Several years ago, long before this site ever existed and once hosted somewhere long since dead, I had written a very pointed and brief thought-piece about “The Arrogance of Atheism.” It had garnered the attention of Austin Reed Cline, a Regional Director for the Council for Secular Humanism and editor of the Atheism section of the About.com web portal, who had published an excoriating and profoundly inaccurate review of my article. Some time last year I decided to resurrect that piece and republish it here, and to include not only Cline’s rebuttal but my response to him as well.

Around that same time I extended an invitation for Cline to interact with me on the response I had composed. His response can be found in the comments to the relevant article at his portal here, and the remainder of this article is my answer to him.

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Christian Faith: Calvinism is back. “In America’s Christian faith, a surprising comeback of rock-ribbed Calvinism is challenging the Jesus-is-your-buddy gospel of modern evangelism.” Josh Burek, Christian Science Monitor (27/Mar/2010)

So Tavarish published his “last reply” defending failed pro-choice rhetoric (at his blog ironically called The Usual Rhetoric), tackling my recent response to his five so-called counter-arguments against the pro-life stance. Since his arguments have not changed in any way, and my response already confronted them head-on, there is very little for me to add to this dialogue. This will be, then, a very brief summation.

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I am self-conscious about how my own prayers sound. Sometimes I mess up and stutter in prayer, and I start over because I feel bad. I want to know if it is something that just comes to you naturally, or… what? Like, I listen to the prayers that my pastor gives and mine just pale in comparison. Every night I usually have my husband lead us in grace before dinner, because I feel I’d sound dumb or say something dumb and have to start over.

First of all, there is the issue of how long a person has been a Christian, as compared to how long you have been one. The relevance here is the extent of their experience with the language of the faith. Obviously the Christian community has a unique language for expressing the faith, and the longer that a person is a Christian the more familiar, knowledgeable, and comfortable he or she becomes with that language. That lends to an appearance of eloquence that is difficult to imitate for someone who is perhaps not quite as familiar with the breadth of the language; e.g., it is not difficult to imagine how grandiose and eloquent the prayer of a career pastor must seem to someone who has been a Christian for only a month.

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Dr William Lane Craig offers a brief response to the challenge often posited by atheist Christopher Hitchens, and others: “Name a moral action that a religious person can do, that a non-religious person cannot.”

In what is thus far the most commented article on this site, penned by our newest staff member Adam (see “How to respond to empty pro-choice rhetoric”), one of our regular visitors and a gentleman I enjoy talking with, Tavarish, recently posted five counter-arguments against the pro-life stance advocated by our staff writers. Not wishing for these issues to get archived deeper into the site as the article ages, I am addressing his five counter-arguments in a fresh article. And I am addressing each of them head-on, as he seems to suggest that no one has directly confronted them. For a full and proper context, please see the comments field to Adam’s article.

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[image removed pending permission from ICR]

Today is the 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens. But what has that got to do with a blog dedicated to defending a Christian world view? Well, quite a lot actually.

On May 18, 1980 when Mount St. Helens in Washington State erupted, melted snow mixed with the volcanic debris and formed huge mud flows. The flows reached speeds of 90mph, picked up sediment and rock, and, in addition to the original steam explosion, devastated a huge area, including some 150 square miles of forest in only six minutes!

These mud flows laid down enormous amounts of sediment, covering the area like a stack of pancakes, and resulting in a sediment pile up to 600-feet think in places. In some areas, thousands of individual layers formed within those sediments.

Then another eruption occurred on March 19, 1982, which created even more mud flows. They eroded large canyons as they scoured the countryside. One of these canyons is now called the “Little Grand Canyon,” and is almost like a smaller model of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. This new canyon even has side canyons, carved by catastrophic water and mud actions.

Catastrophism was a meaningful way of trying to interpret the strata in the early days of geology and this is well attested by the likes of Dr. Terry Mortensen in his writings on the scriptural geologists of the 19th century. However the uniformitarian view of geology popularized by Charles Lyell (and now becoming less popular in the midst of the “second coming” of catastrophism) compelled us to understand that the Colorado river carved the Grand Canyon over millions of years. Yet the canyons that resulted from the eruption of Mount St. Helens were witnessed to form in mere hours. As the caption in an image from this article says, “…  the stream did not form the canyon, the canyon came first and is responsible for the stream being there!” So perhaps the Grand Canyon formed in a similar fashion?

In fact, Creation scientists believe the Grand Canyon was formed in a similar fashion, probably carved out by the drainage of the enormous lakes that formed after the worldwide catastrophic flood and volcanic upheavals of Noah’s day (Gen 6-8).

See, it doesn’t take long for layered sediments or canyons to form from sediments, as proven by the Mount St. Helens eruption. It just takes the right conditions. Mount St. Helens demonstrated what creationists had been saying for centuries. Not only is Noah’s flood an historical event, but it is a plausible way (the best way?) to understand the geological record.

[Main reference: Answers in Genesis Flood Card Set]

Aren’t Millions of Years Required for Geological Processes?
‘I got excited at Mount St Helens!’

A satirical video from North Point Community Church, Alpharetta, GA. (And it really captures accurately the church I used to attend five years ago.)

In the original article published at our web site, we had addressed the question, “How is God relevant anymore, now that we have science?” If you have not read that original article, it might be best that you do, since this follow-up article shall be addressing a rebuttal offered by someone from AtheistForums.org named Tavarish. (His real name is withheld out of respect for his privacy, as he has not disclosed it publically.)

Although Tavarish had a lot to say, he could have spared himself a significant amount of writing because, for some curious reason, nearly half of his rebuttal was devoted to articulating what the scientific method truly is and how it is engaged. He could have spared himself all that writing because not only do I understand the scientific method already but, more importantly, that had nothing to do with what my article had to say. In other words, he invested a tremendous amount of writing in describing what the flashlight is and how to properly use it, whereas my article simply took those sort of issues for granted in order to address an antecedent issue: the fact that the flashlight works in the first place and how to account for that. I think Tavarish was very forceful and clear in his rebuttal, but unfortunately he was rebutting something other than my article. If he wants to make his stand on when a theory is scientific and when it is not, he might be surprised to find me standing beside him. Quite simply, the issue was never the demarcation problem, despite his attempt to insist otherwise, but rather the foundations upon which science rests (taking for granted what science is).

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