Faith & Science

Not Success, but an Uneasy Marginalization

2010-01-24T11:12:00.003-06:00

So years have past, and creationists have been unable to make any intellectual or scientific advances. In spite of the claims of the ID movement, no startling research is forthcoming, no new science at all has come from ID. And in the meantime, evolution continues to be a healthy and useful theory, generating new insights in a host of disciplines, while creationism is stuck repeating the same distortions and misrepresentations it has relied on for the past 30 years and more.

My fear is that what has changed is that a large segment of the population has become marginalized - pulled into home school movements, poisoned against science by their parents and pastors, where propaganda passes for education, and doctrine for academic freedom and inquiry. What becomes of these children, ghetto-ized in the name of God, and shielded from the stark reality of evolution and the complexities of the natural world?

Are we raising a generation of fundamentalist zealots, destined to turn to violence in the name of their vision of God? Does it matter if science and science education is proved right, if a whole segment of our society refuses to face the facts?

What is lacking is not a compelling scientific explanation of the world, but a compelling human vision of what it means to be in the world. Community, meaningful work, direction, quality of life - this is the "answer" to creationism - because folks hold onto creationism as a way of protecting their faith - and cognitive dissonance is a small price to pay (as they reckon), for the assurances of religion.

Evolution is true, and a fundamentalist view of faith is therefore not accurate. To live in the modern world, we have to face this fact. To successfully deny this, we have to revert back to magical thinking about the universe - ignorance. There are any number of folks who, out of mistaken piety or a desire for power, would be happy for us to return to a more pliable ignorance.

Much more is at stake here than a fundamentalist view of God and the afterlife - who controls our ideas, what we can know and how we can express ourselves, what we can discover and make, do and be are are intimately tied to this struggle. Fundamentalists are out to remake our culture in the image of their reading of scripture. It is not an accurate, just, peaceful vision - and it would be a poverty to be drug back to a time of magical thinking and rigid patriarchy.

Expelled Exposed

2008-04-15T01:15:00.003-05:00

You've got to check this site out. It meticulously documents that amazing fraud and distortion that appears in the movie "Expelled."

Expelled Exposed

You'd feel sorry for these folks, if they weren't doing so much damage, giving science-bashers the idea that there was actual evidence to support their mis-understanding of evolution and sense of persecution.

We Need to Believe

2008-03-21T17:35:00.004-05:00

I heard an interesting quote today: "Fear is a poor counselor."

Many folks, perhaps reacting to fear (crime, the economy, terrorism), perhaps lacking a decent education, perhaps mislead by their religious leaders (many of them know better, but fear to speak out, while others buy the creationist lies) believe that a return to a traditional faith is the only hope for a moral society, and that any enemy of religion must be their enemy as well.

Science, especially in its articulation of evolution, confronts us with a much different cosmology than the spirit-driven mystery that is the world of faith. For those who hold a religious worldview, faith's bona fides are all about us - tornadoes are retribution, an earthquake is punishment, spring rain a numinous act of blessing - aimed directly at me and my community. Parking spaces are held open, synchonicities abound, everything happens for a reason.

Science has cracked open that perspective, and lays bare a series of natural processes. No storehouses of snow, no god striding the dome of heaven, hurling thunderbolts at the wicked. That the earth is simply following a process, is indifferent to us, has no conscious awareness of us, no message for us, no lesson to teach us - is not something people want to accept or bear.

People believe creationism because it is a lie they want to be true- and they'd rather accept that lie than face the implications of the universe we actually live in. They find the lie of creationism actually fits their experience of life better than the truth of evolution.

Given that science (which was embraced because folks understood it to offer a secular version of the Prosperity Gospel) has failed to offer a coherent narrative and ethic to replace religion, why should we be surprised that folks go back to faith? After all, we are literally evolved to embrace a supernatural view of the world, and if science steadfastly refuses to offer anything to believe in, then people will have to find their own beliefs (for we will believe). For some, this is traditional religion, but for others it is new age mysticism, UFO-ology, resurgent nationalism, paganism - something, anything, rather than nothing.

So I think that science does need to articulate a coherent story, and put it into terms that can be comprehended by our brains as they evolved, not as we might wish them to be.

There is design, just not an intelligent designer. Even the ID folks understand the distinction - which is why they did not simply call their idea Design Theory. They know things are designed - by evolution. They needed to go further and stipulate that world we see is the work of not just evolution, but as well, the occasional intervention of an Intelligent Designer. Our response ought to be to acknowledge the design, but also to demonstrate the power of evolution as a designer. And then go further, and demonstrate that the world-as-it-is-designed fits much better with the idea of evolution-as-designer than with an intelligent-being-as-designer.

Golden Rules in our Genes?

2008-02-03T14:32:00.000-06:00

One of the "culture war" slogans is that God provides the only basis for morality. In the US at least, God is used to justify some pretty selfish choices. Because the focus of most conservative Christianity is on individual salvation / personal responsibility, there hasn't been very much mainstream work done on community (not none, its just not ... mainstream).

Freedom has to be constrained by accountability, rights with responsibilities, capitalism with respect for the commons (air, land, water ..) and the poor, the minorities, the disenfranchised. This is what it means to live in a community. Isolated individuals are not very good at dealing with freeloaders and others who will abuse the system for their own advantage, but communities can easily do just that. However, it requires mature, robust, inclusive communities - not rigid and judgmental ones.

Religions do provide abundant material from which to construct a caring global community - the issue is a matter of focus. The selfish, individualistic focus of many churches, for example, are a reflection of the culture we live in. The solution is to transform our culture by changing what we value.

How is such a thing done? It starts with a dissatisfaction with how things are now. Concern for the trajectory of our culture. Perhaps even fear for a future weighted down by ecological collapse and torn apart by fundamentalist religious strife. This last part is important, because it suggests that the solution is not a return to "old time religion."

The difficulties we face are tied up with the failure of world religion to adapt to the remarkable advances of our understanding about the natural world. Had scientific discoveries confirmed the sacred texts of one or more religions, religion would have a much more dominant role in the West. As it is, multiple religions compete with various naturalistic and "new age" worldviews to define how best to live.

Through it all, an unprecedented rise of personal wealth has all-but-obliterated the need for sacrifice, discipline and hard work for hundreds of millions of people. This has created a large leisure class, and an even larger class of people who can live fairly comfortable lives (especially by global and historical standards) without exhibiting any particular drive, discipline or even skill.

Though there is no unifying voice pointing to a solution (cultures, religions, institutions offer a multitude of options, but they are often contradictory, and there is no obvious way to select from among them), these scientific observations ay offer a way forward. While retaining your cultural / religious / socioeconomic framework, begin to form, value and maintain healthy community. Create affinity and affiliation with as broad a conception of community as possible. Most cultures affirm the idea of treating others in the way you would like to be treated. Perhaps this is all we really need - genuine community, where we strengthen and encourage one another, and band together against the freeloader, the oppressor, the abuser.

Science: Collateral Damage in the Culture War

2008-01-25T21:42:00.000-06:00

The world is a scary place, mostly because of some of the people who inhabit it. Then there is accident, famine, sickness and natural disaster.

The world is a fabulous place, full of grandeur, amazing and intricate beauty, love, friendship, simple delights and heart-breaking sorrow. The future defies our every attempt to understand or predict it, and the simplest experiences can be interpreted widely differently, even by folks with similar backgrounds and viewpoints.

There are any number of systems that attempt to make sense of this life we find ourselves in. Many, perhaps most of them ascribe the mystery and chaos of the life we live to unseen forces. We don't understand because we don't see the "big picture." We don't understand because unseen players are introducing cause and effect that we know nothing about.

This conjecture forms a working hypothesis about how the world works. Some explanations involve one God, others many. Some have spirits animating everyday objects, others hosts of angels and devils constantly at work on unseen, unfathomable tasks. In some systems, we are working towards the embodiment of moral principles in life after life. For most of human history, one conjecture was as good as another, and there was no real way to tell which system was right, and which system was not.

Along comes the the scientific method, with its assumption of methodological naturalism. Actually, implicit in this approach to science is a hypothesis: the natural world can be explained without reference to supernatural causes or teleological assumptions. Several hundred years later, this hypothesis has been borne out over and over.

Though the results of science have generally been welcomed (even if all the technology that has come of it has been a mixed bag), it has necessitated a sea-change in how we view the world. Rather than an mysterious interplay of benign and malign unseen supernatural forces, the world is a chaotic interplay of natural forces.

This is seen as a direct affront to those who take a literally a spiritual tradition that ascribes events in this world (private and public, intimate and cosmic) to the action of unseen spiritual forces. Even though the evidence is pretty clear, that our early conjectures about the supernatural world is wrong, we are still act as if the old explanations (soul, spirit, gods, angels) are accurate, and the evidence before us (the fruit of science) is somehow wrong, or irrelevant.

Why? Because we are built to find significance. Because we experience coincidence (and intermittent re-enforcement is a powerful teacher). Because we want to believe that we matter, that what we do matters, that we are right and others are wrong. Don't get me wrong. I think that we are significant, that we do matter, and that there is a way to live (loosely speaking) that is better than others. And I believe that, in most of the world's religions, we have recapitulated that truth. But I also believe that most religions reflect these facts, rather than form the basis for moral and ethical action, community and purpose.

So the experience comes first, then the rejection of science. A person who holds that God personally intervenes in the day-to-day life of the believer, when faced with the fact that this is just not the way the world works, is forced to suspend belief in science (at least while they are acting as a person of faith). This is a small price to pay for certainty and a feeling of personal significance, they think.

I think they are wrong. It turns out to be a huge price to pay - and we see it in the religious and sectarian strife, the racial hatred, the destruction of our planet's atmosphere, the way we ignore authentic community and focus on purely personal issues of behavior.

The world is a chaotic system of natural cause and effect. This is evidently the way God made it, or God did not make it - there is not a third viable option. Just like we have had to give up the notion of sickness as caused by our neighbor's curse, or an eclipse as a struggle between good and evil, we need to base the way we view our search for significance and right action on the world as it is - not the world as we wish it were.

Not Your Old Time Religion

2007-12-26T16:24:00.000-06:00

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.

We've Already Moved Past Biblical Literalism

2007-12-14T12:24:00.000-06:00

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.

Biblical Faith and Confidence in The Natural World

2007-12-09T12:19:00.000-06:00

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.

Faith: Science and Religion

2007-11-26T10:47:00.001-06:00

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.

Does Science Hate God?

2007-11-20T21:15:00.000-06:00

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.

Biblicalism: Addressing the Shortfalls of Methodological Naturalism

2007-11-20T12:35:00.001-06:00

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.

Is God outside the universe? Is God the same as the universe?

2007-11-17T13:00:00.000-06:00

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.

Understanding The World

2007-10-04T13:38:00.001-05:00

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.

Is This What It Means to Be Post-Modern?

2007-10-02T17:34:00.000-05:00

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?

Secularism is Not Secular Humanism

2007-09-29T12:44:00.000-05:00

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.

Why Are Some Christians so Wedded to Creationism?

2007-09-20T13:53:00.002-05:00

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.

Ditch Magical Thinking

2007-08-02T12:27:00.000-05:00

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.

Any Room for Faith?

2007-06-15T18:37:00.000-05:00

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.

What We Need to Believe

2007-06-09T18:11:00.000-05:00

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.

Invitation to the Big Tent

2007-04-29T17:59:00.000-05:00

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?

Science in Conflict with Religion?

2007-04-23T20:05:00.001-05:00

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.

Why Science Matters

2007-04-18T20:47:00.000-05:00

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.

The Way Forward

2007-04-14T19:16:00.000-05:00

“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.”

— 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.

Why Is the Church Silent?

2007-04-07T14:49:00.000-05:00

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.

First Science, Then...?

2007-03-26T22:00:00.001-05:00

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.

Does Science Matter?

2007-03-05T19:48:00.001-06:00

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)

Is Science Atheism?

2007-03-03T12:18:00.000-06:00

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.

A Dialogue Between Faith & Science

2007-03-03T11:54:00.000-06:00

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).

Lessons Creationists Have Taught Me

2007-02-27T19:02:00.000-06:00

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.

We've Got Options

2007-02-20T20:39:00.000-06:00

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).

A False Controversy

2007-02-19T20:53:00.000-06:00

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.

Beyond Faith and Science

2007-02-06T06:19:00.000-06:00

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.

Ultimate Truth From Science?

2007-02-03T07:39:00.001-06:00

Brian Greene (author of “The Elegant Universe”) was in town recently to give a science lecture. During the lecture, he noted that Newton’s equations describing gravity have been experimentally verified and are still used today, but are in some instances wrong. Special Relativity either agrees with Newton or more accurately describes what happens, and corrects the idea that the effect of gravity exceeds the speed of light. Quantum Mechanics describes the effects of gravity at the level of the very small, but is in conflict with Special Relativity. We tend to think either QM or SR is right, and the other wrong. The Superstring theory he champions suggests that they are both right, but must be understood in the context of extra dimensions to account for their differences.

There are critics of string theory, and it may be that there is some other explanation that will account for the differences - or that we will never figure it out. The point is that we continue to make better and better sense of the world we see around us. Since I am not trying to make a religion of science - I don't need science to be true in some sort of ultimate sense - I am looking for it to be an accurate tool for understanding the natural world.

The reason that I continue to return to certain central themes is because the "science is provisional" argument is regularly employed to imply that may one day become the perspective of science. I am offering the counter-argument that science for the most part builds on what we know. There is no reason to expect, for example, that the TOE will alter the interpretation of known facts that will lead to a conclusion that the earth is 6,000 years old .

I see the concerted efforts of conservative Christians to mislead their constituents into believing that science is lying to them, misleading their constituents into believing that there is now (or is every likely to be) evidence that the earth is young, evolution did not happen, or that we are NOT all descended from common ancestors is a direct threat to the health and well-being of the human race. It threatens to return us to superstition and ignorance, at a time when we face unprecedented challenges that require us to think about the world in clear-eyed and accurate ways.

The difficulty with the objections to the provisional nature of science is that they also apply to whatever it is that the objectors believe. We have no access to ultimate truth, except by faith. You can’t know that your confidence in a revelation, scripture or the inner workings of your own mind are getting you any closer to ultimate truth than does science. So whatever fault you find with methodological naturalism (or philosophical naturalism) is just as true of whatever you replace it with. The one advantage that science has over faith is that science can demonstrate its conclusions. As a result, in the limited arena in which science operates, we can actually have broader agreement that it reflects truth than any faith - because faith is a subjective experience, and varies widely from time-to-time and culture-to-culture.

For example, compare the Genesis 1 account of creation with the Pythagorean Theorem. Rabbis, early church leaders and various modern-day theologians have a wide variety of approaches to what Genesis 1 means. On the other hand, the Pythagorean Theorem remains clear, unambiguous and universally affirmed to this day. None of the discoveries of science threaten it, and there is no reason to expect anything different in the future, the provisional nature of science not withstanding. Do you (or anyone else) know the Ultimate Truth with respect to Genesis 1? Maybe. But we have no way of verifying who that group or individual might be. Can you independently verify the Pythagorean Theorem? Yes.

So faith and science are very different, and in its realm, science is a reliable guide to knowledge about the world.

Darwin Sunday

2007-02-01T21:32:00.001-06:00

So it turns out that the number of atheists in science is only some 40%, according to a recent survey. 45% support some sort of theism. What is realy interesting about these numbers is that they have not changed appreciably in the last 90 years.

Science does ignore the supernatural - both because it has not so far been needed to explain the natural processes we see around us (lucky for technological advances) and because there is no way to setup a controlled experiment to deal with the supernatural.

Experiments that have been setup to detect the impact of the supernatural (the effect of prayer, for example), have been universally inconclusive - (that is, no effect demonstrated for prayer).

And yet, some people still insist that there is some sort of unfairness in this. Are scientists supposed to not admit these truths?

Creationists regularly lie, misrepresent and distort the facts in order to make their case. This does nothing to commend themselves to the scientific community. And you'll have to admit that it is a pretty strange thing to see those representing the God of Truth lying, while scientists of all faiths (and none) fight to debunk the lies.

While some theists are quick to seize on any scientific discovery that takes their fancy as proof of God, when scientists advance a claim that does not support theism, these same theists are quick to claim foul, and say that these scientists have gone beyond science.

It is past time for folks to grow up and face the facts - the universe is old, we are descended from common ancestors, evolution happens, and all of us are free to draw what conclusions we will from the evidence of science.

Interpreting the Bible in Light of Our Understanding of the World

2006-12-17T20:00:00.000-06:00

I have argued before that we should let our growing understanding of the world impact our theology. I'd like to explain what I mean by this. We have always used analogies from the natural world when we try to apprehend God. At the very least, our language is firmly rooted in our understanding of the world (exceptions like "sunrise," springing from a previous cosmology, serve to prove the rule). As we better understand our universe, it is inevitable that we struggle to reconcile the Bible with our day-to-day perceptions of the natural world. When we deal with revelation that claims to disclose information about the natural world, we treat some of that revelation as metaphor, and some as fact - based in part on our knowledge of how things work.

As we learn more about the natural world, we either have to rethink what parts of revelation are fact and what parts metaphor, or risk having the entire revelation rejected as untrustworthy. This is a normal course of events when we reach new scientific insights. For example, Martin Luther (one of the founders of the Protestant movement in the Christian faith), thought that the earth was the center of the universe, based on the then-universal way of interpreting the Bible. This biblical teaching has now been reclassified from fact to historical artifact, and no branch of the Christian faith takes the geocentrism of the Bible "literally," in spite of its impeccable pedigree.

With relentless regularity, science presents us with a better grasp of the natural world, in turn causing us to look at teachings in the Bible and ask, "fact or metaphor?" Some attempt a contrarian position, and argue that the discoveries of science are in error, or even misleading. Some give up, and stop questioning the religious texts, assuming they have nothing to offer, having been wrong about the simple things like cosmology and evolution. Most of us simply suspend judgement, and postpone asking the hard questions.

Still, many folks seem to have a sense of "Other." They are unwilling to inhabit a world of pure physics, chemistry and biology. They sense a pattern in the fabric of their lives not accounted for by the products of science. They experience an intimation of something beyond the mundane world, and find a shared experience with communities of faith spread over the globe and through time.

There are discoveries of science that bolster confidence that there may well be "something more." The sheer overwhelming complexity of life is one such discovery. No simple mechanisms end up accounting for life; each discovery of the "fundamental" building blocks of life seem to give way to yet another, even more fundamental layer (or field or emergent property). Others look at the highly-tuned constants that make life possible, others the shared experience of synchonicities, of meaningful "accidents," others at the very fact of all this order in the midst of such a vast, empty universe. Or perhaps it is more personal for some - a sense of being known by Another, of touching the Divine - a wholly personal lens through which the rest of life is filtered.

Faith cannot yet justify itself to the satisfaction of science. This is in itself a bit perplexing, because, we tend to think, if it cannot be studied scientifically, we are uncomfortable believing it is "real." It is also perplexing because many faiths posit an interventionist God - one who does in fact change things in the natural world, and in ways that should be measurable. And yet, so far, the only measurements are in terms of personal experience - not the conclusions of scientific experiments. It is also perplexing because faith finds itself ceding ground to science, and never the other way around. When the Bible and Galileo came to blows over the position of the earth relative to the sun, it was the interpretation of the Bible that changed, not earth's place in the cosmos.

So I am arguing that we treat science as an extension of our senses and our intellect - and that we use our understanding of the natural world to help us intepret the Bible. God does not ask us to ignore the evidence in front of us when we think about God. We are invited to "Taste and see that the LORD is good" (Psalm 34:8) - to use the evidence of our senses to understand God's goodness. If we believe that God is the driving force behind the Bible, then we also believe that s/he knew the earth circled the sun when he inspired the texts that speak of the earth standing still and the sun moving across the sky. We assume that s/he knew that the earth was billions of years old when he inspired the story of 6 days of creation some 6,000 years ago. We assume s/he understood the intricate web of common descent when s/he spoke of the special creation of the various "kinds." If this is true, then we don't need to fear that we will distort God's message - we could even form, as a working assumption, that God uses the cultural assumptions of the day when discussing the world and how it works - that is, these are shared assumptions that are used to fuel analogies of spiritual matters, not attempts to teach about the natural world. Rather than insist that these views are accurate, we should focus on what message was being taught about God and how we should respond to that teaching.

More on the Future of Theology

2006-12-16T10:09:00.001-06:00

Faith and science are two approaches to understanding how the world works and our place in it. Religion starts from the premise that this information is essentially unknowable (so we have to be told). Science springs from the notion that we can figure it out. It turns out that faith has not done such a good job of explaining how the world works, and science is able to explain the “how,” but is so far silent on the “why” and “so what.”

It is easy to think that religion is the search for meaning, for transcendence – but I think that removes it from the original context of profound ignorance of the way that the natural world worked. I wonder if religion was much more like science to folks who struggled to survive though millennia when the natural world was an impenetrable veil. Religion filled in the “how” questions with spiritual beings, accounts of struggles between rival forces, and natural events synched to how well we obeyed the dictates of the gods. And yes, sometimes transcendence – the notion that there has to be something more than this brief life.

Nowadays, the transcendence part is what is left to religion – though billions still think that their lives are shaped by spiritual forces, and that many (most?) of the events of their lives are somehow influenced by how closely they adhere to the tenants of their faith.

This is in sharp contradistinction to modern science, which paints a picture of natural forces that so far leave no room for manipulation by God or gods. History and sociology answer for the rise and fall of peoples, nations and communities. Psychology, economics, family dynamics and heredity account for personality, and double-blind scientific trials look in vain for a demonstration of the power of prayer – or for that mater, any “spiritual” power.

And yet it is remarkable that we are here – apparently alone at the bottom of a gravity well in what is essentially an empty universe. We find ourselves bound to a spec of dirt, surrounded by light-years of space, inimical to life. We find ourselves the only self-aware beings in this universe. Who are we, that we should end up here, alone and without really understanding how we got here or where we are going?

And we treat each other so poorly – we commit genocide, engage in religious and civil wars, enslave each other, bully and exploit each other, we even find it hard to treat our friends and family with respect and honor for any length of time.

Science seems to suggest that this is what we should expect, given our history. Science seems to suggest that we probably are not alone, but we may be beyond reach of any other life (and so functionally alone). Science seems to suggest that if there is a God or gods, He or She makes no measurable impact in the natural world.

Still, billions of people do think that there is a transcendent part of us. Some part that endures past this life, some part that is tarnished or enhanced by how we live here – and so there is a reason to live up to a set of standards, even if it has little or no payback in this life. We find the idea that some part of us endures worth struggling for, and we find that a faith community keeps us pointed in the right direction.

Religion is in a time of transformation never before experienced. There have been clashes of religion, and conversions from one faith to another – but now we face a time when the very voice of faith is being questioned. Religion used to explain how the natural world functioned – but no longer. Religion used to explain how communities and people should interact – but its authority in this area has been severely eroded – we now feel it important to modify what religion teaches in light of what we have come to know about how people are made.

For example, just 500 years ago in Europe, the Bible would have been seen as the authoritative source for cosmology, geology, the origin of plants and animals, history, ethnography, sociology, psychology; predictive of future history, and descriptive of the future of the earth, nations and your and my soul. Now, at best, it speaks of personal morality (greatly circumscribed by advances in our understanding of biology, sociology and psychology) and a future that has been recast from concrete description of an imminent fate to figurative language largely suggestive of possible outcomes.

So religion is left to speak to us about immaterial things, future things, states only dimly grasped, and then only in imagination. Our exposure to other sects, faiths, cultures, histories have made it difficult to imagine that only we have truth – and on top of this we find we have no objective way to choose between your view of truth and my view of truth.

All the same, religion seems to be alive and well. We treat texts as rich sources of advise on how to live, how to treat one another, and how to shape our mind and character. Religion forms the basis for bedrock identities, and for identifying communities, compatible world-views and political and social agenda. Far more people consider themselves religious that not, and far more people think God exists that think He or She does not.

Is this just a brief flourish of growth before some massive die-back, or does it reflect that a faith position is worked into the human psyche at such a deep level that it will survive the transition from arbiter-of-all-truth to suggester-of-a-life-beyond-our-grasp?

I think faith will survive, because faith is recognition of an ultimate meaning. Most of us seek to understand patterns – it is one of the ways we deal with complexity and the rush of input. We sort, we categorize, retain the significant, dismiss the unimportant. For many of us, faith is what emerges when we sort the “big-picture” category. We experience connection, causality between our actions and how life goes for us, mysterious connections and synchronicities with other people and events that convince us that there is in fact a pattern just beyond our grasp. Often, we find a religion that articulates that pattern in a way that makes sense to us, and we take it on as our own grid by which we orient ourselves to our life, our times and eternity. When that happens, we become a person of faith - something I don't think will stop happening any time soon.

The Future of Theology

2006-11-24T18:50:00.000-06:00

For many, many people of faith, revelation is not just a personal matter - the Bible is viewed as revelation from God that is public, accurate and historically verifiable.

As an example, consider the religious conflict between the prophets of the LORD and the prophets of Baal (from 1 Kings 18).

22 Then Elijah said to them, "I am the only one of the LORD's prophets left, but Baal has four hundred and fifty prophets. 23 Get two bulls for us. Let them choose one for themselves, and let them cut it into pieces and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. I will prepare the other bull and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. 24 Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the LORD. The god who answers by fire—he is God.

The story goes on to show that Baal could not get the fire going, but that the LORD could. I hope that this story makes it clear that religion is not just something that is carried in the heart- and it is the same today - for the large group of religious conservatives the world over, God impacts the natural world in a tangible and powerful way.

You see the difficulty - the conflicts over the age of the earth and the common ancestry of life go right to the heart of what the Bible is, and the kinds of truth it contains. For many conservatives, the Bible contains the inerrant word of God. In this frame of reference, there is no easy way to sort truth statements between literal and figurative, historically / culturally bound and transcendent, or valid for only a brief time and eternally true. To question one part of the Bible is to bring the entire Bible into question.

Science has made people look at religion and faith in God in new ways. Many of the traditional ways of thinking about God predates the scientific revolution, and the traditional conservative approach to faith reflects that.

Before science, the Bible explained not just why the world came into being, but how. It was not only the standard for belief and daily life conduct – is was also viewed as containing accurate information about the natural world. The scientific revolution changed that - and in the process removed a huge swath of influence and power from the religious domain to the secular one. The conservative church is not just protesting that the Bible is right when it describes the natural world - it is also demanding its lost prerogatives be returned (that is, the right of veto power over the laws that are passed, the conclusions that science can reach, and the way day-to-day life is carried out).

Another factor that should not be ignored is the deep-seated anti-intellectual bias of the conservative church in America. Because honestly dealing with the products of science and modern scholarship changes our beliefs about the Bible and the world around us, education is seen as having a negative impact on faith.

Partly, this is because most anyone can read the Bible and take its worlds at an approximation of face value. But once you have studied the Bible in its historical context, listened to the voice of modern textual criticism, and factored in data about the natural world from science, you see the Bible in a new light. For folks who have not gone through that education process, it looks like education strips people of faith, and it is not clear why. Their working assumption is that education is controlled by an anti-god cabal. It is obvious to them that too much education is a bad thing.

Now intellectuals have come along with PhDs and law degrees and engineering degrees, and they say that science and educated opinion actually supports the naive or literal reading of the Bible. This approach is tremendously popular among conservatives, and a great relief. Since the average person did not follow the scientific arguments against a literal view of the Genesis, when some intellectuals defend literalism, this is enough to assure them that conservatism was right all along.

Given this, I do not expect that either a literal view of the Bible, or the popularity of intellectual defenses of that approach to faith will go away anytime soon. Smart conservatives, wanting to defend their literal reading of the Bible, will continue to evolve new responses to anything science can come up with.

What I think the future holds for religion is that there will be an acceleration of the trend to attribute fewer and fewer things to the supernatural. As science understands more about how the natural world works, there will be fewer and fewer places where we know little enough of the process to suggest that God may have done the hard parts. As the picture of God intervening to bridge the limitations of natural causes gives way to plausible mechanisms for natural evolution, God will become, among the educated faithful, the Designer who made the whole thing work.

This is already happened - but it left behind a large number of people who are ignorant of the scientific discoveries of the past few hundred years - and their implications for the natural world, the Bible, and our understanding of God. We face the displeasure of those "left behind," who are unwilling to let go of a supernatural view of the world. This is not only a conservative Christian movement. There are fundamentalists of almost all religions, and even adherents of various "new age" religions who believe that the supernatural (whatever that means to them) is the true motive force behind the world we live in. These groups represent the "rear guard" in a withdrawal from understanding the world in terms of supernatural causation. It will be generations before this group becomes a true minority, and even then only if we are more successful than we have been in educating people about science.

Science literacy then is not just an economic advantage - it becomes a critical public policy tactic in an attempt to prevent a cultural divide over how people understand the world to work. How people view the world impacts how they make decisions, how they face the future, how they interpret current events, and what items are at the top of their agenda for their leaders and elected officials. Pretty important stuff.

IS ID Creationism?

2006-11-22T19:56:00.000-06:00

So this is the rough idea - because Young Earth Creationism (YEC) buys what they call mirco evolution, there is some overlap with evolution. I guess Old Earth Creationism (OEC) gets a bit more overlap, since it buys an old earth, and ID gets even more, since it buys the mechanisms, and even the general idea of evolution. But all brands of creationism ignore the discoveries of science in favor of their interpretation of the Bible.

Here are a couple of quotes I pulled off of the Wikipedia article on ID

Dembski: "Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory," Touchstone Magazine. Volume 12, Issue4: July/August, 1999

Johnson: "I have built an intellectual movement in the universities and churches that we call The Wedge, which is devoted to scholarship and writing that furthers this program of questioning the materialistic basis of science."..."Now the way that I see the logic of our movement going is like this. The first thing you understand is that the Darwinian theory isn't true. It's falsified by all of the evidence and the logic is terrible. When you realize that, the next question that occurs to you is, well, where might you get the truth?"..."I start with John 1:1. In the beginning was the word. In the beginning was intelligence, purpose, and wisdom. The Bible had that right. And the materialist scientists are deluding themselves." Johnson 1999. Reclaiming America for Christ Conference. How the Evolution Debate Can Be Won

I think the answer is yes - ID is an approach to creationism that does not talk about God, evidently in the hopes that it could then be taught in schools.

Of course, some will object that evolution only knows about natural processes - in which case there could be no overlap at all with creationism. So for the sake of the clarity, evolution is only about natural causes, and the overlap is the parts of evolution even creationists grant - no implication that evolution recognizes supernatural causes.

Why does it matter? Because creationism starts from the view that how they read the Bible takes precedence over what we learn about the natural world via science. I am not talking about issues like the existence of God or the meaning of life - those are beyond science, and science cannot prove anything about these subjects one way or the other. Science has made a convincing case for an old earth, common descent, and natural processes at work in the world, resulting in what we see around us.

This poses some challenges for people of faith - but the right response is to face those challenges, not to pretend that science does not exist, or that by claiming something is true, that makes it so.

Does Creationism Honor God?

2006-11-20T20:07:00.000-06:00

Creationists are essentially insisting on pretending ignorance about anything that touches a literal interpretation of Genesis. This ignorance allows them to say, "Science has not figured it out - so I could be right - God could have just gone 'poof.'"

The dominant scientific theory is that life emerged spontaneously, and folks are trying to work out how it might have happened. We know more about how that could have happened now than we did 50 years ago, and in 50 more we’ll know even more. We do know enough now that we can say that God did not poof everything into existence 6,000 years ago.

Now we could just say, "Genesis says God did it, so we'll accept this and go work on something else." But creationists say that they don't advocate censorship of science - so it must be OK for scientists to explore how life could have spontaneously developed. Really, you can't have it both ways - either the Bible said it and that settles it (so stop doing research), or scientists can pursue the idea that there is a natural explanation for the origin of life.

The starting point of methodological naturalism, which underlies the scientific method is that there are natural explanations for all observed phenomenon. One of the things that concerns me about the various ID/Creationist positions is that their basic assumption is that a particular interpretation of revelation trumps observation.

Of course, there are a variety of creationist positions, and they differ based on how they interpret the Bible. If they believe that Genesis 1:1 covers a long period of time, then you’ve got old earth creationists. If Genesis 1 refers to 7 24-hour days some 6,000 year ago, you’ve got young earth creationists, and so on. The point is that what is driving the debate is not science (or even an objectivley literal reading of the Bible), but differing interpretations of certain revelations found in the Bible. For the moment, various creationist camps have all joined together to fight science, but logic will tell you that they can’t all be right. Will Wells Unification Church theology win, or will it be Johnson’s old-earth creationism, or Gish’s young-earth approach? Or will ID win out, and with it a syncretistic approach to creation, where anyone’s God can step up and take the credit for creation?

Except for one small fact - just as the storehouses for hail or snow referenced in Job 38:22 are not accurate meteorology, Genesis 1 is not a scientific explanation for the origin of the universe, the earth and life. No science that is constrained by a single sect’s theology can be successful in explaining how the world works. By insisting on injecting private opinion (in the guise of one group's reading of Genesis) into science, what will emerge is bad science – and bad science is ineffective science, wrong science – science that does not work. Fewer discoveries, fewer medical advances, the inability to compete technologically with cultures that do not shackle their scientists – and an inaccurate view of the world that God has made. That is just plain wrong – and does not honor God in any way, shape or form.

Ways Forward in the Faith / Science Dialogue

2006-11-15T22:03:00.000-06:00

Are faith and science at an impasse, with faith insisting that it’s view of revelation is the final arbiter of reality, while science refuses to discuss anything that can’t be weighed, measured or tested?

Both faith and science have important contributions to make to our ordinary life. Science makes sense of the natural world, explaining how things work and what the world is made of. This information is used to enhance life, make the world more manageable and extend the reach of our senses. Like any tool, it can also be used to control, and its use can have unexpected consequences.

Faith makes sense of our life experience in the world, explaining why we are here, and our relationship to the world and the people in it. This worldview enhances our life by helping us make sense of our context, our purpose and our future. Like any prescription, it can be divisive and controlling.

Science is an aide to faith because it helps us filter fact from fiction, and provides a means of testing claims that faith makes, especially when it comes to claims about the nature and origin of the world. It also rescues us from a world of caprice and superstition.

Faith can be a useful context for science, suggesting connections and directions for the world and our place in it that are not deducible from strictly material observations.

Faith that is divorced from the real world and how it works slides into superstition and ignorance. Science with no ethical content can become empty materialism. Faith is not the only context for ethics, but it is the source for millions of people.

Creationism Has Become Hate-Speech Disguised as Religion

2006-11-05T09:40:00.001-06:00

Follow the tone of the creationist debate, and you realize that it is taking an increasing nasty and divisive direction. James Kennedy, the influential Christian broadcaster, promotes a DVD series entitled “Evolution, the Heart of the Problem.” This is an odd conceit for a minister who surely must believe that sin is the heart of the problem – but the hyperbole makes my point – a natural explanation for human differences and behavior is at the heart of his problem – a direct challenge to the primacy of conservative Christian theology over every aspect of life (political, religious, economic, cultural or scientific).

The book “I don’t have Enough Faith to be an Atheist” asserts that scientists promote evolution, even through they know it is wrong, in order to gain sex, money and power. Of course, it is absurd on the face of it to think that evolution is a vast conspiracy, or that all scientists participate in some grand façade (let alone that scientists are rewarded for their participation in this scheme with sex, money or power). Still, this concept is put forward as a serious answer to the question, “If evolutionary theory is so flawed, why is it still in universal usage?” It is hard to see how any rational person could take this seriously – and yet, many conservative Christians accept this reasoning without question, apparently because it is just what they want to hear.

Scientists are regularly portrayed as part of an anti-God conspiracy, and the teaching of evolution, one of the best documented theories in science, is viewed as a deliberate broadside against the Christian faith.

Why has it become fashionable to deride and denounce science and scientists, and in fact the whole notion of a secular society? I see three main reasons.

First, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the selectively literal approach to Genesis favored by many Christian conservatives. In the light of overwhelming scientific evidence for common descent and a very old universe, their assertions of special creation, a 6,000 year-old earth and a global flood are simply not plausible. Rather than face this fact, these conservatives have taken the offensive, and are attempting to discredit science. Their hope is that in the ensuing ignorance, they can step in and insist we adopt their viewpoint as the only allowable alternative.

Second, increasing secularism is eroding the authority of conservative churches, and resulting in a society that does not mirror the ideal order they envision from their reading of the Bible. Again, science is an obstacle in their path to a Christian society, because it offers explanations for human behavior and alternative social policies not grounded in their particular view of God. By working to eliminate the competition, the hope is that a theocratic state will emerge, in which conservative Christian values are imposed via legislation and self-censorship. We already see these trends in the attempts at inserting Christian dogma into public school science education, the movement for constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, and the ardent desire to outlaw abortion.

Third, this movement underscores conservative Christians’ status as a persecuted minority. These persecuted believers have been given secret knowledge (via their reading of the bible) unavailable to science or reason. They view the broader culture as the playground of the devil, who has ensnared and blinded non-believers (that is, anyone who does not believe like they do). In this scenario, science is the handmaiden of the devil, weakening Christians’ faith in their interpretation of the bible, and providing “intellectual fulfillment” for atheists. Science-as-the-work-of-the-devil validates their self-image as a select group of persecuted saints who alone know the truth, and who will soon be rescued by the hand of God (who will at the same time destroy the earth, along with all unbelievers).

In this view, science is simply a causality in a war to establish a particular, sectarian vision of reality. Because science does not validate that reality, it must be consigned to the same fiery lake as everything that does not serve God. The Kennedy’s and Dobson’s of the world may use this kind of imagery as rhetorical devices to stir up their support base – but a generation raised on this hate speech and empowered by inflows of cash and political will from the far right may well form a modern tribe of Vandals, who take this "trash-secular-culture" rhetoric as literally as their reading of Genesis.

A Celebration of Ignorance

2006-10-14T10:36:00.000-05:00

Creationists want "their side" inserted into science textbooks. However, they have no real interest in teaching school children about actual controversies in science. How do I know? Just look at the subjects they focus on: origins of life, and common descent (evolution). They are totally uninterested in any other area (they'll get to cosmology eventually), because their real goal is to make the classroom safe for their narrow interpretation of Genesis.

The science textbooks take the approach that, after hundreds of years of scientific progress in understanding the natural world in terms of physical processes, there is in every likelihood a natural chain of events leading from non-life to life (even if we never figure it out). After all, the reasoning might go, here we are. Trying to stay clear of a confrontation with a multitude of religious claims, the textbooks do not attempt an analysis of natural versus super-natural causation. What they do teach is the consensus view of our understanding of the natural world (albeit always a few years out-of-date).

The creationists here are coming from a different viewpoint - they already know God "poofed" everything into existence 6,000 years ago, and so reject any claim that a natural chain of events led to life, because they "know" that is not how it was done.

Just as with ID, even if we can't figure out HOW it could have happened, this does not mean that God did it via a supernatural event- it just means that we have not figured it out. So we are back to the classic God-in-the-gaps explanation. YEC-ers argue for gaps in our understanding where they can say, "see, God did it." Inevitably, the gaps reconfigure, and the YEC-ers are forced to say "What I meant was, God did that."

Compare this with geocentrism in Martin Luther's time. The gap was different, but the approach is the same.

Quote:

"Scripture simply says that the moon, the sun, and the stars were placed in the firmament of the heaven, below and above which heaven are the waters... It is likely that the stars are fastened to the firmament like globes of fire, to shed light at night... We Christians must be different from the philosophers in the way we think about the causes of things. And if some are beyond our comprehension like those before us concerning the waters above the heavens, we must believe them rather than wickedly deny them or presumptuously interpret them in conformity with our understanding."

- Martin Luther, Luther's Works. Vol. 1. Lectures on Genesis, ed. Janoslaw Pelikan, Concordia Pub. House, St. Louis, Missouri, 1958, pp. 30, 42, 43.

Martin Luther based his geocentrism on the Bible (just like YECs), he denied the evidence in deference to his interpretation of Scripture (just like YECs), and he was demonstrably wrong (just like the YECs).

The YEC position results in:

a celebration ignorance (God acts only where we don't know what happened - as soon as it is explained "scientifically" God disappears from view),
discouraging real science (any attempt to demonstrate the "hows" of a gap are seen as part of an anti-God agenda), and
distorting our educational system (instead of learning about the world, the classroom is given over to partisan wrangling about the validity of the Genesis account of creation).

So not only do I think the YEC approach is flawed as both an approach to biblical interpretation AND as science; it also shrinks God to fit into a set of ever-diminishing, tawdry gaps.

Dinosaurs and Humans? Oh No!

2006-09-21T21:52:00.002-05:00

The belief that dinosaurs and humans could have lived at the same time is an idea that has been kept alive past its time. The evidence for human and dinosaur co-existence seems to be:

Biblical references to behemoth and leviathan, assumed to be actual creatures and dinosaurs,
Literary references to dragons (said dragons assumed to be dinosaurs),
Cave paintings believed to depict dinosaurs contemporary with the humans who drew them, and
Human and dinosaur footprints in the same rock.

Arguing against humans and dinosaur’s having co-existed:

The plants and animals found with dinosaurs are not the same plants and animals found with humans (not even close). No modern plants or animals have been found with dinosaurs, for example, and no plants or animals found with dinosaurs have been found with human remains.
Dinosaurs and humans are not found in the same strata. For example, in Kansas, dinosaurs can be found in the remains of a shallow sea, while people are found in the remains of a vast plain. Note that the biblical references to behemoth and leviathan refer to these creatures as being alive in the author’s lifetime, so they all could not have died off pre-flood.
Unlike other extinct creatures that humans interacted with (the mammoth, for instance), there are no artifacts demonstrating interaction. We have found mammoth bones scored by spears, charred bones of mammoths in trash heaps, carved mammoth tusks, etc. There have been no such finds involving dinosaurs.
Ancients ran across dinosaur fossils as well, and tales of large creatures could easily have come from these bones – just as our dinosaur stories in our popular culture have. Furher, dragons don't actually look or act much like dinosaurs (except that they are both large).
The Bible's references to dinosaurs? There isn't any. The Bible refers to creatures known to the readers - and we have no evidence that dinosaurs lived with people (remember the evidence for human-mammoth interaction - and this is in pre-literate, pre-historic cultures; by the times of the Bible, we are dealing with literate cultures where we would have every reason to expect dinosaurs to show up, just like bears, lions, locusts and a host of other clearly identifiable animals do, in paintings, in literature, in "scientific" treatises, etc.).
The claims of human footprints found in the same rock with dinosaurs have turned out to be made in error. Even a quick Google of the subject puts the claims to rest (sure, some people still support the idea, but there is no substantive evidence - none at all).

Notice how these points have nothing to do with the age of the earth or evolution. Of course, when you place humans and dinosaurs in their proper timeframes (tens of millions of years apart) it is obvious that they never co-existed. When you compare the kind of plants that existed during the reign of the dinosaurs with the vegetation human's evolved around, it is clear that a large span of time separates us from dinosaurs. Even setting these arguments aside, however, there is simply no basis on which to conclude that humans and dinosaurs ever met face-to-face.

There is a big difference between explaining how something could be true, and actually looking at the evidence we have, and concluding it actually IS true. You can believe that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time only if you look at a small sub-section of the evidence, and present that sub-section in the best possible light. Look at all the evidence, and subject that evidence to critical thinking, and you realize that people and dinosaurs never met.

What Do We Mean by Special Creation?

2006-08-29T08:05:00.000-05:00

Special Creation is the term creationists use when they want to say that God created the world, and everything in it, pretty much the way we see it today. Further, they contend that He created it all at once, bypassing the natural processes and mechanisms we see at work around us in the universe. So while we see proto-stars, this is not how God made the current stars, though we see material from which planets will form, and material left over from planets that have formed, this is not how God made the planet we are on. Though we have discovered vast plates on which all the surface of the earth rides, these had nothing to do with the formation of the land masses we now see. Though we see evolution at work every day, evolution is not the process through which the diversity of life developed. It is true that some creationists recognize that natural forces are at work in the world, and ascribe trivial changes to them - but creationism ascribes the vast majority of the natural world to a 6 day stretch of time during which everything simply came to be.

Is there any scientific support for the idea of special creation? That is, can the facts we observe about the natural world be reconciled with the idea of a recent (6,000 year) earth, brought into existence over a 6-day period of time? The simple and best answer is no. At every level you look at it, the account of creation in Genesis 1 does not stand up as a "scientific" explanation of how the world was created. For me at least, this does not mean that it is not true - it is a declaration of freedom from bondage to the elemental forces thought to rule the earth - not a scientific explanation of the earth's construction.

It turns out that creation is a metaphor for processes that were not understood at the time, and for which people had neither the world-view, technology or even vocabulary to comprehend. And like all metaphors, it breaks down when you push it to the level of detail required to see the world as it is.

Take the opening sentence "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." When we contemplate these words, we most likely think of the familiar picture of a blue earth resting in vast space. This is not what the original hearers imaged at all - they pictured a vast sea, on which the earth, plate-like, rested on pillars. More pillars supported a dome of sky, and above that, the heavens - the place where God literally dwelt. Below the earth was a place of danger and chaos, where the dead went. The entire world was centered on the middle east, and Australia, North and South America did ot exist. Even much of Asia, India and Europe were unknown, or the merest fables. Ships kept close to the shore for fear of getting lost or eaten by monsters, women and children were property, slaves were a natural part of everyday life, and the world was ruled by powerful and unseen forces, investing all of nature with supernatural menace - capricious gods and spirits who had to be placated at every turn. This is the world pictured by the hearers of Genesis 1.

And where do we live now? In a world with 10,000 species of micro-organisms in a GRAM of soil. In a world where there are 350,000 species of beetle, where we can see the evidence of the slow shift of continents, and find the fossils of - not just strange creatures who have gone extinct- but entire ecosystems (plant and animal) who have developed and died out not just once or twice, but over and over during the 4.5 billion year history of the planet. Seas have formed and dried up, only to be replaced by plains, mountains have thrust seabeds into the sky, entire mountain ranges have been washed into the oceans - not once, but many times. We are not just related to the other apes - we share something like 98% of our DNA with them.

Yes life is wonderful and amazingly complex, and yes, there are still things we have not figured out - but one thing we have figured out is that we were not created 6,000 years ago from the dust of the earth.

If not us, then who?

2006-08-26T17:32:00.000-05:00

While we are all living our lives with a "it could never happen here" philosophy, people are moving into the vacuums created by our non-involvement.

No one around to demand integrity and accountability in politics? The unscrupulous and opportunistic step into their niches.

No one willing to preach the gospel of Christ, knowing what it will do to their TV ratings and "free-will" offerings? Tell people what they want to hear - appeal to their vanity, their pride, their weaknesses, their fears, their prejudices.

No one around to insist that capitalism be balanced with compassion and concern for 'the commons?" Corporations take it as their duty to maximize profit - no matter what it does to people, society or the environment.

We drop duty, service, mercy from our personal values? People get ahead by being selfish and self-serving, and entire industries arise to help them along.

We humans have a remarkable ability to shape our environment - and the shape of that environment determines the behaviors required to succeed. We create and strengthen our environments by every action we take – which is why character matters, and why mercy and compassion matters, and what gives meaning to duty and sacrifice and service.

If not us, then who?

Can A Christian Color Outside the Lines?

2006-08-21T21:15:00.000-05:00

Have you read Acts 1:9 where Luke writes about Jesus' ascension into heaven:

"After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight."

Do we think that heaven is up in the air, above the dome of the sky? The disciples seemed to think so.

Do we think that heaven is anywhere in this physical realm at all?

If heaven is not "away beyond the blue," then why did Jesus travel up a few hundred feet in the air, and then disappear behind a cloud? And where did he go? And why couldn't he have just gone there from right on the ground?

Of course, it is fine to say that there may be things about heaven we do not understand (surely we understand little or nothing) - but we can be fairly certain that heaven is located in no physical place that we can see, or reach, or locate on a map or celestial chart. In any event, we can be pretty certain that heaven is in no place that required Jesus to lift up off the ground and disappear behind a cloud.

So why did he do it? Is there a sense of theater here, playing to the expectations of the disciples? Is Jesus meaning to teach something about the location of heaven, or is he underscoring that that is indeed where he was headed? Certainly the disciples would have seen this as an unambiguous act by Jesus - literally ascending into heaven. The creeds affirm as much. It certainly cannot mean the same thing to us - we've seen what is "up there" and it is space and a planetary system and very distant stars.

So yes, science can make us take a new look at the Bible - and it "makes us look" whether we want to or not. We do not read the bible or experience the world in the same way Abraham or Moses or John or Paul did. We cannot make it otherwise - except by imposing ignorance through the process of demolishing science. This is just what well-meaning people do when they insist that matters of faith be taught as if they were scientifically demonstrated facts. When any heartfelt belief can be legislated into science, then science is in danger of losing its essential character, and truth becomes a word meaning only the opinion promoted most forcefully.

In the name of piety, there certainly are those who are taking an axe to the tree of science. They will be shocked to discover that what grows up is a crop of weeds - all claiming to be beautiful flowers of truth. Let's hope that someone is always around to stop such senseless vandalism - and let's resolve to be that someone.

“Proving” God's Power and Might

2006-08-05T21:45:00.001-05:00

I believe the driving force behind "creation science" and Intelligent Design is the desire to demonstrate, in concrete terms, that God exists and impacts the natural world.

From the faith position, the argument goes something like this (I am generalizing about many evangelical and conservative Christians -I realize that this does not represent the experience or beliefs of all people of faith):

A large number of people believe in God. They base this belief on a combination of personal experience and revelation. We have books that claim to contain the words and acts of God. We have subjective experiences that we believe are the result of God interacting with us. We observe effects in our life and in the social, political and natural world that we attribute to the activities of God.

From these experiences and observations, we come to believe that God has a tangible impact on our lives and the workings of the world. By tangible impact, we mean measurable, noticeable - that God is potent and effective. Isaiah 55:10-11:

quote:
10 As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

The success of science in the past few hundred years has been to describe how the world works without reference to God (not in denial of God, but reflecting the understanding that supernatural intervention is not needed for all natural processes so far identified). So far, no cause-and-effect has been demonstrated to depend on God, and no experiments have been successful in detecting God's activities.

To be sure, there are many, many stories of things happening that are attributed to God - healings, recoveries, fortuitous happenings, incredible coincidences, chains of events leading to results that people feel can only be the action of God - but so far, no way to demonstrate that belief in the laboratory or in the field to a "scientific" level of proof.

This stands in stark contrast to the success of science in understanding how the natural world works.

The "creation science" and ID movement is an attempt to rectify this imbalance by demonstrating the power and effectiveness of God in terms that cannot be denied. So far, this attempt has not been successful. This has resulted in some people of faith "declaring victory" anyway, and trying to convince the rest of the world that areas of uncertainly, complexity and debate represent the genuine activity of God. The world's response has been skeptical.

For now, it seems that the kind of hard proof people of faith are looking for is not forthcoming. It makes sense to keep looking - but integrity demands that we be up front about how the search is going - full of confidence and faith, yes, but declaring victory - not yet.

Of course, there is another approach - to consider the possiblity that the world that science uncovers is the world God has made. God may not be detectable via science because what science reveals is what God does - all of it. In ways that we obviously do not understand, perhaps God makes his will known though what we perceive to be the natural processes we experience everyday. If this is true, then we will never (or always) find God via science. This does not make science any less useful, but it can make science less threatening.

Science and Religion Both Faith-Based?

2006-08-04T23:26:00.000-05:00

Do scientists who accept evolution have equivalent a priori assumptions (old earth, evolution, common ancestor etc.) that causes them to process all facts through a filter that can yield only support for their assumption? That is, are YEC and evolution two faith-based competing theories?

I do not think so, because there are many, many independent lines of evidence that do not make sense in a YEC interpretation of Genesis, but do make sense in the context of evolution and common descent. And of course, this is how the theory developed. A YEC scientist (Darwin) went out and looked around, and realized what the facts he observed led to - evolution. After some rather contentious debate, other scientists came to the same conclusions. Years later, thousands of scientists recognize that evolution makes sense of the facts, whereas special creation does not. Some of these facts include the geological column and the fossils indexed to them, psuedogenes, broken genes, junk DNA, greater similarity correlating with shared ancestry, etc. etc.

So you have evolution emerging from the systematic observation of facts about the world, and the YEC approach coming from an assumption about how to interpret Genesis 1.

While science does not have anything to say about the existence of God, it does have things to say about things that have and have not happened in the natural world. When your confidence in God is tied to the accuracy of statements about the natural world contained in books of revelation, then science is in the uncomfortable position of “disproving” some possible interpretations of that revelation (Genesis can’t be both "true in a scientific sense" and teach that the world is 6,000 years old, for instance, if science is a reliable guide to nature).

Unfortunately for creationists, criticism of our evolution is not the same thing as defending the Genesis account of creation. It may be that mutation and natural selection are not the only forces acting on species to cause evolution. This just means that the theory will get better over time – that there is more to learn. While the theory of evolution will change and grow, there is no reason to expect that the evidence will suddenly start pointing to special creation, a global flood, and a young earth.

None of this rules out the possibility that God designed the universe, especially if He did it in some way that is beyond our detection – and in a way that also preserves the true random nature of the cosmos. This is a position that cannot be proved or disproved by science – two people look at the same facts, some see God, some see chance.

So faith and science two faith assumptions? Christians challenged to believe the Bible or believe science? I don’t think so. Do the findings of science challenge our beliefs? Of course. All Christians used to believe that the Bible taught geocentrism – today, YEC-ers argue strongly that the Bible teaches no such thing. The reason everyone agrees on this point is because scientists demonstrated a fact about the world (heliocentrism) that no one can successfully dispute. Like it or not, we have to test our interpretations of revelation against our real world experience. Science is a tool that magnifies and strengthens our ability to think accurately about our world. And that is all it does – but that is quite a lot.

So What is Wrong With ID?

2006-07-31T20:32:00.000-05:00

I have a few objections to ID. These include:

ID is an interventionist theology, that states that God MUST miraculously intervene to do the "hard parts." By this I mean that ID in general agrees that some evolution has taken place, but that certain things (e.g. species, major organs (like the eye), the bacterial flagellum) represent too much complexity to have evolved. So God, in some unspecified and unknowable way intervened in the process of evolution and added the missing information. This is not my view of how God acted in creation, based on the evidence so far - so I am not an advocate. It also specifically EXCLUDES my theistic evolution approach *which essentially states that science is uncovering how God made the world). Id differ from young earth creationism only in that ID accepts far more of evolution and grants a much longer time frame for life on earth than those folks who think that Genesis 1 accurately describes creation events.

The whole movement is driven by a prior commitment that we know, based on our interpretation of the Bible, better than the evidence of the natural world. Though ID claims to be agnostic about the Designer, both Behe and Dembowski have admitted that they think the designer is the Christian God. The only reason to remove "god talk" is the hope that it will then stand up to constitutional challenge. ID has not made its case, so we are jumping the gun, and asserting things contrary to fact, when we advance the ID idea.

I also think that most of the furor over ID has been whipped up under false pretenses. Conservative Christians have been told that "mainstream science" promotes atheism. This is not true (though there are scientists - both Christian and atheist - who do claim that science supports their beliefs). Science is the most successful tool we have to explore the natural world. Because it has not turned up evidence of the existence of God (something it was not ever designed to do), it is now being made to suffer accusations of being anti-Christian.

Yes, there are cultural, moral and ethical issues we need to face. Yes, scientists (just like pastors, lawyers, politicians, plumbers, etc.) have a variety of personal views - some we embrace, some we reject. Science is being singled out for attack because it speaks with authority about issues that touch on the validity and accuracy of the Bible. ID is an attempt at a scientific case, but in spite of claims to the contrary, it has not yet made its case. Will ID be able to support its claims? Time will tell - and we should give it all the time it needs (however long that turns out to be), not rush it, half-baked, to the table, and then insist that it be the star of the banquet.

Science and the Art of Biblical Interpretation

2006-07-02T00:12:00.000-05:00

I've written lots about what I am against, so what am I arguing for?

First, that the natural world is a continuum with revelation. What I mean by this is that the natural world is like a “fossil” of truth – it provides an accurate picture of what has come before.

An example? The world really is 4.5 Billion years old. Why do we know this? Multiple dating methods converge on this date, using independent properties of matter.

The implication? When Genesis describes creation, it is not describing the events in any sort of scientific manner. This would have come to a surprise to the original hearers, to believers during the life of Jesus, even to early scientists like Isaac Newton.

So how can I justify ignoring the plain meaning of the text? Well, because the plain meaning is not suported by any evidence - none. Not just in the timing of creation (6, 24-hour days), but also in the order of creation (light, day and night before the creation of the sun, for example).

One objection is that this is how God decided to do it; it was a miracle, and one of the (unintentional? unavoidable?) fallouts is that the scientific evidence points in a different direction (old earth), but the Bible sets us straight (young earth). This objection is unassailable – this could be the truth. But when I consider the odd situation that puts us in – the truth (young earth) is of no help to us (for example, flood geology is useless in finding oil), and the scientific “lie” (old earth) proves very accurate and useful information (a good way to find oil) - I am not satisfied with this explanation.

Is this kind of dualism really Biblical? For spiritual purposes, we believe in a young earth, but when we want to have an accurate model of the earth and how it works, we have to resort to the lie of an old earth?

I suppose the same can be said of evolution. In spite of all the hype, no evidence actually exists that disproves evolution, and no support for special creation can be found. What is left is personal disbelief that evolution can work. But inability to believe is not compelling, especially when you follow the evidence, and find that all the claims made to have disproven evolution turn out to be mistaken or worse, fraudulent.

So does that mean that science stands in judgment over the Bible? For me at least, not really. I view science as a natural extension of our curiosity about, and knowledge of, the world. We understand the world in a very different way than did the original hearers of the various books of the Bible. We do not believe in geocentrism. We do believe in the germ theory of disease. From Augustine to Galileo, the church taught that no one lived on the opposite side of the world (the antipodes), because Christ’s message could not have reached them. We now know that in fact people did live there, even before the time of Noah.

God, however, would not have been unaware of any of this. A clear implication is that God spoke to people in terms of their local cultural understandings and expectations. It turns out that the Bible is not a science textbook; God uses the language and experience of the people he is dealing with to communicate to them – how could he do otherwise?

It is true that this opens up sections of the Bible to interpretation; what in the Bible is cultural, and what transcends culture? This is a question that we must, and do discuss (consider the issues of multiple wives, slavery and the role of women to name just a few issues where our modern approach differs from the world found in the New Testament). It is naïve to pretend that we do not reinterpret the Bible for our time and culture. Even literalists have to explain away the order of creation in Genesis and the geocentrism of Joshua; so the question is not IF, but HOW to intepret the Bible. I believe that we must let our understanding of the natural world play a role in our approach to Biblical interpretation.

Science Versus the Bible?

2006-06-24T22:13:00.000-05:00

When we discover that the natural world is different than the picture we expect from our reading of the Bible (for example, geocentrism) do we suspend our thought processes, or hold both the Biblical narrative and the discoveries of science in tension?

Some try and resolve the conflict with creationism, whereby “science-like” explanations for “literal” readings are used in an attempt to justify a pre-determined attitude toward the text. This approach is the very opposite of science, because a determination of what the text means has been made before any facts are checked. For example, the existence of a global flood in 2,500 bc is inferred from the text, and facts are winnowed for support, no matter how the evidence actually falls out. Even in the face of clear evidence that the case for the flood is full of omissions, distortions and manipulation, this prior commitment to the meaning of the text is maintained IN SPITE of the evidence.

Some reasons why we know the Bible is not to be taken literally:
1. Genesis 1 does not describe creation in anything like a “natural” order. For example, light is made before the sun, and day and night are separate creations, independent of light and the sun. Green plants precede the creation of the sun, and the stars are called by name (though they are virtually infinite in number).
2. Explanations of events like the lengthening of the day in Joshua are incorrect, representing a cultural understanding of the causes of day (the sun moving across the sky, Jesus rising up into the clouds on his way to heaven, etc.).
3. The Bible itself represents a consensus, based on hundreds of years of conflict over theology (see Arius, Athanasius, Pelagius, etc.). Even now, there is not unanimity about the cannon between the three major branches of Christianity (Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant), let alone other traditions. This does not mean that the Bible is not inspired, but it does mean we have to appreciate the human process used to assemble, recognize and preserve the Bible. These same human processes are reflected in the content of individual books – which in fact reflect the cultural assumptions of the authors and audience of the various books.
4. We do not have original manuscripts on which to base an inerrant, infallible approach to the Bible. The earliest partial manuscript dates to over a hundred years after the events recorded, and there are irresolvable textual problems that prevent us from recreating an “original” manuscript (for example, we have 4 endings of Mark, and doubt that any of them is the original). This does not mean that the Bible is not reliable – just that it is not inerrant or infallible, at least as concerns the manuscripts we have. The evidence for this is in the public domain (just Google, and skip past all the spin.

As a result, I think it is clear that the Bible cannot be taken as literally true as regards the natural world (6,24 hour days of creation, day and night created before the sun, global flood about 2,500 years bc, the notion that stopping the sun would cause the day to be longer, etc.). The Bible reflects the cultural assumptions of the age in which it was written. We have to keep this in mind when we read and interpret the Bible. As a result, we have to recognize that the Bible does not teach science. Instead, it communicates spiritual truths in the context of the cultural beliefs of the author and original audience.

This does not mean that all historical details are inaccurate – just that the Bible’s authority does not rest on its containing a modern, scientific understanding of the world. Accurate understandings of the world can be used as part of the interpretation process. For example, Genesis 1 should not be viewed as literal history. We only know this because science has demonstrated that the order, timing and cause-and-effect relationships between various elements of the creation story in Genesis is not accurate. When the accuracy of certain historical claims are crucial (for example, Moses’ existence or Jesus resurrection) certainty can be based on other foundations than the claim of an inerrant, infallible Bible.

The Long and Short of Biblical Literalism

2006-06-13T18:58:00.000-05:00

Some people have been having trouble knowing just what to take literally in the Bible, and what can safely be explained away. For example, the story about the sun standing still in Joshua DOES NOT teach geocentrism. But Genesis 1 DOES teach a literal 6, 24 hour day creation. How can you tell them apart? Well, you can't. That is why you need good Bible teachers (cause you'd never figure it out on your own).

I guess the moral is, take the Bible at its word, except when you need to reinterpret it. If you don't keep its literal meaning (except when you have to change it), then it will lose its authority. Except when Catholics interpret the Bible - good conservatives don't hold with those Popes. Or Protestants who don't reach the same conclusions we do. And don't get me started on Orthodox Christians. Where did all these churches come from, anyway?

You see, we can't have any interpretation going on, except when WE say it is OK. And when it is OK, we'll let you know - because you sure can't tell by looking at the passages. Its tricky - two passages can seem to be historical recitations of facts, but one needs to be interpreted, and the other must be treated as literal truth.

Only we can tell you which is which (and don't ask us how we know, it is a spiritual thing - you just know, if you are us). And those Church Fathers - they don't know what they are doing either, except when they agree with us. In fact, this is how we know the interpretation is right - we agree with it. Those other Christians in the past 1900 years - you just can't trust them. Stick with us, we'll tell you when to interpret, how to interpret, and who you can trust (mostly just us, and if it comes right down to it, me and not them).

Faith in A Scientific World

2006-05-27T11:08:00.000-05:00

The past few hundred years has witnessed a sea-change in the way we think about the world. Science, not theology is accepted as the final arbiter on everything from the power of prayer to the age of the earth. This would have been unthinkable to the vast majority of folks even 300 years ago. True, the YEC camp has to fall back on an alternative science to justify their positions - but the point is, they don't just say "it was a miracle" and leave it at that - no, they go to amazing lengths to argue that THEY have the 'true science" and the more accurate view of the world. In other words, they grant the primacy of science when it comes to the natural world.

Most religions record interactions between gods and people. Gods are revealed to change history, perform miracles and dwell in the heavens (or some such place) - which were viewed not as extra-dimensional or outside of space and time, but as PART of the natural order - albeit generally inaccessible. All the same, Orpheus went into Hades, and John had visions of heaven - which are portrayed as actual, physical places.

The point is, we are transitioning from a worldview in which God built the universe, populated it, and physically inhabits it, to a vague notion of God as Spirit, but no longer actually living in the same physical universe with us. Yes, we discuss God as being present in Spirit with us - but the notion that God, who is part of the Universe, extends that presence via his Spirit is quite different than the notion that God is somehow outside space and time, with no natural properties at all, yet somehow interacts with us via spirit, which itself has no natural properties at all - but still has the power to impact us in undetectable (that is, purely subjective) ways via an unknowable mechanism.

Do we need to update our theology (in the classic sense of knowledge about God) to take into account what we now know about the universe?

4 Thoughts About the Faith / Science Dialouge

2006-04-17T19:25:00.000-05:00

First, the religious discussions (here, and in the broader cultural context) have been hijacked by a group who, while claiming to represent "authentic" Christianity, actually represent a narrow and narrow-minded subset of Christian faith and practice. As has been noted before, the church (in space and time) has had a variety of approaches to Genesis 1 - and it is neither accurate nor honest to dismiss them in favor of one group's vociferous insistence that they alone know the truth. Geisler's "either/or" logic is an attempt to capture the entire "biblical" faith perspective for literalism. Though it is fine for literalists to think they are right, the plain truth is that folks we will meet in heaven, folks who have defended and helped define what we know as historic Christianity, helped define the very contents of the Bible, the historic creeds (and even the "founding fathers" of fundamentalism) held beliefs that differ from this modern group of literalists.

Second. There is overwhelming evidence that the earth is old and that that the we evolved from a common ancestor. These facts have to be taken into account when we interpret scripture, in the same way that we use what we know about the world when we read (for example) Isaiah 55:12:

You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.

We recognize that this is poetic, because we know trees do not have hands. Likewise, we know that Genesis 1 does not refer to 6, 24 hour days, because we have learned that the earth is billions of years old, and was not created in the order listed. An alien might think, reading Isaiah, that trees "obviously" had hands, and could clap. Only knowledge about life on earth could set it straight. Likewise, our knowledge about the age of the earth lets us know that Genesis is meant as poetry, not science (not false – Isaiah 55 is true, just not literal, as is Genesis 1).

Third. What is driving the "teach the controversy" movement is an a prior commitment to what is and is not "literal" in the bible. The fear seems to be that if some parts of the bible are not taken literally, then no part will be. This is not true, as demonstrated by the fact that Christians have survived the demise of the divine rights of kings to rule, and the notion that the earth was at the center of the universe. Both were thought to be undoubtedly true, based on a literal reading of the Bible, but somehow Christians have survived the switch in thinking. Likewise, Christians can survive this change in thinking as well.

Fourth. It is of no value to your relationship with God to believe things that are not true. All the time people spend on defending the obvious falsehoods presented by young earth creationism would be much better spent dealing with the world the way it really is, and seeking to address genuine problems that we face (take your pick, justice, morality, human suffering, coming ecological catastrophes).

Creationism Doesn't Belong in the Science Classroom

2006-04-06T18:43:00.000-05:00

There is a measurable, meaningful difference between evolution and creationism. This difference justifies excluding creationism (in any of its wedge or Trojan horse variations) from being inserted into the public school science classroom.

Evolution is a mainstay of scientific thought. 300,000+ articles have been published in science journals keyed to the word evolution in the last 15 years, in comparison to a handful of ID review articles (containing no research). Evolution is a well-established, accepted theory, used every day by scientists all over the world. Contrast folks who graduate with a geology degree from a creationist college, who have to use old earth models of geology to find oil, and who admit that they are not able to use anything they learned at school, as it does not correspond with reality.

Compare the success of evolution in explaining the world with creationism, which offers no coherent theory, no reseach program, no facts - only apologetics, criticism of evolution, and a belief that it must be true because that is the way creationists read the bible. These are not competing ideas that deserve equal time. One explains the world around us, the other confounds our understanding by telling us that the clear facts we observe in nature are wrong.

All the pressure to insert "critical analysis" of evolution into public school classrooms comes from creationism camps, and parents & politicians who have been told by their religious leaders that this is an important issue. Especially telling is that calls for critical analysis in science are limited strictly to those items that contradict YEC claims (with the exception of geocentrism - I guess they have conceded on that one). What about controversies in areas that the Bible does not address? They aren't interested.

As a result, there is no scientific or educational value to teaching a creationism perspective on scientific controversy, since it is strictly an apologetics tool, intended to justify YEC theology.

What is worse, there is no legal or logical reason to limit the discussion to creationist talking points - so we are opening the door to astrology (as ID proponent Behe noted in the Dover trial) and any other form of religious belief being certified as science, as long as there are enough members of the local or state school board to insert it into the curriculum. This will result in children getting the clear message that all truth (even about the natural world) is a mater of personal conviction, based not on evidence, but on what religious leaders say must be true. This is a giant step back in knowledge, and presages a return to superstition, ignorance and fear as we lose our grasp on our understanding of the natural world.

Is Evolution Really The Problem?

2006-04-03T19:43:00.000-05:00

From Dr. Kennedy's website:

Dr. Kennedy and The Coral Ridge Hour examine the bitter fruit of Darwin's theory that man evolved from matter. This broad-ranging DVD, Evolution: The Root of the Problem shows that Darwin's idea has unleashed horror—bringing death to millions through movements it fostered, such as Nazism and Communism. In America, Darwinism has displaced moral absolutes with moral anarchy in our courts and schools. Evolution: The Root of the Problem features a powerful message from Dr. Kennedy and five in-depth Coral Ridge Hour report.

There is a perceived link between science and atheism, because science provides natural explanations of the world, and seems to leave God out of the equation.

The argument then goes, if God is not needed to explain the world, he can be safely excluded from other parts of life- like religion.

With religion out of the picture, people no longer follow the moral rules laid out in the Bible.

By not following these rules, the argument goes, society falls apart.

Is this really something that can be laid at the feet of evolution? I seem to recall reading in 1 & 2 Kings that Isreal's society fell apart every other generation or so, and at no time was evolution part of the landscape.

At the same time, there is no doubt that accepting special creation is every bit a huge as the realization that the earth is not the center of the universe (the Copernican revolution). Theologians have always explained where people came from - that is, until scientists started investigating the world around them, and discovered that it was somewhat different from they way the Bible described it. Now there are two voices competing for attention - a religious voice, and a secular voice. And they are asking compelling questions.

On what underlying principle do we set up rules to guide us: the principle that we were created by God and so are answerable to him? Or the principle that we "just happened" and so are answerable to no one? This is a great question, but it is not connected to the truth of evolution.

I happen to think that the dichotomy is a false one - and one that faith is bound to lose, if it insists on asking its followers to believe things that are not true as the basic premise of their argument. We do share a common ancestor with other apes. Evolution does happen, and the earth is billions of years old. These are facts that we have to face, and we ought to be dealing with reality, not fighting it in the name of truth.

Do you have to be a literalist to be Christian?

2006-03-30T21:07:00.000-06:00

Because most of the science / evolution debate centers around the notion that a literal reading of the Bible is the only correct view, I though it might be interesting to look at ways that the bible is viewed that are not literal, but folks who are both closer to Jesus in time, and undoubtedly Christian. Here are some quotes from various Church Fathers (these folks predate the Catholic church,and helped define what we think of as the basics of the faith). Then there are some quotes from early Fundamentalists (these folks got the movement started), and even CS Lewis. None of them are Biblical Literalists (of the 6 24 hour days persuasion).

I am not trying to say that you can't be a literalist - just that many prominent people in the faith did not seem to think that being a Christian required biblical literalism.

Here are a couple of church fathers who thought that scripture required that the days of creation be 1,000 years long.

Justin Martyr:“For as Adam was told that in the [d]ay [h]e ate of the tree he would die, we know that he did not complete a thousand years. We have perceived, moreover, that the expression, 'The day of the Lord is as a thousand years,' is connected with this subject.”(Dialog with Typho the Jew chapter 81 [AD 155])
“And there are some, again, who relegate the death of Adam to the thousandth year; for since "a day of the Lord is as a thousand years," he did not overstep the thousand years, but died within them, thus bearing out the sentence of his sin.”(Against Heresies, 5:23 [AD 189])

St. Cyprian of Carthage:
“As the first seven days in the divine arrangement containing seven thousand of years, as the seven spirits and seven angels which stand and go in and out before the face of God, and the seven-branched lamp in the tabernacle of witness, and the seven golden candlesticks in the Apocalypse, and the seven columns in Solomon upon which Wisdom built her house l so here also the number seven of the brethren, embracing, in the quantity of their number, the seven churches, as likewise in the first book of Kings we read that the barren hath borne seven”(Treatises 11:11 [A.D. 250])

And Origin does not seem to found of the literal interpretation:
“…We answered to the best of our ability this objection to God's "commanding this first, second, and third thing to be created," when we quoted the words, "He said, and it was done; He commanded, and all things stood fast;" remarking that the immediate Creator, and, as it were, very Maker of the world was the Word, the Son of God; while the Father of the Word, by commanding His own Son--the Word--to create the world, is primarily Creator. And with regard to the creation of the light upon the first day, and of the firmament upon the second, and of the gathering together of the waters that are under the heaven into their several reservoirs on the third (the earth thus causing to sprout forth those (fruits) which are under the control of nature alone, and of the (great) lights and stars upon the fourth, and of aquatic animals upon the fifth, and of land animals and man upon the sixth, we have treated to the best of our ability in our notes upon Genesis, as well as in the foregoing pages, when we found fault with those who, taking the words in their apparent signification, said that the time of six days was occupied in the creation of the world, and quoted the words: "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens."(Against Celus 6:60 [AD 248])

Here is Clement of Alexandria:
““That, then, we may be taught that the world was originated, and not suppose that God made it in time, prophecy adds: "This is the book of the generation: also of the things in them, when they were created in the day that God made heaven and earth." For the expression "when they were created" intimates an indefinite and dateless production. But the expression "in the day that God made," that is, in and by which God made "all things," and "without which not even one thing was made," points out the activity exerted by the Son. As David says, "This is the day which the Lord hath made; let us be glad and rejoice in it; " that is, in consequence of the knowledge imparted by Him, let us celebrate the divine festival; for the Word that throws light on things hidden, and by whom each created thing came into life and being, is called day. “(Miscellanies 6.16 [208 AD])

St. Augustine:
“But simultaneously with time the world was made, if in the world's creation change and motion were created, as seems evident from the order of the first six or seven days. For in these days the morning and evening are counted, until, on the sixth day, all things which God then made were finished, and on the seventh the rest of God was mysteriously and sublimely signalized. What kind of days these were it is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say!”(City of God 11:6 [AD 419])

And from this web page, some early Fundamentalists from the 19th century:

By the very early 1900s, even conservative theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary acknowledged to varying degrees:
a) the lengthy history of the earth,b) the transmutation of species by evolution, and even,c) an evolutionary past for the human physical form.

Such theologians included B.B. Warfield, the famous Presbyterian inerrantist, whose famed defense of Scriptural inerrancy and plenary verbal inspiration was published in the Princeton Review (1881), and republished since then (B.B. Warfield and Hodge, A.A., Inspiration. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), and who continues to be highly regarded among conservative Protestants.

Even when the twelve-volume series, The Fundamentals (an interdenominational work that spearheaded this century's "fundamentalist" movement), was published between 1910 and 1915, it contained the cautiously pro-evolution stances of conservative Christian theologians like George Frederick Wright, R.A. Torrey, and James Orr. (It was only in the eighth collection of The Fundamentals that the previous cautious advocacy of evolution was matched by two decisively and aggressively anti-Darwin statements, one by someone who remained anonymous and another by the relatively unknown Henry Beach, both of whom lacked the theological and scientific standing of the senior evangelicals already mentioned.)

Reverend Orr, one of the more renowned contributors to The Fundamentals, was a theologian of the United Free Church College in Glasgow and widely respected as an apologist for Evangelicalism, but expressed doubts as to how literal, Genesis, chapter 3, ought to be taken: "I do not enter into the question of how we are to interpret the third chapter of Genesis -- whether as history or allegory or myth, or most probably of all, as old tradition clothed in oriental allegorical dress..." [James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World (1897), p. 185, see also p. 447]

Evangelical Christian apologist, C. S. Lewis, admitted he was not disturbed by the thought of Genesis being "...derived from earlier Semitic stories which were Pagan and mythical" [C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (London: Collins, Fontana Books, 1958), p. 93]. "We read in Genesis (2:7) that God formed man of the dust and breathed life into him. For all the first writer knew of it, this passage might merely illustrate the survival, even in a truly creational story, of the Pagan inability to conceive true Creation, the savage, pictorial tendency to imagine God making things 'out of' something as the potter or the carpenter does." [Lewis' essay, "Scripture," in Reflections on the Psalms] Lewis found more truth in the story of the "Garden of Eden" when he regard it as a myth than as history. [See, Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, The Role of Revelation and the Question of Inerrancy (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1979), pp. 34-35)]

Evangelical Christian theologian, Henri Blocher, wrote: "The style [of Genesis chapter 3] is lively and picturesque; the pictures take shape spontaneously in the reader's mind. The Lord God takes on a human form: we see him mold clay, breathe into man's nostrils, walk in the garden when the breeze gets up and make for the guilty couple better clothes than their improvised cloths. There is a dream-like garden with strange trees and a cunning animal who opens a conversation; you could believe you were in one of those artless legends, one of those timeless stories which are the fascination of fokelore..." [Henri Blocher, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis (InterVarsity Press, 1984)]

Is Science a Religion?

2006-03-16T21:47:00.000-06:00

The idea that the world can be explained by natural processes is not a metaphysical assumption, opposed by the theist position that only God makes sense of the world. It is the way that science works.

Imagine for a moment a science experiment designed to test if God gave you a cold to improve your character... go ahead and try... I can't either. This does not deny that God could have given you a cold to improve your character - just that there is no scientific way to test the assertion. Further, from a scientific point of view, the pious notion that "the cold is from God" adds nothing to the germ theory of disease, or the search for the virus responsible, or the search for a cure.

It is the same for other areas of science. Its silence about the existence of God is an artifact of the scientific approach - not a metaphysical bias. In fact, adding a "proper theological perspective" in which you only consider possibilities that are supported by your reading of the bible would ruin science, because what you end up with is apologetics (justify faith, not explaining the natural world).

Science is not reigion. Its main fault in the eyes of conservative Christians is that it has failed to validate their theology - for which it is hardly to blame.

Is Science True? II

2006-03-16T20:58:00.000-06:00

Is our exploration of the natural world a reliable avenue towards uncovering truth?

Judging by our success at explaining the world around us (eclipses are natural events), the root of diseases (viral, bacterial, mental and genetic), and the fabric of the universe (matter breaks down into verified components of fantastical properties), I'd have to say that science is, indeed, a reliable avenue towards truth.

And so would everyone who does not still fear that elementals cause storms, earthquakes and eclipses, everyone who does not live in fear of spirits, and pray that they spare their children, their crops, themselves from sickness and disease, everyone who knows that the world is a reliable place, and not at the command of alchemists, sorcerers, magicians and capricious spirits, who can bend the very earth to their will.

The reason that we face the world with confidence is because of the work of science. It was science who discovered the roots of disease, the regular motions of the stars and planets, and the physical laws governing matter.

Of course, many of us do leave in fear – fear of the stars, of god's wrath, of bad luck. But even this is within the context of an implicit trust in technology – like cars and planes and telephones – that are founded on faith in the truths we have discovered about the natural world.

Are there any limitations to this amazing tool?

Yes, and they strike at the heart of who we are, why we are here, and what other forces inhabit the universe with us. If we cannot formulate an explanation for what we see happening, predict (in both a negative and positive sense) what should happen based on those expectations, and then carry out experiments (and not just us, but anyone who wants to verify the results), then the tool fails us.

So no proofs about the existence or lack of gods, the supernatural, the afterlife. Not because science is hostile to faith, but because God is invisible to science - by definition.

So when you look at science and ask only, "Does it support my religious faith?" you may wonder why science does not endorse religion - this is why; it can't. When you look at the complexity of the universe, you may wonder why scientists don't just give up and admit that God did it - this is why; it isn't that it is a wrong answer; but it isn't the RIGHT KIND of answer.

When you look at science from the perspective of the quest for understanding the universe, "God did it" is an unsatisfactory answer - because the scientist is asking a different question - "How did it happen?" And as an answer, "God did it" is not nearly specific enough.

Is Science True?

2006-03-05T09:19:00.000-06:00

In science, truth = facts that fit into a coherent explanation. This is not a claim for ultimate Truth – it is a claim that we can know accurate things about the natural world, and that from that knowledge we can develop coherent explanations that, when not falsified by evidence, form reliable models of reality.

The explanations do change, and they are sometimes contiguous with previous explanations, sometimes not.

From a metaphysics standpoint, we can never know if we have Truth, or just an explanation that is consistent with all known facts. This is why science cannot deal with the supernatural - there is no way to detect the supernatural, only its effects on the natural world. ID is an attempt to infer a designer from complicated structures in the natural world. When it is defining rules for complex things, and where these rules can be tests and falsified, it is doing science. When it is criticizing evolutionary theory, and proposing tests that could falsify evolution, it is doing science. When it is claiming that complications equal design, it is engaging in metaphysical speculation that may be tru, but is not science.

Is there a God? From a scientific perspective, we don't know.

Is the world 6,000 years old? From a scientific perspective, all facts say no, but science can't rule out some form of "last Thursdayism" - that some designer just made it to look old.

Does evolution work such that it explains observed development of anti-biotic resistance? It seems so, but again, it is possible that some designer has set things up so this is just an illusion - and science cannot detect this.

Did this designer actually design the "hard parts" of evolution, and let nature take its course on the rest? At best, all we can say, should we identify some such hard part, is "we don't know."

On what basis could we resolve this difficulty? The only answer I am aware of is an appeal to authority. For example, in John 1, John states that Jesus created everything. Now it is not clear to me if by this is meant Theistic Evolution, Intelligent Design, or Old or Young-earth Creationism, or something else we haven't figured out yet.

As this is an appeal to authority, it is not a valid logical argument. This does not make it untrue, just not propositionally compelling.

ID takes the bull by the horns, and argues that "We can see no way it could have happened using current evolutionary theory" means "It is reasonable to infer a Designer." Of course, Christians then reasonably (to their mind) infer the God of the Bible is the Designer.

This leaves the debate to 2 questions:
1) Has the ID movement provided a hypothesis that accounts for all the facts (recall that Einstein's equations had to work for all the situations where Newton’s would work, plus solve some where Newton’s broke down), and performed experiments that would falsify their deign hypothesis?
2) In the meantime, does "We don't know" actually infer "a designer did it?"

So far, I would say "No" to the first question, and "No" to the second as well.

A Reasonable Trust

2006-02-18T13:10:00.000-06:00

Over on www.kcfs.org, there is a thread with a link to Hans Kung's reflections on science and religion.

In it, he states that he has a "reasonable trust" in God, but does not expect rational certainty. This is the fact about the world we live in. We can look at the beauty, the complexity, the overwelming abundance of living things around us, and be certain that God exists. Scientific proof, however, eludes us. This is not because God may not be real. Instead, it says something profound about the nature, uses, and limits of science.

Because of the very nature of science, only natural process can be detected and studied. As a result, when God uses natural processes, then God is "invisible." This does not mean that God does not exisit - only that his hand is hidden from "scientific" view.

ID is an attempt to detect his fingerprints by identifying things in nature that could not have occurred by any natural process. The problem with this approach is that it is an argument from ignorance - at the end of the day, a successful ID argument only demonstrates that we don't know how something was done - we still can't say that God "did it" (although we may find it REASONABLE to think that he did).

This means that we are still required to live by faith. A reasonable faith, yes; but one that has been scientifically demonstrated to be true? God could have, but did not, make it so.

Moral Relativism / Absolutism

2006-02-18T12:37:00.000-06:00

I suppose the opposite of moral relativism is moral
absolutism - some group, usually religious, telling us
exactly how we ought to think and live.  Christians
used to defend slavery and the disenfranchisement of
women on absolute moral grounds.  Most Christians
today read their bible differently.  Have the moral
absolutes changed?

We also live in a secular democracy.  The founding
fathers knew from close-up what happens when one
religious group imposes their view of the truth on the
broader society.  This is why we have constitutional
protections in place to separate church and state.
Whose religious laws govern us?  And when the
population shifts, and another religion is dominant,
do we change our laws?

As far as moral relativism, we have atheists defending
a Christian's right to pray in school, and Christian
clinic bombers.  Usually, the same Christians who decry
the decline of personal morality make no comment on global
injustice, grossly unfair business compensation and
profiteering, and endemic political corruption.  Is this
moral relativism?  Instead of sloganeering, we need to
find ways of engaging our community and elected leaders in
substantive discussions about justice, ethical
behavior and how to address issues, like genetic
engineering, that have come up after the world's moral
codes were written.

Science is an approach to understanding the natural world

2006-02-06T22:14:00.000-06:00

Science is an approach to understanding the natural world.

Because it is a tool, it supports no particular philosophy, economic system or ideology (well, it assumes that the world exists, and behaves in a way that can be made into rules).

Because it is a tool for understanding the natural world, it cannot discover things about religion or the supernatural.

This limitation is a real limitation, and not a philosophical one. Science proceeds by suggesting a method of action (a hypothesis), and then testing to see if results can be obtained inconsistent with that method of action. If so, the proposed hypothesis can be shown to be false. When no one can think of any more ways to demonstrate that it is false, it can be generally accepted as true.

A supernatural action cannot be studied or described, and supernatural actions cannot be invoked on demand in such a way as to make them repeatable. So supernatural causes cannot be tested. So far, the world seems to work without the need to posit supernatural agents.

It is assumed that the end results of supernatural events can be studied. So far, studies on prayer, and attempts to identify systems so complex that they had to have been designed by an intelligence have not been conclusive. Even if such end results are identified, because no method of action can be identified, their cause has to remain speculative.

Because future states cannot be known in total, it is possible that at some time, an accepted hypothesis can be demonstrated to be false. So science is said to be provisional. In practice, when enough states have been tested, the hypothesis becomes a theory, and the results can be relied on to be true.

The conclusions reached via science may be applied to religious or irreligious ends, and in ethical or non-ethical ways (within the meaning of any religion or ethical framework).

Some people of faith seek the failure of science, in the hopes that that failure will present a compelling case for a Creator. They hope that the gaps in understanding will prove to be so wide as to prohibit any natural explanation, leading people to assume that God did it.

So far, there have been no such gaps found. Because there are lots of things left to discover about the world, many still hope for a gap that cannot be explained.

The science community encompasses people of faith, people who would like to catalogue such gaps, and people of faith who doubt that such gaps will ever be found.

This search for gaps is a uniquely religious search, and many in the science community do not share this hope for the failure of science. Even a gap that will not yield to an explanation is not proof of God - because science cannot offer such proof - it is only proof of the limitations of current theories.

At the same time, the existence of gaps, or the failure to find gaps does not mean that science has proven that God does not exist. Again, science can prove nothing of the supernatural.

Science usually runs afoul of a religion when the output of science contradicts the contents of a religious revelation. For example, the age of the earth, the “special creation” status of humans, and the historicity of the Genesis flood for Young Earth Creationists. There is no doubt that the earth is billions of years old, that all life shares ancestors in common with humans, and that there was no global flood in or around 2500 bc.

Because these finding are in conflict with the way YEC interpret the bible, there has been a persistent campaign to oppose science. The normal tactic is to look for disagreement among scientists, and use this as an argument against one of the offending conclusions of science. Because those trying to defend the faith often do not understand the science, or because they are looking for anything to support their position, quotes are taken out of context, misunderstandings and rumors are repeated, and writers work to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of conservative Christians.

Of course, all Christians interpret the Bible, and the church has had to deal with revisions to biblical interpretation due to increased knowledge before and survived. Faith should view science as a tool to discover more about the world God made. For people of faith, science describes how and faith provides the Who.

Faith & Science - What's the Conflict?

2006-02-04T19:57:00.000-06:00

One more time, just to make it clear what is going on here:

1. The bible provides information about how old the earth is, and when a global flood happened, and how humans came to be created.

2. Science has been not able to confirm these bible teachings, even though most early scientists assumed them to be true. In fact, it has become clear that the earth is older that 6,000 years (much older), that there was no global flood in 2500 bc, and that humans are related to, and evolved from, other life on the planet.

3. Therefore, some Christians believe that science has to be made wrong, in order for the bible (and their fatih) to be proven right.

Because science cannot "back up" bible claims, its assertion that it does not make theological statements is viewed as suspect at best, and simply untrue at worst. Because science cannot confirm these bible truths, science must be "anti-god."

The solution is for scientists to learn to communicate more effectively about what is known about the world, and what it means for science to limit itself to descriptions of the "natual" world. More moderate Christians need to speak up, and no longer allow themselves to be silenced by the fervor of YEC-ers, who make believing their dogma the litmus test for being a real christian.

Faith and science actually dovetail beautifully, because Christians believe that God created the world, and called it good, and that it reflects the glory of God. Christians should be able to enjoy science as an explanation of "how" God did his work - it is in no way a threat to faith.

Does Revelation Trump Science?

2006-02-02T21:51:00.000-06:00

One of the fundamental questions we have to answer when we think about faith and science is the relationship between the natural world and revelation. Gnosticism is the belief that the "real truth" about ourselves and the world is hidden, and available only to those with special knowledge (gnosis). One the other hand, the Christian faith has been "out in the open." The gospel is plain, freely spoken, and God is the creator and animator of the world - He made it, and called it good.

When we discover things about the world that seem to be at odds with what the bible teaches, we have two options - we can decide that the Christian faith is really a kind of Gnostic religion (the world looks old, but we know it is really not), or we can respectfully ask if we have been reading the bible right. The difficulty is that if we cannot trust what we discover about the world, we have no way of knowing if our faith is true, either.

How was the revelation you base your faith on received? Well, it is based on the bible, you might say - the word of God. On what basis can you trust it, if you cannot have faith in how the world works? For example, think about your ideas as regards written words holding their shape and meaning over time. On what basis do you know that what was written in the 1st and 2nd century is what is displayed on those manuscripts now? Is it possible that the gospel writers wrote one set of words, but over time they drifted around to form different words altogether?

Nonsense, you think. Of course the words haven't morphed! Ink and parchment make a chemical bond... oh, that's right - if I can't be certain about the natural world, I am adrift when it comes to revelation as well. Science does discover true things about the world.

Now what do we do about the age of the earth? Well, some people dismiss uniformatarianism - the belief that the world always worked the way it does now. That way is madness. And has been demonstrated to be wrong. So some people take another approach and attack science - call it wrong, and provisional, and in the hands of godless atheists. This is also wrong - and very shortsighted. The other option, supported by the bible, is to view the world as telling us accurate things about God. If the world is old (and it is),then we have to deal with this, and in humility, let this fact help us interpret our bible - instead of insisting that God can't do this or mean that.

One of the Real Tragedies of Creation Science

2006-01-20T21:09:00.000-06:00

Just been reading about drug resistant bacteria. We are living in a time when we face a host of technological problems - from lack of clean water to environmental degradation, epidemic disease, famine, energy shortages, antibiotic resistance, pandemics - just to name a few.

The result of these problems will be mass suffering on a scale we have never seen before, unless technological solutions can be found. This is not the time to be denying foundational truths of science in order to support a literal translation of the bible. Not only is it a colossal waste of time for so many people to spend so much time denying the obvious - it also punishes people who pursue science careers, and dissuades people who should be entering the fray.

Young Earth Creationism is not true, and all the energy being spent in debating it is diverting time and energy from solving critical problems. What is worse, by branding scientists as liars who are perpetrating fraud with their "godless theories," we are hampering the work of science just when we need it the most.

So What is Up With Evolution?

2006-01-14T16:25:00.000-06:00

For most Christians who are concerned about the subject, evolution is troublesome because it contradicts the "special creation" status of humans, as well as reinforcing the inaccuracy of claiming an approximately 6 to 10 thousand year-old earth. For ID proponents like Behe, who seems to accept that evolution does in fact work as described, the complaint is that evolutionary processes, in themselves, are insufficient to account for certain (highly complex) steps. Note there is nothing in his complaint about the unguided nature of evolution. ID is "religiously agnostic," while the YEC movement (which provides most of ID's support) is up in arms at the (inaccurate) portrayal of evolution as being a purposeless and unguided process.

As well, the theory of evolution DOES NOT claim that evolution is purposeless and unguided (in a "ultimate" sense). True, this is what YEC-ers say about evolutionary theory, because it suits their purpose. Science has no comment on any kind of ultimate or spiritual purpose or lack thereof for evolution. Science has no tools to detect and comment on the supernatural. Science limits itself to a description of what happens, and teaches that several things guide evolution, including the concept of reproductive advantage. It is true that science has found no reason to believe that the "purpose" of evolution is the human race, but again, this is not a refutation of purpose, just a description of the fact that science does not (cannot, should not be made to try to) detect God.

Further, science does not stop religion from proclaiming that "God did it." Nor does it deny that God did it. Science proper has nothing to say about God at all, for or against - because science is about the properties of the natural world.

So why is there a problem? Because science does demonstrate that the earth is billions of years old, and that all life came from common ancestors. This conflicts with YEC religious belief. This is the only sticking point. Note that when there is no religious conflict, YEC proponents are happy for science to produce the advances that we have all come to depend on (electricity, cell phones, computers, increased crop yields, medicine, ...).

The world view that produced these advances is the scientific one. The discoveries that made these advances possible came because we did not have to settle for "it is too complex" or "God did it."

What does it mean to study Mother Theresa Scientifically?

2005-12-15T17:55:00.000-06:00

My thinking is that we could identify genes that have expressed in ways that maximize compassion, maybe even track the development of portions of the brain, measure brain response to stimulae, perhaps even measure levels of neuro-transmitters, etc. These would explain the "how" of Mother Theresa's compassion, but not the "why".

Of course, some folks say there is no why - the how is all there is.

One problem with supernatural explanations is that there is nothing to study because what happened was "not natural." As science has developed, we understand more - so, for example, we can describe the neuro-chemical changes that accompany love, and soon, I would expect us to identify the a genetic and / or developmental basis for the ability to experience an enhanced level of compassion. It may be supernatural, but even a miracle is manifested in the natural world- and so leaves clues that can be studied.

This is one reason that I am unsatisfied with the god in the gaps approach to faith. I think it is safe to suggest (though of course not proved) that everything we experience is mediated through some physical (natural) process. So far, we have not had to resort to the idea that some supernatural agency is required to keep everything going (though I've read that it gets a bit murky down in the quantum foam).

For example, I once prayed for someone with a bum knee. When I put my hand on the knee and he flexed it, I could feel roughness in the knee joint (felt like there was gravel beneath his kneecap). He told me that it hurt. After a few minutes of prayer, when he flexed his knee, it moved smoothly, and he told me that it did not hurt. I could have been mistaken, in the grip of some sort of mass hysteria, or the person with the complaint could have been a well-practiced fake. And I recognize that my story is just that- proof of nothing except that I said I had such an experience. All the same, if the right detection equipment were available, I would expect that each step of (what I believe to have been) a healing would have been measurable in the natural world.

If his knee was bum, and a few minutes later it was not, was that supernatural? Assume for a moment that it was not, and that bodies have some sort of untapped (at least in the western medical tradition) recuperative power. Shouldn't we study that and find out about it?

What if I was indeed mistaken, or he experienced some sort of placebo effect. I, at least, would like to know.

What if it was a miracle from God? What is the harm in trying to figure it out? What if we refused to look for natural causes, because "it was a miracle, and the healing cannot be explained without including God in the explanation." What good would that do us? I suggest we look at the facts and conclude 1. There was no healing. or 2. There was a healing, but we don't understand how it happened (but we might someday, by careful observation, figure out what happened, and apply the results to the practice of medicine, miracle or no). Of course there is a 3. it was a miracle, and no amount of science will ever tell us what went on. But how will we know if we don't try?

Not looking because it is a miracle, or giving up because "God did it" serves no purpose - this attitude would have prevented us from ever training a telescope on the heavens (after all, we would be peeking into God's realm).

So from a purely pragmatic view, methodological naturalism is the best approach to take as a scientist (and probably in most day-to-day activities), even if it does not encompass the entirety of a person's philosophy.

Where do we go when we die?

2005-12-15T17:48:00.000-06:00

Some people wonder how humans got here, and if there is a purpose in life.

A parachurch organization was out canvassing people, trying to engage them in religious dialouge. One exchange went like this:

Q - "Do you know where you go when you die?"
A - "Uh, Pittsburg. I'll be buried in Pittsburg."

Not everyone asks "ultimate" questions.

Many religions offer an answer to the questions of where we came from, where we are going, and why we are here. If I am honest, I say that science also offers an answer. We came from organic molecules, and we return to organic molecules. We are here to pass on our genes (and we are being used by the bacteria in our gut so they can pass on their genes).

I also think that this answer is true. It is useful. It tells me all sorts of true and helpful things about me, the people around me, and the world I live in. Is it all there is? Is it the only answer? I don't think so. Can I proove it? Not in the scientific sense.

Does that mean science is a religion, or that science and religion are in competition? No. I think religion involves some sort of revelation (received truth) and postualtes the existence of the supernatural (but where does that leave some eastern religions?).

I think science constantly revises its dogma (but is full of the hide-bound, conservative, and the agenda-laden - that is to say- humans). What was believed about the world in the 18th century is different in many important respects from what science believes today. This is an admirable and fairly unique claim.

Because science claims to say what is true about the natural world, it will always run afoul of those who, for religious, commercial or political motives, wish to assert that the world is somehow else.

Can People of Faith and Science Talk?

2005-12-08T11:39:00.000-06:00

I think much of the frustration in the dialouge betwen conservative Christians and people who believe in science comes from the scientists' belief that these theories have been founded, not only on good objective evidence, but much of it on overwhelming objective evidence. So much so that it is totally reasonable to expect the other, less well supported ideas to accumulate a similarly overwhelming degree of proof.

Yet those in the YEC camp seem unwilling to follow the evidence where it leads. And not just remain unconvinced, but call the ToE a fairy tale, or impossible. This adherence to an a priori belief, incapable of refutation, makes reasoned argument difficult.

You ask, does science contain truth. I think of the discoveries of science as the end product of truth. No matter how we got here, here we are. No matter how we got here, we share DNA with primitive single-celled creatures. We share the inability to make vitiman C with those animals we have descended from, while many of those we did not descend from can synthesise C. These are facts. What they mean, and how that story unfolded is becoming more clear. As this happens, the kind of role God played in this process is more precisely understood, because we are eliminating things that God did not do. For example, God did not create the world 6,000 years ago, and God did not create each species more-or-less in their present form.

So here is the debate. These facts ar not in dispuit, except by those who have a religious need for them to be true. Since they have to be true for YECs, discussion and proof of facts are very difficult. Introducing the kind of special pleading carried out by folks attempting to proove YEC is not, and never will be, science.

Not that there isn't a rich and fruitful dialouge to be had between faith and science. Science is revealing a world of head-scratching wonder, which leads many materialists to wonder if there isn't something more. Many people of faith follow the unfolding drama of scientific discovery with awe, wonder and worship. I certainly find my faith deepened, challenged, and even sometimes corrected as I follow after scientists who are uncovering the How of creation.

Is ID a Myth?

2005-11-26T16:08:00.000-06:00

Prof. Mirecki from KU recently stated that ID was a myth. This has caused a bit of an uproar, with Dr. Mirecki being branded a "Fred Phelps" for his bigoted view of the Christian religion.

Religious beliefs have been discussed as myths for years in religious studies programs throughout the US. Schools of religion tend to teach religion as an academic subject, not as an Truth. That is, the content of the faith constitutes their myths- stories of how things came to be, and why things are as they are.

When Mirecki says what he did, he is stating that ID belongs in his discipline, not in the discipline of science. At the very least, it belongs in his discipline, because it is a self-consciously religious (even Christian) subject. What is more, it is being promoted by Christian groups like IDEA precisely because it furthers their religious agenda.

It certainly does not make him Fred Phelps. Mirecki claimed something that is true - ID is a type of creationism, which is a core part of most mythologies. In the terminology of his profession, it is a myth. That he also believes it to be untrue is his right (could any professor of religion believe everything about every religion they teach?) - that he believes it is not science puts him in the company of his peers in the science department. None of this makes him a bigot.

Consider the creationists' noting that "Evolution is only a theory." For people not familiar with the use of the term in science circles, mistaking the word "theory" for the popular cognate "guess" is understandable. For otherwise educated people to make this mistake is bewildering - and for them to perpetuate the misunderstanding once it is pointed out is demagoguery.

While the faithful of any religion do not like an academic treating the truths of their faith as subjects of critical scrutiny, this is what the academic discipline is about. To make a big fuss about this is spreading a deliberate misunderstanding, which is a contemptible activity, to my way of thinking - far worse than a university professor not believing in ID.

And What About Darwin?

2005-11-26T10:16:00.000-06:00

Darwin was a human, working in an age of relative ignorance, and his writing represents an incremental advance toward understanding that has been improved upon over time. What is undeniable is that his approach won out, not because it was a piece of revealed truth, perfect in every word, from a person of perfect understanding and intellect, but because his ideas were fruitful. Others tried hard to advance different approches- they were not censored by an intellectual establishment, but fell aside when the evidence did not support them. Darwin is considered great in retrospect- because his ideas worked, and he was able to see (however partially) when many of those around him did not. His name is given to the theory because he was an early articulator, not because he wrote an evolutionist's bible, or because he is the world's greatest authority. He lit a lamp (though not him only), by which others continued the journey.

Now creationists are forced to revisionist history, trying to invent atheist cabals and satanic plots in order to discredit the output of hundreds of years of science and the work of tens of thousands of people (many of them Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Moslem etc.). The world is as it is. It is old, life evolved, the universe is unimaginably vast. Did God make all this? We can't tell, what does your heart say? If you experience some Thou speaking to you, then you need to be willing to wrestle with what God has done in creation - (including evolution). Unless you worship a trixter god, who has made the world an illusion to test the faithful, of course. But then, if the world is an illusion, why discuss science at all?

Save us From True Believers

2005-11-20T18:24:00.000-06:00

True believers are certain that they understand the bible and read it correctly - and believe it to be authoritative over matters both spiritual and natural. They have a simple and honest faith, reflecting the New Testament. Eveyone else who is religious are the lukewarm, who will be spit out of Jesus' mouth (Rev 3:16).

Then there are the scientists, who do not recognize the authority of the bible to say anything at all about the natural world.

There is no common ground here. The founding fathers lived in memory of Puritan pastors banned from coming anywhere near their parishes, protestant versus catholic pogroms, and all sorts of bitter contest between rival factions, each claiming to have the ONE TRUE FAITH. You would think that this bloody and shameful history would at leach teach believers humility - but it does not seem to be working.

My hope is that the constitution will continue to defend us from true believers.

Does the supernatural exist?

2005-11-19T18:00:00.000-06:00

Consider that most supernatural events in the Bible have explanations - causes - associated with them. For example, God causes the sun to stand still (Joshua 10:12), to allow the Israelites more time to defeat their enemies. Consider that these explanations were seen as perfectly reasonable within the understanding of physics and cosmology of the day. Gods and other supernatural beings were seen as being able to manipulate the world - to exert force- just on a scale and to an effect not available to mortals. The concept of supernatural precedes naturalism - it is a later gloss to view the supernatural as a violation of natural laws. The gods acted naturally to the pre-scientific mind, just more potently.

As such, I propose that a better definition for the supernatural is simply those things done directly by God. This acknowledges the unexceptional admission that most stuff “just happens,” but sometimes God intervenes directly in the world. It is this direct action, and not the mechanism, that defines supernaturalism.

The mind exposed to the scientific method (however superficially) expects to find "real world" evidence of God's activities. Many Christians, for example, regularly attest to concrete experiences of God's activity - the activity of the supernatural - in their lives. For that matter, large numbers of people see ghosts, experience physic effects, contact the dead, receive spiritual, emotional and physical healing, experience strange coincidences, act on unexplained urges that result in them taking actions that save themselves and others from harm - in short, it is nature of the experience, not the scientist’s understanding of its causation, that marks something as supernatural in most folks eyes.

The recent focus on studies that investigate intercessory prayer, and the explorations of Intelligent Design, are examples of this process of looking for the fingerprint of God in the accumulated experience of daily living. If you believe in a God who acts in the world, you expect (insist?) on finding this proof – how could it be otherwise? If you believe in a God who is somewhat more subtle, you may have lowered expectations for the result of these investigations.

Today’s difficulty is that we don’t understand the mechanism of many of the miracles. For example, in Joshua 10:12, both the sun and moon stand still – which I take to mean that the earth was halted in its rotation. Here is a particularly interesting case study for literalism, by the way, because if the sun was stopped in its movement through space (relative to the earth?) would it have made any difference to the length of the day? In any event, we don’t know how to stop the earth’s rotation, what with all the problems that that would entail. But that does not mean that God could not have done it. My objection to the traditional notion of supernaturalism is that it does not imply that we don’t understand the mechanism, but that there could have been no (natural) mechanism (with the caveat that, since supernaturalism = not following any natural process, the religious can imagine anything they want happened).

When most religious folks I know talk about the activity of the supernatural, they don’t speak of non-natural mechanisms; they speak of concrete manifestations of the power of God in the world.

But the question is, “Does the supernatural exist?” My personal response is that if it does, it will leave evidence. I recognize that it is not enough to show that people of a particular religion act, in aggregate, in a way that demonstrates Devine intervention, or that something occurred (a healing, for example) that confounds medical experts. You will also have to show that there are no “natural” explanations. This is made even more difficult by the fact that ruling out all known causes does not rule out the possibility that some natural cause exists that has not yet been identified. In fact, this is the “God in the gaps” approach to the supernatural – find something that cannot be explained, and attribute it to God’s direct intervention.

Many people of faith have accepted this working definition of the supernatural, and believe that sufficient evidence has been provided to convince them of God’s intervention in “ordinary” life. Personally, I have experienced many things that I attribute to the supernatural – so I say it exists. Can I prove it? Well, I am fairly perplexed that when I look at broad measures of Christian behavior, I fail to see the significant differences I expect.

Kansas Board of Education Vote

2005-11-09T20:00:00.000-06:00

Of course there are people who view science as giving them an intellectual justification for rejecting religion. In the same way, many people find that they must distance themselves from science in order to keep hold of their faith. Then there are some who try to keep hold of both. What is very clear is that this involves some compromise.

While some people insist they hold to a literal interpretation of the Bible (for example), they do in fact hold a much more liberal view than the original hearers. Obvious examples for conservative Christians are the fact that the earth circles the sun, the stars are not fixed in the sky, that snow is not stored in storehouses, and that creatures are not spontaneously generated from the earth (as Genesis 1 implies, and as was widely held until recently).

Science will from time-to-time demonstrate facts that contradict aspects of one religion or another. The constitution does not protect religion from such "attacks," nor should it. What is more normal, and what is happening here, is that science is being attacked by religion, and truth is being suppressed in order to support the YEC view of Genesis. This is also fine (though depressing), just not in the public education system.

One thing hasn't changed - some people think God is found in the gaps of our understanding about the natural world. I for one tire of the constant retreat to just beyond the frontiers of science, where my co-religionists throw taunts - "You'll never figure this one out!" Oh. "I meant this - you'll never figure this out!" Oh...

My own personal frustration with this anti-science position is that it sacrifices science to defend creationism.

Never mind that it encourages superstition and bigotry (because that is what is left when you remove the truth).

Never mind that it opens the door to astrology, para-psychology and a host of other superstitious errors demanding equal time on exactly the same basis as creationism is being ushered in.

Never mind that it teaches students that truth is whatever you want it to be - the exact mind state desired by racists and demagogues of all stripes.

Never mind that it waters down science by introducing all sorts of special pleading- a real turn-off for the few folks left who want to get on with it.

Never mind that it forces us to pretend that we know less than we do, and pretend that we seriously consider ideologically-motivated fantasy and reasoning from "first principles" as equal to the results of scientific discovery.

After all the special pleading, apologetics, distortions, lies and mis-information, it is truth that will have suffered, kids' education that will have suffered- and only to promote a YEC-view of Genesis. This is what is frustrating about the KBE decision.

For what it is worth, as the election after the last KBE decision like this showed, and as the recent vote in Dover emphasized, this kind of nonsense does not represent the will of the people. It represents how special interest groups can "storm the gates" and pack the board. When the general population wakes up, they rectify the situation. I'll be looking for ways to help rectify this come the next election.

Why Does It Matter if the Bible is True?

2005-11-05T12:00:00.000-06:00

The Bible bases its authority on a claim to be the story of God interacting with people. In a straightforward way, it makes unambiguous claims about people, places and specific occurrences. It uses these events to explain the nature of God, people and the purpose and direction of history. For example, the book of Mark contains a list of people who are ancestors of Joseph, Mary's husband, the mother of Jesus. Many of these people figure in the stories found in the books of Genesis through Chronicles, and in the prophetic books. The Bible treats these events as a demonstration of the nature of both God and people. If they did not happen, then the lessons derived from them lose authority. For example, the exile was God's response to a faithless Israel. If their captivity in Babylon had nothing to do with the quality of their interaction with God, then that changes our understanding of who God is and what he does (and is able to do). You may claim that the story is just as compelling even if it did not happen, and I will say that it is the difference between reading about having a gun pulled on you, and staring down the barrel of a gun pointed at you (I've done both, and for me at least, it is very different).

There is an alternative basis for authority- that many people have found the Bible meaningful, useful, and helpful even. This puts it on a level with a book like the Tao Te Ching (which claims no divinity for its authorship). All that is needed, perhaps, is some cultural insight to better understand what the author had in mind- no historicity is needed. Perhaps this is what is meant by the opening post in this thread. I will grant that any philosophy or religion can be admired and adhered to on this level, and it may even be viewed as in some way better or higher or finer that a philosophy that is rooted in the day-to-day. Again, I suggest it is like reading about being in love and being in love. I can understand how some people might prefer reading about it, after having been through it, but I sure vote for the real thing.

The Bible represents itself as an accurate record of the interaction of the Creator and his creation, from the beginning of time, to the end of time. If your accept that claim, you read it one way. If you reject that claim, you read it another way (or ways)- or, much more likely, just don't read it at all. If the question is, "Can the Bible be useful, even though it is largely fiction?" the answer is sure. If the question is, "Can you accept the Bible as an authoritative guide to the nature of God, people, and the purpose of history, even though many of its claims are false?" the answer probably should be no.

For many people, what gives them confidence in the Bible is that it is rooted in the facts of history. According to the Bible, God did break into history, influence the Pharaoh, the heads of the Babylonian and Persian empire, accurately describe the future, etc. In Isaiah, God is quoted as saying "My words do not come back to me empty, but accomplish the purpose for which they were sent." God is portrayed as an actor in history, not just an influencer of the private thoughts of people. It is these dry facts that demonstrate that this is God's nature. Eliminate the facts, and the very nature of God is changed. You may think this is for the better, others for the worse- but it does make a difference.

The Creationist Ghetto

2005-11-02T21:18:00.000-06:00

Many of us have a commonsense reaction to the beauty and complexity of life - "Surely all this (myself included) is not an accident." What is more, many also believe that God says evolution didn't happen. If God said it didn't happen, and our "gut feel" is that evolution couldn't have happened, Darwin's theory is a hard pill to swallow. Evolution is not a "neutral" theory in this context; it is a direct challenge to the authority of God and our sense of place in the world.

Polls indicate that a significant number of adults reject evolution, and politicians, urged on by well-financed special interest groups and conservative religious leaders, have managed to galvanize them into voting their belief. As a result, there is strong political pressure that will (apparently) require public schools to teach that ID (and let's face it, Biblical Creationism) are valid "scientific" perspectives.

A triumph of the democratic system. The problem? Evolution, in fact, accurately explains what we see around us in the world, and successfully predicted such discoveries as DNA and dinosaurs with feathers. What is more, ID introduces religion into the classroom, which is unconstitutional. "If evolution is so strong, why worry? Just prove ID wrong," might be the response. The difficulty is that there is no way to prove ID wrong, because it makes no testable predictions. Jonathan Wells' recent attempt at responding to this criticism does not help, because even if true, the claim of design is not proven, because the mechanisms of evolution could also produce the same result. In what way does something Intelligently Designed differ from something brought into being through evolutionary processes? How can we tell that this aspect of a thing evolved, and this bit was designed? How and when was the designed bit introduced into the organism?

In the recent Dover trial, Michael Behe, a main proponent of ID, made two telling statements. First, he admitted that ID is not testable, because it has no mechanisms. Second, he offered the opinion that if ID is true, there is no point in looking for more detailed answers - ID is a science-killer. "So what?" you might respond- well, for one, you wouldn't be reading this on a computer without a scientific approach to the world. For another, we would be stuck in fear, ignorance, superstition and sickness - even more than we are - without a scientific perspective on things.

So teachers are left with the unpalatable situation of having to explain to bored and hostile students that truth is what you believe it to be. Truth not judged against any objective criteria is of limited value. Behe's arguments of complexity notwithstanding, concrete examples of ID last barely long enough for publication before they are explained away, and proponents reach for new examples. If this sounds like the old "God in the gaps" approach, that's because it is. What is more, by redefining science to consider non-natural explanations, you open the door to astrology, psychics of all persuasions, and the creation stories off all the religions - not just Christian literalists.

Rather than engage in the scientific process (for example, ID scientists could offer their own alternative explanations to their theories, and design experiments to prove their theories wrong- a normal part of mainstream science), we get well-crafted logical arguments. "Logic is fine," we should say, "but show me results! Make predictions, perform experiments! Gather data!" If James Dobson announced that he needed 10 million dollars to fund an experiment to prove that granite can form in decades under pressure, he would have the money in weeks. Where are these studies? Why won't creationists do the research?

Instead, Creationists are both the victim ("no one will publish our papers!"), and the bully ("We want ID in our schools, and we'll have it"). What creationists are doing is pushing conservative Christians into a ghetto of ignorance and fear. Ignorance because they are taught to distrust science, and to believe things (like a 6,000 year-old earth) that are not true. Fear, because they are told that the hostile world is out there trying to destroy them. It is a hostile world, but science is a tool, not an enemy. If Christians won't use the most powerful tool people have ever devised, they will end up being as relevant to our culture as the last group of science drop-outs, the Amish (but without the close-knit community).

God in The Gaps

2005-05-15T10:16:00.000-05:00

A recent story in Scientific American illustrates my objections to the current approach to redefining science (see the 2005 Kansas evolution debate for an example). The story concerns recent evidence that some values we think of as constant have changed over time, and mentions in passing how unconnected these constants seem to be to each other(here is a link to a summary).

This is the point when the Intelligent Design movement steps in with the comment, "See, isn't it obvious? God made the universe, and here is proof- even scientists agree that things are just too complex to have happened by chance, and the initial conditions too delicate to be an accident."

OK, I believe in God. I think God is the Creator. So here is proof that He exists, and so... I quit my job and go to church? Well wait, maybe what these discoveries mean (as implied in the article) is that there are yet-undiscovered-laws that bridge these constants. That things really aren't just arbitrary-we just haven't discovered the key yet. Understanding these higher laws could unlock all sorts of un-dreamed of possibilities. Shouldn't we take a peek?

Is this the inherent anti-God-bias showing up? Why not just admit that God did it and leave it at that? Why go looking for an explanation that does not include God? The short response is that “God did it” is not enough of an answer. Of course God did it- but how? This is the real question from a scientific perspective. This is what gets left out of the discussions of Intelligent Design, by the way- there is no explanation of the mechanism for what we see. It is these mechanisms that science strives to explain, and these mechanisms that are either missing or only very provisional in Intelligent Design.

No doubt some scientists (just like people in every other kind of occupation) do have an anti-God bias- but does that mean that there isn't a Theory of Everything that will tie things together? Or maybe we are just not be smart enough to figure it out, or we may have come along too late in the universe to see what would have been obvious earlier on. And even if there is a theory, and we discover it, it will not disprove God- because what we see with our electron-tunneling microscopes and X-Ray observatories and super-colliders and mathematical theories is what God did. The physical earth, the universe, our biology - everything we see, hear and do is only possible because of what God did. So if there are 11 dimensions, if superstrings exist, if all life on earth traces its ancestry from a common single-celled organism to a chemical soup, to the bi-products of super-novas, back to the big bang and before that, to some unimaginable pre-history- well, that is what God did, and we will just have to deal with it.

What is the conflict between faith and science?

2005-04-28T22:00:00.000-05:00

A straightforward reading of Genesis 1 leads many to the interpretation that the universe was created in 6, 24 hour days. The genealogies after Genesis 1 suggest a timeframe of a few thousand years between this creation and the birth of Jesus.

Until a few hundred years ago, there was no particular reason to question this chronology. In Europe from the 14th century onwards, people began applying logic and observation to the world around them in new ways, with astounding results. New attention began to be paid to odd formations in rocks that appeared to represent creatures that no longer lived on earth. New observations of the heavens brought into question the nature of the universe, and the notion that earth was at the center of creation.

As people began to form these various observations into coherent theories, a picture sometimes emerged that was at odds with a "literal" reading of the Bible. Most of us recognize that sometimes the Bible is making a statement of fact, and sometimes it is drawing an analogy, or using some other device to convey its meaning. At the same time, it is clear that some statements in the Bible are meant to be taken as communicating facts about the physical earth, the universe, and living creatures. Because the Bible claims to be the inspired word of God, it is critical that we engage the issues raised by scientific discoveries that appear to contradict the Bible. Why? Because our answer will determine how we interpret the Bible, and what we believe God says to us though it.

Not everyone sees faith and science in conflict. Most of the early scientists were men and women of faith. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying that science was “Thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” It is the experience of many scientists and Christians that science and faith does not have to be in conflict. Strategies for dealing with faith and science have ranged from denying the conclusions of science (and attacking the motives of scientists), to dismissing anything in the Bible that is not supported by science.

This blog will explore some of the issues around the subject of science and faith, and provide a survey of the main approaches that Christians take towards science.

What is the Scientific Method?

2005-04-28T21:28:00.000-05:00

The scientific method is a tool to discover certain kinds of things about the world around us. Consider a tree. The scientific method would not be of much help to us if we wanted to plot an adventure story involving the tree, or wanted to know if it was a good abode for fairies, but if we wanted to know what purpose the leaves served, or what kind of soil it grew best in, the scientific approach is one of the most powerful tools ever devised.

Consider this illustration:

This model looks at the process of proving an idea- how many observations, reinforcing one another and independently verified, fit together into systems and areas of knowledge- and as these various systems provide mutual feedback and correction, these shared insights are used to direct, refine and finally produce a way of explaining some aspect of the world (a theory).

The diagram is labeled "idealized" because science is not really so cut and dry. For example, as often as not, a scientist is thinking about a particular kind of problem when she starts the cycle. Few, if any, people notice some random fact and start framing an experiment. More often, people are thinking about a particular kind of problem, and use this approach to figure out what is going on. What is important here is that instead of jumping to the conclusion, the person doing the experiment is asking good questions, performing tests to eliminate possible alternative explanations, and (hopefully?) listening to the data. This is not so much a procedure as a mindset.

Sometimes, we think we are closing in on an answer, and then everything is changed by new discoveries- for example, Newton's framework of physics was replaced by Einstein’s General Relativity- though keep in mind that Newton's laws still work- just not in as many instances as Einstein's - so this is really a case of a partial understanding being replaced by a more encompassing one.

And a few terms:

A fact is an observation that can be independently established by different observers.

A hypothesis is an explanation that accounts for observed facts. Click here for more.

A theory is hypothesis that fits all the observed facts. It has been tested by enough people over a long enough time to be generally accepted as true.

Given the above, a theory can never "graduate" to the status of a fact because they are not the same thing. Facts are the things explained by the theory. You can have so much confidence in a theory that it is not reasonable to deny the explanation. If facts are discovered that cannot be explained by the theory, then the theory is false, and has to be modified, or replaced by a theory that more accurately explains the facts. This is one reason why we are always reading about new discoveries that call some theory into question-it is the nature of science that we "know in part," and we revise our understanding as we go. This is actually a good thing, if it results in a more accurate understanding of our world.

There is no Single "Scientific Method"

"No single criterion yet formulated has succeeded in defining science completely, leading to two possible interpretations. Either we haven't found the all-sufficient definition yet, or it doesn't exist. The latter seems to be much more likely. Thus it is wrong to speak of the "Scientific Method". Rather, there is a constellation of scientific methods. The most robust definitions - those of widest applicability, most immune to abuse and capable of correcting errors - revolve around replication of results by independent observers and seeking ways to falsify theories."

http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/badmodl.htm

Does Science Discover Truth?

2005-04-28T21:25:00.000-05:00

Some people argue that the assumptions behind science blind scientists to reality. By searching for naturalistic answers, scientists refuse to consider supernatural explanations. As a result (some would say), by definition, scientists are unable to "discover" facts that would support faith. They might go on to say that the entire educational establishment, hostile to faith, rejects and ridicules any attempt to bring faith into science, and even evidence that might support, for instance, a young age for the earth is ignored. This perception is strengthened by a number of scientists who are hostile to religion, and by a definition of science that specifically excludes the consideration of super-natural explanations.

On the other hand, the purpose of science is to uncover the mechanics of how things work-in specific. Ultimate answers like "God made it" does not add much to our understanding of blood clotting, for example (though it might enlarge our sense of awe). I think that part of the problem is that we have confused science with Truth, and think that if there is not a scientific answer, there is no answer to be found. Some scientists do hold that there is nothing but matter, and that everything that happens is only the interplay physical systems- but they are not speaking as scientists when they make these kinds of statements; they have become philosophers. Scientists can hold opinions about the nature of ultimate reality, just like theologians can hold opinions about the quantum mechanics- but in each case, they run the risk of arguing outside of their areas of expertise.

How God chooses to manifest in our lives, and how God interacts with the physical universe may not be discoverable, except through the eyes of faith. Seeking to validate our faith through science may be expecting too much of the discipline. This is not to say that faith is not grounded in the physical world, but that God's creation is so well made that it does not require "propping up" to function, and has no "holes in the fence" through which we can peek to see the hand of God at work.

Others suggest that there is no reality to discover. How we experience the world is created by consensus (or our preconceptions). If we had a different consensus, we would have different laws of physics. From this perspective, scientists document our shared habits of belief more than discover basic principles about the universe. Interestingly, this is a difficult charge to defend against, because we have little choice other than to act as if the world we find ourselves in is real (just try not paying your bills!). In any event, this is not a Christian objection to science, as Christians do believe that God (and not us) made the world.

All people bring their assumptions with them to any human endeavor. As well, reality is larger and more subtle than any one of us experience. All the same, I believe that something unusually powerful is indeed uncovered by scientists. What is being uncovered is nothing less than what God has done in the universe. Of course, this work is being done by people, with all sorts of motives, prejudices, agendas, and different levels of skill, experience, intellect... which is why we have the practice of peer review and reproducible experiments, and why controversial ideas take some time to be accepted.

As poor a system as this might be, I cannot imagine that making science a matter of popular opinion makes much sense either. It is not only Christians that have a bone to pick with science. Some Eastern religions question the very notion that there is a reality to discover. Certain groups deny that various historical events occurred; different religions have trouble with even fairly recent anthropology. Non-specialists have trouble with the math that underpins much of modern physics, and the chemistry & biology behind medicine. Given this, does it make sense to determine scientific fact by popular vote? Based their popularity, should we add astrology and numerology to our science curriculum?

Discontinuity or Progressive Change?
One of the things that is not always obvious when we read about new discoveries is that these new discoveries are most often refinements or extensions to explanations of the world around us. For example, recently a scientist has reported that he believes he has demonstrated that the speed of light is not constant. But this actually represents progress in understanding the universe- General Relativity would still be useful and accurate (Just as Newtonian physics is still used, though it has been superseded by General Relativity). So we may be "honing in" on the truth, rather than starting all over again. This matters because, if science is discovering random facts, and our theories veer from one explanation to another, it would be reasonable to assume that "anything is possible," and a theory that is proved wrong today could be proved right tomorrow. What seems more likely is that we do not discard what has been proved right so far, but discover deeper or more fundamental theories that account for more of what we see in the world.

In Summary:

"Science is not merely a collection of facts, concepts, and useful ideas about nature, or even the systematic investigation of nature, although both are common definitions of science. Science is a method of investigating nature--a way of knowing about nature--that discovers reliable knowledge about it."

http://www.carleton.ca/~tpatters/teaching/climatechange/sciencemethod.html

How Do Christians Deal with the Conflict?

2005-04-28T20:50:00.000-05:00

Of course, there are a wide range of responses. They tend to fall into four camps (though as was pointed out in class, there can be quite a lot of shading between these positions; they aren't quite as rigid as this may make it seem):

1. Young Earth Creationism - The world is less than 10,000 years old, just as a literal reading of the Bible indicates. Any science that suggests otherwise is wrong. This position is driven as much by an approach to biblical interpretation as it is with an objection to the discoveries of science. That is, the age of the earth only matters because it seems to contradict the Bible. Another way to put this is that there are few, if any scientists who argue for a "Young Earth" who are also not religious.

Some Links (Check out the home pages for more info)

Institute for Creation Research

Creation Research

2. Old Earth Creationism - The "days" in Genesis really mean ages or periods of time, and while science is right about the earth being old, it was created in stages as described in Genesis, and species were created by God as they appear today. This approach is more easily reconciled with some of the discoveries of science, and some proponents hold that God worked through evolution to bring Adam and Eve into existence. Many Old Earth Creationists are comfortable with the Intelligent Design movement, and simply replace the unknown "Intelligent Designer" of the ID movement with God (see the NewCreationism link, below).

Some Useful Links:
Reasons

New Creationism

3. Intelligent Design - this approach holds that science has it more-or-less right in terms of the age of the universe, the development of galaxies, suns and planets, the evolutionary nature of life- but ID rejects the "all by chance" implication of evolution. The ID position holds that it is obvious from the complexity of life that it had to have been designed. ID does not say who the designer is (and holds that science cannot know the identity of the designer), just that careful science reveals that life requires a designer- it could not have happened by accident. As a side note, the leading proponents of ID are careful to not make an association between ID and a religion, because then it could not be taught in public schools as an alternative theory to evolution. As such, ID is offered as a correction to Darwinism, more than a Biblical response to science.

Some ID Sites:

Discovery Institute

Access Research Network

4. Theistic Evolution- God is the Creator, and designed all of creation. However, He did not need to intervene at any particular stage to bring the world we see today about. "Big Bang" cosmology and evolution describes the "How" of creation. So Theistic Evolution shares the notion of God as the Creator with the Young and Old Earth Creationists, and the idea of an Intelligent Designer with the ID movement (though Theistic Evolution explicitly identifies the God of the Bible as the designer, unike the ID movement).

Three Supporters of this Position:
Dr. Kenneth Miller
Christian and Professor of Biology at Brown University
Finding Darwin's God

Dr. Denis Lamoureux,
Professor of Science and Religion at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta
Home Page
Epic Battle
Overview on Dr. Lamoureux

Dr. Howard van Till
Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at Calvin College
Second and Third Articles on this Page

And Speaking for the State of Science
One thing you will discover (if you have not already) is that the various creationist positions can be very critical about science, scientists and even other creationist positions. Here are a few sites that talk about science.

Science & Theology News

Talk.Origins FAQ About Evolution

This is quite a lot of information, and these just provide overviews of the subject! I encourage you to work through the various viewpoints, and integrate your view of science into your broader experience of faith and interaction with the world.

I hope you are coming to see that science is an approach to the world around us. As such, it is fair to question the assumptions scientists start with. All of us tend to see what we expect to see- this does not change just because we are "doing science" (or religion, for that matter). The scientific perspective that transformed our culture and worldview was at first radical and skeptical. But like most things human, science as an institution has too often become dogmatic and inflexible. But just like institutional failures of the church do not invalidate Christianity, neither do the failures of scientists or institutions invalidate the practice of science (though they might result in bad science).

My confidence is that the God of Truth is not threatened by hard questions and in-depth exploration of the world around us. It may be difficult, even unsettling to come to understand that the world is different than we thought; but men and women of faith have gone there before us, and we can learn from their experience.

How Do We Decide?

2005-04-28T19:30:00.000-05:00

Science can be a challenge to faith, because it suggests that there is an avenue to certainty that speaks more authoritatively than revelation. God has access to information we don’t; in the Bible, He reveals this information to us. At the same time, He speaks to us from a particular time and culture, and He makes use of the ordinary things of day-to-day life to make His points. When He speaks of things in the natural world (like the sun rising), is He using things "commonly accepted" as true at the time of revelation, or is He attempting to teach things about the world (cosmology, geography, biology)? A scientific study of the world suggests the former - God is appealing to our sense of 'the way things are" to teach spiritual truth, not trying to educate people in what we would now call the physical sciences.

This appeal to "the way things are" is found throughout scripture. Almost all the books of the Bible appeal to our knowledge of the world we live in, as they attempt to explain spiritual truths.

This is normally not much of a problem- until what the Bible says about the world differs from our experience- then we have to make a decision: do we take the Bible literally, or do we believe the product of our observation and reason, and interpret the Bible as speaking figuratively?

Just as we understand spiritual truths by analogy with day-to-day experience, so our spiritual experience helps us see our daily life with new eyes. Oscar Cullmann described this experience as a circle:

Now, we have built up certainties about our world that make it very hard to read the entire Bible as "literally true."

When you read this passage from Isaiah 55:12*

12 You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.

Most of us, based on our experience that mountains and hills do not sing, and trees do not clap, would identify this passage as poetry, and figurative (as opposed to literal).

Unlike the people who heard Isaiah for the first time, who would probably have agreed with us, the original hearers of Genesis 1 may well have taken the chapter at face value. Click here to visit a page that provides a picture of how biblical Hebrews may have viewed their world.

Now that our experience of the world is different (we believe in galaxies and billions of light-years of distance, and a round earth revolving the sun), is it fair that we re-interpret Genesis 1 more in line with how we read Isaiah 55:12? That is, should we concentrate on the spiritual truth God is trying to teach us, and not take the Bible as our science textbook?

Some suggest that we do just that; others say that this approach threatens the very foundations of the gospel. Central to my own faith is that God is the God of Truth; He has nothing to fear from science, because he made everything that scientists study.

This is not an area where Christians agree. Some, especially the Young Earth and Old Earth Creationists, view the Bible as containing information about the age and makeup of the earth that is accurate. Science is either wrong or misleading when it contradicts the Bible. Intelligent Design and Theistic Evolution might teach that in places where the Bible communicates a non-scientific perspective, it is speaking to a pre-scientific culture in words and images that made sense to them (much as we still speak of the "sun rising" when we know it is actually the world that turns).

What do you do? I believe that men and women of genuine faith study the facts, pray and read the Bible, and do the best they can. This is made difficult by the technical nature of the arguments. Few people can reach informed conclusions about such esoteric subjects as radio-carbon dating or the red-shift of light from distant galaxies. We are left to trust individuals; then it appears that trustworthy individuals disagree. My own approach is to believe that good ideas will be proven out. The germ theory of disease, the notion that fossils were actually mineralized creatures from the distant past, the formation of mountains, General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics - any many, many more ideas were controversial in their time, rejected by the scientific establishment, and gradually grew to be accepted. On the other hand, the history of science is littered with special pleading, meant to support some scriptural interpretation that has not withstood the test of time.

Under the circumstances, Paul's words to the Ephesians* apply:

4:1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

But, beyond that, how do you determine what you believe? One approach is to read through the various viewpoints (see above), and prayerfully consider the options.

Here are some links to thinkers on the subject that I have found helpful. And this is a link to a site that takes seriously the religious issues raised by this line of questioning.

It takes time, it can be a bit frustrating trying to sort out the claims and counter-claims, but it is part of the process of coming to grips with the nature of the world we live in, the nature of the Bible, and the relationship that God wants to have with us. You have the rest of your life to wrestle with these questions- my prayer is that God will lead you to a good place!

* New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society
NIV at IBS International Bible Society NIV at Zondervan