Pete's Blog

• The Dilbert comic above comes from http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-08-05/, just to give them credit.
• God's creation is very neat. Science is interesting. Food is delicious. Business is intriguing. It's curious that God created so many things that can distract from finding genuine fascination in His divine Word.
• Interview trick questions are fun to try to come up with good responses to. For example, what is a good response to, "What are some of your weaknesses?" "How have you dealt with a difficult manager in the past?" or "What salary would you expect to make from a job like this?"?
• Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express was very, very good.
• Books in the Bible are a product of divinely-inspired human authors. The Christian doctrine of inspiration does admit that the personality of the authors enters into the writing. This is to mention the difference between Isaiah and Jeremiah. Read the first couple of chapters of each of those books. Isaiah seems to be saying that Israel and Judah are bad, and that God's wrath will soon come. Jeremiah describes that God's heart is broken, and expounds on why Judah is bad.
• Jeremiah is very applicable to this day at a practical level. Yes, the book is ultimately about Jesus, but at a practical level, the way Jeremiah describes the people of Judah, could easily be described of people today. Indeed, Judah's sin was different in that they were God's chosen people, and God revealed Himself to them in a way differently from how He revealed Himself to the surrounding nations, while Canada's problem is not that Canadians have rejected their people's God. They've rejected their Creator and their Saviour.
• To clarify the above bullet, the Lord in the Old Testament was related to Israel in a way that was different from how He was related to the rest of the peoples of the world, but there was also a way that relationship was the same. It was different in that Israel was His chosen people. The Lord made a special covenant with Israel. This was similar to foreign nations allying themselves with Dagon, Molech or the Baals, though they are false, non-existent gods, while the Lord was the one, true, living God. The Lord, though, is also Creator. In this sense, the nations have this in common with Judah. Canada does not have a God exclusive to it, as Judah did, but Canadians still reject their Creator.
• Jesus never sinned. Consider then, "And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, 'So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak'" (Mt. 26:40, 41). This seems like a patronizing statement. Yet, it was not sinful. Since it wasn't sinful, it probably wasn't patronizing. Most people would probably be offended if a friend said it to them. The take away is probably that people are too quick to be offended. Any other interpretations?

Alan Shlemon recently posted a very helpful article (HT: Challies) on how to respond to homosexuality, as well as mentioning some facts related to the claim that homosexuals are born that way.

Given that people are born sinners, it wouldn't surprising if people were born homosexual, but it's interesting that there is reason to be skeptical about this claim. Nevertheless, the Christian worldview doesn't require responding to people who argue that homosexuality is innate. The Gospel of the victory of Christ over sin prevails over indwelling sin, even sin present from birth.

Kelly McParland just released a wonderful column.

Trouble could arise when the patients has been run over by a bus, in which case the word “bus” could upset the victim. In such situations, emergency medical teams should try to be as soothing as possible: “It appears you’re a little run down, we’re just going to help you take it easy for a while, soon as we scrape you off the road.”

Challies linked to this post on his blog, but it's worth repeating. Check out these great comparisons between McDonald's and Burger King ads and the burgers he bought at the respective local chain locations.

Denny Burk's a pretty smart guy. He was commenting on the mother who protected herself and her baby, using a gun. The whole article is worth reading, and Dr. Burk deserves the credit of readership going directly to his site, so only part of his (short) article is posted below:

Sarah McKinley is 18 years old and the mother of an 18 month old baby boy. Her husband died of cancer on Christmas Day, and a couple days later she buried him. On New Year’s Eve, she was home alone with her baby boy when two men came to her door and began knocking. She recognized one of the men as someone she suspected had been stalking her. After she wouldn’t open the door, the two men started banging on the door, trying to find a way to break in. Sarah grabbed her baby, a bottle, and a shotgun and ran into a bedroom where she called 911. The dispatcher told her to protect her baby and that the men needed to be in her house before she could shoot them. Finally, the men broke through the front door, and the first one lunged at her with a 12 inch hunting knife. Sarah pulled the trigger and shot the man in the chest. He died on her living room floor, and the other man fled.

Until this month, John Candide had taught religion at Calvin College, affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church, for 25 years. But his “fall from grace,” as the website InsideHigherEd put it, came after he “wrote about challenges science poses to a literal reading of the gospels.” For that offense, he has agreed to leave his tenured teaching job.

As Mr. Candide explains, he recently became troubled by conflicts between science and literal readings of gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection: “The more I read, the more I talked with biologists, the more it became clear to me: science tells us that when people die, they stay dead.” He adds that he continues to believe in the importance of the Bible.

I invented John Candide. The actual story at InsideHigherEd, from which I have borrowed liberally above, was a bit different. The alleged offense involved challenges posed by science to a literal reading of Genesis, not of Jesus’ resurrection. And the professor in question is named John Schneider.

Let’s compare the fictitious case of Prof. Candide with the real Prof. Schneider. Clearly the gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection are at odds with what science tells us about the everyday workings of the world. Faced with this conflict, some Christians have reverted to damage control, saying that of course Jesus didn’t rise from the dead—that”s just silly. What would happen to our credibility if we kept insisting on that? No, the real meaning of the resurrection story is that Jesus lives on in the hearts of all those who follow his example. And so on.

The vast majority of Christians—including those who teach at Calvin College—continue to believe otherwise.

"To hit more home runs, swing with a slight uppercut at high pitches. The high swing utilizes your powerful hip and midsection muscles instead of just your hands and arms." http://www.menshealth.com/mhlists/100-best-fitness-tips/Get_Home-Run_Power.php?page=2

Dedicated to Adam Lim.

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. (1Co. 15: 51, 52)

Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years. (Re. 20: 4-6)

Any Christian must harmonize these two passages. In 1 Corinthians 15 we read that all of a sudden, "in a moment, the twinkling of an eye," the resurrection will happen. All at once: "we shall all be changed." Not some now and some later. In Revelation 20 we read that there is a first resurrection, and that those who do not receive the first resurrection will be raised at the judgment.

Christians who hold to inerrancy must submit an interpretation of the two passages that is compatible. The amillennialist starts with the hermeneutical presupposition that you allow the clearer passages to shed light on the less clear passages. (This is not meant to be a jab at premillennialists. Yes, premillennialists also agree that more difficult passages should be interpreted in light of the clearer passages. The amillennialist simply views the premillennialist as inconsistent.) The genre of epistle (that of 1 Corinthians) is not symbolic in nature, where the genre of apocalyptic literature (that of Revelation) is symbolic. So the passage in Revelation 20 should be interpreted in light of what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15.

This raises questions. For example, the amillennialist is claiming that the coming to life of the rest of the dead (Re. 20: 5) is the resurrection Paul is speaking of in 1 Corinthians 15. So what's the "first resurrection"? The short answer is, The first resurrection is conversion. For a more full explanation of this, refer to Sam Storms' wonderful essay on the millennium. For other questions, there are answers. Premillennialists are given too much chance to criticize the amillennial position, and don't account for their system's holes often enough.

Finally, for a quick primer on amillennialism, the talk given by Kim Riddlebarger on amillennialism is great.

"We care far more for the central evangelical quotes than we do for Calvinism as a system; but we believe that Calvinism has in it a conservative force which helps to hold men to the vital truth." Charles Haddon Spurgeon, published in his magazine, The Sword and the Trowel in April, 1887. Read second hand in John MacArthur's wonderful book Ashamed of the Gospel.

Google has incorporated an algorithm into its search engine that now has a senior engineer at Google saying of it, "The algorithm's understanding of language 'has moved from a 2-year-old infant to something close to an 8 or 10-year-old child.'"

In an article put out by the San Francisco Chronicle, read how the researchers at Google are advancing the brain of their search engine.

Researchers only began to make major strides in the last 15 years or so, once they began supplementing rules with a so-called statistical approach.

Put very simply: By analyzing huge quantities of human text, initially labeled and dissected in much the manner of English class sentence diagramming, machines eventually begin to detect the patterns that define the use of language. After a certain stage of development, the algorithms can be unleashed onto raw or unstructured data, and continue to refine their understanding.

What an interesting idea! Play the odds in language.

Furthermore, this new technique is being employed to improve face-identification technology:

The same process has led to similarly momentous advances in language translation tools, and machine perception technologies like facial and voice recognition.

Cool.

An article in the Boston Globe two weeks ago had the "Ideas" section interview a liberal Bible scholar from Stonehill College about what the Bible says on some ethical questions and what Evangelicals think about what the Bible says. He's better than a lot of liberal scholars (you can see the bottom of the entry to see examples where he's right), but he is still a liberal (example at the bottom, again).

The reporter opens the article, before beginning to quote the interview, saying of the book that Dr. Coogan had released, "In 'God and Sex,' Coogan attempts to distill what the Bible says about an array of topics related to human sexuality often in the news — abortion, homosexuality, divorce, and the role of women in the church — and to help contemporary readers sort through its meanings."

This sentence is very revealing for the abortion argument, specifically the part where abortion is the first item listed under "topics related to human sexuality." The question of the humanity and personhood of a fetus is independent of sexuality. Yes fetuses are produced through sexuality (a fact all pro-lifers will admit without hesitation), but that's where the connection between fetuses and sexuality end.

People in general, apart from the grace of God, desire to be free to have complete sexual freedom. (Sometimes the grace of God is at work in non-Christians. For example, a moderate Jew, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, is opposed to sex before marriage. Other examples include the many non-Christians who are opposed to abortion.) Whenever the opportunity arrives, they should be allowed to have safe, casual sex. Something that happens every now and then during sex is conception; pregnancy. And abortion is a solution, of sorts, for that too.

Anyway, it's interesting that the reporter, Lisa Wangsness, connects sexuality and abortion. She would have been laughed at if the slave trade were thought of as an issue of sexuality (where in that case, the personhood and humanity of non-whites was eventually vindicated), so why is abortion being dragged in there? To say that by limiting a woman's right to kill her unborn baby is limiting her sexual freedom.

Very interesting.

--

This isn't a full review of what Dr. Coogan says, but samples:

Some liberals like to theorize that King David was gay. But read how the discussion went:

IDEAS: Other readers of the Bible see subtle indications that the Bible sanctions homosexuality — in the relationship between King David and Jonathan, for example.

COOGAN: Since the '80s or so, some gay activists have said, "But wait . . . David says of Jonathan, 'Your love for me is more wonderful than the love of women,' so they must have been lovers in physical sense." . . . The problem with that is first of all that David's affair with Bathsheba would suggest that David was not what we could call exclusively homosexual in orientation....I think the relationship between David and Jonathan was not that they were technically lovers, but rather that they had a profound, close relationship.

Good for Dr. Coogan. And he even says, "It has also been claimed that Paul in the New Testament was homosexual. There is no basis for that. He wasn't married; he tells us that himself. But . . . we don't know why. . . . It's also claimed, I think preposterously, that Jesus was gay." I'm grateful that he didn't defile the Lord's Name in this matter.

But he did say some kooky stuff. For example, read what he said about the relationship of Adam and Eve:

IDEAS: Were Adam and Eve married?

COOGAN: That's one of the interesting issues of translation — in Hebrew the word for "wife" and the word for "woman" were the same word. . . . Certainly there is no marriage ceremony described in the Garden of Eden.

Apparently he said in the same discussion something to the extent that "[m]any contemporary readers haven't read the Bible in its entirety, so they have incomplete information about what the Bible says on human sexuality. And those who have read the whole thing often quote it selectively, ignoring its cultural and historical context." For someone accusing others of "ignoring . . . cultural and historical context," he sure does a good job of it himself here.

Whoever wrote Genesis 2 (Moses did, but liberals maintain that someone later than Moses did), was writing it to a community that was already practicing marriage. The event in Genesis 2 did institute marriage, but the release of the book of Genesis (at least 3400 years later) did not institute marriage. The difference is that the event of their being wed no doubt had more words than what is recorded in Genesis 2. What the author of Genesis 2 included was enough to make a bell ring in the mind of a reader to think about marriage.

Anyway, read Genesis 2: 24: "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." It doesn't use the word "marriage," but it sure sounds like marriage. And it would have to the audience of Genesis back in the day. Adam and Eve were married.

This is too important to pass up linking to.

Anyone driving the twists of Highway 1 between San Francisco and Los Angeles recently may have glimpsed a Toyota Prius with a curious funnel-like cylinder on the roof. Harder to notice was that the person at the wheel was not actually driving.

The car is a project of Google, which has been working in secret but in plain view on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver.

And listen to how good it sounds:

Robot drivers react faster than humans, have 360-degree perception and do not get distracted, sleepy or intoxicated, the engineers argue. They speak in terms of lives saved and injuries avoided — more than 37,000 people died in car accidents in the United States in 2008. The engineers say the technology could double the capacity of roads by allowing cars to drive more safely while closer together. Because the robot cars would eventually be less likely to crash, they could be built lighter, reducing fuel consumption.

Don't be fooled, there is a "but," though.

But of course, to be truly safer, the cars must be far more reliable than, say, today's personal computers, which crash on occasion and are frequently infected.

The advantages above are compelling. But consider what would happen if all these robo-cars were networked together. You could near perfect estimates of when you would arrive at your destination because the route would be plugged in and the system would be aware of the intersection of the routes which other vehicles would be taking with your route. (It would only be "near perfect" because presumably other cars would leave after your departure modifying travel time.)

Either way, very cool.

(I tried to save this post yesterday, but instead accidentally published it. I did delete the incomplete version, but it still landed in Buzz and other places that received the syndication, before I deleted it. This is the complete version.)

C. J. Mahaney put out a sermon on what Scripture says about sleep, but that's not what this post is about.

If asked which super-power you would pick, what would be your answer? Perhaps what comes to mind is invisibility, or the ability to fly. Or maybe it's super-strength, or teleportation. These are the ones thought of (most commonly). Loosening the question, instead asking what you would change about yourself, people would probably not choose the super-powers (though, perhaps guys would pick super-strength—would they pick super-strength even if they looked like skinny-pencil geeks?), but would choose to be taller or thinner or stronger or smarter or better able to relate to people. Perhaps some would want to never have to eat again. Or perhaps some would want to not need to breathe (which dips back into the super-power realm because you could swim endlessly). Or perhaps some would desire to never sleep again. (Imagine how much you could get done if you didn't need to sleep?!)

That intro, talking about super-powers and the rest, was to get to the thought of not sleeping. Consider again what it would be like to not sleep. And don't impose it on your life right now, but imagine that from birth you never needed sleep (your mother would probably have put you up for adoption!)—or rather from the age of seventeen. (Yes, I realize that not needing sleep carries strong implications with it. If this were consistent, you'd never need to sit down, you'd never get tired while exercising. But suppose those things were true, but somehow you did a good job of not being a freak.)

For the first seventeen years of your life you go to bed each night, get up, and live that day of your life, ending it in bed. Then, BAM! You turn seventeen and you no longer need to sleep. By that age, your parents trust you (or they don't but nothing's going to change), and you start looking for ways to keep yourself from dying of boredom with those extra hours added to your life. You get to University, and live in residence in your first year. After making some friends, you move in with them in your second year. You decide not to buy a bed. And you begin to find good ways to use the extra hours of the day you've acquired.

You hang out with friends all day long and through much of the night, but then still have plenty left in you to study for a few hours before you need to make your way off to class. This becomes a good routine for the next few years.

You graduate, and get a job. But how do you organize your day? What's the point of going home every night? When you meet a girl and get married, are you going to buy a bed big enough for the two of you just so that you can biblically know her, or are you going to be cheap and get a bed that's big enough for just her?

Who knows what other freakish unusual decisions would need to be made as a result of not needing to sleep.

All that is to put it negatively. To put the value that sleep gives to us positively, it's nice needing to come home every night and sleep. It's nice to have an anchor that forces you to leave your work. Maybe this is closer to C. J.'s sermon than anticipated. But it's a blessing that sleep forces a person to build a home life. You really need a home so that you can sleep. You can do everything else in a restaurant or gym or office. But ongoing, regular sleeping, requires a home. Interesting.

Sorry it took so long to get to the point.

"If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion." –George Bernard Shaw

American President Harry Truman said that he wanted to find a one-armed economist. Economics is fundamentally the study of tradeoffs. Do you spend your whole paycheque, or only part of it and invest the rest for your future? Do you make enough guns to win the war against the neighbouring country, or do you make plows so you can feed your people?

Economists see the advantages and disadvantages to decisions being made, so they (supposedly) talk endlessly about alternatives.

"On the one hand, Mr. Oppressive-Totalitarian-Dictator, if you don't make enough guns, you'll be conquered by your enemy. But on the other hand, if you don't make the plows, you won't be able to harvest enough grain in the coming years, your people will starve, and you'll have no people to oppress."