Mr. Chadwell Part 1

As you might expect, I have lots to say about this. I'll start off, however, with the frank admission that I had never heard of the Treaty of Tripoli either. I now understand that Obama apparently invoked the treaty in his recent speech which probably explains why this issue came to our attention, ultimately. So, understandably, in reading the treaty I'm struck by the language used. I'd like to share some observations with you about this which will serve as a foundation of sorts… a backdrop, maybe.

And by the way, thank you for bringing my attention to it. Every time I encounter something like this, it drives me to learn more about it, and in that process I become better equipped to deal with it. I'd much rather hear this from you than, say, some secular type whom I'm trying to persuade as to the founding of this nation and be left flat-footed, caught be surprise. So thank you, thank you, thank you!

For one thing, and understand this is a minor consideration but a consideration nonetheless, but the article you cite is associated with Stephen Jay Gould. Gould died a while back, but I think it's at least minimally relevant to understand who Gould was. Gould was a rather well known atheist and evolutionary, uh… scientist. I was going to say "biologist" but some of those guys get picky about their precise title, so I'll use the broadest one I know. Gould was bothered by the fact that the fossil record provided precious little in the way of transitional forms and if Darwin had been correct, we should have an incredible wealth of transitional forms. So, he came up with the theory called "Punctuated Equilibrium" to explain away this lack of transitional forms.

What's my point? My point is that everyone has a bias. I most certainly have a bias, so do you, so did Stephen Jay Gould and those who share his world view. Hopefully you have seen by now enough evidence to persuade you that the popular evolution story which we were all fed is demonstrably false and literally impossible. And again, I don't disbelieve evolution if evolution simply means "change over time". I can agree to that and compromise NOTHING in the way of my Biblical world view. But if "evolution" means all living things descended accidentally from a single common ancestor, (this is the story we were fed in school) is laughably absurd and has, in fact, very little (if any) evidence to support it. Still getting to my point… The question is, if people like Gould can look at the plain evidence and simple problems associated with evolution and their naturalist world view and persist in interpreting that data to their favor, then they are obviously prone to twist anything else to their favor if it threatens their world view. These guys (as you've seen in the Expelled movie) will go to GREAT LENGTHS to defend their world view and deny God. Think of Michael Ruse in "Expelled" when he so confidently asserted the life arrived "on the backs of crystals" as if that explains anything. Think of Romans 1:22 which says "Professing to be wise, they became fools."

Now I understand that this alone does not disprove this whole assertion about the Treaty of Tripoli. But it demonstrates the lengths to which people of this world view will go in order to defend their view and to assail the truth. Therefore, their conclusions ought to be treated with careful scrutiny and suspicion, and if their conclusion turns out to be valid, so be it. But there's a good chance it won't.

New e-mail coming. You may post these as comments if you like… up to you. Right now I'm really just writing to you, personally, not so much "to your blog". I'll break this up into several e-mails, 'cuz this is going to get complicated.

I hope it's clear that, since this is the first time I've heard of this treaty, I'm actually reasoning this through to a large extent as I write whatever it is that I write. So while I most certainly do have a bias, I will try to set that aside and just focus on the question at hand and see what reasonable conclusions can be reached. It's a very interesting problem.

There are many passages in the Bible, for example, which skeptics love to point to as being contradictory and of course then they stomp all over the Bible and say that it's obviously not divinely inspired by some "perfect" God. But these always turn out not to be contradictions when the passages are examined more carefully. It always turns out that one part of the contradiction has simply been… often times it has to do with us imposing our way of doing things from our historical context and our culture onto their way of doing things in their historical context and their culture. When you get a little bit into their culture and historical context, the contradictions fade away and things start to make sense.

It's possible that something similar is happening here with this treaty, and that what the secularists are really doing is pulling this article out of its historical context in a way that is misleading. If that strikes you as a bit of a stretch, well, join the club. But we have to account for the thoughts expressed elsewhere by those same founders. If we just ignore all of that then most certainly we're missing something.

Make sense?