You guessed it, smarty-pants. I registered the domain eiei.org because of that song about Old MacDonald. As domain names go it’s not so bad: easy enough to remember and short enough to type. The other little tidbit that hopefully makes the reasoning behind the name come into focus for you is that I registered the domain after becoming a stay-home dad and the primary caregiver for my children. In those days the kids and I passed a lot of time regaling each other with the exploits of Old MacDonald, in verse.

Creationist students, listen to me very carefully: There is evidence for evolution, and evolution is an extremely successful scientific theory. That doesn’t make it ultimately true, and it doesn’t mean that there could not possibly be viable alternatives. It is my own faith choice to reject evolution, because I believe the Bible reveals true information about the history of the earth that is fundamentally incompatible with evolution. I am motivated to understand God’s creation from what I believe to be a biblical, creationist perspective. Evolution itself is not flawed or without evidence. Please don’t be duped into thinking that somehow evolution itself is a failure. Please don’t idolize your own ability to reason. Faith is enough. If God said it, that should settle it. Maybe that’s not enough for your scoffing professor or your non-Christian friends, but it should be enough for you.

Todd Wood, creationist, on The Truth About Evolution

No scientist I’ve ever encountered takes Darwin on faith. Darwin’s theory has been maintained where the evidence supports it, and modified where it doesn’t. Evolutionary theory itself has evolved. Evolution, as it is understood today, isn’t about Darwin or faith but about observation, evidence, deduction and reason. Those who deny this presumably have failed at some point in the chain of logic to either observe, to examine evidence, to reason or to deduce.

James F. McGrath in blog post Taking Darwin on Faith?

… [T]here is a modern set of presuppositions, linked to the realist epistemology most evangelicals favor, which has a profound influence on their exegesis. Having a realist epistemology means that they will tend to favor truth of a factual and scientific kind and not be quite so open to truth of a more symbolic or metaphorical type. One sees it in the evangelical doctrine of biblical inspiration, which is protective of cognitive truth in general and factual inerrancy in particular. It means hermeneutically that the “natural” way to read the Bible is to read it as literally and as factually as possible. In apologetics too evangelicals like to appeal to empirical reason.

They like to ask, If you can’t trust the Bible in matters of fact, when can you trust it? In many ways then, evangelicals are in substantial agreement with the modern agenda which also prefers the factual and the scientific over the symbolic and figurative. What could be more modern that to search for scientific truth in texts three thousand years old? Such a modern presupposition will demand the right to read the Bible in modern terms whatever the authorial intention of the text might be. It just assumes that our values must have been the same as those entertained by the ancient Israelites.

David R. Vinson, Introduction to the Interpretation of Genesis 1

It’s not just biblical texts that believers must complain about. It is God himself…What matters is the context in which complaints and criticism occur. Do I make the criticism because I expect God or scripture to answer my questions and I will not rest until I find my rest in God and his Word? Or because I’ve decided that God and his Word are something I need to protect myself against, because I’ve found a higher standard of truth by which to judge them both?

John Hobbins on his blog Ancient Hebrew Poetry

The greatest of men would be silly and lazy
So I would be king…if the world was crazy.

Shel Silverstein, If the World Was Crazy

There’s a difference between a casual “all you need is love” attitude and “love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34) … There’s nothing wrong with giving money to the soup kitchen, or with trying to implement policies that help the homeless, nor with voting for politicians who will support such policies. The problem is that too often we call this “loving one another as Jesus loved us” and that’s not how Jesus did it.

Henry Neufeld, Love Without Involvement

Who is your Jesus? … What is he saying, in the context of the world that surrounds you? How does he interpret the old messages attributed to him, for current circumstances? What does he have to say for our time about warfare, medical ethics, sexual morality, and economic justice? What would he do, how would he act, how would he change the world today? … Can you see him mixing with the people around you now? How does he fit in, or stand out?

Jim Burklo, Who is Your Jesus?

…Voters in general really love an ad hominem approach to the political debate. We believe what people say if they’re on our side. We smear groups with the actions of some. The tea party protesters are smeared because some participants cross a line, as they did in Jacksonville, but ACORN is smeared because some people that they hire cut corners and engage in fraud.

My suggestion here is that a debate that so constantly turns to an ad hominem approach can hardly be expected to produce rational results. That’s the trouble with our alternatives. I would gladly vote the Democrats out of office, but then the Republicans would take over. I would gladly vote the Republicans out of office, but then the Democrats would (and have) taken over.

The great equivalence, in my view, is that neither party is willing to have their sacred cow programs examined for effectiveness. They just have a different list of programs they hold sacred.

Henry Neufeld, The Trouble with our Alternatives

Resurrection faith…does not mean believing without evidence in the resurrection as something that has happened and will happen, but rather means trusting in the God who is capable of rescuing even from death. This should be the heart of resurrection faith: trust and hope in God rather than arrogant self-assuredness.

James McGrath in The Burial of Jesus