Why we need editors: Only The Shadow knows how to diagram these signs

These side-by-side signs appear to have been made at the same time, so why not word them the same?

If only we knew.

I'm a professional editor, so me pointing out others' word foibles is like Mike Tyson telling me I hit like a girl. Plus, nobody's perfect; I'm occasionally the reason the newspaper I work for has to run a correction. But you've got to admit it actually looks like somebody wasn't sure which way was correct and so tried it both ways, figuring one of them had to be right.

Neither one is.

The sign of the left says the only purpose of this door is for a facilities staff member to open it. (Presumably, the real purpose of the door is to protect something inside from falling into the hands of anyone who isn't on the facilities staff.) The one on the right says that the facilities staff can't do anything to the door except open it. (Can't even close it once it's been opened.)

What the sign-maker really wanted to say was "To be opened by facilities staff only" -- no one except facilities staff can open the door. (The facilities staff can do other things with the door: shut it, lock it; and the door serves other purposes than for the facilities staff to open it.)

That said, I can't imagine what would be so exciting behind either of those doors that anyone, facilities staff included, would want to open them. But then, only you live once. And you can only prevent forest fires.

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On talking with a Southern accent (Video)

My wife says I do-up my Southern accent when I talk to people from my hometown and downplay it when I'm talking to everyone else.

Ah reckon ah do.

Actually, I'm capable of talking so that my wife can't even understand me -- and I don't mean because I'm talking about SEC football or eschatological theories. It's because I'm from Alabama and she's from Connecticut.

She can understand about every third or fourth word our auto mechanic says. My friend The Chemist, who is originally from Hong Kong, has the same problem with him. But I've been around people with such thick accents my whole life, so I think nothing of it. I hear they put captions up for that show Swamp People, but most of my friends who watch it don't need them.

I think I eased out of my thicker accent when I got a job in Birmingham 15 years ago. My wife says I have a "Birmingham accent" when I'm at work, but lay it on thicker at home now that I've moved back to my hometown and commute.

I did, in fact, noticed myself slipping in some thicker drawl in the office when I first moved back. I think I've got the two accents properly separated now.

The thicker one came in handy when I was moving my now-wife here a few years back and our rental truck starting giving trouble. We were in a far more rural area than my hometown, so the accents were huge. I think my wife would've benefited from Swamp People captioning that night.

I know a guy who has a "walking accent." Don't know how to explain it other than he shifts heavily from one side to the other when he walks. Interestingly, I catch myself throwing this walking style on, too, when I fear I'll be taken for a "city slicker." And if I open my mouth, I make sure I sound like Larry the Cable Guy.

I get self-conscious in places like New York City, but a friend of mine has no such worries. I ordered a sausage dog from a street vendor once and my friend followed right behind me asking for a saw-sij dawg. Even though I'd just ordered a sausage dog with my accent, the guy couldn't understand him.

I had the same problem in college when I was working in a grocery store. A woman with a northern accent came in and asked, I thought, where the raisins were.

"No," she told me. "Ace."

"Ace?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Ace bandages?"

"No. Ayyyyyce."

I only figured it out because when I looked up in puzzlement I spied the ice machine.

When she tells this story it probably ends with, "And then the guy says, 'Ohhh ... OSS!"

It's not just a Birmingham accent and a home accent I have either. There are word choices. In Birmingham you eat dinner as the third meal of the day. Back home, dinner is eaten at noon.

I found this out the hard way when I was in college in Birmingham. I made the mistake of calling lunch "dinner" to a classmate who laughed her head off. I quickly switched dinner to the third meal, but then friends at home laughed at me. Since then I've never eaten dinner. I eat breakfast, lunch and supper. You can make fun of me for saying supper if you want, but you'll always know what I mean by it.

Of course, not all Southern accents are the same. There's the Scarlett O'Hara and the Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel. Miss Scarlett has the plantation oh-nah drawl; Cletus has the hillbilly twang.

But sometimes there are just plain personal accents. I worked with a guy who's gruff tone was so hard to understand he'd have to spell his name to people over the phone. Bad part: His name was Jay. So when he spelled it J-A-Y, they still couldn't understand him. You can't spell Jay without a J. If they couldn't understand "Jay" how were they going to understand "J"?

When he called out-of-state I always feared the person on the other end of the line was going to assume that's how everyone here talks.

Oh, well. Tuh-morah is uh-nuth-huh day!

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Why time travel is not possible

Don't get your hopes up. Time travel will never be possible.

A while back a guy claiming to come from the future, John Titor, found a following on the Internet. Any future predictions were hazy, but if anything he said failed to pass he had an out: It's possible he came from a different future than the one we will experience.

I'm sorry to be skeptical, but even if it were possible to build a time machine you couldn't just calculate the time you want to go to; you also have to figure out where in space you want to go.

You can't just return to the same spot. The spot on the planet you are starting at won't be in the same place in the time you are going to. First off, the world is spinning at about 1,000 miles per hour, depending on your latitude, so even going five minutes into the past won't get you to the same place. On top of that, it is circling the sun at about 62,000 mph.

Further, our solar system is circling the Milky Way Galaxy at 155 miles per second and the Milky Way is moving in our Local Group of galaxies at 185 miles/sec. Worst of all, we don't know exactly how fast the universe is expanding. It's about 71 km/s/Mpc, but that's only within a 5 percent margin of error. And you have to be exact on every single calculation to wind up in the "same spot" on the earth. (We didn't even discuss the wobble of the earth.)

Before you tell me I've forgotten relativity, I haven't. Maybe it's just like tossing a quarter up and catching it while you're on an airplane. The quarter travels with you as though you were standing still. Problem is, the earth experiences periods of irregular rotation which can't be predicted.

Still, for sake of argument, let's say you had all these calculations perfectly precise. You still have to know there isn't a person, animal or any other object in the spot you intend to pop into. (For that matter there has to be something there -- even if it's air. You and your machine cannot occupy the same space as air molecules any more than you can occupy the same space as a brick wall.)

But beyond that, if a time machine had ever been built someone would have already come back without being so secretive as John Piper. Once that ship has sailed it would be just like the atomic bomb. Everybody and his brother would have access to one eventually. There'd be a ride in Disney World.

Eventually somebody will use it for evil -- lots of somebodies, in fact. And every somebody who uses it for "good" will try to stop Hitler, John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, etc. Yet nobody ever succeeded in going back in time and killing Hitler. If they had, you wouldn't be reading this.

There is no time travel of the type we see in movies and never will be. Give it up.

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Who was best at creationism, theistic evolution conference?

Hugh Ross addresses the conference in favor of old earth creation.

I've written the past four days about my attendance at Fixed Point Foundation's conference "In the Beginning: 3 Views on Creation." But I didn't give much opinion. I'm a trained journalist, and presented the speaker's words as objectively as I could. Still, I do have opinions.

I went into the conference knowing little about any of the speaker's views except for Hugh Ross. I watched his show Reasons to Believe years ago, and also read his books and heard his podcasts. Whether he's got everything exactly right none of us can know, but I was impressed that he takes science and Christian faith equally seriously and has no problem harmonizing them. I was so impressed, in fact, I bought copies of his book, The Creator and the Cosmos, and gave them to anyone who would take them.

So, needless to say, being able to see Ross up close and rub elbows with him was pretty cool. (A guy named Benjamin Moon who tweets as @CaptainAhmazing put it: "I totally just random campered Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. John Lennox. They're like my Justin Beiber and Taylor Swift.")

Much like Captain Ahmazing, it was a given I'd like Ross' presentation of old earth creationism. The question was, would Terry Mortenson, a young earth creationist or Michael Behe, a theistic evolutionist, be able to sway me?

Unbeknownst to me, John Lennox, at left, would present yet a fourth view as he spoke on opening night. Actually, Lennox's theory sounded a lot like Hugh Ross' with some differences here and there. Lennox postulates that God really did "create" on literal 24-hour days, but it took perhaps millennia for that command to be carried out before he spoke another command on another literal day and the process began again.

He was jolly in his presentation, and I liked how he said it was just a theory and he isn't willing to die for it "though some of you wish I would."

I felt something of a kinship in that every time I tackle any theological controversy I always end up believing both sides are somewhat -- if not completely -- correct. That's how I found out in Bible college I'm a Molinist on the predestination/free will debate.

Each speaker had a little under an hour to present his case, and Mortenson, the "biblical creationist" or young earther wasn't able to give me enough details without purchasing the books and DVDs he had for sale out front. Every speaker was selling books, DVDs and CDs that he pointed to for more detail, but Mortenson did so the most. Since I didn't have the money to buy any, I was left without knowing why light seems to have traveled millions of light years when the universe is only about 6,000 years old. He did touch on carbon dating being unreliable, but Hugh Ross seemed to refute that argument later.

Still, Mortenson made some points about uniformitarianism and the danger that in parts of the world where the doctrine of creation has been dropped other important doctrines have fallen like dominoes behind it -- notably, original sin. I also respected his willingness to uphold the veracity of Scripture. He did nitpick a bit, though, on some of Hugh Ross' points, i.e. saying that Moses wouldn't have used "one rotation of the earth" as one of the meanings for "day" because Moses didn't know the earth rotated. Well, no, that was just Ross' terminology for a 24-hour day, not Moses'.

On the day Behe spoke, I stayed in bed most of the day with a migraine, so I heard only the ending of his talk, though I was able to make his Q&A session the next day. I'll have to wait until I get the DVD of the conference to hear his full argument. But I did learn that he doesn't get into the theological aspects of creation, just the biology. Behe is the Lehigh University biology professor who speaks out for Intelligent Design based on the fact that plant and animal "machines" are far too complex to have occurred through chance mutations, as Charles Darwin asserted. Though a Christian, he makes no attempt to harmonize biology with Scripture, instead noting that life is "irreducibly complex." In other words, it couldn't have slowly built up from scratch with no designer guiding it along.

I liked Behe, too. In the way I respect Mortenson not wanting to see Scripture belittled, I respect Behe for not wanting to see science taken as unimportant. Though I should be clear: Both men do respect both the record of nature and Scripture. That said, I still think Ross best explains how the two work together.

But maybe this journalist was already biased to think that.

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Old earth, young earth, theistic evolution debate

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- John Lennox, at left, kicked off Saturday's session at Fixed Point Foundation's "In the Beginning: 3 Views of Creation" conference with a Q&A session at 9 a.m.

Asked about the "goodness" of God's creation, the Oxford mathematics professor said he believes what Scripture says. "It's the reason I've taken a stand in the public sphere."

He likened God's pronouncements of his creation "good" until finishing on the sixth day and calling everything "very good" to a house. The building site is good, and so is the foundation, but it isn't "very good" until the house in completed.

Disputing scientists who say ancient man believed in miracles because he didn't understand the uniformity of nature, Lennox said, "You can't recognize a miracle unless you know natural laws."

"If I went into my hotel room last night and put $100 in a drawer, then put in another $100 ... and in the morning I check the drawer and find $50 I don't say the laws of mathematics have been broken; I say the laws of Alabama have been broken!" In the same way, "When God inputs into creation he doesn't break the laws of nature."

The "big bang" wasn't the only singularity God was behind, he said. "The Resurrection and incarnation (of Jesus) also are singularities. In fact, every time Genesis 1 says "And God said" is a singularity, he said. "That's God inputting information."

Lennox believes in a real Adam and Eve. "They were not made from a pre-existing homonid."

As to what the Nephilim are, who are mentioned in Genesis, Lennox said, " I haven't a notion."

But he did have a notion on Stephen Hawking's belief that the universe was created by gravity, not God: "What if God made gravity? It's a bit like looking at a Ford Galaxie and I say 'Is it the laws of the internal combustion engine -- or Henry Ford?'"

Hugh Ross holds up the Gideon New Testament he signed his name in at age 17 after determining Christianity was the only religion that jibed with science's view of creation.

Reasons To Believe founder Hugh Ross was asked during his Q&A time about whether God might have built in appearance of age, as young earth creationists believe. When Jesus turned water into wine, it was noted to be "good wine" -- or aged, a questioner said. Ross, who is an old earth creationist, said wine doesn't have to appear aged to taste aged. He pointed to a Japanese company that recently distilled new whiskey that tastes aged.

The astrophysicist also noted that the fossil record shows that at the instant the earth was capable of sustaining life, the fossil record shows that it actually did.

Hugh Ross speaks with an audience member before Michael Behe's Q&A.

Theistic evolutionist Michael Behe, speaking with an audience member at right, spent the first half-hour of his Q&A on the first question, which dealt with critics of his belief that the "irreducible complexity" in nature demands a designer.

He pointed to an assertion on blood clotting he made in the 1990s that was disputed by Russell Doolittle, the leader in the field. It turns out Doolittle had misquoted a paper that he thought had said two mutations brought about the same result as if there were none at all, allowing blood in lab mice to clot normally --the opposite of Behe's assertion. Doolittle had misread the paper and apologized by email, but not publicly, and others still quote Doolittle's rebuttal of Behe today.

Behe is Roman Catholic, but said he doesn't in his science speculate on who the designer is. "It's easier to see that ID (Intelligent Design) exists from looking to than to see who did it and why." He said he left those speculations to Ross and Terry Mortenson, a young earth creationist at the event, who both also have studied theology.

Behe charts why his theory on blood clotting is correct.

Hugh Ross, left, makes a point as Michael Behe and Terry Mortenson listen.

Fixed Point Executive Director Larry Taunton, at right, posed questions to the three advocates during an afternoon roundtable discussion. Taunton asked questions submitted by convention-goers, and eventually Ross, Behe and Mortenson, a young earth creationist jousted among themselves over the issue of whether science was subservient to Scripture or vice versa. All three men agreed Scripture is God's perfect revelation, though Mortenson said he prefers to go with Scripture when the two seem to disagree.

Behe noted that he doesn't get into the debate over whether Adam and Eve are literal, he sticks mainly with the science. He did note, however, that science isn't necessarily fact, but rather man's current understanding of nature, and that that understanding might change in 100 years.

Gilbert Lennox, a church pastor in Ireland and brother of John, preaches on Genesis 1 to close out the conference.

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Photos: Greg Richter Photography (Click on photos to enlarge.)

Dr. Michael Behe on theistic evolution

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama – My intent was to give you a synopsis of Dr. Michael Behe’s presentation on theistic evolution, but I woke up Friday morning with a migraine, which, despite medication, only got worse.

As a result I spent most of the day in bed, praying that I would be well enough to drive an hour to hear him at 7 p.m. I awoke after 6 p.m. and decided I would be able to make the trip, but I would get there late. As it turns out, I missed about three-fourths of his talk.

I’m sure you can read much of his story at his webpage on the Lehigh University website, and also, Fixed Point Foundation is selling audio and video versions of the conference, so both you and I will be able to hear his entire talk once those are mailed out.

I think it's generally safe to say that Behe sees the complexity in creation demanding an engineer with a purpose rather than it being the result of random mutations.

When I finally made my way into the audience, Behe was talking about travelling with a friend and looking at a mountain range. “Look at that slope,” he tells the friend. “From that mountain top to the other one is an angle of 19 degrees!”

“Yeah, so what?” his friend asks.

Next they travel to see Massachusetts’ Old Man in the Mountain formation. Behe notices how the rocks resemble a human face and wonders if perhaps they were designed my some primitive culture.

Finally, they arrive at Mount Rushmore, seeing the perfectly chiseled faces of four U.S. presidents. The slope from the top to bottom of George Washington’s nose clearly was formed by a designer.

Even noted atheist Richard Dawkins admits the “appearance” of a purposeful arrangement of parts in even some of the most simple of life forms, Behe said.

Behe coined the term “irreducible complexity” for his theory, likening it to a mousetrap, which has several components necessary to make it work. If you remove half the components, he said, “you won’t get a mousetrap that works half as well. It won’t work a fourth as well. It’s a broken mousetrap.”

Behe finds it amazing so many biologists would latch on to Darwin’s theory. “The bottom line: There is strong evidence for design, little evidence for Darwinism.”

Radio host Rick Burgess closed out the evening, noting that he, too, is an Oxford graduate. He got his high school diploma from Oxford High School in Oxford, Ala.

“I’m going to ask a question I’ll bet none of these men with Ph.D.s asked,” Burgess said. “I read Genesis and I wonder stuff like: What if, instead of a snake, it had been a giraffe that tempted Eve in the garden. Can you image giraffes with no legs? What if you saw a legless giraffe out in the garden and hollered, ‘Honey, bring me a shovel or hoe!’ then tried to cut that long neck off?”

Turning serious, Burgess said that while it’s good to engage in debates such as the origin of may, Christians shouldn’t make it a litmus test for salvation.

The conference concludes on Saturday, with Q&A sessions with Behe, young earth (or biblical) creationist Dr. Terry Mortenson and old earth creationist Dr. Hugh Ross, a roundtable discussion among all three, a sermon on Genesis 1 from Gilbert Lennox and a concert by modern hymn writers Keith and Kristyn Getty.

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Photo: Owen Tew

Terry Mortenson, Hugh Ross on new, old earth creation

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Dr. Terry Mortenson presented the case for young earth creationism, and Dr. Hugh Ross made the argument for old earth creationism at Fixed Point Foundation's conference Thursday night at Briarwood Presbyterian Church.

The third night of "In the Beginning: 3 Views on Creation," continues tonight with Dr. Michael Behe arguing for theistic evolution. Fixed Point Executive Director Larry Taunton noted that all speakers agree on the authority of the Bible, they just have different interpretations of the text.

Though Christians disagree on the details of the universe's origins, it's vital they engage the culture, Taunton said, because "whoever gets to tell the creation story -- they are the priests of our society."

Mortenson, pictured above, of Answers in Genesis, said the earth and universe were created in six 24-hour days about 6,000 years ago. He took exception with others who argue that the "days" mentioned in Genesis 1 might be long epochs. The literary form in Genesis is narrative, he said, not poetry, parable or prophecy, meaning it was to be taken as literal history.

"That was Jesus' view, and all the other biblical writers treat it as history," he said.

Mortenson, who said he didn’t grow up believing in a 6,000-year-old earth, said Genesis 1-11 is vital to the Christian doctrine of salvation. “Genesis is foundational to the rest of the Bible.” He said parts of the world where the church has accepted evolution have gone on to reject other biblical doctrines as well.

The previous night, Dr. John Lennox had argued that other creatures might have lived and died long before man came along, but didn’t see “decay” that entered the world after the fall of man. Mortenson said fossils have shown that dinosaurs had cancer, so if they existed millions of years before man, they did see decay.

Mortenson said the layers of sediment seen in the Grand Canyon don’t represent millions of years of deposits followed by millions more of erosion. They point to a cataclysmic event: Noah’s flood. He pointed to an atheist scientist who had reached the same conclusion about a deposit in England.

Secular scientists, and some Christian ones, get false results because they are using the wrong lens, he said, just as if he looks through the bottom of his bifocals he would presume members of the audience have heads, but no eyeballs. Looking through the top of the top lens, he can see more clearly. Most Christians who don't believe in his view haven't closely examined the evidence, he said.

Ross, of Reasons to Believe (pictured left), described his view as “constructive integration.” “The Bible and science can be completely integrated,” he said. “God has given us two books: the book of science and the Bible.”

Ross grew up secular, but at the age of 17 decided the complexity he saw in nature demanded a creator. He read the scriptures of all the major religions, finding only the Jewish/Christian texts describing creation the way science does.

The space-time theorem states that the universe began with a singularity, but it had to have an outside causal agent. That agent, Ross said, is God.

While Genesis provides an account of creation, Ross says the Bible contains 27 separate accounts of the universe’s origins. Genesis doesn’t say what God did between creating the universe and man, but elsewhere such things are explained, including his stretching out of the heavens. Science wouldn’t discover the universe is expanding for thousands of years.

Ross rejects young earth creationism, but does believe that God created creatures as they are today; he didn’t use the process of evolution. “There’s been no discernible change in human DNA in 25,000 years,” he said, adding that on average one new species appeared on earth until man showed up. Since then there have been zero.

He said Genesis 1 is written from the perspective of the earth, and that’s why light appears before the sun and moon. The earth was previously covered in clouds, as Venus still is. After God removed the permanent canopy of clouds, photosynthesis could occur, allowing plants to grow.

Ross believes Adam was on the earth a long time before Eve was created. Part of that reason, when Adam first saw his wife he exclaimed, in Hebrew, happa ‘am (At long last!)

Ross said it’s important to find a creation model that synthesizes the Bible with science or it will be impossible to win skeptics over. “If skeptics can’t get past the first page of the Bible, they aren’t likely to get to John 3:16.”

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Photos: Owen Tew