Do We Have Moral Obligations to Future Generations?

There’s a thought I’ve mulled over now and again for some time and I wondered what anyone else might think about this issue. What better time to write on it than “Back to the Future Day”— the day in the future that Marty McFly went to in the movie Back to the Future II. (I realize that “Back to the Future Day” is Oct. 21, 2015 and that I’m posting this on Oct. 20, 2015, but (perhaps ironically to some) I’m anticipating what my writing today might have on the readers tomorrow.) 

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Critical Thinking: So Often Ignored, It’s a Sin: A Few Thoughts on Kurt Eichenwald’s “The Bible-So Misunderstood, It’s a Sin.”

There are already a number of substantive refutations of the Newsweek article “The Bible-So Misunderstood, It’s a Sin” by Kurt Eichenwald (01.02.2015 – 01.09.2015), pp. 24-41. Indeed, Eichenwald’s points were already deftly refuted even before he put pen to paper. But if one’s sources are limited (either deliberately or through no fault of one’s own), then perhaps it is not surprising that Eichenwald would make some of the mistaken observations he made. However, I thought I would weigh in on just a few points I have yet to see in other analyses. I have my brother, Tom Howe, to thank for some of these insights.

First, Eichenwald uses the hackneyed example of how certain 

ID, Science, and the Philosophy of Science: Some Thoughts by Philosopher Dr. J. T. Bridges

I have been reading Stephen F. Mason’s A History of the Sciences and at the end of the chapter on Galileo’s work in mechanics he juxtaposes Kepler and Galileo writing:

Kepler was primarily concerned with making astronomy more precise and accurate technically, whilst Galileo was mainly interested in propagating the intellectual revolution inaugurated by Copernicus….

What Does This Verse Mean to You?—Verses Most Commonly Taken Out of Context 03: Immediate Context – How might the surrounding verses aid our understanding of a passage?

Because there are so many important examples of verses misinterpreted because the immediate context is ignored, it is a challenge to decide where to cut off with the examples and move on the next type of context. For the time being, I’ll stay on this section and explore a few more. The next passage is one whose

What Does This Verse Mean to You?—Verses Most Commonly Taken Out of Context 02: Immediate Context – How might the surrounding verses aid our understanding of a passage?

In a previous entry of “What Does This Verse Mean to You,” I introduced the subject of biblical interpretation, especially with regard to the matter of context. With the preliminaries behind us, in the following entries I want to take a look at one or more examples from each of these five different kinds of contexts Immediate, Original Language, Grammatical, Historical/Cultural, and Theological.

What Does This Verse Mean to You?—Verses Most Commonly Taken Out of Context 01: Some Thoughts about Understanding the Bible

Quite some time ago, I began to put together some thoughts regarding specific Bible verses or passages that I thought were often taken out of context. Those thoughts have taken the shape of a study that I’ve had the opportunity to conduct in various venues. Here, what I want to do is to take one verse or passage at a time from that study. I begin with some general thoughts about understanding the Bible.

Does Everything in the Bible apply to Us Today? 

Young Earth Presuppositionalism

I had the privilege of participating in a panel discussion/debate with K. Scott Oliphint (Westminster Theological Seminary) and Jason Lisle (Institute for Creation Research) on the relationship between apologetic methodology (presuppositionalism vs. classical apologetics) and the age of the Earth. I invite you to view the video here. Our discussion hit the highlights of our contributions to the Christian Apologetics Journal available for purchase here.

Forty-Seven Years Ago Today

I suppose that as long as there are March 3rds, I’ll do at least one blog a year (although it seems I actually did miss a few years). I don’t suppose I’ll never forget the date. Because of this, I feel compelled to re-post these musings.

(re-posted from previous years, mutatis mutandis) I remember being in the our front yard one afternoon after school on Marwood Dr. in Jackson, MS. One of my older brothers had had his telescope out looking at the cloud formations. It began to rain so my brother scooped up his telescope and he and I ran into the house. I sat down to watch television. It was about 4:30. We had a window over the kitchen sink that looked out into our carport. Suddenly, the rain and wind became so intense that the view from the carport window became obscured even though it was protected by the carport ceiling. Then the power went off. That was always frightening to a child, even in the afternoon. Then another brother came running into the den area where we were with our mom. (My youngest brother had been asleep on the couch.) Dad was away on one of his out-of-state business trips. My brother was yelling, “It’s a tornado! It’s a tornado!” None of us knew exactly what to do. The kids wanted to just jump in the car and flee but none of us knew exactly where to flee. Before we had time to really gain our composure (being only 10 years old, perhaps I was the only one who was actually panicked) the storm had passed. There was an errie calm that set in as we began to hear the scream of sirens. The tornado had passed at least a statue mile from our house and we sustained no damage. It was not so for Candlestick Park Shopping Center. Some sources say 13; others say 19 were killed in the shopping center. More were killed as the tornado tracked eastward across other parts of Mississippi and Alabama. Over 300 were injured. After the twister devastated Candlestick Park, it hit a power sub-station (which is what made our power go off). It then followed along Cooper Road for several hundred yards and lifted up, skipping over downtown Jackson. Another brother of mine (I have four) watched the storm from his office window in a downtown sky-scraper (or what would pass as one in those days). The duration of the afternoon and into the night was filled with the sounds of cars rushing to take the injured to the hospital. Someone came to our door and asked if we had a thermos he could borrow to render aid to the rescue teams. We sat around our kitchen table listening to a transistor radio. I was a Beatle fan. I heard for the first time their new hit “Nowhere Man.” Needless to say, every time I heard that song for many years after, it always took me back to those eerie and frightening feelings of that day. Finally, in what seemed like forever, our power came back on at about 10:00 that evening. We all hugged. It was Thursday, March 3, 1966.

Intellectual Dissonance

How Blogs by Writers Who Don’t Understand the Arguments and Reasoning They Have Read in Certain Other Blogs Make for Irksome Reading for the One Whose Arguments and Reasoning Was Completely Lost on Said Writer – A Rejoinder to Fred Butler’s “Apologetic Dissonance: How Popular Apologetics Causes Me to Grimace and Massage my Forehead Right above My Eyebrow.”

This is my rejoinder to Fred Butler’s blog entry “Apologetic Dissonance” found at http://hipandthigh.blogspot.com. In that entry, Mr. Butler has set out what ostensibly is a critique of my earlier blog entry “It’s Worse that I Thought” found at https://quodlibetalblog.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/its-worse-than-i-thought/#more-164 where I analyze a talk by Ken Ham I heard at a church near my home. The reader is encouraged to read my entry because I will allude to that article on several occasions. I also encourage you to read Mr. Butler’s article as well.

Breaking My Internet Silence on Mike Licona and Inerrancy

Until now, I have deliberately not directly weighed in anywhere on the internet regarding the row over Mike Licona’s views and the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Scriptures. The continued barrage of views in various blog posts and on FB (some by people I know and others not) has compelled me to give my 1.5 cents worth. I do not flatter myself to think that anyone would care what my views are in this matter; at least, not as far as being relevant in settling things. There might be some, however, who know me (and perhaps have studied under me) who might be interested in what I think about this debate, if only in as much as it departs from their own thinking.