Again, my disclaimer. I am not, nor have I ever been an AIP member, though I have voted for AIP candidates in statewide (not National elections) and I am sympathetic to much of their platform. Alaska has labored for most of its history under a strong and aggressive federal government that has violated our states rights on numerous occasions. We have not experienced recourse from the federal courts nor even much support from our supposed fellow states. Our mineral wealth goes south in the pockets of out-of-state workers and corporations, while environmentalists tie up ever-increasing resources in order “to save the planet”, leaving Alaskans struggling to survive, though we’re sitting on massive oil reserves and other mineral deposits. We’re one-fifth the size of the continental US, more than twice the size of Texas and have fewer road-miles than New Hampshire and it is virtually impossible (because of the way the federal government “protects” us) for Alaskans to develop anything other than tourism. Out-of-state corporations can always find a way to develop, eventually, here, but Alaskans cannot – even if they have the money.

Thus, the platform of the Alaska Independence Party sounds good to us. Few of us would vote to secede from the US. In fact, few AIP members would vote for that. Their call is not for secession, but for a fair and honest vote by Alaskan residents (no military or temporary residents, thank you!) on the issue. I think we would vote to remain a state, but with a rewrite of our state compact more along the lines of the AIP platform which I am posting below.

Platform and Goal
of the
Alaskan Independence Party

Preamble

We affirm that all political power is inherent in the people; that all government originates with the people, is founded on their will only, is instituted to protect the rights of the individual; that all persons have a natural right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the enjoyment of the rewards of their own industry; that all persons are equal and entitled to equal protection under the law. We stand on a firm constitutional foundation.

Platform
We pledge to exert our best efforts to accomplish the following:

Confirmed by Statewide Convention
Fairbanks, Alaska 2008
All other copies are void

I’m posting on the Alaska Independence Party because I believe there is a great deal of misunderstanding concerning this political party and its history. I am not, nor have I ever be, and do not foresee becoming, a member of the AIP. However, as a registered non-partisan who reserves my right to vote for the best candidate I can find, I have voted for AIP candidates and will continue to do so as good ones come along.

In the 1980s, Alaska got royally messed over by President Carter with the D-2 lands-grab. This ignited years of simmering resentment that boiled over not only in the Alaska Independence movement, but also the so-called “sage brush” rebellion. Things were said, ideas were presented, and principles were set forth that continue to affect Alaskans today.  In order to understand what Sarah Palin might bring to the Republican ticket, you might want to understand the Alaskan issues that helped to shape her.

The Alaska Independence Party is a solely Alaskan political party. Its primary platform is its call for a United Nations plebiscite re-vote on Alaskan statehood under international law; however, its candidates are also known as the most conservative in Alaska and the most likely to refer to the US Constitution,. AIP is affiliated with the Constitution Party. While there has been a wing of the AIP who has called for secession from the United States primarily in protest over the D-2 land-grab in the 1980s, most party members are opposed to the idea of joining Canada as a nation. Secession is not currently part of the party platform, which includes the plebiscite, increased Alaskan control of Alaskan lands, wildlife and minerals, gun rights, privatization, homeschooling and reduction of government intrusion into the private lives of its citizens as well as adherence to the founding documents of the United States.

The party has appeared on Alaskan ballots in all state elections since 1980. Most conservative Alaskans, regardless of party affiliation, have voted for AIP candidates at various times.

When I was growing up, the adults always talked about the Statehood vote as if something shady had happened. No adult I knew before I was in college had voted FOR statehood. My mother was a conservative Republican, my father was a moderate Democrat (by today’s standards, he’d be a moderate Republican) and neither had voted for statehood in 1958. Both had stood in long lines in two very separate and diverse Alaskan communities and had not known anyone who was voting FOR statehood. It seems like it was a total shock that the plebiscite came back for Statehood. Everybody apparently expected the vote to be against Statehood. Essentially every adult I knew claimed that the statehood plebiscite with its 6 to 1 For votes had been rigged, but there were lots of different scenarios given for how this had been done. It sounded like conspiracy theories to me, until I got old enough to start researching it for myself.

Joe Vogler, a frontier lawyer and self-taught Constitutional scholar, began arguing about the validity of Alaskan statehood in 1973 after having done a lot of research into the whole history. He began by circulating a petition seeking support for secession of Alaska from the United States. He gathered 25,000 signatures in three weeks, which got everybody’s attention. He then formed the Alaskans for Independence organization to actively pursue secession from the United States. Alaskans have a long history of accepting colorful characters and some of their ideas while not swallowing their platform whole-hog.  In 1984, a couple of years after the D-2 lands-grab (more on that later), he founded the AIP to explore whether the 1958 vote by Alaskans authorizing statehood was legal. Vogler, typical of many old-style Alaskans who felt deeply injured by D-2, considered himself an Alaskan first and an American second. In time, that did grow to a deep and abiding dislike of the current American political system. When Vogler ran for governor in 1974 he split the conservative vote, resulting in Jay Hammond, a liberal Democrat, being elected. In 1990 Walter Hickle, a well-known Republican, was elected governor as an AIP candidate. Jack Coghill was also elected Lieutinent Governor as an AIP candidate by a separate ballot (Governor and L. Governor run separately in Alaska). Hickle never agreed with the call for secession and was vocal in his opposition to it. In June 2006, the AIP had 13,542 registered members, making it Alaska’s third largest political party (Dems had 66,218, Republicans 111,526).

Sarah Palin has demonstrably been a registered Republican since 1982, when she was 18, so she has never been an AIP member. Her husband, Todd, however, has been an AIP member, which is his right. Married couples do not have to be members of the same political party. Sarah has, however, attended AIP functions, which is a smart thing for a conservative politician in Alaska to do because many Alaskans, even those belonging to the Republican or Libertarian Party (or conservative registered non-partisans like myself), hold ideas sympathetic to the AIP platform.

And what is that platform?

The AIP asserts, per the UN charter governing non-self-governing territories, the 1958 plebiscite should have given Alaskan voters four alternatives:  remain a territory; become a separate and independent nation; accept commonwealth status; or become a state. We were only offered TWO choices: remain a territory or become a state. For more information on this, research the plebiscite in Puerto Rico. The AIP maintains that Alaska’s 1958 plebiscite is “invalid” because the people were not presented with the full range of options available to them; the vote might have gone differently had we had all choices on the table. Joe Vogler asserted that the plebiscite was rigged in several ways to fall the way the federal government wanted, essentially overruling the will of the Alaskan residents. Moreover, the AIP asserts that the federal government has since breached the contract for statehood.

Ideologically, the AIP is essentially a hybrid of conservative Republicanism, populism and libertarianism. The party calls for the direct popular election of the state attorney general and all judges, the right to keep and bear arms, the privatization of government services, the right to home schooling by parents, and a constitutional amendment to ban property taxes. The AIP, following Vogler's infamous confrontations with officials from the National Park Service and the Environmental Protection Agency, remains steadfastly opposed to environmental regulations and actively promotes private ownership and widespread development of Alaskan land. Sixty-six percent of the land in Alaska is owned by the federal government and it has fewer miles of highways than New Hampshire.

The AIP is affiliated with Constitutional Party and has endorsed candidates of that party for President. Currently Chuck Baldwin is that party’s nominee and will appear on the Alaskan ballots in November. Alaska is one of only a handful of states that regularly allows third-party candidates to appear on the ballot, irregardless of their in-state voting percentages.

How do you believe in something that you aren’t certain exists?

No, there is no irrefutable proof for the existence of God, but many people have found strong clues for His existence. Call these divine fingerprints if you will and Christians see them everywhere.

I live in a university town with a strong science department and I have several cousins who are working scientists. One of the things I’ve noticed about some of these scientists is that they have a general sense that “something” other than the material world exists. My atheist cousin who is a paleontologist has looked at one argument for God after another. Although finding some of them quite meritorious, he ultimately rationally avoids them at some point. He wants an absolute airtight proof of God on at least one point or he cannot believe that God exists. We’ve had that discussion about strong rationalism and while he agrees with me in theory, ultimately he had denied the evidence because each point can, by itself, be at least partially refuted. Another cousin who is a research doctor of some repute became a Christian a few years ago because he stopped looking at the lines of evidence as “proofs” and starting looking at them as “clues”.

The philosopher Alvin Plantinga believes there are no proofs of God that will convince all rational persons; there are instead two or three dozen good arguments for God, some of which some people will find compelling. The accumulated weight of the ones you find appealing can be very formidable. We’ll just look at a few – the ones that resonated loudest with me and with my cousins.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

There is evidence that the universe is expanding explosively and outwardly from a single point. Most scientists accept the Big Bang as a highly probably theory of universal origins. In a world where effects inevitably have causes, it seems likely that an event like the Big Bang must have a cause. What could that be but something outside of nature – a supernatural being that exists from itself?

Francis Collins noted this in his book The Language of God, which Sam Harris objected to in his review. Harris wrote, even if you accept that the universe was created by an intelligent being, that does not presuppose that the being was the God of the Bible. True. The fact that there is something when there probably ought to be nothing and that events always have causes in our experience does not prove that God orchestrated the Big Bang and the creation of the universe. But it does give us a strong clue in that direction.

For organic life to exist there are 15 constants (gravitation, strong and weak nuclear forces, etc) that must be precisely balanced. If any one of these if off by even one part in a million, the universe could not actually come to where we find it. Matter would not have coalesced; there’d be no galaxy, stars, planets or people. As Collins wrote, it seems that the universe knew we were coming. And, that’s a problem for those who hold to random selection, because that’s an incredible number of variables all precisely tuned as if for one species. How is that possible in a random system?

Well, Richard Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion that there might be trillions of universes and, if that be the case, it is reasonable that at least one would be fine-tuned just for us – completely by accident. Obviously, the “fine tuning” argument is rationally avoidable. There is absolutely no evidence that there are many universes, but there’s also no way to prove there aren’t. So, can’t we just set aside the anthropic principle, since it is refutable? Not honestly, no! It is not a proof of God. It is a clue pointing to the case for God. It is technically possible that there are infinite universes and this one just happens to meet the needs of our species, but generally when something appears designed it is because it is designed. Should we live our life based on a remote possibility when there is a more reasonable explanation available?

Let’s face it – the universe appears designed and one element of that is its regularity and predictability. All scientific, inductive reasoning is based upon the assumption of regularity (the “laws”) of nature. Water will boil under the same conditions tomorrow as it does today. Using inductive reasoning, we generalize from observed cases to all similar cases. Without inductive reasoning, we couldn’t learn from experience, using language or rely on our memories. Most people find this completely normal and untroubling.

David Hume and Bertrand Russell, however, were deeply troubled by the fact that we can’t explain why nature is so regular. They felt we couldn’t assume it would remain regular tomorrow. They pointed out that scientists take the continued regularity of nature as a step of faith and this bothered them. While many observers have suggested that modern science arose because of the Christian belief in an all-powerful, personal God Who created and sustains an orderly universe, the regularity of nature is escapable. It does not have to be attributed to God. Again, though, while not a proof of God, it is a clue. Why (logically) would the randomly created universe be so regular?

Why is the universe beautiful?  If everything in the world is a product of “an accidental collocation of atoms” (Bertrand Rand) then we exist for no particular reason – we’re accidents. So is our perception of beauty nothing but a hard-wired neurological response to particular data? Music seems so significant, but is that significant merely an illusion? Is love simply a biochemical response inherited from ancestors who survived because this trait helped them survive? Is, as Shakespeare wrote, life merely a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?

St. Augustine in his Confessions reasoned that these unfulfillable desires are clues to the reality of God. Just because we feel hunger for a particular meal doesn’t mean we will be served that meal, but doesn’t an appetite for food indicate the food exists? Innate desires correspond to real objects that can satisfy them. Sexual desire is satisfied by sex, physical appetite by food, tiredness by sleep, and relational desires by friendship. The unfulfillable longing evoked by beauty qualifies as an innate desire. We long for joy, love and beauty that cannot be satisfied by food, sex, friendship or success. These are items that nothing in this world can satisfy. Is that not a clue that “something else” exists? And is that not possibly a clue to the God Who is there?

“Come, let us argue it out!” Isaiah 1:18

Underlying all doubts about Christianity are alternate beliefs based upon unprovable assumptions about the nature of reality. Believe it or not, I respect those who have doubts because I’ve been there. There is a great deal of solid reasoning leading to those doubts. However, in the end, I don’t believe any of those alternative beliefs make Christianity impossible or even highly improbable. There are sufficient reasons for believing Christianity.

Of course, the first question someone will ask is “Which Christianity?” From the outside, the various Christian sects and traditions look almost like distinct religions. Public worship varies greatly. Christianity is a faith that has spread across most cultures and regions of the world and it has adapted itself to various cultural forms. Great theological rifts have also occurred over the centuries – the schism between the Greek and Roman churches in the 11^th Century (creating the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches) and the schism between the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions in the 15^th Century. Honestly, from a doctrinal point of view, these differences between churches are highly significant for they make major differences in how one’s faith is held and practiced. However, all Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches assent together to the great creeds of the first millennia of church history, where the fundamental Christian view of reality is laid out. The doctrine of triunity of God creates a profoundly different view of the world from that of polytheists, non-Trinitarian monotheists and atheists. There is also a strong statement of the full deity and humanity of Jesus Christ in these creeds. For the Christian (universally) Jesus is more than a teacher or prophet, but the Savior of the world and God incarnate.

For our purposes I’m going to define Christianity as the body of believers who assent to these ecumenical creeds. The essential beliefs of such groups are as follows:

          The triune nature of God Who created the universe;

          Humanity’s fall into sin and evil though disobedience to God;

          God’s gracious gift of Jesus Christ Who died and was resurrected for our sins;

          Salvation by grace alone through Jesus’ work on the cross;

          The Christian church universal as the people of God, tasked with telling the

world about Him;

          Jesus will return one day to renew the heavens and the earth, remove all evil,

All Christians believe the above, but no Christians believe just this. You will get different answers to the questions concerning the role of the church in the world or how Jesus’ death accomplished our salvation. Particularly Roman Catholics and Protestants will answer differently based upon their traditions. There’s really no such thing as a “generic non-denominational” Christian. We all must answer these “how” questions in order to live a Christian life and how you answer puts you in one tradition or another. As an Evangelical of the Baptist tradition, I might occasionally present ideas in a particularly Baptist way, but my primary goal is to present evidence of the validity of Christianity beyond a particular denominational stance.

Prominent disbelievers in Christianity today – Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, to name a few – insist there are no sufficient reasons to believe in the existence of God. Dawkins claims that God’s existence should be open to rational demonstration as a scientific hypothesis. These thinkers want a logical or empirical argument for God that is airtight and they refuse to believe in God unless they are absolutely convinced by this.

The difficulty with strong rationalism is that “proof” is an argument so strong that no logical and sane person could have any reason for disbelieving it. I would note that atheists make this claim while Christians make a similar claim – that the arguments for our faith are so strong that those who reject them are simply closing their minds to the truth out of fear, stubbornness or denial.

You see a lot of scientists and writers calling for Christians to supply such proof, but you don’t see a lot of philosophers doing so. This is because philosophers deal in the science of thinking and a great majority think strong rationalism is nearly impossible to defend. It can’t live up to its own standards. How do you empirically prove that no one should believe something without empirical proof? That premise in itself is a belief that it is possible to view something from a completely objective point. Philosophers know this to be fallacious. Everyone comes to their view of the world with individual evaluations and all sorts of experiences and background beliefs that strongly influence our thinking. Our rationalism is never completely objective.

I call for “critical rationalism” which assumes that some arguments are more reasonable than others, but that all arguments are rationally avoidable in the end. You can always find a reason to escape an argument that is not sheer bias or stubbornness. No belief is 100 percent iron clad. This does not mean we can’t evaluate beliefs, only that we should not expect conclusive proof of our beliefs. Even science does not require 100 percent proof, so why would anyone expect such proof of in a metaphysical discussion?

An example would be Darwin’s theory which even Richard Dawkins admits cannot be finally proven.  It can be tested and verified, but new evidence could always disprove it or modify it beyond recognition. In the same way, a belief in God can be tested and justified, but not proven. This does not mean we cannot sift and weigh the basis for various religious beliefs and find some or even one to be most reasonable.

Critical rationality is not a “second best” or “fallback” position. If the God of the Bible really does exist, critical rationality would be exactly the way we ought to approach consideration of His existence. When a Russian cosmonaut returned from space and announced that he had not found God, CS Lewis observed that this was like Hamlet going into his attic looking for Shakespeare, then announcing that there was no playwright. If there is a God, He would not be another object in the universe that would fit into our test tubes for analysis. He would relate to us somewhat like a playwright relates to the characters in his play. The characters (us) might be able to know a bit about the playwright, but only to the degree the playwright puts information about himself into the play.

If the God of the Bible exists, He’s not some object in the attic, but the Playwright. We won’t be able to find Him like we find that long-forgotten trunk of mementos. We can find the clues to His reality that He has written into the universe. If He exists, we should expect Him to appeal to our rational faculties. The Bible (His letter to us) claims we are made in His image as rational, personal beings; there should be some resonance there.

We should also recognize, however, that the Playwright can only be known through personal revelation – which is found in the Bible. Without the Bible, you can never find God fully because that is where He has chosen to communicate to us.

Lewis also noted that he believed in God like he believed the sun had risen, not just because he could see the sun, but by it, he could see everything else. Ever try staring into the sun? Ever learn anything about it that way? I personally just got a headache and spots in front of my eyes. A far better way to learn about the sun is to look at the world it shows us, noting how it sustains everything we see and enables us to see it.

Demanding irrefutable evidence of God is like staring into the sun. Instead, we should look at what the sun shows us. What do we see in the light of God’s glory? Is the world “right” or is it deeply flawed? Mankind knows himself to be great, but aren’t we also deeply wicked?  Why do we have a longing for love and beauty that nothing in this world can truly satisfy? Which worldview best accounts for these conundrums?

Christians do not claim that our faith gives us omniscience (absolute knowledge of reality). Only God possesses that. Christians do believe that our account of reality – creation, fall, redemption, and restoration – makes the most sense of the world. Come see if Christianity has the power to explain what we know and see.

In the Christian worldview, the ultimate evidence for God is Jesus Christ. God wrote Himself into the play of our world. He didn’t just leave information about Himself for us characters to find. He became a main character Himself, when Jesus was born in a manger and rose from the dead.