NEWSLETTER

of the

AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC AFFILIATION - CANADIAN SCIENTIFIC & CHRISTIAN AFFILIATION

Volume 26 Number 5                                                   October / November 1984

ORWELL THAT BEGINS WELL

"WOW!" as some folks say, or "PTIL!" (sometimes the same folks). Both expressions fit the 39th Annual Meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation, held Aug. 3-6 on the campus of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Your Newsletter editor picked up a lot more to think about than we can write about. But we'll give you a taste.

On Friday, ASA president Donald Munro raised the curtain on the meeting's theme: "1984: The Responsibility of Science," The presidential address dealt with bioethical questions that confront us today but were undreamed of when George Orwell wrote his prophetic novel 1984. Back in 1948 (Orwell picked his title by reversing the last two digits of the year in which he was writing), "babies were still made in the usual way" and "everybody seemed to know when a person was dead." Orwell wrote before Rachel Carlson's Silent Spring, five years before the helical structure of DNA was established (there was not even complete agreement that genes were made of the stuff), and long before biochemist Van R. Potter coined the term Bioethics in the title of a 1971 book.

Munro, professor of biology at Houghton College in New York, cited plenty of "ethical fallout from the unprecedented explosion of biological research. Today questions impinging on the definition and value of human life reach the courts before scientists and philosophers have grappled with them thoroughly-and frequently before the Christian community has understood them at all. Scientists and Christians both hope for simple answers, but those who understand the complexity of many bioethical issues realize that there are no simple answers.

Take abortion or "passive euthanasia" for example. Some can say "No, not for any reason"; others, "Yes, for any good reason." Everyone else has to proceed on a case-by-case basis, considering all of the circumstances in any particular situation. Somewhere between Joseph Fletcher's situation ethics that say, "do anything," and Paul Ramsey's cautious, "do nothing, lest you cause some greater evil," most of us have to take our stand.

Don Munro criticized Jeremy Rifkin's Algeny for demanding a halt of genetic engineering research when Rifkin admits there is no way it can be stopped. From a list of 200 books on bioethics published since 1971, Don recommended three that try to bring theological wisdom into their discussions: Paul Simmons's Birth and Death: Bioethical Decision-Making (Westminster, 1983); J. Robert Nelson's Human Life: A Biblical Perspective for Bioethics (Fortress, 1984); and our own D. Gareth Jone's most recent book, Brave New People: Ethical Issues at the Commencement of Life (IVP, 1984).

Don urged ASA members to become better informed about bioethical issues, to think deeply about them, and to share both our knowledge and wisdom with the unaware or unduly opinionated. In an age when human insulin is harvested commercially from modified E. coli cultures, ASA can help people view technical breakthroughs as God's gifts-and urge that such gifts be used for good instead of evil.

The Friday evening session ended with a showing of Mel White's "Deceived," an extremely powerful and thoughtful film about Jim Jones's "People's Temple." White, a professor at Fuller Seminary and professional film-maker, interviewed half a dozen people who had joined the Temple in its earlier days out of Christian idealism, then left as they saw the gospel of Jesus Christ twisted out of shape and subtly replaced by "another gospel." Their description of what went on in the Temple was interspersed with actual footage of Jim Jones and his congregation in action during those years.

Then came gripping scenes of the 1978 mass suicide (or murder) that took place in Jonestown, Guyana. Finally, addressing the audience, Mel White probed into how easily evangelical Christians, trained to be trusting "sheep," might follow a false "shepherd" into bondage. How much responsibility for our spiritual lives do we take ourselves, and how much do we hand over to a pastor, elders, or other leaders? Gulp.

("Deceived" can be ordered from Century Gospel Film Library, Souderton, PA 18964, and probably from other distributors of Christian films.)

Set in the little town of Oxford, 20 or 30 miles NW of Cincinnati and 40 from that city's airport (which is actually in Kentucky across the Ohio River to the south), Miami turned out to be more of a major university than many had expected. Local arrangements chair Edwin Yamauchi, professor of history at Miami, said that during the academic year over 12,000 students are enrolled on the Oxford campus, with several thousand more on each of two satellite campuses. Miami (named for a midwest Indian tribe) is one of a number of state universities in Ohio. Its 1809 charter makes it one of the earliest universities west of the Alleghenies. After instruction began in 1824, Miami grew steadily and absorbed several smaller colleges. Now it offers the master's degree in 63 areas and the Ph.D. in 10 of them.

Armed with a good map, anybody bright enough to get there at all (instead of ending up at the U. of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida) was able to find the dormitory, the dining hall, and Shideler Hall where all our sessions

15 Oct - Send items to Ipswich for Executive Council to consider at their November meeting.

History of Science TV Series lecture dinners with Owen Gingerich:

8 Feb - Dallas. Call Tony Ostroff, (214) 371-0359.

11 Feb - Houston. Call Gordon Mills, (409) 761-2774.

Future Annual Meetings

1985 - 26-29 July. "Christian Faith & Science in Society." St. Catherine's College, Oxford University, Oxford, England. With CSCA and RSCF.

1986 - Houghton College, Houghton, New York.
Dates and theme not set.

1987 - Somewhere in the midwest (any invitations?).

1988 - Pepperdine University, Malibu, California

were held. Named for a distinguished professor of geology, Shideler Hall houses departments of geology and geography plus a fine geology museum.

During our Annual Meeting, Miami president Paul Pearson was in the People's Republic of China arranging for academic exchanges between Miami and several universities in Guangshou (Canton). We were officially greeted by Stephen Day, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and himself a scientist. It was the ever-present Ed Yamauchi and his hard-working committee that made us feel genuinely welcome, however. Ed had recruited members of the Oxford Bible Fellowship, most of them faculty or students at Miami, to attend to our every need. We jotted down a lot of names. Hope we didn't miss any.

For example, Jack Katon, professor of chemistry, ran the airport shuttle service, with help from Dan Hoffman, David Ives, Greg Smith, and Barton Bell, an aeronautical engineer retired from the Air Force and NASA, now farming near Oxford. Some of the same people helped with registration, under direction of Vietta Keith and along with Don Fairburn, Brian Mennecke, Lester Ness, sociology prof Chuck Flynn, and Ph.D. candidate Dave Netzley. (Of course the Ipswich team of Bob and Betty Herrmann and Joni Lipsey were also on the scene.) Art Keeler of Miami's audio-visual service seemed to be in charge of audiotaping, assisted by Dan Hoffman, Brian (Number-one-son of Ever-present-Ed) Yamauchi, and maybe a few others. Jon Andrea did some videotaping of the keynote addresses. Zoology grad student Kathy Keating handled publicity and helped Frank and Kathy Turano (grad students in botany and psychology) take care of baby-sitting.

We understand that Lester Ness coordinated the field trips, guided by Don Fairburn, Howard Krauss, Brian Mennecke, and Barton Bell. Maybe we got some of that wrong, but we heard that George Lambert, Oxford businessman and Miami geology graduate, helped lead a fossil-hunting trip to nearby Indiana that would have made a paleontology buff out of anyone. Sixteen people came back lugging Ordovician rocks (430 million years b.p.), with Wayne Frair clutching a prize trilobite that looked text book-perf ect. We didn't hear if a trip to the Vandenberg Air Force Museum came off, but visitors to Proctor & Gamble's plant brought back lots of free samples with their tales of automated machinery turning out thousands of bars of Ivory soap.

Other points of interest nearby were an old covered bridge that impressed even Janet Neidhardt (a connoisseur of bridge construction and builder of model bridges), and lovely Hueston Woods State Park. A museum on campus occupies the restored home of William Holmes McGuffey, the former Miami professor and "schoolmaster of the nation" whose McGuffey Eclectic Readers were the standard textbooks in the U.S. after the Civil War. Oxford also boasts the home of Benjamin Harrison, Miami class of 1852 and president of the United States, 1888-92.

The university library, largest building on campus, displayed its collection of Orwelliana during the ASA meeting, including a number of first editions of Orwell's books. Saturday night's banquet was held in Schriver Center, which on other campuses might be called the Student Union Building, the SUB, or HUB. Miami's "Hub" turned out to be a central campus memorial made of stones donated by alumni from each of the 50 states. Each stone points out toward that alumnus's state. In the Hub's center is mounted the university's seal, with the motto Prodesse Quam ConspicL

That translates to something like "To accomplish rather than to show off," a good motto for such an impressive but modest university-or for the American Scientific Affiliation, come to think of it.

Keynoting the 1984 Annual Meeting was Herbert Schlossberg, author of Idols for Destruction: Christian Faith and its Confrontations with Society (Nelson, 1983). With a Ph.D. in history from Minnesota, a Master of Public Administration from The American University, and experience in both academia and government service, Herb Schlossberg made a substantial contribution not only in his addresses but also in many small discussions. Herb and his wife Terry are personable Christians of great depth, some of which we were able to see.

The first keynote address, on "George Orwell and the Problem of Utopia," was delivered Saturday night after the banquet. It traced the history of utopian thinking from Plato's Republic to Thomas More's Utopia to Karl Marx to Eric Blair (George Orwell's real name). Family financial reverses made Blair a relatively poor boy attending Eton, but as an adult he was an upper-class Etonian living among the poor. That background and his service as a British policeman in colonial India left him with an immense load of guilt feelings. He chose to write under a pseudonym that sounded less aristocratic than his own name.

Orwell turned to the political left in 1937 during the Spanish civil war, but came to be hated by the left. His writing exposed the totalitarianism of the left as being as oppressive as that of the right. According to Schlossberg, the savagery with which Orwell turned on the left in 1984 and later in Animal Farm stemmed from the dashing of his own high hopes for a socialist utopia.

The second address, on "Characteristics of Utopias," distinguished between the physical sciences, which study artifacts of nature, and history, which studies "everything else." When it was thought that physical limitations are what thwart utopian ideals, people expected technology to overcome those limitations. When "the good life" still proved elusive, people began to think of social structures as the barriers, so they turned to study of the artifacts of human society. Schlossberg thinks that has a lot to do with the rise of the social sciences.

Orwell's 1984 deals with the possibility of altering reality, of changing history, of producing "new people." But something always goes wrong. Promised freedom and security turn into totalitarian bondage. We come face to face with the basically theological questions of the nature of human beings and the nature of reality.

The third keynote address, "Is There an Agenda for the Church?" began with the rationale behind Idols for Destruction. Taking the Old Testament prophets as his model for "blowing the whistle when institutions are crumbling," Schlossberg tried to warn that in many areas of public life the United States has (1) turned from God to idols, and (2) stopped doing justice, or even caring about justice.

Schlossberg is convinced that God gave Orwell the gift of prophecy. Had Orwell been a Christian instead of a "pious atheist" he might have had a different understanding of some issues, but his major thrust would have been much the same. What glimpse of truth made him so pessimistic? In 1948, after all, things looked promising for England, having emerged victorious from WWII and having just elected a progressive socialist government.

Summing up, our keynoter suggested that utopian ideas persist as a haunting dream of the kingdom of God long after all other Christian doctrines, such as creation and salvation, have been forgotten. Utopias are human attempts to build a spurious kingdom of God. We need prophets to call society to repentance, away from "playing god" to face the real God, and to find our real home with him in Jesus Christ. Followers of Christ with intellectual gifts have a particular prophetic responsibility when we see things going in the wrong direction.

Schlossberg himself was challenged by a few prophetic voices in the audience, for possibly "going in the wrong direction" in some of his conservative social and economic opinions in Idols for Destruction. The speaker dissociated himself from "libertarianism" as a false solution. In general he argued for a middle way between laissez-faire and socialism. On the need of the state to intervene in family life to prevent child abuse, for example, he insisted that there must be an alternative other than either letting parents abuse children or making children wards of the state. Although he argued that "guiltridden charity is devastating to the poor," he affirmed that the church must go beyond calling individuals back to God to have a part in reforming our social institutions.

Lively discussions of the Christian's role in society were inevitable after such stimulating keynote addresses. For ASA members with relatively narrow training in the sciences it was fascinating to hear a Christian historian so broadly read tie many disciplines together. Was it Albert Szent-Gy6rgyi, the Nobel prize-winning biochemist, who said that history is the only thing worth studying? Many of us barely know the intellectual or social history of our own specialty, let alone history in general. Herbert Schlossberg has done us the favor of rekindling our interest in history-and in God's purposes in history.

Communications expert James Hefley next gave a down-to-earth description of how electronic communications media already shape "reality" for Americans. The "gatekeepers" of media news, whose own value systems have been shown to be far out of line with the values of the general public, have a pervasive influence because they speak with a consonance of values and because the cumulative effects are barely noticed except by the most sophisticated media critics. But it would be foolish for Christians to condemn technology, Jim said, or to fail to utilize it for good. Reviewing published research on the psychological and behavioral effects of television watching, Jim acknowledged that results are seldom conclusive. Yet we have enough correlational evidence of bad effects from repeated exposure to sex and violence in dramatic portrayals and biased news stories to make us highly suspicious that reality is being tampered with.

Psychologist John Vayhinger focused on behaviorism and its role in totalitarian societies. John, who studied under B.F. Skinner at Columbia, reviewed classical and operant conditioning, showed how benignly Skinner envisioned their use in Walden Two, then called attention to a growing literature on the political misuse of behavior modification. "Pavlovian Institutes" for reshaping reality in dissident minds abound in the Soviet Union, which has at least 2,000 camps containing more than 2,000 prisoners each, John reported. Operant conditioning works. With judiciously applied electric shocks, rats can be made to "believe in the magical powers of religious medals" and the logic of political prisoners can be reconditioned. The first generation of applied behaviorists may be highly ethical, but who knows what temptations such power will lead subsequent generations into? John acknowledged that 80% of our "choices" may be genetically determined and 15% socially determined. But even if only 5% are really "free," that freedom is what makes us human and must be cherished.

Psychology slipped over into parapsychology as former NASA engineer Adrian Clark brought up the "psychic arms race" with the USSR. Adrian's proposed "transient energy superspace signals" (TRESS) sounds more like 2084 than 1984, but he keeps plugging away at it. His plea for sending messages faster than the speed of light by fiddling with time or warping space (or something like that) is not your standard brain-to-brain ESP scheme but goes through some kind of converter to transmitter and receiver. (That seemed to relieve some hardheads in the audience. Then Adrian calmly reported that he had influenced psychokinesis experiments being done in a Princeton laboratory by concentrating on them from Alabama. That didn't seem to relieve anybody-Ed.)

Psychologist Purnell Benson of the Columbia School of Business brought us "back to reality" with his analysis of the status of psychology today and some proposals for reconstructing it along overtly Christian lines. Purnell believes that a psychology true to the totality of human experience must (1) treat inner experience as valid for healthy individuals (just as clinical practice already does for mentally ill clients); and (2) acknowledge the spiritual dimensions of that inner realm. We need to read the Bible as "revealed psychology," asserting the reality of love, grace, and the other data of religious experience. When behaviorists emphasize "motivation" to the exclusion of "inspiration," they rob people of the opportunity to experience God.

Evidence of another sort was presented by Miami U. sociologist Charles Flynn, who has been studying "The Near Death Experience" (NDE). Chuck has interviewed many people who have had an NDE, finding some common features in their reports. Cautious in his analysis, Chuck nevertheless sees the NDE as a divine reaffirmation, in an age of technology, that "God is alive" and "God is love." The changes in people's lives after an NDE have led Chuck to experiment with life-transforming projects to provide the same sort of affirmation without getting so close to clinical death.

Clyde McCone of Cal State Long Beach gave an anthropologist's perspective on social control, pointing to the tension between individual morality and societal morality. Clyde laid out a biblical anthropology in which human beings in a right relationship with God are both free and responsible to exercise social control. Through Christ we are freed from "having to be God."

James Armbrecht, an M.D. with a Ph.D. in biophysics, talked about implications of "Biological Control of the Aging Process." Jim's data on what has happened to the human life-span over the years served as a background for his questions about the future. Technology might make life better but not longer for most people, or might lengthen life by altering the environment or altering the genes that control aging. He asked: "Do we want to live longer in a sinful world?"

Ecologist Fred Van Dyke of Fort Wayne Bible College in Indiana and the AuSable Institute for Environmental Studies in Michigan gave a colorful paper. That is, he kept a panorama of beautiful outdoor scenes before us as he described a coming crisis of unresolvable value conflicts in environmental ethics. Fred argued that Christians have in the Old and New Testaments an adequate basis for an environmental eithic, perhaps the only adequate basis. Jesus provided a model of what it means to "rule over" creation. In a note of historical interest, Fred said that the last passenger pigeon, a species so abundant that their flights darkened midwestern skies before Americans hunted them to extinction, died in 1908 in the nearby Cincinnati zoo.

Sunday afternoon's thematic session was chaired by Robert Voss, an engineer who also heads ASA's new Commission of Industrial and Engineering Ethics. Physicist Robert Griffiths of Carnegie Mellon U. began with a helpful overview of "Quantum Mechanics and the Nature of Reality." The dilemma posed by quantum mechanics needn't zonk us into Zen (the refuge touted in The Tao of Physics and The Dancing Wu-Li Masters), but it's serious enough to be confusing even to Nobelist Eugene Wigner. Acknowledging the "philosophical price tag" on each alternative interpretation, Bob suggested the kinds of "outs" that enable Christians to maintain our affirmation of objective reality.

Physicist Don Evatt (whose employer, Hughes communications, launches the satellites that carry HBO programs) shed some light on the state of the art in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. The complexity of human reason is still orders of magnitude above even Japanese "fifth generation" computers, but Al comes ever closer to mimicking the "production rules" by which humans reason. Some robots now have a limited capacity for vision, and that field is growing rapidly. Sooner or later our affirmation of human uniqueness must come to rest on biblical grounds. The "image of God" must mean something more than complexity of circuitry.

Chemist Jack Haas described some personal experiences with automated analysis that convinced him of widespread misuse of computers and computer-generated data in technical work. The more a computer intervenes between a human investigator and what is being investigated, Jack said, the more likely that false data will be generated and accepted as true. Without an experienced and skeptical analyst carefully checking results, automated laboratories are probably already "reshaping reality."

Dennis Feucht, a research engineer for Tektronics, Inc., who teaches robots to think, showed how one goes about creating a thinking machine. What you need for what is variously called an expert system, a knowledgebased system (KBS), or a rule-based inference system are (1) a "rule interpreter," (2) "production rules," and (3) a database. Dennis, looking very human in a red Tshirt emblazoned with Maxwell's equations, described how to teach a computer to do theology. Computers do better in fields where knowledge is piecemeal and not formalized (such as medical diagnosis) than in fields where knowledge is concise and generalized (such as physics). Dennis thinks computers can facilitate basic theological work in such areas as hermeneutics, linguistic analysis, and literary analysis. He also foresees the use of a KBS to check the consistency of beliefs and the way beliefs are formulated-and even to act as a kind of catechist to aid our Christian growth.

Physicist William Monsma, director of the McLaurin Institute in Minneapolis and ASA's first field director, closed the session with a discussion of "rehumanizing science." Christians contribute to that process when we exercise wisdom in the biblical sense, Bill said, a wisdom that puts us in touch with ultimate reality beyond the reach of science. With such wisdom we can accept what modern science itself should teach us about humility. The scientific quest never ends, so religious faith gives us another key to use "in the meantime" to understand ourselves as human beings

Dale K. Pace, who has put his seminary training to use as a chaplain in more than a dozen jails and prisons, and who is now a systems analyst in the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins, explored "The Potential of Christianity to Rehabilitate Criminals." On a statistical basis, Christian programs don't seem to do much better than others (reported successes of all kinds of programs turn out to be dependent on careful screening of inmate participants). On an individual basis, however, every kind of criminal in the prison system has been completely rehabilitated by turning to Christ. But the prison ministry of Christians goes beyond individual redemption, offering support to families, aiding ex-offenders who have been released, serving as a "conscience" for the criminal justice system, helping to relieve tensions within that system, and learning enough about how it works to change it in a more humane direction.

Our role in "humanizing" all aspects of life, including science, came up again and again. On Jim Neidhardt's invitation, Enrico Cantore, a physicist and philosopher of science who directs the World Institute for Scientific

Humanism in New York, spoke on "Science as a Vocation." Recognizing the Spirit of Christ at work in the ASA and enjoying his "genuinely ecumenical experience," the Jesuit priest stressed both that (1) science must be a quest for truth and (2) truth is more than facts. Only the western Christian culture gave rise to science, he said, largely because that culture had a reverence for the "sapiential knowledge" of Christ, the CreatorWisdom behind the order observable in the natural world. Even if science leaves the supernatural out of its discussions of mechanisms (as it should, Cantore said), its practitioners develop an openness to what exists. And what exists is what God has created.

Physicist Jim Neidhardt of New Jersey Institute of Technology echoed Cantore's positive use of humanism. Both distinguished "true humanism," which includes the spiritual dimension, from the popular usage, which refers only to scientific knowledge of human beings that comes from studying them as objects. With a series of his famous diagrams (familiar to readers of his JASA papers), Jim charted the dynamic relationships at work in a truly human person open to all experience and "cocreating" with God." To flesh out his model Jim reviewed the life and work of James Clerk Maxwell, true scientist, true Christian, true human being-and hence a true role model for members of ASA.

Wow! What a program-and that's only the thematic sessions. We've run out of room to tell you about the other papers, discussion groups, and so on. We'll be back with more next time, plus an expanded discussion of the positive aspects of humanism alluded to by many of the speakers.

Saturday morning's devotions began with Psalm 65, which speaks of our Creator and Redeemer and of the joy of choosing to live in his presence. Gordon College chemist Jack Haas spoke movingly of the personal support Christians can offer each other, citing examples of finding and giving support within the ASA. Recalling his own introduction to ASA at the Gordon meeting in 1957, Jack urged us to reach out especially to young people just beginning their scientific careers, to help them stand firm in their faith.

On Sunday morning we met in the brand new building of the Oxford Bible Fellowship just off campus. OBF, founded years ago by Ed Yamauchi and another Miami' faculty member, has grown from a small faculty-student group meeting in campus buildings to a full-fledged church. ASA participants filled half the church for devotions led by Marquette sociologist David Moberg, with Jack Haas offering support at the piano for hymn singing. Many stayed for the regular OBF worship service, followed by an adult Sunday school discussion, led this time by ASA executive director Bob Herrmann. Others found their way to other Oxford churches, none very far away. (Vans and cars seemed to appear whenever anyone needed transportation all week.)

On Monday morning an open session of conversational prayer was led by indefatigable H. Harold Hartzler, who had left a family reunion in Pennsylvania and driven over 400 miles nonstop with faithful wife Dorothy to be at the ASA meeting for at least one day. Reading also from the Psalms, Harold reminded us that trust in God's Word is what brings ASA members together, whatever our denomination or technical field. After the time of corporate prayer, Harold was presented a specially designed tie clasp in appreciation of his faithful service. President Don Munro presented the award, which bore the equation H3 = ASA. Having already served as ASA president, Harold became the first paid executive secretary of the Affiliation, working half-time at that job while teaching half-time at Mankato State in Minnesota.

Younger members came to understand our affection for Harold when he gave his paper recalling the last 40 years. The ASA was founded in 1941 but couldn't hold meetings at first because of the war. When Harold joined in 1944 he became the 44th member. Not only did he attend the first ASA meeting (at Wheaton College) in 1946, but he's never missed one since-if you count his appearance on videotape at the Eastern College meeting in 1981, when a heart attack kept him confined to a hospital. Why quibble? We anticipate that, in spirit if not in person, 'H-cubed" will always be present at ASA Annual Meetings.

At Saturday night's annual banquet, hearts were uplifted by the singing of a talented couple from Oxford Bible Fellowship, Dennis and Karen Wright. A lot of bodies kept getting uplifted, too, as master of ceremonies Walt Hearn kept introducing everybody, from the members of the Executive Council to "the ASA Olympic team"meaning all those from the Pacific time zone who by coming to the meeting had forfeited their only chance to watch some of the Los Angeles Games at a reasonable hour. (This year the last people to get to bed hadn't been arguing scientific or theological points but rooting for one of the U.S. volleyball teams. Great reception on the big dorm TV set-but three hours later than on the West coast.)

Executive director Doug Morrison of the Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation was introduced with the three or four other Canadians at the meeting. That number included psychiatrist John Howitt, now in his nineties (or twenties, depending on how you count his Feb. 29 birthdays), accompanied by his nephew, John Stewart. That reminded Walt to recognize all "old-timers" who had joined ASA before 1960 (quite a few), and "newcomers" who have joined in the 1980s (even more). ASA's future looks good.

Walt's last introduction at the banquet was intended to illustrate something about the phrase in our doctrinal statement affirming Jesus Christ as the only mediator between "God and man." (We learned at the business meeting that the vote to substitute humanity lost, 237 to 184.) Of course everyone understands that man is used generically, right? But who was included when Walt asked "all men of the female persuasion" to stand? Eventually he got the women to their feet to remind us about who all is included under man, and also on the other side of that equation ("in his own image ... male and female he created them"). Then Walt made it worse by addressing everybody present as his "sisters in Christ," hoping to show how awkward it must feel to be on the other side of the generic fence. It was awkward, all right.

Our genial but bumbling m.c. didn't do much better with his show of ASA slides. The first one, of "a historic meeting of Davis Young and Henry Morris to discuss the age of the earth," turned out to be two armed Greek soldiers facing each other in front of the Government Building in Athens. The "national office in Ipswich" turned out to be another famous shrine, the Acropolis. "Some pillars of the ASA" were really part of the Temple of Poseidon at Sunion in Attica. And so on. We wondered how slides could get so mixed up, until we decided it was a put-up job. Oh, well-at least Walt didn't try to show all his slides from his trip to Greece.

Speaking of "out-of-the holism," ASA's total 1983 income (as audited by Vance, Cronin & Stephenson, Boston CPA firm) was $134,080, slightly more than our total expenses of $131,335. The surplus was small change, you might say-but a nice change. The ASA budget for 1984, though, is $147,400. Gulp. But this is part of the Lord's work we are called to do-and support.

Jack Haas, "hustling" for the ASA European tour following the 1985 joint meeting with RSCF in Oxford, England, was doing a booming business in Oxford, Ohio. Over a dozen people gave him checks right on the spot to reserve their seats (and seats for family members) on that bodacious bus trip. It's probably not too late to join them, if you hurry. (See box: A CALENDAR OF ASA EVENTS.)

Support continues to build for the proposed "History of Science" TV series (five one-hour films on the history of science from a balanced Christian point of view, featuring Harvard science historian Owen Gingerich). The dream is for production to begin in 1986-87 (with a budget of $1,250,000!). Mention of that kind of money makes the Executive Council sweat in its socks, but the idea is to find major donors willing to do more than just complain about Carl Sagan's scientistic preachments. Even the estimated $30,000 cost of holding promotional dinners around the country to seek support has been kept out of the regular ASA budget. The only item in the regular budget related to the TV project is $3,800 to prepare an attractive prospectus to lay before prospective backers.

We're getting better at telling ASA's story. Local publicity for the 1984 Annual Meeting included a good story in the August 2 issue of the Miami U. Report, official campus newspaper published biweekly during the summer, and an interview on a local radio talk show. A special pre-conference mailing also went out to all ASA members in the surrounding area.

Cassette tapes of the keynote addresses and of all papers given at the 1984 Annual Meeting are available. The price is $3.50 per talk, plus postage, from ASA, P.O. Box J, Ipswich, MA 01938.

Reports from the new JASA editor (Wilbur Bullock), our first field representative (Bill Monsma), our vigorous Publications Committee, and some of the newly established interdisciplinary Commissions gave everyone a sense of forward movement. We'll have to wait for another issue of the Newsletter to tell you about various projects "in the works." It's clear that computerizing the Ipswich office has brought ASA into the 20th century at least a few years before the 21st begins. More frequent publication of an ASA/CSCA Membership Directory has become possible, for example. (Bob Herrmann even promised the Council that the next one will explain how to find somebody in the list, for those who don't think like a computer-Ed.)

Keeping the ASA Book List up to date is just one of the things Jim Neidhardt and the Publications Committee are pushing for. Registration packets contained a printout of Jim's annotated additions to the old list (well, only a year old). That list was compiled by Logos Bookstore of Seattle home of the ASA Book Service. Logos of Springfield, Ohio, set up an excellent booktable in the foyer outside the lecture hall where our plenary sessions were held. Store manager Jay Weygandt, having consulted with Jim, and with Michael Adeney of Logos in Seattle, showed up with a good selection of over 120 titles and sold over $2,100 worth-even after giving a 10% discount.

Two nominees for the next five-year term on the Executive Council (beginning in 1985) were submitted by the Nominating Committee (Russ Heddendorf, Frank Roberts, Phil Ogden) at the annual business meeting. The fact that both nominees have been active promoters of ASA assures us of continuing "servant-leadership." Paul Arveson, a physicist employed by the U.S. Navy, has been a leader in the Wash ington-Balti more local section and has captivated several national ASA meetings with his skill at communicating through audio-visual techniques. Chemical engineer Charles Hummel, faculty representative for Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and currently writing a book for IVP on the history and philosophy of science, is also an effective communicator, especially to faculty and students. Ballots mailed this fall will have full biographical information on the nominees.

(Our conclusion, after two days of Executive Council meetings and three days of Annual Meeting: Things are looking up. Jesus is Lord; we are in science ' to serve him; and we're getting on with it. Help us do it right, Lord. Amen-Ed.)

Whitworth College in Washington still seeks a Ph.D. in physics with experience in digital electronics and computer hardware, for a tenure-track position teaching physics plus some math and computer science. Contact:  Personnel Director Robert H. Armstrong, Whitworth College, Spokane, WA 99251. Tel. (509) 466-1000.

Sheridan Hills Christian School in the suburb of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, needs a high-school general science teacher able to teach chemistry. The school is 17 years old, enrolls 500 students in grades K-12, will pay $14K or more for the right person in science. Contact: Superintendent Bill Hewlett, Sheridan Hills Christian School, 3751 Sheridan St., Hollywood, FL 33021. Tel. (305) 9667995 or (home) 987-7718.