rag

Repentance and faith

Acts 20:21 speaks of “repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” This first step of the Christian life is God’s doing. God grants repentance and faith. So while people say, “I repented” and “I believed,” it is only by God’s grace that they did. This can be compared with an alarm clock going […]

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Occam’s razor

Occam’s Razor (also called Ockham’s Razor) refers to a principle of parsimony or simplicity in modern science associated with the medieval monk William of Ockham. His principle states: “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” The word “entities” is ambiguous here: what should be minimized, the total number of entities of any kind or the number of kinds

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Falsification or limitation?

Karl Popper made falsification the key to scientific legitimacy. But as others have pointed out, scientists do not spend much time trying to falsify theories. Instead, they work to confirm and extend theories. Moreover, an observation that goes against a theory doesn’t falsify the whole theory; it creates an anomaly that can be dealt with

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Approval voting

When Benjamin Netanyahu “won” a recent Israeli election, his Likud party actually won 30 of 120 seats in Parliament. Because this was a plurality, they would have the first shot at forming a “government” (called an administration in the U.S.) by forming a coalition with other parties. So it was really a coalition that won

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Return to federalism

When the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789, it established a federation of the independent states called the United States of America. But over time the national government has expanded and overshadowed the states. The Seventeenth Amendment changed Senate elections to a direct ballot, which took state governments out of the loop of federal decision-making. The development

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Intensional science

The word intension is not as well-known as its homophone intention. The word intension denotes the intrinsic meaning of a word, also called the comprehension or connotation. It contrasts with the extension, which denotes the range of applicability or objects to which the word refers, also known as the denotation. For example, the intension of “boat” is “a

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Creation and paradigm

Creation is a fact. Creation is the oldest fact but creation as a paradigm is relatively new. Let me explain. The word “paradigm” was used by Thomas Kuhn for “universally recognized scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and solutions for a community of practitioners.” I would characterize a paradigm as a theme or

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Centrism further explained

You don’t have to spend much time with a talkative progressive (aka liberal) to hear stories about the shortcomings of the private sector. Similarly, you don’t have to spend much time with a talkative conservative to hear stories about the shortcomings of the public sector. But the people in the private and public sectors are

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The end of civil marriage

At first civil unions were allowed in several states for same-sex domestic partnerships. Then judges said they were equivalent to civil marriages. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has redefined civil marriage to include same-sex domestic partnerships. Essentially the Court has downgraded civil marriages to civil unions. States should respond by replacing civil marriages with civil unions. Why? That

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Science and theology

Much discussion continues on the topic of “science and religion” but the concept of religion is vague or arbitrary so it is better to focus on “science and theology.” Christian theology in particular does have some relation to science. Historians have documented the role that Christianity played in the rise of modern science. For example,

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