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.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Saturday, December 16, 2006
More on the Future of Theology
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.
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.
Friday, November 24, 2006
The Future of Theology
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).
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
IS ID Creationism?
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.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Does Creationism Honor God?
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Ways Forward in the Faith / Science Dialogue
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.
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.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Creationism Has Become Hate-Speech Disguised as Religion
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.
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.
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