Sunday, October 2, 2011
The Evolution Debate Continues
I just posted this article on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cosmicfingerprints.com%2Fdarwin-half-right%2F&h=wAQCh7YvgAQAJ9m3p7PuT-us9A712R_0d1Zrzzk2GxF2Yjw
I've made comments there about it, but there are a couple of counterarguments that occurred to me, which I thought might be better in a blog post.
First, the random mutation generator Mr. Marshall links to and cites as evidence that "noise" does not add information to a structure. However, the use of linguistic information as an analogy to evolution is precisely that: an analogy, and by no means a perfect one. The fault in Marshall's generator is that there is nothing that plays the role of natural selection. Nothing that weeds out the harmful mutations. Of course, he would say, as he does later in the article, that such measures are not "natural selection" but "deliberate selection." But again, this is only an analogy, and simply having random mutations with nothing that serves to play the role of natural selection is ultimately not useful, except perhaps to give us a sense of precisely how unusual useful mutations are. But in the real scenario of natural selection there is a sort of "refiner's fire" that gets rid of superfluous or harmful mutations. There is nothing that even serves as a substitute for this process in this generator.
Second, Marshall discusses how there is in fact no question that very beautiful, intricate patterns occur with no interference from a mind: sand dunes, snowflakes, etc. However, putting it that way is theologically incorrect. Precisely because God is a sovereign, personal God, Biblical Christianity would argue that He fashions each snowflake, each sand dune, every thunderstorm, the course of every river, and so on. Yes, these are entirely natural occurrences, but it is God who not only wrote the laws that govern the natural forces which produce these magnificent displays of His glory, but He is intimately involved with them (and us) day by day. There is no easy, scientific way to explain how these can be both completely naturally occurring and intimately designed by God, but nevertheless, Biblical Christianity sees no conflict between these positions.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
The Forbidden Subjects
Everyone knows you don't talk about politics and religion. But I've never been a big fan for agreeing with what everyone knows, so here's a blog about both.
I've noticed in my post-college years more and more young, evangelical Christians who are NOT, by any means, Republican. In fact, many of them resent the fact that the Republican party, with often very un-Christian actions and views, claims the name and votes of their religion. These young evangelical Christians are less concerned about pro-life and anti-gay marriage stances than about issues of social justice and poverty relief, among others.
I foresee two possibilities for the future of the Republican party as this group grows, both in numbers and age.
1. The Republican party may, within a generation or two, no longer be able to count so strongly on the evangelical vote as more and more of these young evangelicals become politically and socially active.
2. On the other hand, this group consists primarily of young, single or recently married folks. In other words, people who don't have a lot of net worth or family to protect and provide for. It could be that as they develop wealth and families, they begin to fear the loss of these things, and will find themselves voting more in line with the party that claims to protect these things.
What about you? Have you experienced this apparent growth of more liberally minded Evangelical Christians? Are you one of them? Do you think my characterization is fair? What aspects of your faith inform your politics?
Are you a more "traditional" evangelical Christian who votes Republican? What aspects of your faith inform your politics? Do you think my characterization of you is fair?
Why might it be a good thing for more liberally minded evangelicals to increase in number? Why might it be a bad thing? Why might it be a good thing for evangelicals to continue their support of the Republican party? Why might it be a bad thing?
I've noticed in my post-college years more and more young, evangelical Christians who are NOT, by any means, Republican. In fact, many of them resent the fact that the Republican party, with often very un-Christian actions and views, claims the name and votes of their religion. These young evangelical Christians are less concerned about pro-life and anti-gay marriage stances than about issues of social justice and poverty relief, among others.
I foresee two possibilities for the future of the Republican party as this group grows, both in numbers and age.
1. The Republican party may, within a generation or two, no longer be able to count so strongly on the evangelical vote as more and more of these young evangelicals become politically and socially active.
2. On the other hand, this group consists primarily of young, single or recently married folks. In other words, people who don't have a lot of net worth or family to protect and provide for. It could be that as they develop wealth and families, they begin to fear the loss of these things, and will find themselves voting more in line with the party that claims to protect these things.
What about you? Have you experienced this apparent growth of more liberally minded Evangelical Christians? Are you one of them? Do you think my characterization is fair? What aspects of your faith inform your politics?
Are you a more "traditional" evangelical Christian who votes Republican? What aspects of your faith inform your politics? Do you think my characterization of you is fair?
Why might it be a good thing for more liberally minded evangelicals to increase in number? Why might it be a bad thing? Why might it be a good thing for evangelicals to continue their support of the Republican party? Why might it be a bad thing?
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Creating Languages
Every so often, it strikes again - that quiet, persistent urge to exercise what Tolkien called the "Secret Vice". It started, as so many such things do, in the days of my no-social-life-outside-of-school adolescence. I would lock myself in my room and go through page after page of titillating material. I was creating my own language.
Inspired by the example of J.R.R. Tolkien, whose Lord of the Rings trilogy had by then become my favorite novel, and by that exotic, tempting leather-bound copy of Latin Grammar I had found and perused at my great-aunt's, I entered innocently into the world of toying with powerful forces I had yet to understand. But they had begun their work of slow seduction, and it wouldn't be long before I became more machine than man, bent on galactic domination...well, perhaps that's an exaggeration. Nonetheless, I had found my calling.
What impressed me about my first introduction to Latin, from that battered book on my great-aunt's shelf, was that here was a language which expressed perfectly well with suffixes what we had to use often clunky permutations of word order to say. I wondered, could there be still another way to express the relationships between words in a sentence? And while we were at it, what about the sounds of a language? These were the two revelations that provided the basic structure of my language, which I originally called Kirkian, from my middle name, eventually settling on a name from within the language, Paijodd, the "high speech".
I wondered if it were possible to use a completely new and different way of defining the relationships between different words. I made it so by deciding that nouns would have a different form to show whether they were related to other nouns or to verbs. There would be suffixes that could be added to these basic forms to specify the relationships further. In this way, a noun inflected to show relationship to the verb could cover all the basic functions (subject, object, indirect object, etc.), and even take on some adverbial meanings. On the other hand, a noun inflected to show relationship to other nouns could show adjectival meanings, possession, or simply form compound words.
The different forms for these nouns are based on the other part that fascinated me: sounds. I thought it would be neat if consonants with the same place of articulation (like b, p, v, and f, for example) alternated their manners of articulation (that is, b means something different than p) to indicate different meanings or grammatical functions. So that's how it works in Paijodd. Final consonants change to indicate different meanings or relationships.
Fricatives (like v and f), for example, indicate plurals. A voiced consonant (such as b, singular, and v, plural) indicates that the noun is related to the verb, while the remaining two (unvoiced - p and f) consonants indicate that the noun is related to other nouns.
There's one more aspect of sound that fascinated me, though: vowels. I always liked English irregular verbs like run, which changes its vowel in the past tense, to ran, so I wanted something of that in Paijodd. To that end, it is not only final consonants that indicate the noun's relationship to its verb, but the vowels in the final syllable of the word as well. To create rules for this, I arranged the possible vowels in Paijodd into a hierarchy. In noun base forms, the vowel moves down in the hierarchy to indicate relationship to a verb, or stays the same as the base form to indicate relationship to another noun.
To make this all a little bit clearer, let's look at an example. Take the word sabb, which means "war". The two forms would be:
seb- = related to a verb, and
sap- = related to a noun.
seb- shows the vowel e, which is below a in the hierarchy I devised, and the voiced final consonant b. Together these sounds show that this word is related to the verb.
sap- on the other hand, shows the original vowel, a, unchanged from the base form, sabb, and the unvoiced consonant p, which IS changed from the base form, together indicating this word's relationship to other nouns.
To these would be added suffixes making the precise relationship with the other part of speech a little clearer. To round out our example, let's just take the suffix -ía, which has a meaning like with or of. Thus, it can express how someone did something in the verb-related form: Sebía sem eós, "He came with war" (in order to make war or by making war). Further, in the noun-related form, it can show possession: Sapía égg, "the war's end".
I could outline the entire grammar, of course, but this is just a taste of it, and only meant to explain which aspects fascinated me about the prospect of creating a language and why. For me, it was primarily the notion of creating an entirely new and unique way to express the relationships between words in a phrase or sentence, as well as the use of different but related sounds to change the meaning or function of a word. It was these titillating bits of the language-that-could-be that knocked me off of my feet, and kept me locked in my room for hours, afraid that someone might walk in on me any minute!
Inspired by the example of J.R.R. Tolkien, whose Lord of the Rings trilogy had by then become my favorite novel, and by that exotic, tempting leather-bound copy of Latin Grammar I had found and perused at my great-aunt's, I entered innocently into the world of toying with powerful forces I had yet to understand. But they had begun their work of slow seduction, and it wouldn't be long before I became more machine than man, bent on galactic domination...well, perhaps that's an exaggeration. Nonetheless, I had found my calling.
What impressed me about my first introduction to Latin, from that battered book on my great-aunt's shelf, was that here was a language which expressed perfectly well with suffixes what we had to use often clunky permutations of word order to say. I wondered, could there be still another way to express the relationships between words in a sentence? And while we were at it, what about the sounds of a language? These were the two revelations that provided the basic structure of my language, which I originally called Kirkian, from my middle name, eventually settling on a name from within the language, Paijodd, the "high speech".
I wondered if it were possible to use a completely new and different way of defining the relationships between different words. I made it so by deciding that nouns would have a different form to show whether they were related to other nouns or to verbs. There would be suffixes that could be added to these basic forms to specify the relationships further. In this way, a noun inflected to show relationship to the verb could cover all the basic functions (subject, object, indirect object, etc.), and even take on some adverbial meanings. On the other hand, a noun inflected to show relationship to other nouns could show adjectival meanings, possession, or simply form compound words.
The different forms for these nouns are based on the other part that fascinated me: sounds. I thought it would be neat if consonants with the same place of articulation (like b, p, v, and f, for example) alternated their manners of articulation (that is, b means something different than p) to indicate different meanings or grammatical functions. So that's how it works in Paijodd. Final consonants change to indicate different meanings or relationships.
Fricatives (like v and f), for example, indicate plurals. A voiced consonant (such as b, singular, and v, plural) indicates that the noun is related to the verb, while the remaining two (unvoiced - p and f) consonants indicate that the noun is related to other nouns.
There's one more aspect of sound that fascinated me, though: vowels. I always liked English irregular verbs like run, which changes its vowel in the past tense, to ran, so I wanted something of that in Paijodd. To that end, it is not only final consonants that indicate the noun's relationship to its verb, but the vowels in the final syllable of the word as well. To create rules for this, I arranged the possible vowels in Paijodd into a hierarchy. In noun base forms, the vowel moves down in the hierarchy to indicate relationship to a verb, or stays the same as the base form to indicate relationship to another noun.
To make this all a little bit clearer, let's look at an example. Take the word sabb, which means "war". The two forms would be:
seb- = related to a verb, and
sap- = related to a noun.
seb- shows the vowel e, which is below a in the hierarchy I devised, and the voiced final consonant b. Together these sounds show that this word is related to the verb.
sap- on the other hand, shows the original vowel, a, unchanged from the base form, sabb, and the unvoiced consonant p, which IS changed from the base form, together indicating this word's relationship to other nouns.
To these would be added suffixes making the precise relationship with the other part of speech a little clearer. To round out our example, let's just take the suffix -ía, which has a meaning like with or of. Thus, it can express how someone did something in the verb-related form: Sebía sem eós, "He came with war" (in order to make war or by making war). Further, in the noun-related form, it can show possession: Sapía égg, "the war's end".
I could outline the entire grammar, of course, but this is just a taste of it, and only meant to explain which aspects fascinated me about the prospect of creating a language and why. For me, it was primarily the notion of creating an entirely new and unique way to express the relationships between words in a phrase or sentence, as well as the use of different but related sounds to change the meaning or function of a word. It was these titillating bits of the language-that-could-be that knocked me off of my feet, and kept me locked in my room for hours, afraid that someone might walk in on me any minute!
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Why am I a Christian, anyway?
Discussing my thoughts about Dawkins arguments in my last post naturally begs this question. And I would like to share briefly how I became a Christian, and more importantly, what keeps me going, in spite of the obvious challenges that being of a curious, analytical mindset raises.
First, I became a Christian at the age of fourteen, or at least that's when I made it my own, and chose to follow Christ for myself, not just because it was the way I had been raised. I made the decision at a moment of crisis when, confronted with ideas from other religions, I realized I needed to decide what I believed. Although I respected the idea of constant searching for truth from Eastern traditions, I felt that Christianity had the most cohesive argument of any religious system I was familiar with at the time: it explains where we all came from, why things don't seem right in the world, and what the God who created it all has done and is doing about it, and what will become of everything in the end.
Created by a Holy, just God in His image, man sinned and was separated from the creator. Man's sin is so pervasive that he cannot earn forgiveness on His own, because God's holiness and justice cannot be attained by man. Yet God is also loving and merciful, so He sent Christ to die on the cross, thereby satisfying the justice of God, while allowing Him to extend His love and mercy to man. But man must accept it in order to escape the justice of God.
That still makes more sense to me than any other belief system out there. But what really keeps me going in Christ is the growth I've experienced in all the years since, the experience of living the Christian life. Thinking Christianly about world issues, consttantly seeking to grow and learn more, and to deepen my relationship with God through Christ, as well as to take action and actively love people as Christ loves them are all the reasons I still find Christianity to be the most satsifying, freeing, and enjoyable experience of faith.
First, I became a Christian at the age of fourteen, or at least that's when I made it my own, and chose to follow Christ for myself, not just because it was the way I had been raised. I made the decision at a moment of crisis when, confronted with ideas from other religions, I realized I needed to decide what I believed. Although I respected the idea of constant searching for truth from Eastern traditions, I felt that Christianity had the most cohesive argument of any religious system I was familiar with at the time: it explains where we all came from, why things don't seem right in the world, and what the God who created it all has done and is doing about it, and what will become of everything in the end.
Created by a Holy, just God in His image, man sinned and was separated from the creator. Man's sin is so pervasive that he cannot earn forgiveness on His own, because God's holiness and justice cannot be attained by man. Yet God is also loving and merciful, so He sent Christ to die on the cross, thereby satisfying the justice of God, while allowing Him to extend His love and mercy to man. But man must accept it in order to escape the justice of God.
That still makes more sense to me than any other belief system out there. But what really keeps me going in Christ is the growth I've experienced in all the years since, the experience of living the Christian life. Thinking Christianly about world issues, consttantly seeking to grow and learn more, and to deepen my relationship with God through Christ, as well as to take action and actively love people as Christ loves them are all the reasons I still find Christianity to be the most satsifying, freeing, and enjoyable experience of faith.
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