Faith and Science

Reblogged from Wrestled With Angels:

We have a lot to appreciate through the study of science. Advances in medical research and developments in technology can be attributed to the study of science. The religious may argue that science is the enemy but in many ways our lives are blessed because of the study of science.

Dr. Hannah Gray, at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, recently prescribed a treatment that “functionally cured” a baby girl with a HIV infection.

Read more… 462 more words

I am reposting this because I think it elegantly and wonderfully expresses the relationship between science and faith.

The Death and Rebirth of a Dream

This Sunday, April 7, 2013, the 2^nd Sunday of Easter, I am scheduled to be at Sugar Loaf (NY) United Methodist Church. The Scriptures are Acts 5: 27 – 32, Revelation 1: 4 – 8, and John 20: 19 -31. The message is now entitled “Do You Have See To Believe?” Services are at 11 and you are welcome to attend.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on this date in 1968. Today, some forty-five years later I wonder if the dream that he spoke of, the dream of equality died that day as well.

We know that the night before Dr. King spoke of seeing the Promised Land; he also spoke, rather prophetically, of not making it with the rest of us. I tend to believe that he believed that he would die because of his actions, though I don’t believe he thought he would die the next day.

There were those in 1968 who did not like what Dr. King was saying about civil rights and his stand against the Viet Nam war. And I am sure that his expansion of the civil rights movement to include the poor and lower social classes of this country were not going to set well with those in power and those for whom economic slavery, whatever form it may take, was essentially to their wealth and status.

We were a country at war in 1968 in southeast Asia that was beginning to look like a quagmire. But we were also a country at war internally with divisions based on economic status and race becoming more and more apparent.

Now, some forty-five years later, we are still a country at war in southeast Asia and while there is talk of the war coming to an end, we are finding new ways to continue the fight. The only difference between then and now is that we sent our sons off to war in 1968; in 2013, we send our sons and daughters off to war. But whether it was our sons or our daughters, when they came home then and when they come home today, we still don’t care what happened to them and we cast them aside.

The reason that Dr. King came to Memphis in 1968 was economic, to support the garbage workers in the struggle for better pay and working conditions. Today, the gap between the rich and the poor is perhaps even greater than it was back then and it does not appear as if it will ever decrease. We are not moving towards a place and time of equality but one of inequality and forced servanthood.

Some people said that the one thing that saved 1968 from being a totally bad and terrible year was the Apollo mission around the moon on Christmas Eve. And perhaps, for one brief moment, it did offer a ray of sunshine and hope.

But while we would send some twenty-one men to the moon and twelve would walk on the moon, we no longer visit our neighbor in the sky and we have no plans to do so. Those of us who were in high school in 1968 were the beneficiaries of a radical change in science and math education, a change that quickly ended when the cost of war and greed became more than inquiry and discovery.

I look at our schools today and see nothing more than factories, factories designed to turn out workers who do not and cannot think independently. I see very little creativity in our schools today and I don’t see much change. If there is no creativity in the schools today, there cannot be much hope for tomorrow.

I have written about it before but don’t tell me that this generation of students is the most technologically advanced generation. They may have the technical tools but they really don’t know how to use them for much more that character-limited sentences. There are possibilities beyond description in the smart phones of today but the basic rule of technology still applies – no computing device (phone, computer, or otherwise) is ever smarter than the person using it.

Our students may be able to answer countless and myriad questions of educational trivia designed to show how much they know. But being able to answer a question about the past is no guarantee that we can create a future.

We saw in the churches of 1968 a moral force, a force that would make the Gospel message of Jesus Christ true and real for all mankind. Today, most people probably don’t even know what the Gospel message was or that it was everyone. The message of the church today is one in which the rich are God’s chosen few and the poor are condemned to sin and slavery. While Jesus could and did enter the Temple, I don’t think that many churches today would welcome Him, His message, or those who followed Him.

We had an opportunity forty-five years ago to make a dream a reality. It may be that we still can make it real today. But we will have to change the way we see society and make the gaps between people smaller, not bigger.

We will need to change the way we see education, not as a process that makes our children mindless robots but the creative and innovative individuals God meant them to be.

We will need to change the way we see our churches, not as sanctuaries for the rich to hide from the poor and needy on Sunday but as places of hope, hope for all that God’s Kingdom is for all.

A man was killed forty-five years ago today and with him a dream probably died. We can take the time to day to make sure that the dream did not die; it will require work and it will not be easy. But the longer we wait, the harder it will be.

Thoughts on the new Pope

Right after Pope Benedict XVI resigned/retired/quit/abdicated his position, someone associated with our local church but not a member asked me about the church’s (meaning the local church) reaction to his actions.

I pointed out that we, as a church and as a denomination, had no concern in the matter.

And I think I was right in saying that. Nothing a Pope says or does really directly concerns the actions and operations of any United Methodist Church.

But, and this was especially after the announcement of the election of Francis I, I began to think about what his election means not just for the United Methodist Church but all churches, local, denominational, and in general.

Okay, first the obvious – the guy’s old but there was a sense of being alive when you, if you were watching the proceedings Wednesday, first saw him. The one cardinal who came out and read the announcement looked and sounded really old. And then Francis stepped out on the balcony and there was a smile on his face and he just seemed alive.

I have said on it a number of occasions in the past but there is mind-set old and there is calendar old. Francis has the years but I think he has a young, or younger, mind-set.

His age is going to work against and I wouldn’t doubt that the pressures of the position wear on him very quickly. Don’t be surprised if he doesn’t resign in five years or so.

And while Francis is said to be theologically conservative, I am not sure that is a label that means as much as one thinks. His actions tell more about what may happen than guessing about how he thinks.

He lived frugally as the Arch-bishop and it appears that he has begun doing some of the same things in Rome. I read the other night that he didn’t sit on the throne or ride in the limo provided for the Pope. These actions are going to upset some people, especially those who make their living based on the power of the position. That may be a good thing in the long run, especially in terms of the bureaucracy that so dominates the Vatican.

He is the first pope from the Americas, from the southern hemisphere, the first Jesuit, and he chose a name that had never been used before. Each of these, in a small way, speaks of some change. In his election, the Roman Catholic Church is beginning to realize that their church is changing and is no longer what it once was.

I think that it is a message that we in the United Methodist Church might well listen to. We are not the church we once were and while we would like to be that church of days ago, it is the mission we must consider and not what once was.

In choosing the name Francis, this new pope honored St. Francis Xavier, one of the co-founders of the Society of Jesus, which we know better as the Jesuits. The Jesuits are, as one commentator pointed out, the intellectuals of the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Francis is saying that what we think is very important.

But he also honored St. Francis of Assisi. In his own live, we can see how or why he choose to honor this saint and it would say much about where this new pope sees the mission of the church.

And that is something that we, as United Methodists need to examine ourselves. John Wesley felt that education and intellect were as important as caring for the poor and the less-fortunate. This new pope’s name tells us that he puts an equal premium on one’s heart and mind together and neither should take second to the other.

And that is, I think, what we should take from the selection of Francis I as the new pope. In order to understand the mission of the United Methodist Church, we need to remember that we live for Christ with our mind and heart together and not apart.

“Removing the Veil”

This was originally entitled “A New Vision” but as I worked on it and I kept focusing on the veil that Moses wore and that one that Paul tells us that Christ removed, that title didn’t seem to work. And in light of the focus of this piece in conjunction with Evolution Weekend and Boy Scout Sunday, it made sense to talk about removing the veil so that one can see.

Corollary thoughts may be found at Ponderings on a Faith Journey: Science, Faith and the Pursuit of Truth.

Evolution Weekend is the weekend that coincides with Charles Darwin’s birthday (Happy Birthday, Chuck!) and focuses on the interaction of faith, religion, and science. I have participated in this observance, either through a sermon or a blog post since 2009.

And because it is the 2^nd Sunday in February, it is Boy Scout Sunday and it represents for me the day that I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior.

I am not certain that it has always been on Transfiguration Sunday as it this weekend but it is perhaps a good connection between what transpired for Jesus and the disciples and what must transpire in our minds and soul when we encounter Christ in our own lives.

Now, for some, there can be no discussion of the interaction of any sort between religion, faith, and science. Both sides of this “debate” or “issue” see the other group as the enemy, dedicated to the reduction of the other to virtual and actual nothingness.

Richard Dawkins once stated,

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence. . . Faith^, being belief that isn’t based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion. (Page 4, The Language of God, Francis S. Collins)

My first thought on this is that this is an incomplete thought; perhaps an expression that science can answer all questions and one needs to place their “faith” in science. To me, this strikes as nothing more than scientism, a belief system based on science. (See “A Particular Moment in Time” for links to discussion on this idea.)

Francis Collins, from whose book The Language of God I got the quote from Richard Dawkins, also quoted the noted creationist Henry Morris,

Evolution’s lie permeates and dominates modern thought in every field. That being the case, it follows inevitably that evolutionary thought is basically responsible for the lethally ominous political developments, and the chaotic moral and social disintegrations that have been accelerating everywhere. . . When science and the Bible differ, science has obviously misinterpreted its data. (Page 5, The Language of God, Francis S. Collins)

And just as I think that what Dawkins said was incomplete, so too do I believe that what Morris said was also incomplete. There are numerous examples of where Darwin’s notions about the evolution of life have been misused but that should not be considered the fault of the theory behind evolution.

It is interesting that Morris would say that science misinterprets the data and I would like to know how it is that he came up with that statement. Actually, I think I know how it is that he did and, for someone who claimed to operating under the framework of science, there was a major flaw in his thinking process.

You can never interpret the data in terms of a preconceived conclusion, which is the case for so many people who think that the Genesis creation story is the absolute truth. For among other things, they find themselves having to adjust the data, experimentally determined, to fit their model. Quoting Sherlock Holmes in my post “A Dialogue of Science and Faith”, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence.” Neither can you make the evidence fit the theory; the theory must come from the evidence. This doesn’t mean that your interpretation will be correct.

I noted in the “Dialogue” that Tycho Brahe had the evidence that suggested stars were a long way away from the earth but because he did not believe that the stars could be as far away from the earth as his observations suggested, he concluded that the earth was motionless and at the center of the universe. Again, he forced the data to fit his model.

I find many people who understand the concept of radioactivity and its use in dating ancient objects but who then “fiddle” with the data so as to keep their chosen model in place. I posted a piece two years ago about radiometric dating (“How Old Is Old?”) because of the number of individuals who have decided that the age of the earth is 10,000 years and the data that suggests otherwise. As it happens, in my own piece I refer to a more detailed explanation of this issue at “Radiometric Dating – A Christian Perspective” by Dr. Roger C. Wiens. Dr. Wiens also provided rebuttals for the critics of these techniques.

But my question to those who suggest that the data that we observe has somehow been altered by some supernatural deity is, “Why should I believe in a god that would manipulate the data and then expect me to believe in him, her, or it?”

Do I believe in the words of the Bible? Yes, I do, for they tell me a lot about the people whose faith system is the foundation of what we believe today. Do I believe that they knew as much as about the world that we do today? No. But the Bible wasn’t written to tell me about the world; it was written to tell me about the people and their relationship with God, a relationship that exists today. It is a story that speaks volumes if we would listen and think about what it said.

Am I to simply accept the statements of a few individuals that the world is less than 10,000 years old (a figure that, by the way, is not found in the Bible). What am I do to with the data that tells me otherwise? Should I change my data to fit the words of Genesis simply because a group of pastors in the late 19^th century decided that they were the words of truth?

Too many people today simply want don’t want to think about the words or what they mean. Because to think means that they must be involved and they do not want to be involved.

And for those who see science as the answer to all questions (again, invoking the notion of scientism rather than science) I would ask, “Where is that good and evil come from? Are they parts of our bodies, encoded somehow into our DNA? If one has denied religion and faith, one cannot then say that good and evil are parts of our soul, for the soul is not part of physical body. So good and evil are inherent parts of our bodies and that opens a box that even Pandora would not want to open.

On the other hand, if we acknowledge that there is something or someone “out there” that had a hand in our creation, then we have to have some sort of faith system in our lives.

It is entirely possible that I could or would have come to Christ without having been a Boy Scout but that is clearly a question for another time and place. Besides finding a path to God through the God and Country award, I also began to develop an appreciation for the world around us. I cannot call myself an environmentalist but clearly, having seen the beauty of the Rocky Mountains when camping with my troop and seeing the physical wonders of this country and then seeing the awesome view of galaxies far away, I know that there is a Creator out there. And if there is not a Creator, then how was this all done?

Can I use the skills that God gave me (allowing me to use other words from Genesis that state that you and I were created in His image) and begin to work out the mysteries of the universe, from the moment of the Big Bang to the present day and perhaps far into the future?

My participation in Evolution Weekend comes because I cannot stand aside and let two groups, both whose minds appear to be closed to new ideas, destroy the fabric and nature of science, all in the name of the truth as they see it.

I have stated it before that I perhaps don’t have to be involved in this because I am a chemist and chemical educator who never took biology. I never took biology because I had the opportunity to skip it when I was in high school and I could take alternative courses to traditional biology when I was in college (though at least one of my college classmates offered the thought once that the course that we both took provided the impetus for his accepting the Genesis creation as the true story of creation.)

In a Rod Stewart moment (“if I had known then what I know now”), if I had known that I was going to really be involved in chemistry and especially bio-inorganic chemistry, it would have been beneficial to have taken biology sometime in my life. Quite honestly, you can be successful in biochemistry without having taken a biology course but it does help. But, it does not matter whether or not I have taken biology at any time in my life. As a chemical and science educator, I have made a commitment to help individuals think and the attack being made on evolution today must be met.

We have created a society in which knowledge is feared, not respected and certainly not to be gained. We began a space race in 1957, not because we were interested in the cosmos or what might lie beyond the stars but because we perceived that there was a major threat to our way of life and we could not envision a world where the Soviet Union and its Communist philosophy was better and capable of launching a satelite while our country could not. Our response was a massive science and mathematics revolution but it was a fleeting one at best and one whose effects are long forgotten.

We stopped sending people to the moon, not because we had answered all of our questions, but because we had won the political race with the Soviet Union. And as the cost of the Viet Nam war took away our resources (both our youth and our money), we found ourselves unable to do the things that would develop our resources.

And the result is that today we are probably incapable of responding in the manner that we responded in 1957. Let us hope that any problems that develop in the coming years have solutions in the back of the book, because that is what we are teaching our children today.

Some will say that the problem lies in our leadership but I fear that the problem lies somewhere between what Pogo (of comic strip fame) said in 1970, “We have met the enemy and he is us”, and what Cassius said to Brutus in Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar”, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Society is often like the Israelites demanding that Moses put on a veil because they were afraid of the glow that cover Moses’ face after his encounters with God. And if they were not afraid of the change that had taken place in Moses, they were certainly unsure as to what was happening and they were ill-prepared to respond.

The problem is that too many leaders are quite willing to put the veil on and hide the knowledge, knowing that it allows them to control the people. If there is a veil between the people and the truth, the people cannot see the truth and must accept whatever it is that their leaders tell them, even if, they know in their own minds that what is being said is not always truthful.

Paul tells the Corinthians that Christ removed the veil so that we could know for ourselves who God was and what God has done for us and what He wants us to do.

And I go back to my original statement; if we are created in God’s image, are we not to seek more information?

Several years ago I encountered a piece in which the author postulated that Isaac Newton would have opposed Charles Darwin’s thoughts and ideas on the nature of evolution (“A Dialogue of Science and Faith”). In writing my piece I discovered that my path of faith and science was somewhat similar to that of two early chemists, Robert Boyle and Joseph Priestly. I also had the opportunity to re-read a biography of Isaac Newton that I owned. Each man was both a man of science and a man of faith; each man wanted to know more about how God had created this world in which we live.

Could we live in this world if it were not for Georges Lemaître, who first postulated the Big Bang, or Gregor Mendel, who first postulated the mechanisms of genetics? Probably, but our knowledge of this world would be somewhat limited. Both were Catholic priests yet both were willing to look beyond the written word to see what God had done.

The beginning of Francis Collins’ book describes the ceremony at which human genome, the sequence of DNA that defines our bodies, was first unveiled. He offered a quote by President Bill Clinton,

Today we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift.

Some would have us simply say that the human genome was the product of some entity and are so complex as to be beyond our understanding? But any time we are presented with a question that asks us how, we are challenged to find an answer. It was once said that the answer to a single question may be two more questions but that is the nature of life at times.

If we live a life where the truth is hidden by a veil and we are unwilling to seek that truth, then perhaps we deserve a life of ignorance. For in ignorance there is no hope. But that is not why Christ came to this world, that is not why Christ walked among us and taught us and healed us and helped us in so many ways. He offered a chance to see beyond the veil, to remove our reliance on those whose own interests were more self-serving than God-serving. Christ gives us the opportunity to remove the veil of ignorance that keeps us from the truth.

On this day when Peter, James, and John began to understand just what it was that was about to happen, it is also a day that we can open not only our heart and soul but our minds to Christ. For our lives are not just our heart and soul or our mind alone but all three. Opening our hearts, our minds, and our souls to Christ allows the veil of ignorance to be lifted and the truth to shine.

“Parts of the Church”

I am at Sloatsburg United Methodist Church again this Sunday, the 3^rd Sunday after the Epiphany. Services there start at 10:30 and you are welcome to attend. The Scriptures (as somewhat noted in the message) are Nehemiah 8: 1 – 3, 5 – 6, 8 – 10; 1 Corinthians 12: 12 – 31; and Luke 4: 14 – 21. I also gave part of this message on Saturday at Grannie Annie’s Kitchen. I was also there last week; unfortunately I had a problem with my hard drive and the flash drive where I store my files. As a result, I lost the electronic copy of last week’s sermon (still got the hard copy though) and was unable to post it to the blog.

When I began thinking about this message, I was specifically looking at the Epistle reading for today (1 Corinthians 12: 12 – 31) and Paul’s thoughts on the gifts and talents of the people in the Corinthian congregation. And because of something one of my cousins, Paul Schuëssler, a Lutheran minister, gave me several years ago about the structure of church membership (see “The Structure of Church Membership”), I thought that was the path this message was going to take.

But then some other things happened and I began to wonder if there wasn’t another path that my mind and thoughts should take.

One of those things that changed the direction was the Old Testament reading for today (Nehemiah 8: 1 – 3, 5 – 6, 8 – 10). As I read it and thought about it, it occurred to me that thinking about the part of the church inside the church walls might be a little limiting.

You see, the passage from Nehemiah is probably the first time that women and children are specifically mentioned as being part of the gathering. Most of the time, when you read about a gathering of people in either the Old or New Testament, any discussion of numbers is always in terms of the men present; women and children are assumed to be present but only as an after-thought.

When the writer of Matthew refers to the feeding of the multitudes, first the 5000 and then the 4000, he is referring to the men that are there. In actuality, there may have been close to 20,000 men, women, and children present each time.

Now, how can you think about the people inside the church as being the only one who are parts of the church? Those individuals may be, as my cousin Paul described, the visionaries, the resources, the learners and the activists that guide and direct the nature of the church but there are many, many more people who are a part of the church, especially if you move, and one has to move, beyond the walls of the church.

And that is what brings me to the other thoughts that changed what I was thinking before I began writing these words.

I had the chance the other day to view the documentary “Ripple of Hope.” It is about the night of April 4, 1968 and what transpired in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Senator Robert Kennedy had come to Indianapolis to participate in a campaign rally in his bid to obtain the Democratic Party nomination for President. But as word spread across the nation about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that day, violence and anger seemed to erupt almost simultaneously. Many individuals, both city officials and Kennedy campaign staffers, felt that the threat of danger was too great and that for his own security, Senator Kennedy should cancel the rally.

But Senator Kennedy chose to attend the rally, perhaps fully knowing the risks involved and perhaps equally aware that individuals would seek to use the rally as a provocation for hatred, anger, and violence. But he was also aware that many individuals were already gathering at the campaign rally sight and were probably unaware of what was transpiring in Memphis and across the nation.

After telling the crowd that had gathered what had occurred in Memphis that afternoon, Senator spoke from his heart and soul as much as from his mind that he understood how people felt at that moment and how their natural instincts were to strike out in vengeance and retribution. But he also said that violence could never replace justice and to seek a violent solution would vindicate those who opposed Dr. King’s work, not honor it.

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. (from Wikipedia)

Senator Kennedy concluded by reiterating his belief that the country needed and wanted unity between blacks and whites and encouraged the country to

“dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.”

When he was finished, he asked the people gathered there to go home and pray for the people and the country. It is remarkable to note, that on a night marked by violence in every major city in this country, there were no riots or acts of destruction in Indianapolis, such were the power of the words that Robert Kennedy spoke that night.

At the end of the film is a scene at Senator Kennedy’s grave in Arlington Nation Cemetery. Carved in the granite wall memorial are words that he spoke in Cape Town, South Africa on June 6, 1966 for the University of Durbin’s “Affirmation Day” celebration.

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. (from http://rfksafilm.org/html/speeches/unicape.php)

Where are the ripples of hope in today’s society? It is a question that pertains very much to why we are here today (both at Grannie Annie’s Kitchen and at Sloatsburg United Methodist Church).

This is, as you well know, a United Methodist Church. I will not spend time on why it is a United Methodist Church but on why it is that we are those people called Methodists.

John Wesley never sought to create a new denomination; all he sought to do was reform the Church of England. He saw a church that failed to meet the spiritual needs of the people and a society that failed to meet the physical and social needs of the people as well. He saw a church community that built walls around the church in order to keep those outside the church from ever entering the church and he saw people who made sure that anyone from the outside would be very unwelcome should they ever find a way around the walls and barriers erected to keep them out.

He also had questions about his own salvation and what it would take for his soul to find peace. He saw the path to salvation as a strict obedience to the perceived laws of God.

In 1729, his brother Charles, along with a number of other students at Oxford University, found the Holy Club. They would gather on a regular basis and began to develop a systematic way of life that would enable them to answer the same set of questions that perplexed John Wesley; how does one truly achieve salvation? Because of this regular and systematic approach, other students derided them by calling them “Methodists.” This approach not only included regular prayer and worship but the beginnings of a prison ministry, a credit union to help the poor and indigent, a community health organization, and a Sunday School for the education of children. As a result, two things happened.

First, the early Methodist ministers, both in England and here in America, were barred from preaching in the pulpit of the Church of England. Wesley would go into the fields, the mines and the factories and preach because that was were the people were. He once said that it was easier to preach the Gospel there than in a church because the people in the fields would listen. And the people in the fields, factories, and mines were unable to come to the church, then perhaps the church should come to them.

The other thing that happened was something that actually did not happen. England in the 1700s was on the verge of a political and social revolution, the same revolutionary spirit that swept across America and created this country. Many historians will tell you that the only thing that prevented England from undergoing the same violent revolution that swept France a few years after the American Revolution was the efforts of those associated with the Methodist Revival and John Wesley.

Why did John Wesley seek to change the way his church worked? Why did John Wesley and those that formed the early Methodist groups and societies seek to reach out to others, others that the church ignored?

I think that the answer and our response today can be found in an earlier part of the speech that Robert Kennedy gave to the students at the University of Durbin. He said

We must recognize the full human equality of all of our people before God, before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do this, not because it is economically advantageous, although it is; not because (of) the laws of God command it, although they do; not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.

What are the right things that we must do? It seems to me that John Wesley and the early Methodists understood that it was imperative to treat all people the same if for no other reason that what Robert Kennedy would say later, it is the right thing to do.

When Jesus stood before the people in his home synagogue in Nazareth, he took the scroll and read,

God’s Spirit is on me; he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, To set the burdened and battered free, to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”

Jesus would then begin his ministry, not there in the synagogue, but in the countryside, moving from town to town, healing people and offering words of hope. His call to the people was an open call, even to those who, because of some rule or regulation or perhaps because of where they were born, were barred from access to the Temple.

We know that there were many who did not like this ministry. Comfortable inside their own synagogues, they did not like to hear that Jesus and his followers would preach.

But those outside the walls of the church rejoiced in the message, for it was the first time anyone had ever paid attention to them because of who they were and not because those who came wanted to use them for their own selfish purposes. And the world changed.

The same was true when John Wesley and other early Methodists, fueled by the Holy Spirit, went into the fields, the factories, and the mines. This may have been the first time that the people there had ever heard the Gospel or known that other people truly cared about them. And the world changed.

It may seem, especially today, that one individual can do very little in the world. But Robert Kennedy spoke words of love and peace to people filled with anger and hatred and it changed the world.

Jesus preached the same message and told us to go out into the world, to preach the message of good news and announce the pardon of prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind and to set the burdened and battered free. If we do as John Wesley did, seek to follow Christ and open our hearts, our minds, and our souls as so many others have done before us, then the world will change.

If we let the Holy Spirit come to us, as it came to Saul on the road to Damascus when he became Paul or as it came to John Wesley that night that we call Aldersgate, then we can create that ripple of hope that Robert Kennedy spoke of that will begin the wave that sweeps down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

We can begin to do that when we make our part of the world part of the church.

“Top Posts for 2012″

Here are the top posts for 2012. Since I really didn’t post much new stuff this year, the list looks a lot like last year’s list (“Top Posts for 2011”).

I am not sure what 2013 will look like from a blogging standpoint. We are continuing the Saturday morning devotionals at Grannie Annie’s Kitchen and if I give the devotional, then it will be posted. (Get in touch with me if you are in the Newburgh area and want to present the devotional some Saturday).

1. The Chemistry of Bowling – July 26, 2008 (#1 in 2011)
2. Brer Rabbit and the Briar Patch – November 18, 2009 (#3)
3. What is a part per million? – February 19, 2010 (#8)
4. Why Do We Celebrate Palm Sunday? – March 13, 2008 (#2)
5. Who Cuts the Barber’s Hair? – September 15, 2009 (#5)
6. A Collection of Sayings – January 17, 2008 (#4)
7. John Wooden – A Review of “A Game Plan for Life – the power of Mentoring” by John Wooden and Don Yager– October 9, 2009 (#7)
8. What Does Stewardship Mean to Me – November 6, 2005 (#13)
9. Hearing God Call – January 7, 2009 (#12)
10. A Brief History of Atomic Theory – April 27, 2011 (#9)
11. The Dilemma of Modern Christianity – April 18, 2009 (#6)
12. The Twelve Disciples – Were they management potential? – October 3, 2008 (#14)
13. “A Child’s Book Report on the entire Bible” – November 6, 2005 (not ranked)
14. What Does It Mean To Be Called? – August 30, 2008 (#16)
15. The Difference Between Football in the North and South – October 8, 2006 (#10)
16. “A Cake Without Baking Powder” – October 8, 2006 (unranked)
17. “Just What Is The Right Thing To Do?” – June 28, 2008, (unranked)
18. “The Difference Between Republicans and Democrats” – November 27, 2008, (unranked)
19. “Describe Your Pastor” – March 11, 2008, (unranked)
20. A Scout is Reverent – February 2, 2010 (#19)

My all-time list is

1. The Chemistry of Bowling (#1 in 2011)
2. Why Do We Celebrate Palm Sunday? (#2)
3. Brer Rabbit and the Briar Patch – November 18, 2009 (#4)
4. A Collection of Sayings (#3)
5. John Wooden – A Review of “A Game Plan for Life – the power of Mentoring” by John Wooden and Don Yager– October 9, 2009 (#5)

“Thoughts for Christmas Day, 2012″

“For unto us a child is born”

A child was born this morning into a world of violence and hatred, into a world of military power and oppression, into a world where peace was proclaimed around the world but it was a peace obtained through might and not love.

It was and is a world where what matters is more a measure of where you came from and not who you are. It is not what is in your heart but what is your bank account that counts the most. It was and is a world that measures success by the amount of stuff that you have and how much stuff you can amass.

It was and is a world where it what you do for me is more important that what I do for you.

This was the world into which Jesus Christ was born but how much different is the world today? Twenty children and six adults at an elementary school are killed with a gun and many people say that we need more guns. How much different is that from the Pax Romana where peace was maintained through oppression?

We send our young off to war in far away lands and when they come home we toss them aside. What did the parents of Roman soldiers say or think when their sons were sent off to Roman outposts in the Galilee or England? Were the wars and police actions of the Roman army any different from our engagement in Afghanistan?

We have turned the birth of a child into a major economic scenario. We are more concerned with the presents we buy than we are with the significance of Jesus’ birth. And I sometimes, quite honestly, think that we don’t want to know much about the birth.

We sing of the shepherds visiting the family, not realizing the social statement that this makes. We forget that shepherds were the outcasts of society in Jesus’ birth and for them to receive the Good News of Jesus’ birth first was a major social statement that the lowest of society would be the first in God’s Kingdom.

The wise men came seeking the Christ Child and yet today wisdom and thought no longer seem to matter. The wise men had to leave the comfort of their home and go beyond normal boundaries to seek new knowledge and yet today we are fearful what lies over the horizon and beyond the boundaries of our lives. I have no doubts that the wise men understood why Herod wanted to know where this young child was; they understood the meaning of the message of the angel that they should return home by another route. Are we as willing to day to discern the difference by the desires of the powerful and greedy and the needs of the people?

We woke this morning to the knowledge that innocent people were killed and we may never know why. We woke this morning with wars and violence all around the world. The world in 2012 is not much different from what it was over two thousand years ago.

But just as we celebrate the birth of a child two thousand years ago, we celebrate the birth of children today here, in our own extended family twins were born yesterday, and elsewhere. If there is to be a future, it will be in the children and how we treat them.

A child was born some two thousands years ago and His Birth determined our future.

We can continue to live in this world of hatred and war and know that there is no future.

Or we can honor Christ’s Birth and continue the mission, the ministry that began two thousand years and know that there will be a future.

How we respond to Christ’s Birth this Christmas day will tell us what our future shall be.

“Power to the People”

This day started early today because we wanted to get to the polling place as soon as possible. I was the 10^th person in my ward to vote! Now, I am not all that crazy about knowing what number I am because, in theory, one might figure out which ballot was mine and then determine who I voted for.

But since there were quite a few people from other wards and districts voting, the probability of determining my vote was reduced.

It wasn’t like it was in 1980 when 1 person in my town voted for the Communist Party candidate and everyone assumed that it was me. The fact that I had a “John Anderson for President” sticker on my car should have told them something but I guess not.

I had planned on doing a write-in vote this year but circumstances (a 4-year old grandson) made that a little impractical. As I have stated in my blog before, I voted for a 3^rd party candidate. Some will say that I wasted my vote but since both major parties pretty well wrote off New York, I used my vote to insure that one of the third parties would be able to remain on the ballot.

The only way that there will be any preceptible and visible change in this country is when we vote. And it isn’t just in the national elections every two years; it is in every election. One of the poll workers told us that today was going to be a mad house but no one votes in the city and local elections.

All politics are local and if you do not vote then you lose your power.

One’s vote, however cast, is the expression of the power of the people.

“Observations of a 21st Century Neo-Luddite”

For a period of time I collected statements that I thought were interesting or caused you to think (see “A Collection of Sayings”). I should probably put some of following observations on that list but there are here because this piece follows “Thoughts of a 21^st Century Neo-Luddite”; of course, it is entirely possible that some of the statements there could easily fit here as well.

In 1990, as part of our research on the nature of computer networks and computer literacy Marcin Papryzcki, George Duckett and I suggested that the on-line courses would be developed as a natural progression in computer technology. But the development of such on-line courses and the change of real and physical classrooms into virtual classrooms has done little to facilitate learning. The drill-and-practice problems that seem so common place in the real classroom are now part and parcel of the virtual classroom.

Three years ago, in “The Future of Education”, I first published the idea that on-line learning was not necessarily going to be a boon to education. In December of 2009, I wrote “The Grinch in the Classroom”, in which I wrote about the ways to improve our schools and it wasn’t by putting our schools on-line. I noted in January (“The State of Education – 2012”) that there is research to show that on-line education doesn’t necessarily work.

The following observations are an out-growth of those thoughts:

1. No matter what type of technology one is talking about or using, be it a computer (main-frame, desktop, laptop or mini), a calculator (with or with graphing capability), or a “smart” phone, two things are certain:
   • The device in use is only as smart as the person using it.
   • If you are using the device to gather information or solve a problem and you know nothing about the problem, you are apt to get the wrong answer as quickly as you can get the right answer and not know the difference.
2. Much can be said about productivity software (word-processing, spreadsheets, presentation software, database, etc.) but it still remains that
   • A poorly prepared presentation cannot be salvaged by an elaborate and overdone Power Point presentation (see “The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation” and “The Making of the Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation”).
   • If you cannot spell, spell-checkers are of no-value and if you cannot write, neither are grammar checkers.
3. We have the technology to change the world but the technology by itself can do nothing. Students in America have the same technology as students in Egypt but I have yet to see the ground-breaking changes in America that took place in Egypt and other Middle-East countries during the Arab Spring of 2011.
4. If the tasks that you will be doing do not require technology, then learning new technologies does little to prepare you for those tasks.
5. Based on this author’s experience at various community colleges and four-year schools, while students at both the pre-college and the college level are well-versed in texting and other similar communication methods, they are unable to translate those communication skills into writing and the use of word-processing programs. This may be very anecdotal in nature but when you see the same thing occuring in a variety of settings, one may presume a certain degree of truth to the observation.
6. The advent of the personal computer has also seen the development of hardware and instrumentation for the chemistry and physics laboratory. Much development has gone into developing experiments that utilize the instruments. But, while some students may be comfortable using hardware in experiments, there is some reluctance or inability to include the output of said experiments into a formally produced lab writeup. Often times, the printout containing experimental data is stapled or otherwise attached to the lab writeup/report. Students may know how to prepare a document and they may know how to use a spreadsheet but they do not know how to utilize both at the same time.
7. Even with the advent of on-line document sharing processes, most students do not know how to work together cooperatively. I am not sure that most instructors know how this works either and if they do not know how to share documents, they are probably unwilling to let their students do it.
8. I truly believe that most instructors are not capable of utilizing the computing power of their desktop machine to its maximum capability. Even with the prepared database of questions that most text publishers provide, most instructors could not create individualized exams that would allow students to work together without cheating.
9. On-line instruction is the next “big thing”, especially in college instruction. It allows perhaps an unlimited number of students to take a course at any time while not worrying about classroom size. It would appear that all the instructor has to do is maintain a reasonable set of office hours.
   • Yet, many instructors are given only rudimentary instruction in the use of the on-line instruction software and there is very little interaction between student and instructor or other students in the classroom.
   • The one good point is that students do have the opportunity to post thoughts and comments about items being covered in the course but there is very little “real-time” interaction.
   • Despite the rise of on-line instruction, much of the work is still essentially drill-and-practice work with very little instructional creativity involved. Most text book companies will provide the materials that can be uploaded as the course work material and simply transpose the problems from the end of the chapter and the back of the book to subsections on the computer hard drive.
10. In courses that require laboratory time, there is no ability to run “real-time” experiments. And we will not go into the nature of safety and liability when experiments are encouraged but can only be done in uncontrolled and definitely non-scientific environments.
11. Final observation – We need to focus on doing something with what we have, not simply creating new applications or devices. And if we don’t start doing that soon, we will not have anyone capable of creating new devices.

Clearly, there are some people out there who are creative; we would not have the state-of-the-art technology that we do. And one only look at the Mars Rover “Curiosity” to know that there are some people who can envision ways of utilizing technology to obtain new information. But the ones who did create “Curiosity” are not the ones in school today and those are the ones where the focus needs to lie.

“How To Become a 21st Century Neo-Luddite”

This piece follows “Thoughts of a 21^st Century Neo-Luddite” and hopefully provides the set up for the next piece, “Observations of a 21^st Century Neo-Luddite”. This is more of a story of how I got to this point in the technological development of this country.

I have personally been interested and involved with computers and the application of computers since 1963. Back then, programming a computer was primarily done with machine language and you operated on a huge main-frame system. In theory, because I successfully navigated my way through a self-paced book on machine language programming, I had the skills to be a computer programmer. But there were no main-frame computers available for 8^th graders to practice on and I never explored that possibility.

By the time I got to college, programming had evolved into more useable languages and I learned FORTRAN. Still, the only computers available were big main-frame computers and it was a matter of sitting at a key punch and preparing stacks of punch cards, each with a line of code type on it. Each main-frame had its own set of codes for running your program and that complicated things.

Still, I began seeing ways that I could use a computer, even if it was a main-frame, in part because in the back of my physcial chemistry textbook was a FORTRAN program that do the calculations for a particular experiment that we did in the lab. Because I was familiar with the set-up codes for the main-frame that the college used, I was able to add some formatting codes and prepare a reasonably decent lab report. Unfortunately, my instructor would not accept the computer printer, even though it was typed and on 8-1/2 by 11 paper, because no one else in the class was able to do the same thing. I guess being on the cutting edge of technology doesn’t always help.

The main-frame computer was still the computer of choice when I began working on my doctorate but now one could sit in a room deep with the confines of a building and type in your program at a terminal instead of finding time to sit at a key punch. I also began learning SPSS (Statistical Programming for the Social Sciences) so that I could complete the statistics courses that were part of my doctoral program. The main-frame that I had access to also had a word-processing program and now it was possible to do my papers at a keyboard and have them printed out on 8-1/2 by 11 paper in the proper format for submission. This time, everyone had the capability of doing this so my work was accepted. While this was reasonable, it still required many hours at a terminal on campus. The personal computer revolution and the ability to work away from the main-frame was still a couple of years away. Still, there were those who saw possibilities of computer-based education and began developing programs that people could use as learning tools. Keep in mind that much of this early work was done with limited or no graphics.

The mid 1980s saw the development of the personal or desktop computer. Much credit must be given to those educators, occaisionally in administration, who saw the potential for this new device in education. Unfortunately, while there was vision, it was limited. There was very little knowledge about computers and the work that was involved in preparing programs that would allow the student to learn or test new ideas. Many people thought that all that they had to do was buy the computer and learning would take place automatically (perhaps a bit over-stated but I think you get the point). And if programs were needed, they were relatively easy to write. Needless to say, that wasn’t what happened.

As we moved into the 1990s, we saw the beginnings of the notion of computer literacy. But it was still very much based on the ability of a user to program a computer and not use the computer to solve problems or increase one’s productivity.

Faced with students who were considered computer literate because they had passed a class on basic computer programming (I never have determined if that was a class in basic computer language or an introductory class in programming) but who were unable to utilize a computer in their work, Marcin Papryzcki, George Duckett and I undertook some research on the nature of computer literacy. The one important conclusion for this moment is that computer literacy must be phrased in terms of what one does with the computer, not one’s ability to program a computer.

If we are to consider how long computers, in whatever form they may be, have been a part of our lives, then we have to figure that computer literacy, or the ability to understand how computers work, has been a part of our lives aw well.

The passage of time, however, suggests that while computer literacy is a stated goal of every school system (K – 12 and college), it is still very rudimentary in nature.

Computer literacy may have changed from understaning what computers do to being able to use a computer but there is still a limited understanding of how to use a computer in a particular setting.

When I began exploring computers in 1963, I had no idea where such explorations would take me. Computers were big and bulky, locked away in massive building accessible to a select few. Along the way, I found ways to use computers in ways that fit within the framework of my other interests. Perhaps my education gave me that opportunity.

What is clear is that many people still don’t realize or cannot realize the potential of the technology that lies at their fingertips. As we progress deeper into the 21^st century, that is a very frightening thought.