Magic Statistics

Clive Staples Lewis died on this day in 1963. Todd Granger, The Confessing Reader, has posted a collect, Scripture readings, and a closing prayer. The collect is from James Kiefer's Christian biographies site:

Almighty God, whose servant C.S.Lewis received of thy grace singular gifts of insight in understanding the truth in Christ Jesus, and of eloquence and clarity in presenting that truth to his readers: Raise up in our day faithful interpreters of thy Word, that we, being set free from all error and unbelief, may come to the knowledge that maketh us wise unto salvation: through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

I wonder: Is there any Christian writer today with comparable gifts of insight, eloquence, and clarity? None that I know of. That's why this prayer is, I think, especially appropriate.

Charles H. Townes, Nobel Prize-winning physicist, accepts both evolution and creation. In fact, he says he accepts both evolution and intelligent design.

A Nobel laureate in physics believes that some intelligent force probably created the universe but He (or it) used evolution to do it.
. . .
Mr. Townes, 89, is one of the few men in the world who could step into the fray between creationists and scientists, and command everyone's attention: He won the Nobel Prize in 1964 for his work on the laser, and, earlier this year, he was awarded the Templeton Prize for his contributions in uniting science and faith.
. . .
Mr. Townes didn't place himself in the middle between creationists and scientists, so much as above them, with a third theory gaining credence these days, intelligent design.

Prof Townes implicitly admits that he’s not using the term "intelligent design" in the same way that, say, William A. Dembski and The Discovery Institute do. In an interview published in the UC Berkeley News last June, Prof Townes said this about his understanding of intelligent design:

Intelligent design, as one sees it from a scientific point of view, seems to be quite real. This is a very special universe: it's remarkable that it came out just this way. If the laws of physics weren't just the way they are, we couldn't be here at all. The sun couldn't be there, the laws of gravity and nuclear laws and magnetic theory, quantum mechanics, and so on have to be just the way they are for us to be here.

Some scientists argue that "well, there's an enormous number of universes and each one is a little different. This one just happened to turn out right." Well, that's a postulate, and it's a pretty fantastic postulate — it assumes there really are an enormous number of universes and that the laws could be different for each of them. The other possibility is that ours was planned, and that's why it has come out so specially. Now, that design could include evolution perfectly well. It's very clear that there is evolution, and it's important. Evolution is here, and intelligent design is here, and they're both consistent.

I agree with Prof Townes that intelligent design is a postulate that makes sense–and, it seems to me, is taught by the Bible. However one understands the specific process(es) God used in creation, the church has always believed that the opening chapters of Genesis teach that the universe was created by an almighty and intelligent being who has certain purposes in mind for his creation. The universe was, ipso facto, intelligently designed. As Richard H. Bube wrote here, the biblical doctrine of creation is foundational to the faith.

It is because of this foundational character of the Biblical doctrine of creation that it is unfortunate when the word "creation" is used narrowly and restrictively to refer–not to the fact of Creation–but to a possible means in the creative activity, usually to that means known as fiat creation. When it is implied that creation and evolution are necessarily mutually exclusive, or when the term "creation" is used as if it were primarily a scientific mechanism for origins, a profound confusion of categories is involved. The implication is given, deliberately or not, that if evolution should be the proper mechanism for the growth and development of living forms, then creation would have to be rejected. To pose such a choice is to do basic damage to the Christian position. It is to play directly into the hands of those evolutionists who argue that their understanding of evolution does away with the theological significance of Creation. If such an evolutionist is wrong to believe that his biological description does away with the need for a theological description, the Christian anti-evolutionist is wrong to believe that his theological description must make any biological description impossible.

Makes sense to me.

via Bourque.

Dr John Sentamu, the first black Archbishop of York, calls on the people of his adopted homeland to reclaim their national heritage.

Britain's first black Archbishop has made a powerful attack on multiculturalism, urging English people to reclaim their national identity.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, said that too many people were embarrassed about being English. Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly for me, let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains, he said.

He said that the failure of England to rediscover its culture afresh would lead only to greater political extremism.

To me, it is telling that this call comes from a foreign-born person who has received racist threats from British citizens. He has, it seems to me, ample cause to reject the greatness of Great Britain, or at least to keep quiet about it. But he does not allow personal attacks to obscure his understanding of history and culture. And he knows the soil in which English culture flourishes:

He described English culture as rooted in Christianity and, in spite of attempts by secularists to marginalise it, the Church still had a central role to play. I think the Church in many ways has to be like a midwife, bringing to birth possibilities of what is authentically very good in the English mind.

Amen to that.

We know that North Americans find much cause for complaint in the actions of our governments. Sometimes those complaints are justified, but the opening paragraphs of this article on Jews who have fled France for the safety of Canada made me realise that we need to count our blessings, too:

Frederic Saadoun and his wife, Valerie, moved to Montreal with their two children from Paris in August. Both IT workers, they found jobs, and Jewish Immigration Aid Services (JIAS) helped them locate a comfortable apartment in a western Montreal duplex. But we were terribly homesick, says Mrs. Saadoun, a French-born Jew of Algerian descent. "We missed our family. We had friends in Paris who we saw regularly for 20 years. Here we found other Jews who had just come from France, and our children play together, but still, everything was alien. The first two months were very hard."

Mr. Saadoun knew they had made the right decision last month. He had attended a Jewish New Year service with his eight-year-old son, Yoni. Upon leaving the synagogue, he says, "Yoni looked at me and he said, very alarmed, 'Papa! You are wearing your skullcap on the street. You must take it off! It is not safe!'"

"I told him that in Canada you can wear a kippa on the street with no fear of danger. When I said it, I immediately thought, Thank goodness we're here. It will be good for us here."

Let's hope and pray it stays that way–and work to that end.