Regular readers of my blog should be familiar with this material.  But it’s important to show that Christian folk-science is nothing new.  We’ve attempted to solve questions of physical science with appeals to Scripture and Theology ever since the earliest days of the Church.  These are merely two examples.

Let me know what you think!

This lesson is short, but is a critical transition from  the “background” trilogy (1-3) to the “common ground” segment (5-6).  It introduces the concept of a folk-science: pseudo-scientific beliefs whose primary function is to support one’s (metaphysical) worldview commitments.  Folk-science has no ability to increase our knowledge of the created order – that is not its purpose.  It is simply a belief system dressed in scientific vocabulary.

I can already anticipate some criticism here from my non-theists friends.  I used two quotes from non-theists: Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins, to demonstrate that folk-science can also be used to justify philosophical materialsm — which many scientists consider an abuse of science (Gould comes to mind).

However, I don’t believe the quote I used from Sagan was intended to be a philosophical statement.  Certainly it is interpreted that way by most evangelicals, but Sagan was much too nuanced and sophisticated to commit such a blunder.  When he says, “The cosmos is all there is, was, or ever will be,” I understand this as a definition of what Cosmos means — as in, the scope of what the Cosmos is… it is everything!  The Cosmos literally encompasses all of space, time, and matter.  I would like to believe that Sagan merely used poetic language to express this, and did not intend to open his famous series up with a slam against theism.

Dawkins, on the other hand, is fair game as far as I am concerned.  But if anybody has a quote that better illustrates my intended point than the Sagan quote, by all means share it with me.

Also be advised–after this lesson, it starts to get ugly!  Most evangelicals will agree with the historic examples of Christian folk-science presented in Lesson 05, and with the egregious case of modern Christian folk-science presented in Lesson 06.  But the sky will start falling when YEC, Flood Geology, Special Creation, and ID are shown to be no different than these in terms of hermeneutics, scientific integrity, and hindrance to the Gospel — which should leave viewers in an awkward position.  And its hard to be charitable when dealing with this.  Hopefully, the humor I use will not be taken the wrong way.

Starting to get more technical now.  These first three lessons are the “foundation” for the rest of the series.  After this, I introduce the concept of a “folk-science” and compare/contrast this to standard laboratory science.  Then the fun really begins! 

Enjoy!

As promised, here is the second installment.  I noticed when I was doing the FLV conversion that there are unfortunately no graphics in Lesson 2.  I think it’s the only one with just me talking, which I tried to minimize.  However, Lesson 3 has plenty of eye-candy to keep the pace moving.  If anybody has any thoughts on graphics that I could use to reinforce the monologue, I’m open to suggestions. 

The fisrt video lesson was viewed 174 times during the first two days.  This makes me question the 4,798 hits my website supposedly received during that same time.  What were the other 4,624 people looking at?

Next one will go up Sunday.

Here is the first installment on the new video series.  I’m still playing around with the technical aspects of flash video, so I need feedback on how well the video runs, and if the data transfer can keep up.  The goal is to have the best possible quality and still be able to stream through the average connection speed.  The frame rate seems choppy to me, which could be the effect of this new flash video conversion utility (that I have yet to register).  The original version is DVD quality in widescreen format.

I would also like to get some useful content feedback.  Unless there is something really distracting in the video narration, I probably will not shoot that again.  But changes to the graphics and titles are relatively painless.

Check back in a couple of days for the next one.