Hopefully I’m not the last one in the world to find out about this, but I just found the neatest site: 20q. It’s an AI implementation of the game of 20 Questions, and it seems to be pretty good. I just tried it with “a math textbook” in mind, and it got “textbook.” Next I tried something ab it more abstract: “the month of January,” to which it guessed “the season of summer.” Not half bad, considering that it’s starting with a blank slate each time and it’s as dumb as a condition code multiplexer. (Computer engineer joke. Sorry.)

Check it out. I’m sure you can stump it without much effort, but you may be surprised at what it does get. (It just guessed “logarithm” when I was thinking “supralapsarianism”–maybe I threw it off when I said supralapsarianism could bring joy to some people. Accurate answers help, I suppose.)

Post in the comments some of the things it got and didn’t get.

As promised, here is my first paper for PR-501. It is my answer to the following question:

How does the general postmodernist approach to truth challenge the task of Christian apologetics in the contemporary world? Your answer should include the following four areas:

1. The nature, purpose, and justification of Christian apologetics. Give biblical support.
2. The importance of worldview for apologetics.
3. What the Christian worldview is.
4. A basic strategy for defending the Christian worldview (apologetic method) in the postmodern context.

If it strikes you as breathlessly terse at points, you’re on to something. You’ll also notice that it doesn’t so much end as it does run up against some invisible barrier: in this case the last line of the seventh page of double-spaced 12-point text with 1.25″ margins. I make many assertions that I would normally never leave unjustified in a blog post, but to do them justice might double the size of the essay, and that was just not allowed. (In all fairness, professors and their graders can only read so much text, and there are close to 100 people in the class. Length limitations are only humane.)

Finally, the preponderance of Doug Groothuis citations can be explained easily by noting that he’s the teacher of the class–and a very fine one at that.

Enough caveats. This is pretty much exactly what I turned in four hours ago, just HTML’d up a bit. Read and comment:

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It is the new received wisdom that we are experiencing a radical transition between intellectual eras. The old primacy of rationality, method, and word is passing away, replaced by an emerging world of community, radical pluralism, and image. We are told that the old apologetic paradigms that focused on winning arguments and proving absolute truth claims are relics of an oppressive, Modernist past to be cast off as we reshape the ancient Faith into terms set by atheistic philosophers in recent decades. Is this dramatic paradigm shift warranted? Do traditional apologetic fail to meet the challenges of the postmodern world?

A thorough interaction with all of the claims of postmodernist Christianity is beyond our present scope. Instead, this paper will examine the challenge posed to traditional Christian apologetic methods by the postmodern intellectual milieu, and will propose a strategy for apologetic interaction with the present generation of men and women in Western culture. The new intellectual consensus requires not a radical recasting of Christianity, but instead suggests several minor, evolutionary changes in the practice of apologetics. These changes consist primarily in a more thoughtful approach to postmodernity’s endemic pluralism, better preparation to defend the classical Christian view of truth, and a renewed emphasis on the Biblical priority of the relational context for apologetics and evangelism.

The Nature, Purpose, and Justification of Christian Apologetics
To pursue this improved strategy, we must understand thoroughly the nature and purpose of the enterprise of Christian apologetics. Doug Groothuis defines apologetics as “The rational defense of the Christian worldview as objectively true and existentially engaging.” Apologetics so construed is undertaken in order to bring glory to God, to reach the lost, to encourage doubting believers, and to aid in the sanctification of believers who seek to deepen their knowledge of God.¹We find ample Biblical justification for this endeavor. The classical proof texts in support of the antithetical defense of Christian claims are Peter’s command that believers should “�always [be] prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you”² and Jude’s injunction to “�contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints”³ against false teachers in the church. Further, we find apostolic warrant in Paul’s overt apologetic interaction with the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers in the Aeropagus of Athens.⁴ Most persuasively we see a consistent pattern of rational argumentation in the interaction of Jesus with Jewish intellectual leaders and others to whom he ministered. Jesus very deftly escaped the horns of potentially life-threatening dilemmas (Mt 22:15-22), used a fortiori arguments in defense of his teaching on the Sabbath (Jn 7:21-24, Lk 13:10-17), appealed to evidence in defense of his uniquely messianic ministry (Mt 11:4-6), and used reductio ad absurdum arguments for a variety of purposes (Mt 22:41-46, Mt 12:25-27).⁵ Even a cursory survey of the Biblical witness gives the contemporary apologist substantial comfort with the tools of rational discourse when engaging hostile skeptics, false teachers, and seeking souls in the defense of God’s truth.

Against recent claims that postmodern people have moved beyond the “white male myth” of logic and propositional truth, we may observe that logic is tellingly employed even in the defense of these claims. As bearers of the imago dei, all human beings have the capacity and indeed the need for rational thought. We may be irrational and inconsistent at times, and sin may cripple the use of our rational faculties even unto our own deaths, but the basic capacity to work out our thoughts in a non-contradictory framework remains as an unchanging part of our nature. Changes in the intellectual climate, be they real or imagined, are powerless to alter this fact.

The Importance of Worldview for Apologetics
A hypothetical apologist in sixteenth-century France might have had to engage his interlocutors on matters of ecclesiastical authority, the doctrine of justification, what systems of civil government are most consonant with Biblical principles, or in the case of extraordinary cross-cultural outreach, possibly a discussion of the uniquely messianic role of Christ with a Jewish neighbor. Even in the latter case, he might never–given a long life of fruitful ministry–encounter anyone with a basic framework for understanding life that differed materially from his own. This state of affairs no longer obtains for any nontrivial case in the postmodern world.Because postmodernity is fundamentally pluralistic, the contemporary apologist must have a robust understanding of the concept of worldview and its effect on human thought. Sire defines a worldview as follows:

A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true, or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being.⁶

More succinctly, a worldview is a collection of “words and concepts that work together to provide a more or less coherent frame of reference for all thought and action.”⁷ Every human soul of even nominal mental acuity is in possession of a worldview, be it true or false or consciously defended or passively breathed in without any examination at all. This worldview forms the semi-permeable membrane though which all words and concepts must try to pass before they are taken into the mind, finally arriving intact, significantly modified, or not arriving at all. It is antecedently obvious that effective apologetic interaction depends sensitively of the characteristics of this membrane, both as it occurs in the mind of the apologist and in the mind of skeptic, doubter, or false teacher.

Sire proposes that a worldview can be defined by its answers to the following seven questions (the proposed answers are illustrative, not exhaustive):

1. What is ultimate reality? God or the material universe?
2. What is the nature of external reality? Ordered or chaotic? Existing objectively or only as it is perceived by subjects?
3. What is a human being? A molecular machine or God’s image bearer?
4. What happens to a person at death? Annihilation, reincarnation, resurrection?
5. Why is it possible to know anything at all? Because the same Divine Mind that conceived and created the universe also created our minds? Or is knowledge actually not possible?
6. How do we know what is right and wrong? By relative levels of pleasure and pain, by evolved survival mechanisms, or by revelation from God?
7. What is the meaning of human history? To perfect human society? To please God? Or is it meaningless? ⁸

Any given worldview-holder may be able to produce sophisticated, consistent, and defensible answers to all of these questions, or she may not be able to answer any of them in objective terms. However, she has and believes answers to all seven questions, even if she resorts to skepticism or agnosticism on any point. These answers will have a profound impact on how she receives the truth claims of Christianity (or any other sensory or conceptual input), so they and their relationship to the Christian worldview must be understood well by the apologist seeking effective communication and authentic interaction.

The Christian Worldview
Sire’s proposed worldview model can be applied effectively to Christianity. Indeed, if the aspiring apologist lacks the resources to study any other worldview–which privation would itself pose a severe handicap–knowledge of the Christian one is certainly a necessary condition of meaningful apologetic interaction. Starting from Sire’s answers to the questions of Christian worldview, we might propose the following:

1. Ultimate reality is the triune, transcendent, immanent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, sovereign God.
2. External reality exists objectively and is ordered, having been created ex nihilo to operate “with a uniformity of cause and effect in an open system.”
3. Human beings are volitional creatures created in the image and likeness of God, and therefore bear dignity and purpose that is otherwise alien to their nature.
4. Upon death, human beings face a single resurrection to a physical body which then experiences an eternal state of felicity with God or eternal torment.
5. We can know about the external world because the Mind that created it also created our minds in his image and likeness. In addition to this ability to discover the world accurately, God reveals knowledge to us using language.
6. Ethics finds its source in the character of a good God. What is right and what is wrong flow from his immutable nature; and these categories are knowable through conscience and revelation.
7. “Human history is a linear, meaningful sequence of events leading to the fulfillment of God’s purposes for humanity.”⁹

Speaking more succinctly, a Christian might describe the world as created ex nihilo by God, populated by God’s fallen image bearers who can be reconciled to their creator through the cross of Christ, and headed toward a point of historical consummation in which God’s utterly good purposes for his creation will be fully realized. Even this skeletal understanding can begin to provide a meaningful framework from which to engage postmodern men and women thoughtfully and sensitively.

A Postmodern Apologetic Strategy
Notwithstanding the urgency of recent calls for a radical reassessment of Christianity in light of the putative needs of postmodern people, human beings do not change much over time. Intellectual climates and prevailing attitudes change in readily observable ways, but the questions that rob men and women of sleep in the middle of the night are few and well-known. Likewise the immutable laws of consistent thought cannot change any more than we can begin thinking with our kidneys. Apologists can take heart that their subjects are still people, and people still reason the same way about essentially the same questions they did 2,000 years ago.Human society, in contrast, is evolving ever more rapidly. We must also be careful to discern how our generation’s seemingly fluid zeitgeist influences the thinking of those to whom we minister apologetically. The postmodern apologist is guaranteed to encounter a wide array of significantly divergent worldviews, totally unlike her hypothetical French counterpart of the High Middle Ages. This requires her to think in terms of worldview and to have a working knowledge of the worldviews she is most likely to encounter in her ministry.

The contemporary apologist should also expect to find fundamental disagreement on the nature of truth itself. Whereas the Bible views truth as revealed, objective, absolute, universal, engaging, specific, antithetical, and systematic,¹⁰ the typical postmodern is more likely to see truth as constructed, subjective, relative, trendy, and fragmented. While preparation in comparative worldviews may be the first educational task to be mastered by the apologist, agreeing on the nature of truth–and vigorously defending the Biblical view thereof–is surely the primary logical task in any given apologetic engagement. Without consensus on the Biblical view of truth, meaningful discussion and possibly even knowledge itself are ruled out.

Given a new sensitivity to the diverse worldviews likely to be encountered today and a readiness to defend an intellectually functional understanding of truth, the postmodern apologist is finally advised to engage in apologetics relationally. Postmodern men and women know what it is to be the target of a mass-market ad campaign, and they understand viscerally the utter insincerity and lack of personal concern entailed in such an appeal. To communicate to them unintentionally that they are the subject of some rote method or the target of a large-scale crusade in which they yet again a tiny part of the denominator of some impressive statistic is to ensure that our defense of Christianity will be rejected. Engaging them as persons, soul-to-soul, with authentic concern for the existential import of their questions, is a more Biblically faithful way to earn their hearing.

With these tools in hand, the apologist to the postmodern world can continue to approach unbelievers and doubters with confidence.

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¹Douglas Groothuis, Defending The Christian Faith class notes, Denver Seminary, 31 August 2004.
² 1 Pet 3:15 (ESV)
³ Jude 3 (ESV)
⁴ Acts 17:16-33
⁵ Douglas Groothuis, On Jesus, Wadsworth Philosophers Series, (United States of America: Wadsworth, 2003), 26-35.
⁶James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog, 4th ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 17.
⁷Ibid.
⁸Ibid, 20.
⁹Ibid, 26-44.
¹⁰Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 65-79.

Via a post at Tulip Girl’s, I found this particularly depraved op-ed on homeschooling. Originally posted an the Holland [Michigan] Sentinel, it can no longer be found there. I have therefore reproduced it here for posterity.

I don’t have the time to give it the fisking it so richly deserves, but I’ll let you take a few swings in the comments.

Home-schooling robs children
By MARGARET W. BOYCE

I read with interest the recent article in The Sentinel about home-school families. I find it strange that we send our young men and women to help assure that children can go to school in Afghanistan, yet we allow parents in Michigan to keep their children at home.

One of the best and brightest moves that our Founding Fathers made was to make it possible for all children in America, not just the rich, to be educated. Eventually, all children were expected to attend. If they did not, they were considered “truant” and parents were held responsible and could go to jail. This public education still is the very cornerstone of democracy.

This strange phenomenon called “home schooling” at best undermines these principles. For many children, it is far worse. Who is monitoring these families? Many a child of abusive parents has an observant teacher to thank for a rescue, some for their very lives. To whom can these children turn when they are kept at home? They are being denied a basic right, which has been fought for all the way to the Supreme Court — the right to attend school.

We don’t allow people to play doctor or nurse without a license, nor can one play lawyer without passing some rather rigorous tests. But today, anyone who wants to “play school” can do so, regardless of their educational background. Recently, some parents have been jailed for withholding medical treatment for their children, yet we are almost making heroes of these parents who do the same with their children’s education.

Some parents of home-schooled children speak glowingly of the “wonderful imaginations” developed by their lonely child, who, being surrounded always by adults, has little opportunities to develop friendships with real children. Others associate only with small groups of like-minded people. What happens when they enter the world and cannot control everything, as they do in their sheltered home environment?

What an ego trip for a parent — to be all things to your children, to control every thought, every concept that enters their world. Is this education, or programming? To deny them the stimulation of working and playing with their peers is unfair. It’s far better to send them out into the world for brief forays, such as the school day, and then discuss the day’s adventure while they are still young enough to want to work out values with their parents.

There are other losses, such as never being “on the team,” never cheering for “our school,” never being in a class where the interaction of ideas is more important than the text, or doing any of the myriad of things that make up the process of “belonging,” from the first day of school to the 50th class reunion. There is far more to an education than a curriculum — it includes summer break, Friday nights and graduation.

I have met and talked with a variety of home-schoolers, both children and parents. Many have great gaps in their knowledge. Many are incredibly naive. Some do quite well — they would have been superstars in school. Others can’t wait to leave home, knowing full well that they have been cheated.

Parents often believe that they are protecting their children from the “evils” of life. However, children cannot be brought up in a bell jar. Remember that the school day is only six hours long, five days a week. That leaves many hours during the week and summer for the parent.

Give your child the wings needed to grow outside of that jar. If parents wish to be involved in the education of their children, there are many opportunities to be part of the school day. Volunteer to be a lunch or recess monitor. Offer to tutor children in reading or math. Help the art teacher. Be a part of the process of building your community, not a member of the opposition.

A recent Harvard study following home-schooled children over many years found that these children did not do better at the college level than traditionally educated children. The real trip was for the mothers, who received the big emotional rewards. My response is: Mothers, get a life. How unfair it is for you to take away your own child’s life in order to gratify yours? Is this what we must expect from the “me first” generation as it raises their families?

The role of a parent is vital in a child’s education. However, without all four of the pillars provided by home, school, church and community working together, we have a precarious foundation for the next generation. The public school system is the very cornerstone of democracy in America. We need to cherish it and nurture it.

Margaret W. “Peggy” Boyce is a resident of Saugatuck.

I realize that this is an old meme¹ and incredibly cheap blogging, but:

1. I promised my brother I’d get him a picture of the office setup with the new speakers.
2. Much of my writing time will be taken up for the rest of the week by an Apologetics paper due on Tuesday, so I may not post again until then (the paper will be posted here when finished).
3. I’m an incredibly cheap blogger.

Thanks go to friends Jason and Jane for the speakers and to friend Cary for the receiver. Outlook’s email notification sound has never sounded quite like this.

Here’s a large version for anyone who wants to try to find Waldo, establish my exact age, or determine what I had for dinner last night through your nearly superhuman powers of induction.

Note that this is also where I work, which I am about to go do right now.

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¹This is the first time I’ve used the word “meme” in my blog. I hate the word, but I may have to bow to the pressure of language change. I no longer object to people saying “person” where “man” used to suffice, so I suppose such accommodationalism is inevitable. From now on, we will meme it up here.

A year ago I wrote about an overtly crisp, autumnal September 10 that gave way to a blustery, cloudy September 11. The weather was a fitting metaphor for the occasion. Not so today.

Today it was just hot, a welcome little riposte of summer after a mild three months of abundant rain and sparing heat. Even if recycling the weather theme wouldn’t be tiresome, there’s just nothing there that fits our circumstances. It’s been an on again/off again summer in Iraq; no cool, damp respite there. Last week brought unspeakable horror to Beslan–call it the Children’s September 11–and I don’t know what kind of weather that could possibly be like. A hurricane? A tornado? Both at the same time, with an erupting volcano thrown into the mix? I have no idea.

Whenever I look at a picture of the burning towers (image courtesy of Fox News), I remember the way I felt that morning: violated, enraged, stunned. Utterly unable to believe this was happening. Stupefied that those two proud buildings that had stood there at the start of the day were now gone. I think the survivors in Beslan have some idea of the feeling: an inability for the moment to grasp how this could possibly be.

It makes a guy want to shout defiantly Never again! but I know I can make no such promise. A meek not since would be nearly accurate, but Madrid, Jakarta, and Beslan make it plain that now is not the time for any such bold oaths. As raw as these wounds really still are, we live yet with the reality that new ones could be opened tonight. We live one radiological suitcase away from our next unspeakable horror.

Living that life, but usually forgetting that we do, we are continuing a low-level war in Afghanistan and slowly making good in Iraq. Maybe we’ll bag Osama soon. Maybe the insurgency will die down in Iraq, elections will go well, and peaceful economic growth will take root there. Maybe the thousand covert battles waged every month will attrite our enemies to some strategically significant degree. And whether the admission appeals to your political instincts or not, maybe the results of our own November election will reflect our continued political will to finish the war begun in earnest three years ago today.

And maybe soon I’ll be able to get my mind out of the details and the policies of the war and get some perspective on the thing. Which would require it being, well, over. I look forward to that part, but for now, I am eager to see where we are in another year. This has not been a bad year, but the next can always be better.

Labor Day was an appropriate day to empty out the kiddle pool on the back patio. It’s the end of the season, it had been filled for the better part of a week, nobody was playing in it (with the exception of a little bit of splashing on the part of one of the little Adeodatuses on Sunday evening), and the water had become dirty enough to reach Eyesore Status. When I went to pick up one side to dump it out, I noticed some little critters squiggling around in the water. Can you say microscope, kids? I knew you could.

We were up in the mountains doing Labor Day Things for most of the day, but upon our return I broke out the family microscope for an impromptu science lesson. (Lesson: these are mosquito larvae. They live in standing water. People normally think of swamps, not your kiddie pool. Gross, huh?) A few hours later, the kids in bed, I went to dump out the water at long last, when an idea struck me: digital camera.

Does that work? Can you just hold up the lens of the camera to the objective of the microscope and snap a picture? Oh, can you. Enjoy…

I took several videos. Please excuse the Windows Media format, but the free trial version of Ulead Video Studio 8.0 makes much smaller WMF files than it does MPEGs.

   

I have at least two more that are worth posting, but the little animated thumbnails are a pain! Watch this space during the weekend for more.

And for the stills: