Haldane’s Dilemma and Numbers

I first learned about Haldane’s Dilemma over at William Dembski’s Uncommon Descent blog. I thought it was a fascinating subject, and one that the neo-Darwinian evolution side of the controversy need to face if they are honest.

But one thought quickly entered my mind. One of the puzzling questions in the Old Testament concerning the Book of Numbers is that the numbers reported in the book of the populations of the twelve tribes seem implausibly high. This, many critics allege, is evidence that the Old Testament is not reliable or accurate—at least as far as historicity is concerned. I would not be surprised if those atheist evolutionists would use this same argument against the Bible. (For the record, there are plausible solutions to this problem of large numbers: these numbers are not entirely improbable, since the Isralites were particularly productive, and the growth rate required to achieve these numbers is not out of the bounds of reasonableness.)

But here is the rub. The same evolutionists insist that there is no dilemma in Haldane’s Dilemma (HD), even though, if they apply the same standard of criticism to HD as to the Old Testament, they are compelled, a fortiori, to regard HD as insurmountable. That is to say, they cannot reasonably deny the Numbers account while at the same time believe that HD poses no difficulty; indeed, HD is a much harder problem to overcome than the large numbers in OT.

Protesting the wrong thing

The supposed privacy advocates are directing their energies at protesting the wrong thing. The National Security Agency’s collection and analysis of domestic call data are really innocuous. They do not involve wiretapping or listening to the contents of calls, only number patterns. The hysteria is mostly due to ignorance, and, of course, politicians and lawyers profit from the ignorance of the masses.

Now if people are serious about privacy, they should direct their protests at the tax code and the Infernal Revenue Service. The IRS is the most intrusive beast in the government. Just think about it: in the United States we pay 1/3 of our income to be governed. When we lose control and enjoyment of the fruits of our labor, how are we different from slaves? It is amazing that so many people do not realize this.

What about public universities?

Leftists like to blast corporations for awarding executives outsized compensations. But how about the top guys in public universities? Sure, they probably don’t get hundreds of millions as, say, Lee Raymond (former CEO of Exxon-Mobil) did. But corporations do so with shareholders’ money, and if shareholders disagree, they can just dump the stock and find other companies with governance that they like. In contrast, public universities live on taxpayer money, and the hypocrisy is only too apparent. No wonder janitors are picketing.

A heartbreaking yet hopeful story

Something is very wrong with a country when its citizens would seek refuge in China; one such country is North Korea. Only that China is not much of a refuge after all, since many Chinese are driven by profit and have few moral scruples about turning in refugees to authorities for monetary reward. And yes, China has recently been voted back on the United Nations Human Rights Council while at the same time flagrantly violating its treaty obligations.

As part of my daily reading, I came upon this article by Melanie Kirkpatrick about the stories of two North Korean women who fled their oppressors, with many trials and tribulations on the way. These are heartbreaking stories, yet beautiful in that they testify to the ongoing work of missionaries who not only labor to bring the Gospel to difficult places, but also help the oppressed gain freedom in this life, here and now. I pray that God will be gracious to these women and they will be strengthened in their journey of faith.

Enns and Carson

Peter Enns, who has recently been promoted to professor of Old Testament and biblical hermeneutics at Westminster Seminary, has written a book titled Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. This book received a strongly negative review by Brenton Ferry in the New Horizons magazine (OPC). The book and the review apparently stirred up a little uneasiness in the readers. I read the review and have now read a good part of the book, and, frankly, I was a little swayed in Enns’s direction and found Ferry’s review to be too much in dogmatism and too little in engaging actual arguments. However, I also sensed some problems with Enns’s approach, but I could not articulate what was bothering me.

Thanks to D. A. Carson’s review on reformation21.org, I now have a better grasp of the issues and can see the weaknesses and gaps in Enns’s presentation. Carson is charitable in his tone, yet engages in real arguments. He points out counterarguments that had already been advanced but which Enns failed to include and address in his book. As a result, Enns seemed often to be hand-waving and would hide behind ambiguities of his incarnational metaphor. I do not doubt Enns commitment to the Westminster Standards and to sound scholarship; however, at many crucial points his presentation seems to be lopsided. Carson’s review was helpful to me in seeing the other side of the problem.

Annual Contest on My Royalty Check

I published a book back in 2002, with three other coauthors, and, to my amazement, I am still receiving royalty checks. Of course, the amount is diminishing, but for a very specialized technical book, that is still pretty encouraging.

Last year my sister and I started a little game to guess how much the amount of the royalty would be. We would each write our guess in an envelope, seal it, and store it in the safe. Then, when the royalty check arrives, the one whose guess is closer to the actual amount wins and is entitled to a free dinner at a fancy restaurant. Last year I was the winner, and both of us had overestimated. This year it turned out my sister was again more optimistic than I, but we both underestimated. Her guess was $723, and mine was $623. But the check came in at $792.61. Oh well. At least that is enough for the dinner. Maybe—if Uncle Sam does not take it away again by the dreaded AMT.

Why, Lord!?

This morning I received the sad news that Matt Baugh, a missionary of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church to Haiti, was killed in a motorcycle accident. He was survived by his wife and five young children.

It was a shock to me, as only on Wednesday I had prayed for him. In my head I know that God is sovereign and therefore his taking him away must be for his good purpose. But my heart could not but ask, “Why, Lord!?” May God sustain his family and give them courage and strength, and may God further open the way further for the Gospel to be preached in Haiti.

Sermons at Park Street Church, Boston

I have been enjoying Dr. Gordon Hugenberger’s sermons thanks to technology that facilitates the distribution of contents. Dr. Hugenberger is senior minister at Park Street Church, Boston; he has also taught at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. A friend of mine who studied under Dr. Hugenberger at Gordon-Conwell and later earned his Ph.D. in Old Testament at University of Sheffield, once described Dr. Hugenberger as the finest preacher in New England. Dr. Hugenberger has a good sense of humor, and, even though, as he himself admits, his sermons tend to be long, they are indeed well composed and a pleasure to hear (not to please men, of course, but edifying and uplifting). I greeted Dr. Hugenberger once when I visited Boston in March 2004, and asked him about his work on the commentary on the Book of Judges. I had learned from my friend more than ten years ago that he had been working on it, and Dr. Hugenberger was a little surprised that I knew about his work. I have his book Marriage as a Covenant, and am now eagerly awaiting his commentary. I marvel at his ability: ministering at a church like Park Street Church is not for the faint of heart, and he is also doing a theologian’s work! There is one thing on which I disagree with him, and that is his egalitarian-leaning position. His paper on that topic has been effectively refuted, I think, by his friend Wayne Grudem. But I guess I can live with that dissonance for his greatness in other areas.

Since I spend quite a bit of time on the road to and from work (about 20 minutes each way), I find it helpful to listen to the sermons while driving. An mp3-player with an FM transmitter doesn’t really work that well in my car; the FM reception tends to be noisy. So my current solution is to record the sermons on CD-RWs, which can be reused many times, and fortunately the CD player of my car can read CD-RWs. However, sometimes the CD player gets confused when I restart the car, and it cannot resume from where it last stopped. This could be an annoying problem if I record the (long) sermon as one track. I experimented with various solutions, and the best solution I have found is as follows:

1. Convert the mp3 to WAV format using lame --decode
2. Resample the WAV format to two-channel 44.1k sampling rate, using sox. I compiled sox on my PCs with cygwin. This resampling may take some time, but I can always pipeline the steps.
3. With a cuesheet file that breaks the resampled WAV into 5-minute chunks, I can then use Exact Audio Copy to write the WAV file into the CD-RW with gapless tracks.