of the
American Scientific Affiliation & Canadian Scientific & Christian Affiliation
ZIPF UP TO PRES
In the usual succession of ASA officers, Elizabeth ("Betty") Zipf has become president of the Council and of the Affiliation for 1993,
replacing Kenneth Dormer, who remains on the Council through 1993
as immediate past president. Betty
has a B.A. from Mary Washington
College, an M.A. in zoology from
the U. of Pennsylvania, and a
Ph.D. in biology from the U. of
Virginia. She did embryological studies in her graduate and postdoc
years but has spent most of her scientific career at Biosciences Information Service (BIOSIS, publisher of
Biological Abstracts) in Philadelphia,
where she is currently employed.
As a technical editor Betty Zipf
rose in the ranks, heading the Editorial Dept and serving as technical
consultant to the president of BIOSIS. She has held offices in
national and international associations of scientific editors, in
particular helping third-world countries develop their own scientific
infrastructure. She has served Sigma
Delta Epsilon (graduate women in
science) in many capacities. ASAers
also know Betty Zipf for her active
Christian witness to scientific colleagues, her lovely singing voice,
and her love for her home church,
Congregation Beth Messiah in Philadelphia.
On the ASA Council, industrial
physicist Fred Hickernell, Sr., of
Phoenix, Arizona, has moved from
the secretary-treasurer slot to become vice-president. Ecologist Ray
Brand of Wheaton College, Illinois,
has become secretary-treasurer after
completing his first year on the
Council.
WILCOX JOINS
COUNCIL
David L. Wilcox, professor of biology at Eastern College in St.
David's, Pennsylvania, is the newly
elected member of ASA's Executive
Council. On I Jan 1993, Wilcox replaced Messiah College biology
professor Gerald Hess, retiring after
a five-year term. Hess served as
ASA president in 1991.
As usual, ASAers had to make
a choice between two able candidates. Coming in second in the balloting was engineer Robert T.
Voss, active for years in the Metropolitan New York ASA local section. Bob was recently sent by Bell
Atlantic Mobile Systems to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to be general
manager of Network Engineering
for cellular and wireless communications systems. He hopes to make
contact with others in the Pittsburgh area to stir up some local activity there, so it looks as if ASA
will continue to have the benefit of
Bob Voss's leadership.
HITTING THE BIG TIME
We made it! Time magazine,
that is. And we have a big
winner of the ASA Geographic Award:
Time
associate editor Richard Ostling. Ostling not only
mentioned ASA (and described it rather well) but actually located
ASA in Ipswich so people can find us.
The cover of the 28 Dec 1992
issue asked in large type, "What
Does Science Tell Us About God?"
The seven-page cover story ("Science, God and Man") was written
by Robert Wright, a senior editor
at the New Republic and author of
Three Scientists and Their Gods
(1988). His
Tiffw
story tracked possible religious implications of current
scientific ideas and discoveries. Do
these empirical and theoretical explorations tend to undermine religious
faith or reinforce it? According to
the author, things could go either
way. Though Wright identified himself as "a fairly hard-core scientific
materialist," his article was remarkably open to serious religious interpretations.
Accompanying the main story
was a piece written by
Titme's
own
Richard Ostling, headlined "Galileo
and Other Faithful Scientists." Beginning with Galileo Galilei (and the
Oct 1992 speech of Pope John
Paul II vindicating the l7th-century
Catholic astronomer), Ostling cited
scientists who have remained true
to their religious faith. After naming several Christian, Jewish, and
Muslim scientists, he devoted a paragraph to "America's Protestant
creationists" (defined by their insistence "that life on earth was
created about 10,000 years ago"
among other things). Then came
two final paragraphs:
Opposing the creationists is a
group of devout, mostly Protestant
scientists who are also conservative but willing to consider evidence for evolution. They are organized
into the American Scientific
Affiliation. based in Ipswich,
Massachusetts, which counts nearly
1,000 Ph.D.s among its members. The A.S.A. has distributed 100,000
copies of a booklet urging
school-teachers to be aware of the
unanswered scientific questions
about Darwinism and to avoid
slipping in the unwarranted
assumption that evolution in effect
displaces God. A.S.A. executive
director Robert Herrmann, a
biochemist, advises fellow Bible
believers to remain open to
,.evolution as the process the
Creator may have used to bring
life and mind into being.".
For Harvard astrophysicist Owen
Gingerich, an Evangelical
Protestant, the real choice is not
"creation or evolution" at all, but
,.purpose or accident." Like
millions of ordinary folk, he says,
"I passionately believe in a
universe with purpose, though I
cannot prove it." Purpose, like
origin, is a point where the
wisdom of empirical science ends
and the quest for religious faith
begins.
By mentioning Ipswich in such a
large-circulation magazine, Richard
Ostling did a great favor to ASA
and to those whom we aim to
serve. So many people have called
the ASA office to ask for "the
booklet mentioned in Time" that
we'll soon have to reprint Teaching
Science in a Climate of Controversy. And who knows? That cover
story and side piece might be what
it takes to move some person or
foundation to underwrite production
of ASA's long-awaited TV series,
"Space, Time, and God."
COUNCIL BUSINESS
Specific recommendations made in
Hawaii for ASA's future course
gave the Council plenty to work
on at their December meeting in
Ipswich. An immediate task they
face is finding a replacement for Bob Herrmann. They discussed the
"job description" for the position of
executive director. Here are some
major requirements:
1) Interaction with and
encouragement of a scholarly
membership require a good
background in science, preferably
with experience in publishing and
directing university research,
obtaining grant support, and
administering research funds.
2) Personal interaction with a
diverse and scattered membership
requires major travel commitments
(perhaps five months each year),
participation in local section
programs, and leadership on boards
of such projects as the "Space,
Time, and God" TV series and
the African research institute, AISRED.
3) Financial support of ASA
programs requires a great deal of
correspondence and persistent
personal contact with individuals
and foundations.
4) Administration of office staff
requires supervision of such tasks
as record-keeping, budget control,
publication, and meeting
arrangements.
5) Ministry to the Christian
community requires good public
relations and actual liaison with
diverse churches, Christian colleges,
campus organizations, and other
Christian professional societies.
6) Ministry to the scientific
community requires appropriate
outreach at professional meetings,
through university lecture programs
such as the Templeton
Lectureships, and via publications
such as
Teaching Science in a
Climate of Controversy.
Underlying all, of course, are
commitment to Jesus Christ, an evangelical understanding, and spiritual
maturity rooted in a life of prayer
and Bible study. (If all these requirements seem too stringent for
you even to consider applying,
we'll boil them down. "Help
wanted: One forgiven sinner with
good will, common sense, much energy, and at least some. experience
in the scientific community."
-Ed.)
OUR BUSINESS
To keep the office where it is
would be to ASA's advantage.
The Council recognized that variations in housing costs could make
it difficult for a qualified person to
move to Ipswich from certain parts
of the country. That problem makes
a good subject for prayer by the
whole membership. Perhaps a special "grant" could be found to
subsidize a new director's move, probably at less cost than moving
the office to that person's present
location. Another consideration: ASA
now has its best office staff ever,
none of whom are able to relocate.
Besides, New England is a lovely
place to live.
The current financial picture isn't
grim, but it is serious. This is a
good time for members "blessed
with employment" to consider increasing our financial support of
ASA. The Council wasn't able to
settle on a particular Christian investment counseling outfit to run an
externally managed endowment program for us. An "in-house"
program set up last year is available to receive major gifts,
however, so there's no need to
wait. Large or small gifts can be
made to ASA's Long Range Fund
as well as to the general operating
budget. We have many things yet
to accomplish together in the
Lord's name.
SEATTLE WILL BE HOT
We don't mean the weather during the 1993 ASA ANNUAL
MEETING August 6-10; we mean
the topic, "Caring for Creation: A
Christian Perspective on the Environment." Have you noticed the flood
of new books trying to awaken the
Christian public to environmental
stewardship? The "main stream" is
catching up with ASA.
Program chair Joe Sheldon of
Messiah College has lined up at
least one "hot ticket" as keynote
speaker: Calvin DeWitt, professor of
environmental studies at the U. of
Wisconsin and director of the Au
Sable Institute in Mancelona, Michigan. He has made major
contributions to that flow of books,
editing The Christian and the Environment: What Does the New
Testament Have to Teach? (Baker,
1991) and co-authoring Earthkeeping
in the Nineties: Stewardship of Creation (Eerdmans, 1991).
The entire Dec 1992 issue of
Fuller Seminary's Theology, News
& Notes was devoted to "A
Christian's Ecological Responsibility," with a major paper by Cal
DeWitt on "Responding Creatively
to Creation and Its Degradation."
The Summer 1992 issue of Firmament: The Journal of Christian
Ecology featured a down-to-earth excerpt of DeWitt's Feb 1992 address
to religious broadcasters, laying out
biblical principles for everyday Christians to follow. (Copies of the full
text of "Respecting Creation's Integrity" are available for $3.50 from
Au Sable Institute Outreach Office,
731 State St, Madison, WI 53703.)
KENYA/ASA RESPONSE
0ur post-Hawaii update on the
Kenya/ASA connection drew a
response from Richard Swanson
(2655 Rice Creek Rd, Apt 305,
New Brighton, MN 55112-5321).
An anthropologist with a B.A. from
Bethel College and a Ph.D. from
Northwestern U. (1976), Richard
has spent his professional life in agricultural development, mostly in
Africa. Having watched AISRED's
development, he wrote to ask how
he could be of assistance.
After serving a number of years
as a missionary with SIM Intenational, Richard has continued in the
development arena, working on various Projects, usually led by a
major university and with USAID
funding. After eight years in
Burkina Faso on applied farming
systems and food grain research projects, he worked in Haiti for four
years (farming systems, agro-forestry, watershed development,
socio-economic surveys), and in
Niger for over three years (famine
early-warning monitoring, using
NDVI satellite data and field station data in nine West African
countries). In between, he had short-term assignments in Algeria,
Morocco, Tunisia, Burundi, and
Rwanda. Now he's back in Minnesota, doing some short-term work
(for Algeria, Chad, and Cameroon)
while "looking for the Lord's leading concerning another long-term
posting."
Richard should definitely get in
touch with AISRED (P.O. Box
14872, Nairobi, Kenya), though at
this stage we doubt that they have
any funds to pay Western workers.
How many other ASAers have that
kind of African experience, we wonder? And what could they do now
to help? AISRED board member Ken Dormer may have some ideas.
His address is P.O. Box 26901,
Oklahoma City, OK 73190.
One way of checking out the situation in Nairobi is to go for a
one-semester or one-year faculty appointment at Daystar University
College, under a program administered by Messiah College, which
grants the B.A. degree at Daystar.
The cooperative program between
Daystar and the Christian College
Consortium is open to faculty at
member institutions of the 70-college Christian College Coalition.
Faculty with a sabbatical coming
up might want to contact Dr. Harold Heie, Dean, Messiah College,
Grantham, PA 17027. At present,
AISRED operates under Daystar's
aegis.
WHEREVER GOD
WANTS US: 26.
A SA members continue to take
their skiffs overseas. Brent
Friesen finished his Ph.D. in chemistry at the U. of Minnesota last
year, specializing in the chemistry
of medicinal plants. Now Brent,
wife Judy, and two small children
are in N'Djamena, the capital of
Chad in central Africa, where Brent
teaches chemistry (in French) at the
U. of Chad under a United Nations
program. This is actually the second stint in Africa for the Friesens.
After graduating from Bethel College, Brent worked for a year as a
lab instructor there, then in 1982
he and Judy left for Zaire with the
Mennonite Central Committee. They
studied French in Belgium and then
taught in a Zairian high school for
two years.
When Brent returned to grad
school at Minnesota in 1985, he
met Bill Monsma of The Maclaurin Institute, who introduced him to
ASA and encouraged his vision of
going back to Francophone Africa.
Bill Monsma is thus one of many
ASAers who function in North
America but whose influence is felt
overseas. We were reminded of
such people last September by a
phone call from David Moberg in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Here's that
story, give or take a few details:
On his 1991 retirement from
teaching sociology at Marquette University, Dave Moberg donated
thousands of books to an academic
institution in China. Many months
later, the boxes of Dave's books
still sat on a pier in San Francisco, possibly mixed with others
awaiting shipment in a cargo container under auspices of Bridge to
Asia Foundation. Once everything
was mingled together, there was
some question about whether Dave's
books would go where he had promised them. His "China agent,"
Derek Chung of the Billy Graham
Center in Wheaton, had looked into
the matter. Chung would soon be passing through the Bay Area on his way to and from Asia. Could a
small ASA work crew be organized
on one of those days to help
Derek physically move the books to
another location?
Dave had already called Bridge
to Asia in Oakland without straightening things out. When in doubt,
we decided, turn to an expert~or
at least to somebody who speaks
the language. We called Chi-Hang
Lee in nearby Walnut Creek. Chi
said he would try to contact Bridge
to Asia and would also call Derek
Chung, whose work with NAE's
World Relief Commission was
known to Chi. In no more than
four phone calls, Chi unscrewed an
inscrutable mess and contacted another Chinese friend in the shipping
business. Within a few days, that
friend had trucked Moberg's 76
boxes of books to another pier, and
the valuable books were on their
way to China.
Many ASAers know of the Friday Night International Fellowship
that Dave and Helen Moberg
hosted weekly in their home for
years. Some know that after a diagnosis of cancer in 1989, Helen
underwent many surgical and therapeutic procedures with only sporadic
relief. When we called Milwaukee
to say that the books were at last
bound for their destination, Helen
was failing. Days later, Dave called
to say that she passed away on
Oct 16. In over 46 years together,
the couple touched the lives of
many students and scholars from
other countries. We salute the Mobergs, and all others who bear
Christ's name "into all the world."
MAUNA LOA FALLOUT
& t the 1992 ASA Annual Meeting, amateur scientist Forrest
Mims of Seguin, Texas, was
applauded heartily after his plenary
talk. He told the story of being rejected as a Scientific American
columnist when the editor learned
that he was a Christian and not an
orthodox believer in Darwinism. He
also told of his long career of making observations with homemade
scientific instruments. For example,
since the fall of 1991 he has made
regular measurements of atmospheric
ozone concentration with a UV detector he calls TOPS (Total Ozone
Portable Spectroradiometer).
Mims was delighted to be on
the Big Island last August with so
many fellow Christians devoted to
science, and to visit the Mauna
Loa Observatory run by NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric
Administration). There he was able
to calibrate his ozonometer against
the world standard Dobson-83 instrument. Thereby hangs another tale,
revealed in Dec 1992 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in
San Francisco by scientists from
NASA (National Aeronautics &
Space Administration).
A Houston Chronicle headline (7
Dec 1992) read: "TEXAN VINDICATED: Amateur scientist proves
NASA wrong on size of ozone
hole over Antarctica." The good
news is that Mims alerted NASA
scientists to a 2-percent error in
data from their TOMS (Total
Ozone Mapping Spectrometer) ozonometer aboard the Nimbus-7 satellite.
Mims credited Dr. Arlin Krueger
and Dr. Richard McPeters of the
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
for "demonstrating the self-correcting
nature of science at its best." The
bad news: this year's largest-ever
ozone hole over Antarctica was actually larger than reported, and the
eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines destroyed more ozone than
previously thought.
Mims had noticed a consistent
difference between his TOPS data
and NASA's TOMS data. Ozone scientists he consulted suggested that
his readings were adversely affected
by the June 1991 eruption of Mt.
Pinatubo. In late October he finally
obtained the satellite data for that
August day on which he had calibrated his instrument at Mauna
Loa. In November he notified
NASA that their data didn't check
out with NOAA's standard. NOAA
reprocessed the data before sending
it to NASA in December.
Forrest had submitted a paper to
a proper scientific journal, but after
the San Francisco announcement he
called Chronicle reporter Joe Abernathy, who wrote the 7 Dec story.
Scientists at both NASA and
NOAA have been impressed that an
"amateur scientist" could make such
a significant contribution. Some of
them have asked Mims to build
some TOPS instruments for them.
He has been invited to address the
Goddard Space Flight Center science colloquium in Mar 1993. In
June he will head back to Hawaii
to teach a scientific module at the
University of the Nations, where
ASA met last August.
To read about the ozone layer
(with good references to the scientific literature) or learn how to
build your own TOPS instrument to
measure it, check out two major articles by Forrest in the Nov 1992
issue of Science Probe!. That issue
could become a collector's item;
"The Amateur Scientist's Magazine"
is being dropped despite a 50,000copy circulation. In Hawaii last
August, founder-editor Forrest Mims
said he was looking for another publisher. In Nature (I Oct 1992)
James Lovelock of Gaia fame
wrote a very favorable review of
Science Probe!; he said that one article (by Mark Hartwig) "makes
basic statistics so lucid that some
professional scientists who read it
may be able to distinguish precision
from accuracy."
Incidentally, Forrest Mims may
lose his amateur standing by beginning to publish in such peer-reviewed journals as Applied Optics
and Geophysical Research Letters.
In Nature (29 Oct 1992) he responded to a warning that periodicals printed on glossy paper
produce minuscule amounts of radiation from clays in the paper coating. Forrest's letter included a
graph from his Hawaii lecture, showing radiation measurements he made
on a commercial flight; one hour
of aircraft travel, he wrote, can subject a person to more radiation
than 500 hours spent in a library
full of slick magazines.
JOHNSONIANA
UC. Berkeley law professor Phil1ip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial (IVP,
1991), has continued
to make news since our Jun/Jul
1992 issue ("Keeping Track" and
other stories, p. 2). After his talk
on "Science and Scientism" at ASA's 1992 Annual Meeting, he and Harvard astronomer Owen
Gingerich went at it in a stimulating ad hoc discussion group.
Gingerich's "Further Reflections"
and John Wiester's analysis of
their areas of agreement and disagreement published in PSCF (Dec
1992) continued the dialogue.
That public interaction began
with Gingerich's review of Darwinon Trial in PSCF (Jun 1992). Biologist
Duane Thurman seemed better
satisfied with the book in a review
published alongside the one by
Gingerich. Christian publications
have generally tried to present a balanced assessment. CT (19 Aug
1991) started it by adding sidebar
opinions from Charles Hummel, J.
P. Moreland, and David Wilcox to Tom Woodward's
strongly positive
review. The Real Issue (Aug 1991)
offered side-by-side reviews by Dean-Daniel Truog and Henry F. Schaefer, III. Since then, a review
by Princeton physicist Bob Kaita
has appeared in The Crucible (Winter 1992), and one by Paul D.
MacLean of NIH in Zygon (Dec
1992). William Hasker's review
essay in Christian Scholar's Review
began a continuing exchange between Johnson and Hasker in CSR.
Nature (Vol. 352, pp. 485-486,
1991) published a caustic review by
philosopher David Hull. CTNS Bulletin (Winter 1992) reprinted Hull's
review, accompanied by a balancing
review by Walter R. Hearn. Scientific American (July 1992) published
a long, ill-tempered review by paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, calling
Johnson's book "full of errors, badly argued, based on false criteria, and
abysmally written." Johnson immediately wrote a reply entitled "The
Religion of the Blind Watchmaker." When
Scient~fic
Anterican editor
Jonathan Piel refused to print it, Johnson sent a copy to Gould and suggested
that he call Piel and ask him to reconsider. When that didn't work, copies of
the response were widely circulated by Johnson and his friends. 'The Religion of
the Blind Watchmaker" has since appeared in print in The
Real Issue (Oct
1992) from Christian Leadership Ministries (13612 Midway Rd, Suite 500, Dallas,
TX 75244) and is scheduled to appear in the Mar 1993 PSCF.
Meanwhile, Johnson has actively challenged "the central dogma" in
various venues. His presentation before the Southwestern Andiropological
Association was reported by writer Tom Bethell in The
Awrican Spectator ("Darwin
in the Dock," Jun 1992). Johnson was interviewed in Radix
(Vol. 21, No. 1)
and in ARN's Currents
(Winter 1992). An
article based on his 1992 lectures at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School has
just appeared in First
Things "Creator or
Blind Watchmaker?" Jan 1993); we understand that Howard Van Till, a
respondent at those lectures, will again respond in the Feb issue. In the Jan
1993 Interterm at New College Berkeley, Johnson taught a oneweek course on
"Darwin on Trial."
Audio cassettes and videotapes of Johnson lectures are available from various
sources, such as Access Research Network (P.O. Box 38069, Colorado Springs, CO
80937-8069). One of the best is a lecture and interaction with a faculty/student
audience at U.C. Irvine. A high-quality 2-hour videotape of that session,
professionally produced by Art Battson of U.C. Santa Barbara, is available from
Reasons to Believe, P.O. Box 5978, Pasadena, CA 91117, for $30.00
("Darwinism on Trial," Item V9210). Over 300 copies of that video have
been sold.
In the Sep-Dec 1992 Mission
Frontiers Bulletin, Johnson's
book was one of two on science in a
list of a dozen books recommended for students in a new M.A. program at the U.S.
Center for World Mission. (The other was Hugh Ross's
The Fingerprint of God.) The
book's broad appeal gets it advertised both in ICR's "young earth"
Master Books catalog and by Hugh Ross's "old-earth" Reasons to
Believe. Under "Apologetics," Darwin
on Trial is also
advertised in the Christian Book Distributors discount list (at $13.95 plus
p&h from CBD, Box 6000, Peabody, MA 0 1961-6000).
Johnson's goal, however, was to get secular
scholars to
reconsider Darwinist claims. In the Fall 1992 Whole
Earth Review, his
book made it into a bibliography of 18 .1
non-creationist' books
critical of Darwinism in a major article by Kevin Kelly: "Deep Evolution:
The Emergence of Post-Darwinism." Kelly, a former editor of WER
(formed in 1984
from a merger of Whole
Earth Software Review and
Co-Evolution
Quarterly), is
expanding his article into a book due from Addison-Wesley in 1993.
Perhaps the most dramatic place Darwin
on Trial has turned
up is on the required reading list for students in William Provine's
introductory evolution class at Cornell University. Evolutionist Provine is
notorious for deriding as intellectual cowards any fellow biologists who will
not admit publicly that Darwinism is equivalent to -atheism. He met Phil Johnson
in 1991 when serving as respondent to a Johnson lecture at Cornell. Provine now
has his 450 students read Darwin
on Trial, then
counters its arguments in class. On a recent trip to Berkeley, he complained to
Phil to the effect that "I'm having a hard time converting many students to
atheism after they've read your book."
BULLETIN BOARD
For his Ph.D. dissertation at Duke, Bill Durbin hopes to treat
20th-century American science/religion by focusing on the life and thought of
Henry Margenau, professor of physics and philosophy at Yale (1929-69). Bill has
interviewed Margenau (who still lives in New Haven), a Lutheran who has generally kept his Christian convictions private
except for some autobiographical reflections and some hints in other writings.
Bill is now looking for reminiscences or correspondence that might give insight
into Prof. Margenau's interaction with religious organizations, science/religion
groups, or individuals who drew inspiration from his example. Also, how were his
writings on science, religion, and ethics received in the Christian community?
Bill would appreciate any information ASA members can supply. His address is 308
Oakridge Rd, Cary, NC 27511.
(Me Weary Old Editor just got another lesson in his memory's fallibility. Hoping
to help Bill Durbin's project along, the WOE recalled his own election to Sigma
Xi and consequent subscription to its journal, American
Scientist, then
edited at Yale. In his first issue (Vol. 36, No. 1, Jan 1948, celebrating the
1947 centennial of Yale's Sheffield Scientific School), he found several short
communications on science/religion plus a stimulating regular feature,
"Marginalia." The final installment of that series (Vol. 43, No. 1,
Jan 1955) envisioned a robot smart enough to conceal its own origin and thus
become "divine." That piece about an .. electronic anti-Christ"
was unforgettable. Ever since, the WOE has credited it to Henry Margenau,
probably by confusing the title of the column with Margenau's name. In fact
"Marginalia" was written by Yale zoology professor G. Evelyn
Hutchinson. Not much help, Bill. WOE is me.-Ed.)
- The American
Association for the Advancement of Science meets in Boston on 11-16 Feb 1993,
with a focus on "Science & Education for the Future." Papers that
caught our eye in the program were Howard Van Till's C'Antievolution as a
reaction to scientism") in a session on The New Antievolutionism; and two
by Owen Gingerich: "The expanded universe: 1493-1698" in a
session on the history of cosmology, and another on history of science in a
session on improving science education. Four sessions make up a special track on
"Science & Religion: Examining Both."
ASA executive director Bob
Herrmann planned to attend from
nearby Ipswich. A lot more of us
should probably be there.
- "Scholarship As Sacred Calling," a conference for graduate
students in the humanities and social sciences, will be held 12-14
Mar 1993 at the Center for Development in Ministry, U. of St. Mary
of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois.
The conference is a joint venture
of the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies and InterVarsity
Christian Fellowship. Plenary speakers will be sociologist James
Hunter of the U. of Virginia and
David Jeffrey, prof. of English literature at the U. of Ottawa, with theologian Carl F. H. Henry,
EFACS founding father, leading Sunday worship. Total cost is $125.
For registration materials, write Dr. Terry Morrison, IVCF Faculty Ministries, P.O. Box 7895, Madison,
WI 53707-7895.
- Two books listed as out of
print in the current edition of
ASA's bibliography, Contemporary Issues in Science and Christian Faith
are now back in print and available
from the Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute. IBRI (P.O. Box
423, Hatfield, PA 19440-0423) sells Robert C. Newman's Genesis One
and the Origin of the Earth for
$8.45 postpaid and John R.
Wiester's Genesis Connection for
$16.45 postpaid.
SQUIBS
-Tenemos que disculparnos to
Spanish-speaking readers for a foulup in our Dec/Jan story about En
el Principio, new Spanish version
of Teaching Science in a Climate
of Controversy. Instead of adding accent marks indicated by our
computer, the Ipswich computer simply deleted all accented letters
within words. In the next story,
our Chinese must have been legible, though; author Chi-Hang Lee
had an order for the book we mentioned (from Linda Jekel of North
Haven, Connecticut) even before receiving his copy of the Newsletter.
- Christianity Today got a huge
amount of mail after it published
(14 Sep 1992) an interview with
U.S. Senator Albert Gore, author of
Earth in the Balance. Almost all of
that mail was negative, despite
Gore's stated commitment to Jesus
Christ and emphasis on "Preserving
God's 'Very Good' Earth." CT
noted (9 Nov) that "Some readers
missed the environmental discussion
entirely in their dismay at the
space given the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in an election
year. None who accused CT of partisanship appeared to recall the
lengthy interview with Vice-president Dan Quayle published in the
June 22 issue."
- Although some conservative
Christians act like sore losers when
elections don't go their way, such
behavior isn't limited to the "Reglious Right." For example, the lead
article in the Fall 1992 NCSE Reports from the National Center for
Science Education in Berkeley decried recent "takeovers" of some
secular offices like school boards
by "fundamentalist Christians." Editor John Cole called that "Stealth
Politics." (If the same candidates
had lost, we suspect that NCSE
would have applauded "Grass Roots
Politics." -Ed.) San Diego Water
Dept chemist Jerry Albert sent a
clipping from the San Diego UnionTribune (28 Dec) about his
county's Vista Unified School District. According to staff writer Lisa
Petrillo, election of a "Christian fundamentalist majority" that
publicly backed "creationism" drew
network TV cameras to the Dec
1992 meeting of the five-person
school board. "Creationism" was put
on the agenda for the Jan 1993
meeting, but one of the three majority members, John Morris of the
Institute for Creation Research, cautioned against making any move
that would stir up a backlash or
subject the district to expensive lawsuits. (Almost everything that
sounds simple in campaign speeches
turns out to be more complicated
in real life.-Ed.)
- Redeemer College, Ancaster, Ontario, received a specialized collection grant of $2,500 for 1992-93
from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada to
acquire philosophy of science materials in its Pascal Centre collection.
The Pascal Centre conference on Science and Belief held in August attracted a number of ASA/CSCA
members. Thomas Torrance, Bill Dembski, and Mark Kalthoff were
among those who gave papers. Bill
Durbin saw Ted Davis and Char.
lie Thaxton, plus Dave Wilcox and
Jack Haas, who came in from the
ASA meeting in Hawaii. Jack's report on the conference appeared in
PSCF (Dec 1992).
PEOPLE LOOKING FOR POSITIONS. Computer Science/Math: Paul van Arragon (Dept of Computer Science, U. of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1) seeks academic post to make use of his Ph.D. in artificial intelligence; currently teaching at Redeemer Christian College, and adjunct at Waterloo; willing to work abroad.
POSITIONS LOOKING FOR PEOPLE. Biology: Jun 1993, Ph.D. with emphasis in vertebrate physiol & anatomy, plus commitment to integration of Christian faith with discipline; teaching experience preferable. Teach intro biol & lab plus upper level courses in liberal arts college of Presbyterian heritage on 42-acre campus in state capital. Send letter of intent, cm., transcripts, statement of philosophy of Christian higher ed, and references (ind. senior pastor) to: Dr. Daniel C. Fredericks, Vice-President & Dean, Belhaven College, 1500 Peachtree St, Jackson, MS 39202-1789. Chemistry: Head of Chemistry Department: Open for Fall 1994. Must hold Full Professor rank in current position. Contact ASA member Terry Murphy or current Head, Roger L. DeKock (on leave from Calvin College), Department of Chemistry, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 32486AI-Khod, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. Dean of College of Science: Open Fall of 1993 or 1994 (?). Must hold Full Professor rank in Chemistry, Physics, Biology, or Earth Science, with appropriate administrative experience. Send vita in confidence to His Excellency Yahya Mahfoud Al-Manthery, Vice Chancellor, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 32500AI-Khod, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. More information aJso available from Terry Murphy at address listed for previous postion.