funky presbyterian goes to church circa 1977

Apt

Right here at the last little stubby end of 2008 I've stumbled upon the lyric that seems custom written to summarize our 2008. It's not much in the way of poetry, but there's gotta be something said for aptness.  

It's first line on the first track of the most recent Ryan Adams & the Cardinals album, Cardinology. The song is Born into a Light:

For everything that's wrong there is a worried man,
There is a reason why
We just don't understand but will, you gotta keep the faith
be patient oh the past is just a memory and heal.
Heal your vines, you'll heal inside eventually

We were born into a light.

listen here.

The Award for Most Pleasure Inducing Album Recorded by Someone Else and Listened to By Me in 2008 Goes To

Midnight Organ Flight, by Frightened Rabbit

The Award for Best Fiction Book Read by Me in 2008 Goes To...

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

The Award For Best Non-Fiction Book Read by Me in 2008 Goes To...

The Reason for God, by Tim Keller

whole heartedly recommended for your Christmas listening needs

low- christmas
rosie thomas- a very rosie christmas

unadulterated cheer and goodwill never make for satisfying christmas carols. advent always requires those undertones of melancholy, longing, and humble restraint. these two albums deliver the goods. put one in your stocking this year.

Vintage Funky Presbyterian on a Television Antenna

Science Community Narrowly Avoids Apostacy

The title of this post links to an article in discover magazine. It's a scientific magazine, not a religious magazine. What seems odd to me is that the scientific establishment will go to such great lengths to protect their belief that there is no intelligent creator of the universe, even though they admit such a conclusion is not based on scientific method. They are willing to postulate the equally unscientifically verifiable solution of infinite universes in order to avoid saying what the data seems to suggest: the universe was intelligently and intentionally designed to accommodate us, that life is not random or peripheral, but central to the purpose of the universe. 

Now, I don't have any problem with people postulating theories which are not scientifically verifiable. What I do find curious is the scientific community's insistence that they are not religious and that their beliefs about the world are developed from empirical evidence and scientific methodology. Clearly at this point their methods cannot sustain the beliefs to which they have committed themselves a priori.  And yet they hold them regardless.  In one sense, I'm completely ok with that.  There is no other way to hold beliefs about the world!   I just wish they'd write a follow up article admitting that they too are religious and have an orthodoxy to which they hold and which exists independent of, and prior to the criteria by which they judge the evidence.  But they can't because in the modernist, scientific religion, doing so would amount to apostacy.  

I guess what I'm saying is  I am suspicious of their metanarrative.  Call me a religious skeptic.  

Call it a fluke, a mystery, a miracle. Or call it the biggest problem in physics. Short of invoking a benevolent creator, many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multi verse. Most of those universes are barren, but some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life.

The idea is controversial. Critics say it doesn’t even qualify as a scientific theory because the existence of other universes cannot be proved or disproved. Advocates argue that, like it or not, the multiverse may well be the only viable non religious explanation for what is often called the “fine-tuning problem”—the baffling observation that the laws of the universe seem custom-tailored to favor the emergence of life.

Physical laws clamor for life: the universe knew we were coming.

“For me the reality of many universes is a logical possibility,” Linde says. “You might say, ‘Maybe this is some mysterious coincidence. Maybe God created the universe for our benefit.’ Well, I don’t know about God, but the universe itself might reproduce itself eternally in all its possible manifestations.”