Hello, Everyone!!!

In the past month, I've finally reached the end of major administrative tasks to be completed in establishing Credible Faith. Some of it was quite mundane, if not boring. I needed to file registration documents with the attorney general's office of the state of Illinois, and sent those documents off. I prepared and submitted application material for sales tax exemption in the state of Illinois. In May, I shared about having a credit card processing system in place so that people would be able to go to the website and make a donation there; recently I submitted an application for getting the capacity for Credible Faith to accept donations via ACH bank transfer. I also prepared application material for Credible Faith to get non-profit mailing rates, but one would need to spend $400 up front to get that reduced rate (which would seem somewhat counter-productive if non-profit rates are there to help non-profits without huge budgets). I accordingly did not submit the application. I also entered much of the financial information for Credible Faith into the accounting system. Much of that is behind the scenes work, but one area where work in the past month will have a visible impact is the graphic design work done for Credible Faith printed material. Established ministries and businesses often have professional looking letterhead, envelopes, note cards, or other printed material that customers or donors receive. Now, Credible Faith has that same material, and so will have a professionalism on the side of physical mailings. In some of that printed material can also be found Credible Faith's new slogan, 'Leading the Thinker to Faith, Leading the Faithful to Think'.

With major administrative tasks of Credible Faith behind me, my attention will be devoted to preparing material for talks on or related to the resurrection and trying to set up opportunities to give some of those talks, to expanding my network of ministry contacts, to fundraising, to working towards completion of the book that would argue for a new interpretation of another passage of Matthew other than my PhD thesis' new interpretation of Mt. 18:18-20, and to reading. Particularly, in much of the last part of June and first part of July, my attention will be devoted to required reading for the Discovery Institute intelligent design summer seminar that will be taking place primarily in Seattle, Washington in July. Over fifteen books were sent to me, and I have a massive amount of intelligent design reading to finish before the seminar starts.

On the family side, I had indicated in the May newsletter that Eric and Jill were going to buy a house, and that Angela and Joe had a signed contract for the sale of their home. Something happened in regard to the house that Eric and Jill were going to buy, and they did not buy it and are back looking for a home. Also, the person who would have bought the home of Angela and Joe is now not going to buy it, and Angela and Joe's home would be back on sale sometime later in this month and/or in July.

My Dad's birthday was June 16, and my brother Eric and Jill and their boys, and my brother Travis and his boys (Amy had work) went over from where Travis' house is to Dairy Queen (the little animated GIF is actually of Eric's youngest son Silas trotting along. Is he not cute?). On the Sunday prior to that, many of us went to a place where there is water, a dock, and a little beach, and there we celebrated Dad's birthday and nephew(s) played in the water.



Sincerely,

Paul

Quote of the Month

A quote from Stephen Meyer's book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, note 33, pp. 545-546, having some thoughts relevant to the 'Who Designed the Designer?' objection of Richard Dawkins: "This claim of inconsistency subtly misrepresents the basis of the argument to intelligent design. Uniform and repeated experience does not show that specified complexity always points to an intelligent cause. Instead, uniform and repeated experience shows that whenever specified information arises-originates-a mind always plays a causal role. Thus, we typically infer that specified complexity points to an antecedent intelligence because of this principle. In those many cases where we have good reason to think that specified complexity not only exists, but also first originated in time, we always infer an antecedent intelligence. Since an uncaused mind did not originate in time, such a mind would not point to a prior designing intelligence, even conceding for the sake of argument that minds are complex (and specified; see n. 32). Experience says nothing about whether there might be a self-existent uncaused mind capable of initiating a novel chain of cause and effect. Even so, that is a logically possible hypothesis for the origin of biological information. Nor would the existence of such an uncaused mind violate what we know from experience about information-rich systems always originating from intelligence. Since we have good reason to think that life and biological information originated at a time in the finite past, we have good reason to think that an intelligent cause played a role in that event. Nevertheless, inferring an intelligent designer for the origin of that information does not entail an infinite regress of other designing intelligences, since the designing intelligence in question may not itself have originated, that is, begun to exist. The designing mind may have existed eternally, as theists think the mind of God has done. Dawkins may not like this possibility, but an uncaused self-existent designer is, at least, a logically possible candidate cause. Thus, inferring intelligent design from the information that originates with the first life does not entail an infinite regress of similar designing minds."