Tomorrow is that day of the year when the immature among us dress up in fun costumes and say scary things in order to frighten us. I know if Shane Claiborne came to my door, I'd give him a Snickers.

And here are some Trick-or-Treaters now.

Don't they look more seasonally appropriate than a wagon full of pumpkins?

We have turned a corner, I do believe. We can't yet say what all we'll find around this corner, but it is clear that the scenery has changed drastically and our grandchildren will live in a different landscape from the one we grew up in. Nineteenth Century scientists made some preposterous assumptions about man, nature and society, and those assumptions have led us down a very inhuman path. (Read Eric R. Pianka, Steven Pinker, William Provine, Michael Ruse, and Steven Weinberg.)

But by what I take to be a conspicuous divine grace, 21^st Century scientists have found evidence for the thing they feared most and the last thing they ever expected to find in their derelict cloisters. Scientists discovered the sign of a very big bogeyman in their microscopes, and they have that bewildered and unmanned look that one likes to see in his enemies' eyes.

Uncommon Descent holds that...

Materialistic ideology has subverted the study of biological and cosmological origins so that the actual content of these sciences has become corrupted. The problem, therefore, is not merely that science is being used illegitimately to promote a materialistic worldview, but that this worldview is actively undermining scientific inquiry, leading to incorrect and unsupported conclusions about biological and cosmological origins. At the same time, intelligent design (ID) offers a promising scientific alternative to materialistic theories of biological and cosmological evolution - an alternative that is finding increasing theoretical and empirical support. Hence, ID needs to be vigorously developed as a scientific, intellectual, and cultural project.

Yesterday we took a break from our profoundly inane Sunday School discussion to trek down to Park Cities Presbyterian Church to hear Stephen C. Meyer talk about the cultural relevance of Intelligent Design. He didn't go through Signature in the Cell, but he explained to a roomful of people the cultural significance of what is afoot in the world of science.

I have recommended both Meyer and David Berlinski in the past, but I would encourage all of you who can find an opportunity to give them a serious reading and, if possible locally, hearing. Yesterday's class ended with an odd expression of faith: a roomful of believers in a fervent and earnest singing of the doxology.

Very rare. That alone was worth the drive.

A lot of our time on Remonstrans is spent observing the antics of dimwits and propagandists. We know of the profane and depraved antics of Emergence, and we are not unaware of the recent convoluted and disordered thoughts about separation and the gospel up in Allen Park.

But Christendom is different, dear reader, and keeping up might be nice for a change.

You might have had reason to see some of those TV shows where mental defectives try to ride skateboards off rooftops onto trampolines, or they stand on ladders resting on the very tree branches they are trying to cut down with chain saws, or they ride bicycles backwards down metal handrails set in concrete. If there is ever a time and place in the Christian life for schadenfreude, this must be the time and place. It would be an ungenerous faith for a reader of Solomon to withhold the laughter these fools seem desperate to provoke.

If a person of middling intelligence thinks riding a bike down a handrail is a skill he hopes will someday land him a lucrative position with the circus, he might start out with helmets, mats and spotters; but you don't need to go to that expense if you just want to have fun.

I think the Emergent church is also made up of people hungry for the thrill of stupidity. That is why I think you owe it to them to watch their show: Xtreme Idjits Visit Sparkhouse.

Here you have a movement devoted to "empowerment", and the Jo in JoPa Productions suggests that we disempower the clergy. The Pa in JoPa Productions wants people with a Call (whatever that means...he professes not to know) to get up and do it.

Here's David Huth:

"Ok, here's what I think: We have a chance of sparking new life if those of us who for generations have been blah blah talkin' a hole in God's head can shut up and listen so that those of us who for generations have been silent can stand up off their [sic] asses and speak the truth as they see it, we have a chance."

Pam Heatley tells everyone not to be afraid of chaos. When the Spirit moves, unexpected things happen. We shouldn't be afraid to let the "Spirit move in that chaos moment". Don Heatley wants broader ideas about theology and the Bible to come into our churches. Laura Arp wants us to "light our dreams". Phyllis Tickle wants us to "return to the disciplines". Jay Bakker wants us to be honest with one another. Jake Bouma tells us that biological life is really diverse. Danielle Shroyer wants us to be more imaginative. Kevin Ewing wants us to connect through a service project that creates "a bond that is pretty cool."

Spencer Burke is the bobblehead over at TheOoze; he wants us to "listen to the other voice" and to listen to a few heretics. "There's power in listening to the heretic." Spence believes "all of our orthodoxy started as heresy."

Now I ask you: you are sitting in the large conference room and Phyllis and Laura and Danielle and Pam and Jo and Pa and Jake and Jay are all drinking fair trade coffee around the big table, they've twittered their obscenities to one another, they've listened to other voices, they've conferred with truckers and juvenile delinquents, the spirit of their god has moved in the chaos moment, and now they have just shared with you their dreams for the future of Christianity. What do you do? (I mean what do you do if you're not fortunate enough to have a cyanide capsule in your pocket?)

How do you move ahead with this input? Could you perhaps even prioritize this input? What are you prepared to do with the truth as they see it?

You may think this nightmare is not possible, but that just goes to show you don't understand the postmodern Christian. The new Christians want to sit around and compare journeys and listen to other voices and listen to a few heretics. What we hear these Sparkhouse svengalis saying is exactly what we should expect to hear. They are into community and collaboration; well, this is their community and Phyllis and Laura and Danielle and Pam and Jo and Pa and Jake and Jay are the ones they will be collaborating with.

And if that doesn't make your heart merry, then I just don't think you really want a merry heart.

I was asked to revisit an idea that came up in a recent comment. A reader entirely innocently, and even to a point quite rightly, compared Emergents to Liberals. There are very good reasons to make that comparison, and I would even say that at some points it is commendable to make those similarities explicit.

Unfortunately similarity is not identity. It is clear that Emergents have pitched their tent toward Liberalism; there is a traceable lineage and a recognizable attitude that I'm not eager to dismiss. So if someone says, or if you have ever said, that Emergence is repackaged or renovated Liberalism, that doesn't land you in the sin bin. I would say we have no quarrel worth mentioning.

By the same token there are some pretty drastic differences between Emergence and Liberalism. Differences that should not be lost in the shuffle or we will handicap our own efforts at understanding.

To those who will still think this is an unproductive quibble, consider the profound differences between the Emergence and Liberalism.

It is true that Emergence and Liberalism have a similar contempt for Scripture, but recall that Liberals wanted to retain the moral essence of the Gospel even as they eviscerated the writings of the Evangelists. They were wrong, of course, and they failed. But what they failed at was preserving a religious sensibility during the collapse of a worldview. Who looks to Emergence to preserve a worldview? What worldview could survive deconstruction?

Some Liberals were devout men. Don't take my word for this: I didn't know them. But J. Gresham Machen knew them, studied under them, and had the utmost respect for some of them. Emergence hasn't produced any such people.

As for sympathies with the Enlightenment or appreciation of reason, listen to Jones and Pagitt on the topic of Plato. You will choke with laughter.

Liberals were nothing like Emergents. They didn't cuss like sailors, they didn't get pierced and tattooed like aborigines, they spoke the language of the church and they understood its symbols. They had a culture. They were not hell-bent on destroying Western virtues and they didn't offer us doggerel as liturgy.

Emergents don't want to preserve a moral essence at all; they want to impose a political agenda. Look at the leftist activist agenda that defines the McLaren and Jones blogs.

And we may call a Hindu squatting beside the Ganges devout; no one calls an Emergent devout. An Emergent is committed. And the only use Emergence has for the fruits of the Spirit is as a counter-accusation.

Emergents have nothing but contempt for any religious sensibility. They flaunt their contempt for and ignorance of culture. Emergents celebrate the destruction of all moral constraints, even those acceptable in secular society and in foreign religions. They clearly have no use for education except to gain social status.

Why is this important? Is this quibble worth the trouble? It may not be, as I called it, a quarrel worth mentioning, but it may nevertheless be a distinction worth maintaining.

I think it is. I think so because of the obvious difference between people who preserve religious sensibilities and those who destroy them. People who want to maintain the moral essence of a religion are better than those who don't. People who want to inculcate moral sensibilities are superior to those who merely push a temporal and carnal agenda. Respect for culture is good and contempt for culture is perverse.

The difference between these things does not get you into Heaven or keep you out, but real Christians are interested in more than getting people into Heaven; there is a long list of good things the church ought to be preserving while it evangelizes the world. People who read the New Testament respectfully have picked up on that fact.

For thousands of years, actually.

I think these things are especially important because of our times. We live with people who can't define anything. We cannot distinguish between different things; we cannot compare like things.

Movements cannot declare their beliefs. Fundamentalism cannot define itself, and Evangelicalism is a totally useless word: if you use it you have to tell people what you mean and what you don't mean. What does justice mean any more? One Emergent told us justice means not flushing a toilet! What does holiness mean? What is Art? What is worship? How do we provide community? What is the eschaton? What is the meaning of the Incarnation? What is the Christian hope?

I do think that the first step toward reform is to recover the habit of using the right words to say the right things. If we had a fixed, common understanding of any of those italicized words in the previous paragraph, no one would be giving Emergence a second look.

As it now is, these words have only tribal definitions, and that is the confusion we cannot encourage.

I should begin this (way too long) post with some explanation of what I do believe. It shouldn't necessarily be important to you that I believe this, but it will be helpful for you to know how my predisposition is relevant to the confrontation I am about to relate.

I believe that Revelation is more informative and far more interesting than I was ever taught. I was taught that it was important in a theological way, but I was not told much—certainly not enough—about how its importance should be appreciated in a literary way. I was sternly told not to mess with the content of Revelation, but I was not helped to understand the form of Revelation. I learned since that when Moses wrote the first five books of my Bible he said much more to his contemporaries than he ever did to me.

Poetry and narrative are never just decorative or entrancing ways to convey information; the poetry and the narration are essential to understanding what Moses wants us to know. Without making this post interminable, you can get some idea of the scope of what I mean by reading The Art of Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter.

And if you refuse to do even that little thing for me, at least go to the bookstore, find a chair and read through the introduction to his translation of the Pentateuch in The Five Books of Moses.

Read about the hands in the Joseph story.

I say all this to say that if you talk to me about the importance of biblical "story", you will have my interest, and not just because I've grown up reading Æsop and Grimm and Homer and Chaucer and Poe and MacDonald and Twain and Wodehouse and.... You will have my undistracted attention because I've grown up misreading Moses.

_______________

So I'll move this along by telling you I heard that Danielle Shroyer (just back from that happening/ event/gathering in Darkest Minneapolis) was going to be signing her new book at Tuesday's "Very Exciting Meeting of the Cohort".

Emergence right here in Dallas!

So I told my wife she could have my evening crust, I was driving my pickitup truck down to hear the preacherette talk about story. I'll give you a sample of the insights she takes from Moses' exodus story by quoting the close of her second chapter.

Nobody is allowed to get in the way of God's call for us to go. And when we see injustice, we are called to act like Moses and confront the pharaohs of our own day. We are called to be people who practice exodus day after day after day. We have seen freedom fighters decry the pharaoh of American slavery. We have seen Martin Luther King Jr. galvanize the fight against the injustice of racism and suffragettes denounce the injustice of sexism. We can tell stories of economists working in the Two-Thirds World to bring about economic exodus in small villages through sustainable efforts. We can hear about American teenagers emboldened by the plight of child soldiers in Uganda and raising their voices to a shout. In each of these ways, and in countless more, we declare and demand the future of God to be made more present among us. When we practice exodus, we declare our allegiance not to the powers that be but to the God of Green Lights.

I had a reasonable suspicion that Moses would not have recognized his own work in Danielle's book.

But back to the story.

The discussion out on the patio of the Northwest Hwy Tin Star was meandering in a predictable way when the topic of "the Flood Story" came up and the preacherette said that the lesson of the flood story was that "no matter how bad man got", God would not destroy him again.

"But that's not true, is it?" said I.

"What's not true?" said she.

"It's not true that that is the lesson of the Flood Story," said I.

"How do you mean?" asked she.

"Moses didn't tell us any such thing. What he told us was that God set the sign of a covenant in the sky that he would never destroy man with a flood, not that he would never destroy man at all," answered I.

"Well, that is just your interpretation!" accused she.

"That is what the text says!" retorted I.

My mind was immediately taken by two thoughts. First was her complete ignorance of (or dishonesty about) what Moses actually wrote into his Flood story. Second was her unexpected abandonment of the postmodern understanding of texts: like she had some special understanding of Moses' writing. Or even that Moses meant anything at all which we could determine in our unique times.

This from a professing Emergent?!

I went with the first; I mean what's the point in pursuing story if it's just become interpretation? My interest in story took a back seat to my interest in fact, but she persisted in dismissing my reading as mere interpretation. Then she went on to inform everyone at the table that I like to "come and mix things up".

(If an Emergent wishes to reject orthodoxy he is "asking the hard questions" and "challenging our traditional perceptions". If I ask inconvenient questions, I "like to mix things up". As you all know, I do like to mix things up, but I also like to have serious and productive conversations. Which one I get is part of the serendipity of life.)

When I got home I sent her an email which included an excerpt from the Septuagint in which Moses says three times in the space of three sentences how God would not destroy man again with a flood. In Wednesday morning's email she finally agreed that that is what Moses wrote, but then she quoted a second passage which she thought supported her misunderstanding of the first passage.

It's possible she was re-embracing a postmodern hermeneutic, but I had lost interest in this woman's literary insights and I wrote her this reply:

Among mankind's great institutions are the war college and the insane asylum.

It is inevitable that people will disagree. If those people are rational and authentic, some understanding is possible: they can talk about it; if they are irrational and deceptive, then talking is a total waste of time. That's when the war college and the insane asylum come in handy.

Last night you said something that was untrue about God's judgment. When I defended my objection by referring to the actual "flood story" you said that it was merely my interpretation of the story and that you had a different interpretation. (I came home and emailed you the text and you finally agree that it does say what I claimed it said: it was not "my interpretation" of what it said.) But even before we can honestly approach this disagreement there is something even more interesting. If you were an honest person and if you were consistent and rational, you would have accepted "my interpretation" as being just as valid as "your interpretation". You would have said Namaste, you would not have dissolved the importance of story with the word "interpretation" and you'd've avoided an interruption to the more serious conversation about the usefulness of the Biblical narrative.

You pretend that you are open-minded but you are not; yours remains the privileged "interpretation".

So last night was a total waste of time. It was just your chance to dump on your ideological opponents and cast aspersions on hermeneutics, theology, fundamentalism and a few other oversimplifications that polluted the conversation.

But the point remains. Your enemies do not fail to appreciate "story" or "biblical narrative"; what they fail to do is allow you to prejudice the case with a pretense that you have some special appreciation for story that the rest of us do not. You get the story; we get the interpretations.

This really is contemptible, not just because it is a subtle abuse of another human's conscience and faith, but because it ruins whatever valid conclusions we may draw about narrative in Revelation.

I think you should be ashamed of yourself. I know you're not, but I still think you should be.

I also think you are a careless reader. I did not say our discussion was violent; I said our disagreement was violent. If you read the flood story to mean that God promises never to judge mankind again no matter how bad he gets, and if I read the flood story to mean that God will not destroy man again by means of a kataklusmos udatos but that that kataklusmos udatos stands as a precedent for an even greater judgment, then that is as violent a disagreement as we can have. We have read the same story and drawn contrary conclusions.

This really is intolerable, Danielle.

Her reply took me to task for not demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit, and she said that she would not continue this discussion "in this email forum". She suggested we might talk about this over coffee or a meal.

At first I thought to ask her if we could discuss this at a barbecue or during a round of Frisbee golf, but I decided to take Solomon's advice about answering questions.

_______________

All of this is more important than you may think. If we just listen to these people cuss and spout their jargon, we will miss an important fact of our religious life. We are dealing here with a people who claim to have a special appreciation for Story and Narrative and Art, but in story and narrative and art they have no skills. Check out the works of Soupiset, McLaren, Scandrette, and Shroyer.

Shroyer does not have any interest—or competence—in story. Don't take my word for it; read her book or have a young child read her book. People, like Alter, who have an interest in story know what they are talking about. And that knowledge sticks out a mile. I can read Alter for hours and hours and never learn his political commitments.

Shroyer has a need for a pretext, and biblical stories are just a point of departure for conversations about Martin Luther King, Jr., racism, sexism, the Two-Thirds World, sustainability, child soldiers in Uganda, blah, blah, blababa, blaba, blah. She has no interest, as her Sparkhouse sound bite suggests, in our using imagination or in being creative, and she certainly made it clear that there is no room in God's story for me. And I don't take this personally; I'm sure there is no room in God's story for anyone else who insists that the storytellers in the Bible meant what they wrote.

Talking with Emergents is about as hostile and judgmental an experience as approaching the RAs in a fundamentalist Bible college about the possibility of having a kegger in the chapel.

So I didn't get Shroyer to sign my book, and I wasted gas making the trip down to Dallas—which I'm sure was bad for the environment.

* * * WARNING * * *

This post contains puerile observations and offensive language.

We know our civilized readers will make allowance for the fact that we are reporting on Emergents' recent activities and will therefore expect gratuitous profanity as the preferred means of expressing their deepest theological insights.

Please understand that this is just them keepin' it real.

* * * WARNING * * *

Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt have formed a production and consulting company which, sparing no strokes of genius, they have named JoPa Productions. Their most recent failure took place this weekend in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and it was called Christianity21.

The plan was to invite 21 females to talk for 21 minutes about the future of 21^st Century Christianity—and I think all of us of the masculine persuasion spotted the flaw immediately. Jo and Pa intended for it to be "less a conference and more a happening, an event-a gathering of voices and ideas that will shape the future of our faith".

Confusing interconnectivity with community, this bunch of Sunday School dropouts began twittering in public. I include a couple twitterings for your edification. The first is from c_w_s, a talkative woman but not much of a looker who really knows how to twitter after a religious happening/event/gathering. After the first evening she could be found in the bar calling to everyone online:

c_w_s: not quite ready for bed but don't want to drink alone. Anyone else in the Marriott bar? I'm on the couch by the fire.

We hope she found the "community" she was looking for.

Mike Stavlund, ranking Emergent thinker, wanted everyone to do the environmentally responsible thing, especially when using the facilities:

MikeStavlund: make a statement for justice by not flushing @ #C21 (if it's yellow, let it mellow...)

Makeesha Fisher, one spokesbimbo of the 21, was quite entertained by Paul Soupiset, her colleague at Generate, and the artwork he was doing on site:

makeesha: @soupiset just sketched flowers that looked like little sperms lol #c21

Three other attendees celebrated an idea voiced from the stage by Debbie Blue:

moffou42: God the Almighty, sucking at his mother's breast, unable to hold His own head up. A God who has an anus... it seems like blasphemy. #c21

jakebouma: Debbie Blue on incarnation: God had an anus. Naturally, @soupiset draws "Anus Dei". Perfect. #c21 #c21 http://twubs.com/c21

dtrigueros: death & decay, bacteria, shit, phlegm:the Body of Christ. We eat & drink this ev week so complicated gives us life #C21 (via @Mad_Curls)

Then it occurred to the spiritually sensitive happydaydeadfis that these epiphanies might not be leaving the best impression on everyone in the world observing from his computer:

happydaydeadfis: remember, folks who are reading the c21 tweets, that these quotes are OUT OF CONTEXT. they are good, but... #c21 http://twubs.com/c21

Killjoy.

Elsewhere mlgregg wrote:

mlgregg: Holiness is characterized by profound joy... i.e. the Dalai Lama and Tutu #c21 http://twubs.com/c21

And one last quote from mojojules:

MoJoJules: #c21 fucked my shit up. I feel almost torn a part. Needing for when I come terms w/ it to look someone in the eye and tell them the gift

It's difficult to quantify the impact that was made on a person who feels almost torn a part [sic].

But one of my favorite features of the happening/event/gathering was the "Sparkhouse", a little white playhouse with a red chair and a welcome mat. Whatever time was left over after coming up with a name for the JoPa Production company was given over to this brilliant innovation.

People were asked to sit in a special chair and offer ways to "spark new life in Christian communities". We got the considerable wisdom of

Doug Pagitt
Tony Jones
Phyllis Tickle
Julie Clawson
Spencer Burke
Steve Knight
Philip Shepherd
Jay Bakker
Jake Bouma

I cannot imagine your not wanting to hear these emerging philistines and degenerates explain their ideas on sparking new life.

Before the Emergents barbecue their last rib and their throw their last Frisbee, let's not fail to notice what passes for their liturgy. Here is Brian McLaren's shot at immortality with his own Kyrie Eléison.

Let's Confess It (Em, c, b) 106bpm
(a prayer of confession)

Let's confess it: there's a lot of evil, lust and greed in our world. Oppression and sin build up pressure within until there's an eruption of corruption. Beneath the skin, we skid and spin in spiritual crisis where vice is the norm, and justice, kindness, humility, and civility are all too rare.

Unaware of our despair, we smile in denial and say "It's all OK. No need to change, no need to grow, just have another drink or smoke, tell another joke, and don't think or rethink. Make another buck, with some luck you can buy a bigger house, store more stuff, drive fast, look good, keep up."
Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.

Meanwhile, addiction, rejection, and a lack of reflection spawn friction, dejection and a loss of direction. Every family, community, and nation are shaken. Creation's resources are carelessly taken. And pollution scars every ocean, mountain, breeze, and shore, with visible symptoms of our inner war.

We're all victims. We're all villains. We're stuck in the web that we spun ourselves. But God lights a spark of hope in the dark to help us cope with all that's wrong and needs to be made right. God has come into all our pain, shame, and loss through the cross, and calls us to a path of life, love, purpose, and peace.
Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.

If we humble ourselves to believe and receive, a river will flow and a candle will glow in a secret sacred place within us, very deep, where we have been wasting in shadows, half-dead or half-asleep. We've been falling in a vicious viral downward spiral that leads to death. Let's wake up, hear God calling, take a deep, fresh breath.

Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

"We confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart and we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and please forgive, that we may finally and fully learn to live in dignity and unity, integrity and harmony, delighting in your will and walking in your ways, to the glory of your name. Amen."

Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.

Emergents have recently floated some rumors suggesting the possibility of having meetings on restarting the non-bureaucratic machinery of their undenomination; their great conversation as ebbed and their great experiment in decentralization has produced some underwhelming results, and they think that barbecuing some people might rekindle an interest in their religious commotion.

Time will tell.

Fundamentalists continue their riveting debate on what a fundamentalist was, what a fundamentalist is, and what a fundamentalist should look like. We wish them the best of luck with that.

And up in Chicago's suburbs, Mark Galli bangs his head against a wall and speaks about what it means to be an evangelical:

Some use strict definitions that include a complex set of beliefs and behaviors, and so define evangelicals as a step above the ordinary mortal. Others use loose definitions in which the word seems to mean nothing more than "nice religious person." Evangelicals by these definitions fare pretty badly when compared with the rest of the world.

In this article, I lean toward the looser definition. We might feel better about ourselves as a movement if we restrict the word to the most committed-that would eliminate the problem of nominalism anyway.

(I think referring to evangelicals as those who hold to "a complex set of beliefs and behaviors" was intended to be vicious sarcasm. The one thing we know is that evangelicals do not entertain complex beliefs, and no one thinks of an evangelical as "a step above the ordinary mortal".)

I can't predict what will make evangelicals feel better about themselves, but I would feel better about evangelicals if they could tell us what it is they believe, not how committed they are to it.

You may remember Mark Galli. He wrote this about evangelicals:

In this sense, the history of the Christian faith is littered with evangelicals, from the apostle Paul to Antony of the Desert, from Francis of Assisi to Teresa of Avila, from the monastic movement to camp meetings, from Beth Moore to Mimi Haddad, from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to Evangelicals for Social Action.

In the current article Galli takes the typical CT approach:  he throws together a collection of blurbs, casual summaries, glib stereotypes and superficial characterizations, pretends that doing this constitutes historical research and then he pontificates vapidly. In this case he pontificates about the need for having "a vertical relationship with God". He has nothing at all helpful to say about what it means to have a vertical relationship with God—and a few of his readers have noticed this. Having a vertical relationship with God is just one more empty metaphor by which he can continue misapprehending and misrepresenting the faith.

Imagine going to The Great Hall of Evangelicalism to sign up only to be told by some drooling clerk that it is irrelevant what you believe; whatever it is you believe, your application has been denied because you lack sufficient commitment.

I think it is worth your reading Mark Galli: clearly he has no answers, but if you want to catch some sense of the spirit of the age, this should do the trick. If you want to get a feel for the modern evangelical's intellectual incapacities, Galli is your man.

Ignorant armies clashing by night.

Some time ago now there was a loud noise, and after the dust settled it became apparent to all that whereas there had been nothing, now there was something. With the passage of significant amounts of time this something changed, expanded, morphed, mutated, developed, grew, survived, and advanced into everything there is, seen and unseen. It was not hard for scientists to explain the sequence, and basically it boiled down to a rather straightforward account of matter and energy and chance.

Scientists did not give an entirely satisfactory account of everything, but as defective an account as it was it was still preferable to the account we got from preachers which featured a Meddlesome Intruder.

Then I came along.

Yes; as I view it, my advent spurred two unpromising scientists to find some more suitable explanation for the miracle of life, and shortly thereafter Crick and Watson worked out what DNA looked like, and from their conclusions grew a realization that matter and energy could produce nothing without information.

Dr. Meyer doesn't give a full treatment of my involvement, but he compensates for this snub by telling a very interesting story about the essential rôle of information in the origin of life.

You ought to read this book. You should be able to find it in a bookstore, but it could take you billions and billions of years if you look in the Science section. If you go to Barnes&Noble, where I went, you will find it in the Comparative Religion section.

Silly me, I didn't think to look there first. I asked the nice lady behind the computer and she took me right to it.

There is also a programmer's rendering of the process here which is intended to help us visualize what Meyer is describing.

Chance and random mutation are looking more and more like a pathetic wheeze.

Meyer demolishes the materialist superstition at the core of evolutionary biology by exposing its Achilles' heel: its utter blindness to the origins of information. With the recognition that cells function as fast as supercomputers and as fruitfully as factories, the case for a mindless cosmos collapses. His refutation of Richard Dawkins will have all the dogs barking and the angels singing.

--- George Gilder

____________________
Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design
Stephen C. Meyer
Harper Collins, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-147278-7