Engineering Week

National Engieneers Week was last week, so I thought I'd honor my profession and have a little fun in the process.

Great Engineering Quotes

"Engineers aren't boring people, we just get excited over boring things."

"Arguing with an engineer is a lot like wrestling in the mud with a pig. After a few hours, you realize that he likes it."

AutoCAD Monkey

A tourist walked into a pet shop and was looking at the animals on display. While he was there, another customer walked in and said to the shopkeeper, "I'll have an AutoCAD monkey please." The shopkeeper nodded, went over to a cage at the side of the shop and took out a monkey. He fitted a collar and leash, handed it to the customer, saying, "That'll be $5000." The customer paid and walked out with his monkey.

Startled, the tourist went over to the shopkeeper and said, "That was a very expensive monkey. Most of them are only few hundred dollars. Why did that one cost so much?"

The Shopkeeper answered, "Ah, that monkey can draw in AutoCAD - very fast, clear layouts, no mistakes, well worth the money."

The tourist looked at a monkey in another cage. "That one's even more expensive! $10,000! What does it do?"

"Oh, that one's a Design monkey; it can design systems, layout projects, mark-up drawings, write specifications, some even calculate. All the really useful stuff," said the shopkeeper.

The tourist looked around for a little longer and saw a third monkey in its own cage. The price tag around its neck read $50,000. He gasped to the shopkeeper, "That one costs more than all the others put together! What on earth does it do?"

The shopkeeper replied, "Well, I haven't actually seen it do anything, but it says it's an Engineer."

Blind Golfers

A priest, a doctor, and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers.

Engineer: What's with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!

Doctor: I don't know, but I've never seen such ineptitude.

Priest: Hey, here comes the greens keeper. Let's have a word with him.

Priest: Hi George. Say, George, what's with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow today, aren't they?

George: Oh yes, that's a group of blind firefighters. They lost their sight while saving our clubhouse last year, so we let them play here anytime free of charge.

SILENCE.

Priest: That's so sad, I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight.

Doctor: Good idea. I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there is anything we can do for them.

Engineer: Why can't these guys play at night?

Beyond Opinion

One of my heroes in the faith is a man named Ravi Zacharias. I recently purchased his new book entitled "Beyond Opinion - Living the Faith We Defend." For those not familiar with Zacharias, he is probably the most influential Christian Apologist since CS Lewis and is a true giant of the faith. Born in India, educated in the west, the scope of his ministry is truly experienced all over the world.

Over the past 5 years, I have listened to and read nearly everything he has published, and so much of his teaching has defined where I am today. In the opening preface of "Beyond Opinion", he writes these words:

There is no greater example in apologetics than the apostle Paul speaking at Mars Hill. The irony of the talk Paul gave is in the difference in reaction the Easterner has when reading Paul’s address to that of a Westerner. The Easterner is thrilled at how the apostle wove the message starting from where the listeners were to bring them to where he was in his thinking. The average Westerner is quick to point out that few of his hearers responded. Such an attitude says volumes about why the church in the West has been so intellectually weak. To those in the West, the bigger the number of respondents, the more replicated the technique. The bigger the statistic, the greater the success. Westerners are enamored by size, largesse, number of hands raised, and so on. When the sun has set on these reports, we seem rather dismayed when statistics show the quality of the life of the believer is no different from that of the unbeliever.

No doubt about it, the body of Christ in America needs a serious wake up call. We have been trained by "church" to feel our faith, but have we been trained to think? Sure, we all sit in front of pre-packaged messages every Sunday and hear our favorite pastor give us valuable insights on how we should think, act, love, give, etc... But how many times have you heard a pastor defend why Christianity is TRUE? How many times have you heard a preacher explain to you why he believes that the resurrection is a historical fact?

I like to think about it on three levels: Level 1 is the ground floor, the foundation. Its the level that defines a person's worldview. It's the thought behind the answer, "Why are you a Christian?" In my opinion, most Christians today would have a hard time answering that question at level 1. But in a scientifically minded, "prove it to me" culture, shouldn't we have a good explanation for why we believe what we believe? That's why I love the title of the book, "Beyond Opinion." Our faith in Jesus should go beyond that of opinion.

Level 2 would be considered the arts or entertainment, where the worldview of level 1 gets communicated. Take any popular TV show in which pre-marital sex and homosexuality are treated as the norm and you will see level 2 in action. In the same way, the American church has become a master at level 2 - stimulating the senses to achieve maximum emotional gratification. Now don't get me wrong; I love level 2. There is nothing that excites me more than raising my hands with fellow Christians as we sing at the top of our lungs. But here's the point; the emotional response of raising my hands should be born out of thought - out of level 1, and not from the lighting, multimedia, or intensity of the music. In my opinion, the western church has done a great disservice to our generation by over emphasizing the level 2 approach. In the process, we have abandoned the tool of critical thinking and left ourselves vulnerable to attacks from the enemy.

In the same way, the church has become a master of level 3, which I call the application side of life. Its the level that says, "Do this, think that, don't do this, watch out for that, etc." I would venture to say that 95% of Sunday sermons this week could fall under these categories. Again, don't get me wrong. There is nothing problematic about preaching on application. There are always new insights on how to walk closer with God which can be very helpful to all of us. My point is simply this:

We should not run away from levels 2 and 3. But we should also recognize that the world is also very good at levels 2 and 3. The world loves emotional outpouring during a concert. The world loves tips for a healthy life. What the world cannot stand is the uncompromising truth that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. And unless we have trained and equipped ourselves, and our children to understand this truth, we may be just moments away from being swept off our feet to something that feels a little better than following Jesus.

Evolution and Race

Recently, there has been a firestorm of criticism raining down on Dr. James Watson, one of the men who helped unravel the mystery of DNA back in the 1950's. Here are a couple of his quotes that have ruffled people's feathers:

"There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically."


"(I am) inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really."

Most of his critics are rightfully pointing out that the "intellegence testing" cannot be accurately assessed accross cultural lines. Fair enough. But something much bigger is slipping through the cracks. Let's look closer at the first quote.

Dr. Watson is clearly pre-supposing a naturalistic Darwinian worldview which holds that all life came from primordial soup and arose by random chance + time. This is also the same worldview which undergirds virtually all of Dr. Watson's scientific peers who are now criticising his statements. But here's the problem - if mankind is really just a random collection of materials, then his first statement is perfectly reasonable. Varying intellegence accross racial and ethnic lines should be expected if Darwinism is true. Why should we expect that a random collection of cells called "my brain" would function EXACTLY the same as a person raised in Africa, China or Canada? In fact, doesn't the whole Darwinian model enspouse and defend this very thinking: Survival of the fittest? Only the strong (and smart) survive?

This whole episode vividely points to one of the biggest problems with evolutionary thinking on the origin of life. On one hand, the atheist wants to remove God from the picture and live only inside a natural framework. On the other, the atheist wants equality across racial and ethnic lines. But on what basis?

Ideas have consequences. The idea of Darwinism has consequences, one of which is the loss of an objective basis for the value of equality. Too bad that only a theistic worldview can justify their outrage.