Heading to Steel Town

Today my column on Baseball Prospectus did not feature any new analysis or the usually endless tables overflowing with numbers and headed with three-letter acronyms. No, today marked the 100th and (at least for now) final Schrodinger's Bat column, marked with the title "Opus 100".

The column does not require a subscription and so you can read it for yourself but in the final section I briefly discuss the reason that this centennial edition is the last in the series.

To borrow from that bit...I'm leaving BP to join the front office of the Pittsburgh Pirates to become their Director of Baseball Systems Development. In that capacity I'll be assisting the excellent staff--including Kyle Stark, Bryan Minniti, Greg Smith, and Joe Delli Carri, under the direction of General Manager Neal Huntington--in building systems to support and inform the decision-making process of the baseball operations staff. All of those individuals mentioned, and many others, have made me feel more than welcome, and I'm thrilled to start the process of integrating the array of quantitative and qualitative information in a way that makes both even more instructive.

While I'm very excited at the new challenges and opportunities, I'm also a little sad as I say goodbye to Compassion International, where I've worked as a software architect for the last three years. Beyond the successes of the team in building a service oriented infrastructure that I've been blessed to be a part of, working at Compassion has truly been a wonderful experience. The dedication, intelligence, and vision of the organization and its employees to release children from poverty in Jesus' name is truly inspiring. It really is a great place to work and hey, I hear they might be looking for someone :)

On Evangelicals and Climate Change

Last week I had the opportunity to listen to a talk given by an evangelical Christian leader to an audience of primarily evangelicals on the topic of global climate change. Given the rancor that sometimes accompanies this issue, it was a bit of surprise as were some of the reactions I observed afterwards. But this subject has been on my mind for the last few months after attending a lecture given by Dr. Richard Alley, professor of geosciences at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania, last June at the Denver Science Museum and having just finished reading Tim Flannery's 2006 book The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth.

Actually, I hadn't kept up with the most recent surveys on evangelicals' views on climate change and so after the talk I took a look around and found that in one recent study 33% of evangelical Christians describe global warming as a "major issue" while the numbers are over 50% for people of other faiths or of no faith. The results were culled from a Barna poll and were based on nationwide surveys conducted on 1,007 adults in January 2007 and 1,004 adults in July-August 2007. They break down like this:

Percentage That Agree Global Warming is a Major Issue
Evangelical Christians                 33%
Non-evangelical born again Christians  55%
Notional Christians                    59%
Non-Christians of other faiths         61%
Agnostics and atheists                 69%

and the article goes on to give the following percentages within Christianity although it's not clear if this is in response to the same question...

Catholic      59%
Protestants   52%
Mainline      59%
Non-mainline  49%

However, another study referenced in a CBS commentary and done by CBS found that 46% of evangelicals "think global warming is having a serious impact on the environment" as compared to 52% of the population as whole. Obviously the wording of the question has a lot to do with the answers but it's possible that this signals a shrinking of the gap as discussed in this recent Washington Post piece..

Regardless, the gap still exists and the reasons for it and why it tends to shrinks as you go from evangelical to non-evangelical and Protestant to Catholic are intriguing. While I'm not sociologist I'll venture a few guesses based on my own experience and the reactions I observed last week.

A Conspiracy wrapped in a Hoax. Within the evangelical community there is certainly an emphasis on prophecy and end times events as evidenced by the popularity of the Left Behind series which focuses on one particular (and historically recent) interpretation of the book of Revelation. In that vein one of the conditions or preconditions for the rise of the anti-Christ that is often discussed is the formation of a one-world government that, interestingly enough dovetails with other groups who fear the same thing. And so many evangelicals feel that global climate change and the kind of international treaties it may produce (Kyoto) is just the kind of issue that could be used to hasten the creation of a one-world system as people look from national to international solutions. Christians of other stripes don't as often take this view of the book of Revelation and therefore this issue doesn't arise. Oh, and it doesn't help that in the U.S. one of the main advocates of climate change has been a traditional enemy of conservatives and that a large majority of evangelicals are political conservatives.

Scientific Skepticism. Spurred on by the very prevalent belief in young-earth creationism many evangelicals chafe when the discussion turns to the scientific consensus on climate change let alone things like ice cores showing temperature patterns that go back hundreds of thousands of years. On the former issue young earth creationists already believe that the scientific consensus on the pattern and history of life is fatally flawed and so disbelieving in the human connection with climate change is not only to be expected but is actually easier to deny than is biological evolution. As to the latter, the belief that the earth is only around 10,000 years old means that climate reconstructions and talk of previous ice ages (or even the most recent one) are unconvincing to the say the least. And of course there's a liberal sprinkling of myths that circulate as well including the one about volcanoes emitting more CO2 than man-made sources (in actuality human sources are 130-150 times more potent). Once again, other stripes of Christianity don't hold this view and in fact young earth creationism is almost entirely restricted to the U.S.

Dissonance with God's Plan. Although it seems simple on the surface one of the primary issues may simply be the belief that the all powerful God is in control of his creation and so Christians needn't worry. This would make sense but I think it goes a little deeper and reflects a feeling of dissonance with the idea of God commanding mankind to proliferate and subdue the earth. If indeed not only the industrial revolution but all of mankind's activity on the earth for the past 10,000 years (the so-called "Anthropocene") has brought about these changes, something would seem amiss with God's plan. One would think this conflict would arise in other flavors of Christianity as well but perhaps their view of God's plan is somewhat less deterministic.

A Question of Priority.
Finally, there are many evangelicals who simply believe that Christians should be focusing on other more pressing social issues. While that's an argument I can certainly respect, there would seem to be no reason why one would necessarily preclude the other and Christians couldn't both focus on issues like the right to life and the environment.

In the end this seemed to be the main point made by the speaker I heard last week. Christians can all agree that we have a responsibility both to our fellow man, especially the poor and the oppressed, and to be stewards of the creation. In the area of climate change these go hand in hand since by caring for the environment we can help lesson or avoid the deleterious effects, most of which will be felt by the poor whom Christians are called to serve.

You Gotta Have Faith

Just a couple thoughts before Game One tonight in Boston.

First, I thought this was an interesting article on the Rockies, faith, and how they've put their team together. It's funny how when you're winning things like this are spun in a neutral to positive fashion and when you're losing they're seen as part of the problem.

Like many folks in the area I too have a Rockies-ticket-buying-horror-story to tell. On Monday morning I was of course shut out as were all but 500 others. On Tuesday I had three computers running and twice was taken to the page allowing (supposedly) ticket purchases. After selecting four best available (section 121 row 26 for Game Four), getting the seats, entering the credit card, and verifying it, I was at, presumably, the final screen. After clicking the button it spun and spun for about three minutes and when it finally returned it said my reservation had timed out. On the three or four previous screens I had spent probably a total of 20 seconds in data entry and so the timeout consisted entirely of the response time from their servers. On the same machine I was able to access the transaction a couple seconds later (since they used a cookie per machine approach) but that browser could not access the cart information and the session died. I was hoping that perhaps the order went through and I'd receive a confirmation email but to no avail...

I think it's pretty clear that the company that runs the system simply wasn't prepared for the load and then tried to shift blame by claiming a malicious denial of service attack. Their tentativeness in saying that they could have been a target of such an attack smells funny and the fact that all they apparently changed was upping the wait time from 60 to 120 seconds indicates that they were trying to lighten the load. I hope the Rockies and MLB aren't buying the excuses. It's also clear that after looking at the HTML code they used to put up a timer, a program could easily have been written (and I'm sure was by ticket brokers as evidenced by the thousands upon thousands of tickets that now grace StubHub and EBay) to "force your way in line" and therefore have a better chance of acquiring seats.

It's too bad that local fans didn't have much of a shot at acquiring seats. Although the Rockies rightly claim that internet sales are the most equitable way to sell tickets (assuming you have the technology) there are other considerations to be made as well.

Lightning

In the spring of 2004 my wife and eldest daughter had the chance to travel to England so that I could attend a conference. Since this was our first visit we planned to pack in as much as we could during the trip and in addition to a quick tour of London that included the British Museum, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, we headed up to the Yorkshire Dales where the real James Herriott (Alf Wright) practiced. Before making our way to the conference south of London we swung over to Oxford in order to get a look at where C.S. Lewis lived and worked. On a rainy Saturday, with the help of a local man who knows the pastor, we were able to visit the Anglican church near Lewis' home where he worshipped for all of his adult life and where he was buried in the small church cemetery. Inside the church there are several remembrances of Lewis including a very nice window depicting a scene from Narnia and a marker on the pew where Lewis and his brother Warnie regularly sat. That's my daughter sitting in the seat that Lewis typically occupied.



All of this came to mind as I was reading Lewis' essay "On Church Music" published in Christian Reflections the other night. The essay attempts to navigate the controversy of "high" versus "low" church music with high meaning more serious music sung by a trained choir and low meaning hymns sung by the congregation. As Lewis often does he sees in both the opportunity for Christians to "humbly and charitably" sacrifice by either indulging the "lusty roar of the congregation" or remaining silent and respectful of that which one doesn't understand. In that way "Church Music will have been a means of grace; not the music they have liked but the music they have disliked." For his part Lewis was more skeptical that any music is very religiously relevant and even in this essay we find one of his famous quotes that "What I, like many other laymen, chiefly desire in church are fewer, better and shorter hymns; especially fewer."

Given the admonition that at the very least music is a chance at sacrifice and a means of giving grace, I'm somewhat hesitant to proceed. And yet I'll share what I found to be my own interesting reaction to one of the praise songs we sometimes sing in our church. The song is called "Indescribable" by Chris Tomlin, the first two verses and the chorus of which go like so;

From the highest of heights to the depths of the sea
Creation's revealing Your majesty
From the colors of fall to the fragrance of spring
Every creature unique in the song that it sings
All exclaiming

Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing God
All powerful, untamable,
Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God

Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go
Or seen heavenly storehouses laden with snow
Who imagined the sun and gives source to its light
Yet conceals it to bring us the coolness of night
None can fathom

Now, this song is clearly extolling the power and majesty of God and has a melody and cadence that heightens the emotions and from what I observe is clearly one of the favorites of the congregation. That said, each time the second verse beginning with "Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go..." begins I cringe just a little.

To me, these lyrics that God has an interest in directing individual lightening bolts harkens back to the early 18th century when lightning was viewed as a means of God's displeasure and/or the work of demons which, along with good spirits, were thought to have filled the air. In those days as a storm approached church bells would be rung in order to ward off the bolts as in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas "The tones of the consecrated metal repel the demon and avert storm and lightning". As you can imagine this wasn't an effective strategy and as Walter Isaacson related in Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, "during one thirty-five year period in Germany alone during the mid-1700s alone, 386 churches were struck and over a hundred bell ringers killed." Of course Franklin's invention of the lightning rod in 1752 began to change this way of thinking although some theologians resisted its use fearing that it would be impious to resist the hand and judgment of God. In one particularly tragic event over 3,000 people were killed in 1767, some fifteen years after Franklin's invention when the church of San Nazaro in Venice was struck igniting gunpowder being stored in the church.

What I find interesting in all of this is that in the praise song lightning is viewed as just another display of God's creativity and power along with the flowers and stars. And yet this is a power that has been tamed by the intervention of man and so in the song we can stand back and admire it without fear of consequences or judgement. While congregations 300 years ago may indeed have also looked at lightning as a display of God's power, they would additionally have looked at it as an instrument of God's judgement. The mention of lightning in a hymn would have conjured up far different notions to them than it does to us. One wonders whether including the other sentiments expressed in Tomlin's song would even have seemed appropriate. Beyond that it seems just silly to praise God in worship songs for directing lightning bolts when we do our darnedest to intercept and redirect them whenever possible. What if the word lightning in the song were replaced with "tornado"? Would we really sing "Who has told every tornado where it should go..."? I just don't think most modern Christians think God uses natural events to punish people and so I find it somewhat surprising that the concept is so blatant in a song that I've heard sung in more than one evangelical church in the last decade. Unless I'm wrong one would hope church leaders would do a better job of ensuring that what is sung and said in the service lines up with current Christian belief. To that end, I wonder what seekers attending services think when they see lyrics like this?

The point was also hit home a few weeks ago when we also had a guest worship leader who sang a song he had written that included the line "to the God of lightning." Before the song he relayed the context of its writing which included sitting with his eight-year old daughter on the back porch watching the thunderstorms roll over the eastern Colorado plains. His daughter was awed by the display and before heading to bed asked to linger and then prayed that God would send another blast of lightning and thunder. Again, 300 years ago that would have been unfathomable.

To me, remembering the terror and destruction that lightning has caused along with how the church viewed it historically, I find it anachronistic and intellectually vacuous to sing praise songs in which we in effect blame God for a natural phenomenon.