Well I believe in God and evolution but I don't call it "theistic evolution"

A group of zebras. Image source.

So I wrote my review of "The Language of God" but I decided to make a whole separate post about theistic evolution because I have a lot to say about it.

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How the book defines theistic evolution

Here's a quote from pages 200-201:

There are many subtle variants of theistic evolution, but a typical version rests upon the following premises:

1. The universe came into being out of nothingness, approximately 14 billion years ago.
2. Despite massive improbabilities, the properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life.
3. While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, once life arose, the process of evolution and natural selection permitted the development of biological diversity and complexity over very long periods of time.
4. Once evolution got under way, no special supernatural intervention was required.
5. Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes.
6. But humans are also unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanation and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the Moral Law (the knowledge of right and wrong) and the search for God that characterizes all human cultures throughout history.

If one accepts these six premises, then an entirely plausible, intellectually satisfying, and logically consistent synthesis emerges: God, who is not limited in space or time, created the universe and established natural laws the govern it. Seeking to populate this otherwise sterile universe with living creatures, God chose the elegant mechanism of evolution to create microbes, plants, and animals of all sorts. Most remarkably, God intentionally chose the same mechanism to give rise to special creatures who would have intelligence, a knowledge of right and wrong, free will, and a desire to seek fellowship with Him. He also knew these creatures would ultimately choose to disobey the Moral Law.

This view is entirely compatible with everything that science teaches us about the natural world. It is also entirely compatible with the great monotheistic religions of the world. The theistic evolution perspective cannot, of course, prove that God is real, as no logical argument can fully achieve that. Belief in God will always require a leap of faith. But this synthesis has provided for legions of scientist-believers a satisfying, consistent, enriching perspective that allows both the scientific and spiritual worldviews to coexist happily within us. This perspective makes it possible for the scientist-believer to be intellectually fulfilled and spiritually alive, both worshiping God and using the tools of science to uncover some of the awesome mysteries of His creation.

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BioLogos

In the book, Francis Collins says the name "theistic evolution" isn't that great, and he wants to rebrand it as something different. He calls it BioLogos. "Bio" from "biology", and "Logos" which is a Greek word meaning "word" or "reason." As in, John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Christ is the logos of God. So Collins has invented this word, BioLogos, which combines biology and following God in a logical way.

So as I'm reading this, I'm like, wait a minute, I know a website called BioLogos. I've read articles from this site before. I never really got a sense of what their overall position is- is it theistic evolution? If you asked me to describe the BioLogos site, I would say it's articles about the topics of creation and evolution, from a Christian perspective, and they're pretty good, and very noticeably are *not* the typical creationist talking points.

Well I just did some googling, and here's what it says on the "history" page of BioLogos: 

BioLogos began with Francis Collins, one of the world’s leading scientists.

In 2006, Collins wrote The Language of God (2006), the best-selling book that told the story of his journey from atheism to Christian faith, showing that science is not in conflict with the Bible, but actually enhances faith.

The outpouring of response to the book showed the need for virtual and actual meeting places to ask questions, discuss issues, and learn from the top Christian minds in the sciences and theology.

Wow, I had no idea. Pretty cool that this organization was started by him.

(But again, it goes to show: I've heard plenty of Christians claiming Francis Collins as a symbol, like "oh people say you can't be smart and be a Christian, but look, we have Francis Collins on our side!" Like, score a point for our side as we argue with the atheists. But I have very rarely heard Christians actually being interested in what Collins has to say.)

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Did God use evolution?

Theistic evolution, as I understand it, is the idea that "God used evolution." I don't buy this. I can't buy this. Evolution is a heartless process that generates more complex and better adapted creatures by ruthlessly letting the less-adapted ones die.

Yeah sure, the book says evolution is "elegant." Okay, it's elegant. Something as simple as natural selection, choosing among variations in a species, producing the amazing variety of life we see in our world today. Yeah it's "elegant," I'll give you that. But what about all the animals that die? What about the species of animals that have a ton of offspring, because that's a good evolutionary strategy, and then the majority of the offspring die very quickly? What about the little baby sea turtles struggling to get to the ocean, being eaten by seagulls? What about the male lions killing other lions' cubs? Did God want it to be this way?

The idea that "God used evolution" makes it sound like everything is just fine, with one's religious beliefs and the reality of evolution. It's not fine! This is basically the same thing as the Problem of Evil. How could a good God allow this? And the claim is not only "God allowed this", but that God chose to use the mechanism of natural selection to create all the animals, including humans. God chose that? Really? Y'all are fine with this?

So my position is like... I believe in a God who is all-powerful and good, and I believe in evolution, and this is a problem. This is a problem! Just like how the Problem of Evil is a problem. It's not just "oh, God used evolution" and that's all there is to say.

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The last will be first, and the first will be last

The entire point of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is that love triumphs over power. (Okay, that's my take, but Christians have a lot of different opinions on what's "the entire point of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.") He came to bring the kingdom of heaven to this earth- a new kind of kingdom where the last will be first, and the first will be last. Blessed are the poor. The meek will inherit the earth.

It might look like power is winning. It might look like the strong can oppress the weak and get away with it. But this is not the end of the story. This is not how God wants it to be. He came preaching a message of love and acceptance, challenging the power structures that existed in society, and He was killed for it. But that is not the end of the story. He lives!

But how can that be the case, if "God used evolution"? Does God want the last to be first, or does God want survival of the fittest? The first will be first. The last get removed from the gene pool. If the last were first, humans never would have evolved.

This heartless process, which is the total opposite of the message of Jesus, is the mechanism God used to create humans? And you all are fine with that?

And this isn't just about Jesus. The Old Testament also talks about how it will be in the kingdom of heaven. The prophet Isaiah said, 

The wolf will live with the lamb,

    the leopard will lie down with the goat,

the calf and the lion and the yearling together;

    and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear,

    their young will lie down together,

    and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

The infant will play near the cobra’s den,

    and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

They will neither harm nor destroy

    on all my holy mountain,

for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord

    as the waters cover the sea.

The wolf will live with the lamb. The cow with the bear. The child will put his hand in the viper's nest. This is how God wants it to be, in the kingdom of heaven. But if wolves and lambs really lived together peacefully, humans would not exist. The struggle between predator and prey is what made animals evolve such amazing and fascinating complexity. 

Joel Duff has a good post which asks the question: in a young-earth creationist worldview, what would we expect animals to look like before the Fall? Young-earth creationists believe that before Adam and Eve sinned, there was no death- not even animal death. What would animals look like, if the threat of death wasn't something that their features needed to adapt to? That link has a rather terrifying photoshopped image of a rabbit with its eyes on the front of its head. Prey animals have eyes on the sides of their heads because of death. Every single interesting trait that any animal has, it's because if they didn't have that, they would be more likely to die. It's because of survival of the fittest. It's because of power. It's because this world is not the kingdom of heaven, that Jesus came to bring.

If you're an atheist, this is fine. Yeah animals and people were produced through natural selection, which is cruel and heartless, but it's not like anyone *wanted* it to be that way. It's not like it's "supposed" to be that way, in any sense. Sure, that's what how the natural world works, but we can choose to live in more moral and altruistic way instead.

But if "God used evolution" and we have signed on to worship that God, well, what then?

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God changed

If there is an answer to this, it must be something about God changing. Maybe the animal world is meant to be governed by "survival of the fittest," but humans are meant to be different. Or maybe God doesn't value animal lives at all, so it doesn't matter that a huge fraction of them died, in service of the greater good of evolution- but humans bear God's image, and They actually care about that, so now They want to change it and say we have to care for each other and the last will be first. Or maybe God originally used evolution and natural selection, but then changed Their mind and wanted things to be different.

To a large extent, we could say I view the work of Jesus and the message of Christianity as a reaction to the way the world is. Jesus came to preach good news to the poor- but, if God was on their side, then why are they poor in the first place? The God of this kind of religion is not a God who has always been in charge of the whole world, but instead is taking the current state of the world as a starting point, and taking steps to make it better. We hope for the future where God will make everything right- but why do we need to do that? Why didn't God just make it right in the first place? IS IT BECAUSE THEN HUMANS NEVER WOULD HAVE EVOLVED?

Kind of comes across like a religion that isn't true at all, but helps us feel better because we imagine that it means God *will* make things better. But if this was actually true, wouldn't God have already made it better? If religion is about the hope that things will get better- well, what reason is there to think that there would be a significant change, if God has always been totally in charge of the world?

This is why I don't pray. If we really believe that God is gonna intervene and help us in response to our prayers, well why didn't God just intervene earlier and prevent our problems from happening in the first place? Does our world, with all its problems and injustice, look like a world where God is frequently intervening to help people?

And believing the message of Jesus is about bringing the kingdom of heaven to the earth, about our responsibility to do good, right the wrongs, and fight for justice- which is what I believe- doesn't it come across like a religion that's not true at all, and its only value is in inspiring people to do good? God's not actually doing it, so we have to?

(I realize I've just opened a whole can of worms, but yeah there you have it.)

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I'm a Christian because I really do believe in Jesus. His incarnation, his teachings, his message, his resurrection. But that doesn't mean I think this is all fine and my religious beliefs totally make sense. What does it say about God, that They "used evolution" to create all life on earth? Are we really okay with that?

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Related

"The Language of God" (surprisingly I like this book!)

Animals Screw Over Other Animals and Get Away With It

I used to be a young-earth creationist

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. That "Pending PayPal Charge" Email Is a Scam — Even Though It Really Came From PayPal (April 28, via) "Don't call the number. Don't reply."

2. The hard problem of AI therapy (February 26, via) "Suppose you’re a high-functioning person with anxiety who discovers that the chatbot can always soothe you on the spot. You ask one question—Do you think I handled that email wrong?—and feel relief. Ten minutes later: But what if she’s actually mad? Then: Can you rewrite my follow-up? Then: List ten reasons I’m not a bad person for sending it."

3. How China’s Deaf Delivery Riders Find a New Life in Gig Work (April 20) "By contrast, most deaf interviewees described becoming delivery riders as turning a new page, one of less discrimination and greater autonomy. Delivery platforms offer features that make interacting with restaurants and customers easier, such as voice-to-text conversion, pre-written messages, and digital badges that will alert users that the rider is deaf."

Also from Sixth Tone: Nine Months After Cloning Its First Yak, China Has 10 More (April 30) "To date, the team has generated over 200 cloned Tibetan yak embryos. By the end of 2028, they aim to build a core herd of over 100 cloned yaks, develop a new high-altitude yak breed, and establish standard breeding protocols."

4. 1 Corinthians 13 in the news (April 27) "Read the Beatitudes from Luke’s Gospel you cowards!"

Also from the Slacktivist: The literary puzzle of Isaiah 1 (April 29) "The current form of our Bibles tricks us into reading Isaiah 1 and Amos 5 as critiques of the religious observance prescribed in the Books of Moses, but actually what we have is the Books of Moses configuring their religious commandments, in part, as a response to and a defense against those critiques in Isaiah and Amos."

5. Soniferous Aether (April 27) From xkcd.

6. Women Have Agency: You Don’t Have to Obey Churches or Husbands Who Want to Control You (April 29) Posting this here because it's important to get the word out about this: If you are a woman who has decided to divorce your abusive husband, and now your church leaders are requiring you to come to a meeting so they can decide if you're allowed to do that, you can just not go. !!! Yes, really! You can just not go! Say no! They can't do anything to you! Even if you signed a "church covenant"- those things are not legally binding. It will not hold up in court. You can say no!

A lot of us spend our whole lives with the mindset "I need to be a good girl" which means when some authority figure says "you have to" do something, then you have to do it. We might not even realize there's another option: NOT doing it.

I'm so glad I learned about boundaries- I really had no idea about any of this before I learned about boundaries.

7. This week in "what Chinese songs is my toddler listening to": 蹦蹦跳跳 沒煩惱 李昕融 舞蹈完整版 簡單舞蹈 律動 廣場舞 洗腦歌 幼兒律動 幼兒舞蹈 兒童舞蹈 兒童律動 抖音舞蹈 動態歌詞 TIKTOK KidsDance【#波波星球泡泡哥哥bobopopo】

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Trump’s cruel plan for Afghan refugees, briefly explained (April 23, via) "Many of the 1,100 Afghans now stuck in limbo in Qatar aided the US over nearly two decades of war as interpreters working with US troops or served as members of the Afghan special forces. Some, the Times reports, are family members of American soldiers, and more than 400 are children."

2. Texas Tech Issues Ban On Students Writing On LGBTQ+ Topics (April 24) "The implications are profound—and at times border on absurd. In core and lower-level courses, there are no exceptions at all. A history professor course could not allocate instructional time to the Stonewall riots or the gay rights movement. If a U.S. history textbook includes a chapter on the AIDS crisis, the professor must skip it."

3. White House posted photo of Trump, King Charles III with 'TWO KINGS' caption (April 29)

4. James Comey posted a picture of seashells by the seashore. Trump's DOJ indicted him for it. (April 29) "The most embarrassing 24 hours (yet) of the Justice Department in President Donald Trump’s second administration continued apace on Tuesday, when Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced another indictment of James Comey, the former FBI director. This time, Comey — targeted by President Donald Trump as a political enemy — was indicted in North Carolina in connection with his since-deleted Instagram post showing a photo of seashells laid out in the shape of the numbers '8647.'"

Also from Law Dork: SCOTUS guts what remained of the Voting Rights Act before taking on TPS termination case (April 30) "The decision in Louisiana v. Callais upended the pivotal civil rights era voting law that Congress initially passed in 1965 and reauthorized several times since, leaving the section at issue “all but a dead letter,” as Justice Elena Kagan said with a somber voice, nearly stone faced, as she announced the dissent from the bench."

I don't really understand this Voting Rights Act case- all the articles I've read say it's so terrible that the Supreme Court has ruled this way, because it allows states to draw districts in a way that racial minority voters are always grouped together with a population of white voters which outnumbers them, and therefore the racial minority voters don't have any meaningful representation. This is confusing to me- it seems to rely on the assumptions that all people of color vote the same way, all white people vote the same way, and white people wouldn't vote for a candidate who would take minorities' needs seriously. Probably this is me being naive about how racism works, and missing some key facts about the history of racist voter suppression. If anyone has an article that explains this, post it in the comment section~

5. U.S. to issue commemorative passports with Trump's picture for America's 250th birthday (April 29) Fortunately it's only the Washington DC office that's doing this, and if you apply for a passport at any other location, you will just get a regular one without the mark of the beast.

6. The Trump team is quietly eliminating U.S. support for birth control abroad (April 29) This makes me so mad. Having penis-in-vagina sex is really common, and for women who are doing that, they *need* to have some kind of birth control, otherwise their lives will be completely dominated by the huge burdens of pregnancy and caring for babies. Those MAGAs claim they are "helping women" by being mean to trans people, while ending the programs that *actually* help women.

Retconning the Old Testament

Text written in Hebrew. Image source.

The Christian bible is divided into 2 parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The New Testament is the part about Jesus- but, you know Christians, we try to make everything about Jesus. We try to make the Old Testament about Jesus too.

In this post, I'm going to call it the Hebrew bible, instead of calling it the Old Testament, because I want to make the point that it belonged to Jewish people first. It was already a thing, even before Jesus was born. It already meant something and could stand on its own- it wasn't incomplete, waiting for Jesus to come along so it could finally make sense.

The way Christians tell the story, though, is that the Jewish people were waiting for so long, looking forward to when the messiah would come. There were prophecies, there were signs that pointed forward to Jesus. And finally Jesus came, and lived and died and rose again, and this ties the whole story together. Now it finally makes sense, and the whole bible is about Jesus.

This is a retcon. As originally written, the Hebrew bible is not about Jesus. Christians read it through the lens of Jesus' life- and yes, I'm a Christian and I do this- but that's putting our own spin on it, and we shouldn't forget that. Our Christian take on the Hebrew bible is not its "real meaning."

Blogaround

1. Confederate monument melted down to create new, more inclusive public art (October 26, via) "The project is called Swords into Plowshares, taken from a Bible verse in the book of Isaiah." Yessss.

2. With Funeral Portraits, a Photographer Gives Dignity to Rural Elderly (October 31) "But during her work trips to the countryside, Yang would hear villagers discussing their friends’ funerals and lamenting the absence of a portrait or the quality of the photo. 'In their eyes, it is a symbol of dying with dignity,' she said."

3. Chocolate: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (October 30) This is about child labor on cocoa farms. I don't really know what to make of this... back when I was in college, I read a lot about fair trade chocolate, and I felt like I was morally obligated to only buy chocolate labelled "fair trade" rather than just regular chocolate. But... fair trade chocolate was so expensive, and seemed to only have dark chocolate available, and so many snack foods have chocolate in them, so it's impossible to avoid non-fair-trade chocolate... and the idea that there's slavery in the chocolate supply chain but somehow most people seem to be okay with it, except for a few activist groups here and there... it was all too big and impossible for me to reconcile with my understanding of reality. So eventually I just gave up, just kind of put it out of my mind and didn't think about fair trade chocolate any more.

In other words, it seems like if it's really true that most of the chocolate we buy is made by slave labor (or other exploitative working conditions), then ... shouldn't we all be more upset about that? How could this really be real?

But, maybe that's just how the world always works: Those of us who have more money get to pretend that everything's fine, and we set up our lives such that we don't have to see the damage that is being done to the poorest people in the world. And every now and then we spend a little extra money buying fair trade chocolate, and feel like we did a good thing.

4. Alabama Mayor Kills Self After Right-Wing Blog Outs His Cross-Dressing (November 4) [content note: suicide, queermisia/ transmisia/ anti-queer bigotry] This is really tragic.

5. Sam Bankman-Fried Faces 110-Year Max Sentence After FTX Trial—Here’s How Long Experts Think He’ll Be Behind Bars (November 3) "Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty on all seven counts Thursday after a massive fraud and money laundering trial involving now-collapsed crypto exchange FTX and trading firm Alameda Research, charges that can lead to a maximum of 110 years in prison—and lawyers told Forbes he may face a decades-long sentence, unlike other white-collar defendants."

6. Sarah Huckabee Sanders Decides To Keep Obviously Innocent Man In Prison At Least Six More Years On Top Of 30 He's Already Served (November 4) 

Also from Wonkette: House Speaker Mike Johnson Pushing Christian Extremist 'Ex-Gay' Torture? LORDY THERE ARE TAPES. (November 3) Oh. So Mike Johnson used to work for ADF (Alliance Defending Freedom). Oh. 

When I was in high school, my parents were on the mailing list for ADF, so I read all their newsletters and propaganda- and I totally believed it. It was all about how "homosexuals" have a nefarious "agenda" to destroy marriage and all of society, or something. Years later, I found out all of that was bullshit, and actually LGBTQ people are just regular people, going about their lives, who want to have the same rights that everyone should have. 

Let me be clear: Every single thing that ADF does is built on a foundation of lying about queer people, and demonizing queer people. The bible says "do not bear false witness against your neighbor"- well, ADF bears false witness day in and day out. Their whole entire thing is bearing false witness against their neighbors. Also, the bible says "do not take the Lord's name in vain, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name"- well, ADF claims to be doing all these things in the name of God. They claim they are on God's side. They ask their supporters to pray that God will help them in their court cases against queer people having rights. I hope that the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses Their name.

The Wonkette article also mentions ADF's "Day of Truth" as a response to the "Day of Silence" (I remember a few kids in my high school participated in the "Day of Silence"- the idea is, you don't talk for the whole day, to show support for queer kids who are bullied and silenced). Well ADF invented the "Day of Truth" where high school kids should hand out propaganda to other students, about "the truth about homosexuality" (ie, it's bad, everyone who lives a "homosexual lifestyle" is unhappy, God can help you change, etc). Just disgusting. How will I explain ADF to my children?

7. Amazon Execs Intentionally Made Site Shittier to Rake in More Profit, New Quotes from FTC Lawsuit Show (November 3, via) "'Amazon’s online storefront once prioritized relevant, organic search results,' the complaint states. 'Following directions from its founder and then-CEO Jeff Bezos, Amazon shifted gears so that it now litters its storefront with pay-to-play advertisements. Amazon executives internally acknowledge this creates ‘harm to consumers’ by making it ‘almost impossible for high quality, helpful organic content to win over barely relevant sponsored content.’' "

Blogaround

1. Meet China’s High Heels King (February 24) Wow, I am really impressed about how this man actually understands how unworkable a lot of high-heeled shoes are, learning it through actual experience. And impressed at how well he's able to run and jump in heels.

2. Can pastors please stop salivating over women’s bodies in sermons? A response to Jonathan Pokluda’s objectification of the ‘perfect’ woman (February 24) "Women deserve better than to go to church and hear all that stops our pastors from having sex with total strangers is a Bible memory passage. We’re all for Bible memory, but we’re also for marriage vows, faithfulness and holding Christian men to at least the same moral standard as your average non-Christian husband at your local Applebee’s." PREACH!

3. Wall-E – Paradise Regained? Reflections on the Garden of Eden and Man’s Labor (January 23) "The movie causes us to ask, what do we think our future will be like? Wall-E, the movie, depicts a world that Man has destroyed through lack of stewardship, and in which they are relegated to living away from their home with technology serving their every need. At first sight, it may seem as though they live in a kind of paradise. Though they have been taken from the earth, they now live a life of pleasure. Is this heaven? Is this what some people, including many Christians conceptualize heaven to be like? No work, being served, just relaxing all the time?"

4. The Origins of the Parable of the Sower (and Other Seedy Riddles) (February 22) "This is not the parable you would tell if you were calling people to action, because it presents a deterministic view of humanity. ... However, at the meta-narrative level, this parable makes perfect sense if it is aimed at Mark’s community—especially those discouraged by a lack of success in their preaching and missionary work."

And another one from the same blog: Did Jezebel Murder Naboth? A Reassessment of Israel’s Most Notorious Queen (January 15) "This is not meant literally; we are not supposed to understand that anyone will actually be eaten by dogs and birds. Rather, such wording constitutes a curse of non-burial; telling someone that their corpse will be consumed by animals implies a shameful death and legacy. Such curses were 'a standard part of treaty and covenent formulas throughout the ancient Near East' (Cronauer, p. 26), and there are many examples outside the Bible."

5. 'Then' (February 28) "Whenever some people start talking about revival, other people will start quoting Isaiah 58." As they should. (This is another post from the Slacktivist about the Asbury revival. All of his posts on it have been extremely good.)

Blogaround + Happy Chinese New Year!

Chinese New Year design with a cow, "2021", and "新年快乐" [xīn nián kuài lè]. Image source.

Happy Year of the Ox, everyone! Tonight (February 11) is Chinese New Year's Eve. (Chinese New Year is also called Spring Festival.) 2021 is the year of the 牛 [niú] which is a cow/bull/ox/buffalo/etc but seems like everyone's translating it as "ox" in English. *shrug* (I contend that "Year of the Cow" is equally valid.)

This year is weird because the Chinese government strongly encouraged everyone not to travel for the holiday (the biggest holiday of the year). There are rules about "if you travel, you need to have a covid test within 7 days before your trip." So the 春运 [chūn yùn], the largest annual migration of people in the entire world, is way down this year. ("春运 [chūn yùn]" is the Chinese word for "the massive phenomenon that is everyone's Chinese New Year travel", see, there's an actual word for it.)

I am in Shanghai, and usually Shanghai is fairly quiet during new year holiday because a significant proportion of Shanghai residents aren't originally from here, so they all leave. Not this year though. This year we are staying.

However, in China there are tons of migrant workers- which means they come from a poorer area and go to big cities to get better-paying jobs- and it's common that they leave their children back in their hometown to be raised by the grandparents. Typically migrant workers only get to go home and see their families/kids once a year- at Spring Festival. So seems like a lot of them are traveling anyway, even though this year it's much more difficult and they run the risk of getting stuck in a lockdown or quarantine somewhere along the way.

Anyway that's the situation here. Hope the Year of the Cow is better than the Year of the Mouse. 新年快乐！ [xīn nián kuài lè]

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And here's the latest blogaround:

1. Disney Parks To Revamp Jungle Cruise Attraction, Responding To Racism Charges (posted January 25) Okay, yes, that ride is definitely racist.

2. I’m Sorry, What Is Going on With GameStop and AMC? (posted January 27) Yep, I had the exact same question. (About recent happenings with reddittors buying ridiculous amounts of GameStop stock, to screw over the short-sellers.)

3. These Creationists Learned a Weird Lesson from Sloths (posted January 29) LOLOLOL

4. On the Trail of COVID-19 in Shanghai (posted February 4) In January/February there have been something like 21 locally-transmitted COVID cases in Shanghai. This article is about how disease experts did contract tracing in response. At this point it seems like that outbreak has petered out and that's that.

5. Christopher Plummer, Actor From Shakespeare to ‘The Sound of Music,’ Dies at 91 (posted February 5)

6. How Isaiah converted Israelites to secularism (posted February 8) "Prayer, worship, and stomping through the doors of a church are all dismissed here as meaningless, wholly insignificant in comparison with the paramount duties God enumerates and describes — all of which seem to be things that white Christianity perceives and portrays as 'secular.'"

Blogaround

1. I Refuse to Participate in Worship that Leads to Devastation (posted March 25) "In Isaiah, worship that endangers others is described as an abomination, a weariness to God, “solemn assemblies with iniquity.” Those who continue to worship in a way that brings harm to those who need protection – they have blood on their hands (Isa 1:15). God hides God’s eyes from them. God ignores their prayers."

2. Wow, this tweet is exactly 100% what I used to believe prayer was:

who else has the type of anxiety that tells you that, if you stay hypervigilant & informed & if you, in detail, imagine every possible bad outcome, you will thereby ward off harm to yourself & your whole community like some kind of powerful, jumpy magician

& how are you doing

— R.O. Kwon (@rokwon) March 28, 2020

3. Asia may have been right about coronavirus and face masks, and the rest of the world is coming around (posted April 1) Well HOW ABOUT THAT.

Blogaround

Two lab puppies playing in the snow. Image source.

1. Sunday favorites (posted February 18) The author of Isaiah says God has HAD ENOUGH "thoughts and prayers."

2. Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales "King George and the Ducky" (posted February 22)

3. Why Some Winter Olympic Sports Are "Faster, Higher, Stronger" For Men Only (posted February 22) "Apparently only two dudes can lay on top of each other and fly down the ice on a sled."

4. Why Janelle Monáe’s ‘Make Me Feel’ Is a Brilliant Bisexual Pop Anthem (posted February 23)

5. Where Billy Graham 'missed the mark' (posted February 22) "According to Martin, Graham would preach that 'all men are created equal under God,' but backtracked when segregationists criticized him by saying he 'followed the existing social customs' in whatever region of the country he preached. He sometimes accepted segregated seating at his crusades for fear of offending whites."

6. Answers in Genesis’ Tone-Deaf Rainbow Tussle (posted February 26) "In other words, Answers in Genesis’ message to the LGBTQ community is 'the rainbow is actually a symbol that you will burn with fire for your wickedness.'"

Blogaround

One of those desk-calendar things, that stands up by itself and has a spiral that the pages flip around. The page that's visible says "2018". Image source.

1. Erica Garner, daughter of police chokehold victim, dies at 27 in Brooklyn (posted December 30)

2. The “Pete Ruins Christmas” Series: the virgin shall conceive (posted December 20) "The point is that before the child is old enough to make moral choices, the Syro-Ephraimite siege will have come to and end."

3. Are Private Schools Immoral? (posted December 14) "We have a system where white people control the outcomes. And the outcome that most white Americans want is segregation. And I don’t mean the type of segregation that we saw in 1955. I don't mean complete segregation. I don't think there are very many white Americans who want entirely white schools. What they do want is a limited number of black kids in their schools."

Honest Advent: God's Light

Sunlight coming through clouds. Image source.

The next Honest Advent reading is Isaiah 60:19-22:

The sun will no more be your light by day,
nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you,
for the Lord will be your everlasting light,
and your God will be your glory.
Your sun will never set again,
and your moon will wane no more;
the Lord will be your everlasting light,
and your days of sorrow will end.
Then all your people will be righteous
and they will possess the land forever.
They are the shoot I have planted,
the work of my hands,
for the display of my splendor.
The least of you will become a thousand,
the smallest a mighty nation.
I am the Lord;
in its time I will do this swiftly.”

This is great. I interpret this as a description of resurrection and the future kingdom of God. "Light" means goodness and truth- everything will be full of goodness and truth. No evil, no pain, no mourning.

When it says "the Lord will be your everlasting light," I do NOT take that to mean anything along the lines of a "personal relationship with God" like evangelicals believe. It would be possible to interpret that verse as "everyone will believe in the correct version of God, and it will be SO OBVIOUS, like a light shining" but NO, that's not what I believe.

Because everyone is able to experience God's goodness, regardless of their beliefs about God. That's what we are all doing right now, on this earth. When there are good things in our lives, those things are from God. It doesn't matter if we believe in God or not, it doesn't matter if our beliefs about God are right or wrong- we still experience the pleasure from the good things in our lives. And that's what it will be like in heaven, as these verses describe. It's not about religious beliefs, it's not about "a personal relationship with God." Everyone can experience the goodness and light.

For the bit about "they will possess the land forever"- okay, now we're starting to see some signs that originally this was written just for the people of Israel, not the whole world. There's a bit of an "us vs them" dynamic contained in the concept of "possessing the land." Reassuring the readers that no one will take their land only makes sense if there is someone who could possibly take their land- if there are people who are not in the land.

Throughout the majority of the Old Testament, it was understood that God's promises and God's blessing were just for Israel. (Though there are a few exceptions.) In the New Testament, the idea that people could be Christians without being Jewish was SUPER-CONTROVERSIAL. But they decided yes, Christianity is for the whole world. This was a big change from the beliefs of Old-Testament people.

As for the part that says "the least of you will become a thousand, the smallest a mighty nation"- yeah that doesn't make any sense, mathematically. If one person, the least powerful person, becomes so great that they end up having power over a thousand people (or they have a thousand descendants, or whatever), then wouldn't they no longer be "the least"? It's not possible for every member of a set to be greater than at least 1000 other members of that set.

Seems like they're just using "thousand" and "mighty nation" as shorthand for great blessings and goodness, totally not thinking about the actual reality of one person having power over a thousand people.

The bible does this a lot, actually- using large numbers of people as nothing more than a symbol that affects one person. Look at how God punished David for taking a census by killing 70,000 people. So basically David's punishment is he has to deal with this crisis and feel guilty about it, and the punishment for each of those 70,000 people- who were totally innocent in this whole census-taking business- is death. How on earth does that make sense? Innocent people were hurt far more than the actual target of God's punishment. It only makes sense if you don't think of the 70,000 people as real people with their own complex, imperfect, valuable lives. Instead, they're nothing more than symbolic indicators related to David's status as king.

So we could say the writer wasn't really thinking through this whole "the least of you will become a thousand" thing, and it's not meant literally in any sense at all. But there's another possible interpretation, a very shady one. Perhaps those referred to as "you" and those referred to as "a thousand" are completely different groups of people. Perhaps it's saying "the least of you Israelite men will become rulers over a thousand women, slaves, and immigrants." As I said, in the Old Testament they didn't think God's promises were for everyone.

Maybe the "thousand" are treated as a status indicator for one person, rather than treated like real human beings, because the culture back then actually didn't treat everyone as real human beings.

I don't know if that's what the writer actually meant, but it's certainly true that the culture back then did not see women and men as equal, and of course that ends up being reflected in the bible they wrote. This is why I do NOT believe "what was the writer's original intent?" is the be-all-end-all of biblical interpretation. Yes, it's very important- but just because a writer held certain biased assumptions which influenced their writing does NOT mean that we need to respect and perpetuate those biased assumptions now.

Overall, I like this passage. God's light. It's about resurrection. Someday everything will be good.

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So about disqus: I'm finding I'm usually not able to see the disqus comment box at first, but then I load the page a second time and it's there. So... yeah still working on this.