Anselm's Explanation of the Trinity
How can the Father, Son and Holy Spirit each be God, but not be each other? This is Archbishop Anselm's explanation - the best I've heard so far.
Anselm at Starbucks
A new look at Anselm's argument for the existence of God.
The Divine Inferno
Why the existance of Hell is a demonstration of God's mercy.
1000 Easter Balloons
What if, on Easter Sunday morning, after services, every church in town released yellow balloons?
Scary Meditation
What is the difference between Eastern meditation and Christian meditation?
The Golfer of the Gaps
Have you heard that our God is a "God of the Gaps," only invoked to explain increasingly small gaps in science? Here's that logic applied to golf.
Esther's Japanese Origins
Using the approved "wild extrapolation" method, I've conclusively shown that the Biblical Book of Esther is of Japanese origin.
But I Was Born That Way
When people use this excuse, why do we keep trying to talk them out of it?
Digital Reality
Is reality digital? I couldn't care less, but if it is, maybe that's one point for the theistic view.
Church Economics
It's kind of fun to see companies becoming successful using the kind of financing churches have used for ages.
Legislating Morality
You can't legislate morality! Really? If you can't legislate morality, what can you legislate?
Paganism in Christmas and Easter?
A writer thought I ought to stop celebrating Christmas and Easter. It had pagan origins, he said. So what, I replied.
Shooting the Wounded
In which I launch a diatribe against a phrase I find particularly shallow and offensive.
Evolving Computers
What computers do - or don't - show us about evolution.
Are All Religions the Same?
A Buddhist's view.
Lately some evolutionists have begun experimenting with computer programs to simulate evolution. I'm always a bit suspicious of that since you can program computers to do just about anything you want, like making toasters fly, but if there's anything to such simulations, then I suppose my experience is equally valid.
My experience was at a company that had a computer system that nicely handled thousands of transactions daily. Here's the gist of a conversation I heard:
Great!, management said. System works. Let's roll it out to handle tens of millions of transactions a day.
No, the Chief Technology Officer said. The system can't handle that volume.
Well, make it bigger.
No, the CTO said, we need a whole new system, designed from the ground up.
But why? The system works great. Just make it bigger.
CTO, kind of sighing: No, the current system is not scalable. Its structure was not designed to handle a huge load, and no matter how you add to it, it won't be able to do it properly.
I don't know if the management folks ever quite understood why you couldn't just make it "bigger," nevertheless, they wisely took the CTO's advice and came up with a system that could handle a huge volume.
Now, my point in all this is that if computer systems are in any way analogous to life (and that's a big If), then this is an argument against macro-evolution. In my example it looked as if a little tweak was all that was necessary, but to get to the next level actually required a huge, new, ground-up approach.
If this is so with computer systems, then it may be true with life. In other words, it may be possible to evolve from Life 1.0 to Life 1.1, but not from Life 1.x to Life 2.0.
So to speak.
© Copyright 2000 Brad Haugaard
“The meanest and most contemptible person whom we behold is the offspring of heaven, one of the children of the Most High; and, however unworthily he may behave, so long as God hath not passed on him a final sentence, He will have us acknowledge him as one of His; and, as such, to embrace him with a sincere and cordial affection.”
–Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man