“freedom of religion is much more than the freedom to worship; it is the freedom to act according to that belief in the service of others.” – Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor¹

“Which religion, whose adherents accept the tenets of that religion as the truth about God, does not regard adherents of other faiths as holding imperfect theological notions? If religious belief is important, then to accept more perfect beliefs is to be more perfect.” – David Klinghoffer¹

“Scientism’s dismissals are … self-refuting.

Those dismissals are also vacuous, as if affixing the label non-science to an argument tells us anything meaningful about the strength of the argument. The “it isn’t science” response to contemporary design arguments is neither a reasonable nor a particularly stimulating reply. In such cases, the mathematical/empirical approach has degenerated from a way of thinking into a way of stopping thought, a Procrustean bed for chopping off and discarding whatever doesn’t fit within its narrow confines. ” – Benjamin D. Wiker and Jonathan Witt¹

A few days ago several of us (Pidgin developers) were approached by Ms. Dahna McConnachie asking for an interview for the Australian version of PC World. Apparently I was one of the only developers to respond to her request, and as a result, I have now appeared in print.¹ I only spent an hour or so answering her questions, and I did not take the time to read it over as I should have. On the other hand, it appears she did not spend much if any time editing it either. For example, she clearly googled to see what “oscar” is, but came up with a totally wrong acronym. Still, I think it is cool in a way to be interviewed.

(The expansion of “oscar” was removed about 14:43 EDT)

Let me be clear. I am not saying the origin of life was simply an extremely improbable accident. I am saying the origin of life was deliberately, purposely arranged, just as the fundamental laws and constants and many other anthropic features of nature were deliberately, purposely arranged. But in what I’ll call the “extended-fine-tuning” view, the origin of life is merely an additional planned feature culminating in intelligent life. The origin of life is simply closer to the very same goal that other, more distant anthropic features (laws, chemical properties, and so forth) were also put in place to bring about. Nonetheless, just as it was possible to discover a set of proximate conditions that would lead to the origin of the moon, it may also be possible to arrange a local set of conditions that would lead to life, and that would be a scientifically interesting project. If it succeeded, some would claim that it revealed that life needed no miracle. But in fact it would show the beginning of life needed a directing intelligence.¹[emphasis added]

This is an important thought. A key quote. It contains many ideas all of which are central to Intelligent Design. It contains one thought, at the end, that many people cannot grasp. If I do something, if I will an end and achieve it, then I have not proved that it could happen without someone to will it. I have not proved that it is possible for it to happen randomly. It is possible, it may even be likely, that it is only with intervention that it can possibly happen. Take weighted dice. Not just slightly weighted dice that increase your odds, but do not guarantee a particular outcome, but massively weighted dice. Dice that if you drop them, will always land with a given face up. You would have to place such dice for them to land with the weighted face up, the reverse of what physics tells you should happen. So too, it is possible that my experiment only shows that intelligence can cause something.

For evolution to be true, and not just possible, something more is needed. The bar is higher. The scientists must prove that something can happen as a result of undirected, unwilled chance. Not only that, but for it to form a realistic explanation, they must show that it is likely to have happened.

It is possible, so I am told by physicists, that the universe could just wink out of existence in a singular quantum event. It is possible, according to that physics, that we winked into existence in precisely the same manner one second before you read this. Neither are particularly likely. Neither make particularly believable or useful explanations.

Evolution might be possible. I do not think so, from what I have read, but it might be. I sincerely doubt anyone could argue that it is likely enough to make a believable explanation.

All the rest is very true. There is a very long list of things that have to be just so for us to be here. It defies probability. It stretches probability that we exist anywhere. Some authors say it even defies probability that we are here anywhere.

If you ask me to believe that there are a multitude of universes, one for each throw of each coin, and that is the best you can do to make sense of the universe, you can take your materialist theories and smoke them. They are not worth the paper it would take to print them; you have come up with something no more scientific than either of the creation stories found in the Bible. Any of the three resulting stories (one from the materialists, two from the Bible) might in a literal, historical, sense be true. None of them qualify as a scientific theory.

Six years ago today my father died. As I write this, I was either en route to the hospital, or just barely there. How I miss him. How I wish he could be here with me physically and not just spiritually.

Saint Dominic is surely at this moment imploring God’s intercession. What in the world are the Dominicans in Holland thinking?¹ Why is the Church not reacting more strongly‽

In no particular order:

• The seller agreed to do the repairs.
• Andy got all the paper work he needs for our loan application. No word back yet.
• Notified the land lady that I will be moving the last weekend in October.
• Worked late four nights out of the last 10-11 business days, only one of which was to make up for time.
• Took Mom to her discogram (resulting in the time I had to make up the most recent of those four late days)
• Went down to Richmond for a good birthday weekend #1 with Lauren
• Just barely started packing
• Started over on a work project many times as the requirements changed underneath me.
• Changed contexts even more times on work projects as due dates changed without notice.