Many thanks to John Halton over at Confessing Evangelical for linking to “Creation, Evolution, and Christian Laypeople” (PDF), an intriguing essay by Tim Keller on attempts to reconcile Christianity and evolution. With the rise of both the “new atheists” and the “intelligent design” movement in recent years, it seems like the tension between religion and science, Christianity and evolution, has never been greater. Or, as Keller puts it (emphasis mine):

Many secular and many evangelical voices agree on one ‘truism’—that if you are an orthodox Christian with a high view of the authority of the Bible, you cannot believe in evolution in any form at all. New Atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins and creationist writers such as Ken Ham seem to have arrived at consensus on this, and so more and more in the general population are treating it as given. If you believe in God, you can’t believe in evolution. If you believe in evolution, you can’t believe in God.

This creates a problem for both doubters and believers. Many believers in western culture see the medical and technological advances achieved through science and are grateful for them. They have a very positive view of science. How then, can they reconcile what science seems to tell them about evolution with their traditional theological beliefs? Seekers and inquirers about Christianity can be even more perplexed. They may be drawn to many things about the Christian faith, but, they say, “I don’t see how I can believe the Bible if that means I have to reject science.”

However, there are many who question the premise that science and faith are irreconcilable. Many believe that a high view of the Bible does not demand belief in just one account of origins. They argue that we do not have to choose between an anti-science religion or an anti-religious science. They think that there are a variety of ways in which God could have brought about the creation of life forms and human life using evolutionary processes, and that the picture of incompatibility between orthodox faith and evolutionary biology is greatly overdrawn.

Early in the essay, Keller identifies four difficulties that evolution presents for Christians:

1. Evolution requires that we see Genesis 1 as non-literal, which undermines the Bible’s authority and trustworthiness.
2. If we agree that evolution explains the biological origins of life, then we must accept evolution as the explanation for every other aspect of our existence (e.g., cognition, morality).
3. Evolution challenges the historicity of Adam and Eve, and therefore, challenges traditional Christian notions of sin and suffering.
4. Christians believe that violence and death were not part of God’s original creation, but that they entered into creation via the Fall. However, violence and death are part of the evolutionary process.

Keller then spends the rest of the essay answering the first three objections, as they are the ones raised most often by the laypeople with whom he has interacted (he lumps objection #4 in with #3). The essay itself is relatively short, but very fascinating and intriguing. I’ve included a few excerpts below.

On Biblical authority and authorial intent:

The way to take the Biblical authors seriously is to ask ‘how does this author want to be understood?’ This is common courtesy as well as good reading. Indeed it is a way to practice the Golden Rule. We all want people to take time to consider whether we want to be taken literally or not. If you write a letter to someone saying, “I just wanted to strangle him!” you will hope your reader understands you to be speaking metaphorically. If she calls the police to arrest you, you can rightly complain that she should have made the effort to ascertain whether you meant to be taken literally or not.

[...]

This does not mean that the Biblical author’s intent and the genre are always clear. Genesis 1 and the book of Ecclesiastes are two examples of places in the Bible where there will always be debate, because the signs are not crystal clear. But the principle is this—to assert that one part of Scripture shouldn’t be taken literally does not at all mean that no other parts should be either.

On evolution as a biological process verses evolution as a worldview:

If you believe human life was formed through evolutionary biological processes (from here on, referred to as EBP), you must therefore believe in the Grand Theory of Evolution (from here on, referred to as GTE) as the explanation for every aspect of human nature.

[...]

GTE is fast becoming what Peter Berger calls a ‘plausibility structure’. It is a set of beliefs considered so basic, and with so much support from authoritative figures and institutions, that it is becoming impossible for individuals to publicly question them. A plausibility structure is a ‘given’ supported by enormous social pressure. The writings of the new atheists here are important to observe because their attitudes are more powerful than their arguments. The disdain and refusal to show any respect to opponents is not actually an effort to refute them logically, but to ostracize them socially and turn their own views into a plausibility structure. They are well on their way.

This creates a problem for the Christian layperson if they hear their teachers or preachers telling them that God could have used EBP to bring about life forms. Evolution as a ‘Grand Theory’ is now being used at the popular level to explain nearly everything about human behavior.

On Derek Kidner’s “model” for Adam and Eve:

[Kidner] proposes that the being who became Adam under the hand of God first evolved but Eve did not. Then they were put into the garden of Eden as representatives of the whole human race. Their creation in God’s image and their fall affected not only their offspring, but all other contemporaries.  In this telling, Kidner accounts for both the continuity between animals and humans that scientists see, and the discontinuity that the Bible describes.  Only human beings are in God’s image, have fallen into sin, and will be saved by grace. 

This approach would explain perennially difficult Biblical questions such as—who were the people that Cain feared would slay him in revenge for the murder of Abel (Gen 4:14)? Who was Cain’s wife, and how could Cain have built a city filled with inhabitants (Gen 4:17)?  We might even ask why Genesis 2:20 hints that Adam went on a search to ‘find’ a spouse if there were only animals around? In Kidner’s approach, Adam and Eve were not alone in the world, and that answers all these questions.

And finally, on the state of Eden:

Traditional theology has never believed that humanity and the world in Genesis 2-3 was in a glorified, perfect state. Augustine taught that Adam and Eve were posse non peccare (able not to sin) but they fell into the state of non posse non peccare (not able not to sin). In our final state of full salvation, however, we will be non posse peccare (not capable of sinning.) Eden was not the consummated world of the future. Some have pointed out that in the Garden of Eden that there would have had to be some kind of death and decay or fruit would not have been edible.

Confessing Evangelical has done an even more indepth exegesis of Keller’s essay, which I highly recommend reading.

First things first. Yes, I do have a bit of a Snake Eyes fixation. And while I couldn’t quite bring myself to see G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, I did see G.I. Joe: Resolute. Which I ultimately found to be a little underwhelming and surprisingly conventional, especially considering it was penned by Warren Ellis. That being said, Snake Eyes’ one-man aerial assault in the second webisode was cooler than cool.

However, I’m not sure if it’s cooler than this 12” high diorama from Sideshow Toys, which depicts Snake Eyes unleashing some ninja fury on two of his arch-foes from the Red Ninja clan. And it’s only $294.99.

I’d like to think that this was intended as a joke, if only for the sake of the dignity of everyone involved. But I’ve seen enough Christian esoterica in my life to know better.

If you’ve done any significant ExpressionEngine development in the last year or so, then you’re probably familiar with Brandon Kelly. With add-ons like Wygwam and FieldFrame, Kelly has quickly joined the upper ranks of “rock star” EE developers, alongside such developers as Solspace and Leevi Graham.

In October of 2009, Kelly announced that he would be leaving his job and forming his own company, Pixel & Tonic, to focus on full-time EE add-on development. And on February 23, 2010, Kelly unveiled the new Pixel & Tonic website.

Use any of Kelly’s add-ons, and you quickly realize that he sweats the small things—his add-ons are elegantly designed down to the littlest detail—and it’s no different with his website. It may not be the flashiest developer website, but it’s a solid, good-looking one that is packed with useful information (including thorough documentation for all of his apps). But the real magic happens if you’re using a “cutting edge” browser, such as Safari 4.

Kelly has used CSS3 to develop the website, which means that users with newer browsers will see a lot of subtle visual flourishes that give the site an extra level of polish. For example, the form fields are just lovely thanks to a nice use of gradients and rounded corners. Also, he’s using HTML5 to mark up the website, which means that the website’s code is more sensible, semantically correct, and easier to maintain.

Of course, this means that IE users are left behind. Visually speaking, the Pixel & Tonic website is an absolute mess in IE6, and only slightly better in IE7. But, as Kelly points out, that’s not really big deal for him:

So what about IE? Well, thanks to the fact that I’m targeting other web developers, I can say with 97.3% certainty that you’re not using it. Which is awesome, because that gave me a practical reason not to worry about it (besides just not caring). I did scope out the damages a couple days before launching, and it wasn’t pretty. Not even remotely usable. I’ll probably deal with that in some form eventually, but it’s most certainly not going to be full support.

Kelly has been blogging about the processes behind the website, which is a nice way to get in the head of one of ExpressionEngine’s premier developers.

All in all, a very nice website and a nice sign of things to come. It’s certainly a website that I plan to return to a lot in the future, if only to keep abreast of the coolness that Brandon Kelly unleashes upon the EE community.

I haven’t seen The Secret of Kells yet, and I’m not the only one, the film has only had a very limited run here in the States to qualify it for an Academy—but I’ve been intrigued ever since I first heard about it. And Filmwell’s review only increases my interest.

The incorporation and demonization of folk belief are as old as old as the Christian faith, and it’s not difficult to imagine that for many of the monks of medieval Ireland, there was no serious dissonance between the trinitarian God they worshipped and the faeries outside the abbey walls. And while there’s no explicitly Lewisian baptizing of the pagan myths, the film aesthetically ties the two, not just in making the natural world mirror the illuminated manuscript or vice versa but also by countless small details, working trinitarian symbols into the forest trees and crosses in the place of snowflakes, descending gently onto the earth. Aisling, Brendan’s fairy friend, is as delightful a pagan creature as you’re likely to meet, but she sides herself quite clearly with Kells and its mission. You can interpret that as you wish—softening the Book of Kells into a syncretistic gaelic mythology or trumpeting the divine spirit that animates the world. But in this ambiguity the film at least allows for the give-and-take that must have been going on within the Irish soul. That it does this largely through aesthetic choices—this film is all aesthetic choices—is a matter of no small commendation.

Friends, it’s been almost two years since we—“we” being pop culture geeks everywhere—dodged a bullet. In May 2008, the powers that be at Fox decided to cancel the American remake of Spaced due to negative reactions to the pilot.

This may have been the only time when a Fox cancellation turned out to be a good thing: if the above clip is any indication, the American remake—dubbed McSpaced due to the involvement of director McG—would’ve been a soulless, life-draining entity devoid of anything resembling humor or joy. Via

As a follow-up to his excellent Hayao Miyazaki overview, Steven Greydanus has posted a review of Castle in the Sky, one of my fave Miyazaki films:

Amid somewhat murky plot workings, a moral theme emerges of compassion over corrupting power, of humble closeness to the earth. Miyazaki’s penchant for animist allusiveness is at a minimum in this comparatively accessible film, making Laputa one of the director’s easiest films to recommend, especially to newcomers.

As usual, Miyazaki festoons his work with odd, gratuitous flourishes of beauty. Pazu’s strange house, with its brickwork, roof-top trap door and tower with spiral treads, is a joy, as is his curious morning ritual of climbing to the roof to release the pigeons and trumpet the dawn. I get a kick out of the brick on the pulley that pulls Pazu’s door shut. Another brilliant touch: the crow’s nest on Dola’s ship that converts into a kite-like glider.

The crowning glory, though, is Laputa itself, a half-ruinous ghost city, with gardens still tended by decrepit robots, crumbling stonework, flooded shafts, and that one titanic tree that ages ago shattered the dome above with its branches, and whose roots reach into the deepest bowels of the city. If Miyazaki’s previous film, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, ideally showcases the epic scope of the director’s imagination on an evolutionary scale, Laputa does the same on a civilizational scale. Laputa is one of the great places of the movies.

Castle in the Sky has been recently re-released on DVD by Disney, along with several of Miyazaki’s other movies. Unfortunately, I’m still waiting for the Blu-ray release.

Note: This article contains spoilers. Proceed at your own risk.

I don’t get to play too many video games these days, for a couple of obvious reasons. So when I do get some time for gaming, I want to make sure it’s worth it. Which, for me, means skipping all of the countless first person shooters and going right for games that are a bit more substantial. Which basically means that I end up playing anything and everything released by BioWare.

Since its inception in 1995, the Canadian company has made a name for themselves via incredibly detailed and complex role-playing games such as Neverwinter Nights (2002), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003), and Dragon Age: Origins (2009). And with Mass Effect 2, the second game in a planned trilogy, they’ve continued that trend and then some.

The game, like many of BioWare’s titles, has garnered massive amounts of both critical and popular acclaim: the game currently has a score of 96 at Metacritic and sold 1.1 million copies for the Xbox 360 in the month of January alone (which is all the more impressive considering the game was released within the last six days of the month).

And it’s not at all difficult to see why: the game is epic in a way that all great galaxy-spanning sci-fi is, packed with adventure, cool gadgets, exotic alien babes, and fearsome alien baddies. Basically, it lets you fulfill all of those hero fantasies that involved cruising around the interstellar spaceways in a big, bad-ass spaceship—and who can resist that? And given BioWare’s name on the packaging, it’s incredibly well-made, good-looking graphics and a slew of great voice acting that includes such luminaries as Martin Sheen, Carrie-Anne Moss, Seth Green, Tricia Helfer, and Adam Baldwin. BioWare has truly created a rich, involved game world for players to explore.

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