is to make it to St. John's Cathedral, or possibly Mdina.

Channel News Asia, next

2006-02-06T12:18:00.001+08:00

for anyone who can receive Channel News Asia, I will be on tomorrow, February 7, at 7.30 am discussing the controversy over the Danish cartoons which have caused such problems around the world. I normally like to keep a bit lower profile in these kind of issues, but i do think this is an important issue to discuss.

Update: There is a low resolution version of the interview here. When i got to the studio, i was informed by a producer that the primary goal was to talk about the issue, but to keep the network out of trouble. Which helps to account for the lack of fireworks. the presenters were more anxious than i was, it seems, to stay out of the firing line! Not that I really relish the idea of getting blasted by irate crowds.....

out of oxford

2006-02-05T06:02:00.000+08:00

after a busy two days at the oxford internet institute, I am on the way home. I love oxford, the history, the architecture, the art. Went to the Ashmolean museum for a quick look around during lunch on friday, then back to meetings, then to the white pony pub before dinner, where i debated Latin America's slide towards the left and their future in forging an anti-American alliance with a Brazilian, a Chilean, a Chinese, and another American. i love being an academic. Dinner was at Pembroke College, where I learned that the most famous alumni is Roger Bannister, and JRR Tolkein was a fellow for 20 years. Nice dinner, though not as formal as I had expected.

After the workshop broke up today, I bought a couple of souvenirs for the kids, then went to cornmarket street to see about getting a watch repaired. Cornmarket street on a weekend is so crowded with tourists that it is easy to forget where you are. There were also a number of protestors, though. One table was set up by British muslims protesting the Danish cartoons of Muhammed, while a few yards away was an anti-abortion table. Don't think they are actually connected to one another....

sky high blogging

2006-02-05T05:55:00.000+08:00

Wow, i am posting this from 30,000 feet, somewhere over the black sea, on my way back to Singapore. Trying out Boing's new inflight internet service. Not too fast, but overall, not too bad! I am quite amazed, actually! It is about as good as most wireless services I have used, although I don't pay lots of attention to the speeds.

I won't say it makes up for having a seat in the back of the plane, with my knees crammed into the seat in front of me, and no room to move, but hey, it is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick!

OK, after about 24 minutes, i am still unable to publish this, not because of the satellite connection, but because blogger keeps telling me to republish in ten minutes. I am trying, i really am!

in oxford

2006-02-02T17:16:00.000+08:00

Have arrived in Oxford, staying at the Royal Oxford Hotel. Not sure what it takes to get the right to use the word "royal" in Britain (it costs lots of money for licensing fees in Malaysia), but it evidently isn't a lot. The hotel is clean, somewhat warm, but pretty basic.
Went to the Bird and Baby pub last night for dinner to see what they had done after the release of the Chronicles of Narnia. Evidently, nothing. Still have the pictures of CS Lewis, Tolkein, etc up in the middle room, but nary a mention of either Chronicle or Lord of the Rings.
btw, it is quite cold here. Quite dreary, cloudy, and windy. I keep forgetting after five years in Singapore that a coat just isn't enough to keep you warm. Even inside, I keep freezing. Might look for a warmer coat today, but the main agenda is to spend the day at Blackwell's before the sessions begin tonight.
some pics later...

missions in NYT

2006-01-30T12:10:00.000+08:00

Be sure to see the NYT article on "post colonial missionaries" before it disappears behind Times Select.....

upcoming travels (travails....)

2006-01-26T11:26:00.000+08:00

Lots of air time the next three weeks. Immediately after chinese new year, I will be in Oxford at a seminar at the Oxford Internet Institute. Then back to Singapore for three days, then another fifteen hours in a plane to go back to Europe, this time for another meeting in Malta.

I hadn't originally wanted to go to Malta, then I realized this is the same Malta where Paul shipwrecked, thereby altering the island's history forever. In reading up for the trip, i have found that the island has a tremendous history in East-West conflict, particularly the battle to protect the island from the Turks.

Since this is an intense working meeting, there won't be much time to explore. But, it is a small island after all. How long can it take to explore? I will take some photos, however, and post them to the flickr site.

Happy year of the Dog!

2006-01-26T11:21:00.000+08:00

I can't shake off mazdas

2006-01-26T08:47:00.000+08:00

I have been driving a mazda since january of 1994, except for the year and a half with no car when we first moved to Singapore. So, I guess this is appropriate.

I'm a Mazda RX-8!
You're sporty, yet practical, and you have a style of your own. You like to have fun, and you like to bring friends along for the ride, but when it comes time for everyday chores, you're willing to do your part.
Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

caught up

2006-01-25T14:36:00.000+08:00

For one brief, fleeting moment, I am caught up. I have no immediate deadlines, nothing (well, ok, only one thing) past due, and can actually think, rather than right.

Oops, times up. gotta go....

Mandarin in the UK

2006-01-21T09:06:00.000+08:00

In an encouraging move, Brighton College in the UK has made Mandarin lessons compulsory for all students. It is obvious not every student will use it in later life, but for those who do, what a great head start.

interview on cybercons

2006-01-17T17:40:00.000+08:00

This website has reproduced a portion of an article that was run in the Straits Times recently on cybercons. I actually said more interesting things, but those got cut out of this version. Sorry for no posting to the actual article, but the Straits Times has an incredibly lame policy for online content, about which I constantly complain.

God and the Singularity

2006-01-06T15:59:00.000+08:00

I haven't seen this blog before, but the Speculist has a post on God and Singularity, referring to Ray Kurzweil's book that I have mentioned before. Yes, there does seem to be a tremendous amount of overlap between the traditional Christian understanding of God and what Kurzweil promises we have coming. Here is a key quote:
So there, I believe, is the common ground that believers and Singularitarians have in exploring the relationship between God and the Singularity. Both have a keen interest in goodness. In working to bring about an emergent superhuman intelligence, the Singularitarian can find in the idea of God (or at least in some of the more prominent ideas about God) a model, a template, an ideal. A believer might counter that to attempt to create God would be the worst kind of hubristic folly, and blasphemy to boot. We'll look at these objections in greater detail later.
But no one is talking about creating God. A Christian mother who tries to instill Christ-like qualities in her children would not be accused of blasphemy, nor have I ever heard anyone ascribe hubristic folly to that book by Thomas a Kempis. And if anything is blasphemous, surely it's the name "Christian," meaning "little Christ."
The Speculist inadvertently makes an important apologetic point, i think, in referring to the "ideal" of God. This ideal, or logos, or hunger, or whatever one might call it, seems to be a universal human aspiration, and to my mind, is inexplicable outside of the possibility of fulfillment. Call me an unredeemed medievalist or whatever, but I still haven't found a good explanation for this universal phenomenon of conceiving of and desiring more goodness than is possible.
If there was a question, which i doubt there is, I would definitely fall in the camp who argue that the ideal or aspiration to the singularity is indeed hubristic, even Babel-like, and to equate the ideas of merging AI with humans with the practice of the imitation of Christ, a la Thomas a Kempis, is simply a false analogy.
There are significant philosophical and theological dimensions of Kurzweil's book, and I wish i had more time to think them all through. I certainly don't mean to cut off all discussion, but let me just leave it at this. The idea that the increase in computing power is going to somehow transcend human nature is ultimately, naive.

the ultimate customization of news

2006-01-06T13:36:00.000+08:00

Here is an interesting video "history" of the next eight years of internet development, particularly the role of the media in how people get the news. Lots to argue about, but it is a thought provoking piece.
Thanks to Becky for sending this along.

Let's settle this, once and for all

2006-01-06T13:22:00.000+08:00

In a startling development, an Italian court is finally going to take up the question of whether or not Jesus existed. Hmmm. This should be interesting. Of course, the debate has been going on for what, two thousand years now? I am glad we are finally going to settle it.

Actually, it seems to me that this lawsuit is nothing more than the atheist author using the public courts to market his book. How better to get free press than by initiating a lawsuit that would inevitably be reported around the world?

Back to work

2006-01-06T13:20:00.000+08:00

Finally arrived late last night from a three week trip to the US for the Christmas holidays, so hopefully will get back to blogging soon. Lots to comment upon during my trip, but no broadband connection.....what is this world is coming to?

Anyway, i am not quite sure why readership seems to go up when I am not actively posting...er, maybe I do... Anyway, thanks for checking in.

2005-12-12T13:45:00.000+08:00

Here is the picture (I finally had it scanned) of our group with General Vo Nguyen Giap. This refers to this earlier post from October, 2004.

More on Narnia

2005-12-12T13:00:00.000+08:00

In Singapore, there is no public fury over the release of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, as there seems to be in much of the West. So, writings like this one are surprising me. Nevertheless, this is an interesting response written by a non-Christian, wondering why all the hullabaloo.

Here is a great quote:
Above all, I can’t help wondering why the instincts of secular liberals should be so repressive. It is odd, when one considers that a major part of post-enlightenment secularism is supposed to be enlightened tolerance. Their response strikes me as similar to the response of the British Muslims who burnt The Satanic Verses or the British Sikhs who demanded that a play offensive to their religion be closed.
What both groups have in common — one extremely religious, the other extremely opposed to religion — is a reductive cast of mind. They all suffer from extreme literalism. This is perhaps understandable with religious fundamentalists, including Christians; they all see themselves as people of the book and of the literally true word. With secular fundamentalists it is harder to understand; they have no book or word to refer to; they have no cultural excuse.

To be literal minded is either to be credulous — to believe that ancient writings (and self-contradictory ones at that) are the very word of God — or it is to have a repressed and repressive imagination. In the life of the free mind, by contrast, things can have many meanings at once; things can be true at different levels of the imagination. There are archetypes and myths that are found in all cultures, differently expressed in each, and anyone not oppressed with literal mindedness is free to let them play upon his or her imagination in his or her own idiom.

Pajamas Media also has a "webjam" up on the movie here.

NPR on a Chinese evangelist

2005-12-12T10:58:00.000+08:00

NPR has an excellent report on a Chinese evangelist. This dates from some time back, but I just found it. Very good reporting.

2005-12-11T15:46:00.000+08:00

Received this "tropical Christmas" card this year, and just had to share it.

Christmas in America

2005-12-11T15:42:00.000+08:00

This year, for the first time in six years, we actually get to return to the US to have Christmas with our family. It probably won't be white, but it should be cold. I leave for the US in two days, to be followed a few days later by the family, so probably light posting for the next several weeks.

More on Narnia

2005-12-10T07:32:00.000+08:00

Blogs4God has a round-up of posts about the new Narnia movie. And the NYTimes also has a review up. Bottom line, don't miss it!

electronics glitches

2005-12-08T11:56:00.000+08:00

Having lots of electronics problems lately. First, I lost my Canon A95 Powershot camera, full of pictures of the most beautiful place on earth, when we were travelling last July. Lost in on a ski slope, in july. Yes, read it and weep, all you North Americans.

So in July, against my better judgment, I let the electronics guy, a guy i have bought from multiple times in the past, always to my satisfaction, talk me into buying the Casio Exilim S500 as a replacement. Of course, readers of this blog know that it broke down last month, just before my picture with Barbara Bush, so I took it in two weeks ago to get the entire lens assembly replaced.

Picked it up yesterday, and got it all the way home, only to discover that in putting in the new assembly, they neglected to adjust the focus. So every shot now is blurred. Took it in this morning, and for my own benefit, just asked if in fact, it was reasonable for me to expect that it should be in focus after replacing the lens. They apologized, but still left the blame with me for messing it up in the first place. hopefully, it will be back in time for our trip to OK for the holidays.

Anyway, next camera, its back to Sony.....

Early responses to Narnia

2005-12-08T11:49:00.000+08:00

Clive Davis has a round-up of early responses to the Chronicles of Narnia film. It doesn't begin in Singapore until Dec 22, so we will try to catch it in the US.

I am one of the biggest of CS Lewis' fans, so of course I am going to like it, no matter what. But, I gotta admit, i was just a bit disheartened when I was at Toys R Us last week and ran across a shelf full of "Narnia Action Toys." Yes, I should have expected it, but it still hit me like a fist in the gut. It isn't that there are toys, but that the majestic Aslan should be reduced to a movable plastic figure, whose most notable action is the movable legs and jaws, rather than the redemption of the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve.

Oh well, you wanna play in popular culture, you gotta get muddy.

2005-12-02T10:40:00.000+08:00

Eight more days....

Ideological balance in a university

2005-12-02T09:50:00.000+08:00

Here is a great article about the need for universities, in this case law schools, to take their commitment to intellectual diversity much more seriously, and quit substituting gender and race for true viewpoint. You could scratch all the law school references in it, and just substitute university, and it would pretty well sum up my perspective. Here is the key quote, toward the end:

Nevertheless, a teaching institution that constructs an ideologically one-sided faculty, whether liberal or conservative, seriously abdicates its pedagogical responsibilities. Professors have a sacred duty to their students and to each other to affirm-and also to exemplify-core academic and intellectual values. We should convey to our students an abiding respect, even awe, for the complexity of law in society, and we should exhibit the ideological humility that this complexity implies. Any professors worthy of the title have strong views, of course, but they should also have a keen sense that those views may be wrong, or based on incomplete evidence, or highly reductive. Even if we are utterly convinced of the correctness of our positions, we should teach as if we aren't-as if there are serious counterpositions to be entertained and explored, as if even the truth cannot be fully apprehended until it is challenged by the best arguments that can be marshaled against it. And although scrupulous teachers can sometimes challenge their own deepest convictions in class, most of us need competing points of view-on our own faculties, debated before our own students-to keep us intellectually honest and to enrich learning.

but here is the problem, and I am being serious here. Many academics have been so insulated from their political ideas being challenged in an intellectual atmosphere that it is inconceivable to them that they might be wrong. I sit in countless workshops, conferences, symposia, etc, in which people will vigorously question your evidence, your methods, your conclusions, etc, but rarely, if ever, will they challenge left-liberal politics. I will remember one momentous meeting at which a "high prestige" professor said in public that he supported the Iraq war, and it was like he admitted to being a murderer. I remember another encounter with a senior official at a major university who told me during the most recent election, "I don't think I have ever met an academic who supports George Bush!" To be fair, the following discussion was civil and polite, but I think it really startled him that there was a conservative in the arts and sciences.

Christmas music

2005-11-29T09:03:00.000+08:00

I love this time of the year, cause I am a sucker for sugary, sweet christmas music. My favorite is usually Accuradio's Holiday streaming feed, but I did find this more comprehensive list of every conceivable type of Christmas music. On I-Tunes last night, my son and I found the Pokemon Christmas Bash album, but we are not, i repeat, NOT going to buy it. I will, however, fork out 99 cents for "Grandma got run over by a reindeer."

2005-11-28T09:49:00.000+08:00

Bird Flu hits Disneyland....I am starting to get worried!

Business as Mission

2005-11-23T09:56:00.000+08:00

NYTimes today has a fairly positive article about the "business as mission" movement, or Christians who establish businesses around the world, which they can then use as a platform for the gospel. Surprisingly positive portrayal.

I must admit, I am surprised there wasn't more of a tone of cynicism, or criticism, as the movement itself has quite a bit of disagreement within it between the "platform faction," who often don't engage in any real business at all, and the "integrity faction," who argue that if you aren't engaging in real business, it is deceptive and contrary to the scriptures (sorry for the implied bias in my terms).