M.L.King's Letter from Birmingham Jail

“Letter From Birmingham Jail”

April 16, 1963

This famous letter from Martin Luther King, Jr, to Alabama Clergy. This letter was an answer to a letter sent to Dr King by these clergy.

I have taken excerpts from the letter demonstrating two points:

1.  Answering the question why he would break the law by declaring some man-made laws as evil, e.g., segregation laws, requiring Christians to non-violently to disobey them and declaring the evil nature of segregation.

2.  Declaring that the church must reclaim its rightful role as conscience to the ruling authorities (Ephesians 3:10) or be relegated to the rank of a social club.

“How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I-it” relationship for an “I-thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? “

. . .

“There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

“Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.”
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If we agree with Dr. King that segregation is sin, then you and I must confess that sin and repent of it.  If we want to see the church have its rightful place as a moral compass in society, we must end our hypocritical segregation in the body of Christ.

After repentance and confession, we need to be intentional in ridding ourselves of this sin.  

Intentionally invite someone of a different race to church with you.  

Intentionally add music that is more inclusive:  Black Churches add the old hymns that are familiar to whites; white churches, add a praise team with a guitar and drums.  

Intentionally make others feel welcome.

Did you experience the largeness of God’s church tonight, when you  heard Chinese Christians singing worship songs?  Diversity is the cure for segregation.  

Let us take Dr. King’s dream to the next level in our generation.

Intellectual Schizophrenia

Intellectual Schizophrenia is the title of a book by Rousas J. Rushdoony, originally published in 1961, and currently available in a reprint on Amazon.com.  The book was prophetic; what Rushdoony claimed would be the outcome of the change in public education from Christian to Humanistic foundations, is our present experience.

The purpose of this essay is to point out one particular arena where this schizophrenia is most obvious: the church.  As an example, I was teaching a Sunday school class for college students and we were studying the book of Genesis.  As we discussed the creation story, one student asked me how old the earth is.  I told him that we can’t be sure, but based on Bishop Ussher’s genealogy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology), there have been about six thousand years from the time of Adam until today, so I would conjecture, based on the Bible, that the whole universe was not much older than that.

Then he asked me, “But how old is it, really?”  I asked him what he meant.  He said, “They didn’t teach that in science class.”  Trying to be gentle, I pointed out that he was at a state university and that he was being indoctrinated by humanists to believe that the Bible’s evidence was not real evidence because they believe it is not scientific.

So I told him, “If there is a God, and if the Bible is God’s revelation, and if God tells the truth, then the earth is really thousands (not millions or billions) of years old.”  Really.

“How can that be?” he asked.  “How can it not be?” I replied.  “What about science?” he queried.  “Science, true science, rightly understood, will never contradict the Bible, rightly understood.  If there appears to be a contradiction, then we do not understand the science, or we do not understand the Bible, or both.  Truth is truth, no matter where it is found, and truth will not contradict truth.”

Christians in humanist schools hold to two different truths, religious truths, which are true in the religious dimension, and scientific truths, which are true in the scientific domain.  They are thus intellectually schizophrenic, trying to hold to two opposing ideas at the same time.

Religion and Science

I get three daily quotations via my iGoogle web page.  One quotation last week caused me to stop, re-read it, and copy it for further evaluation:

“Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science.”  -Gary Zukav

If we accept this statement as true, and then apply it to his own writings, then “Western religious people” will accept his precepts and “Western scientists” will reject what he says, for his writings are full of assertions without proof.

The Wikipedia article featuring him (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Zukav) includes the following excerpts describing his Teachings:

“Zukav introduces . . . . He asserts . . . . which he defines . . . . He further asserts . . . . According to Zukav, . . . . which he describes as . . . . He asserts . . . . Zukav distinguishes . . . . He calls this . . . . Zukav posits . . . .”

It is good for him that people are not generally consistent.  Both religious people and scientific people like his books, putting his books on the NY Times bestsellers list multiple times.

If you are familiar with analyzing logical fallacies, you will find two glaring examples of fallacies in the iGoogle quotation.  The first fallacy is called “Straw Man.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

He posits that “Western religion” has, as a fundamental characteristic, something for which there is no evidence in any religious writings.  (But I have already pointed out that assertion without evidence, i.e., asservation, is his strong point.)  It would seem to me that, if something were a fundamental characteristic of a religion, there would be some attestation to it in the religious literature.

The other fallacy is called “Composition (or Part for the Whole).” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition

Suppose Zukav has met one person identified as a Western religious person and that person accepted things without proof.  Then Zukav could have made this statement, supported by evidence, but with the Composition Fallacy.  Picking out one nut from a bucket of small parts does not mean that the whole bucket is full of nuts.  There may be many bolts, washers, screws,  nails and a few nuts.

His quotation is also ambiguous.  What is “Western religion” or “Western science?”  Western religion has a link in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_religion), but no citations.  “Western Christianity,” on the other hand is well defined. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Christianity)

If Zukav was parodying Western Christianity, then he is caught in a contradiction.  A cursory reading of the New Testament, the defining document of Christianity, reveals that much of the content is the presenting of evidence to support belief claims.  Much of the Gospel writings are a presentation of the evidence that proves that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.  All claims of individuals’ speaking on behalf of God are supported by proofs that the person qualifies as a Prophet, because he performed wonders or accurately foretold the future.  There are no claims or requests to accept ideas without evidence.  The evidence documented in the Bible (i.e., the presentation of the fundamental characteristics of Christianity) contradicts Zukav’s quotation.  Like Wikipedia’s characterization of his teaching demonstrates, he asserts it, i.e., he makes it all up.

It is a cute quotation, but you can now forget it.

Where do Presuppositions Come From?

A common theme is the last several essays has been that presuppositions determine conclusions.  The major premises that we accept without proof influence our logical conclusions as much as the minor premises discovered by investigation.  People who believe catastrophism will come to different conclusions than those who begin with uniformitarianism.

But where do major premises come from?  Basically, we believe what we believe because of our experiences and because we have not experienced anything that would contradict what we believe.  If we have experienced a contradiction, we are more prone to challenge or reinterpret the contradicting information than to contradict our prevailing belief set, because it is our prevailing belief set (often called our world and life view), that gives us our identity.  It is what makes us right in our own eyes, and we as a species, are reluctant to admit to being wrong.

I came to my presuppositions as a result of the sum of my life experiences, and you came to yours as a result of your life experiences.  Since no two of  us have identical life experiences, we rarely find someone whose presuppositions are identical to our own.  When we do find someone whose shared, shared experiences match those which we are willing to share with them, we call them "soul mates," because most people do not fall in the same category.  [It is only the shared, shared experiences that we find in common.  Some other experiences may be common to both, but without the verbalization and communication (sharing) of them, we do not realize all the commonalities or differences we have.  That is why soul mates break up.  They learn of differences that they had only assumed were commonalities.  They are no longer one.]

The scientific word for experience is experiment.  We learn what we learn and believe what we believe because of experience.  If we are wise, we can also learn from the experience of others, but most people appear programmed to have to go through things for themselves, and do not accept the testimony of others.

Let's revisit the major premise of the first argument we looked at:  All men are mortal.  Assuming this statement is not a tautology, then it relates to our experience.  We have each observed a process whereby living people die.  We have observed people to die who have an accident, an abnormal medical condition, an act of war, a capital crime committed against them, or they have grown too old to continue living.

In our "universal human experience," we have an expectation of death as an event that terminates physical life.  This experience is so common in our experience that we accept it as true.  On the other hand we may not, a priori, deny the existence of never-dying persons, on the basis that we have never seen one.  But we accept it by faith, or else accept, as we do for most theories, that it is probably true with a very high degree of probability.

Other presuppositions come with the same caveat: they are probably true. We build chains of inference that depend on our presuppositions.  If uniformitarianism is true, then evolution is probably true.  If catastrophism is true, then a world-wide flood is probably true. Etc.

Or, stated in the opposite way, if evolution is true then uniformitarianism (or something very much like it) must be true, and if world-wide flooding is true, then castrophism (or something very much like it) must be true.

Where do presuppositions come from?  They come from our experiments and experience.  Are they true? Probably.  What if two people have different presuppositions?  They should test them to make sure they are consistent with the rest of the data they collect.  What if the two people's presuppositions contradict each other?  They might both be false, but they cannot both be true, if, indeed, there is a contradiction.  Is one presupposition better than another?  Actually, the true ones are better than false ones.

The bottom line is, What do you believe?  Why?  It is your faith that determines your conclusions.

Proud Alumnus of Emory College of Emory University

Going through graduation season and having many acquaintances who are going through graduation ceremonies has caused me to think about my own graduation and what it means to me.

I went to Emory College at Emory University and also the Graduate School of Emory University, and was even accepted into the Master of Divinity program at Candler School of Theology at Emory University. (I only attended the convocation--I enrolled in Reformed Theological Seminary shortly thereafter.)  It has been 46 years since I graduated from Emory College, and it wasn't until a couple of months back, when a representative of the Alumni office came through Starkville, Mississippi, that I have thought seriously about what graduating from Emory has meant to me.

While at Emory, I never thought about whether or not it was a good school.  It was the only one I knew.  My brother and I were first generation college goers.  None of our parents or grandparents had gone to college.  My mother and step-father had determined to make it financially possible for my brother and me to attend college, and the faculty of Druid Hills High School, likewise, made it their goal to qualify us academically to succeed in college.  Those are debts we owe that can never be paid back.  They can only be paid forward to try to do the same for the next generation.

It is a marvel to me that, at the time that Thomas J. J. Altizer, the author of God is Dead, was on the faculty at Emory and receiving much publicity, I was involved in Bible studies with other students and became a born-again, evangelical Christian!  I was developing a love/hate relationship with my alma mater.  She stood for many things that were anathema to me, but also, she was the nurturing mother to my educational achievement and social development.  Although I do not really identify with Moses, I can understand how he must have felt, owing his life and training to the household of Pharaoh, although his true loyalties belonged to the Great I AM of the Exodus.

More than anything else, I remember the academic freedom at Emory.  The people there were really intelligent.  I do not understand how I passed the entrance requirements, but can thank six people, specifically, who seem to me now, to have been the ones who prepared my mind for those entrance requirements:  Mrs. Camp, my Geometry teacher, and Mr. Hall, my Advanced Algebra and Calculus teacher both prepared me to think analytically, and Mrs. Pomeroy and Mrs. Garrard, whose English grammar and vocabulary stick with me to this day, and Dr. Meroney, whose Latin vocabulary and grammar prepared me to excel in language learning.  I can't leave thoughts of DHHS without kudos to Mrs. Gibson who gave me a job as Chemistry Laboratory manager, and whose excellent foundation enabled me to get an NSF undergraduate research grant in my freshman summer at Emory.  So it was not I, but they, who scored my SAT grades and got me in Emory.  Nonetheless, I was surrounded by intelligent students and faculty.

I have now taught in five colleges in addition to being a teaching assistant in Geology at Emory.  None has matched the academic excellence and freedom that I experienced at Emory.  Only in the church do I have the freedom to challenge the students to think, in the same way I was challenged at Emory.  As my teachers before me, I am more interested in the process you use to get your results, than the results, themselves.  My teachers didn't require me to come to the same conclusions they did, but they did make sure I was rigorous in the procedures of reaching mine.  Did I test every assumption?  Were the steps in the process logical and clear?  It was an atmosphere of academic freedom like this that formed my understanding of understanding.

After a "Creation vs. Evolution" debate with a biology instructor at a private high school in Jackson, Mississippi, a couple of decades ago, the biologist told me, "You clearly won the debate, but I still don't believe you."   We live in an age of intellectual schizophrenia in which we do not need for things to make sense in order for us to believe them.  Even though existential philosophy was dominant during those years, my education at Emory prepared me for coherence, a belief in things that make sense.

Of all my peers in theology, I appear to have a background with more science and math than they.  I am able to analyze the arguments of scientists better than most ministers who majored in history, Bible, social sciences, or languages.  My blogs in the last month have been written with the intent to demonstrate how to apply presuppositional analysis to the arguments of scientists.

Presuppositional analysis, contrary to what my evidentialist brothers may think, is not simply showing that Biblical presuppositions are the only ones that lead to true truth.  It is also getting into the analysis of someone else's logic and demonstrating the problem areas, either in their presuppositions, or in their conclusions.

Last week's essays were able to raise questions, in the scientists' own framework, as to the limits of their knowledge.  By examining in a secular framework their own problem areas, I have hoped to open the door to a faith-based presuppositional argument that is more scientific than theirs, because it examines more evidence and eliminates exclusion bias from the process.

If I am successful, I can thank my Alma mater, Emory University, for setting me on the right learning process.  Cor prudentis possidebit scientiam.

Rocks and Layers

In a prior essay, we looked at the geology of sedimentary rocks and at the conclusions that can be drawn from the existence of the layers.  We saw that a presupposition of uniformitarianism yields a conclusion more in tune with the theory of Evolution, but a presupposition of catastrophism produces a conclusion that favors a world wide flooding over a short period of time.

Uniformitarianism is currently in vogue, but there is so much to commend Catastrophism that some geologists try to join the two concepts into a different theory called Punctuated Uniformitarianism, to account for the evidence that supports both theories.  This theory suggests long periods of uniform activity punctuated by major catastrophic events.

Part of the reason for the need for a combined theory is found in the layers, themselves.  What makes a layer a layer is the fact that everything in it is similar material.  Being similar to itself means it is different from the layers above and below it.

The homogeneity of a layer causes some logical problems.  Why would a layer contain only a limited number and type of life forms?  If you would look in a river delta or a lake where dead things are being deposited by current runoff and erosion, you will find multiple life forms, including both unicellular and complex. You may find  algae, oysters, alligators, fish, and perhaps, a human corpse.  These things are all living in today's ecosystem, so if they died and were fossilized, the deposits would contain a diversity of fossil life forms, not uniform layers of index fossils characterizing just one group or age, unless there was something other than time, e.g., density, by which the layers were established.

The interfaces between two layers also present problems.  Was there a layer that originally existed between the two layers we find in today's rocks?  And did that layer get eroded (uniformly across the globe) so that all the life forms in it were totally annihilated by some global events?  The reason this is an important question is because Uniformitarianism and its associated consequence, Evolution, would require that life forms represented in one layer evolve to life forms in a later layer.

There would need to be evidence of gradual changes from one life form in one layer to more complex forms in the next layer.  Because there are no fossils showing intermediate forms, these "missing links" (missing between any fossil and its supposed ancestor, not just ape and man), must be assumed to be in the layers that are not present, i.e., the layers that must have been washed away by erosion, washed away, incidentally, without any evidence or any fragments of preexisting fossils in more recent layers that should contain such runoff.  [Note: this kind of argument is called "argument from silence," indicating it is implied by the absence of data.  Although it is not necessarily a fallacy, an argument from silence is weak, at best.]  The global extent of the layers and the uniformity of the extant layers makes the absence of any intermediate forms anywhere, a convincing statement.  Sometimes, the absence of data is because it never existed in the first place.

The third problem evinced by layers is the limestone/coral problem.  Some limestones are formed mostly of the fossilized remains of coral.  Coral are known to grow only at certain temperatures and water depths, so coral-limestone should form in linear bands along the coastlines of continents.  The fact that some of the layers, e.g., in the southeastern United States consist of many miles of coral-based limestones, indicates that the delicate ecosystems that support coral growth moved over time.  It is postulated that the limestones in the layers in the southeastern US were formed as the polar ice caps melted and the ocean advanced onto the continent, and then moved back to their present locations.  This would mean that these limestone regions represent large periods of time and that they cut across time, not that they represent a particular time.

Here we see some of the problems posed by the existence of layers.  The problems must be accounted for by the presuppositions. Otherwise, the presuppositions need to be modified or rejected in order to account for the data problems.

As we have seen, presuppositions determine conclusions, but presuppositions must also be consistent with the data being analyzed.  Remember that presuppositions are just paradigms that are accepted on faith.  Clark Pinnock once said, "The heart cannot delight in what the mind rejects as false." (Set Forth Your Case, Craig Press, Nutley, New Jersey, 1968.) Your faith must be reasonable to you, but, in the end, it is faith, nonetheless.

Limits of Presuppositions for Scientists

Up to this point we have seen that presuppositions determine conclusions, major premises determine interpretations, and that only what goes into the deductive reasoning process can come out.  Reason and argument do not add anything to a system that was not already there.  For this reason, it is said that all reasoning is circular reasoning.  This does not mean that all reasoning is fallacious, however.  It only means that all reasoning depends on the truth of its premises.

Reasoning can, in itself, be instructive.  Sometimes combinations of truthful statements shine new light on a problem that allow insight to be gained, and sometimes, reasoning confronts us with the limits of our presuppositions.

Let us take time as an example.  Time is defined as a succession of moments or even as a dimension in a multidimensional space.  Time is important in both science and history.  Existentially, we move through time from one day to the next, or one moment to the next.  Time is an essential ingredient to human personality.

In mathematics, we talk about time as existing from minus infinity to plus infinity and use symbols like the indefinite integral to represent functions whose time-frame goes from minus infinity to plus infinity.  However, in the real cosmos, we know that this is not a true construct.

In the real universe, we have observed what we know as the Law of Entropy, which states, among other things, that things go from more ordered states to less ordered states, from more energetic states to less energetic states as they progress through time.  This is why a pan of boiling water cools off, if you turn off the heat under it.  We can take measurements of the surrounding environment and the current temperature and volume of the water, and extrapolate back to the time the water was at a full boil.  Eventually, the water and its surrounding environment will be the same temperature.  If it has cooled for a long time, the water will be as cold as its surroundings.

This principle of Entropy, when applied to the cosmos, and especially to "hot spots" in the cosmos, such as our sun, indicates that there was a definite point in time when the sun was formed.  If there were an infinite time period, all "hot spots" would have cooled, and everything would now be the same temperature.  That fact has led scientists to postulate a beginning point.for all things, a "big bang" or "creation" event.  It means there is no such thing as "minus infinity" on the time line.

The mathematician is free to use the indefinite integral and to study functions involving the concept of minus infinity, but physicists and other natural scientists must limit themselves to a "t sub zero," the first instant in time as the starting point in their time formula and the lower limit of their time integration.  I am afraid most scientists do not consider t sub zero when extrapolating backwards on the time line.  It is possible using mathematics to extrapolate backwards to minus infinity, but any extrapolation prior to t sub zero is an error, in the real world.

There is another presupposition problem most scientists ignore.  We know from experiments that mathematics allow us to represent equations for systems such as the flow of electrons in a circuit.  However, we also know that these equations only work when the circuit is at steady state, but do not apply at the instantaneous state when the circuit is first energized.

We know that a circuit behaves very differently when the power goes from zero to some steady value, than it does after a certain period of time has elapsed, and the circuit has stabilized.  The circuit demonstrates transient effects when it is first energized, and these effects last a definite, but transient period of time.

By analogy, we should expect to see transient effects at a creation or big bang event.  We normally use another mathematical construct, differentiation, to help explain changes over time, but differentiation doesn't apply to a time between the first instant, and the non-existent instant before it. Some transient effect must occur, which can resemble the effects of division by zero.

Normal assumptions do not apply to transient situations.  The definition of some things becomes meaningless at such a point.  Things such as velocity, for example, expressed as a value "per second" don't have meaning in that period leading to the first second.  Even such equations as E=mC^2 need special attention at the first instant, because C, the speed of light, is expressed in terms of "per second."  What does that mean when time is going from zero to one second, causing transient effects?  Can C be a constant in such a situation?

I don't know the answers to these transient time questions, but I do know that one should be cautious in making definitive statements regarding time and the Big Bang or Creation.  The point I am making is that one's presuppositions need to be examined.  They sometimes contain limits.  In order to be consistent in our argumentation, we need to remember the limits of our presuppositions.