New song in progress: Pretty Cafes. This is only a snippet, but I think it’s coming along pretty cool. Turn it up to hear best.
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Month: August 2006
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New Paper and Conferences
If Ambien and Lunesta aren’t doing the trick for you, a draft of my current working paper, The Penguin’s Paradox: The Political Economy of International Intellectual Property and the Paradox of Open Intellectual Property Models, is available on SSRN.
At the end of this month, I will present at the conference “Closing in on Open Science: Trends in Intellectual Property and Scientific Research,” at Maine Law School. My topic is “Virtue Ethics and Biotechnology Patent Policy.”
In November, I will present at the conference “The World and Christian Imagination,” at Baylor University. My topic, again, will be “Virtue Ethics and Biotechnology Policy.” This conference is sponsored by the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and Arts, and will feature interdisciplinary dialogue among Christian scholars from a variety of disciplines. Cool.
In this book, David Snoke, a professor of Physics at the University of Pittsburgh, presents a case for a “day-age” view of Genesis 1. Snoke’s twin goals are to establish that the “day-age” view is a valid alternative for Christians who hold to Biblical inerrancy and to argue for a concordist understanding of the Genesis texts and modern science. He succeeds admirably at the first goal, but is less persuasive concerning the second.
The book is organized into nine chapters and includes an appendix with a “literal” translation of Genesis 1-12. The first two chapters identify Snoke’s underlying assumptions and recite the scientific evidence for an old earth. Snoke does an excellent job of explaining why and when extra-Biblical evidence can be used to interpret the Bible, and provides a calm, concise summary of the physical evidence against the young earth view. These chapters are particularly useful and admirable because they avoid the argumentative tone that so often creeps into this sort of discussion.
After laying this groundwork, Snoke responds to two key objections against the old earth view: the problem of death before the fall and the relationship between the creation week and the Sabbath. His insights concerning animal death before the fall are particularly helpful. In particular, he suggests that the wild, untamed aspects of creation, including things such as carnivorous animals, may have served before the Fall as a reminder to Adam and Eve of God’s power, and as a sort of warning about life outside the protected confines of Eden. Just as Aslan in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books is not a “tame Lion,” he notes, these aspects of creation that don’t seem “nice” to us remind us that God is also a “dangerous” God.
After presenting his Biblical case for an old earth, Snoke turns to the case for a concordist view of science and scripture. He defines “science” as “nothing but a way to organize and analyze the things of the world around us,” and concludes that since the Bible also makes observations about the physical world, there should be areas of overlap where “things in the Bible are open to scientific investigation.”
Many readers will take issue with this definition of “science,” as well as with the expectation that the Biblical text is presented in an objective, narrative form that can be correlated with modern scientific propositions. Many readers also will question why Snoke discounts Darwinian evolution based on an a priori reading of the creation story concerning Adam and Eve, while remaining willing to consider alternative interpretations of related texts that superficially seem to suggest a recent creation. Nevertheless, on the question of the age of the earth, this is a fair and well-balanced book that deserves a wide reading, particularly in the evangelical community.
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Dispensational Truth
This is a scan of a two-page plate from the book “Dispensational Truth,” published in 1918. I have the first edition, which was in my wife’s grandfather’s library. Interestingly, it is still available in a reprinted edition.
A reviewer of the reprint edition on Amazon correctly noted that this book is most interesting and useful as an original source document that helps us understand dispensational theology at the turn of the nineteenth century. Modern dispensational theology would mostly eschew the very detailed divisions identified in these old charts (see, for example, Blaising and Bock’s Progressive Dispensationalism), even though it retains some basic concepts such as a distinction between national Israel and the Church.
It’s particularly interesting to me that this chart refers to the “gap” theory of an original, ancient earth that was destroyed before the present earth was created. This is how many conservative Christian theologians tried to accomodate facts from geology and fossils at the turn of the century — not by denying the facts from general revelation, but by reimagining what the scriptural text was saying. I don’t think the “gap” theory is correct, but the approach of using knowledge from general revelation to shed light on special revelation is correct.
This chart is also something that helps me understand my psyche, as this old-style dispensationalism, reflected as well in the Scofield Reference Bible first published in 1909, underlay the “exclusive” Plymouth Brethren church I grew up in until I was a teenager. While I don’t hold to this theology anymore, I do appreciate the depth and fervor with which the Bible was studied in that tradition.
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State of the Blog
Jeff recently wrote on the state of his blog, the Dawn Treader, and it inspired me to think about the state of this site. Jeff noted that he writes to gain perspective (via organizing and refining his thoughts, like the discipline of journaling) and to practice his writing. He also writes to persuade, but more as a possible incidental side benefit than a primary purpose.
I keep this site for these same reasons, and for a few others. I have to break the alliteration now, but here are some other reasons I like to blog:
- Learning from others. I’ve learned tons from other bloggers and commenters. Blogging has introduced me to perspectives and resources I wouldn’t have found on my own. Discussing — even arguing — in blogs and other on-line forums also has helped me clarify my thinking on many things.
- Modeling. My aspiration for this site, which I probably don’t ever fully realize, is at least in some small way to model some things to others in the Christian community — in particular, that we can love God “with all our minds,” engage ideas, examine different perspectives, perhaps disagree, or even maybe develop in our own thinking about some things, without being defensive or resorting to angry rhetoric.
- Resourcing. I often come across books, music, and other resources that are helpful to me and that I think might be helpful to others. I want to highlight those things so that others can perhaps benefit from them as well.
This site isn’t yet near where I want it to be on any of these counts. When I changed my banner a while back, I included the subtitles “Theology, Culture, Society, Justice.” My intent was, and still is, to build sections of the site that will focus on these topics, with content from my posts as well as external content. It hasn’t happened, because life is too busy. I’d also like to do some things to build traffic. Like Jeff, I’m happy to be in the “long tail” of the blogsphere, but I’m afraid sometimes that I’m more like some of the dead skin that gets sloughed off the tail when the animal molts. Maybe with the new season I’ll get some of this done!?
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Through the Looking Glass
Back from vacation — Through the Looking Glass today.
The best academic’s home page I’ve ever seen: Peter Simpson, philosopher at CUNY. Note: make sure your computer speakers are on.
Good inteview with Del Ratzsch, philosopher of science at Calvin College. Ratzsch makes some good points, I think, about epistemology, design in nature, and scientific method. (HT: Telic Thoughts.)
Meaty site: The Galilean Library. Looks like lots of interesting stuff is posted here (including the aforementioned Ratzsch interview) and there is some good discusion and community in the forums.
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This Week and Last
Last week was busy in a good way. Over the weekend and through Tuesday, I was at Northern Frontier camp with my older son. We had a blast shooting air rifles, launching model rockets, jumping off the thirteen-foot high dive, singing goofy campfire songs, and reading the Bible together. This is what it’s all about.
On Thursday, I took the GRE, as I’m hoping to apply to some Ph.D. programs this year. As expected, I crushed the verbal section — over 700, probably a 90th percentile score — but my math, shall we say, needs some work. The programs I’m looking at most seriously are the Communication and Culture program at NYU, which has a strong focus on Internet-related legal and regulatory issues, and the political science program at CUNY. Both of those are things I could do while in my current academic post. I was thinking as well of the public policy programs at Princeton, but I don’t think I’ll be able to get the math score where it needs to be for that. I’ll have to talk with some people and see if I need a better math score for the NYU and CUNY programs I’m considering.
I also worked hard late in the week to finalize a draft of my latest paper, “The Penguin’s Paradox: the Political Economy of International Intellectual Property and the Paradox of Open Intellectual Property Models.” It’s now out to the law reviews, so we’ll see if I get any publication nibbles.
I played golf Friday at Wild Turkey and had a pretty good round for me, especially on the front nine — I broke 100, though barely and with a hole or two where I took a mullligan.
Now, we’re at the Jersey shore for a week, reading, swimming with the kids, and relaxing. Thank God for summer!
I Want One: 3D Printers take information from CAD software such as Solidworks and produce prototype models from plastic in a matter of hours. Currently the printers cost about $50K, but Manufacturers of the printers have plans to make models that are von Neumann machines, reducing the cost. Other companies have plans to offer online replication services. For example, you design your own action figure in software, send it over the web to the printer, and have a solid plastic model sent back to you the next day. Cool! (HT: Wall Street Journal).
Excellent Book: Glen Stassen’s Living the Sermon on the Mount. This challenging study will change how you read the Sermon on the Mount, including the beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer. A longer review is for another day, but here is a little nugget from the book:
The beatitudes are not about high ideals but about God’s gracious deliverance and our joyous participation. Here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says we are blessed because God is not distant and absent; we experience God’s reign and presence in our midst and will experience it even more in the future…. What greater meaning in life can there be than to participate, even in a little way, like a mustard seed, in the deliverance that God brings in Jesus?