MindFlights 2: The Stories

Since MindFlights is a speculative fiction e-zine, it's fair to look over the stories. Although MindFlights is technically new, it has a seasoned staff, so I'll set the bar higher than I did for the newer Wayfarer's Journal.

The best of the stories, in my view, is "The Significance of Snowflakes," by C. L. Dyck. It's also the best story from a scientific and philosophical standpoint. For that matter, it's the only outright Christian story in the group; all the others could have been written by an atheist or Wiccan with the right kind of imagination. (If you've ever looked at Isaac Asimov's "religious" fantasy short stories you'll know what I mean.)

"The Other's Mission," by Matthew Wuertz, is also good, showing how a spec fic story can be generally "Christian" without being particularly preachy. (On other hand, the basic plot could also be transferred to a non-spec fic setting: it's basically a missionary story.)

"The Red Unicorn," by Rebecca D. Bruner, is caught in a dilemma of the author's own making. In medieval symbology, the unicorn represented Christ, and Bruner appears to accept that. But that makes the importance of virginity work in a troublesome way, as though it were a means of grace or even salvation. Is there forgiveness for someone who marries for the wrong reason? Apparently not.

"On the Edge of Eternity," by Steve Stanton, has a few issues. The opening scene should've been deleted; the story proper starts in the lounge. I found the "sprite" idea excessively cute. It could work, but not this way.

"Heart of Flesh," by Michael Bonett, Jr., was depressing enough I didn't finish it. I suspect it has a worthwhile point; I just didn't care for the overall tone or spirit of the piece.

"Takin' Notice," by Susan Plett, just annoyed me. The narrator affects a folksy tone, yet when God shows up in quasi-Bubba gear, he talks like a regular city fella. It probably wasn't God at all--just Obama makin' a stopover in flyover country. (Zeb shoulda ast to see him bowl!) And remember, flyover folks at best are well-meanin' but childlike dolts who need a city slicker to straighten 'em out. And what's on God's mind anyway? Salvation? Repentence in general? No, just avoidin' critters on the road. Good point and all, Lord; should I save the whales while I'm up?

"Potato," by Ben Payne, and "Poisoned Thorns," by Jonathan Moeller, were both good stories at the start, but in the end they inexplicably took a sharp turn right into the wall. I wanted to like "Potato" in particular--its opening is reminiscent of my novella "Virtual Messiah," though the setting there is relevant to the story as a whole. In this case we seem to be looking at a fake existence that is changed (more or less) to something more real by evil. There's a wrinkle God never thought of! (Yes, God does use our evil deeds to confront us with our selfish, godless fantasies, but perceiving reality is a gift of God, not a direct result of evil.) And the solution to mindless fantasy is something poisoned and evil. Okay...

In "Poisoned Thorns" the main character decides that the answer to bad magic is not-so-bad magic. Though warned at every turn that there will be some kind of curse on the result, she perseveres--and no curse turns up! (Okay, her hubby may throw a hissy fit. Large whoop.) I was prepared for some kind of "Monkey's Paw" resolution, and indeed the logic of the story requires one. I have no idea where it got off to.

Someone will probably take issue with my statement that "The Significance of Snowflakes" is the sole specifically Christian story in the group. What about "Wedding at the End of Time," by Russ Colson? It does use some biblical imagery and terms, but the concept is a bit of a stretch. The early Christians realized that the big deal about the afterlife was being admitted into or barred from the presence of God. Here, rather like "Waiting for Godot," there's a certain amount of chat about the curiously absent deity (okay, no, there's way more in the play than in this story), but it's unsurprising that the story ends without his actually putting in an appearance.

So we have two stories out of nine that are good, perhaps two more than aren't bad, and the rest (in my view) hit the wall for one reason or another. Not bad, I suppose.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll make a few observations about the e-zine as a whole and why it's necessary to set the bar higher for spec fic than for regular fiction.

Other CSFF Blogs on the tour:
Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Kameron M. Franklin
Beth Goddard
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Michael Heald
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Pamela Morrisson
John W. Otte
John Ottinger
Rachelle
Ashley Rutherford
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Rachelle Sperling
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Robert Treskillard
Linda Wichman
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

Fake ID?

Intelligent Design gets a lot of strawman treatment, and no wonder: even its supporters don't always understand it. It isn't opposed to evolution as such, for example (some Christian evolutionists believe in intelligent design); it actually opposes methodological naturalism, the idea that anything can be dealt with scientifically as part of nature. So if angels exist, it should be possible to get hard data on them and determine the physical laws by which they work. What's amusing about this is that at this level neither ID nor methodological naturalism is "scientific": they are really metascience: metaphysical approaches to or assumptions about science.

(There is a scientific basis for ID, however: that some things cannot be reasonably explained except as products of design, and that there is a verifiable protocol for detecting such things. But back to the metascience of naturalism.)

The argument for naturalism is that it's impossible to have a theory that accounts for powers beyond nature: if miracles can occur, then the predictability of science is in jeopardy. This is true as far as it goes, but it should be clear that the result is biased, and biased in a way that can't really be justified. If the resulting theories were tagged as "accurate so far as naturalistic methods can discover," that wouldn't be bad. But it takes precious little effort to move from the theoretical acknowledgement that science has its limits to the effective pronouncement that the miraculous cannot occur. (And we may also observe that not all sciences are predictive anyway; some are more descriptive.)

Now, ID does not actually require miracles, just a Designer, and that Designer (if omniscient and omnipotent) could have simply planned for some things to happen that could not happen by chance. But what if science did allow for miracles? Would all vanish in primordial choas? No. Essentially, life and science would continue. The main difference would be in outlook: instead of claiming that appearances are truth, we would always place a limit ("so far as we can tell"). Perhaps we would even realize that our desire for knowledge doesn't justify all means of obtaining it. Similarly, "I'll do it because I can" is a terrifying statement. I found it morbidly amusing that at the same time the scientific community authoritatively dismissed Mengele's research on ethical and moral grounds, it clamored for experimentation on embryos.

So acknowledging that purely naturalistic science has its limits is a good thing. But does it help with apologetics? Not really. We'll see why next time.

Did We Bomb Hitler With Antimatter?

A Dialog Between Lunatics:

Looney 1: We ended World War Two by dropping an antimatter bomb on Hitler.
Looney 2: We did not! That's not how the war ended at all.
Looney 1: So, you're saying that antimatter doesn't exist! But it's a proven fact that it does.
Looney 2: No, it doesn't.

Take a look at that for a moment. Why are they both nuts? Well, Bachelor #2 could have gotten off the Looney Express as follows:

Looney: So, you're saying that antimatter doesn't exist! But it's a proven fact that it does.
Non-Looney: It doesn't matter whether antimatter exists. Historically, we did not end the war by bombing Hitler.

Now at this point the first guy would probably continue to rant, but at least the second one would have established his sanity.

What does this have to do with the Creation/Evolution debate?

Looney 1: We got here through purposeless biological evolution.
Looney 2: We did not! That's not how we got here at all.
Looney 1: So, you're saying that evolution doesn't occur! But it's a proven fact that it does.
Looney 2: No, it doesn't.

Now, with sanity:

Looney: So, you're saying that evolution doesn't occur! But it's a proven fact that it does.
Non-Looney: It doesn't matter whether evolution occurs. Historically, we did not get here by evolution.

The problem is that people on the Creation side let themselves get bogged down about whether evolution is possible. But that doesn't matter. Consider: if someone proved that a new species (not a subspecies) had evolved, would that really prove anything about how we got here? No. (If one could prove that evolution can't happen, that would settle the matter, but it's notoriously difficult to prove a negative.)

Yet I have actually known of people who claim that the Bible somewhere says that evolution is impossible. (It doesn't. Seriously.) Focusing on biological evolution is largely a red herring. While I personally take Gen 1 as literal history, some Christians don't. That should at least move us to caution.

In the next post, I'll look at what does matter--the point we should be arguing. (Some are arguing it already, in fact.) And then we'll consider why even that is only of secondary importance.

The World's Worst Definition?

As an example of how our view of apologetics has drifted, I'm going to look at evolution.

Evolution is defined as "Change over time." The first time I ran into that, a young Christian and reflexive theistic evolutionist was explaining to me why evolution doesn't conflict with the Bible. Leaving that point aside for the moment, I'm still amazed I didn't laugh in his face.

You see, all change is change over time. In fact, the way you know something has changed is by comparing Time 1 with Time 2 and spotting a difference. Arguably, if nothing changes, no time has elapsed.

More amusingly, by this definition, an embryo evolves into a baby and eventually an old person, and a bunch of raw materials evolves into a car and later a junk heap.

Even if you say that a longer time is meant, you aren't really talking about evolution in the typical sense unless you say that you mean change in a species arising over the course of several successive generations.

So why use such a lousy definition?

Right off hand, I can only think of one reason: to obscure rather than explain. Technically, there are a number of things called "evolution": stellar evolution, planetary evolution, and biological evolution. The only things these have in common are the word "evolution" and the concept of "change over time."

They are very different ideas, however. Non-biological evolution involves the development of an entity over time; biological evolution involves change in different entities over several successive generations. I don't think non-biological evolution is particularly controversial, either: given time, it would happen. Stellar and planetary evolution is simply applied physics.

But what about biological evolution? We'll look at that next time.