Sex Blogging

I was going to call this gender blogging but that's exactly the problem. A new book (hat tip: Instapundit) about the importance of sex: Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences
by Leonard Sax

This book is another that helps us get over the foolishness about gender. You see sex is fixed (e.g. male or femalee). Gender is constructed and chosen (or so we are told). Yet let's hear Sax on sex:

From Publishers Weekly
In the feminist conception of gender flexibility, no set rules apply: girls can play with trucks; boys can play with dolls. But pediatrician and psychologist Sax argues that our theories about gender's fluidity may be wrong and to apply them to children in their formative years is quite dangerous. Sax believes the brains of boys and girls are hardwired differently: boys are more aggressive; girls are more shy. And deliberately changing a child's gender—in cases of intersex (hermaphrodism) or accident (as in the case of David Reimer, who was raised as a girl after a hideous circumcision mishap)—can ruin a child's life. Sax also believes modern gender philosophy has resulted in more boys being given behavior-modifying drugs and more girls being given antidepressants. Much of his argument makes sense: we may have gone to the other extreme and tried too hard to feminize boys and masculinize girls.

This book is similar to another phenomenal book called Taking Sex Differences Seriously by Steven E. Rhoads. His book and many wonderful articles can be found at www.sexdifferences.net.

Rhoads and Sax argue that new studies prove that men and women are biologically biased by their sex and ignoring this fact leads to ruin.

Another example can be found here, ripped from the headlines:

It has long been known that there are strong differences between boys and girls in their literary preferences. According to reading interest surveys, both boys and girls are unlikely to choose books based on an "issues" approach, and children are not interested in reading about ways to reform society -- or themselves. But boys prefer adventure tales, war, sports and historical nonfiction, while girls prefer stories about personal relationships and fantasy. Moreover, when given choices, boys do not choose stories that feature girls, while girls frequently select stories that appeal to boys.

Unfortunately, the textbooks and literature assigned in the elementary grades do not reflect the dispositions of male students. Few strong and active male role models can be found as lead characters. Gone are the inspiring biographies of the most important American presidents, inventors, scientists and entrepreneurs. No military valor, no high adventure. On the other hand, stories about adventurous and brave women abound. Publishers seem to be more interested in avoiding "masculine" perspectives or "stereotypes" than in getting boys to like what they are assigned to read.

At the middle school level, the kind of quality literature that might appeal to boys has been replaced by Young Adult Literature, that is, easy-to-read, short novels about teenagers and problems such as drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, domestic violence, divorced parents and bullying. Older literary fare has also been replaced by something called "culturally relevant" literature -- texts that appeal to students' ethnic group identification on the assumption that sharing the leading character's ethnicity will motivate them to read.

Apparently boys will be boys and they aren't as interested in relavance or race as those who "educate" them are. Until the confusion clears regarding the significance of sex (not gender) I will sex blog.

Seems even Harvard could use some sex blogging.

A Pastor tells why he blogs...

Ted Bolsinger, a Pastor, gives a compelling perspective on why pastors should blog:

In my last post I argued that pastors, of all people, should blog because we have a vested interest in something that the blogosphere makes more readily available: To more effectively, cheaply and regularly communicate the elements of Christian faith to a wider number of people. This will also, I argued, encourage our long-term pastorates and presence in our home churches (and families) by making it easier to reach larger numbers of people each week without leaving home.

Today I want to also add that blogging allows us to be far more effective at communicating Christian truth in depth, and responding to challenges to the faith effectively, broadly and without delay. Let me highlight both briefly by focusing on two terms that Blog helps us better understand.

In Blog, Hugh Hewitt uses a number of political examples to demonstrate the way in which bloggers can give attention to crucial issues that are often overlooked by the “mainstream media”. Very often TV news, magazines and such are not only victims of the biases (aren’t we all), but are handcuffed by the perception of the public’s “short attention span.” So, complicated news stories are quickly eclipsed by the sound bite.

We pastors fall into this trap also. When our congregants expect us to deliver sermons filled with strong exegesis, relevant examples and a joke or two all in 25 minutes or less (ok, I’m a Presbyterian…some of you get a lot more time than that.) It is easy to develop the habit of reducing everything to the ridiculous. Pretty soon our theology is nothing more than slogans or acronyms or representative stories. And communicating the depths of crucial issues and doctrine go by the way side. (By the way, publishers are doing the same thing with books. Unless you are NT Wright, it’s pretty hard to publish something that is long, in-depth and requiring serious study. So most books are necessarily short (and often shallow).

With a web log, I don’t have to worry about “sales” and “numbers,” I can offer a “serial” of teachings that can go as far or as deep as I need to go. I don’t worry about running out of time or getting the service over before the childcare team is pulling their hair out, instead I just pick up the discussion in the next post. Long deep conversations are more readily available to more people who are eager to go deeper, and those who aren’t can move on and check back in later.

As a guy with a Ph.D. in the “ecclesiastical and transformative implications of the doctrine of the Trinity,” it’s nice to have a place to actually write about the Trinity without fearing that 500 people will skip church next week. When I want to probe a subject, I can linger as I long as I like.

In the few weeks that I been doing this blog thing, I have been really blessed to read and link to a number of incredibly thoughtful, easily accessible posts by pastors and theologians that have strengthened and inspired me.

If we pastors are going to blog, then let’s fulfill our calling and equip the saints and teach the church. Let’s not limit this blogging thing to just “promotion” of our “stuff”, but instead allow it to be a true extension of our ministries to mature the faithful.

The second and most dramatic example of the power of blogging, is demonstrated in Hugh’s discussion of the speed of the blogosphere, “swarming” and the “long tail”. Speed is just the reality of how information can be linked instantly around the globe. Swarming is the way in which a number of people from a number of different positions “swarm” a challenge or opportunity and maximize the effectiveness of their position. The “long tail” refers to the huge, cumulative effect of a number of small opinion makers to make a difference over a long term.

If you followed the blogs immediately after the annual “let’s demythologize and debunk Christianity just in time for the holiday editions” of Time and Newsweek, then you saw the overwhelming and rapid effectiveness of literally hundreds of pastors who posted thoughtful, cogent, articulate responses to the unscholarly and, in some instances, irresponsible articles published by the newsmagazines. The blogosphere allowed even those who would never be quoted by the LA Times an opportunity to respond and then be linked and disseminated across the world in minutes.

No longer do we have to our faith-affirming responses relegated to the “letters to editor” pages a week after the fact while the front pages are filled with long-debunked scandals that might sell a few papers. Instead by writing and linking and writing and linking, we can respond to the challenges posed by skeptics, not with the hue and cry of the hurt, but with the rapid, clear and sober answers that reveal the truth.

(I have already been thinking of how powerful the blogosphere will be next year when the movie version of “The Da Vinci Code” is released. We can now address the questions that film will inevitably raise by bringing people solid accessible teaching right to their home computers.)

Another example of how blogs help us respond to challenges, now oft-cited has been the history-making response of internet donations to relief efforts in the wake of the Tsunami disaster. While I needed to wait until Sunday to encourage my congregation to give generously, I (along with virtually every other pastor-blogger I know) posted a link on my blog to World Vision as soon as I could and within hours of the disaster, money was pouring in.

My friends, the blogosphere offers us opportunities to faithful put forth clear witness for Christ in large and influential numbers. So perhaps the final word is appropriately a warning. Like any technology, it can be used for good or evil. In his book Hugh reminds us, “The blogosphere is about trust.” Let’s pray for each other, dedicate ourselves to be worthy of the trust that our readers give us. Let’s hold each other accountable and pray that our postings will only encourage more and more people to trust both the messengers—and more importantly, the message that we bring.

Blog on.

An Apt Response

A woman in my church recently sent a letter to the Boulder Camera in response to a guest opinion on science and faith. For those who don't subscribe her letter follows. The original piece appears at the bottom.



FAITH/SCIENCE

Both systems rely on belief

In his essay, "Faith is outside realm of science," Joel Selbin (Guest Opinion, Jan. 8) says, "Science seeks answers without creating or tolerating myths or calling upon faith ... since it [faith] is by definition not based upon any evidence, it is outside the realm of science. This is the primary reason intelligent design should not appear in a science class."

However, Professor Selbin needs to find another argument against teaching intelligent design, because faith is already in the science classroom via teachers and textbook writers who base their understanding of science on philosophical naturalism, the unproved belief that nature is a closed system of cause and effect (nature is all that exists and all that has ever existed).

Over 60 years ago historian Jacques Barzun wrote, "The so-called warfare between science and religion [should really] be seen as the warfare between two philosophies and perhaps two faiths." The battle over evolution is merely one incident "in the dispute between the believers in consciousness and the believers in mechanical action; the believers in purpose and the believers in pure chance." (Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner: "Critique of a Heritage.")

More recently, in a notorious speech at the 1993 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, avowed evolutionist Michael Ruse candidly stated, "I think that philosophically one should be sensitive to what I think history shows, namely, that ... evolution, akin to religion, involves making certain a priori or metaphysical assumptions, which at some level cannot be proven empirically." Ruse also thoughtfully advises his colleagues not to admit this in a court of law. (A transcript of Ruse's speech is online at www.arn.org/docs/orpages/or151/mr93tran.htm.

GAYLE NOWELL
Lafayette

-----------------------------

Selbin: Faith is outside realm of science

By Joel Selbin
January 8, 2005

School boards around the country are considering whether to put faith-based Intelligent Design alongside science-based evolution in science classes.

In fact, in October, the Dover, Penn. school board, by a 6-3 vote, ordered biology teachers at Dover Area High School to include in the curriculum the "theory of intelligent design." This represents the first such mandate in the United States. Similar proposals questioning the teaching of evolution and proposing the teaching of ID are being dealt with in about 40 states.

The recent re-election of an administration that advocates "creation science" and often makes political decisions on faith-based philosophies rather than on hard, cold reality, only reinvigorates the nationwide efforts to inject religion into science classes. Religion has a clear place in the home, in comparative religion courses and in churches, synagogues, mosques, etc., but it has no place in science courses.

After the Supreme Court in 1987 banned the teaching of creationism in public schools on grounds of separation of church and state, creationists have changed their call for teaching "creationism" to the teaching of "intelligent design." Only the words are different. The so-called "theory" is not.

The claim by creationists that evolution is merely a theory, is quite simply, and outrageously, false. Evolution has been observed and very extensively established by thousands of scientists, many thousands of times over about 140 years and at sites around the world. The results have been published in thousands of independent articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Evolution, under attack by certain fundamentalist Christians, is very well established by scientific observations.

Scientific theories are not like the average person's casually saying "I have a theory about this or that." Scientific theories are constructs of an educated human based upon study and observations of nature. But a theory, an idea generated within the mind of one scientist, is very different from the continuing observations and experimental facts obtained by many, usually independent, scientists. These facts may or may not conform to or support the theory. Thus, theories and experimental results/facts (which often turn into laws of science) are very different things.

There is not just one theory of evolution, but several competing ones. Like any other scientific theories, a single theory of evolution can never be proven beyond all doubt. However, scientific evidence (factual information) may favor or support one theory while that evidence may end up causing a competing theory to be revised or discarded. A specific example would be Newton's theory of gravity to explain a well known observed phenomenon we call gravity. His theory has been replaced by Einstein's theory of gravity, but of course the observed effects of gravity have not changed one bit.

A theory must be able to do two powerful things. It must be able to satisfactorily explain what we already know, and it must be successful in predicting things we do not yet know. When scientists do not understand something, they set up observations and experiments and seek independent and reproducible results. When the proponents of ID (the creationists) do not understand or cannot explain something, they simply attribute the unknown to an even more, albeit magnificent and glorious, unknown, an "intelligent designer." . Science seeks answers without creating or tolerating myths or calling upon faith. There is nothing wrong or unsatisfying with faith. However, since it is by definition not based upon any evidence, it is outside the realm of science. This is the primary reason intelligent design should not appear in a science class.

Finally, the ID folks insist that all things, including life and the incredible universe around us, require a creator. I and no one I know yet fully understand how the universe and life came into being. But these are part of the great challenges to the human intellect that make science so fascinating. And considering how utterly complex and magnificant both life and the universe are, how much more complex, magnificant and incredible must be an "intelligent creator."

But since the ID people require that all things must have a creator, I would ask them to explain to us: Who or what created the intelligent designer? Was it an even more complex and incomprehensible intelligent designer? And who or what designed that and....

Joel Selbin is a retired professor of chemistry who lives in Boulder.

I'm back...finally

Well after being sick for almost 3 weeks and traveling to three separate conferences, I'm back. And in the two days since I've been home I've joined the Firefox Revolution. I read about Firefox in the Wired Magazine that came in the mail on Friday.

I decided to move to Firefox for two reasons. One, because it sounded fast and cool and it is. Two, because I'm so mad at Microsoft for their arrogant mistreatment of customers as evidenced in the SP2 debacle. I heard one of my organizations IT managers say that the misery of SP2 would sink any other company and should sink Microsoft. He also said his next laptop will likely be a Apple because Microsoft has become such a nightmare.

I figure Firefox is a market force brought to bear on the lazy, arrogant monopoly at Microsoft.

Join the resistance.

Sick

I was planning on blogging tonight but I'm sick as a dog. I have the worst cold in a long time. Back Soon.

Chrenkoff: The 12 most stupid tsunami quotes

Chrenkoff has "The 12 most stupid tsunami quote. "

Stupid is actually being kind to these quotes.

If you didn't see this, enjoy!

Back to Blog

I've been working at DCC so I had not blog time. However my life is changing as we speak. I begin in earnest preparations to move to Boston. I should have more time to squeeze in some blogging.

Infinite Monkeys: Hugh's Blog Book

Infinite Monkeys tells why Hugh's Blog Book is so important:

"I think many Americans believe blogs are a hot trend, but a temporary one, like CB radios. And, yes, for many bloggers the thrill of BlogSpot wears off quicker than you can say 'Breaker One-Nine, good buddy.' However, Hugh understands that there is something much deeper and more powerful going on here, and rightly compares it to Gutenberg and the Reformation. The way we communicate is fundamentally being changed, and while the New York Times, CBS and the political process are closest to the epicenter, the shaking will soon be felt in pop culture, religion, the arts and other unexpected corners of the world.
Hugh's book is a great survey: it moves briskly for those familiar with blogs, but wisely Hugh puts some of the meat in the middle where a casual reader looking in an airport bookstore will be drawn in (and this is the perfect book for reading on a flight, although the reader will be itching to get back to his computer to check out some of the blogs, especially the ones listed at the bottom of page XII). He clearly lays out the history of blogs, then goes further into the longer term implications. It really is essential reading."

In Iraq, a clear-cut bin Laden-Zarqawi alliance | csmonitor.com

In Iraq, a clear-cut bin Laden-Zarqawi alliance | csmonitor.com: "But now, the US and its allies face a grave and growing threat: an alliance of mutual interests and convenience between the group that carried out the 9/11 attacks in the United States and the one that has contributed so much to Iraq's chaos.
'There were certainly some differences between bin Laden and Zarqawi,'' says Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies. 'But these differences were minor compared to the biggest things they have in common - their desire to hit at the US.'"


And I'm sure this alliance started after the U.S. attacked Iraq. After all, both parties were in love with the U.S. before the impudent President Bush "rushed to war". Isn't it odd that the left can clearly see a "vast right wing conspiracy" but Islamofacists are all independent operators.

Tsunami Disaster Relief Part 2

If you would like a trusted means of giving to alleve the suffering of those devastated by the Tsunami in Asia you can give to CCC's Tidal Wave Relief Fund by clicking here.

Blogging on Blogging

Hugh Hewitt has a new book that helps quantify what the blog is going on around here. Instapundit thinks it pretty good and I suspect it is though I haven't yet read it.

The following quote illustrates the power of the internet with respect to niche markets and niche tastes. Blogs are just the niche markets of opinion media and the tail is apparently very long.

Wired 12.10: The Long Tail: "To get a sense of our true taste, unfiltered by the economics of scarcity, look at Rhapsody, a subscription-based streaming music service (owned by RealNetworks) that currently offers more than 735,000 tracks.
Chart Rhapsody's monthly statistics and you get a 'power law' demand curve that looks much like any record store's, with huge appeal for the top tracks, tailing off quickly for less popular ones. But a really interesting thing happens once you dig below the top 40,000 tracks, which is about the amount of the fluid inventory (the albums carried that will eventually be sold) of the average real-world record store. Here, the Wal-Marts of the world go to zero - either they don't carry any more CDs, or the few potential local takers for such fringy fare never find it or never even enter the store.
The Rhapsody demand, however, keeps going. Not only is every one of Rhapsody's top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just a few people a month, somewhere in the country.

This is the Long Tail.

You can find everything out there on the Long Tail. There's the back catalog, older albums still fondly remembered by longtime fans or rediscovered by new ones. There are live tracks, B-sides, remixes, even (gasp) covers. There are niches by the thousands, genre within genre within genre: Imagine an entire Tower Records devoted to '80s hair bands or ambient dub. There are foreign bands, once priced out of reach in the Import aisle, and obscure bands on even more obscure labels, many of which don't have the distribution clout to get into Tower at all."

Truly this is a new Reformation. I wonder what the implications of the long tail will be in the realm of religion. It seems likely that this kind of media reformation will be very challenging to oppressive regimes like Radical Islamist and the Communist Chinese. On the other hand for Christiam Culture which has already undergone a famous reformation, there seems to be a move back to unity and authority. Christian Blogs will be interesting to me because of the tension between this move back to authority and the inherenent democracy of the blogosphere.

Tsunami Disaster Relief

Amazon.com has a one-click donation process set up to give to Red Cross relief efforts if you would like to quickly aid victims of the recent Tsunami.

Fathers and Sons at Christmas

Sand in the Gears reminds us of what Christmas is all about (or maybe just for boys):

"Target? Target! Their logo is a bloody bulls-eye, for crying out loud. Surely they would have cowboy guns, yes? Don't believe the hype.

And so it was with every destination. Time dragged on and the roads began to fill with grim-faced shoppers. In desperation I wheeled into the local mall. There was one place left, one final hope for a man intent on arming his children, in fine American fashion, for Christmas. The hobby shop.

I was greeted by a gruff bearded man. He could smell the panic on me, like a grizzled sergeant can smell it on a soldier in his first battle. "Something I can do for you, son?"

"Yes. Please. Please, for the love of all that remains good about America, tell me that you carry toy cowboy guns. Just a couple of cowboy guns is all I'm asking for. Toys R Us doesn't have them, Wal-Mart doesn't have them . . ." My voice trailed off.

He sized me up, perhaps to see if I was one of those pansy do-gooder Public Citizen types just looking to make trouble. Fortunately I hadn't shaved, and I was wearing flannel. "C'mon," he said with a gleam in his eye, "we just got in a shipment."

They just got in a shipment.

He led me to the back, where he had assembled -- and I am not making this up -- gun racks to hold all the toy armaments. If Santa ever needed to assemble a commando strike force, this could be his armory."

If you love what boyhood used to be, you'll love reading the whole thing. Merry Christmas to all, especially little boys and their Dads.

Bigotry on Campus

The Chronicle: Career Network: 12/15/2004: "After class, I asked one of the students for his read on what had happened. How could the response be so heated but the question left unengaged? He replied: 'You know how it is. Students don't want to disagree with their professors. Most of the students around here are pretty conservative, but they get the strong sense that their professors are liberal. And on issues like these, they're afraid to disagree.' They had made assumptions about how I would think and were reluctant to contradict me.
A couple of days later, during the Republican National Convention, I ate lunch with several colleagues. The discussion turned, inevitably, to politics. The anti-Republican tenor at the table remained unbroken, but reached its zenith with this vehement comment from one colleague, 'I'm not even going to watch [the convention]. I can't stand it.'
I could no longer blame the students for shying away from hot-button issues like Iraq: For them, the academy does not foster thoughtful discussion of thorny issues, but harbors the potential at any time to unleash the visceral reactions of their superiors to what students think are their own reasoned political positions. For students, the risk of speaking up is much the same as it is for me: They risk losing the respect of professors and perhaps endangering their long-term aspirations. "

Just another example.

More from a converted Atheist...

Biola > Page 1 : Biola News & Communications: "During a couple telephone discussions shortly after their last dialogue, Flew explained to Habermas that he was considering becoming a theist. While Flew did not change his position at that time, he concluded that certain philosophical and scientific considerations were causing him to do some serious rethinking. He characterized his position as that of atheism standing in tension with several huge question marks. "

This is a compelling interview between flew and a long time philosphical opponent. It's riveting. It's the equivalent of Steve Jobs suddenly becoming CEO of Microsoft. Or something like that.

America's One Party State

Economist.com: "Bias in universities is hard to correct because it is usually not overt: it has to do with prejudice about which topics are worth studying and what values are worth holding. Stephen Balch, the president of the conservative National Association of Scholars, argues that university faculties suffer from the same political problems as the "small republics" described in Federalist 10: a motivated majority within the faculty finds it easy to monopolies decision-making and squeeze out minorities."

It is interesting and ironic that conservatives would learn the meaning of institutional bigotry by being on the wrong end of it. For many years I've observed that liberals make too much of Institutional Racism and conservatives make too little of it. Perhaps turnabout is fair play.

Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / A left-wing monopoly on campuses

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / A left-wing monopoly on campuses: "'If this were a survey of students reporting widespread sexual harassment,' says ACTA's president, Anne Neal, 'there would be an uproar.' That is because universities take sexual harassment seriously. Intellectual harassment, on the other hand -- like the one-party conformity it flows from -- they ignore. Until that changes, the scandal of the campuses will only grow worse."

I'm so glad that this kind of thing keeps getting attention.

Leading Atheist Philosopher Concludes God's Real

Follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Leading Atheist Philosopher Concludes God's Real.

NEW YORK — A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism (search) for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God — more or less — based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.

At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew (search) has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.

Flew said he's best labeled a deist like Thomas Jefferson (search), whose God was not actively involved in people's lives.

"I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins," he said. "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose."

Flew first made his mark with the 1950 article "Theology and Falsification," based on a paper for the Socratic Club (search), a weekly Oxford religious forum led by writer and Christian thinker C.S. Lewis.

Over the years, Flew proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele, and Reading universities in Britain, in visits to numerous U.S. and Canadian campuses and in books, articles, lectures and debates.

There was no one moment of change but a gradual conclusion over recent months for Flew, a spry man who still does not believe in an afterlife.

Yet biologists' investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved," Flew says in the new video, "Has Science Discovered God?"

The video draws from a New York discussion last May organized by author Roy Abraham Varghese's Institute for Metascientific Research in Garland, Texas. Participants were Flew; Varghese; Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder, an Orthodox Jew; and Roman Catholic philosopher John Haldane of Scotland's University of St. Andrews.

The first hint of Flew's turn was a letter to the August-September issue of Britain's Philosophy Now magazine. "It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism," he wrote.

The letter commended arguments in Schroeder's "The Hidden Face of God" and "The Wonder of the World" by Varghese, an Eastern Rite Catholic layman.

This week, Flew finished writing the first formal account of his new outlook for the introduction to a new edition of his "God and Philosophy," scheduled for release next year by Prometheus Books.

Prometheus specializes in skeptical thought, but if his belief upsets people, well "that's too bad," Flew said. "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads."

God is Alive... in Philosophy Departments!

I believe that this could signal the rebirth of the University as the center of the Judeo-Christian tradition (I'll explain more at the end). Consider the following information sent to me by my wizened friend Steve Hays:

http://www.philoonline.org/about.htm

Philo
is the only professional philosophy journal devoted exclusively to criticisms of
theism and defenses or developments of
naturalism.

***************************************************

Consider
the experience of its founding editor:

www.philoonline.org/library/parsons_4_1.htm

My
experience editing Philo was bittersweet. Philo was born out of
discussions between myself and Timothy J. Madigan, Executive Director of the
Society of Humanist Philosophers. I was concerned that recent work in the
philosophy of religion had been dominated by theists, with few replies and
critiques by atheist or humanist philosophers. Worse, a very conservative
strain of apologetic, heretofore relegated to the periphery of academic
discussion, had begun to enter the mainstream. I was, and am, convinced
that the vast majority of professional philosophers are nontheists who endorse
secular aims and values, yet, while theist philosophers energetically pursued
their agenda, the secular voice was mute.

Philo was
founded to provide the forum for the best and most sophisticated expression of
atheist and humanist philosophy, while still being open to the publication of
articles by theists. With much trepidation, I agreed to edit Philo, a job
for which I had no experience. While I have been proud to serve as the
founding editor, I have been disappointed by the response of the philosophical
community. For any journal to thrive, it must have a generous number of
high-quality submissions from top scholars. While I feel that the pieces
we did publish were generally very good, we often had to make issues slimmer
than I would have liked because we had too few top-notch submissions. I do
sincerely hope that humanist philosophers will support Philo by submitting some
of their best work and not leave the field to an increasingly strident and
aggressive religious
apologetic.

************************************************************************

Let
us follow this up with the admission of his editorial successor.

http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm

THE
DESECULARIZATION OF ACADEMIA THAT EVOLVED IN PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENTS SINCE THE
LATE 1960s

By the second half of the twentieth century,
universities and colleges had been become in the main secularized. The standard
(if not exceptionless) position in each field, from physics to psychology,
assumed or involved arguments for a naturalist world-view; departments of
theology or religion aimed to understand the meaning and origins of religious
writings, not to develop arguments against naturalism. Analytic philosophers (in
the mainstream of analytic
philosophy) treated theism as an antirealist or
non-cognitivist world-view, requiring the reality, not of a deity, but merely of
emotive expressions or certain “forms of life” (of course there were a few
exceptions, e.g., Ewing, Ross, Hartshorne, etc., but I am discussing the
mainstream view).

This is not to say that none of the
scholars in the various academic fields were realist theists in their “private
lives”; but realist theists, for the most part, excluded their theism from their
publications and teaching, in large part because theism (at least in its realist
variety) was mainly considered to have such a low epistemic status that it did
not meet the standards of an “academically respectable” position to hold. The
secularization of mainstream academia began to quickly unravel upon the
publication of Plantinga’s influential book on realist theism, God and Other
Minds, in 1967. It became apparent to the philosophical profession that this
book displayed that realist theists were not outmatched by naturalists in terms
of the most valued standards of analytic philosophy: conceptual precision, rigor
of argumentation, technical erudition, and an in-depth defense of an original
world-view. This book, followed seven years later by Plantinga’s even more
impressive book, The Nature of Necessity, made it manifest that a realist theist
was writing at the highest qualitative level of analytic philosophy, on the same
playing field as Carnap, Russell, Moore, Grünbaum, and other naturalists.
Realist theists, whom hitherto had segregated their academic lives from their
private lives, increasingly came to believe (and came to be increasingly
accepted or respected for believing) that arguing for realist theism in
scholarly publications could no longer be justifiably regarded as engaging in an
“academically unrespectable” scholarly pursuit.

Naturalists
passively watched as realist versions of theism, most influenced by Plantinga’s
writings, began to sweep through the philosophical community, until today
perhaps one-quarter or one-third of philosophy professors are theists, with most
being orthodox Christians. Although many theists do not work in the area of the
philosophy of religion, so many of them do work in this area that there are now
over five philosophy journals devoted to theism or the philosophy of religion,
such as Faith and Philosophy, Religious Studies, International Journal of the
Philosophy of Religion, Sophia, Philosophia Christi, etc.
Philosophia
Christi began in the late 1990s and already is overflowing with submissions from
leading philosophers. Can you imagine a sizeable portion of the articles in
contemporary physics journals suddenly presenting arguments that space and time
are God’s sensorium (Newton’s view) or biology journals becoming filled with
theories defending élan vital or a guiding intelligence? Of course, some
professors in these other, non-philosophical, fields are theists; for example, a
recent study indicated that seven percent of the top scientists are theists.1
However, theists in other fields tend to compartmentalize their theistic beliefs
from their scholarly work; they rarely assume and never argue for theism in
their scholarly work. If they did, they would be committing academic suicide or,
more exactly, their articles would quickly be rejected, requiring them to write
secular articles if they wanted to be published. If a scientist did argue for
theism in professional academic journals, such as Michael Behe in biology, the
arguments are not published in scholarly journals in his field (e.g., biology),
but in philosophy journals (e.g., Philosophy of Science and Philo, in Behe’s
case). But in philosophy, it became, almost overnight, “academically
respectable” to argue for theism, making philosophy a favored field of entry for
the most intelligent and talented theists entering academia today. A count would
show that in Oxford University Press’ 2000–2001 catalogue, there are 96 recently
published books on the philosophy of religion (94 advancing theism and 2
presenting “both sides”). By contrast, there are 28 books in this catalogue on
the philosophy of language, 23 on epistemology (including religious
epistemology, such as Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief), 14 on
metaphysics, 61 books on the philosophy of mind, and 51 books on the philosophy
of science.

And how have naturalist philosophers reacted to what
some committed naturalists might consider as “the embarrassment” of belonging to
the only academic field that has allowed itself to lose the secularization it
once had? Some naturalists wish to leave the field, considering themselves as no
longer doing “philosophy of mind,” for example, but instead “cognitive
science.” But the great majority of naturalist philosophers react by
publicly ignoring the increasing desecularizing of philosophy (while privately
disparaging theism, without really knowing anything about contemporary analytic
philosophy of religion) and proceeding to work in their own area of
specialization as if theism, the view of approximately one-quarter or one-third
of their field, did not exist. (The numbers “one-quarter” and “one-third” are
not the result of any poll, but rather are the exceptionless, educated guesses
of every atheist and theist philosophy professor I have asked [the answers
varied between “one-quarter” and “one-third”]). Quickly, naturalists found
themselves a mere bare majority, with many of the leading thinkers in the
various disciplines of philosophy, ranging from philosophy of science (e.g., Van
Fraassen) to epistemology (e.g., Moser), being theists. The predicament of
naturalist philosophers is not just due to the influx of talented theists, but
is due to the lack of counter-activity of naturalist philosophers themselves.
God is not “dead” in academia; he returned to life in the late 1960s and is now
alive and well in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments.

Remember, this evaluation was penned by an atheist. What encourages me most about these developments is that philosophy is at the root of the academic enterprise. One can be a professor without being a biologist, but one cannot be a human being without having a philosophy. If the most rigorous philosophical inquiry leads to belief in God, then I expect that in 50 years the academic world will reject the fad of secularism and return to it's roots in theology as the queen of the sciences.

Long Time No Blog

I don't know whether it's fatigue after the election or just too many appointments and kids activities but the blog has been silent for too long. I've had many many things I wanted to blog about but just haven't. I'm going to try to get back into the swing of things now though.