Though some Christians may pretend that conservative religious faith has remained somewhat constant through the centuries, what even the most conservative literalist believes today varies in significant ways from the world view of the early church. As late as the 1500s, it was assumed that angels and demons controlled the most mundane aspects of life. The vast territory that we now call the natural world did not exist in the minds of most people until very recently. Christian Europe believed that demonic forces directly and regularly caused things like illness, death, wasting of crops, barrenness, etc. that are now understood to have more "natural" causes.
This mindset lives on today. As quoted in the Times of India, "Officials at Nepal's state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said on Tuesday."
This is not to say that religion is unimportant. One of the themes I have been trying to develop on this blog is that we need to come to new understandings about the interplay of science and religion. Belief is bound up in what it means to be human, it would seem. Faith is an integral part of how we go about our lives. At the same time, much of our traditional religious frameworks are bound up in cosmologies and understandings of cause and effect that we no longer share with our spiritual fore bearers. We have a largely naturalistic view of the world, but our spiritual framework is defined by people who saw even the most mundane occurrences as fraught with supernatural agency.
Rather than argue that faith requires us to believe absurd things, we need to work out how to maintain faith in light of the massive shift in worldview that has overtaken us as the result of our study of the natural world.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
We've Already Moved Past Biblical Literalism
If you believe the earth rotates the sun, then you believe things that science has discovered that contradicts the bible. Do you extend your faith to a flat earth and a sun that moves across the sky?
In fact, you have changed the way you read the Bible such that you don't even think the Bible teaches that. The fact that Martin Luther thought that it did shows that it our interpretation that has changed, and not the Bible's teaching.
Science assumes naturalism because that is all it can study. It is like the old joke about a drunk looking under a streetlight for his car keys because the light is better there. Science assumes naturalism, not as a commitment to atheism, but because it won't work when the answer is "God did it."
This is where the gaps of the "God in the Gaps" theology comes from. When science can't find an answer, you can assume that we'll never figure it out, we might figure it out, or that God did it. Progress is only made in science when you assume that we might be able to fougre it out. Unexpectedly perhaps, this assumption has been so successful, there has been no reason to question it.
The big bang did happen. This is not speculation, it is based on evidence, and confirmed by experiment. The earth is not 6,000 years old - this is based on evidence, and confirmed by experiment. So it is hardly fair or accurate to say that these are two competeing views of the how we got here. A fair and balanced treatment of evolution would say that evolution is the only theory that explains the facts. Full stop.
The idea of the Big Bang is weird, no doubt. And you can believe that God did it, no doubt. But what God did not do is create the earth 6,000 years ago. What God did not do is create species from the mud, just as they are (or even mostly as they are) today. Just like a flat earth and a sun that is drug across the sky, modern discoveries give us challenges in reading the Bible. These are real challenges, but they should not be papered over by denying the age of the earth and the actions of evolution.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Biblical Faith and Confidence in The Natural World
The level of comfort I have with evolution and other scientific explanations of the world and how it works is pretty high. But I do not call that confidence faith.
"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." (Hebrews 11:1) I do not have faith that gravity is at work. I do not need to hope that gravity shows up and does its thing, nor are its effects unseen. Evolution is the same - its effects are everywhere, and the evidence for evolution is everywhere.
One problem a Biblical faith must address is that a plain reading of the Bible lays out a world that was created 6,000 years ago and suffered a world-wide flood 4,500 years ago. Where all living creatures were within walking distance of the ark. A world where stopping the sun will lengthen the day and where Jesus went up into the sky to reach heaven, and was to return from the sky before his followers died. This is a book with two different creation accounts, two different 10 commandments, and irreconcilable differences in the chronology and activities of Jesus' life on earth.
These things are simply true about the Bible, and just like the fact of evolution, should in all honesty be faced. Some biblical literalists tell us that rather than face these facts, the facts should be denied, and if they can't be denied, that a Christian is supposed to make a virtue of believing things that are obviously not true (they call this faith - compare this with Hebrews 11:1 above, and you'll see that this is an innovation, and shares little with the notion of Biblical faith).
As a personal religion, I am OK with that (well, it makes me uncomfortable, but we all believe things that aren't true). I put these beliefs in the same category as astrology and palm reading.
What has me concerned is that there are now enough of these folks who believe that ignorance is a virtue that they are being successful in rolling back confidence in science. Educators are being fired for doing their jobs, teachers are being pressured to skip over the teaching of evolution, and pastors are pandering to this "appearance of godliness" by blaming the teaching of evolution for the world's ills.
It is important to live in the light as much as possible, in part because we risk making grave errors when we base our public and private lives on a lie. It is difficult work to figure out how to read the Bible in light of what we have learned about the natural world. But just like we managed to adjust our thinking about the Bible to Galileo's revelations, we can adjust to reading the Bible in light of what we've learned about the world via evolution and quantum mechanics.
"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." (Hebrews 11:1) I do not have faith that gravity is at work. I do not need to hope that gravity shows up and does its thing, nor are its effects unseen. Evolution is the same - its effects are everywhere, and the evidence for evolution is everywhere.
One problem a Biblical faith must address is that a plain reading of the Bible lays out a world that was created 6,000 years ago and suffered a world-wide flood 4,500 years ago. Where all living creatures were within walking distance of the ark. A world where stopping the sun will lengthen the day and where Jesus went up into the sky to reach heaven, and was to return from the sky before his followers died. This is a book with two different creation accounts, two different 10 commandments, and irreconcilable differences in the chronology and activities of Jesus' life on earth.
These things are simply true about the Bible, and just like the fact of evolution, should in all honesty be faced. Some biblical literalists tell us that rather than face these facts, the facts should be denied, and if they can't be denied, that a Christian is supposed to make a virtue of believing things that are obviously not true (they call this faith - compare this with Hebrews 11:1 above, and you'll see that this is an innovation, and shares little with the notion of Biblical faith).
As a personal religion, I am OK with that (well, it makes me uncomfortable, but we all believe things that aren't true). I put these beliefs in the same category as astrology and palm reading.
What has me concerned is that there are now enough of these folks who believe that ignorance is a virtue that they are being successful in rolling back confidence in science. Educators are being fired for doing their jobs, teachers are being pressured to skip over the teaching of evolution, and pastors are pandering to this "appearance of godliness" by blaming the teaching of evolution for the world's ills.
It is important to live in the light as much as possible, in part because we risk making grave errors when we base our public and private lives on a lie. It is difficult work to figure out how to read the Bible in light of what we have learned about the natural world. But just like we managed to adjust our thinking about the Bible to Galileo's revelations, we can adjust to reading the Bible in light of what we've learned about the world via evolution and quantum mechanics.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Faith: Science and Religion
Science and religion use the word faith in two very different ways. Speaking of faith as it relates to the expectation that the earth will rotate around to face the sun again tomorrow is quite different than the faith praised in Hebrews 11 ("Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see"). To suggest that science is also based on faith, because some of the foundational laws of physics are not experimentally demonstrated but treated as "givens," is misleading.
True, Carl Popper (the influential philosopher of science) noted that the financial disclaimer "Past performance is no guarantee of future returns" is also true of inductive reasoning. But, just like investors view past performance as an indicator of future returns, many regard Popper's critique of induction as a kind of reductio ad absurdum argument - we have good reason to expect natural laws to remain in effect. Just because we can't be absolutely certain does not mean that we have no certainty at all. We go with successful investment funds because we expect the future to look like the past. Unlike funds, however, we so far have found no exceptions to the rule that the present continues to look like the past, as far as the laws of physics go - and so it is reasonable to expect the future to look like the past as well. This is a far cry from the Biblical notion of faith.
The Bible commends faith that holds firm in the absence of evidence. Good science encourage faith (if that is the right world at all) only in the face of compelling (even if not irrefutable) evidence.
Science is just an extension of careful observation and reasoning. We've been doing science for thousands of years. What enabled what we think of as modern science to transform the world's culture in a few hundred years seems to be a combination of the right political climate and a rejection of traditional explanations ("As above, so below"). That, and methodological naturalism.
Taken from this perspective, science and faith don't present any more of a conflict than did faith and the natural world for the author of Hebrews. The attempt to make science just another faith (and a religion on top of that) looks to me to be an attempt at undercutting the demand for faith. The author of Hebrews argues not that science is just as uncertain as religion, but that we have faith in the face of uncertainty. Rather than tear down science, Hebrews urges, build up faith.
True, Carl Popper (the influential philosopher of science) noted that the financial disclaimer "Past performance is no guarantee of future returns" is also true of inductive reasoning. But, just like investors view past performance as an indicator of future returns, many regard Popper's critique of induction as a kind of reductio ad absurdum argument - we have good reason to expect natural laws to remain in effect. Just because we can't be absolutely certain does not mean that we have no certainty at all. We go with successful investment funds because we expect the future to look like the past. Unlike funds, however, we so far have found no exceptions to the rule that the present continues to look like the past, as far as the laws of physics go - and so it is reasonable to expect the future to look like the past as well. This is a far cry from the Biblical notion of faith.
The Bible commends faith that holds firm in the absence of evidence. Good science encourage faith (if that is the right world at all) only in the face of compelling (even if not irrefutable) evidence.
Science is just an extension of careful observation and reasoning. We've been doing science for thousands of years. What enabled what we think of as modern science to transform the world's culture in a few hundred years seems to be a combination of the right political climate and a rejection of traditional explanations ("As above, so below"). That, and methodological naturalism.
Taken from this perspective, science and faith don't present any more of a conflict than did faith and the natural world for the author of Hebrews. The attempt to make science just another faith (and a religion on top of that) looks to me to be an attempt at undercutting the demand for faith. The author of Hebrews argues not that science is just as uncertain as religion, but that we have faith in the face of uncertainty. Rather than tear down science, Hebrews urges, build up faith.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Does Science Hate God?
Some creationists think that Douglas Futuyma provides a "smoking gun," proving a scientific bias against their faith, when he says:
"Evolutionary theory does not admit conscious anticipation of the future (i.e. conscious forethought)."
Futuyma seems to be saying that the theory of evolution has no room for the idea of guided processes - because, as in the rest of scientific explanations discovered to date, the world "works" - things have been successfully explained without resorting to "and then a miracle occurs." To say that evolution works without guidance is to say that it is a natural process, which does not require the intervention of God.
This is, in fact, a true statement about EVERYTHING that science discovers. Every scientific theory deserves the same criticism (God's intervention is not required). Think about this for a moment. This represents a sea-change in how people think about the world. So far, NO process identified to date requires the intervention of a deity to explain what goes on. Not the sun rise, thunder and lightening, crops, birth, death, the creation of the sun, moon, stars or earth. This is not what scientists expected when Western science got started in earnest, just a few hundred years ago.
If this is true (and it is), then why single evolution out for explicit criticism? I suspect because it runs afoul of the way some Christians (biblical literalists) interpret Genesis 1 and 2. If God did not fashion Adam from the mud some 6,000 years ago, then Jesus did not die for our sins (or so their argument goes). Millions of Christian do not share their perspective, but this does not matter to the literalists. It is their way or to Hell with you. What is more, the rest of science will get its turn. Chemistry, geology, cosmology - not to mention anthropology, archeology, history - the list goes on - will have to be heavily "edited" if the goal is conformity with biblical literalism. This is just another reason to resist the ongoing attempt to censor science in the name of piety. You may not care about the theory of evolution, but when they get around to something you do care about, it will be too late.
Of course science has implications for theology. If you believe that God rides a chariot across the sky, pulling the sun, you are in trouble (unless you believe in an invisible chariot, I guess). So, yes, evolution suggests that things happen in a particular way (using natural processes, not requiring God’s direct intervention). You can look at how the world works and see no God, you can see God as the creator, using natural processes to accomplish his purposes, or you can argue for the suppression of science because you disagree with its conclusion.
"Evolutionary theory does not admit conscious anticipation of the future (i.e. conscious forethought)."
Futuyma seems to be saying that the theory of evolution has no room for the idea of guided processes - because, as in the rest of scientific explanations discovered to date, the world "works" - things have been successfully explained without resorting to "and then a miracle occurs." To say that evolution works without guidance is to say that it is a natural process, which does not require the intervention of God.
This is, in fact, a true statement about EVERYTHING that science discovers. Every scientific theory deserves the same criticism (God's intervention is not required). Think about this for a moment. This represents a sea-change in how people think about the world. So far, NO process identified to date requires the intervention of a deity to explain what goes on. Not the sun rise, thunder and lightening, crops, birth, death, the creation of the sun, moon, stars or earth. This is not what scientists expected when Western science got started in earnest, just a few hundred years ago.
If this is true (and it is), then why single evolution out for explicit criticism? I suspect because it runs afoul of the way some Christians (biblical literalists) interpret Genesis 1 and 2. If God did not fashion Adam from the mud some 6,000 years ago, then Jesus did not die for our sins (or so their argument goes). Millions of Christian do not share their perspective, but this does not matter to the literalists. It is their way or to Hell with you. What is more, the rest of science will get its turn. Chemistry, geology, cosmology - not to mention anthropology, archeology, history - the list goes on - will have to be heavily "edited" if the goal is conformity with biblical literalism. This is just another reason to resist the ongoing attempt to censor science in the name of piety. You may not care about the theory of evolution, but when they get around to something you do care about, it will be too late.
Of course science has implications for theology. If you believe that God rides a chariot across the sky, pulling the sun, you are in trouble (unless you believe in an invisible chariot, I guess). So, yes, evolution suggests that things happen in a particular way (using natural processes, not requiring God’s direct intervention). You can look at how the world works and see no God, you can see God as the creator, using natural processes to accomplish his purposes, or you can argue for the suppression of science because you disagree with its conclusion.
Biblicalism: Addressing the Shortfalls of Methodological Naturalism
Senator Brownback is on recording as advocating that we should just say no to scientific ideas that contradict conservative Christian theology. This is an idea that has far-reaching implications.
Let me flesh out the proposal - let's call it Biblicalism. The way Biblicalism proceeds in discovering how things work is: 1) identify all statements from the Bible that contain information about the natural world, and 2) set those down in a "Foundations of Science" textbook as "Givens." This would include the Bible's statements on cosmology, geology, chemistry, physics, biology, history, archeology, etc.
An "idea review board" would be set up, manned by Bible Scholars (only men, and members would be picked by a "literal-off", in which those who can explain how the most number of passages in the Bible are meant to be taken literally (exactly as written in the KJV) would be chosen). Any evidence that contradicts these Givens would be rejected. All explanations that do not fit with these Givens are rejected. Anyone who insisted in arguing for things that contradicts the Givens would be prohibited from publishing or teaching (otherwise, it just gets too messy, as the discussions over creation and evolution have shown).
You'd need to add some a new scientific discipline: Supernatural influence (giving input to other disciplines about how spiritual forces are impacting politics, morals, weather, geological processes like earthquakes and volcanoes, fashion, etc). They would also add steps to ostensibly "natural" processes to highlight God's part. For example, since "in Him we move, and breathe, and have our being" we'd need to add God's part to the study of pulmonology). We might want to consider banning mechanical ventilators, for example, because that is clearly breathing when God is no longer helping out. Those liberals who think the passage quoted is poetical must not be allowed to insinuate their materialistic philosophy into innocent minds; that way leads to madness!
You'd need fact checkers to identify when things are attributed to natural causes when in fact there are Givens at work. These errors would have to be corrected, and the violators punished. Sanctions are required, because most Givens will not actually improve the usefulness of the explanation (in fact, they will usually make them less accurate and useful, though more True), so people won't use them unless it is required.
Dispensation will have to be given for engineers to use approaches that contradict the Givens, because otherwise, they won't be able to actually make things work (for example, you'd need a non-Flood geology model to find oil and gas). This is probably best kept quiet, so perhaps we could develop guilds, with strict membership and secrecy requirements.
It would be best to restrict literacy and education in general, as it is a demonstrated fact that education leads to disputation of Givens. For example, in many conservative Christian circles, Seminaries are called "Cemeteries" because a graduate education the Bible leads so many students away from faith in the Givens.
I think that these modest proposals will solve most of the mistakes evident in modern science, and end attacks on the Bible.
Let me flesh out the proposal - let's call it Biblicalism. The way Biblicalism proceeds in discovering how things work is: 1) identify all statements from the Bible that contain information about the natural world, and 2) set those down in a "Foundations of Science" textbook as "Givens." This would include the Bible's statements on cosmology, geology, chemistry, physics, biology, history, archeology, etc.
An "idea review board" would be set up, manned by Bible Scholars (only men, and members would be picked by a "literal-off", in which those who can explain how the most number of passages in the Bible are meant to be taken literally (exactly as written in the KJV) would be chosen). Any evidence that contradicts these Givens would be rejected. All explanations that do not fit with these Givens are rejected. Anyone who insisted in arguing for things that contradicts the Givens would be prohibited from publishing or teaching (otherwise, it just gets too messy, as the discussions over creation and evolution have shown).
You'd need to add some a new scientific discipline: Supernatural influence (giving input to other disciplines about how spiritual forces are impacting politics, morals, weather, geological processes like earthquakes and volcanoes, fashion, etc). They would also add steps to ostensibly "natural" processes to highlight God's part. For example, since "in Him we move, and breathe, and have our being" we'd need to add God's part to the study of pulmonology). We might want to consider banning mechanical ventilators, for example, because that is clearly breathing when God is no longer helping out. Those liberals who think the passage quoted is poetical must not be allowed to insinuate their materialistic philosophy into innocent minds; that way leads to madness!
You'd need fact checkers to identify when things are attributed to natural causes when in fact there are Givens at work. These errors would have to be corrected, and the violators punished. Sanctions are required, because most Givens will not actually improve the usefulness of the explanation (in fact, they will usually make them less accurate and useful, though more True), so people won't use them unless it is required.
Dispensation will have to be given for engineers to use approaches that contradict the Givens, because otherwise, they won't be able to actually make things work (for example, you'd need a non-Flood geology model to find oil and gas). This is probably best kept quiet, so perhaps we could develop guilds, with strict membership and secrecy requirements.
It would be best to restrict literacy and education in general, as it is a demonstrated fact that education leads to disputation of Givens. For example, in many conservative Christian circles, Seminaries are called "Cemeteries" because a graduate education the Bible leads so many students away from faith in the Givens.
I think that these modest proposals will solve most of the mistakes evident in modern science, and end attacks on the Bible.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Is God outside the universe? Is God the same as the universe?
These days, God is imagined to exist in some other dimension - not bound to this universe. Or conversely, like Gaia, to be the earth, or the universe itself.
I can't imagine how we can know if God exists beyond our universe; we run into a descriptive wall when there is no natural world to think about. What category do we have for what would be "outside" the universe (if such a term means anything)? Revelation does not help us much, because the folks to whom it came had such a different cosmology from ours. Since God has to speak through and into a particular culture (ones lacking the language of physics and modern cosmology), these kind of distinctions don't even come up. It is not at all clear to me that the expansive language used to describe God's remoteness and otherness means non-material or non-local.
To say that God IS all the processes and systems of the universe would make God irrelevant, because to explain the natural world (as science is in process of doing) would also describe God and all her activities. To say that God chooses to act in exact synchronicity with natural law means that we can drop God from the equation. At this point, God becomes an idea, perhaps an inspiring thought - this concept fits few notions of God.
In a similar way, saying that God is supernatural would mean that God is unable to interact with the natural world at all, since so far, we have not detected any uncaused action. That is what supernatural would look like, right? Some physical process taking place with no cause acting on it, or through it - like a vase floating from point a to b though the air, with no possible explanation of how it is happening. So at the very least, God inhabits the universe, without simply being the universe. Inhabiting the universe gives the mechanism of action, and not simply being the universe gives the possibility that God is more than another way of saying natural processes.
What about the millions (billions?) of people who say that they have experienced God just that way? A direct-to-brain sense of God speaking to them (figurative or literal), an experience of comfort and assurance, miraculous coincidence, healings, interventions, appearances of angels at just the right time, just the right word from a friend or a stranger, knowledge of the private thoughts of another person, or predictions of future events that turn out just as described? The difficulty is that these experiences don't seem to stand up to scrutiny; that is, they don't seem to have a statistically significant impact on health, longevity, divorce rate, standard of living (if God blesses His own) and so on. Why do we experience significant spiritual events if they don't seem to impact the overall experience of life on earth? For example, Pat Robertson is a world-famous faith healer, yet he is seeking our Western medicine for his prostate cancer. Is it just me, or is this odd? Millions of people are praying for him, yet his disease is progressing in complete accord with statistical norms. Why this disconnect between what we believe, and what seems to be the case?
We don't perceive reality directly (one simple example: objects don't have color, right? Color is literally in the mind - a way we process the eye's reception of various wavelengths of light bouncing off an object - or so we explain it to ourselves). If I read the popular physics books correctly, all of time already exists, and for some reason we don't understand, we are forced to experience it one "slice" at a time, and only in one direction. There are other examples that suggest that we experience only a small subset of what there is, and that experience is heavily structured and mediated (and sometimes even manufactured) by our sensory and cognitive apparatus.
I am not trying to suggest some "gap" in our understanding is where God is. I am trying to suggest that we are heavily invested in our experience of the world, and even things we are confident about (a blue sky day, for example) represent a heavily coded representation of reality, and not reality itself. We pay attention to the things our brain generates based on data from our five senses because that is what we've got. In this sense, we are like the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight "because the light is better." Our brain looks for patterns (and finds them). Our brain generates explanations for cognitive dissonance (and we believe them, even when they are patently false). We do better with an optimistic outlook, and our brain paints a rosy picture for us (many of us, some of the time).
I don't think that this means we do not know or experience reality (but we are working under some heavy disadvantages). Much of what we know (and we can easily sort truth from fiction here) is grounded in an actual physical system. That we experience those systems at a remove is a truism we skip for the sake of convenience. So to say that the sky is blue is a shorthand way of saying that receptors in our eyes have registered photons in the 475 nm range, and which our brains are mapping as the color blue (or near enough - if the exact process ends up being different, it won't impact this argument). That synesthesia - experiencing color as smell or taste is a clue that this binding is arbitrary (through hard-wired in the brain); but it does not mean that our description of the sky is any less real.
This is one of the reasons that science has been so successful. By challenging assumptions, insisting on data to support ab assertion, carefully running experiments and having others check the results, by having lots of smart people try to disprove an idea (as opposed to apologetics - having those same smart people rationalize why an idea is correct), we are moving in a more "truthlike" direction as regards our understanding of the natural world.
I know that I personally locate the experience of Spirit in my sense of flow, of synchronicity, of connectedness, of things coming together for a purpose. Perhaps I mean grace. I do not understand why so many people's lives appear to lack that grace. The truly wretched state of billions is the strongest argument against grace that I know - and yet, I still believe I experience it, and witness its effects in the world.
I can't imagine how we can know if God exists beyond our universe; we run into a descriptive wall when there is no natural world to think about. What category do we have for what would be "outside" the universe (if such a term means anything)? Revelation does not help us much, because the folks to whom it came had such a different cosmology from ours. Since God has to speak through and into a particular culture (ones lacking the language of physics and modern cosmology), these kind of distinctions don't even come up. It is not at all clear to me that the expansive language used to describe God's remoteness and otherness means non-material or non-local.
To say that God IS all the processes and systems of the universe would make God irrelevant, because to explain the natural world (as science is in process of doing) would also describe God and all her activities. To say that God chooses to act in exact synchronicity with natural law means that we can drop God from the equation. At this point, God becomes an idea, perhaps an inspiring thought - this concept fits few notions of God.
In a similar way, saying that God is supernatural would mean that God is unable to interact with the natural world at all, since so far, we have not detected any uncaused action. That is what supernatural would look like, right? Some physical process taking place with no cause acting on it, or through it - like a vase floating from point a to b though the air, with no possible explanation of how it is happening. So at the very least, God inhabits the universe, without simply being the universe. Inhabiting the universe gives the mechanism of action, and not simply being the universe gives the possibility that God is more than another way of saying natural processes.
What about the millions (billions?) of people who say that they have experienced God just that way? A direct-to-brain sense of God speaking to them (figurative or literal), an experience of comfort and assurance, miraculous coincidence, healings, interventions, appearances of angels at just the right time, just the right word from a friend or a stranger, knowledge of the private thoughts of another person, or predictions of future events that turn out just as described? The difficulty is that these experiences don't seem to stand up to scrutiny; that is, they don't seem to have a statistically significant impact on health, longevity, divorce rate, standard of living (if God blesses His own) and so on. Why do we experience significant spiritual events if they don't seem to impact the overall experience of life on earth? For example, Pat Robertson is a world-famous faith healer, yet he is seeking our Western medicine for his prostate cancer. Is it just me, or is this odd? Millions of people are praying for him, yet his disease is progressing in complete accord with statistical norms. Why this disconnect between what we believe, and what seems to be the case?
We don't perceive reality directly (one simple example: objects don't have color, right? Color is literally in the mind - a way we process the eye's reception of various wavelengths of light bouncing off an object - or so we explain it to ourselves). If I read the popular physics books correctly, all of time already exists, and for some reason we don't understand, we are forced to experience it one "slice" at a time, and only in one direction. There are other examples that suggest that we experience only a small subset of what there is, and that experience is heavily structured and mediated (and sometimes even manufactured) by our sensory and cognitive apparatus.
I am not trying to suggest some "gap" in our understanding is where God is. I am trying to suggest that we are heavily invested in our experience of the world, and even things we are confident about (a blue sky day, for example) represent a heavily coded representation of reality, and not reality itself. We pay attention to the things our brain generates based on data from our five senses because that is what we've got. In this sense, we are like the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight "because the light is better." Our brain looks for patterns (and finds them). Our brain generates explanations for cognitive dissonance (and we believe them, even when they are patently false). We do better with an optimistic outlook, and our brain paints a rosy picture for us (many of us, some of the time).
I don't think that this means we do not know or experience reality (but we are working under some heavy disadvantages). Much of what we know (and we can easily sort truth from fiction here) is grounded in an actual physical system. That we experience those systems at a remove is a truism we skip for the sake of convenience. So to say that the sky is blue is a shorthand way of saying that receptors in our eyes have registered photons in the 475 nm range, and which our brains are mapping as the color blue (or near enough - if the exact process ends up being different, it won't impact this argument). That synesthesia - experiencing color as smell or taste is a clue that this binding is arbitrary (through hard-wired in the brain); but it does not mean that our description of the sky is any less real.
This is one of the reasons that science has been so successful. By challenging assumptions, insisting on data to support ab assertion, carefully running experiments and having others check the results, by having lots of smart people try to disprove an idea (as opposed to apologetics - having those same smart people rationalize why an idea is correct), we are moving in a more "truthlike" direction as regards our understanding of the natural world.
I know that I personally locate the experience of Spirit in my sense of flow, of synchronicity, of connectedness, of things coming together for a purpose. Perhaps I mean grace. I do not understand why so many people's lives appear to lack that grace. The truly wretched state of billions is the strongest argument against grace that I know - and yet, I still believe I experience it, and witness its effects in the world.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Understanding The World
The best we can do, in our attempt to understand the universe we find ourselves in, is to make models. This is because we do not directly encompass the world with our minds - rather, we store samples of our interactions with the world, and ideas about how the world works and what kind of relationships there are in the world - that is, we make models of the world, and use those models to predict the future and make sense of our circumstances. These models are limited by our ability to reason and remember, and by the tiny subset of data points afforded by our short lifetimes and limited experience. The usefulness of these models is further degraded by the physical limitations of our brain and senses (given to errors in perception, cognition, reasoning and recall).
On top of all of this, we sample our environment at the end of a long chain of events. For example, we experience color as the result of (or at least, so we model it) photons bouncing off of physical objects and entering the structure of our eye, where their energy excites chemical reactions, causing electrical impulses to travel the optic nerve. These signals are then collated into some meaningful pattern which is passed from area to area in our brain. Motion is processed in one area of the brain, pattern-matching occurs somewhere else. At some point in this process, we become aware of these signals as a picture of what is "out there." As you might imagine, there are opportunities all along this chain for failure (no visible light), distortion (optical illusions), and even outright fabrication (hallucinations) to occur.
Rather than give in to Philosophy 101 despair, however, we've adopted any number of mechanisms to compensate for the vagaries of our perceptual apparatus. Someone walks down the street in green pants, and we say to our friend, "Did you see that? "See What?" “Those lime-green pants!” "Sorry, those are not green." Perhaps it is a testament to the unreliability of our senses that we spend so much time calibrating what we experience with those around us. We even tend to surround ourselves with people who experience the world as we do – abandoning the attempt to determine "absolute" truth in favor of a consensus among friends.
All-the-same most of us have a high degree of certainty that what we see is indeed what is out there. Might as well just say it like it is - we are certain that what we see (under a set of fairly broad circumstances) is what is out there, even allowing that we can be wrong, tricked, or from time-to-time confronted with something that we cannot classify or identify. It is the same with our other perceptions, and with our models of the world. Though we may interpret things differently, one person to another, we believe that we can (or could, given enough time and experience) know the “straight facts” about much of the world we live in.
Some philosophers claim that this is not the case. Hume argues, for example, that because many of the inputs for our mental model are mediated by our senses, we can never be certain that what we perceive is really what is "out there." We are doomed to experience the world at a perceptual reserve, never actually coming into contact with the world itself, so always stuck in a “web of guesses.” As a result, the best we can do is to be reasonably certain about our models of reality, and even under the best of circumstances, we must hold open the possibility that we are wrong (maybe there is no sun, it may not appear tomorrow, flipping the light switch may not be what makes the light come on, etc.).
I am not convinced, for a number of reasons.
1. This is a logical problem, which may or may not be connected to reality. In the same way Xeno's Paradoxes "prove" things impossible that we all do every day, Hume's argument may be more about the meaning of words than about our experience of reality. Or to use Xeno's example, if in order to reach an object we must cover half the distance between ourselves and the object, and then half the distance again, and so on, you must come to the logical conclusion that it is not possible to ever actually reach the object. This is logically true, but it does not actually map to our experience of the natural world.
2. We are part of the universe we perceive, not a remote observer. This means that we do not experience reality from outside, but as an observer who is part of the system. This may introduce interesting biases, but it is more reasonable to assume continuity with our surroundings than that we are of a different kind or substance from the world around us. Each part of the system we observe also has this same problem – it is separate from the effects it causes, and from the things that affect it. Yet we can observe that these disconnected things share the same substance, and do indeed supply action and reaction down the chain. We can now even observe our own internal perception processes and follow the causal links (even though we cannot sense these links and processes in the actual acts of perceiving or thinking). In this way, we can confirm that what we are perceiving is indeed the world that is out there.
3. Science, as an extension of the process of verification and validation of our senses that occurs as a normal part of social interaction, acts to confirm and correct our models. As such, we can become certain of some things, even as we withhold judgment on others. Our experience of the world is not uniform, nor is our model uniformly complete (or incomplete). While there are any number of things about which we must hold open the possibility that we are wrong, there is a whole class of things about which we can be certain. For example, while we may not be sure just what gravity is and how it works, we can be certain that when we drop something (within certain well-understood bounds), it falls.
4. Technology has given us extensions to our senses, and external locations for our models and memories. This has resulted in qualitative and quantitative changes in what we know and how we know it. This means that we have overcome some of the objections Hume had about our knowledge and understanding of the world. Our sense impressions and reasonings about the world can be described specifically and unambiguously, and independently checked and verified. For example, a meter measuring stick can be independently manufactured, calibrated, and used to specify the length of an object, which itself can be independently identified and located, resulting in certainty that a particular thing is indeed a specific length (within a pre-defined margin of error). This is certainty. For some parts of our models, it is no longer useful to hold that we cannot be certain – rather, it is now no longer useful to pretend radical skepticism. This is not a universal, but it is non-the-less true.
5. It is just as valid, and much more useful, to suppose that the world is as we experience it as it is to hold open the possibility that it is not as we experience it. Models can always be revised, and assumptions checked – this is standard operating procedure for humans ("Is that what I think it is?"). While it may be an essential part of doing science to hold a skeptical position, it is neither credible nor helpful as a constant (nor does science proceed by holding this kind of skepticism about everything, or every experiment would begin with an infinite recursion of self-doubt). What is more useful is to be able to discriminate between what we are certain about (and the ways in which we are certain), and what we have uncertainty about (and the nature of our uncertainty).
The Nature of Certainty: Science and Faith
Revelation makes two assumptions: a revelation contains information beyond our ability to obtain though natural means, and the revelation can be understood (even if it must be deciphered or interpreted). Because the believer knows the truth (God told them, and is able to directly interface with the brain, bypassing indirect pathways like sight and sound) this belief is immune to Hume's logical objection. If a scientist argues that all knowledge is provisional and might be wrong, the person of faith will take that as an admission that their revelation trumps the scientists’ suppositions (after all, unlike the scientist's knowledge, theirs is certain, and based on "higher" authority, or direct God-to-brain communication). Further, the sacred text is a record of direct-to-brain communication made to trusted individuals in the past, and so also “trumps” mere scientific observation and modeling.
Science argues that it has useful models. These models allow you to make (more) accurate descriptions of behaviors and to make better predictions than many “folk models” arrived at via other methods. They deny certainty, they hold open the possibility that new observations will break their model; even that their models may not correspond to reality, except in some gross, over-simplified way – perhaps more of an analogy or metaphor than a physical description. Even if there is a reality, our brains may not be capable of understanding it, or encompassing it.
Is there an Objective Reality?
Then there is also the post-modern assertion that denies any over-arching explanation that encompasses everyone's experience. Though you can critique from within a narrative, and you can point out logical inconsistencies or examples of how a particular narrative is inconsistent or ineffective, you lack any meta-narrative by which you can make absolute judgments about right and wrong (or even correct and incorrect).
In this sense, post-modernists seem to be taking a page from science; we all have models of the world; they can be more (or less) useful, but we can't know (because we do not experience the world directly) if our models correspond with anything actually “out there.” Language, culture, politics all influence scientific activities and the interpretation of results. For example, Martin Seligman comments about his research on behavior modification that contrary evidence was suppressed, due to the overwhelming sense that BF Skinner was on to something.
Even the suggestion that via experiment and observation (the scientific method) people can arrive at consensus is up for grabs. Due to differences in language and culture (which apparently result in alterations to the shape and function of the brain) two people can reproduce the same experiment and reach different conclusions. Some experiments cannot be reproduced; we can only make observations. From this perspective, we are only left with a kind of pragmatism; what we know works (more-or-less) well; that has to be enough. What you believe is not wrong, it just does not work for me.
Of course, this suggests, not that science cannot discover truth, but that it is a human activity, with all that that implies. In fact, to claim that historical, political, cultural and personal motives and bias influences the models that science generates suggests a path by which those influences can be identified, and perhaps even removed.
I am reminded of Johnson's refutation of Berkely's idealism. Striking his foot on a stone, he said, “I refute it thus!” I am suggesting that our mental models share a material continuum with the stone our toe strikes. We may have to wade through the barriers of differences in brain structure, ways of thinking, differences in perception and analysis, competing models, and social, biological, and political constraints on our science. But in the end, these are things that can be sorted through and compensated for. If we cannot agree on what is, we can at least bound the solution space, and work on ways to further constrain the problem.
On top of all of this, we sample our environment at the end of a long chain of events. For example, we experience color as the result of (or at least, so we model it) photons bouncing off of physical objects and entering the structure of our eye, where their energy excites chemical reactions, causing electrical impulses to travel the optic nerve. These signals are then collated into some meaningful pattern which is passed from area to area in our brain. Motion is processed in one area of the brain, pattern-matching occurs somewhere else. At some point in this process, we become aware of these signals as a picture of what is "out there." As you might imagine, there are opportunities all along this chain for failure (no visible light), distortion (optical illusions), and even outright fabrication (hallucinations) to occur.
Rather than give in to Philosophy 101 despair, however, we've adopted any number of mechanisms to compensate for the vagaries of our perceptual apparatus. Someone walks down the street in green pants, and we say to our friend, "Did you see that? "See What?" “Those lime-green pants!” "Sorry, those are not green." Perhaps it is a testament to the unreliability of our senses that we spend so much time calibrating what we experience with those around us. We even tend to surround ourselves with people who experience the world as we do – abandoning the attempt to determine "absolute" truth in favor of a consensus among friends.
All-the-same most of us have a high degree of certainty that what we see is indeed what is out there. Might as well just say it like it is - we are certain that what we see (under a set of fairly broad circumstances) is what is out there, even allowing that we can be wrong, tricked, or from time-to-time confronted with something that we cannot classify or identify. It is the same with our other perceptions, and with our models of the world. Though we may interpret things differently, one person to another, we believe that we can (or could, given enough time and experience) know the “straight facts” about much of the world we live in.
Some philosophers claim that this is not the case. Hume argues, for example, that because many of the inputs for our mental model are mediated by our senses, we can never be certain that what we perceive is really what is "out there." We are doomed to experience the world at a perceptual reserve, never actually coming into contact with the world itself, so always stuck in a “web of guesses.” As a result, the best we can do is to be reasonably certain about our models of reality, and even under the best of circumstances, we must hold open the possibility that we are wrong (maybe there is no sun, it may not appear tomorrow, flipping the light switch may not be what makes the light come on, etc.).
I am not convinced, for a number of reasons.
1. This is a logical problem, which may or may not be connected to reality. In the same way Xeno's Paradoxes "prove" things impossible that we all do every day, Hume's argument may be more about the meaning of words than about our experience of reality. Or to use Xeno's example, if in order to reach an object we must cover half the distance between ourselves and the object, and then half the distance again, and so on, you must come to the logical conclusion that it is not possible to ever actually reach the object. This is logically true, but it does not actually map to our experience of the natural world.
2. We are part of the universe we perceive, not a remote observer. This means that we do not experience reality from outside, but as an observer who is part of the system. This may introduce interesting biases, but it is more reasonable to assume continuity with our surroundings than that we are of a different kind or substance from the world around us. Each part of the system we observe also has this same problem – it is separate from the effects it causes, and from the things that affect it. Yet we can observe that these disconnected things share the same substance, and do indeed supply action and reaction down the chain. We can now even observe our own internal perception processes and follow the causal links (even though we cannot sense these links and processes in the actual acts of perceiving or thinking). In this way, we can confirm that what we are perceiving is indeed the world that is out there.
3. Science, as an extension of the process of verification and validation of our senses that occurs as a normal part of social interaction, acts to confirm and correct our models. As such, we can become certain of some things, even as we withhold judgment on others. Our experience of the world is not uniform, nor is our model uniformly complete (or incomplete). While there are any number of things about which we must hold open the possibility that we are wrong, there is a whole class of things about which we can be certain. For example, while we may not be sure just what gravity is and how it works, we can be certain that when we drop something (within certain well-understood bounds), it falls.
4. Technology has given us extensions to our senses, and external locations for our models and memories. This has resulted in qualitative and quantitative changes in what we know and how we know it. This means that we have overcome some of the objections Hume had about our knowledge and understanding of the world. Our sense impressions and reasonings about the world can be described specifically and unambiguously, and independently checked and verified. For example, a meter measuring stick can be independently manufactured, calibrated, and used to specify the length of an object, which itself can be independently identified and located, resulting in certainty that a particular thing is indeed a specific length (within a pre-defined margin of error). This is certainty. For some parts of our models, it is no longer useful to hold that we cannot be certain – rather, it is now no longer useful to pretend radical skepticism. This is not a universal, but it is non-the-less true.
5. It is just as valid, and much more useful, to suppose that the world is as we experience it as it is to hold open the possibility that it is not as we experience it. Models can always be revised, and assumptions checked – this is standard operating procedure for humans ("Is that what I think it is?"). While it may be an essential part of doing science to hold a skeptical position, it is neither credible nor helpful as a constant (nor does science proceed by holding this kind of skepticism about everything, or every experiment would begin with an infinite recursion of self-doubt). What is more useful is to be able to discriminate between what we are certain about (and the ways in which we are certain), and what we have uncertainty about (and the nature of our uncertainty).
The Nature of Certainty: Science and Faith
Revelation makes two assumptions: a revelation contains information beyond our ability to obtain though natural means, and the revelation can be understood (even if it must be deciphered or interpreted). Because the believer knows the truth (God told them, and is able to directly interface with the brain, bypassing indirect pathways like sight and sound) this belief is immune to Hume's logical objection. If a scientist argues that all knowledge is provisional and might be wrong, the person of faith will take that as an admission that their revelation trumps the scientists’ suppositions (after all, unlike the scientist's knowledge, theirs is certain, and based on "higher" authority, or direct God-to-brain communication). Further, the sacred text is a record of direct-to-brain communication made to trusted individuals in the past, and so also “trumps” mere scientific observation and modeling.
Science argues that it has useful models. These models allow you to make (more) accurate descriptions of behaviors and to make better predictions than many “folk models” arrived at via other methods. They deny certainty, they hold open the possibility that new observations will break their model; even that their models may not correspond to reality, except in some gross, over-simplified way – perhaps more of an analogy or metaphor than a physical description. Even if there is a reality, our brains may not be capable of understanding it, or encompassing it.
Is there an Objective Reality?
Then there is also the post-modern assertion that denies any over-arching explanation that encompasses everyone's experience. Though you can critique from within a narrative, and you can point out logical inconsistencies or examples of how a particular narrative is inconsistent or ineffective, you lack any meta-narrative by which you can make absolute judgments about right and wrong (or even correct and incorrect).
In this sense, post-modernists seem to be taking a page from science; we all have models of the world; they can be more (or less) useful, but we can't know (because we do not experience the world directly) if our models correspond with anything actually “out there.” Language, culture, politics all influence scientific activities and the interpretation of results. For example, Martin Seligman comments about his research on behavior modification that contrary evidence was suppressed, due to the overwhelming sense that BF Skinner was on to something.
Even the suggestion that via experiment and observation (the scientific method) people can arrive at consensus is up for grabs. Due to differences in language and culture (which apparently result in alterations to the shape and function of the brain) two people can reproduce the same experiment and reach different conclusions. Some experiments cannot be reproduced; we can only make observations. From this perspective, we are only left with a kind of pragmatism; what we know works (more-or-less) well; that has to be enough. What you believe is not wrong, it just does not work for me.
Of course, this suggests, not that science cannot discover truth, but that it is a human activity, with all that that implies. In fact, to claim that historical, political, cultural and personal motives and bias influences the models that science generates suggests a path by which those influences can be identified, and perhaps even removed.
I am reminded of Johnson's refutation of Berkely's idealism. Striking his foot on a stone, he said, “I refute it thus!” I am suggesting that our mental models share a material continuum with the stone our toe strikes. We may have to wade through the barriers of differences in brain structure, ways of thinking, differences in perception and analysis, competing models, and social, biological, and political constraints on our science. But in the end, these are things that can be sorted through and compensated for. If we cannot agree on what is, we can at least bound the solution space, and work on ways to further constrain the problem.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Is This What It Means to Be Post-Modern?
If by postmodern, we mean that "meta-narratives" (a coherent, all-encompassing story that gives shape and meaning to our lives) like science and ideologies (-isms and -itys of all sorts) have failed us (or are just not all-encompassing enough), then maybe the post-modernest has (quite unconsciously) decided to inhabit adjacent "pools" of perspective. In one environment, and with one community, perhaps we accept cause-and-effect, and look toward the rational and scientific for guidance. Later, with other folks, or while immersed in other objectives, we are intuitive, or non-rational (even mystical)- and embrace ideas no science can prove. Rather than try to tie the two together, perhaps we simply put these meta-narratives on and off as required.
Our desire for a story, a direction, a purpose to our lives may be more important to us than any sort of literal or scientific truth. Our comfort and survival may be more important than any ideology or religion. Our language, our brain, our limited experience may condemn us to a partial, unsatisfactory understanding of whatever it is we turn our minds to. We fill in the sketchy parts with a story, or some speculation, or even rationalization.
We may be willing (even eager) to discover lacuna (gaps in our meta-narratives, which are then available to fill with our own conjecture) into which we place our sense of significance (isn't this what the mystification of Quantum Mechanics is all about? Expanding the interactions of the unimaginably small to hold our hopes and dreams, to keep them safe from the relentlessly Newtonian universe that rules at our scale of existence)?
Even knowing that soul and spirit are not different from the brain and body (or perhaps they turn out to be epi-physical; latent, but actually generated by interactions between our brain and our environment - family, community and language (and so tied to our zeitgeist), manifesting in physical changes to our brain), won't we continue to experience pattern, and significance, and intuition; to experience life as larger than our ability to comprehend it (even if this is "simply" a limitation of our brain) - precisely so that there is some place for hope, and dream and destination?
Our desire for a story, a direction, a purpose to our lives may be more important to us than any sort of literal or scientific truth. Our comfort and survival may be more important than any ideology or religion. Our language, our brain, our limited experience may condemn us to a partial, unsatisfactory understanding of whatever it is we turn our minds to. We fill in the sketchy parts with a story, or some speculation, or even rationalization.
We may be willing (even eager) to discover lacuna (gaps in our meta-narratives, which are then available to fill with our own conjecture) into which we place our sense of significance (isn't this what the mystification of Quantum Mechanics is all about? Expanding the interactions of the unimaginably small to hold our hopes and dreams, to keep them safe from the relentlessly Newtonian universe that rules at our scale of existence)?
Even knowing that soul and spirit are not different from the brain and body (or perhaps they turn out to be epi-physical; latent, but actually generated by interactions between our brain and our environment - family, community and language (and so tied to our zeitgeist), manifesting in physical changes to our brain), won't we continue to experience pattern, and significance, and intuition; to experience life as larger than our ability to comprehend it (even if this is "simply" a limitation of our brain) - precisely so that there is some place for hope, and dream and destination?
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Secularism is Not Secular Humanism
Secularism is an approach to civil order that argues that the religious beliefs of a particular sect or religion should not dominate the legal and social structures of a society. It is an approach to dealing with pluralism. What do you do when the citizens of your country are not just biblical literalists, but also Protestants with varying views of the Bible; Catholics, Orthodox, Gnostic and so on (yes, including mutually contradictory beliefs on what constitutes heresy), not to mention Mormonism, Scientology, Unity, various Native American, Pagan, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Janist, Zoroastrian, etc. etc.?
One approach is to set up religious police (dare I say Inquisitor?). You can revise the Constitution to include a religious test for public office (surely if teachers have to pass muster on what they can teach, politicians should as well). Of course, I hope you will agree that this is not a good idea (if for no other reason than there is insufficient time for any particular group to vet everyone, and you really can't trust anyone else, if the history of denominational splits is any indication). After all, without a national religious purity group, you'd get all sorts of regional and local variation, and that won't do, if the point is adherence to a particular approach to biblical literalism. Sure, conservative are banded together now, but that is because of a perceived common enemy. There would be no where near as much cooperation in victory.
The alternative is to remain a secular state. So what does that mean? It means that you don't push ANYONE's religion. So what do you teach in school? Reading, writing, math, science, the arts, history, humanities...
Of course, you immediately run afoul of various faiths at this point. What books do you read? Whose history do you teach? What is a fitting subject of the arts? What views can be expressed, especially if they are critical of a particular religious belief or practice? What conclusions of science do you discuss? Almost all scientific facts offend someone's religious beliefs. Christian Scientists reject the germ theory of disease. Mormons dispute the settlement patterns of North America, Hindus reject the idea of the heat death of the universe, Islamic, Christian, Jewish and Hindu conservatives reject evolution (though they may disagree on the details of the alternatives).
If you are a biblical literalist, do you think about these questions - the implications of the cultural victory you strive for, or do you long for a theistic state, with your interpretation of the Bible deciding all these questions, forgetting the struggle for power that comes with control of the apparatus of government? Can you see that even if you want a theocracy, you have no consensus on how that works out in practice? That the history of religious / state conflicts have been bloody and savage? That our Constitution enshrines secularism for a reason? If you are not a literalist, do you see that this discussion is important, perhaps even critical?
I do not want biblical literalists to force my children to learn a non-scientific, non-biblical version of history and science. I don't want to live in fear of being punished because I have run afoul of one specific group's religious beliefs about the fitness of my faith to pastor a church or teach in public school. I hold that it is wrong to force a particular religion on the culture, and to fire teachers who have done no more than state what the evidence demonstrates; that the creation story and the flood are non-historical; that evolution best explains the diversity of life on the planet; that God speaks through people, who share the cultural limitations of their place in history. Sure, you can believe as you see fit; but the broader culture should not be forced to live under your censorship, especially when it comes to the discoveries of science.
One approach is to set up religious police (dare I say Inquisitor?). You can revise the Constitution to include a religious test for public office (surely if teachers have to pass muster on what they can teach, politicians should as well). Of course, I hope you will agree that this is not a good idea (if for no other reason than there is insufficient time for any particular group to vet everyone, and you really can't trust anyone else, if the history of denominational splits is any indication). After all, without a national religious purity group, you'd get all sorts of regional and local variation, and that won't do, if the point is adherence to a particular approach to biblical literalism. Sure, conservative are banded together now, but that is because of a perceived common enemy. There would be no where near as much cooperation in victory.
The alternative is to remain a secular state. So what does that mean? It means that you don't push ANYONE's religion. So what do you teach in school? Reading, writing, math, science, the arts, history, humanities...
Of course, you immediately run afoul of various faiths at this point. What books do you read? Whose history do you teach? What is a fitting subject of the arts? What views can be expressed, especially if they are critical of a particular religious belief or practice? What conclusions of science do you discuss? Almost all scientific facts offend someone's religious beliefs. Christian Scientists reject the germ theory of disease. Mormons dispute the settlement patterns of North America, Hindus reject the idea of the heat death of the universe, Islamic, Christian, Jewish and Hindu conservatives reject evolution (though they may disagree on the details of the alternatives).
If you are a biblical literalist, do you think about these questions - the implications of the cultural victory you strive for, or do you long for a theistic state, with your interpretation of the Bible deciding all these questions, forgetting the struggle for power that comes with control of the apparatus of government? Can you see that even if you want a theocracy, you have no consensus on how that works out in practice? That the history of religious / state conflicts have been bloody and savage? That our Constitution enshrines secularism for a reason? If you are not a literalist, do you see that this discussion is important, perhaps even critical?
I do not want biblical literalists to force my children to learn a non-scientific, non-biblical version of history and science. I don't want to live in fear of being punished because I have run afoul of one specific group's religious beliefs about the fitness of my faith to pastor a church or teach in public school. I hold that it is wrong to force a particular religion on the culture, and to fire teachers who have done no more than state what the evidence demonstrates; that the creation story and the flood are non-historical; that evolution best explains the diversity of life on the planet; that God speaks through people, who share the cultural limitations of their place in history. Sure, you can believe as you see fit; but the broader culture should not be forced to live under your censorship, especially when it comes to the discoveries of science.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Why Are Some Christians so Wedded to Creationism?
After some years of trying (with little success) to convince creationists that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, it has become clear that the objection is primarily theological, and not evidential. The reason that creationists will not accept evolution is because it contradicts their theology, and no amount of reasoning concerning evolution will address that.
This leads me to the conclusion that more attention needs to be placed on the theology of creationism. There are at least two faulty assumptions creationists make. First, that the Bible should be taken as “literal” truth, and second, that the God of the Bible would deceive humans (plant misleading evidence) as to the origins of the natural world by making it seem that the world is one way (old), while it is actually some other way (young).
Assumption 1: The Bible is Meant to Be Taken Literally
Creationists argue that the main mode for understanding the Bible is to take its plain meaning. Though this is a generally sound approach, it fails when you ignore the cultural and historical context of the Bible, and when you ignore clues from the natural world. For example, creationists argue that the Genesis creation accounts are to be taken literally. There are several problems with this assertion.
1. Both Jewish and Christian theologians, both today and throughout history, have taken a variety of non-literal views of the Genesis story. Though a literal approach is one possibility, given scientific evidence, it should be abandoned, just as the church abandoned geocentrism.
2. There are two creation stories (Genesis 1:1-2:3, and Genesis 2:4-2:25). These accounts do not mesh, leading to the clear conclusion that neither should be viewed as “scientific” truth about how the world came to be, and how life (and people) were created. The most obvious demonstration of the need for a non-literal approach here is that that man and woman are created together, in the image of God, and after plants and animals in the first story, while man is created BEFORE plants, animals, sun, moon and stars in the second story, with woman created almost as an afterthought (“but for the man, no suitable helper could be found”) from man‘s rib.
3. The Genesis creation story does not make sense as a scientific explanation, as day and night are “created” before the sun, green plants before the sun, and the sun, moon and stars all described as being fixed in the sky.
4. Stories like the long day in Joshua 10 (which states in verse 11 “The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day“) show that the Bible incorporates then-current cosmology into its worldview (we know this, because stopping the sun would not impact the length of the day).
5. Stories like Noah’s ark (which describe a worldwide flood that did not happen) reinforce that the Bible is not a science textbook. Apologetics for the global flood end up making claims that the Bible itself does not support (for example, large-scale geographic changes - gorges carved, mountains raised etc).
Assumption 2: Scientific Evidence is Wrong (God Intended Non-Believers to be Deceived)
Creationists have to deny that science discovers accurate things about the world. Taken as a whole, there is no doubt that the world is old, and that we share common ancestors with all life. There is no evidence for a young earth or special creation. These facts have to be denied, in order to promote creationism. Science is not judged by how closely it describes reality, but by how close it matches creationism. "Useful" science is readily incorporated into creationist doctrine (for example, "micro" evolution), but those same scientists are suspect when they fail to support creationist theology.
1. While accusing scientists of fabricating support for evolution, creationists distort the plain meaning of the Bible, create miracles where none are mentioned (parent-less baby dinosaurs living as vegetarians on the ark), and believe things about evolution and biology that no working scientist finds credible (for example, the extinction of dinosaurs in rigid order (all the dinosaurs of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous dying in the same group order all over the world, without EVER getting mixed up). Easy to explain if they were separated by millions of years - rather more difficult if they all lived at the same time only a few thousand years ago).
2. Creationists Arbitrarily Deny "Macro" Evolution
Just like creationists had to admit that the “geocentric” view of the Bible was wrong, so they have had to concede that evolution, as a mechanism, exists (after all, we observe it real-time in the lab, and in the world around us). So now they accept “micro” evolution (changes within species), but deny the evolution of major organs or systems (in spite of excellent evidence for the evolution of flight three different times, or the land-mammal-to-whale fossil evidence - to mention just two examples among many). Why deny "macro" evolution? Because they have had to fabricate an extra-biblical concept of "kinds" as generic animals types from which modern animals evolved in order to maintain a belief in special creation.
3. Creationists Arbitrarily Endow "Micro" Evolution with Abilities it Lacks
Now that they have embraced evolution, they credit it with far more than can be supported by the evidence or theory. From a few thousand “kinds“ on the ark, more than 16 million plus species must have radiated out from Mount Ararat to all the remote corners of the world - crossing oceans, adapting to new environments, evading new predators. And remember that we have written history going back to the supposed flood date, and the existing species we are familiar with were with us then as well, so this must have happened in the blink of an eye. If the flood happened around 2500 B.C., this gives virtually no time for this incredibly rapid evolution. Again, no scientist believes that the genome is capable of this rate of evolution, nor is there any explanation for why the rate of evolution ground to a halt some four thousand years ago.
A Powerful Motivation
So creationists are in the uncomfortable position of forcing the Bible to mean things it clearly does not, and forcing evolution to do things it clearly cannot. There must be a powerful motivation for this kind of rationalization and denial. I think there are at least 4:
1. A Desire to Control the Interpretation of the Bible
The larger church has embraced a wide range of Biblical interpretation. Creationists are uncomfortable with many of these, and see Biblical literalism as a way of “closing the door” on teachings they do not approve of (while reserving the right to interpret the Bible less literally when needed (for example, in “harmonizing” Genesis 1 and 2, or allowing women to go to church with heads uncovered)).
2. A Desire to Retain Confidence in the Historicity of the Bible
The physical life, death and resurrection of Jesus is central to creationist’s theology. Creationism is a kind of “forward line” in their defense of this doctrine. A common argument is that, if Genesis 1 is not meant to be taken as history, then how do you support the resurrection of Jesus as history? The immediate problem with this argument is that, as it is certain that Genesis 1 is not history, this seems like an unfortunate linkage to make, as this belief requires that you either have to give up science, or the historicity of the resurrection. A more tenable position would be one that recognizes the cultural forces at work in the Bible, recognizing that its authors were humans, limited in their understanding of geology, cosmology, biology, physics - in fact, lacking even adequate vocabulary to express much of what we now know to be true about the natural world. The Bible was not created all at once, or even assembled until after the Apostolic age; there is no reason to link the historicity of Genesis with the evidence for the life of Jesus.
3. A Desire to View the Bible as “Verbally” Inspired
Most creationists also argue that the Bible is without error - each word is from God (the human writer's cultural and religious beliefs did not impinge on the contents of the text). When pressed about some errors found in the Bible, many fall back to the position that the “original manuscripts” are inerrant. We no longer have the originals, and copy errors account for any mistakes of fact. Much of the creative biblical interpretation among creationists are devoted to harmonizing or otherwise explaining away errors or contradictions in the Bible.
The undeniable fact that the Bible does contain lots of cultural bias (against slaves, against women, against folks from other religions, for example), as usual, is faced when it can't be denied,or when a particular practice is no longer in vogue. An example is the requirement that a woman's head be covered in church. In most creationist circles, this is no longer required - not because the Bible changed, but because our culture changed. Essentially, I am arguing that the same reevaluation of Genesis (in light of science) is at least as valid as the church's reevaluation of women's head coverings.
4. A Belief that Only Creationists' Theology Provides a Basis for Salvation and a Moral Society
Ultimately, you are going to Hell unless you believe like they do. What is more, all social ills are because other people don’t believe like they do (on the other hand, when people who DO believe like they do commit crimes or immoral acts, this is because they are only human).
Despite the fact that there are less religious cultures with lower rates of crime, divorce, and disease, and higher rates satisfaction with life, there is a belief that only a civilization founded on their interpretation of the Bible can be successful.
As you can see, the reasons creationists deny science have to do with maintaining a particular perspective on the Bible. However, this theology comes with a high cost; science and scientists are slandered in the process (cast as at best deluded, and at worst enemies of God), truth is denied, and the Bible itself is distorted. These facts should be warning signs that creationist theology is on the wrong track.
This leads me to the conclusion that more attention needs to be placed on the theology of creationism. There are at least two faulty assumptions creationists make. First, that the Bible should be taken as “literal” truth, and second, that the God of the Bible would deceive humans (plant misleading evidence) as to the origins of the natural world by making it seem that the world is one way (old), while it is actually some other way (young).
Assumption 1: The Bible is Meant to Be Taken Literally
Creationists argue that the main mode for understanding the Bible is to take its plain meaning. Though this is a generally sound approach, it fails when you ignore the cultural and historical context of the Bible, and when you ignore clues from the natural world. For example, creationists argue that the Genesis creation accounts are to be taken literally. There are several problems with this assertion.
1. Both Jewish and Christian theologians, both today and throughout history, have taken a variety of non-literal views of the Genesis story. Though a literal approach is one possibility, given scientific evidence, it should be abandoned, just as the church abandoned geocentrism.
2. There are two creation stories (Genesis 1:1-2:3, and Genesis 2:4-2:25). These accounts do not mesh, leading to the clear conclusion that neither should be viewed as “scientific” truth about how the world came to be, and how life (and people) were created. The most obvious demonstration of the need for a non-literal approach here is that that man and woman are created together, in the image of God, and after plants and animals in the first story, while man is created BEFORE plants, animals, sun, moon and stars in the second story, with woman created almost as an afterthought (“but for the man, no suitable helper could be found”) from man‘s rib.
3. The Genesis creation story does not make sense as a scientific explanation, as day and night are “created” before the sun, green plants before the sun, and the sun, moon and stars all described as being fixed in the sky.
4. Stories like the long day in Joshua 10 (which states in verse 11 “The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day“) show that the Bible incorporates then-current cosmology into its worldview (we know this, because stopping the sun would not impact the length of the day).
5. Stories like Noah’s ark (which describe a worldwide flood that did not happen) reinforce that the Bible is not a science textbook. Apologetics for the global flood end up making claims that the Bible itself does not support (for example, large-scale geographic changes - gorges carved, mountains raised etc).
Assumption 2: Scientific Evidence is Wrong (God Intended Non-Believers to be Deceived)
Creationists have to deny that science discovers accurate things about the world. Taken as a whole, there is no doubt that the world is old, and that we share common ancestors with all life. There is no evidence for a young earth or special creation. These facts have to be denied, in order to promote creationism. Science is not judged by how closely it describes reality, but by how close it matches creationism. "Useful" science is readily incorporated into creationist doctrine (for example, "micro" evolution), but those same scientists are suspect when they fail to support creationist theology.
1. While accusing scientists of fabricating support for evolution, creationists distort the plain meaning of the Bible, create miracles where none are mentioned (parent-less baby dinosaurs living as vegetarians on the ark), and believe things about evolution and biology that no working scientist finds credible (for example, the extinction of dinosaurs in rigid order (all the dinosaurs of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous dying in the same group order all over the world, without EVER getting mixed up). Easy to explain if they were separated by millions of years - rather more difficult if they all lived at the same time only a few thousand years ago).
2. Creationists Arbitrarily Deny "Macro" Evolution
Just like creationists had to admit that the “geocentric” view of the Bible was wrong, so they have had to concede that evolution, as a mechanism, exists (after all, we observe it real-time in the lab, and in the world around us). So now they accept “micro” evolution (changes within species), but deny the evolution of major organs or systems (in spite of excellent evidence for the evolution of flight three different times, or the land-mammal-to-whale fossil evidence - to mention just two examples among many). Why deny "macro" evolution? Because they have had to fabricate an extra-biblical concept of "kinds" as generic animals types from which modern animals evolved in order to maintain a belief in special creation.
3. Creationists Arbitrarily Endow "Micro" Evolution with Abilities it Lacks
Now that they have embraced evolution, they credit it with far more than can be supported by the evidence or theory. From a few thousand “kinds“ on the ark, more than 16 million plus species must have radiated out from Mount Ararat to all the remote corners of the world - crossing oceans, adapting to new environments, evading new predators. And remember that we have written history going back to the supposed flood date, and the existing species we are familiar with were with us then as well, so this must have happened in the blink of an eye. If the flood happened around 2500 B.C., this gives virtually no time for this incredibly rapid evolution. Again, no scientist believes that the genome is capable of this rate of evolution, nor is there any explanation for why the rate of evolution ground to a halt some four thousand years ago.
A Powerful Motivation
So creationists are in the uncomfortable position of forcing the Bible to mean things it clearly does not, and forcing evolution to do things it clearly cannot. There must be a powerful motivation for this kind of rationalization and denial. I think there are at least 4:
1. A Desire to Control the Interpretation of the Bible
The larger church has embraced a wide range of Biblical interpretation. Creationists are uncomfortable with many of these, and see Biblical literalism as a way of “closing the door” on teachings they do not approve of (while reserving the right to interpret the Bible less literally when needed (for example, in “harmonizing” Genesis 1 and 2, or allowing women to go to church with heads uncovered)).
2. A Desire to Retain Confidence in the Historicity of the Bible
The physical life, death and resurrection of Jesus is central to creationist’s theology. Creationism is a kind of “forward line” in their defense of this doctrine. A common argument is that, if Genesis 1 is not meant to be taken as history, then how do you support the resurrection of Jesus as history? The immediate problem with this argument is that, as it is certain that Genesis 1 is not history, this seems like an unfortunate linkage to make, as this belief requires that you either have to give up science, or the historicity of the resurrection. A more tenable position would be one that recognizes the cultural forces at work in the Bible, recognizing that its authors were humans, limited in their understanding of geology, cosmology, biology, physics - in fact, lacking even adequate vocabulary to express much of what we now know to be true about the natural world. The Bible was not created all at once, or even assembled until after the Apostolic age; there is no reason to link the historicity of Genesis with the evidence for the life of Jesus.
3. A Desire to View the Bible as “Verbally” Inspired
Most creationists also argue that the Bible is without error - each word is from God (the human writer's cultural and religious beliefs did not impinge on the contents of the text). When pressed about some errors found in the Bible, many fall back to the position that the “original manuscripts” are inerrant. We no longer have the originals, and copy errors account for any mistakes of fact. Much of the creative biblical interpretation among creationists are devoted to harmonizing or otherwise explaining away errors or contradictions in the Bible.
The undeniable fact that the Bible does contain lots of cultural bias (against slaves, against women, against folks from other religions, for example), as usual, is faced when it can't be denied,or when a particular practice is no longer in vogue. An example is the requirement that a woman's head be covered in church. In most creationist circles, this is no longer required - not because the Bible changed, but because our culture changed. Essentially, I am arguing that the same reevaluation of Genesis (in light of science) is at least as valid as the church's reevaluation of women's head coverings.
4. A Belief that Only Creationists' Theology Provides a Basis for Salvation and a Moral Society
Ultimately, you are going to Hell unless you believe like they do. What is more, all social ills are because other people don’t believe like they do (on the other hand, when people who DO believe like they do commit crimes or immoral acts, this is because they are only human).
Despite the fact that there are less religious cultures with lower rates of crime, divorce, and disease, and higher rates satisfaction with life, there is a belief that only a civilization founded on their interpretation of the Bible can be successful.
As you can see, the reasons creationists deny science have to do with maintaining a particular perspective on the Bible. However, this theology comes with a high cost; science and scientists are slandered in the process (cast as at best deluded, and at worst enemies of God), truth is denied, and the Bible itself is distorted. These facts should be warning signs that creationist theology is on the wrong track.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Ditch Magical Thinking
Science has been put forward (at least in the classical Western mind-set) as the most effective way to understand the natural world. Although science is often faulted for being incomplete, or inadequate to the task of explaining all of our experience, it has a unique place in our culture - it explains our world, and allows us to develop effective technologies in a way that magic and speculative philosophy never has.
For example, though someone may completely ignore their health, play the lottery, read their horoscope, believe in ghosts (all indications of magical thinking)– they still get on an airplane (the fruit of science). They don’t understand Bernoulli's principle, so it may as well be imps holding the plane up as a difference in air pressure. The fact that no one rode in airplanes even 100 years ago (or used a telephone, or a computer, or a light bulb, or sat in a car) underscores the 1,000s of technologies that have come from a better understanding of how the world works. Magic has never worked over the entire course of human history, while science has enabled technologies that rival the wildest fables. You’d think that folks would compare the outcome of magical thinking, and the outcome of scientific thinking and draw the obvious conclusions. Still, most folks seem to embrace the fruit of science, while retaining a magical worldview.
When we discover (much to our surprise) that magic is invisible to science, magical thinkers see this as a fault of science, not as an error in their way of seeing the world. Yet magical thinking injects inaccurate, often dangerous ways of viewing the world. Consider the popularity of prosperity thinking (currently championed by no less than Oprah) in a world where we allow billions to face hunger, famine, disease, and early preventable death. Consider our unwillingness to face up to the way we have polluted our world, while ignoring the clear results – declining fisheries, animal extinctions, global warming. We can raise over 600 million dollars in 10 days to see Spiderman III, but we can’t be bothered to address Darfur, the Central African Republic, drug resistant TB, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, acute malnutrition - the list goes on.
We forget that we live in a democracy (that is, we are responsible for the state of things), and let our infrastructure crumble, our children go without health coverage, and our commitment to fairness and decency dissolve, while we seek immediate gratification (and fall further in debt).
At least one reason these things happen is that we fail to see the obvious conclusions science presents us, and take responsibility for ourselves, our community and our planet. Magic does not work, and our culture is not going to be made happy, healthy or wise by magical thinking. We cannot hand over political power to the greedy and corrupt and expect good to come of it. We can’t insist on buying the cheapest goods and expect anything other than exploitation, slavery and shoddy practices to come of it.
Instead, we should be spending our political and economic capital in ways that help build a world in which we all can live. Paying careful attention to the way things are (the legacy of science) is a first step in this process, because it helps us exchange our magical (wishful) thinking for a glimpse of what actually is. Even more crucial are the next steps, where we create a fairer, more just culture based, not on what we wished was real, but based on what actually exists.
For example, though someone may completely ignore their health, play the lottery, read their horoscope, believe in ghosts (all indications of magical thinking)– they still get on an airplane (the fruit of science). They don’t understand Bernoulli's principle, so it may as well be imps holding the plane up as a difference in air pressure. The fact that no one rode in airplanes even 100 years ago (or used a telephone, or a computer, or a light bulb, or sat in a car) underscores the 1,000s of technologies that have come from a better understanding of how the world works. Magic has never worked over the entire course of human history, while science has enabled technologies that rival the wildest fables. You’d think that folks would compare the outcome of magical thinking, and the outcome of scientific thinking and draw the obvious conclusions. Still, most folks seem to embrace the fruit of science, while retaining a magical worldview.
When we discover (much to our surprise) that magic is invisible to science, magical thinkers see this as a fault of science, not as an error in their way of seeing the world. Yet magical thinking injects inaccurate, often dangerous ways of viewing the world. Consider the popularity of prosperity thinking (currently championed by no less than Oprah) in a world where we allow billions to face hunger, famine, disease, and early preventable death. Consider our unwillingness to face up to the way we have polluted our world, while ignoring the clear results – declining fisheries, animal extinctions, global warming. We can raise over 600 million dollars in 10 days to see Spiderman III, but we can’t be bothered to address Darfur, the Central African Republic, drug resistant TB, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, acute malnutrition - the list goes on.
We forget that we live in a democracy (that is, we are responsible for the state of things), and let our infrastructure crumble, our children go without health coverage, and our commitment to fairness and decency dissolve, while we seek immediate gratification (and fall further in debt).
At least one reason these things happen is that we fail to see the obvious conclusions science presents us, and take responsibility for ourselves, our community and our planet. Magic does not work, and our culture is not going to be made happy, healthy or wise by magical thinking. We cannot hand over political power to the greedy and corrupt and expect good to come of it. We can’t insist on buying the cheapest goods and expect anything other than exploitation, slavery and shoddy practices to come of it.
Instead, we should be spending our political and economic capital in ways that help build a world in which we all can live. Paying careful attention to the way things are (the legacy of science) is a first step in this process, because it helps us exchange our magical (wishful) thinking for a glimpse of what actually is. Even more crucial are the next steps, where we create a fairer, more just culture based, not on what we wished was real, but based on what actually exists.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Any Room for Faith?
So I've heard that my last post seems a little bleak.
I have to say that this is pretty much how it ... Sorry for repeating the bleak part.
The "On the other hand?"
The experience of billions of people is that they experience patterns, events, feelings, circumstances that cannot be explained by viewing their life as simply a series of natural causes and effects. From answers to prayer, to physical healing, to synchronicities too amazing to be coincidence, the reports of the overwhelming majority of people is that there is some extra dimension to their life - some spiritual component that is required to make sense of their experience.
I don't doubt this. I experience it myself. I am, however, coming to recognize that, however it is explained, this is not what we have traditionally thought of as 'supernatural" experiences. I am not saying that they don't exist, and by calling them natural I am not trying to rule out the activities of God or what we think of as spiritual forces - I am simply suggesting that whatever these things are, they operate withing the natural world.
Why do I think this? Partially because of the evidence science provides, that natural causation is not violated. Before you insist that this is the case, consider that the world of the Bible is not supernatural - God is portrayed as potent in the natural world - Spirit, yes, but not without the means to impact this world.
I have to say that this is pretty much how it ... Sorry for repeating the bleak part.
The "On the other hand?"
The experience of billions of people is that they experience patterns, events, feelings, circumstances that cannot be explained by viewing their life as simply a series of natural causes and effects. From answers to prayer, to physical healing, to synchronicities too amazing to be coincidence, the reports of the overwhelming majority of people is that there is some extra dimension to their life - some spiritual component that is required to make sense of their experience.
I don't doubt this. I experience it myself. I am, however, coming to recognize that, however it is explained, this is not what we have traditionally thought of as 'supernatural" experiences. I am not saying that they don't exist, and by calling them natural I am not trying to rule out the activities of God or what we think of as spiritual forces - I am simply suggesting that whatever these things are, they operate withing the natural world.
Why do I think this? Partially because of the evidence science provides, that natural causation is not violated. Before you insist that this is the case, consider that the world of the Bible is not supernatural - God is portrayed as potent in the natural world - Spirit, yes, but not without the means to impact this world.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
What We Need to Believe
Reading a review of Behe's new book God as Genetic Engineer, I am reminded that what creationists claim as true, and what even creationist proponents believe can be supported by the evidence are two different things.
For example, Behe accepts an old age for the earth, common ancestors for chimps and humans, and the ability of sequential mutations to increase an organism's chances for survival. He accepts these things, though they contradict biblical literalism, because the evidence is compelling.
Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, given a chance to clarify his views of evolution, backs away from a literal reading of Genesis, and says that faith and science are not in conflict - meaning that evolution happened, and that Genesis 1 is not to be taken literally.
What remains? A conviction, widely held, that "all this is not an accident." The notion that some way, some how, "God did it." This is not based on the Bible or science – it is a "gut feeling" that life is not just a series of random events – that we have a privileged place in the universe.
The difficulty, of course, is in getting down to specifics. It is clear that God did not do it as laid out in the Bible (or any other religious text). It is clear that God (as immediate cause) is not needed to explain any part of the world we live in (except to assert that in some as-yet-not-understood way, “God did it”).
Not only do we find no clear evidence of God acting in history or our day-to-day world, it is becoming increasingly clear that there is no known mechanism for supernatural action at all. The response of faith is, “well, obviously, science is wrong, because God does act.” That, and the other theistic response - that the things we discover about the natural world, including cosmology and evolution, is how God does it.
So how can smart people like Behe and Huckabee and Brownback live with this cognitive dissonance (claiming both that the all we can know about are material causes, and faith’s claims that all the important causes are supernatural)? They know (and even publicly admit) that the Bible does not accurately portray (when taken even semi-literally) the history and workings of the natural world. Yet they find themselves compelled by their belief to insist that God has taken a direct (though unspecified) role in shaping the natural world, the historical events in the world in the last few thousand years, and in the day-to-day events of their (and billions of others') lives.
Treat this like a large-scale survey about what people need and want in their lives. They want the world to make sense. They need there to be order and pattern and purpose. We experience the effects of this unmet need in the social chaos we see around us - people seeking any number of things (much self- and socially- destructive) to escape pointlessness and boredom, alienation and loneliness.
Science is often perceived as relentlessly eroding a sense of purpose and significance - at best silent, and at worse dismissive of the notion that we can have a special relationship with a supernatural force that impacts our world in a way that benefits our daily life, community and world history. Science earns this reputation by failing to find any evidence that claims of supernatural intervention have any basis in fact.
The implications are not lost on people of faith: absent supernatural intervention, we may not be a special people, and our leaders not appointed by the gods. This may not be not the promised land. The seasons and weather may not reflect supernatural approval or disapproval of our actions. Wealth may not be a sign of divine favor. Parking spaces may not be held open for us by the great valet in the sky. Worse, much of what happens may be as pointless, random and unfair as it seems. Meaning may be where we find it, and love may be where we make room for it.
Of course, this could all be taken as a wakeup call to grow up and take more responsibility for our lives, our relationships, our community and planet. Conversely, many people have tried and failed the attempt to be responsible and proactive, and have found themselves unable to cope with the despair, the open alternatives, the absence of any objective set of values or fixed compass by which to navigate. They turn to faith for certainty, for direction, even purpose.
So the reaction is often to blame the messenger - science. This is normal - especially since the expectations for science and technology are so great, and science and technology has proven such a mixed blessing. Still, the message, such as it is, is accurate.
Science cannot get us out of this mess, because it is not a religion, offers no path to meaning and purpose, and is not, in itself, a foundation for meaningful community.
People seem to need a sense of purpose, significance, and community. We seem to need a sense of our place, and a way to make a meaningful, lasting contribution. We want to be safe, and to be free from fear and want. We obviously to need to learn how to be social creatures, able to interact positively with others – and to do that, we need stable, helpful models. This takes enduring institutions and an extravagant investment of time and compassion. It takes a way of starting over, a way of being held accountable, a way of being forced to live within some limits.
The value of individuals, the right relationship between a government and the governed, an individuals obligations to their community (and vice versa)- these are all tightly bound up with people's moral, ethical and religious beliefs.
Science is not a replacement for faith or morals, but it often represents the only viable alternative to revelation or arbitrary claims of authority. It is can be an infuriating goad to arbitrary authority. Science can be stifling orthodoxy to folks who are trying to think in new ways. Because science makes no claim to infallibility, and yet is often viewed as the final arbiter of truth - (both claims have some merit), science is seen as both autocratic and fractious, authoritative, and as changeable as the next discovery or clinical trial.
The best way to defend science is to build healthy communities of people who, among other things, embrace science as a tool - neither making it an oracle, nor forcing it to be subservient to some other master (politics, capitalism, prejudice or religious dogma). Science is a critical tool exactly because it can help us discover accurate things about our world. When we silence science (as we have in the discussions of global warming, for political purposes, in our drug approval process, for economic motives, and so on) we all lose - because we have diminished our ability to distinguish claim from fact, and are more at the mercy of dogma and demagogues, wild speculation, ignorance and superstition.
For example, Behe accepts an old age for the earth, common ancestors for chimps and humans, and the ability of sequential mutations to increase an organism's chances for survival. He accepts these things, though they contradict biblical literalism, because the evidence is compelling.
Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, given a chance to clarify his views of evolution, backs away from a literal reading of Genesis, and says that faith and science are not in conflict - meaning that evolution happened, and that Genesis 1 is not to be taken literally.
What remains? A conviction, widely held, that "all this is not an accident." The notion that some way, some how, "God did it." This is not based on the Bible or science – it is a "gut feeling" that life is not just a series of random events – that we have a privileged place in the universe.
The difficulty, of course, is in getting down to specifics. It is clear that God did not do it as laid out in the Bible (or any other religious text). It is clear that God (as immediate cause) is not needed to explain any part of the world we live in (except to assert that in some as-yet-not-understood way, “God did it”).
Not only do we find no clear evidence of God acting in history or our day-to-day world, it is becoming increasingly clear that there is no known mechanism for supernatural action at all. The response of faith is, “well, obviously, science is wrong, because God does act.” That, and the other theistic response - that the things we discover about the natural world, including cosmology and evolution, is how God does it.
So how can smart people like Behe and Huckabee and Brownback live with this cognitive dissonance (claiming both that the all we can know about are material causes, and faith’s claims that all the important causes are supernatural)? They know (and even publicly admit) that the Bible does not accurately portray (when taken even semi-literally) the history and workings of the natural world. Yet they find themselves compelled by their belief to insist that God has taken a direct (though unspecified) role in shaping the natural world, the historical events in the world in the last few thousand years, and in the day-to-day events of their (and billions of others') lives.
Treat this like a large-scale survey about what people need and want in their lives. They want the world to make sense. They need there to be order and pattern and purpose. We experience the effects of this unmet need in the social chaos we see around us - people seeking any number of things (much self- and socially- destructive) to escape pointlessness and boredom, alienation and loneliness.
Science is often perceived as relentlessly eroding a sense of purpose and significance - at best silent, and at worse dismissive of the notion that we can have a special relationship with a supernatural force that impacts our world in a way that benefits our daily life, community and world history. Science earns this reputation by failing to find any evidence that claims of supernatural intervention have any basis in fact.
The implications are not lost on people of faith: absent supernatural intervention, we may not be a special people, and our leaders not appointed by the gods. This may not be not the promised land. The seasons and weather may not reflect supernatural approval or disapproval of our actions. Wealth may not be a sign of divine favor. Parking spaces may not be held open for us by the great valet in the sky. Worse, much of what happens may be as pointless, random and unfair as it seems. Meaning may be where we find it, and love may be where we make room for it.
Of course, this could all be taken as a wakeup call to grow up and take more responsibility for our lives, our relationships, our community and planet. Conversely, many people have tried and failed the attempt to be responsible and proactive, and have found themselves unable to cope with the despair, the open alternatives, the absence of any objective set of values or fixed compass by which to navigate. They turn to faith for certainty, for direction, even purpose.
So the reaction is often to blame the messenger - science. This is normal - especially since the expectations for science and technology are so great, and science and technology has proven such a mixed blessing. Still, the message, such as it is, is accurate.
Science cannot get us out of this mess, because it is not a religion, offers no path to meaning and purpose, and is not, in itself, a foundation for meaningful community.
People seem to need a sense of purpose, significance, and community. We seem to need a sense of our place, and a way to make a meaningful, lasting contribution. We want to be safe, and to be free from fear and want. We obviously to need to learn how to be social creatures, able to interact positively with others – and to do that, we need stable, helpful models. This takes enduring institutions and an extravagant investment of time and compassion. It takes a way of starting over, a way of being held accountable, a way of being forced to live within some limits.
The value of individuals, the right relationship between a government and the governed, an individuals obligations to their community (and vice versa)- these are all tightly bound up with people's moral, ethical and religious beliefs.
Science is not a replacement for faith or morals, but it often represents the only viable alternative to revelation or arbitrary claims of authority. It is can be an infuriating goad to arbitrary authority. Science can be stifling orthodoxy to folks who are trying to think in new ways. Because science makes no claim to infallibility, and yet is often viewed as the final arbiter of truth - (both claims have some merit), science is seen as both autocratic and fractious, authoritative, and as changeable as the next discovery or clinical trial.
The best way to defend science is to build healthy communities of people who, among other things, embrace science as a tool - neither making it an oracle, nor forcing it to be subservient to some other master (politics, capitalism, prejudice or religious dogma). Science is a critical tool exactly because it can help us discover accurate things about our world. When we silence science (as we have in the discussions of global warming, for political purposes, in our drug approval process, for economic motives, and so on) we all lose - because we have diminished our ability to distinguish claim from fact, and are more at the mercy of dogma and demagogues, wild speculation, ignorance and superstition.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Invitation to the Big Tent
While science engages with religious conservatives on issues like scientific proof for a young earth, global flood and special creation, what these literalists are actually doing is presenting the following syllogism:
A moral culture can only be built on the Bible
The Bible is only authoritative if taken literally
Therefore, to have a moral culture, the Bible must be taken literally
This logic has a lot of traction with non-literalists, who want a safe culture in which to live and raise their kids. The world is in fact worrisome, and free-market capitalism has not delivered the promised happy and abundant society.
Science is portrayed as insisting that the Bible cannot be taken literally, which turns out to be seen as an attack on attempts to build a moral society. This puts science on the side of the bad guys. That science is correct in its rejection of literalists’ claims is no defense.
"No wonder society is sick," conservatives say, "if science is allowed to tear down the only foundation for ethical behavior."
You might notice that science is only peripheral to this issue – and to argue for strong science without addressing the assumptions about what is required to have a moral society is to be relegated to the less-interesting part of the discussion.
One approach for science advocates may be to engage in a discussion about what constitutes a moral society. When we address issues of social and economic justice, both religious and non-religious folks can participate – while deemphasizing the importance of special creation and other literalist agenda items. Moderates are satisfied, because topics of concern to them are being addressed.
People seem to be taking note of the fact that we face many social justice issues today. For example, 27 million people in some form of slavery, a growing disparity between rich and poor, competition for oil and other resources with countries like China and India. Against our will, many of us are facing up to the fact that global warming is happening. In the face of the political, economic and ecological crises we face, it may be time to broaden our understanding of what it means to live a moral life.
Science advocates can further the cause of science by noting that our growing awareness of the interconnectedness of life and culture come from a revamping of how we view the world, in no small part due to the work of science. In fact, we need to directly challenge the notion that a conservative religious agenda, with its narrow focus on personal morality, is an adequate moral and ethical foundation for the modern world.
This need not be confrontational - everyone can be invited to discuss issues of justice and the defense of the weak - strong themes throughout the Bible, for example. Rather than lose moderates to the "Big Tent" of ID, why not invite them to a "big tent" of social and economic justice?
A moral culture can only be built on the Bible
The Bible is only authoritative if taken literally
Therefore, to have a moral culture, the Bible must be taken literally
This logic has a lot of traction with non-literalists, who want a safe culture in which to live and raise their kids. The world is in fact worrisome, and free-market capitalism has not delivered the promised happy and abundant society.
Science is portrayed as insisting that the Bible cannot be taken literally, which turns out to be seen as an attack on attempts to build a moral society. This puts science on the side of the bad guys. That science is correct in its rejection of literalists’ claims is no defense.
"No wonder society is sick," conservatives say, "if science is allowed to tear down the only foundation for ethical behavior."
You might notice that science is only peripheral to this issue – and to argue for strong science without addressing the assumptions about what is required to have a moral society is to be relegated to the less-interesting part of the discussion.
One approach for science advocates may be to engage in a discussion about what constitutes a moral society. When we address issues of social and economic justice, both religious and non-religious folks can participate – while deemphasizing the importance of special creation and other literalist agenda items. Moderates are satisfied, because topics of concern to them are being addressed.
People seem to be taking note of the fact that we face many social justice issues today. For example, 27 million people in some form of slavery, a growing disparity between rich and poor, competition for oil and other resources with countries like China and India. Against our will, many of us are facing up to the fact that global warming is happening. In the face of the political, economic and ecological crises we face, it may be time to broaden our understanding of what it means to live a moral life.
Science advocates can further the cause of science by noting that our growing awareness of the interconnectedness of life and culture come from a revamping of how we view the world, in no small part due to the work of science. In fact, we need to directly challenge the notion that a conservative religious agenda, with its narrow focus on personal morality, is an adequate moral and ethical foundation for the modern world.
This need not be confrontational - everyone can be invited to discuss issues of justice and the defense of the weak - strong themes throughout the Bible, for example. Rather than lose moderates to the "Big Tent" of ID, why not invite them to a "big tent" of social and economic justice?
Monday, April 23, 2007
Science in Conflict with Religion?
Science is misunderstood primarily because of preconceptions about how the world is (or must be) – that is, we already know what the world "must be" like, and don’t want to yield our preconceptions to the empirical results of the scientific process.
One source of misconception is the certainty that the world is influenced by the supernatural (that is, by some agency with no knowable method of action). This is not to say that God does not exist - just that God seems to use the mechanisms of the natural world to accompish his purposes.
While it is possible to say that, in principle, science and relgion are not in conflict, most science is in conflict with that part of any religion that involves magical or supernatural action (again, action without scientifically observable mechanisms). So, for example, a young earth, special creation and a global flood (but also Native Americans as descended from the "lost" tribe of Israel and countless other incorrect beliefs about the natural world).
The reason that ID-ists distance themselves from mechanisms is because of this conflict. Science describes a world in which identifiable (measurable, repeatable) mechanisms exist for all actions observed in the natural world. Most religions explicitly defend god's prerogative to act without regard to natural mechanisms.
There are two ways out of this dilemma. First, you can deny science. Say that there is scientific evidence for things with no natural explanation (I say deny science, because so far, there is no such evidence). Alternatively, you can define religion to be some sort of vague impulse, statistically indistinguishable from natural causes. The first involves denying the plain facts, the second involves making faith irrelevant (except as a personal mental model - and construing religion as such strips it of much of its appeal and power).
There are likewise a couple of reasons to deny that religion and science conflict - first is to avoid the complete rejection of science by those folks who do think that the supernatural exists, but who have not really looked into it rigorously. Second, because of the recognition that, for all the anti-social things religion creates, it also provides a cohesive social order and sense of meaning that seems fairly impervious to any attempt to stamp it out.
One source of misconception is the certainty that the world is influenced by the supernatural (that is, by some agency with no knowable method of action). This is not to say that God does not exist - just that God seems to use the mechanisms of the natural world to accompish his purposes.
While it is possible to say that, in principle, science and relgion are not in conflict, most science is in conflict with that part of any religion that involves magical or supernatural action (again, action without scientifically observable mechanisms). So, for example, a young earth, special creation and a global flood (but also Native Americans as descended from the "lost" tribe of Israel and countless other incorrect beliefs about the natural world).
The reason that ID-ists distance themselves from mechanisms is because of this conflict. Science describes a world in which identifiable (measurable, repeatable) mechanisms exist for all actions observed in the natural world. Most religions explicitly defend god's prerogative to act without regard to natural mechanisms.
There are two ways out of this dilemma. First, you can deny science. Say that there is scientific evidence for things with no natural explanation (I say deny science, because so far, there is no such evidence). Alternatively, you can define religion to be some sort of vague impulse, statistically indistinguishable from natural causes. The first involves denying the plain facts, the second involves making faith irrelevant (except as a personal mental model - and construing religion as such strips it of much of its appeal and power).
There are likewise a couple of reasons to deny that religion and science conflict - first is to avoid the complete rejection of science by those folks who do think that the supernatural exists, but who have not really looked into it rigorously. Second, because of the recognition that, for all the anti-social things religion creates, it also provides a cohesive social order and sense of meaning that seems fairly impervious to any attempt to stamp it out.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Why Science Matters
An update, based on comments from folks at KCFS.
Why Science Matters
If the world were simple and straightforward, science may never have developed from ordinary observation and experiment. As it happens, the natural world is much more complex and diverse than anyone would ever guess. From the behavior of quarks to the light-years-spanning galaxies in space, from the over 350,000 species of beetles to the intricate beauty of DNA's double helix, our world has amazed us with its complexity, invention and resiliency.
Science unveils a world far beyond our expectations, drawing us from our day-to-day experiences and confronting us with a reality more inventive than our richest imaginings.
Science Gives Us An Accurate Picture Of Our World
From earliest history, philosophers have speculated about what the world was and how it worked. Many of these ideas were wrong: the results of limited perceptions, inaccurate assumptions and often, a lack of attention to facts.
Science is the product of our search for a more accurate understanding of the world around us. Throughout history, people looked at what was happening around them, reached tentative conclusions, and tested their assumptions with careful experiments. They learned from other inquisitive minds, and encouraged one another in their search for knowledge. Science is simply an extension of that quest.
Based on observation, confirmed by experiment and subject to verification, scientists have developed, not just a description of the world, but a kind of understanding that lets us put that scientific knowledge to work. From Ben Franklin experimenting with lightening to Thomas Edison and the electric light bulb is a direct line - scientific research to technological advance.
What has emerged is a startlingly accurate picture of the world and how it works. It is not a complete picture, and no doubt surprises are in store – but the sciences, painstakingly built up over centuries of work, provide a framework of understanding that informs many of our most important perceptions, decisions and actions.
Science Improves our Everyday Existence
It is easy to lose perspective on what it was to live in a world before modern science. People often died young, mostly of diseases that could have been prevented by good public heath practices. Nature was seen as capricious and judgmental. Our ability to provide food and shelter was limited to manual labor, augmented by a few simple tools and machines.
Clean drinking water, improved crop yields, antibiotics, streetlights and the Internet all sprang from an understanding of the world provided by science.
Even more, nature is no longer the province of vengeful spirits, disease no longer the result of someone’s malign intentions, and the physical properties of the world no longer hidden behind a veil of mystery, forbidden to mortals. This understanding has allowed us to solve a host of problems, resulting in a myriad of improvements to the quality of our life.
Science Can Inform Some of Our Most Important Decisions
Many of the difficult questions we face, from genetic engineering to global warming to alternative fuels benefit from a basic understanding of the science behind the issues. By being better educated in the sciences, we are able to make more informed decisions as a consumer, a patient and a citizen.
Science Promotes Common Understanding
Science, with its focus on natural cause and effect and repeatable, experimental verification can provide a common vocabulary and set of perspectives on the world - a kind of Rosetta stone by which we can better understand our relationship to one another, the earth, and all life. This can be as simple as forging a common understanding of the mechanisms that make crops grow, ecologies flourish and children healthy. These common understandings help banish fear and mistrust, and provide concrete arenas for cooperation and growth.
Science Is A Tool
Everyone forms conclusions about how things work. Science provides a powerful means to test those conclusions, and reveal areas where we need to enlarge our understanding of the natural world. A good grasp of science – its strengths and limitations - is one of the keys to better understanding our world and our selves.
Science is one of the most successful, accurate and powerful tools we’ve ever discovered. Like any tool, the value we get from it depends on how well we use it. If we apply the fruits of science with skill and wisdom, it enhances our life and understanding. As we face the many challenges in front of us, we need the unique contributions of a strong, free, accurate science.
Why Science Matters
If the world were simple and straightforward, science may never have developed from ordinary observation and experiment. As it happens, the natural world is much more complex and diverse than anyone would ever guess. From the behavior of quarks to the light-years-spanning galaxies in space, from the over 350,000 species of beetles to the intricate beauty of DNA's double helix, our world has amazed us with its complexity, invention and resiliency.
Science unveils a world far beyond our expectations, drawing us from our day-to-day experiences and confronting us with a reality more inventive than our richest imaginings.
Science Gives Us An Accurate Picture Of Our World
From earliest history, philosophers have speculated about what the world was and how it worked. Many of these ideas were wrong: the results of limited perceptions, inaccurate assumptions and often, a lack of attention to facts.
Science is the product of our search for a more accurate understanding of the world around us. Throughout history, people looked at what was happening around them, reached tentative conclusions, and tested their assumptions with careful experiments. They learned from other inquisitive minds, and encouraged one another in their search for knowledge. Science is simply an extension of that quest.
Based on observation, confirmed by experiment and subject to verification, scientists have developed, not just a description of the world, but a kind of understanding that lets us put that scientific knowledge to work. From Ben Franklin experimenting with lightening to Thomas Edison and the electric light bulb is a direct line - scientific research to technological advance.
What has emerged is a startlingly accurate picture of the world and how it works. It is not a complete picture, and no doubt surprises are in store – but the sciences, painstakingly built up over centuries of work, provide a framework of understanding that informs many of our most important perceptions, decisions and actions.
Science Improves our Everyday Existence
It is easy to lose perspective on what it was to live in a world before modern science. People often died young, mostly of diseases that could have been prevented by good public heath practices. Nature was seen as capricious and judgmental. Our ability to provide food and shelter was limited to manual labor, augmented by a few simple tools and machines.
Clean drinking water, improved crop yields, antibiotics, streetlights and the Internet all sprang from an understanding of the world provided by science.
Even more, nature is no longer the province of vengeful spirits, disease no longer the result of someone’s malign intentions, and the physical properties of the world no longer hidden behind a veil of mystery, forbidden to mortals. This understanding has allowed us to solve a host of problems, resulting in a myriad of improvements to the quality of our life.
Science Can Inform Some of Our Most Important Decisions
Many of the difficult questions we face, from genetic engineering to global warming to alternative fuels benefit from a basic understanding of the science behind the issues. By being better educated in the sciences, we are able to make more informed decisions as a consumer, a patient and a citizen.
Science Promotes Common Understanding
Science, with its focus on natural cause and effect and repeatable, experimental verification can provide a common vocabulary and set of perspectives on the world - a kind of Rosetta stone by which we can better understand our relationship to one another, the earth, and all life. This can be as simple as forging a common understanding of the mechanisms that make crops grow, ecologies flourish and children healthy. These common understandings help banish fear and mistrust, and provide concrete arenas for cooperation and growth.
Science Is A Tool
Everyone forms conclusions about how things work. Science provides a powerful means to test those conclusions, and reveal areas where we need to enlarge our understanding of the natural world. A good grasp of science – its strengths and limitations - is one of the keys to better understanding our world and our selves.
Science is one of the most successful, accurate and powerful tools we’ve ever discovered. Like any tool, the value we get from it depends on how well we use it. If we apply the fruits of science with skill and wisdom, it enhances our life and understanding. As we face the many challenges in front of us, we need the unique contributions of a strong, free, accurate science.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
The Way Forward
“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.”
Recent trial balloons from the right suggest that the next approach for creationists attempting to make inroads into public school is the notion of science as a "materialist religion."
The argument for creationism is a theological one - "This is how I read the Bible." Responding with evidence for evolution misses the point - which is that some people choose to accept a somewhat literal reading of the Bible over the clear evidence.
While science is not a religion, and methodological materialism is not a faith, biblical literalism most certainly is. The relentless press to establish a narrow, sectarian view of Christianity as the official religion of the US is something we all should resist. First, because theocratic states are by their very nature repressive. Second, because this country explicitly rejects the idea of an official religion (that is why there is no religious test for office allowed in the constitution). Third, because the only people with the energy to push for a theocracy believe all sorts of things that are just plain wrong (like a young age for the earth, a global flood and special creation) that will cause all sorts of pain and damage when they end up with the sanction of government.
So the discussion might go like this:
Q: I've heard that evolution is a failed theory, and is only kept alive by lies and distortions. Why should I believe it?
A: If that were true, you should not believe it. As it happens, there is strong evidence for evolution, and I'd be happy to talk about it, but let me ask you a question first, "are you open to considering the evidence?"
Q: What makes you think I'm not?
Well, for most of us, we have a hard time believing in things we disagree with. For example, we want to believe certain things about our country, our children, our friends - and we have a hard time accepting it when someone presents us with facts that run counter to our beliefs.
It is the same with science. Most people who object to evolution have a particular view of God that they see as incompatible with the gradual development of life over billions of years.
If you accept evolution, you have to give up a literal reading of Genesis. Are you willing to consider doing that, if the evidence is strong enough?
------
Science is on the defensive on two fronts. First, that the evidence for evlution is flawed, and second, science is a religion, and so Christianity should be given equal time. The proper response is to point out that a particular sect is trying to promote their narrow sectarian faith at the expense of the truth, and in the face of the Constitution.
— Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom
Recent trial balloons from the right suggest that the next approach for creationists attempting to make inroads into public school is the notion of science as a "materialist religion."
The argument for creationism is a theological one - "This is how I read the Bible." Responding with evidence for evolution misses the point - which is that some people choose to accept a somewhat literal reading of the Bible over the clear evidence.
While science is not a religion, and methodological materialism is not a faith, biblical literalism most certainly is. The relentless press to establish a narrow, sectarian view of Christianity as the official religion of the US is something we all should resist. First, because theocratic states are by their very nature repressive. Second, because this country explicitly rejects the idea of an official religion (that is why there is no religious test for office allowed in the constitution). Third, because the only people with the energy to push for a theocracy believe all sorts of things that are just plain wrong (like a young age for the earth, a global flood and special creation) that will cause all sorts of pain and damage when they end up with the sanction of government.
So the discussion might go like this:
Q: I've heard that evolution is a failed theory, and is only kept alive by lies and distortions. Why should I believe it?
A: If that were true, you should not believe it. As it happens, there is strong evidence for evolution, and I'd be happy to talk about it, but let me ask you a question first, "are you open to considering the evidence?"
Q: What makes you think I'm not?
Well, for most of us, we have a hard time believing in things we disagree with. For example, we want to believe certain things about our country, our children, our friends - and we have a hard time accepting it when someone presents us with facts that run counter to our beliefs.
It is the same with science. Most people who object to evolution have a particular view of God that they see as incompatible with the gradual development of life over billions of years.
If you accept evolution, you have to give up a literal reading of Genesis. Are you willing to consider doing that, if the evidence is strong enough?
------
Science is on the defensive on two fronts. First, that the evidence for evlution is flawed, and second, science is a religion, and so Christianity should be given equal time. The proper response is to point out that a particular sect is trying to promote their narrow sectarian faith at the expense of the truth, and in the face of the Constitution.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Why Is the Church Silent?
In the early 20th century, the fundamentalist movement purposefully turned away from social justice issues and the results of modern scholarship in order to affirm “fundamental” biblical principles. These were unrelentingly issues of personal morality and personal relationship with God, based on a particular way of reading the Bible. This is a theology that embraces the idea that Jesus did not preach revolution against the established order, but asks us to be good citizens so that we can be about a life of devotion to God, unencumbered by larger political or social concerns (which are best left up to God).
The concept of America as a Christian nation, the idea that God wishes to bless His people, and the notion that we are to be good citizens (plus the lingering idea of communism versus capitalism as a religious / economic / political struggle) all combine to send the powerful message that there is no real conflict between conservative Christianity and American capitalism. For example, most of the social action and compassionate ministries sponsored by the conservative church involve caring for the victims of the system, not transforming the system to remove the harm. Even when the conservative church critiques the system, it complains of moral failure, not a system of capitalism that prospers when people make impulsive, selfish and shortsighted choices.
It is a "blame the individual" orientation that keeps many Christians blind to a system that is designed to elicit behavior of economic benefit precisely by tearing down moral and rational safeguards (for example, by advocating a sense of entitlement over responsibility, spending over saving, style over substance, instant gratification over delayed gratification and so on). People who live responsible, moral lives are poor consumers - so the natural conclusion should be that free-market capitalism is fundamentally at odds with Christianity.
That many Christians are now becoming concerned about social justice and ecological issues is not because of a renewed interest in theology or Bible study (either of which would offer a strong corrective and a call to action), or from a call by national religious leaders to move in a new direction. Rather, the excesses of the free market, the rising tide of suffering and disease, the rejection of Western capitalism by whole cultures and the dangerous state of our eco-system has come to the attention of more and more “ordinary” people, and those people are bringing these issues into churches.
This is an area where few theologians, pastors, national religious leaders or even prophetic voices within the church are raising an alarm. There has been no renewal, no call to repentance, no “move of the Spirit” convicting Christians in these areas. That these concerns are raised at all is in fact due to the encroachment of secular concerns into the church - which explains why there is precious little theology, ecclesiastical structure or leadership to nurture it. It also explains the hostility or indifference to issues like global warming - it is simply irrelevant to the agenda of personal salvation.
Many conservative Christians are genuinely puzzled as to why accurate science, opposition to global warming or renewed political action to establish a more just system (not to simply provide relief to those already suffering) should matter to Christians. “Why are these things important?” they ask – “How does involvement in these areas make me a better Christian?” Conservative Christianity does not have an answer to these questions, because they have a theology that is almost totally focused on the individual’s personal connection to God, to the exclusion of all else.
The concept of America as a Christian nation, the idea that God wishes to bless His people, and the notion that we are to be good citizens (plus the lingering idea of communism versus capitalism as a religious / economic / political struggle) all combine to send the powerful message that there is no real conflict between conservative Christianity and American capitalism. For example, most of the social action and compassionate ministries sponsored by the conservative church involve caring for the victims of the system, not transforming the system to remove the harm. Even when the conservative church critiques the system, it complains of moral failure, not a system of capitalism that prospers when people make impulsive, selfish and shortsighted choices.
It is a "blame the individual" orientation that keeps many Christians blind to a system that is designed to elicit behavior of economic benefit precisely by tearing down moral and rational safeguards (for example, by advocating a sense of entitlement over responsibility, spending over saving, style over substance, instant gratification over delayed gratification and so on). People who live responsible, moral lives are poor consumers - so the natural conclusion should be that free-market capitalism is fundamentally at odds with Christianity.
That many Christians are now becoming concerned about social justice and ecological issues is not because of a renewed interest in theology or Bible study (either of which would offer a strong corrective and a call to action), or from a call by national religious leaders to move in a new direction. Rather, the excesses of the free market, the rising tide of suffering and disease, the rejection of Western capitalism by whole cultures and the dangerous state of our eco-system has come to the attention of more and more “ordinary” people, and those people are bringing these issues into churches.
This is an area where few theologians, pastors, national religious leaders or even prophetic voices within the church are raising an alarm. There has been no renewal, no call to repentance, no “move of the Spirit” convicting Christians in these areas. That these concerns are raised at all is in fact due to the encroachment of secular concerns into the church - which explains why there is precious little theology, ecclesiastical structure or leadership to nurture it. It also explains the hostility or indifference to issues like global warming - it is simply irrelevant to the agenda of personal salvation.
Many conservative Christians are genuinely puzzled as to why accurate science, opposition to global warming or renewed political action to establish a more just system (not to simply provide relief to those already suffering) should matter to Christians. “Why are these things important?” they ask – “How does involvement in these areas make me a better Christian?” Conservative Christianity does not have an answer to these questions, because they have a theology that is almost totally focused on the individual’s personal connection to God, to the exclusion of all else.
Monday, March 26, 2007
First Science, Then...?
One of my concerns with both the exodus of religious conservatives from schools and the fight for vouchers is the impact this trend will have on public schools.
First, public school will become a place for those with no options. The better off, more motivated and anti-secular parents will resist funding schools they do not support or intend to use.
What is worse, we will end up with many students graduating from alternative schools that leave out important information - civil rights, important lessons of history, facts about the natural world - resulting in the formation of minds hostile to a secular democracy, cultural pluralism and scientific literacy.
Rather than teaching common values and a shared view of how the world works, we may end up with balkanized groups of students, each with their own distorted view of the world, and each with a parochial view of the world that makes it difficult or impossible to understand people different from themselves, let alone get along with them.
First, public school will become a place for those with no options. The better off, more motivated and anti-secular parents will resist funding schools they do not support or intend to use.
What is worse, we will end up with many students graduating from alternative schools that leave out important information - civil rights, important lessons of history, facts about the natural world - resulting in the formation of minds hostile to a secular democracy, cultural pluralism and scientific literacy.
Rather than teaching common values and a shared view of how the world works, we may end up with balkanized groups of students, each with their own distorted view of the world, and each with a parochial view of the world that makes it difficult or impossible to understand people different from themselves, let alone get along with them.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Does Science Matter?
Science Gives Us An Accurate Picture Of Our World
The world is not always what it seems. This is especially obvious when you compare how we thought about the world only a few hundred years ago, and how we understand it to work today. It is easy to lose perspective on what it was to live in a world before modern science. People often died young, mostly of diseases easily prevented by good public heath practices. What we would consider modest distances between people presented difficult, often insurmountable barriers. Mountains, oceans, weather, language, economics all conspired to keep us separated and ignorant of one another.
The mechanics of everyday life (why leaves were green, why the sky was blue, where the wind came from, what the stars were made of) were all unknowable, and the subject of wild (inaccurate) speculation.
Science Improves our Everyday Existence
Every time we use a telephone or the internet, take an airplane ride, listen to digital music or enjoy clean drinking water, we owe a debt to science – because science drives the technologies that transform our world.
Without science, there would be no plastics, no antibiotics, no airplanes, automobiles, lasers (so no DVD's or supermarket scanners) – we couldn't even feed the burgeoning population of our planet without the basic research into how the world works that science provides.
Science is a tool, and a powerful one. The proper use of science requires a strong, broad community to guide the policies and priorities of the scientific community, and to help channel the fruits of science into the technologies that build better, more meaningful lives. In order to play that role, we all need a good grounding in science and technology, to help us grasp the benefits and pitfalls of science.
Science Invites Us To Awe And Wonder
Science unveils a world beyond our imaginings– drawing us beyond the day-to-day world we live in, towards amazing variety and potential. Understanding how the world works has not robbed us of mystery, or awe or the capacity to wonder. Rather, as we struggle to uncover how the world works, we are confronted with endless variation and beauty, both subtle and grand.
It turns out that the universe is much more complex and diverse than anyone ever imagined. From the behavior of quarks, to the light-years-spanning nebula seen by our space-based telescopes, from 350,000 species of beetles to the intricate beauty of DNA's double helix, our world has amazed us with its variety, complexity, invention and resiliency.
Science challenges our pre-conceptions about how the world works, and invites us to explore new possibilities, new options, new answers. In the process, we learn about how we impact the world and our community. The world is connected in amazing ways – ways that we would never discover, if not for science.
Science Does Not Take the Place of Ethics or Values
While science concerns itself with “how,” ethics, faith, philosophy struggle with questions of ultimate meaning, and the wisdom or folly of our actions. Science can inform those discussions, but science does not take their place.
At best, science is a tool that we humans use to better understand our world. Like any tool, the kind of value we get from it depends on how we use it. If we use science with skill and wisdom, it enhances our life and understanding. Science is an important window into the world in which we live. To understand science is to better understand our world, our selves and our future.
OK, So What’s The Issue?
Some people have reached conclusions about what the world is like, and they object when their preconceptions are not supported by science. Sometimes we accept this this corrective and revise our perspectives of the world to align with new information. Sometimes, we attempt to discredit, marginalize, or even manipulate science to support our preconceptions. This is a mis-use of science, and results in spreading mis-information about the world. Bad information can lead to improper conclusions. What is worse, these kinds of artificial controversies damages science’s reputation, and results in fewer people studying science, weakening our ability to compete globally and address pressing problems.
Science should be left alone to answer questions about how the world works, free from dogmatic prescriptions about what science can and cannot discover. Questions of ultimate meaning (Why) should be left to philosophy and religion.
(revised 3/30/07)
The world is not always what it seems. This is especially obvious when you compare how we thought about the world only a few hundred years ago, and how we understand it to work today. It is easy to lose perspective on what it was to live in a world before modern science. People often died young, mostly of diseases easily prevented by good public heath practices. What we would consider modest distances between people presented difficult, often insurmountable barriers. Mountains, oceans, weather, language, economics all conspired to keep us separated and ignorant of one another.
The mechanics of everyday life (why leaves were green, why the sky was blue, where the wind came from, what the stars were made of) were all unknowable, and the subject of wild (inaccurate) speculation.
Science Improves our Everyday Existence
Every time we use a telephone or the internet, take an airplane ride, listen to digital music or enjoy clean drinking water, we owe a debt to science – because science drives the technologies that transform our world.
Without science, there would be no plastics, no antibiotics, no airplanes, automobiles, lasers (so no DVD's or supermarket scanners) – we couldn't even feed the burgeoning population of our planet without the basic research into how the world works that science provides.
Science is a tool, and a powerful one. The proper use of science requires a strong, broad community to guide the policies and priorities of the scientific community, and to help channel the fruits of science into the technologies that build better, more meaningful lives. In order to play that role, we all need a good grounding in science and technology, to help us grasp the benefits and pitfalls of science.
Science Invites Us To Awe And Wonder
Science unveils a world beyond our imaginings– drawing us beyond the day-to-day world we live in, towards amazing variety and potential. Understanding how the world works has not robbed us of mystery, or awe or the capacity to wonder. Rather, as we struggle to uncover how the world works, we are confronted with endless variation and beauty, both subtle and grand.
It turns out that the universe is much more complex and diverse than anyone ever imagined. From the behavior of quarks, to the light-years-spanning nebula seen by our space-based telescopes, from 350,000 species of beetles to the intricate beauty of DNA's double helix, our world has amazed us with its variety, complexity, invention and resiliency.
Science challenges our pre-conceptions about how the world works, and invites us to explore new possibilities, new options, new answers. In the process, we learn about how we impact the world and our community. The world is connected in amazing ways – ways that we would never discover, if not for science.
Science Does Not Take the Place of Ethics or Values
While science concerns itself with “how,” ethics, faith, philosophy struggle with questions of ultimate meaning, and the wisdom or folly of our actions. Science can inform those discussions, but science does not take their place.
At best, science is a tool that we humans use to better understand our world. Like any tool, the kind of value we get from it depends on how we use it. If we use science with skill and wisdom, it enhances our life and understanding. Science is an important window into the world in which we live. To understand science is to better understand our world, our selves and our future.
OK, So What’s The Issue?
Some people have reached conclusions about what the world is like, and they object when their preconceptions are not supported by science. Sometimes we accept this this corrective and revise our perspectives of the world to align with new information. Sometimes, we attempt to discredit, marginalize, or even manipulate science to support our preconceptions. This is a mis-use of science, and results in spreading mis-information about the world. Bad information can lead to improper conclusions. What is worse, these kinds of artificial controversies damages science’s reputation, and results in fewer people studying science, weakening our ability to compete globally and address pressing problems.
Science should be left alone to answer questions about how the world works, free from dogmatic prescriptions about what science can and cannot discover. Questions of ultimate meaning (Why) should be left to philosophy and religion.
(revised 3/30/07)
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Is Science Atheism?
Physical processes can be identified at work in the natural world. For example, heating, expansion, cooling, forming and breaking of chemical bonds. The mechanism of evolution is based on these physical processes, which have been observed and are well-defined.
That God is not observed in these processes does not mean that God does not exist, but it does require the belief (which cannot be proved) that God designed the universe in which these processes are active (that is, science uncovers the "how" of God's creative activity). As recent scientific discoveries have indicated, the universe “works” all the way down to the quantum foam, and all the way back to the Big Bang. This severely constrains our understanding of the ways in which God has chosen to interact with the universe. This understanding should inform our theology.
Of course, this belief in God is not required to explain the way that the world works, so some people see this as tacit support for atheism.
So what role does faith play in the world? Well, so far, I do not need it to make sense of how the world works, from the perspective of science. And I do not, in fact, seek scientific understanding from faith. I do look to faith to help me understand my place in the universe, a search that includes the dimensions of spirituality, community and personal morality and ethics.
That God is not observed in these processes does not mean that God does not exist, but it does require the belief (which cannot be proved) that God designed the universe in which these processes are active (that is, science uncovers the "how" of God's creative activity). As recent scientific discoveries have indicated, the universe “works” all the way down to the quantum foam, and all the way back to the Big Bang. This severely constrains our understanding of the ways in which God has chosen to interact with the universe. This understanding should inform our theology.
Of course, this belief in God is not required to explain the way that the world works, so some people see this as tacit support for atheism.
So what role does faith play in the world? Well, so far, I do not need it to make sense of how the world works, from the perspective of science. And I do not, in fact, seek scientific understanding from faith. I do look to faith to help me understand my place in the universe, a search that includes the dimensions of spirituality, community and personal morality and ethics.
A Dialogue Between Faith & Science
Both sides of the faith / science dialogue (and those who say you don't have to take sides) are talking. I am not sure folks are always getting what is being said. We all re-interpret what we hear in our own terms - in order to make it intelligible. This does not make understanding impossible, but it makes it more difficult - because we often miss what is being said because we change it into something somewhat different in the process of trying to understand it.
Many conservative Christian creationists are trying to defend two things - the authority of the Bible, and a particular worldview that comes out of their interpretation of the Bible.
Because this worldview is understood to be "ultimate reality" (and the physical world we live in a distorted version of that reality), there is a deep distrust of the natural world and the products of our reasoning, emotions and sensory experiences.
Science cuts through the Gordian knot of the "what is reality?" question by taking it as a given that the world we experience is real, and seeks to understand how the natural world works (bypassing the "Why" question). Science has been successful beyond all imaginings at this enterprise. Lasers, digital music, semiconductors, & nano-machines would have been beyond anyone’s wildest speculation even a few hundred years ago.
Precisely because it ignores the supernatural (and because science has not been hampered by this lack), science is suspect - it is part of the "world" that is set against the "Kingdom of Heaven." The world we live in is part of the “present evil age" – and to be resisted - while Christians are called to be part of the age to come (marked by the direct rule of God, and no part of the current political, economic or technological order – referred to as Babylon, and depicted as a whore).
Because science seems to have no need of God, it represents an affront to the worldview that nothing makes sense except in the light of God's creating, sustaining and guiding activity. So on one level, ID is simply an attempt to “place” science in the context of a larger Christian worldview – it becomes an area of theology (learning about God through his creation).
Many conservative Christian creationists are trying to defend two things - the authority of the Bible, and a particular worldview that comes out of their interpretation of the Bible.
Because this worldview is understood to be "ultimate reality" (and the physical world we live in a distorted version of that reality), there is a deep distrust of the natural world and the products of our reasoning, emotions and sensory experiences.
Science cuts through the Gordian knot of the "what is reality?" question by taking it as a given that the world we experience is real, and seeks to understand how the natural world works (bypassing the "Why" question). Science has been successful beyond all imaginings at this enterprise. Lasers, digital music, semiconductors, & nano-machines would have been beyond anyone’s wildest speculation even a few hundred years ago.
Precisely because it ignores the supernatural (and because science has not been hampered by this lack), science is suspect - it is part of the "world" that is set against the "Kingdom of Heaven." The world we live in is part of the “present evil age" – and to be resisted - while Christians are called to be part of the age to come (marked by the direct rule of God, and no part of the current political, economic or technological order – referred to as Babylon, and depicted as a whore).
Because science seems to have no need of God, it represents an affront to the worldview that nothing makes sense except in the light of God's creating, sustaining and guiding activity. So on one level, ID is simply an attempt to “place” science in the context of a larger Christian worldview – it becomes an area of theology (learning about God through his creation).
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Lessons Creationists Have Taught Me
Lessons learned from dialouges with creationists:
1. There is no evidence for creationism (young-earth, old-earth or ID). For folks predisposed to see design, they see design. For folks who look into the science of nature, they see that explanations for how the world works requires no supernatural intervention (open invitation for any creationist to provide a counter-example – show your work).
2. Creationist sources invariably lie about, distort or omit important facts about how science works, and what scientists themselves say about their work in order to bolster their claims. Naïve creationist supporters roar in to the frey, armed with arguments form creationist web sites, only to be shown over and over again that they have their facts wrong. Invariably, the argument is pared down to how to read the Bible – almost always, they end up saying something like “I have the right interpretation, and those who don’t share it are going to hell.”
3. Truth takes a back seat to strategy. This is obviously a religious issue – creationists want their children to be able to hold on to their creationist beliefs while getting a public education. There are two main approaches here – withdraw from public school, like the Southern Baptists, or get schools to stop teaching science, as laid out in the DI’s Wedge Strategy.
4. The discussion cannot take place on the basis of facts. Creationists have no facts to back up their position (they are not even interpreting Genesis 1 literally, or they would be flat-earthers and geocentrists). They simply “know in their knower” that they are right, and that means that anyone who opposes them are tools of Satan.
5. This is not about materialism, or liberalism, or naturalism. Science makes no claims about the supernatural, and so far, no appeal to the supernatural is required to explain the world we live in. This may mean that the natural principles we’ve discovered are the methods by which God created the universe. It does not mean that science is opposed to religion – just that science does not deal with religion.
6. We do have real problems to deal with – but they are not the fault of evolution, and are not solved by believing that dinosaurs and humans walked the earth together, or that God spends His time poofing tails onto flagella.
1. There is no evidence for creationism (young-earth, old-earth or ID). For folks predisposed to see design, they see design. For folks who look into the science of nature, they see that explanations for how the world works requires no supernatural intervention (open invitation for any creationist to provide a counter-example – show your work).
2. Creationist sources invariably lie about, distort or omit important facts about how science works, and what scientists themselves say about their work in order to bolster their claims. Naïve creationist supporters roar in to the frey, armed with arguments form creationist web sites, only to be shown over and over again that they have their facts wrong. Invariably, the argument is pared down to how to read the Bible – almost always, they end up saying something like “I have the right interpretation, and those who don’t share it are going to hell.”
3. Truth takes a back seat to strategy. This is obviously a religious issue – creationists want their children to be able to hold on to their creationist beliefs while getting a public education. There are two main approaches here – withdraw from public school, like the Southern Baptists, or get schools to stop teaching science, as laid out in the DI’s Wedge Strategy.
4. The discussion cannot take place on the basis of facts. Creationists have no facts to back up their position (they are not even interpreting Genesis 1 literally, or they would be flat-earthers and geocentrists). They simply “know in their knower” that they are right, and that means that anyone who opposes them are tools of Satan.
5. This is not about materialism, or liberalism, or naturalism. Science makes no claims about the supernatural, and so far, no appeal to the supernatural is required to explain the world we live in. This may mean that the natural principles we’ve discovered are the methods by which God created the universe. It does not mean that science is opposed to religion – just that science does not deal with religion.
6. We do have real problems to deal with – but they are not the fault of evolution, and are not solved by believing that dinosaurs and humans walked the earth together, or that God spends His time poofing tails onto flagella.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
We've Got Options
Many creationists seem to want us to choose faith or science.
Actually, these are not the two only options.
Creationists would have us believe that life is unlikely and rare. Is this true? It may be that life is in some sense inevitable, given the universe we live in. It may not be that the exact life as we know it was inevitable (rewind the tape, and perhaps something different would evolve), but some sort of life may be inevitable, all the same. Creationists seem to want this to be impossible - God had to have created a universe that does not work, except God's hand keeps spinning it up - what if he is a better craftsman than that?
And of course, the possibility exists that God used the natural process science discovers to accomplish his purposes. In which case, no conflict. Or that there is some other set of factors involved that we have yet to discover that accounts for the world we experience.
There is no reason to choose between the horns of the creationist dilemma. They seem to want this to be a faith choice – choose between the purposeful creation of God, or the meaningless, random acts of blind nature – it is a false dichotomy.
Science does not ask you to make a choice. Rather, it asks you to accept that there are physical laws and natural processes that account for the world you see around you. That this is true is obvious on the face of it, and the technology that has sprung from scientific discovery demonstrates this fact.
It does not say anything about what the world means, or for whom it was made, or what its ultimate purpose is. Creationists would have us believe that this is a fault - science is lacking because it is not religion, recapitulating the Bible. True, science is not religion - but it is not a fault (after all, that is what religion is for!).
You do not have to choose between Science and faith, and you should not choose fantasy over reality, just because you’ve been told your faith requires it (faith does not).
Actually, these are not the two only options.
Creationists would have us believe that life is unlikely and rare. Is this true? It may be that life is in some sense inevitable, given the universe we live in. It may not be that the exact life as we know it was inevitable (rewind the tape, and perhaps something different would evolve), but some sort of life may be inevitable, all the same. Creationists seem to want this to be impossible - God had to have created a universe that does not work, except God's hand keeps spinning it up - what if he is a better craftsman than that?
And of course, the possibility exists that God used the natural process science discovers to accomplish his purposes. In which case, no conflict. Or that there is some other set of factors involved that we have yet to discover that accounts for the world we experience.
There is no reason to choose between the horns of the creationist dilemma. They seem to want this to be a faith choice – choose between the purposeful creation of God, or the meaningless, random acts of blind nature – it is a false dichotomy.
Science does not ask you to make a choice. Rather, it asks you to accept that there are physical laws and natural processes that account for the world you see around you. That this is true is obvious on the face of it, and the technology that has sprung from scientific discovery demonstrates this fact.
It does not say anything about what the world means, or for whom it was made, or what its ultimate purpose is. Creationists would have us believe that this is a fault - science is lacking because it is not religion, recapitulating the Bible. True, science is not religion - but it is not a fault (after all, that is what religion is for!).
You do not have to choose between Science and faith, and you should not choose fantasy over reality, just because you’ve been told your faith requires it (faith does not).
Monday, February 19, 2007
A False Controversy
We are being driven into a false conflict between faith and religion, simply because some people want to insist that the Bible is science. This is both harmful and wrong.
1. It is no more improbable that God made a universe where His will could be expressed thorough evolution and other natural causes than that he created a universe where all the hard parts have to be done through supernatural intervention (i.e. creationism).
2. Science no more promotes an ideology of materialism than does any other way of explaining how the world works – it is simply describing what is, and how what is works. No evidence for design has been found, and no observation of design in progress has ever been observed. This is not the case for various natural causes, which abound in every field, and can be observed whenever you bake a cake or drive your car (or for that matter, eat your breakfast or blink your eyes).
3. To insist that public school science class consider non-material causes introduces philosophy and religion into science class. Science is not improved in the process. A further danger is that there are many, many competing philosophies and religions – shall they take turns in science class? Shall they be voted in by the local religious majority at the time?
4. Scientists can study the idea of supernatural design anytime they want. There are hundreds, if not thousands of privately-funded research institutions. There has never been a barrier to such research, and in fact there have been Christian creationist research organizations founded. They simply have not been able to demonstrate the creationist hypothesis.
All this furor over creationism only serves to alienate many Christians from the discoveries of science, and create the false notion that you have to choose between thee Bible and the discoveries of science. It is time for more Christians to be willing to think, rather than just take the word of their youth leader, pastor or radio preacher.
1. It is no more improbable that God made a universe where His will could be expressed thorough evolution and other natural causes than that he created a universe where all the hard parts have to be done through supernatural intervention (i.e. creationism).
2. Science no more promotes an ideology of materialism than does any other way of explaining how the world works – it is simply describing what is, and how what is works. No evidence for design has been found, and no observation of design in progress has ever been observed. This is not the case for various natural causes, which abound in every field, and can be observed whenever you bake a cake or drive your car (or for that matter, eat your breakfast or blink your eyes).
3. To insist that public school science class consider non-material causes introduces philosophy and religion into science class. Science is not improved in the process. A further danger is that there are many, many competing philosophies and religions – shall they take turns in science class? Shall they be voted in by the local religious majority at the time?
4. Scientists can study the idea of supernatural design anytime they want. There are hundreds, if not thousands of privately-funded research institutions. There has never been a barrier to such research, and in fact there have been Christian creationist research organizations founded. They simply have not been able to demonstrate the creationist hypothesis.
All this furor over creationism only serves to alienate many Christians from the discoveries of science, and create the false notion that you have to choose between thee Bible and the discoveries of science. It is time for more Christians to be willing to think, rather than just take the word of their youth leader, pastor or radio preacher.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Beyond Faith and Science
While science cannot answer questions about the existence of God, it can answer questions about the impact of God on the natural world.
Several scientific studies have concluded that so far, that impact has not been detectable. Surely this a significant and unexpected mystery. Why is God’s impact on the world not measurable – if not in a specific instance, in aggregate (for example, in hundreds of patients in a hospital, or in the life outcomes of the British royal family).
This lack of tangible effect has led some to suggest that if God exists, then s/he has no effect on the natural world. Others affirm that God does make a difference in the natural world (beyond the inner state of the believer), just not one that can be studied scientifically. It is not clear what this statement might mean
I think that this boundary is one of the important frontiers of religious thought. Some centuries ago, there would have been overwhelming certainty that God was a potent force in the world. Yet everywhere that science has looked, that potency has receded in the presence of testable laws governing the workings of the natural world. Is this a failure of science? Of perspective? Does this tell us something about God, or ourselves?
If religion is going to play a role among modern, technological, scientifically literate people, these questions are going to have to be raised and, if not answered, at least wrestled with.
Several scientific studies have concluded that so far, that impact has not been detectable. Surely this a significant and unexpected mystery. Why is God’s impact on the world not measurable – if not in a specific instance, in aggregate (for example, in hundreds of patients in a hospital, or in the life outcomes of the British royal family).
This lack of tangible effect has led some to suggest that if God exists, then s/he has no effect on the natural world. Others affirm that God does make a difference in the natural world (beyond the inner state of the believer), just not one that can be studied scientifically. It is not clear what this statement might mean
I think that this boundary is one of the important frontiers of religious thought. Some centuries ago, there would have been overwhelming certainty that God was a potent force in the world. Yet everywhere that science has looked, that potency has receded in the presence of testable laws governing the workings of the natural world. Is this a failure of science? Of perspective? Does this tell us something about God, or ourselves?
If religion is going to play a role among modern, technological, scientifically literate people, these questions are going to have to be raised and, if not answered, at least wrestled with.
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