1

Nice list.

How about adding some economic items?

I'd be interested to know what you think of our health care system, campaign finance, and other such issues.

2

I have no doubt about the "Who did it" though I am still undecided on the "how it happened" questions. I reject most YEC answers because I find them irrational and unpersuasive. I am more open to Intelligent Design because I find it more plausible than the alternatives. But I am also a firm believer that our understanding of science is at best rudimentary. Sure, we may have progressed in scientific knowledge to a point where we know more than Aristotle or Francis Bacon. But we still have a long way to go. My frequent defenses of ID are not an unqualified support of the theory. I just think the ideas should be intelligently considered.

Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience; . . . Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know. ~ James Barr Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University in England

Whoever takes another meaning out of Scripture than the writer intended, goes astray, but not through any falsehood in Scripture. ~ Augustine

Nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of the human mind. ~ Augustine

As a matter of interpretation, YEC is consistent, rational, and obvious. Other interpretations are, mostly, tortured attempts to appease materialists.

3

I for one would like to hear what Joe's problems are with YEC's.

I'm probably considered a YEC although i'm not exactly sure what that entails. I'd say I agree pretty much with what bevets wrote above, and I obviously agree with the Old Testament account, and i'd also say that Intelligent Design appears plausible to me. Can a YEC also subscribe to ID?

Perhaps there is a part that I do not comprehend, but it seems that i'm for both.

4

As an American living in a foreign country (New Zealand, the socialist and deeply politically correct "Sweden" of the South Pacific) I can testify that people here think in cliches as much, if not more so, than Americans do.

5

Good list, Joe. I was surprised at how many points we agree on, including creation.

Fortunately, Johnny and Bob recorded "Girl from the North Country" together, which is a fine song.

One problem I have with YEC is that God has endowed us with intelligence, and we have used that intelligence to discover fossils and to be able to date those fossils. A YEC view of the earth is that it is much younger than the age of the fossils.

6

Bob wrote;

A YEC view of the earth is that it is much younger than the age of the fossils.

Maybe this is the problem that Joe has with YEC? Not sure but let's see if we can discuss this.

Science tells me that it is not possible for the Earth to stop spinning (Or if it does there will be trouble). It also tells me that it is impossible for Mary to have given birth to Christ without first having copulated with a man. It tells me all kinds of things that happened in the Bible that appear impossible and could only be possible through the supernatural acting on the natural.

So, i'm not sure what your objection is, unless it is that there is no supernatural?

7

Joe:

You wrote,

"While I'm opinionated and hard-headed, I am open to persuasive power of rational argumentation. I've only thought through about 46% of my opinions so there is still plenty of room for convincing. In other words, if you think I'm wrong, you're more than welcome to try to set me straight."

I don't think you're right about that: when you say "about 46%" it reflects that you haven't thought through your opinion of what you've thought through. It would be more accurate, I think, to say you've thought through 100% of your opinions but, in some instances, not very well or thoroughly.

I hope, having heard my convincing argument, that you're now straight.

8

Joe says: "I'm pro-life, which is why I am theoretically in favor of the death penalty."

Perhaps I have my wires crossed, but I need that one explained to me. I don't see the inferential relation that you seem to think carries you from the first to the second.

9

Joe:

I can't find anything on your list I disagree with. I would say that one sentence that describes you and me and probably many Christians who agree with you is this: "There are not too many hills I want to die on."

Eric & Lisa:

I have never understood for one moment the insistence by Christians that the earth must be young. This insistence seems to be based on the notion of six 24-hour days of creation. This notion is absolutely, positively, incredibly, maddeningly, silly. The notion that a day means anything at all to our God is silly. (But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 2 Peter 3:8) There was nothing like our 24-hour day until the fourth day of creation. Making God operate in six 24-hour days makes the Bible contradict itself in an obviously silly way. This has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not God COULD do it in six 24-hour days. Of course he COULD. But the insistence that He did is bizarre. I just don't get it.

I have great respect for your opinions on many subjects, however.

10

bevets:

"As for these 'days,' (Genesis creation days) it is difficult, perhaps impossible to think - let alone explain in words - what they mean." ~ Augustine, In the City of God

"But at least we know that it (the Genesis Creation day) is different from the ordinary day with which we are familiar." ~ Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis

Augustine doesn't seem to be quite as sure as you in regards to Creation. But perhaps he was trying to appease the "materialists."

11

I don't condone torture or support those who do. I also don't think the word has been properly defined in a way that is useful in clarifying the political debate on the issue. There is a broad spectrum that ranges from undeniable acts of outrage to the type of discomfort that I was subjected to in Marine Corps Boot Camp. Confusing the term in order to bash the President has done more harm than good and may unnecessarily inflame anti-American sentiment .

That being said, if President Bush has authorized actions that I would consider torture then I think he should be condemned and held accountable.

At boot camp did you have to have your rectal temperature constantly monitored to ensure that you didn't accidently die causing the Marines the embrassment of telling your parents they killed you? As in:

"When the Navy SEALS would interrogate people, they were using ice water to lower the body temperature of the prisoner and they would take his rectal temperature in order to make sure that he didn't die. I didn't see this, but that's what many, many prisoners told me who came out of the SEAL Compound, and I also heard that from a guard who was working in our detention facility, who was present during an interrogation that the SEAL had done."
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/09/malkin_award_no_2.html

I've been somewhat agnostic on the torture debate myself. The origin of the above source is Democracy NOW, a far left wing program BUT the statement is from U.S. Army interrogator Specialist Tony Lagouranis AND other pieces of evidence are leading in the same direction that this isn't just a case of bad apples but a policy directed from the top.

Also troubling is the fact that this administration appears to be caving in intellectually on the issue. We are being told that unlike the 40 years we spent under the terror of nuclear now 'times are different'. The first sign that you are starting to move towards unethical behavior is rationalizing that the tough times you are experiencing are somehow exceptional and therefore justify relaxing or ditching rules that were in place in the past (which was supposedly peaceful and innocent).

If you need additional help take a peek at John Yoo:

Cassel: If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him? Yoo: No treaty Cassel: Also no law by Congress -- that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo... Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

Again that quote came from a radical source (a communist outfit) but disturbingly the quote appears totally real. (Nat Hentoff appears to have confirmed it was said by Yoo http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0605,hentoff,71946,6.html). Let's take a step back here and keep the following in perspective.

1. While tragic, 9/11 was carried out by a trivial number of people and killed a TRIVIAL number of people. If you look at the number of people murdered each year in the US 9/11 was barely a blip. While 9/11 did justifying changing lots of things it DID NOT justify fundamentally changing our way of life. There's a big difference between saying now we must be extra secure at airports and boarding planes and saying that a handful of nuts who live in caves have altered the principles upon which the US was founded. In contrast look at how Churchill behaved in WWII. He told Britons to pick themselves up, shake the dust off their clothes and continue to behave as Englishmen, not giving the enemy the satisfaction of taking their spirit. This was after enduring a lot worse than 9/11. This President, though, would have us act quite frankly as sissies living in a state of hyper fear half a decade after we lost 2.5 office buildings.

2. These victims were and are very real but historically this hardly rises to something so horrible that all rules of ethical behavior are off. During WWII people were being killed by the millions. From that, though, the US clearly asserted an ethic that torture, war crimes and other inhuman behavior (not a great word since such behavior is all too human..) were illegal regardless of what a country's actual written laws said.

3. Now after debasing themselves on behalf of the Bush administration the intellectual bankruptcy of the right is almost complete. A gov't official can casually assert there is no law against not only torture but even torturing of innocent children (mutiliation too) if the President thinks national security merits it.

12

Science tells me that it is not possible for the Earth to stop spinning (Or if it does there will be trouble). It also tells me that it is impossible for Mary to have given birth to Christ without first having copulated with a man. It tells me all kinds of things that happened in the Bible that appear impossible and could only be possible through the supernatural acting on the natural.

So, i'm not sure what your objection is, unless it is that there is no supernatural?

Logical error here by our friends Eric & Lisa. They/it are making the following argument:

Science says certain things cannot happen absent the supernatural.

The Bible says certain supernatural things happen (Virgin birth, earth standing still).

Therefore if Joe asserts YEC is wrong he must be rejecting the supernatural.

I'll let someone else figure out the names of the error(s) committed here.

13

Jd wrote;

I have never understood for one moment the insistence by Christians that the earth must be young.

I do not insist that the Earth must be young. I believe that it probably is, in a sense, quite young, just as say a new car is young in one sense, although it was put together with parts that are from an Earth which is quite old, if you get my meaning.

My view, and i'm not sure if this is the YEC view but i'm guessing it is similar, is that since Genesis reads, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters."

I take from this that there was a bunch of stuff, of what sort i'm not entirely sure. God took that stuff and made the light and the darkness and everything else. Just as I could take a bunch of materials and put together a structure, the structure might be new but the materials used to create the structure may be really old.

Obviously not scientifically possible because all that stuff that was there to begin with, well, what do we know about it? Nothing really. Only, in my view, that God created it and with it he made everything.

So in this way, yes, I think the Earth is quite new. Recently formed from a bunch of stuff that had probably been around for quite some time. However, as should be clear, the stuff that we are made of, and the earth, is quite old.

14

thanks for the heartfelt and open commentary on yourself.

i, like i suspect several others do, read this post to try to understand how evangelicals think. i was raised in the church, went to church school instead of public, went to church 3 times a week. i was there at what must have been the beginnings of the christian right movement in the mid-80s.

i can't say that i understand modern christians, even though i was raised one. i simply don't understand how the bible is read to support the republican agenda. not that this is about politics, like a free-market economy as opposed to socialsim, but more like why does the church seem set on bringing about the apocalypse? do christians really beleive that by waging multiple wars in the mid-east that this will bring christ back? if so, this is the height of arrogance: to assume that anything man, even born-agains, can do will in nay way influence god.

i don't get it. please explain.

15

If you mean by recently formed formed in the neighborhood of 4-5 BYA then yea we are all on the same page. If you mean less than 50,000 years old then that is directly contradicted by the scientific evidence.

The other items you mentioned are not directly contradicted. We know from observation that human females get pregnant from having sex with males but that cannot rule out the possibility that of the billions of times this has happened there wasn't a single time it didn't. However you run into a serious problem if you're going to assert that the Earth as we know it got its start only a few thousand years ago when there's a wealth of evidence, in fact proof, that it's older than that.

As an academic exercise, tell my why a RYEC (really young earth creationist) would be wrong? Say one who asserts that the Earth is only about 95 years old?

16

Joe,
You've been really far-fetched before, but when did Cash & Dylan ever work together? :)

collin
http://evangelicalperspective.blogspot.com

17

I just think the ideas [of Intelligent Design] should be intelligently considered.

And if their proponents ever do so, they'll be taken seriously. We're still waiting.

18

So, tastes great or less filling?

19

The importance of believing in six literal days of creation goes back to the issue of the inerrancy of the Bible. They are six days because God said that they are six days, simple as that. When one reads the creation narrative without bringing any preconceived notions of the age of the earth to it- especially when one reads things like "morning" and "evening" denoting one full, 24-hour day- it is easy to see where the six days of creation and one day of rest comes from. Of course, God is not bound by time, so why can he not create in a week if He chose to do so? Why is it silly for us to assume that what He has told us is true? For more on this topic, see
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i1/sixdays.asp
Answers in Genesis is an incredible resource on Young Earth Creationism, and backs up it's claims not only with the authority of the Bible, God's word, but also with science and research from some very educated scholars. It's much more helpful for defining and defending YEC beliefs than I could ever be.

Joe- on the rest of your beliefs, I think I'd tend to agree with you. :-)

20

The torture dialog going on right now is interesting. We really need to get Christians thinking about the issues here. It is easy to just agree with one political party's stated position - we need to evaluate each element of what our leaders do. (Al Mohler wrote the most thoghtful commentary on the subject, in which he condemns the use of torture.)

I forget who said that Christians support the war in Iraq in order to bring on the apocolypse . . . but that isn't correct of most of us. While there is general interest in the mid-east for the reason that it is mentioned in apocolypse scriptures, most Christians do not think that us sending troops to the mid-east is going to affect God's timing one bit. What we DO believe is that Jesus will return when he wishes, and while told to be watchful, we will not know the day or the hour - only God does (and nothing we do is going to affect the day or hour).

21

Collin,

Dylan and Cash worked together on the Dylan's Nashville Skyline album, circa 1969. Their duet was on "Girl from the North Country".

22

"I don't hate libertarians. I just think that they are more dangerous than other types of liberals."

What about Vox Day?

23

The issue of torture is a troubling one for anybody. I think Joe was right to call into question the definition of torture. We need to define it.

My impulse is to condemn anything regarded as torture in any circumstance. But then, suppose we were faced with an impending attack on a major city with a nuclear device, and we had people in custody who could provide the information that would enable us to stop this attack and save tens of thousands of lives. What are the limits of what should be allowed to get that information?

This is not an easy question.

24

They are six days because God said that they are six days, simple as that.

God also said he was a mother hen, a door, a shepherd, and so forth. The secret to a biblical hermeneutic is to read Scripture in the way it intends to be read. Now, I realize that isn't always easy, and people of good faith can disagree, but note that in the original Hebrew the creation narrative in Genesis is rendered as poetry. That should give an initial clue as to how to read it.

Also remember that the same man who wrote Genesis, Moses, also wrote, "For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night" (Psalm 90:4).

25

Rachel,

You make the distinction that it is significant that since there was "evening & morning" that they must be 24 hr. days. If I'm not mistaken, the sun and moon were specifically created on the 4th day. This is what governs evening and morning on this planet. So there's a little discrepency right there, among many others that could be pointed out.

The Biblical Creation story is not there to give us a detail by detail account of what happened, but rather to stress the fact that it was YHWH that was the Creator. It's not there to give YEC's a reason to dogmatically assert that there belief is the only true interpretation of the Bible that still holds to inerrancy.

26

Thanks for flashing your ideological passport, permitting your posts to have free travel in my country of thought. so says churchpundit!

27

I don't condone torture or support those who do. I also don't think the word has been properly defined in a way that is useful in clarifying the political debate on the issue. There is a broad spectrum that ranges from undeniable acts of outrage to the type of discomfort that I was subjected to in Marine Corps Boot Camp. Confusing the term in order to bash the President has done more harm than good and may unnecessarily inflame anti-American sentiment .

That being said, if President Bush has authorized actions that I would consider torture then I think he should be condemned and held accountable.

The problem Joe is that Bush is not interested in "clarifying" the issue. His intent is exactly the opposite. To make the definition vague enough to permit torture. Sullivan says it better than I can:

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/09/bushs_central_l.html

The Washington Post homes in on the essential fiction that the president is telling about his position on military interrogation: that he wants "clarity" for interrogators. There already is clarity. What Bush wants is a vague and utterly subjective standard against treatment that merely "shocks the conscience." ... Common Article 3 is not vague. It is crystal clear. It bans what Mr Bush has illegally authorized and wants to continue practicing.

My main beef with the Christian political groups, when I'm not beating them up about their retarded ideas about gay and lesbian people, is that they won't even engage in the debate on torture.

The last few weeks, where has Focus on the Family been? How about the Traditional Values Coalition, Phyllis Schaefly's CWA, or other members of the Arlington group, the collection of conservative and Christian political orgs? They meet with the White House on an almost weekly basis to plan strategy.

If the President had come forward and said that he wanted to make Gay marriage legal, they would be sending out 100 press releases a minute. But if the President says he wants to make "coercive interrogation", techniques, such as water-boarding, SOP for intelligence gathering and the military, they fall utterly silent and won't even engage in the debate at all.

28

The Biblical Creation story is not there to give us a detail by detail account of what happened

It is very literal if it is only meant to be figurative....

Also saying science has "proven" fossils are of a certain age is misleading. You can't prove the age of anything unless you have eyewitness accounts when the thing began. I have only found one eyewitness account.

All other aging "guesses" are based on lots of assumptions, which may or may not be true.

Not believing what is written by the only eyewitness takes a lot more faith than just believing it. :)

Brad

29

Brad,

It is very literal if it is only meant to be figurative

I have no idea what that statement means.

I also didn't say anything about the age of fossils proving the age of the earth. I just don't think we really can say definitively how old the Earth is. I also don't think the Bible demands a YEC view.
We have science, from which we can determine some things about the universe around us. It seems pretty clear that either a) the universe is really old, or b) God made it to look really old to trick us into thinking it was really old (ok, maybe it wasn't to trick us :) ). Unless one of the things you consider an "assumption" is the speed of light.

30

Tom and iDoc,

Rachel IS reading Scripture in the way it was intended to be read. It is obvious that "mother hen" is a symbolic idea. The Creation narrative, however, is most certainly not poetic or symbolic. It is in the Hebrew style of straight historical narrative, which is how Jesus (Mark 10:6), the Apostles (read 2nd Peter; it seems Peter believed in a global flood), and the majority of church fathers and Reformers understood it. Simply referring to another passage that shows how a day is like a thousand years to God is irrelevant to this argument and is the real hermeneutical fallacy in this discussion. The question is not "how long the Genesis days felt like to God"; the question is "were they really 24-hour days?" I think almost everyone who read Genesis prior to the modern age of evolutionary ideas would have understood Genesis in the literal sense (Augustine's problem was rooted in Greek philosophy; he thought God created everything in an instant). There is no contextual clue to suspect otherwise. In fact whenever "day" ("yom" in Hebrew) is coupled with terms like "first, second, evening, morning, etc." anywhere else in the OT it is always referring to a 24-hour day. I think the only reason anyone really doubts what day means in this passage is due to an ‘a priori’ commitment to an extrabiblical assumption (based on philosophy, not real operational science) about the age of the Earth. To read that back into Genesis is called eisegesis and it is a fallacy.

Regarding other objections...

-All you need for morning and evening is a rotating Earth and a light source. God created light on day 1 and gathered it into one place (source unknown, it may have come from Himself). On day 4 God installed the sun and moon to take over. No trouble at all, unless you are convinced National Geographic can't go wrong.

-As for fossils and rock layers and all that, it is impossible scientifically to determine the ages of such things, as all the current dating methods are based on untestable assumptions about starting conditions, decay rates, and contamination. Distant starlight arguments face a similar problem. Do we really know that much about the nature and shape of the space time continuum both now and in the past to use distant starlight to discredit Genesis? Indeed, the big bang crowd has a distant starlight problem of its own.

In fact all these arguments for long ages and/or evolution are really as much based on philosophical considerations as young Earth Creationism. So since both views are on equal footing scientifically (though most in the mainstream would never dare to admit it), why not trust the plain meaning of Scripture, instead of trying to reinterpret Genesis to fit the philosophical schemes of atheists and deists.

I invite you to go to www.answersingenesis.org, type in any of the terms discussed here and see a plethora of convincing evidence (in much more depth than I can provide) for the YEC interpretation.

31

Brad:

Also saying science has "proven" fossils are of a certain age is misleading. You can't prove the age of anything unless you have eyewitness accounts when the thing began. I have only found one eyewitness account.

Again, what proof do you have that the world isn't say 150 years old?

All other aging "guesses" are based on lots of assumptions, which may or may not be true.

The same could be said about your reading of the Bible.

berean77
My impulse is to condemn anything regarded as torture in any circumstance. But then, suppose we were faced with an impending attack on a major city with a nuclear device, and we had people in custody who could provide the information that would enable us to stop this attack and save tens of thousands of lives. What are the limits of what should be allowed to get that information?

It is a difficult question but it is interesting to note many here have had no problem answering it in a slightly different form. When the topic of stem cell research comes up many here are very quick to declare that if it did produce some miracle cure it still is not ethical to kill an innocent life. So if you can't kill an innocent life to save hundreds of thousands or millions then why is it questionable to...say...crush the testicals of a child of a terrorist suspect to do the same?

What else should be noted here is that the assumptions of this hypothetical are set up to be as favorable as possible towards torture. It is a certainity we have the right suspect. It is certain only torture will reveal this information. It is certain that the only choices are torture to get this information or suffer not finding the ticking bomb in time.

Not to dodge the hypothetical but shouldn't we note that so far no evidence has been produced that our policy has been so refrained so as to only torture people who we know to possess knowledge of such ticking time bombs. Historically we know that regimes that engaged in a policy of torture, whether their ideologies were far leftist or far rightist, almost always did not engage in 'professional torture' of just the right suspects to just the right degree. They almost always ended up encouraging sadism on the part of those who implemented the policy. Even in our recent history look at the torture scandals that hit Iraq. What was often missed in the reports is there was no clear evidence many of the victims were terrorist masterminds. In fact many of them appeared to be either petty criminals or other types of nobodies. Those who engaged in the torture were likewise rookies. Not master interrogrators seeking specific information, which is who you would want to interrogate someone you honestly thought was a mastermind who knew where Al Qaeda planted the time bomb.

Which of course brings up your other implicit assumption that there is no downside to this policy. Accepting torture gives up a chunck of the moral high ground. No I don't think it makes us as bad as Al Qaeda but it is certainly a step closer to them rather than a step away from them. The practical consquences to this means that we will lose some friends in the world. That some will be more sympathetic to Al Qaeda than they otherwise would have been. That our enemies will exploit this for propoganda against us. Now like it or not those are costs. In some circumstances, though, the costs may be offset by the gains but nothing about this administration leads me to believe they have gained anything valuable from torture to offset its costs.

So to begin to address your hypothetical.

Assuming such a situtation existed before engaging in torture you would need a rock solid system of checks and balances to:

1. Determine if torture could be justified.
2. Determine which tortures could be used.
3. Ensure that they are properly carried out and torturers are not permitted to fall into sadism.

The result would be a little bit like the death penalty. Perhaps it is technically on the books but applying it is so difficult that if it is ever used it is only used in a small fraction of cases. Of course this assumes already that you have accepted morally that the death penalty is OK. Here the above assumes we have accepted the morality of torture in such an extraordinary case. That's a big if, from what I have read so far both domestic and international law DOES NOT accept torture as moral even in the extreme 'ticking time bomb' case. Here we should be clear and demand that Bush state he wants a revised moral policy if that's what he is really aiming at.

Assuming you accept the morality of torture in the time bomb scenero then it is reasonable to demand that any torture policy show how it will be limited to such sceneros. So far this adminsitration's idea is "if I say it is necessary then it is and if you don't trust me you shouldn't have elected me". No, I think it has to do better.

32

To address several points:

To not be a YEC is not to deny a global flood. Please don't conflate the two.

Unless the laws of physics have changed since the creation, we actually do have some pretty good standards on which to judge the age of the universe. You must believe that the speed of light and the decay rate of radioactive materials have somehow changed since the creation in order to discount some of the standard means by which we judge dates. You don't have to know the starting point; you need to know where you are and count backwards based on known constants. It's like looking at a map and tracing back to your journey's beginning by recounting the miles traveled, the turns made, etc.

And finally, answersingenesis is not the be-all, end-all. They have had to several times go back and correct their "scientific" evidence to bring it up to speed with irrefutable evidence we know, e.g., the group's previous stand that entropy is proof of the Fall until, oops, someone pointed out that entropy is involved in everyday occurences such as digestion.

33

Also, the claim that the Hebrew word "yom" with an ordinal number always means a 24-hour day is simply wrong on several counts. First, it relys on a misreading of the original Hebrew. Gleason Archer, as solid an evangelical as you can find, does a nice job of dealing with that argument:

“ There were six major stages in this work of formation, and these stages are represented by successive days of a week. In this connection it is important to observe that none of the six creative days bears a definite article in the Hebrew text; the translations “the first day,” “ the second day,” etc., are in error. The Hebrew says, “And the evening took place, and the morning took place, day one” (1:5). Hebrew expresses “the first day” by hayyom harison, but this text says simply yom ehad (day one). Again, in v.8 we read not hayyom hasseni (“the second day”) but yom seni (“a second day”). In Hebrew prose of this genre, the definite article was generally used where the noun was intended to be definite; only in poetic style could it be omitted. The same is true with the rest of the six days; they all lack the definite article. Thus they are well adapted to a sequential pattern, rather than to strictly delimited units of time.”

That view also has a problem with Hosea 6:1-2, which uses the word "yom" with numbers but clearly refers to longer periods of time.

“Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.

For anyone so interested, the Hebrew scholar Rodney Whitefield--another solid evangelical, by the way--can lay out all the grammtical rules of Hebrew for why the answersingenesis explanation is simply mistaken, made as it is by people who don't really read Hebrew.

34

Franklin Mason,
Unless I missed it, your question wasn't answered.
I'll answer my opinion of Joe's statement and your question:

"Joe says: "I'm pro-life, which is why I am theoretically in favor of the death penalty."
Perhaps I have my wires crossed, but I need that one explained to me. I don't see the inferential relation that you seem to think carries you from the first to the second".

Personally, I find this quite easy and wise. However, Joe was not very clear, so to clarify, I believe he means in favor of the death penalty for murder.

How is it pro-life to be for the death penalty for murder?

It's the very definition of pro-life. As a society that values life, we are saying that if you murder someone, you forfeit your life. To not forfeit the life of someone that murders is not valuing the life of the murdered individual. Being against the death penalty is the same as no penalty.

35

"My main beef with the Christian political groups, when I'm not beating them up about their retarded ideas about gay and lesbian people, is that they won't even engage in the debate on torture."

Really?

http://tinyurl.com/pfzdg

36

YEC, no YEC!
Whatever!

I only have a problem when people use a debate like this to define whether someone really is a Christian of not.

Do not create barriers to Christianity that don't need to be there (not that anybody here is doing that)

37

Joe, I'm a real soulmate on most things, but I think you 'damn' GWB with quite a LOT of praise. Not only beating Kerry, but also Gore-Blimey is quite a service to the USA in itself.
He's at least a very convinced Christian, and in a two horse race don't you have to back the better one, rather than neither? I can't understand the US only having a 50% turnout. I think that's a big weakness, even if it turns out OK mostly..
As an Australian I'd get the chance to keep voting for GWB unless a better guy showed up, unlike your strange system which gives you lame-duck leaders.
Look at your noncommittal remarks again. Just HOW MUCH can any one man do? Isn't Reagan about on a level with GWB?:
I'm not a Bush apologist. In fact, I don't particularly care for George W. Bush. I believe he is a generally mediocre President who has been thrust into an extraordinary time in history. On such issues as global terrorism or embryonic stem cell research, I believe he is right more often than he is wrong. Also, whether due to luck or skill, he has prevented any further terrorist attacks on U.S. soil; I give him credit for that occurring on his watch. He also averted the tragi-comedy of a Kerry Administration, so I have to give him that too. Still, my support for him is severely limited.

38

Tim L. To add to your reply to Franklin, it amazes me how people DON'T see the rationality in Joe's statement. If life has an infinite or great value [even an atheist must agree on the second], depriving someone deliberately of it is huge inustice, a profound, almost incalculable crime, but the anti-CP people never seem to 'get it'.
Cruelly killing a child [and Jesus had very strong things to say about abusing children] can deprive him or her of 60 years of productive life, but the penalty now can be as little as six or seven years in a comfortable cell for the offender.
Is that justice, or excessive mercy?
Usually you can get a fair answer by asking the families of the murdered, who are also victimised for life.

39

Barrie and Tim L -

Hmm... I find myself with Franklin on this.

Killing to prove that life is valuable seems a bit off. And I seem to recall Jesus amending 'eye for an eye' in the NT - to something more like 'love your enemy'.

40

Barrie and Tim L.,

I'll press the issue. For the Christian, human life is of great value. Perhaps as Barrie says it is of infinite value. Moreover, for the Christian, this value can never be lost. For we are all sinners and all would be lost if Christ had not come, and yet he did come so that all might be saved.

For the Christian, sin, no matter its severity, cannot erase the value of a human life. How then can we justify the death penalty?

Perhaps you'll reply that justice demands that a price be paid for the sin of murder (and indeed for all other sins). But it is of the essence of Christianity that the price of sin need not be paid by us. It has been paid for us, paid by another. Christ has paid the price for us and thus we may be forgiven our sins. If Christ has done this for us, should we not do the same for others.
I do not mean to let murderesr free. We still must protect ourselves from the harms that others might do to us. But there is no need to kill the murderer once he is caught, and if so should we not follow the example of Christ and exercise what mercy we can? Should we not spare the murderer's life.

Christianity is not a religion of justice alone. It is also a religion of mercy, and indeed the mercy takes precedence over the justice. It is by the mercy of God that we are spared. Ought we not emulate that mercy to the degree that we are capable?

I find it curious that often when we reflect on our own sins we praise the mercy of God, but when we speak of the sins of others we demand only justice and allow no room for mercy.

In a way, not only just punishment but mercy too reflect the value of human life. Just punishment reflects the value of the life harmed. Mercy reflects the value of he who did the harm. How are these to be balanced? Christ has shown us the way. Where we might have expected only justice and thus punishment, we received mercy. Where we might have expected that we would be condemned, we were redeemed.

41

Anna,

I never said killing to prove the value of life. I said killing because of the value of life. Even if my above post is wrong, there is quite a difference in intent.

The wisdom of the death sentence is certainly biblical. Franklin, maybe you are right in that things are different in the NT with Jesus and mercy in addition to justice.

However, I want to get back to Joe's statement. The response by others were that it didn't even make sense to be pro-life and also pro-death sentence. My only argument is that it does make sense and it is an argument founded in wisdom. Your argument does not dismiss the wisdom of Joe's statement or my defense of it, in other words saying that it doesn't make any sense is not the basis of disagreement. On the other hand, to say that there is a better way and showing the example or explanation (as Franklin has) is the basis of listening and conversing about a very important subject.

It's kind of similar to another aspect of wisdom. Many comment about fearing God. It is certainly wise to fear God, but we are also told in 1 John 4:16 that "there is no fear in love. But perfect loves drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love".
Now does this mean that to fear God doesn't make sense? My opinion is not at all, for "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge". To have no fear, is to understand the Lord's perfect love. It's a maturing of wisdom, a maturing of your relationship with God.

42

Joe:

When I read other people’s interpretations of my views—both here and on other blogs—I often want to respond the same way as Cash: It doesn’t go like that at all.

Mostly, it’s my fault for not being clear in what I mean.

No, it's not. It's not your fault at all.

Most of the items on your list where things I already knew quite well to be your opinion. All the rest, while somewhat new to me, were entirely consistent with what you have written over the years.

The fault, Mr. Carter, lies in the ability of readers to understand the positions of someone who may disagree with them.

43

The biblical justification of the death penalty (in Genesis 9) is very much based on pro-life considerations. Since it is such a high crime to take the life of a human being, the only appropriate punishment is that the murderer's life is forfeit. It's murder to take the life of a (relatively) innocent person. It's justice to take the life of someone who has forfeited the right to life by unjustly taking an innocent's life.

44

Eric & Lisa -- Maybe this is the problem that Joe has with YEC?

I probably shouldn’t have opened that can of worms. I’ll have to save that for a future post in order to give it the attention it deserves.

Dr. Mike -- I don't think you're right about that: when you say "about 46%" it reflects that you haven't thought through your opinion of what you've thought through.

Yes, that particular opinion also falls into the 54% of opinions that I haven’t thought through. ; )

Franklin -- Perhaps I have my wires crossed, but I need that one explained to me.

Jeremy Pierce beat me to this one. His explanation in his comment sums up my belief on the issue.

Boonton -- From your quote: I didn't see this,…

That about sums it up. The “torture” in question is based on third-hand hearsay evidence.

… other pieces of evidence are leading in the same direction that this isn't just a case of bad apples but a policy directed from the top.
Isn’t this what was said about Abu Ghraib? Oh, and where are all those tapes that were supposedly on the verge of being released that would show the extent of the abuse going on there?
I prefer to deal with the evidence when it is presented, rather than based on promises that “it’s there…we just can’t show you yet…” If there is so much torture going on, why isn’t it easier to document evidence of it occurring?

Chris -- What about Vox Day?

Good grief, Vox is the most dangerous of all. ; )

Patrick -- Sullivan says: “Common Article 3 is not vague. It is crystal clear.”
Sullivan is an idiot. Common Article 3 is vague. It was written with the intention of being vague. If it was crystal clear than a nation cold have their lawyers could parse the text and find ways to torture people that did not fit the “crystal clear” definition in the Geneva code. The ambiguity is needed to keep country’s unsure about what is considered a “war crime.”

Unfortunately, the ambiguity cuts both ways. Because violations are felonies, U.S. soldiers could be tried for “war crimes” based on what a country like Somalia believes is an “outrage upon personal dignity.” A female prison guard inadvertently rubbing up against a Muslim prisoner would qualify, thereby giving a reason for charging her with a war crime. That is why Bush wants it defined clearly. We’ll never meet the world’s shifting interpretation but at least we can follow what the American people believe is the definition of a “war crime.”

My main beef with the Christian political groups, when I'm not beating them up about their retarded ideas about gay and lesbian people, is that they won't even engage in the debate on torture.
There are a number of reasons why these groups have not spoken out, the main one being that the “debate on torture” has been mainly a red herring. No one has come out and said they are for torture. The “debate” is often about interrogation techniques that may or may not “shock the conscience.” When you dig beneath the surface you find that the questions are far more nuanced an complex than the Bush-bashers claim.

Also, all of the groups you mention focus on domestic policies. They have no experts on national security on staff, so it would be a bit of a stretch for them to speak on an issue for which they would be woefully ill-informed.

45

Boonton wrote;

If you mean less than 50,000 years old then that is directly contradicted by the scientific evidence.

It might be, just as the birth of Christ is in direct contradiction to science, just as his resurrection is in direct contradiction to science, just as fitting a bunch of animals on an arch is in direct contradiction to science.

So, what's your point?

Boonton also wrote;

Say one who asserts that the Earth is only about 95 years old?

Well, if one asserts it, that's one thing. If God asserts it that's another thing all together. Why should I care if some stranger asserts that the earth is 95 years old?

This one pops up twice, so I guess Boonton thinks it is important

Again, what proof do you have that the world isn't say 150 years old?

These are odd questions and i'm not sure why they are asked. Perhaps Boonton can explain.

46

I wanted to share a few more thoughts about miracles (Such as creation) and time.

In Matthew 21:19-20 we have the following;

And seeing a lone fig tree by the road, He came to it, and found nothing on it except leaves only; and He said to it, "No longer shall there ever be any fruit from you." and at once the fig tree withered. And seeing this, the disciples marveled, saying, "How did the fig tree wither at once?"

We all know through science that it takes time for a tree to wither. Shoot, even the disciples knew that and surely their science was poorer than ours. Yet this happened, "at once." So, to any scientific observer the tree would be old and dead, hence the miracle.

In John 2:9-10 we have this,

And when the headwaiter tasted the water which had become wine and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the headwaiter called the bridegroom, and said to him, "Every man serves the good wine first, and when men have drunk freely, then that which is poorer; you have kpt the good wine until now."

Anyone who knows anything about making wine knows that the key scientific process in wine making is time or, as they wine makers like to call it, fermentation.

So, if we were to drink some good wine we would be very surprised to discover it took literally, no time at all to make. We'd even say it was a miracle. Or, as I mentioned above, the supernatural acting on the natural.

Of course, most scientists wouldn't believe it. They'd examine the wilted tree and find scientific evidence to support the theory that the tree wilted just as all tree's wilt. And if they examined the wine they'd find all the same things they find in non-supernaturaly made wine, i'm sure. In other words, there wouldn't be some supernatural marker that scientists could point to and say, "Ah! The supernatural is proved scientifically." That sort of defeats the purpose of a miracle, i'd say.

I'm rambling now, I hope my point is clear. I barely even had to look for those two examples I gave. They sprung up from memory, so i'm sure there are plenty more just like that. Those two should be sufficient to make my point.

47

Joe....I can't believe you forgot....you didn't tell your readers that you are considered to be, by your nearest and dearest, an optimistic sap! :)

48

Boonton wrote:

"While tragic, 9/11 was carried out by a trivial number of people and killed a TRIVIAL number of people...
...This President, though, would have us act quite frankly as sissies living in a state of hyper fear half a decade after we lost 2.5 office buildings."

How are we acting like sissies? After all, it's no big deal. If we were truly sissies we'd get really serious and lose a couple hundred thousand, right? We've lost a "trivial" number of soldiers in Iraq, historically speaking. How many times have you lefties complained about the "trivial" number of lives lost in Iraq?

The President has not apparently asked the Left to sacrifice enough...so I will ask for him. All you lefties who feel that we haven't sacrificed enough for the cause, feel free to sacrifice your first amendment rights for just a little while and please... shut up.

49

Killing to prove that life is valuable seems a bit off. And I seem to recall Jesus amending 'eye for an eye' in the NT - to something more like 'love your enemy'.--Anna Brown

This misses the point. The death penalty is the only punishment prescribed for the very reason that we are created in God's image.

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man" (Genesis 9:6). Old Testament scholar Walt Kaiser likens murder to killing God in effigy. And the "love" used in the beatitudes is agape, willing the best for another. But nowhere does this imply that you have to be a milquetoast, either. The principle of self-defense (and in many ways capital punishment is also a form of self-defense) is well established in Scripture--even in Jesus' own words.

"He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one" (Luke 22:36).

Perhaps you'll reply that justice demands that a price be paid for the sin of murder (and indeed for all other sins). But it is of the essence of Christianity that the price of sin need not be paid by us. It has been paid for us, paid by another. Christ has paid the price for us and thus we may be forgiven our sins. If Christ has done this for us, should we not do the same for others.--Franklin Mason

By this reasoning, we should also empty the jails, since the price of the "sin" of drug dealing, burlary, etc., has already been paid for too. No, Jesus may forgive the ultimate penalty for a sin, but that does not remove the need to punish in this realm for the crime, not the sin. (Romans 13 is clear that the State is given the sword in order to punish evildoers in this life.) And Genesis 9:6 makes it clear that the ultimate penalty is to be enacted by man.

It is also a religion of mercy, and indeed the mercy takes precedence over the justice. It is by the mercy of God that we are spared.--Franklin Mason

No, justice and mercy are equally parts of God's character. One does not take "precedence" over another. God showed mercy on us sinners by exacting his justice on himself. In other words, justice was not ignored or put on a lower shelf; it was satisfied in Christ's death on the cross.

50

Boonton wrote:

It is a difficult question but it is interesting to note many here have had no problem answering it in a slightly different form. When the topic of stem cell research comes up many here are very quick to declare that if it did produce some miracle cure it still is not ethical to kill an innocent life. So if you can't kill an innocent life to save hundreds of thousands or millions then why is it questionable to...say...crush the testicals of a child of a terrorist suspect to do the same?

I haven't heard anybody here (yet) support killing people to get information, so your stem-cell analogy doesn't quite hold here.

Otherwise, I think your comments are thoughtful and reflect the need for defining what torture is. I have a problem with killing or maiming people. I do not have such a problem with making them uncomfortable.

51

Tom,

I did not suggest that we empty the jails. Indeed I said that for self-preservation we ought to keep murderers locked up.

What I said was that, if a murderer is already in captivity, we ought to show what mercy we can spare his life.

We might have two reasons to punish criminals. The first has to do with the protection of the innocent. The second has to do with the felt need to make criminals suffer for their crimes. I do advocate that we protect the innocent. Jails are, unfortunately, a real necessity. But I think that, since we are Christian, we ought to temper our desire to punish for punishment's sake. God so loved the world - the whole of it, no sinner excepted - that he chose not to condemn it but redeem it. Insofar as is possible, we ought to follow the example. Yes it is just to execute a murderer. But at times we need not do it to protect the innocent, and thus we ought like God show mercy.

52

Franklin

You as an individual certainly may show mercy and forgiveness toward the murderer, just as you may choose not to fight back against the person attacking you. I can respect that position.

Governments, however, do not have that option. The State is charged by God to punish evildoers, as it is also charged with maintaining peace and justice. For that reason, the State maintains an army and police force.

To change the venue a bit, I can respect the individual pacifist, but to say the State should also be pacifistic is unbiblical. The State cannot turn the other cheek as an individual can. (Yes, I realize this is a bit generalized and simplistic, but the basic principles remain.)

53

You err in assuming that all libertarians are liberals.

54

Joe, I agree with nearly everything you wrote. But I feel that while a president is in office, there should be respect for the office. Criticizing his actions is not offensive. But calling him "mediocre" (even though I might agree) and saying that you "don't particularly care for George Bush," I find unnecessary and lacking in respect for the office of the presidency. Historians will one day decide his effectiveness as a leader. Are you close enough to the presidency to label him as mediocre now? This is our duly elected leader. That doesn't seem fair to do now.

Mimi

55

"The issue of torture is a troubling one for anybody. I think Joe was right to call into question the definition of torture. We need to define it."

No, we don't need to "define" torture. Sorry, pal. If you have a true lack of understanding of what the word torture means, hie thee to a dictionary.

But maybe there's a gray area for you? Maybe some of what you've read sounds like fraternity hijinx? Or are we to believe Joe's bald-faced assertion that some of what we're doing to our captives is on a par with Marine basic training? (Joe, let's have some black-hooded CIA interrogators work you over for a few months and then you get back to us, 'kay?)

Consider Justice Stewart's definition of obscenity: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . [b]ut I know it when I see it..."

Torture is just like that. You see something happening to somebody, you wince in sympathetic pain, it's torture.

If we do anything to our captives that you would be uncomfortable having done to your child or spouse, it's torture.

And one point that seems to give a lot of people trouble, but is really very simple, is the "ticking time bomb scenario." If this posited case justifies torture in your mind, then let not your heart be troubled. We can safely outlaw torture knowing that the ticking-bomb situation never comes up. Ever. The professionals admit it.

But.

If it ever did come up, then we torture the crap out of the bastard and make him talk. Whoever is responsible for ordering the torture answers for it later in a court of law. That's how our system works. And if you don't see it that way, then you are an enemy of America.

Why an atheist has to give moral lectures to the religiously pious is a true mystery. You guys are all holy and love thy neighbor and turn the other cheek, but slap a turban on the enemy and you people are sharpening the bamboo shoots and fighting with yourselves over who gets to turn the thumbscrews first.

Really astonishing and utterly sad.

56

Tom,

It seems that no matter how careful I am, I am not understand. I am no pacifist - if I or my family is attacked, I will defend them, and I do believe that there is such a thing as just war. Such are the necessities of life post-Fall. But when a murderer is in prison, it seems to me that the state has no real need to execute him; and in such a case I've counciled mercy. It seems to me an immanently reasonable view. I take it that it is the view of the Catholic church.

57

Does anyone else here just love the big generalizations such as Raven's:

Why an atheist has to give moral lectures to the religiously pious is a true mystery. You guys are all holy and love thy neighbor and turn the other cheek, but slap a turban on the enemy and you people are sharpening the bamboo shoots and fighting with yourselves over who gets to turn the thumbscrews first.

Really astonishing and utterly sad.

??

I've read here that Christians seem to take a variety of postions on this issue, yet to read this, we're all keeping stretching racks, and bone-tipped flogs hidden in our deep, dark closets. So what is this really about? It's not about truth, or trying to find it; it's about striking a pose. Me pound chest, me good, me much better than bad, bad, Christian. Now that is sad. And for the record, I'd wager no Christian here believes they are better than you, dear Raven, just a tad closer to the truth, and willing to take the leap of faith required to arrive.

Don't choke in the thin air up on that high horse of yours...that would be tragic..

58

Franklin

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you were a pacifist, not that there's anything wrong with that! (With apologies to Seinfeld.) I was merely making a distinction between the prerogatives of the individual vs. the duties of the State.

I will add a qualification, too: because the circumstances of some cases are so muddy--e.g., a robbery where it cannot be established which of two robbers pulled the trigger--then the State should err on the side of caution and sentence both to life. But in cases where there is zero doubt about the identity of the murderer, there is only one punishment fit for the crime of taking the innocent life of one created in God's image. Genesis 9:6 has the answer. It's an affront to justice that Charles Manson lives on, supported by the taxpayers of California, while his victims lie in their graves some 40 years now.

59

Joe says:

There are a number of reasons why these groups have not spoken out, the main one being that the “debate on torture” has been mainly a red herring. No one has come out and said they are for torture. The “debate” is often about interrogation techniques that may or may not “shock the conscience.” When you dig beneath the surface you find that the questions are far more nuanced an complex than the Bush-bashers claim.

Also, all of the groups you mention focus on domestic policies. They have no experts on national security on staff, so it would be a bit of a stretch for them to speak on an issue for which they would be woefully ill-informed.

You are reaching here Joe. These groups have never let ignorance prevent them from sending out a press release. They often comment on international and security issues. And they could come forward, and simply say as you have, that its a complex issue.

So you think the Gevena accord is deliberatly vague and therefore all-encompassing. Exactly where in the Bible do you think it is that Jesus give you some leeway in the matter of "what is torture"?

Joe, do you believe waterboarding is torture?

And BTW, comparisons to what soldiers undergo when training are without merit. Because unlike victims of torture, they choose to be there and can leave whenever they want to.

60

RD: Of all the places I should find moral clarity on the Internet, this site should be front and center. But I drop in and what do I see? A lot of hand-wringing and confusion about what constitutes torture. Suggestions that we need to parse out the distinction between waterboarding somebody or just making 'em stand in one spot for 40 hours.

Jesus H. Christ on a three-speed pogo stick. Some pregant teenager needs an abortion and y'all are absolutely bursting with perfect moral rectitude; chain an innocent Iraqi to the floor and hose him down with freezing water and oh dear oh my now maybe that's not torture, maybe that's OK, um, maybe we need to talk about this...

Pathetic, RD. Absolutely pathetic.

61

So much for "evangelical" outpost. It's sad to know you reject the Bible's teachings as you please. (Let's be frank, the resurrection isn't exactly "rational" in the same way YEC isn't rational. But pick and choose, the contemporary Christian mantra.)

Then again, evangelicals like to do that with lots of things. That is, reject the Bible because they think humans are more rational than God.

62

Raging hypocrite warning: Raven

"Some pregant teenager needs an abortion and y'all are absolutely bursting with perfect moral rectitude; chain an innocent Iraqi to the floor and hose him down with freezing water and oh dear oh my now maybe that's not torture, maybe that's OK, um, maybe we need to talk about this..."

Raging hypocrite reversal:
"Prevent an 'innocent' Iraqi to the floor and hose him down with freezing water and y'all are absolutely bursting with perfect moral rectitude; suck a fetus out a tube and oh dear oh my now maybe that's not murder, maybe that's OK, um, maybe we need to talk about this..."

You're pathetic, along with your cursing Christ.

63

Once again, I'm reminded why I come to this site, and then why I stay away from the comments most of the time. I liked Joe's post. Sympathized with a lot of it--feel the same way about many of the issues and being typecast as the "fundy" or "the Bushie" or the "red state guy" when, I hope, I'm none of the above (at least not in the sense those words usually mean). So I check out the comments to see if anybody else feels the same way, and 60% of the posts are doing the same old darn YEC/ID debate we've had a million times, and most of the rest are just bashing anything but stock liberal positions. Thanks, guys.

On another note--one funny thing about "torture" that hit me (and I KNOW, IT'S NOT FUNNY....) but the horrified post about SEALs inflicting hypothermia amused me. I recently re-read a very good book on the SEALs called "The Warrior Elite--the forging of SEAL class 228." Guess what--SEALs are no strangers to hypothermia and the old rectal thermometer. Pretty much everybody gets to know that feeling during their hell week. SO Joe's "what I got in boot camp" line takes on a little different spin when seen in that light. OK, bash away. I won't read the comments for another month now.

64

Franklin says: I do not mean to let murderers free.... But there is no need to kill the murderer once he is caught, and if so should we not follow the example of Christ and exercise what mercy we can? Should we not spare the murderer's life.
Christianity is not a religion of justice alone. It is also a religion of mercy."

Of course it is. I didn't say otherwise.
I note that no-one has tackled my key point about 'excessive mercy', nor does Franklin. In Australia it is rare indeed for a murderer to be committed for more than 10 costly years, after which he enjoys a normal life again. He [or she] is not usually gaoled to protect society either, but to 'serve justice'.
So much anti-DP argument is couched in sentimentality, not in terms of the Bible or of real justice.
Note the thief on the Cross said he was 'justly punished' [a pretty central passage!].
Regularly the families of the murdered - normal people - sense the great injustice of the State granting such 'just' mercy, while they continue to suffer a deep unjust family loss [so it is NOT just 'a life for a life'].
The penalty of death was not just for deterrence either - it is to mark the heinousness of the deed itself -the Deprivation of life God granted.
Personal Christian ethics are not identical to the duty of the State to 'bear the sword'. If our soldiers can kill, why cannot there be a death penalty to bring earthly justice WITHIN the society? I support most Americans here.
Curiously, our PM Howard does not want to intervene to save nine Aussie drug runners in Indonesia being executed, even though we stopped CP in the 60s. Can the PM see some faint Justice there, that we have lost?
Any comments?

65

It's clear now, nothing is sacred to you dear Raven, but the thoughts in your own head, which rule you as your god. Use the name of our Savior crudely and disrespectfully to make your non point if you wish, it simply points to your own baseness.

In your world killing pre-born babies is OK, hosing down a terrorist is not. Fine. But pretending that Christians never have to struggle with where certain moral lines are drawn is just folly, and you're simply trying to score some points on some kind of moral superiority scale. So y'all can just go home and settle into that bowl of grits; it's not playing.

By the way, who's RD? Time for some new spectacles, I guess.

66

Also, all of the groups you mention focus on domestic policies. They have no experts on national security on staff, so it would be a bit of a stretch for them to speak on an issue for which they would be woefully ill-informed.

The more I thought about this statement the sillier it sounded later.

If torture, or even "Coercive Interrogation" methods were introduced as a valid police tactic to use in the United States, do you think Christians should perhaps speak up about the issue?

And apparently the Traditional Values Coalition has since come out IN FAVOR of the Presidents "Coercive" interrogation methods.

67

It seems pretty clear that either a) the universe is really old, or b) God made it to look really old to trick us into thinking it was really old

What is old? Which part? Remember the Theory of Relativity. Time can pass at different rates in different places, at least according to that theory.

The problem isn't "solved," but look at the White Hole cosmology of Dr. Humphrey which provides a possible explanation of how we could have distant starlight with a young earth. As noted elsewhere here, Big Bang cosmology has its own starlight and heat travel time and other serious issues. Though you rarely hear of those.

I have yet to hear of an "old ages proof" that didn't have at least one young earth explanation.

Of course if you assume old ages, everything will fit that, but assumptions are not proven by definition.

___All other aging "guesses" are based on lots of assumptions, which may or may not be true.___

The same could be said about your reading of the Bible.

Of course, but that is my whole point. All require assumptions. They are not inherently true. Thank you for demonstrating my point. :)

Most who believe in old ages deny the assumptions they make. Noting those assumptions would admit that they could be wrong if the assumptions were false. It is certainly must easier to be dogmatic than truly seek open inquiry. And YECs are supposed to be closeminded....

Ultimately "science" is much more closeminded than most people want to admit.

Brad

Brad

68

answersingenesis is not the be-all, end-all. They have had to several times go back and correct their "scientific" evidence to bring it up to speed with irrefutable evidence we know, e.g., the group's previous stand that entropy is proof of the Fall until, oops, someone pointed out that entropy is involved in everyday occurences such as digestion.

I never saw them claim to be God either. What site/speaker/group has ever been completely correct?

BTW, I doubt that food consumption worked identical to today before the Fall. Did the Garden have "his and hers" restrooms? :)

You assume physical laws worked precisely the same. Jesus walked through walls after His resurrection. That is a clear difference in physical laws!

Brad

69

Raven,

Good to hear from you, pal. It's refreshing to see you back with more broad-brushed generalizations of the evil Christians.

Asserting that the limits of torture should be apparent to anyone, you wrote,

Consider Justice Stewart's definition of obscenity: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . [b]ut I know it when I see it..."
Torture is just like that. You see something happening to somebody, you wince in sympathetic pain, it's torture.

You couldn't have made my point more clearly. We certainly don't have a definitive acceptance of what constitutes obscenity in this country, Justice Stewart's observation notwithstanding. He knows it when he sees it - you know it when you see it - but the two of you don't necessarily see it the same way. Simplistic references to dictionary definitions are not useful here.

You go on about how it doesn't work anyway, that the "tthe ticking-bomb situation never comes up. Ever." - That "even the professionals admit it".

Well, that's not quite true. There are mainstream news reports that coercion has yielded information that has prevented attacks on America. Maybe you haven't heard, or you have heard and don't believe it. Whatever.

But after dismissing the "ticking time-bomb" scenario, you suggest (incredibly) that if this scenario did occur, we proceed with the necessary torture and hold the torturer accountable by the rule of law. Because this is how the American system works, yadda yadda.

So in your court of law, what standard will you apply to the malefactor, since you disdain the need for defining limits of torture? If you are going to run this country by the rule of law (the American way, after all!) - don't you need a law?

70

I don't think I've read anything this month (books, blogs, magazines, etc.) with which I completely agreed on every point and detail, and I've read quite a bit this month. How interesting that Joe's post is the first.

B

71

Heya berean: Good questions. Let's go -

"There are mainstream news reports that coercion has yielded information that has prevented attacks on America. Maybe you haven't heard, or you have heard and don't believe it. Whatever."

Thus far, the only reports I've read that our torture policies have produced effective intelligence that has proven useful in actually thwarting terrorist plots and attacks have been transcripts of Bush's speeches. He appears to be the only person making this claim.

If, in fact, there were some actual plot we discovered, I rather tend to think that it would be front-page news, and the White House would be scrambling to disseminate such amazing information because it would completely validate what Bush refers to as, "The Program."

In actuality, we get a rag-tag bunch of misfits like those clowns in Miami, or the bizarre group in Chicago whose entire thwarted "plot" turned out to be little more than a secret club handshake. And yet these laughably pathetic targets were front page news for the reasons outlined in the previous paragraph. Make no mistake, if the Patriot Act or the Warrantless Wiretapping business or the illegal renditions actually produced anything of value, we'd know about it immediately because its propaganda value would be extremely high and outweigh any need to keep it classified. It would be a PR coup.

As we see, instead, these massively expensive and, from a civil liberties perspective, repugnant programs impel their employees to fish for ever-smaller targets until they at least find something to justify their use. Which is one of the things that makes them so worrisome.

"But after dismissing the "ticking time-bomb" scenario, you suggest (incredibly) that if this scenario did occur, we proceed with the necessary torture and hold the torturer accountable by the rule of law."

Yes, of course.

"So in your court of law, what standard will you apply to the malefactor, since you disdain the need for defining limits of torture?"

As others have pointed out already, a strict definition of torture is probably not even possible or desirable. You want the law to protect the accused in every case. Remember that hundreds have already been released from Gitmo, the Red Cross estimated the number of innocent captives at Abu Ghraib during the period of peak abuses at roughly 90% - the law must serve to protect the innocent and falsely accused. Under no circumstances should such people be tortured. If our laws are corrupted by Bush and Cheney so as to allow brutal interrogations, many innocent people are going to suffer extremely serious pain at the hands of our black-hooded interrogators and I don't want that done in my name. No one should.

Even the guilty, however, deserve humane treatment because an enemy combatant is a POW. A terrorist is a criminal, and both should be treated accordingly.

Now, back to the ticking bomb scenario: I am not opining on my own that there is no such thing, I am quoting interrogation experts from diverse sources, both domestic and abroad. They say that it happens on TV and in the movies, but not in real life. Yet, it is thinkable - so we can examine it as a philosophical test case to verify our position in general, but it is not an urgent problem we must solve and in no way can the posited scenario justify routine, systematized, institutionalized mistreatment and brutality.

Thus, if you've followed me this far, it is reasonable to assume that if you did catch someone who knew where the hidden, armed nuclear bomb was, you would probably have to act in an exceptional way to deal with an exceptional circumstance. The law cannot encompass every case imaginable - nor should it. It must only address the likely circumstances. In the ticking bomb case, then, we bring the torturer to trial before a judge for a determination of charges:

Judge: It says here that you cut three fingers off the accused's right hand with a pair of gardening clippers. Can you tell the court why you did that?

Cop: Well, we knew that he'd just planted a nuclear bomb that would have leveled the city and we had only hours to find it. There was no other choice.

Judge: That's clear enough for me. Case dismissed.

Now, there would have to be sufficient evidence, witnesses or the like, but basically it would go like that. Same in a military courts martial. Thus, you don't dare torture anybody unless you are willing to risk your freedom and stake your future on the fact that you have a guilty individual and that the necessity is so overwhelming that any reasonable person would give you a pass on it.

And we aren't doing that. One guy we released last year, after putting him through The Program, was a baker who got caught up a general sweep through an Iraqi neighborhood. "They kept beating me," he said, "and asking me 'Where's Osama?' as if I would know? How could I know?" That's what the law must prevent or we will continue to lose our moral authority to behave as rational actors.

72

You err in assuming that all libertarians are liberals.

He didn't assume it. He deliberately stated it that way to be inflammatory.

73

Make no mistake, if the Patriot Act or the Warrantless Wiretapping business or the illegal renditions actually produced anything of value, we'd know about it immediately because its propaganda value would be extremely high and outweigh any need to keep it classified. It would be a PR coup.

You obviously know absolutely zero about how the intelligence business works. The last thing they do is trumpet to the whole world what is working. By doing so, the other sides changes their M.O., and you've just lost a valuable tool. In the intel business it's called "sources and means," and they're the most closely guarded secrets we have.

Now go back to commenting about the few things you might actually know something about.

74

Joe,
Great list; I agree with everything you said 100%, and you articulated it much better than I could have.

75

Hey tom, the two largest and most serious breaches of international counterintelligence operations were:

A) Capture of the London subway bombers
B) The UK "explosive liquids" plot

In both cases, the Bush administration was so eager to promote these "successes" that it overrode the objections of MI-5&6 and rushed the news onto the airwaves, disrupting policework in progress and arguably causing us to lose a number of criminals who were tipped off early.

I can make the assertion I've made for a large number of reasons - one of which is documented precedent. Another of which is that I've worked in intelligence myself (although I can't say anything more than that about it). Now you, tom, can go back to your Clancy novel. I'm sure it's most exciting.

76

Raven, you said "Jesus H. Christ on a three-speed pogo stick..."

I don't know if you would confess Jesus as your Lord and your savior from the result of your sins, but you need to think before you write. If you consider yourself a believer, then I want to publicly rebuke you for using the name of the Lord in vain...for taking lightly the creator of the universe. And if you don't consider yourself a believer, than you must not be someone who believes in respecting others (or else you would've used a different expletive).

77

In both cases, the Bush administration was so eager to promote these "successes" that it overrode the objections of MI-5&6 and rushed the news onto the airwaves

Simply not true. The news wasn't announced until the arrests were made. Once the trap is sprung, it has become obvious to all. Notice they didn't trumpt the sources and means, too.

And I've never read a Clancy novel in my life. I know intelligence from having worked in it.

78

I Owe One to Robert Eggleton

October 30, 2006, by Evelyn Somers, Editor, The Missouri Review

Earlier this year I was contacted by first-time novelist Robert Eggleton, asking if I would review his forthcoming e-book. If people knew how many requests of this kind editors get, they would understand that out of self-preservation we sometimes… well, I ignored the request.

Robert tried again. There was something in the tone of his e-mail: this mattered to him. So I said yes, I’d take a look, though I didn’t think we could review Rarity From the Hollow. This is all fogged somewhat in memory: in the months since then our magazine moved its office, I was hospitalized for a cat bite (yes, they’re dangerous), we’ve published two issues, read hundreds of manuscripts, I went to Africa, etc., etc. But as I recall, Robert sent me the first chapter, which begins with two impoverished schoolgirls (from the Hollow of the title) studying together and spelling the word for a sex toy. It was quirky, profane, disturbing. I said I’d look at the book, not entirely sure what I could do to help.

He sent me the whole thing by e-mail. I read portions of the book, which is subtitled "A Lacy Dawn Adventure," after the girl protagonist, Lacy Dawn. I liked Lacy Dawn, who lives in a world of poverty, classmates with precocious sexual knowledge and/or experience, unemployed men, worn-down women, and cruelty so casual that it’s more knee-jerk than intentional. Maybe I was just too bothered by the content, but at a certain point I knew I couldn’t do anything. My time was nonexistent.

So I deleted the book from my desktop.

Robert contacted me again, and I got soft. You see, there was something about the whole project in general. Robert is a social worker who has spent at least a portion of his career working with child-abuse victims in Appalachia. The book was partly about that, and mostly very strange. In the Hollow, Lacy takes up with an android named DotCom, from "out of state," which really means off of this planet. Under DotCom’s wing, she decides that she will "save" her family. Little does she know she will end up saving the universe. The subject was not exactly run-of-the-mill. And Robert was donating the proceeds from sales of the e-book to help child-abuse victims.

Robert is not a kid; he’s maybe my age, maybe older. What was at stake wasn’t youthful ambition, vanity or reputation. This was about some kind of personal calling. I believe in those. I also believe in people who are driven to get their writing out there to an audience, through whatever venue. The e-book idea intrigued me. The earnestness of the appeal got to me. Send the book again, I said. He did. It’s still on my hard drive. (I suppose I should delete it, since I haven’t paid for it.)

Robert kept after me. If I