Hurricane Katrina relief donations

The Mission to North America of Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) has a fund for Hurricane Katrina disaster relief.

Van Til and Barth

Karl Barth once said that Van Til regarded him as the greatest heretic. Indeed, Van Til wrote a book called Christianity and Barthianism. Following Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism, the theme of the book is clear: that Barthianism is different from Christianity. I don’t know if Van Til is completely right here. Certainly Barth’s theology departed from orthodoxy in many places, but his understanding of the total depravity and sinfulness of man is unparalleled. He has certainly called attention to the bankruptcy of 19th century European theological liberalism, and his theology raises serious questions and provides interesting, if not always satisfactory, perspectives. And surely his heroic opposition to Kaiser Wilhelm and later to Hitler is to be admired.

Contrary to the stereotype, Van Til is not the dogmatician who denounces everyone with whom he disagrees. I was particularly moved by this anecdote from White’s authorized biography of Van Til (147):

Soon after Christianity and Barthianism was released, William Jones, a warm friend and admirer of Cornelius Van Til, was driving along a street in Princeton where he happened to spot the continental theologian hurrying to keep a probable appointment. Jones braked his car and called out, “Dr. Barth, may I take you somewhere?”

Barth looked up, surprised, and said in broken English, “T’ank you very much, yes.”

He got into the car and explained where he wished to go.

Jones said, “Dr. Barth, I’m a friend of Cornelius Van Til. I must say you and he are great scholars, even though you disagree in your convictions.”

Karl Barth frowned and said, “Ach, he hates me.”

“No sir, he doesn’t hate you or anybody else,” Jones protested. “I happen to know he often prays for you.”

Barth was deeply moved. “I am glad to know that,” he said quietly.

We know Van Til best as a theologian and apologist, but he is first and foremost a Christian who is worthy of our imitation.

Statistics lie

Statistically speaking, statistics lie. All sorts of people have used all sorts of statistics to reinforce their preconceived notions or advance loony theories. The latest map from DailyKos (via The Corner at National Review Online):



It is unmistakeable what theory Kos is trying to advance. There seems to be a correlation between the locations of the brown dots in the first map to the locations of the blue regions in the second. Ergo, thinks Kos, regions that voted Democrats suffered most of the casualties, the subtext being either that Democrats are more patriotic or that the evil Bush conspired to put more Democrats in harm’s way, or both.

There are several problems with this, in addition to those mentioned in the blog entry at The Corner. The fact that a region voted blue doesn’t mean that the servicemen from that region were all Democrats. Because these blue regions are more highly populated, from these regions even a relatively smaller percentage of people serving in the armed forces would still represent a relatively larger absolute number. To put it in numbers, let’s take two regions, one blue and one red. The blue region has a population of 100,000, with 70% Democrats and 30% Republicans. The red region has a population of 10,000, with 70% Republicans and 30% Democrats. From each region 1% of people serve in the armed forces. Thus we have 1,000 servicemen from the blue region and 100 from the red region. And for the sake of argument, let’s say all of those serving are Republicans. If casualties are evenly distributed, say 1%, there would be 10 casualties from the blue region and 1 from the red. This would still cause the maps to show the correlation between casualties and blueness, despite the assumption that all servicemen from these two regions are Republicans!

Of course, the assumption that all servicemen were Republicans was irrelevent to the actual calculation. What this calculation shows is that the statistical correlation between the two maps shows nothing about the patriotism of Democrats or Republicans.

California propositions

Tom McClintock is one of the very few politicians that I actually like, even though I ended up, for reasons of pragmatics and feasibility, not voting for him in the special recall election in October 2003 (wow, it’s almost two years!). I agree with him on most issues, and here are his recommendations for voting on the propositions this year. I intersperse them with some comments of my own (McClintock in blue).

Proposition 73: Parental Notification for Abortion. If parental consent is required for a child to use a tanning booth or get her ears pierced, shouldn’t parents at least be notified if she’s getting an abortion? YES. Whether you’re pro-life or pro-choice, this should be the all-time no-brainer.

The abortion industry is driven by ideology and profits and will fight tooth and nail to remove any restriction and hinderance between the damsel-in-distress and her abortionist. No-brainer for us, no brains for the hardened of heart.

Proposition 74: Teacher Tenure. Do parents have a right to expect a higher level of competence before a teacher is granted life-time tenure? YES. This modest measure simply increases the teacher probation period from two years to five years.

Every industry has requirements for competence. Well, except perhaps for the league of CEOs—the fact that even failing CEOs [think Carly] get big packages is disgusting. But for the rest of us, poor performance results in no promotion or termination. The same should hold for teachers.

Proposition 75: Public Employee Union Dues. Should public employees decide for themselves which candidates they will support with their own money? YES. This measure requires that before a public employee union can take money from that employee for political donations, it has to get the employee’s permission.

Have public employee unions become a department of the Democrat Party?

Proposition 76: State Spending. Should government live within its means? YES. This measure restores the authority that the governor of California had between 1939 and 1983 to make mid-year spending cuts whenever spending outpaces revenue without having to return to the legislature.

Starve the beast.

Proposition 77: Re-districting. Should voters choose their representatives in legislative districts that are drawn without regard to partisan advantage? YES. The most obvious conflict of interest in government is when politicians choose which voters will get to vote for them by drawing their own legislative district lines. This measure puts a stop to it.

Propositions 78 and 79: Prescription drug discounts. Do you want the same people who run the DMV to run your pharmacy? NO. These are rival measures, one supported by drug companies and the other by liberal activists – both of which purport to lower drug prices. What they really do is assure that one group of patients gets to pay higher prices to provide subsidized prices for others. There’s no such thing as a free Levitra.

Why does the government want to run everything in our lives? There is no free lunch. Prices are determined best by the market, not by government fiat. Has not the failure of socialism taught anyone?

Proposition 80. Electricity Regulation. Do you want the same people who run the DMV to run your electricity company? NO. This measure locks in monopoly control of your electricity by the bureaucratized utilities and forbids you from ever being able to shop around for the lowest-priced electricity available.

Standards of proof

Just some quick thoughts about the current controversy about Intelligent Design. In particular, the standards of proof used in science:

1) Proof by lack of counterexamples. This is the primary method of the hard physical sciences. This is what Karl Popper’s standard of falsifiability entails. When a scientific “theory” is said to be “established”, what is really meant is that we have observed no counterexamples, or only very few that depart significantly from what the theory says. If a substantial counterexample is found, then the theory needs either to be revised or overthrown. This pattern of revision and revolution has been observed in Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

2) Proof by possibility of evidences, even if actual evidences are lacking. This is the modus operandi of macroevolutionary biology. The apparent sudden appearance of complex structures and the lack of evidences showing transitional forms do not bother hardcore evolutionists. All that is required to establish evolution is the mere possibility of the existence of evidences. This standard of proof is much weaker than the proof by lack of counterexamples, because there is no way to falsify the given theory. The proof of existence of something (a counterexample in the physical sciences) is hard enough. But the proof of nonexistence is even harder, if not impossible. Thus, contrary to popular notions, evolution is unfalsifiable because one cannot prove the nonexistence of transitional forms, for dogs could have eaten them. By contrast, particular arguments for Intelligent Design are falsifiable. All that is required is real evidence that shows how species gradually transform from one to another, with a specified timeline that allow for significant probability (not mere possibility), fossil records, etc.

3) Proof by divine intervention. (a) The person attempting the proof invokes divine curse upon himself if the proposed theory were not true: “If this theory is not true, may God strike me dead in three seconds!” One ... two ... three ... I am still alive. Ergo, the theory is true. (b) Discontinuities and aberrations cannot be explained by “natural processes” and therefore must be an act of God.

The abortion “industry”

Finally, someone has spoken of the profits of the abortion “industry” as the driving force of the abortion lobby. After all, if it were only about “rights”, there would have been no need to oppose legislations such as parental notification. (Isn’t it ridiculous that for girls to get ears pierced parental consent is needed, but not abortion, which is a medical operation.) In my class notes for a Sunday school class on Christian ethics (dated August 2000), I remarked that the abortion industry’s size was about $700 million to $1 billion and therefore could be a potent political force:

當然, 墮胎也牽涉到金錢 (及政治) 上的利益: 『墮胎市場』每年有 7-10 億美元 (US$700m–1b) 的『營業額』.

Manuel Miranda, former counsel to Sen. Bill Frist, writes in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Roe v. Wade is not just the source of a right; it's a business license for abortion clinics. This comes best into focus when we consider that in the next term the Supreme Court is likely to hear cases involving not the right to abortion but laws regulating parental consent and notice of abortions for minor girls. These are laws that, according to a Los Angeles Times poll, over 80% of Americans support.

Miranda goes on to quote Sen. Orrin Hatch, in a little-publicized speech in September 2002 when Democrats blocked the nomination of Judge Priscilla Owen:

I fear the opposition to Justice Owen from the abortion lobby is not at all about abortion rights, because abortion rights are not affected by a mere notice statute. The opposition to Justice Owen is not really about abortion rights, it is about abortion profits. Simply put, the abortion industry is opposed to parental notice laws because parental notice laws place a hurdle between them and the profits from the abortion clients--not the girls who come to them but the adult men who pay for these abortions. These adult men, whose average age rises the younger the girl is, are eager not to be disclosed to parents, sometimes living down the street. . . . At nearly one million abortions per year, the abortion industry is as big as any corporate interest that lobbies in Washington. They not only ignore the rights of parents, they also protect sexual offenders and statutory rapists.

Follow the money, as they say.

On a separate note, Planned Parenthood is probably the most visible and infamous name in the abortion industry. I have always thought, what a misnomer it is! Shouldn’t it be Planned Non-Parenthood? But then the abortion industry is full of euphemisms, which ironically show that there is something inherently objectionable about abortion.

Recent readings

J. Ligon Duncan, “The Attractions of the New Perspective(s) on Paul”

Guy Prentiss Waters, Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul. (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2004)

John Frame, “In Defense of Something Close to Biblicism: Reflections on Sola Scriptura and History in Theological Method” and “Reply to Richard Muller and David Wells”

Helmut Thielicke, How Modern Should Theology Be? (English translation by George Anderson)

Dan McCartney, “New Testament Use of the Old Testament,” ch. 6 of Inerrancy and Hermeneutic: A Tradition, A Challenge, A Debate, edited by Harvie Conn.

John Baillie, Our Knowledge of God. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959.

Split infinitives

Ever since I learned about split infinitives, I have been paying increasing attention to them both in reading and in writing. The traditional rule against split infinitives apparently finds its root in classical languages such as Latin and Greek, in which infinitives are not formed with a particle like to in English, but with verb endings. For these languages, the infinitive appears as one word, not two, and the problem of split infinitives is nonexistent. The infinitive in German is closest to English, formed with the particle zu. However, as I understand it, the zu is so close to the verb that it would be impossible to put another word between them. In fact, for verbs with separable prefixes, the zu goes between the prefix and the root verb, forming a single word, e.g., ausgehen, auszugehen. Hence, I believe the split infinitive is nonexistent in German as well.

The problem with English is that it is a very malleable and expressive language. Whatever sounds all right to a native speaker would gradually make its way to becoming standard. In many cases, the split infinitive may have somewhat different connotations than its non-split form. In other cases, the placing of the adverb or adverbial phrase before the particle to may result in ambiguity as to which verb—the leading verb or the infinitive?—is being modified. I am mostly comfortable with split infinitives in such cases. Nevertheless, I believe it is still considered nonstandard to split an infinitive with certain adverbs, such as not and never. Thus, this sentence in an article coming from no less than a publication known as Editor & Publisher, caused me to cringe (emphasis mine):

The board of The American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) has voted unanimously to not endorse an earlier decision to give a Conscience in Media award to jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller, E&P has learned.

(UPDATE 2005-08-04 22:24): According to The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage (1989),

In some sentences—particularly ones where the infinitive comes after a copula and particularly ones with a negative like never or not—the infinitive is customarily not split. Here are two examples:

Molee’s quest for a perfect replacement for English seems never to have ended —Baron 1982

... human qualities that even the most zealous military officer must possess if he is effectively to command men —William Styron, This Quiet Dust and Other Writings, 1982

I would add that the infinitive ought not to be split for constructs such as in order to and ought to.

feed2js

While trying to figure out a way to display on the sidebar of my blog a box showing the music that I am currently listening to, I found this nifty program called feed2js. It converts a feed (RSS or Atom) into a javascript, which then displays the titles and summaries. I then started a second blog to which I post information about the CD that provides me the joy of listening to classical music.

Bill Frist’s treachery

I used to have much respect for Senate majority leader Bill Frist, but his recent actions have caused me to choke. First was the delay of voting on the repeal of the death tax. Then there was his announcement of support for expanding federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research.

Of the latter event Glenn Reynolds wrote, “I am with Frist.” This struck me as strange coming from an ardent libertarian. That he would support embryonic stem-cell research was to be expected, but I should think that as a libertarian he would oppose federal funding of it.

Anyway, I am beginning to lose my respect for Sen. Frist because of his treachery. Even if it is a calculated move to garner support from the “center” of the political spectrum in preparation for his potential presidential run, it is by no means clear that such a move is wise in the current political climate. But then what do I know.

(UPDATE 2005-08-01 09:19) Ha, I am glad that I qualified my complaints with “what do I know.” This article from the GOP site, by someone who worked for Sen. Frist, cautions against pre-judging him. I suppose I shall halt the sliding of my respect for the time being and adopt a wait-and-see attitude.

(UPDATE 2005-08-07 16:53) I have been thinking about the possiblity that Sen. Frist’s apparent shift in position was more a political gesture than substantive change, especially in light of the fact, as he must have known, that President Bush would veto policies that would federally fund research involving creation and destruction of embryos. This line of thinking is in part confirmed by the latest edition of the Federalist Patriot (05-31), which usually is quite insightful in its political analysis:

On the culture front...

The Patriot has received countless inquiries from readers regarding the position this publication takes on Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's revised stance on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. At this point, our response has to be underwhelming.

As it stands, it's unclear just how much Sen. Frist has changed his position. He says that of the 78 existing embryonic stem-cell lines the federal government agreed to fund, only 22 are actually viable for research. Consequently, Frist says, Congress should increase funding to speed the research, and expand federally funded research to embryos created in vitro and frozen by couples who, having completed their fertility treatment, donate them to research. Otherwise, these embryos would remain frozen or be destroyed. Frist has endorsed House legislation to this effect -- legislation that does not permit creating embryos for research purposes.

All in all, this appears to be a mild change in policy; a slippery slope it need not be. Sen. Frist is, undoubtedly, jockeying for leverage on other issues, knowing that President Bush has vowed to veto any expansion to federal funding.