I was indeed suprised by getting the attention of PZ Myers. During the week prior to his blogging about the “Intelligent Alien Intervention Institue”, I only received about 500 hits. In the 24 hours after he posted, I got 10,000 hits! Funny how things work out. And I do need to get one of those shirts!

I wouldn’t disagree that the bible often seems to us moderns like a clumsy vessel of timeless truth, but I think it helps to understand it more like a body of “religious precedent” for the Judeo-Christian tradition. It’s more like an anthology than an encylopedia. It’s like case law is to a lawyer — not an infallible rule, but you should definitely have a strong case if you want to rule against it. And like our own bill of rights, there are some essential propositions that are non-negotiable. If you can’t accept these, then you really can’t be a part of the community of faith.

I used “subjective” to mean non-rational. I don’t do a lot of pleading with God to work against the natural order. I personally am unsure of how God mediates his agency through the natural world. I know what the bible says, but I also know that even my computer would seem like a supernatural phenomena if seen by the ancients. Christians pray for the sick, but not for the dead. We pray for quick healing for somebody with a broken leg, but not than an amputee would regenerate a new limb. Why? In the case of regeneration, we know God can do this because it happens to salamanders all the time. Part of me thinks theodicity demands that God’s agency be limited in some way. Possibly mediated only through contingent events like quantum states and probabilistic wave functions. I’ve actually got a fairly large stack of reading on this, so I hesitate to think out-loud too much about until I have more time to digest this material.

In terms of the comment about my marriage, you should think of it simply as this: two poeple who come together in a context that allows them to focus on common goals and shared perspectives will probably have a happier marriage then two who don’t. And if that shared context is one that elevates service to others over seeking one’s own satisfaction, and our happiness is derived from that, then you can see how a synergism can easily emerge. But I do not pretend that this type of relationship is exclusive to the Christian faith. I’m just relating my experience.