Invasion Myths and DNA

It is not only in relation to the origins of the Israelites that DNA evidence has the potential to solve longstanding mysteries about the origins of a people group. Since the colonial era, when light-skinned Europeans took control of India, it has seemed plausible to many European scholars to interpret the Vedas as reflecting the culture of a people who, like their European cousins, invaded India and took control of it away from other, darker-skinned human beings. Although challenges to this scenario have often been raised, these have themselves been suspicious, since many supporters of the indigenous Aryan scenario were themselves motivated by nationalism and other concerns.

Now, however, studies of both Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA markers are pointing in the same direction: the Aryans were, most probably, well-established in India long before the purported Aryan invasion would allegedly have occurred.

Missed Meeting (SNTS 2007, Sibiu, Romania)

SNTS (usually referred to as the 'Society for New Testament Studies' by English speakers, although it is technically the STUDIORUM NOVI TESTAMENTI SOCIETAS) apparently held its annual meeting this year in Sibiu, Romania, which is my wife's home town. It would have been nice to go, but for that to have happened, I would have needed to know about it. As someone who aspires to perhaps be a member someday, I will say that SNTS needs to work on improving its web presence. Having no clear official home page with up-to-date information is a poor reflection on the existence, not to mention the work, of an otherwise outstanding organization.

The Other McGrath Interviewed By Richard Dawkins

There is an interesting interview of Alister McGrath by Richard Dawkins that is available on Google Video, an interview that never made it into Dawkins' program The Root Of All Evil:



Dawkins says he wants to give McGrath the opportunity to say something intelligent. McGrath does so, but it doesn't get into the film. Dawkins even says that he acknowledges that McGrath rightly criticized him (!) for misconstruing what Christians like him mean by 'faith'. McGrath's explanation of what he means by faith being rational is very helpful: it takes the evidence seriously, but inevitably goes beyond it. Of course, when McGrath suggests that God is not so much something or someone improbable but rather one whose existence explains the improbable universe we inhabit, Dawkins rightly observes that this merely adds a greater improbability to that which palpibly exists.

Dawkins also would entertain a natural God who evolved elsewhere in the universe, seeded life here, and even watches over us - that could fit his worldview. I had an atheist ask me a wonderful set of questions about what could be changed in the doctrine of God, and yet I'd still believe. I share one of them with the religious believers reading this: If God was precisely as described in the Bible, did all those things, but evolved in an earlier age or even an earlier universe, would you still worship him? Recent discussions (e.g. in connection with Process Theology and Free-Will Theism) have suggested that traditional ideas of omnipotence could be set aside without sacrificing the Christian idea of God per se. What about omnipresence? Omniscience? But more interestingly, what if God has all those attributes, but had a beginning, and like the creator in the Rig Veda, perhaps doesn't know where the universe came from?

I came across the link to this clip on the Uncommon Descent blog. I wonder what McGrath himself would make of the views usually put forward there. Certainly his books about Dawkins' recent publications are really on target and balanced, which I have not found to generally be the case with ID proponents. Of course, it must also be pointed out that Dawkins' program is just like his book in opting not to include the intelligent interaction with intelligent and well-informed religious believers like McGrath (the other one, I mean).

Design, Information, and languages such as DNA and Indo-European

I'm currently involved in a discussion on the Uncommon Descent blog, and while my post there awaits moderation, I thought I'd share it here.

Since those in the natural sciences would generally not consider my field a science (except perhaps in Germany, where it is all Wissenschaft), I won't get entangled in a debate about the definition of science. [In my religion and science class today we discussed Schafersman's famous piece on the subject, and found it helpful but also problematic]. But in terms of whether or not Darwinian evolution follows a valid and logical reasoning, it seems to me to be no more problematic than linguistics, which cannot watch Latin evolve into the modern Romance languages (much less Indo-European into Sanskrit, Latin, etc), surely the ways languages splinter and develop today, plus the 'fossils' we have in texts, make the theory of linguistic evolution as certain as anything one might claim about the past. As someone who believes that criminals are rightly convicted on the basis of forensic evidence plus deductive reasoning even when no one saw them do it, I find unpersuasive the argument that evolution is a problematic theory because it is supposedly untestable or unrepeatable. [The comparison with linguistics is indebted of course to Robert Pennock's book Tower of Babel, reviews of which can be found here, here, here and here]

Of course, if one focuses solely on natural selection, one will of course find it unsatisfactory. One had to include other factors entirely, such as sexual selection, to account for the peacock's impressive feathers, which are presumably advantageous enough in impressing peahens that the disadvantages they must offer when it comes to quickly escaping predators and that sort of thing.

I am willing to grant that for at least a small number of individuals, ID and CS are distinct. For many who use the terms, however, the distinction is at best unclear - e.g. the creators of the board game 'Intelligent Design vs. Evolution'! :-)

The main reason I find myself unpersuaded by ID as a scientific approach is that it wishes to redefine science rather than play according to its rules. I do not believe science requires adherence to metaphysical naturalism, but I do think it requires methodological naturalism, because science itself is about natural processes. If any agent (whether a human being, God, angels or fairies) goes into a scientist's lab late at night and tinkers with the knobs and stirs in the beakers, the experiment will be invalidated. That doesn't mean persons natural or supernatural don't have a role to play in the universe - it just means that science isn't about that, at least as the overwhelming majority of scientists understand it.

ID may be based on observation, but so was Paley's design argument. Shifting the locus of design back from the macro to the micro/biochemical level doesn't change the fact that the argument seemed persuasive but turned out to be problematic, and allying oneself to the argument then as now provides ammunition to the opponents of faith, rather than helping its cause.

Family History (my great-great-great-uncle was a theologian)

It has been a while since I've been able to devote any serious time to my investigations into my family history. High on the list of priorities is learning Slovak and improving my Hungarian, so that I can do research on the only other theologian that I am aware of in my family's history. Joszef Repaszky was the canon of Kosice cathedral in the 19th century and the author of quite a few books as well as a regular contributor to the Hungarian-language newspaper Catholic World. The great thing is that, if and when I can make some serious progress on the relevant languages, this 'hobby' interest of mine could actually serve as a subject for my scholarly research!

Let me praise the wonders of the internet. Although one should be wary of trusting 'ready-made' genealogies found online, there really are some fantastic resources available (not to mention the many more one can gain access to through local family history centers - a fact that has given me a greater appreciation for the Mormon doctrine of baptism for the dead!). Although I vaguely hoped that I might one day see it, I never thought I would find online my great-great-great-grandmother's grave online for me to find - yet there it is! Even though I am not yet quite able to read them, in order to gain access to some of Joszef Repaszky's books, I didn't have to spend my time in the ancient books collection of the single library in Slovakia that still has copies. I merely had to hire a genealogist, who went to the archive, photographed the books, and sent me the digital photos on CDs. If and when I do get to Slovakia to do family history research, I can use my time more usefully than sitting taking pictures or making copies. (Many thanks to the genealogist in question, Juraj Cisarik, whose services I can certainly recommend).

I would love to teach a course that incorporated family history. My research, including interviewing relatives, has influenced my scholarly work in other ways, since I am currently interested in the role of eyewitness testimony and oral tradition in the study of the historical Jesus. There is nothing like doing actual 'field work', even in relation to a personal rather than professional interest, to demonstrate both the impressive ability of oral tradition to preserve information, and the potential for not only oral tradition but even eyewitness testimony to be unreliable, even when garnered from honest, well-intentioned persons.

Eclipse

I've now had the privilege of witnessing total eclipses of both the sun and moon during optimal viewing conditions. Although solar eclipses are somewhat more spectacular, watching the earth's shadow move across the moon was still a great experience - as was hearing our neighborhood screech owl's reaction, and getting a better view of the Pleiades than I had before.

I remember the dismay I felt hearing a Baptist preacher in Romania claim that the 1999 eclipse was a "supernatural event", and that if it had been a natural event, it would never have gotten light again. How can anyone in our day and age still think of the darkening of the sun and the moon becoming as blood as signs and portents?

Critical Thinking and Religion: Science, Genetics, and Israelite Origins

In my next religion and science class, we'll be discussing Steven Schafersman's "An Introduction to Science: Scientific Thinking and the Scientific Method." This piece, which the author has made available online, is intended to do what some science textbooks skip, namely introduce the scientific method, which Schafersman considers to be applicable to all disciplines and domains, and which he identifies as the same thing as critical thinking. There is a certain degree of tension in the piece, as he seeks to emphasize scientific inquiry as the only route to certain knowledge, while also aware that in the social sciences and humanities those using this method can nonetheless reach different conclusions.

In my own teaching, I'm putting more emphasis lately on getting students to understand when there are differences of opinion among experts and why. If everyone apart from those committed to a particular ideology agree that the Book of Joshua cannot be considered a straightforward historical account, there is probably good reason. The reasons are of course that the cities that are said to have been destroyed in that book were not in fact all destroyed at the same time. That said, when it comes to interpreting the raw archaeological data, there are a number of interpretations that may be compatible with the evidence. On the one hand, it may be that the later Israelites composed stories to explain the origins of ruined cities standing in their time. On the other, it may be that Joshua simply compresses into a lifetime what were many waves of arrival in Canaan by outside invaders, over many centuries. If we have only the archaeological and textual data to work with, multiple configurations and explanations may be possible, depending on what weight is given to the various types of evidence available.

When data from the natural sciences are available, of course, this may change the situation and provide relatively more certainty. This seems to be happening in connection with the question of Israelite origins, as I have noted previously. It has long been hypothesized that the origins of the Israelites may have been (at least for the most part) within Canaan rather than from outside. Archaeological discoveries (including continuity in pottery types and other such evidence of cultural connectedness, plus the evidence from Ugarit of similar religious terminology and practices in earlier Canaanite society) could be combined with linguistic evidence (Hebrew is in fact part of the Canaanite family of languages), but for those most resistant to the conclusions of historians when they fail to support or match up with the Bible, this would not be felt to be sufficient proof.

Now, however, we have additional evidence from genetics. It is possible to compare the DNA of modern Jews with DNA from the Lebanese (descendants of the Phoenicians, one of the most famous Canaanite civilizations), from Palestinians, and even from unearthed remains in some instances. The results of these findings suggest that the Israelites and the Canaanites were in fact the same basic people group, who were separated or came to be separated by ideology, not biology, as one excellent documentary put it (Ancient Evidence).

Some of the relevant studies are going to be controversial in the modern political context. The title of one of these studies is "The Origin of Palestinians and Their Genetic Relatedness With Other Mediterranean Populations", and it will take little explanation to see why this will be controversial, although the small excerpt from a larger tree of genetic relationships given below may help:














On the one hand, the suggestion that the Israelites actually originated in the land may be welcomed by some who wish to bolster the Jewish claim to the land as belonging to them. On the other hand, the Palestinians appear to be able to make the same claim. From the perspective of historical studies, however, it becomes clear that the gulf between a straightforward reading of the Biblical texts and all the available data from archaeology and now genetics is as wide as ever.

None of this is news to historians and Biblical scholars, but there is a long-standing gap between those 'in the know' and others who either do not read and inform themselves or simply choose not to accept the evidence. The gap is between poorly informed lay Christians on the one hand, and not scholars and archaeologists (who make this information readily available), but pastors who studied all of this material yet choose to pretend it does not exist and do not pass it on to their congregations. It is in the pulpit that accurate information about Biblical studies, history and archaeology seems to bottleneck and stop flowing.

Those interested in the genetic evidence may also wish to take a look at another online article, "The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East".

The Good German

I occasionally mention movies on my blog, but only rarely does one impress me to such a degree that I devote a blog entry to it for its own sake. The movie The Good German, starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchette, is such a movie. Filmed in black and white, it is not merely an imitation of the great classic films, it actually does what many have tried to accomplish and failed. This is a genuinely new film that nevertheless manages to incorporate all the things that made the classics by Hitchcock, the enthralling films starring Humphrey Bogart, great in the first place. The story has all the intrigue, suspense and troubled romance one could hope for in a plot - mysterious and suspenseful without losing the viewer in excess detail. It is set in post-WWII Berlin, and Cate Blanchette is in superb form as the main character, a German with a complex and troubled past who wants to get out of the city. The movie includes scenes that have more of an edge to them than would have been acceptable in the old classics, but that is to be expected - there is one example of this that seems gratuitous, but for the most part, the film is far more subtle in many instances than has become the norm in recent films.

Topping it all off is a score by Thomas Newman that captures the mood perfectly, as did the classic film scores of Korngold, Waxman, Herrmann and others. Highly recommended!

Lucky Winners

Stanley Porter and Gordon Heath address a question in their recent book The Lost Gospel of Judas: Separating Fact from Fiction that is also addressed in the book by Jones I discussed in my last blog entry, the question (raised in particular by Bart Ehrman) of whether the views that became later 'orthodox' Christianity were in fact the 'lucky winners' among a number of diverse but equally early and equally valid viewpoints. When one puts it like that, it is relatively easy to show that later Gnosticism does not seem to reflect the views in our earliest texts.

But it would also be easy to oversimplify things. The Gospel of Thomas may incorporate an early Jewish-Christian source, and the Q source has also vanished. The early Jewish Christians had sources that have not made it down to us. Largely Gentile Christianity was not merely a 'lucky winner', since law-observant Jewish Christianity could not compete for numbers, but neither is it necessarily the movement that most closely resembled the beliefs and practices of the earliest followers of Jesus.

It is often observed that in later centuries, the Gnostics regularly claimed that their teaching had been passed on by an apostle, but secretly. The proto-orthodox could counter that they maintained the true, public teaching of the apostles. When it comes to claims to have a special perspective that was passed on secretly, our earliest such claim is found in the Gospel of Mark, our earliest surviving Gospel! Could it be that such claims, rather than being made only in later centuries by the Gnostics, were made from the outset? Did Gentile Christianity use this device to claim that their views were true to those of Jesus, only to have this weapon turned against them by the Gnostics?

When it comes to the Gospel of Judas, no one can seriously claim that that text really comes from Judas or takes us back to traditions earlier than the canonical Gospels. Nevertheless, our canonical source about Judas leave us asking the questions that this later work seeks to address. What really happened, and why? Our two accounts of Judas' death disagree so significantly, that a historian could only conclude that either Matthew, or Luke, or both of them, were confused and uncertain about what actually happened. What we have in these sources were perhaps the rumors that circulated; about the reality, one can only speculate, and clearly people did, then as now.

Misquoting Ehrman?

I just read Timothy Paul Jones' little book Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus", which sets about to expose the "fallicies" of not one but two of Bart Ehrman's recent books, Misquoting Jesus and Lost Christianities. Jones' book is full of entertaining Star Wars references, making it worth its weight in Republic Credits for that reason alone. But it seems to me that the book's subtitle is almost as overstated as some of the claims Ehrman himself makes. There is really only one overarching fallacy of Ehrman's that the book (in my view fairly) takes on and challenges, namely the either-or thinking that led him from fundamentalism to agnosticism. In Ehrman's view, the facts of text criticism and the study of early Christian diversity lead one to abandon faith. Although I think that at times Jones does insufficient justice to the importance and implications of the historical uncertainties Ehrman highlights, he rightly points out that what Ehrman regards as bad news for Christians is in fact only bad news (and perhaps only news) to fundamentalist, King James only extremists. For well-informed Christians, Ehrman's books merely provide information that will lead to a better understanding of the Bible and of early Christianity.

In my class on the Bible this week I had the chance to introduce historical study and discuss how it works. It is certainly true that historical study can be disconcerting for religious believers who are not used to applying such an approach to their sacred texts. What is most potentially troubling is the inability of historical study to confirm those things that are most important to conservative religious believers, namely miracles. Jones' book doesn't address this, but it is extremely important.

I actually come right out and ask my students what sort of evidence they would require in order to be persuaded that another student who was pregnant had become so by miraculous rather than ordinary means. (I tell them, of course, that I am assuming the other student is a female - otherwise the evidence for a miracle would be pretty good). One suggested perhaps the degree of previously-established trust would be important, but when pressed did not seem willing to commit to believing even someone they knew well and trusted if such a claim to virginal conception was at issue. The truth is that, as Carl Sagan famously put it, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". The issue for religious believers is not really whether or not Jesus really said any number of things in the New Testament - we have a reasonable degree of certainty about some important things that he said, and a legitimate basis for believing he probably didn't say certain things the Gospels claim. But when it comes to the miracles, only the credulous would find themselves persuaded that such things happened in our time on the basis of testimony and evidence offered to them first-hand. How could any historian be expected to conclude that such things are probable based on ancient texts?

Let me draw attention to two important articles on scholarship and faith. The first is from Biblical Archaeology Review and is entitled "Losing Faith: How Scholarship Affects Scholars". It is about two who did and two who didn't, and it is telling that the two who did were starting from fundamentalism. The fundamentalist preachers' claim that you either believe the whole Bible or toss it in the trash is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who are made aware of the middle ground are less likely to swing from one extreme to the other.

The second is actually about Bart Erhman's own viewpoint and experience, and is entitled "The Book of Bart", and appeared in the Washington Post.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do (Richard Dawkins' Burkha)

I am posting again a review of Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion that I made available earlier on my old blog as well as on the Richard Dawkins forum. This is to facilitate referring to it in a comment I am leaving on the Uncommon Descent blog, where (as I remarked before) the moderators have in the past shown an unwillingness to post comments reflecting dissenting viewpoints. Today's comment appeared - it's a promising sign!

Dawkins' book is at times highly entertaining and thought provoking, but it is also at times highly problematic. I wish to be fair to the many wonderful features of Dawkins' book. Yet I must begin with the problematic, because it is there almost from the outset. Dawkins needs to provide focus to his book and its arguments, so he needs a definition of God, and he begins to provide one starting on p.13. He makes clear that the sort of God he is talking about is not the one Einstein believed in, and Dawkins even calls himself 'religious' in a certain specific sense on p.19. So what sort of God will he be arguing against? The God of popular theism, as found mostly in popular piety, although he does also take the time to challenge certain conservative sorts of theistic positions in theology and philosophy as well. In other words, when it comes down to it, he is only talking about "supernatural gods" (p.20).

He sets aside two views early on: Pantheism, which he calls "sexed-up atheism", and Deism, which he characterizes as "watered down theism". Notably absent from his discussion is any mention of panentheism. I like to think that, were he to consider it, he might call it "sexed up atheism on Viagra" (the best compliment a religious viewpoint could presumably hope for from Dawkins). I suspect, however, that he might instead call is "theism watered down homeopathy-style" (i.e. until there is nothing but water left in the vial).

Dawkins is seriously inconsistent in his argument against 'God', and he performs a sort of bait-and-switch tactic that the reader could easily be duped by. Anything that strikes him as intelligent and sophisticated (e.g. Einstein's views) are not really religious views and don't really have to do with God (see e.g. p.57). Thus it is no wonder that he ends up focusing on the worst rather than the best religion has to offer. He mentions wonderful and refreshing conversations he has had with modern, progressive religious individuals, but although those are mentioned, they are not described, since presumably it would give to some adherents to religious views credit that he does not wish to. In the end, he seems to withdraw his respect even for Einstein when he says on p.36 that he is not attacking any particular version of God, but any and all gods. This might seem like a contradiction, and in one sense it is, but it has more to do with Dawkins' "define and conquer" approach. He adds to his statement the words "anything and everything supernatural". So while he claims to be attacking all gods, in fact here he provides the same proviso as earlier: he is attacking with rhetorical flourish and much pomp and circumstance every and all gods (see footnote: except for the ones he isn't attacking). This not only leads to significant confusion and frustration on the part of well-informed readers, but it also gives the same misleading impression the fundamentalists on the other end of the spectrum do: that there are really only two options to choose from. Other options, such as the non-supernatural theism or panentheism of process thinkers such as David Ray Griffin (see for example his Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism) are not even mentioned. This is not surprising, since Dawkins has no patience for or interest in theology, and doesn't even consider it a real subject. Yet by focusing on popular religious views he at once does an important service and a serious disservice to religion. Would he, I wonder, accept criticism of popular understandings of science as fair and accurate criticism of science itself?

Dawkins is of the opinion that a theologian's viewpoint is not preferable to a chef's or anyone else's when it comes to matters that go beyond what science can answer (p.56). Because he refuses to take theology seriously as a subject, he makes some blunders beyond those I've already mentioned. He assumes that 'everyone is an atheist with respect to some god(s)'. How many Hindus would agree with this statement? He also attributes the letter to the Hebrews to Paul the Apostle. If he were willing to listen to Biblical studies, he might learn some things. Yes, the story of Abraham's near-sacrifice is very problematic (pp.242-243). But having noted elsewhere in the book how different the views of the "enlightened" were even a few decades to a century ago, this should have highlighted the need to ask what the story was doing in relation to its context. Ancient Israel clearly practiced child sacrifice. Jeremiah and Ezekiel differ about whether it was something that God wanted, but both acknowledge that it was done (Ezekiel 20:25-26; Jeremiah 19:5). In that context, the Genesis story can be read as an attempt to change this prevalent practice - to suggest that Abraham, the great Patriarch, was only tested to see if he was willing to do this, but God in fact prevented him from doing so. In this context, the story is meaningful and positive. Taken out of its context, the story has potentially horrific implications and potential applications. The problem therefore is the "do as I say, not as I do" approach to the Bible that many people adopt, asking only 'What does the text say?' but not 'Why did the author write this? What was this supposed to accomplish in its original historical and cultural context?' [Charles Allen has a sermon on the story of Abraham's binding of Isaac on his web page]

If Dawkins knew even a little of Biblical studies, he would know that the Book of Job makes the same point he does on pp.226ff, namely that being good for rewards is mere 'sucking up' and not genuine goodness. I've addressed Job recently in other posts and so I won't say more on that topic. But Dawkins' suggestion that non-fundamentalist religious believers make the world safe for fundamentalism by making unquestioning faith a virtue (p.286) is simply wrong. I don't think anyone could accuse me of encouraging unquestioning faith, and I know many other educated religious believers for whom this is true, even though there are also people who would fit the description in Dawkins' book. One of the scholars who made a big impression on me early on is John A. T. Robinson, who acknowledges in one of his books that he used to understand Paul's view on a particular subject, but the evidence persuaded him otherwise (The Body: A Study in Pauline Theology). That is precisely the sort of thing Dawkins applauds in his book, and it is found among open-minded religious individuals and scholars, and not only among scientists. Dawkins quotes Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot and the quote is truly wonderful. Sagan writes:

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded,
"This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets
said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we
dreamed"? Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him
to stay that way. A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the
Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of
reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths"

I don't know how many people respond in the way Sagan describes, but I know that I do and that I am not alone. Our understanding of the universe has expanded, and any attempt to avoid rethinking our understanding of God and theology as a result is baffling. The awe inspired by the view of the world available to the author of Genesis 1 cannot compete with the awe inspired by the images from the Hubble telescope. But increasing awe and an increased understanding of the universe doesn't necessarily invalidate the interpretation of our place in the cosmos offered by Genesis. It will require that we rethink and revise, but that is precisely what we see going on in Genesis and the rest of the Bible. As understanding of the natural world increases (or at least changes), the way that God is thought of also changes. The problem, once again, is that some religious believers once again only ask what Genesis says, and not what the significance is of the two accounts of creation and the fact that over and over again in Scripture one author will come along and revise, expand on and/or modify what earlier authors wrote. A serious academic approach to the Bible not only leaves room for increasing scientific knowledge, it pretty much requires it. And unlike Dawkins, Sagan seems to take religion seriously even if he too would criticize certain forms of it. Right after the words Dawkins quotes, Sagan's very next sentence was: "Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge."

Dawkins writes many things that helpfully challenge forms of faith that might be better termed superstition. But if I dismiss the views of others in that way, I'll probably be doing exactly what I've criticized Dawkins of doing - defining my words so that my point seems stronger than it is. No, it is not something other than religion, but religion itself that Dawkins criticizes, and the views that people hold which deserve criticism are definitely religious views. One of the points I most strongly agreed with in Dawkins' book is his criticism of our assumption that if a viewpoint is 'religious' it should be off limits from criticism, from analysis, from the need for evidence and justification. His view is that the answer is to attack religion. I believe that there are more effective resources in the Bible, which itself challenges the irrational definition of faith that many Christians adhere to, and which Dawkins takes for granted on p.306.

Many things that Dawkins assumes to be part and parcel of religion he may be forgiven for, since many religious believers make the same assumption. Yet even something as apparently central as the afterlife is not even mentioned in most of the Bible. And while some would quickly assume that the later writings that do advocate it trump the earlier ones, it would be interesting to try to approach this question the way Jesus approached divorce: "Daniel gave you hope for an afterlife because of the hardness of your hearts, but it was not this way from the beginning..." On the other hand, questions about the soul and the continuity of the personality involve a number of considerations, potentially including ancient texts, but certainly not limited to them.
I found particularly intriguing a quote from Steve Grand's book Creation: Life and How to Make It, given towards the end of Dawkins' book.

Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you.
Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made.

It is precisely this mysterious yet obviously true observation about the continuity in a human being's existence in the midst of other discontinuities that was at the heart of the traditional belief in the soul. Please note that I am not suggesting that there is a separate 'entity' called the soul that relates dualistically to the body, or anything of that sort. My point is merely that there are wondrous and mysterious aspects of our existence, such as the emergence of consciousness out of matter, the continuity of consciousness even when there is not continuity of matter, and so on. Such experiential data should not be dismissed - and I don't think Dawkins is suggesting that it should. The main point is that Biblical texts say things that they do because they were written in and for a time before we knew lots of things we know now. The mistake many readers of the Bible make is to assume such details are there because they are eternal truths that these ancient authors wanted to instill in us. In fact, the different cosmological assumptions reflected in Biblical writings from different times suggest that these authors would have updated their worldview had they lived today. But once again, Christians do as these authors say, and not as they do.

I gave as an alternative title to this blog entry "Richard Dawkins' Burkha", the reference being to an image used towards the end of Dawkins' book. He draws an analogy between having one's horizon broadened and the widening of the opening in (and ultimate removal of) a burkha. In my view, Dawkins himself is encouraging the broadening of human horizons in matters of science (which I applaud), but is himself willfully resisting the broadening of other horizons: the spiritual, the aesthetic, the moral. I am a religious believer, but I am thrilled by scientific advances, including the announcement in Scientific American on March 28th that they may be a step closer to providing a scientific account of the origins of life. There was also a transitional fossil between limbed lizards and snakes discovered. Progress in our understanding excites me, because as Carl Sagan suggests but Richard Dawkins resists, such progress can lead to an expanded view of God, of transcendence, of the ultimate. Whether or not this research in the end proves fruitful, it is a quest to understand, and an approach to religion and spirituality that is appropriately humble and open to new information can also be an important contributor to that quest.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Do you remember the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, or the various other series of a similar sort (such as Pick Your Path, Endless Quest, etc.)? As I wrestled with the fact that I like to begin my classes where my students are and work step by step from there, and yet my students in classes like my one semester course on the Bible are starting in all sorts of different places, it struck me that a "Choose Your Own Adventure" textbook would be just the solution to this problem. I spent quite a bit of time developing one, which can be found online at http://blue.butler.edu/~jfmcgrat/Interactive/Bible/ (or via the shortcut link http://hyperactive.sytes.net/). I only cover the introductory component of the course, since once one gets beyond that the need for individually-tailored presentations is somewhat reduced. I'd be delighted if other professors and interested individuals were to get some benefit from it, and would welcome input on its usefulness and suggestions for improvements.

On a related note, there is an interesting article in the August 27th 2007 issue of Time magazine by John Cloud, entitled "Are We Failing Our Geniuses?", about the ways in which education in the United States largely ignores the specific needs of the brightest students. There seems to be significant discomfort in the US with people being particularly adept at anything intellectual. Just think about it: if one's child is a budding pro baseball player from an early age, one can comfortably proclaim it from the rooftops, but if the child is a math whiz instead, we mutter something apologetic.

This makes me realize just how insightful the story by Kurt Vonnegut, "Harrison Bergeron", of which I admit I've only seen the movie, really was. I've mentioned the story once before on this blog. It envisages a future United States that carries our current emphasis to the extreme. In our society that in areas of sports, economics and much else endorses competitiveness, we have begun to emphasize uniformity in the academic achievements of our students. In the future imagined in this story, the government is responsible for making everyone "equal". The story focuses on the character Harrison Bergeron, who is smart and just can't live up to society's expectations of mediocrity. I highly recommend the movie!

When Paul Gets It Wrong

Let me begin by emphasizing that I would really rather be focusing on where Paul gets it right, the wonderfully insightful things he has written, and so on. Alas, in order to not have my appreciation of Paul misunderstood as a claim to his inerrancy or the inerrancy of his writings, it is necessary to point out not only where he writes things that offer a poignant challenge to contemporary readers, but also where he is not accurate in relation to modern science.

In ancient Greece there were debates about whether sentience, will, emotions, decision making and other such human mental activities were rooted in the heart or in the head/brain. Aristotle famously argued for the former position. Paul quite clearly follows him, consistently using heart in reference to human beings' thinking. Of course, most modern readers simply take such language as a metaphor. This would be fine, if modern readers would consistently take such pre-scientific language metaphorically. But unfortunately some readers pick and choose, deciding that it is OK to take Paul's references to the heart as the seat of consciousness and volition metaphorically, and yet still demand that other language be taken literally even when there too scientific data shows that, taken literally, the statements in question are just plain wrong. [There was an excellent paper on Paul's language in the context of the Greek head vs. heart debate at last year's midwest SBL meeting]

There are many good examples of our interpreting Paul as though we know what he is talking about, when in fact in his own context Paul's meaning would have been significantly different. Some wonderful examples are provided in the book Homosexuality, Science, and the "Plain Sense" of Scripture edited by David Balch. Providing many different disciplinary perspectives and many different points of view with respect to the contemporary debates, the most interesting information is provided in the studies of the use of terminology such as "nature" with reference to sexuality in ancient Greek texts, as background to Paul's language in Romans 1. There are, in reading Paul contextually, two main options, neither of which resembles the usual interpretation of modern readers who read Paul in English. First, there is the possibility that Paul's reference is primarily to the problem of passion, which was felt by some (in particular, but not exclusively, the Stoics) to represent a disordered or unnatural use of sexuality. Second, there is the fact that in Paul's time the problem with homosexual intercourse between two adult males of the same social status was that one took on the passive role which was the natural subordinate state of females, but was inappropriate to adult males. Given that Paul speaks of men lusting for one another in a way that is contrary to nature, either of these two options could make sense of what Paul says. What is to be noted is that Paul does not have in mind the natural complementarity of male and female sex organs (and note that neither Paul nor any other Biblical author suggests that there are some orifices that are completely off limits in the context of married male-female intercourse, which might have been expected if that were the point of the reference to what is 'natural' here). Also to be noted is that Paul never addresses the most common form of homosexuality in the Hellenistic world, namely intercourse between an older male and a younger one. To our modern sensibilities, this practice is pederasty, the molestation of children. Yet on this issue Paul says nothing directly or specifically. His concerns, as one would expect from a male author of his time and context, was on the way sexual relations between men of the same status were dishonoring, since one inevitably took on the passive role that is natural only for women, who are naturally subordinate.

Paul's views on this subject do not correspond in any precise way to the views of those who quote him in the context of contemporary debates about sexuality, and this is worth noting. But I would now like to highlight another, even more remarkable irony in how Paul is read and interpreted today. Paul's own writings regularly seek to set aside Scripture in light of experience. This might seem nonsensical to modern readers for whom Paul's writings are themselves Scripture. But in Paul's time, Scripture meant the Jewish Scriptures, what most Christians refer to as the Old Testament, and Paul concluded because he was convinced God had given his Spirit to uncircumcised Gentiles that God had set aside the Torah, the Sinai covenant, and had accepted as full members of the Christian community people who had been excluded by Scripture. This is a remarkable argument, found in Galatians and Romans in particular. Yet it is even more remarkable to try to imagine how Paul would react to people using his very writings which aim to include those excluded by Scripture but accepted by God in pouring out his Spirit, as ammunition to argue for the exclusion of certain people today. Could anything be more ironic?
If we are really interested in the question of whether God welcomes homosexuals as full participants in the Church, Paul's letter to the Galatians would suggest that the evidence to decide the matter should not be sought in Scripture, but rather in the evidence of the fruit of the Spirit and thus of God's acceptance. To absolutize Scripture is not merely idolatry, treating this element of the created order as though it shared in God's perfection and inerrancy. It is also to ignore the very ways Paul relativized some Scripture over against others in arguing for the inclusion of Gentiles as full members of God's people. The issue boils down to whether Christians today want to simply be those who stick to laws written on stone, as it were, repeating as precisely as possible the exact words of Scripture as they have learned them, or whether the appropriate way to appropriate the Scriptures today is to learn from the example of early Christians like Paul, and to not simply do what they said (ignoring differences of context, scientific knowledge, and so on), but to do what they did, and follow the example and the principles they have left for us.

On some things, Paul clearly gets it wrong, at least from the perspective of science/medicine/anatomy. On other matters, he simply has the perspective of an ancient author, which it is hard for a modern reader to understand. But in his approach to this matter, and in particular his willingness to set aside Scripture in welcoming those whom he perceived that God was welcoming, where a fundamentalist might be tempted to say Paul gets it the most wrong (were that not to trap him or her in an unsolvable paradox), it is here that Paul's willingness to change his mind and to struggle for the inclusion of those he himself once sought to include, Paul's example to us is not only on the mark and profoundly challenging, it is nothing short of heroic.

[I've reposted this entry from my old blog to facilitate referring to it in a discussion on the Julie Unplugged blog]

The Banana and Peanut Butter Arguments on YouTube

In my religion and science class today I mentioned the Kirk Cameron-sponsored board game about evolution and intelligent design (which, for him at least, is the same thing as anti-evolutionary young earth creationism). Let me share, for those who may not have seen it, the infamous 'banana argument' Kirk lent his support to, as well as two informative and entertaining critiques of it, once again all on YouTube. I posted these before on my old blog, with additional commentary. I share them again for the benefit of my current religion and science students, and because some of them are just so funny!







The last one has at least a couple of inaccuracies, but is included because at the end it shows how the cultivated banana differs from the naturally-occurring wild banana, and thus provides evidence of evolution!

Once you've finished with the "banana argument", you can move on to the claim that peanut butter is also "the atheist's nightmare", in another clip with Chuck Missler showing off his scientific ignorance. I follow it up with a Pastafarian perspective.

Religion and Science on YouTube

I'm also going to share the first of three clips (each) about Richard Dawkins, Stephen Weinberg, and atheism that have been made available on YouTube. They will be of interest to students from my Religion and Science class, but presumably also to others. They are from a BBC series called "The Atheism Tapes".





I'm also sharing a clip of John Polkinghorne, and one of a very large number of excerpts from lectures by Ken Miller, who has had a key role in discussions about religion and evolution. He is a Catholic, the author of one of the best biology textbooks, and has frequently testified at trials related to the introduction of creationism and/or intelligent design in science classrooms.





The last clip for now is from a BBC program about the Dover trial about Intelligent Design.

Those lying, cheating, self-preserving androids

I'm finally getting around to posting on last Saturday's Masters of Science Fiction. Unfortunately I didn't catch the beginning of the show, but even what I saw was wonderful, particularly as it relates to my current research on religion and artificial intelligence. A lawyer who is arguing the case that an android named Jerry is "human" does so by pointing out not its great intelligence (it was built with limited intelligence, to do things like eliminate mines from a minefield - being blown up in the process) but its similarities to us in being capable of lying, cheating, and selfishly sacrificing another android so as to save itself - as well as liking Christmas music. The lawyer admits that, as someone who believes in God, he believes there is a spark of the divine in Jerry, because just as we are made in God's image and have that spark, those we make in our image have it too. The final voice-over by Stephen Hawking suggests that perhaps one day humanity will be defined not by the gifts we possess, but by the virtues we lack.

If you have already watched all the latest Hollywood releases and still have time to kill before LOST, Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who start up again, in the last few days of the holiday I watched two movies that were non-Hollywood and which both impressed me. One is called Sweet Land and provides a wonderful look at an earlier time in American history, addressing issues of prejudice but without being at all preachy. The second is called The Italian, a Russian film about a young boy scheduled to be adopted who escapes from the orphanage to see if he can track down his birth mother.

Answers in Genesis Wikipedia Edits

There is an interesting blog post about the recent Wikipedia edits made by employees at Answers in Genesis. I will let it speak for itself, and share it merely as a follow-up to my previous blog entry about Wikipedia.

Also amusing is the release of a creationism board game. There is a review of it in the latest Reports of the National Center for Science Education.

Oral Tradition and Eyewitness Testimony

There is a very important post about Richard Bauckham's recent book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimonyon the Vridar blog. There it is drawn to our attention that one particular instance of testimony about the Holocaust (an example Bauckham uses in his book), which is assumed to be reliable, turned out to in fact be fiction. A similar point was made about oral tradition by Ted Weeden at SBL not that long ago, pointing out that whereas Kenneth Bailey is correct that a story about missionary John Hogg was passed on faithfully for decades, it is also the case that the story they passed on so faithfully was not, according to Hogg's biography written by his daughter, what actually happened.

I still recommend that anyone interested in oral tradition and testimony read the work of Jan Vansina, which deals with both, and confirms from much field work what we all ought to know instinctively, namely that neither testimony nor oral tradition is consistently reliable, but both can be at times. Both need to be tested using the methods of historical investigation. There is no way around it.

As I write this, I am listening once again to the music of Dan Locklair. I highly recommend it! It is wonderfully melodic music in a typically American form of late Romanticism. I listened once again last night (when I couldn't sleep) to Kurt Atterberg's Symphony No.6, Värmland Rhapsody and Ballad without Words. It never ceases to amaze me how skilled Atterberg was at weaving together simultaneous melodies. If you are new to his music, try the slow movement of the symphony on that CD, the Varmland Rhapsody and eventually the Ballad Without Words. Such beautiful music - and it is such beauty rather, than any theological argument, that keeps my belief in the reality of transcendence, depth, meaning and ultimate concern alive.

This Semester's Classes

Today is the first day of classes at Butler University. This semester I'm teaching The Bible, Religion and Science, and South Asian Civilizations. Useful links on those subjects are always welcome. What are other faculty and students who are reading this teaching/taking this semester?

Coping with the start of a new semester

Here are some suggestions:

1) Don't Panic - print a copy of the cover of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and paste it on your office door, across your computer screen, wherever necessary.

2) Go on the Atkins diet - the first few days can be tough, but then you get a nice boost of energy.

3) If your office doesn't have a coffee maker, buy one, and use it frequently - of course, if you go on the Atkins diet, you will need it less.

4) Have lots of inspiring music ready to play in the background - Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Symphony, Violin Concerto, Sinfonietta and Sursum Corda; Kurt Atterberg's symphonies; Maurice Ravel's Daphnis & Chloe; and Sergei Rachmaninov's Symphony No.2. Check whether your university subscribes to the Naxos music library - if so, put their investment to good use, and try some recent releases by composers you've never heard of, like Carson Cooman or Nicholas Flagello.

5) Take deep breaths.

If necessary, repeat steps one through five.

Old Time Religion Meets New Fangled Science

The famous warning of Dean Inge that "when the church marries the spirit of the age, she finds herself a widow in the next" is particularly relevant when trying to relate one's faith to science, which is not only always progressing, but often undergoes paradigm shifts that themselves give birth to whole new worldviews. As I gear up to teach a course on religion and science again, I am mindful that by the time the course is over, some givens of physics may have been overturned, some unexplained mysteries may have been explained, and some speculative future technological and ethical issues may be present realities that confront us in the here and now. It is with this in mind that I share the following three articles with you:

Evidence of New Physics?

Thirteen Things That Do Not Make Sense

Is This Man Cheating On His Wife?

The problem is not in relating faith to the worldview one lives in. One does so whether one admits it or not, and doing it knowingly is far less dangerous. The danger is only when one thinks one has come up with the definitive view of God, the definitive theological arguments, and so on. That, once again, is bordering on the idolatrous. I think it was Nietzsche who pointed out that while the philosopher (substitute any systematic thinker) is impressed with the edifice he constructs, those who come after him are fortunate if they find among the rubble of his system a stone or two that is of lasting use. Humility, as in everything, is the key.

Privileged Planet? Copernicus vs. Goldilocks: Smackdown

Last night I watched the documentary The Privileged Planet, and also finished reading Paul Davies' latest book Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life. To the credit of the Discovery Institute, who produced the documentary, they did little more than argue that our place in the universe is special, in a vague sense, and that this indicates that our existence has a purpose. Paul Davies, in his book, makes perfectly clear that he feels simply appealing to a deity to solve the mystery of our existence is intellectually unsatisfying - rather than say there are "turtles all the way down" (to recall one famous and amusing anecdote), this view introduces a "superturtle" that is supposedly self-explanatory. But a simple God does not have a choice about creation, and so an argument about the 'first cause' cannot get one to the God of the Bible, by any means.

Be that as it may, I do feel that criticism of the so-called "Copernican Principle" is appropriate. Humans are scarcely typical of life on earth in our quest to understand the workings of the universe. Nor is Earth typical of the planets of the solar system. Too much has been made of the strong anthropic principle, since the weak one is self-evident. Any sentient species, looking at the universe, would inevitably wonder why we are so fortunate as to be in this place. But the answer is as simple and correct as it is unsatisfying: if the conditions for life were not 'just right' here (the Goldilocks principle) we wouldn't be here. I think it was the book The Probability of God that made a comparison to finding ourselves before a map at a shopping mall and finding that its words "You Are Here" with accompanying arrow designated precisely our position! But the effect is illusory - if we weren't here, we would not be observing it.

Taking Jesus' Humanity Seriously

In order to refer to it more conveniently in a discussion I've been having on Scot McKnight's blog, I'm reposting here an entry from my old blog about the humanity of Jesus and what it means to take it seriously. I begin by mentioning the very strong evidence that Jesus was mistaken about the nearness of the end. Although John Meier has argued that the key sayings (Mark 9:1; 13:30) may stem from the early church rather than being authentic words of Jesus, this does not detract from the likelihood that the early Christian emphasis on the nearness of the end derives from Jesus himself. One of the most impressive features of Keith Ward's wonderful book What the Bible Really Teaches is that it tries to take this sort of information in the New Testament completely seriously.

What does it mean to acknowledge that Jesus was mistaken about something so important? Well, for one thing, it should put the claims of some fundamentalists to know the full story of the end times in perspective. But on a more basic level, it enables us to view Jesus as a genuinely human figure, and that helps us to treat him as a real figure, and not merely an ideal we create and contemplate in our imaginations.

We end up with a Jesus who can learn - which we are presented explicitly in Luke 2:52, but Luke's fully-human Jesus has a tendency to disappear behind the theological portrait of Jesus as divine, influenced by John's Gospel in the New Testament, but even more so by later creeds and developments. A Jesus who has nothing to learn (and thus makes no mistakes) is the pattern for many who call themselves Christians today, and they resemble this image themselves, believing that they too as followers of an inerrant Jesus know the truth and can proclaim it with utter certainty and no need to a humble openness to being wrong, to new information. But Jesus as we confront him in the Gospels, even if often idealized or in the process of being transformed into a sinless, other-worldly individual, still retains these characteristics of humanity.

In his book Bullying: A Spiritual Crisis, Ronald Cram writes about the story of the Canaanite woman:

Even Jesus implies she is a "dog"...But in a moment of enormous strength, dignity, nonviolence, and wisdom brimming with suffering, the Canaanite woman sympathetically throws up to Jesus a mirror in which to see the dehumanizing force of his own words, not as an act of retribution, but as embodiment of a caring and empathetic teacher who believes so deeply in the necessity of interdependence, including interdependence with the Palestinian Jew, that she is willing to perish for it. And remarkably, Jesus sees himself. Through the eyes of a nonperson, Jesus sees himself, repents, and learns more fully what it means to be a caring and just human. [p.62]

If we are open to taking seriously that Jesus was a genuine human being, and that he grew up in a world that included all the human features we are familiar with, including prejudice and racism, then Jesus certainly encountered them. But did he encounter them within himself? One does not need to posit that his parents were sinless in order for them to have taught Jesus to love rather than hate those different than himself. But when it comes to the Canaanites, it is hard to imagine anyone growing up in a devout Jewish family, learning the laws and stories about the Israelites exterminating vast numbers of the inhabitants of the land, not viewing such people as less than human. And yet Jesus also clearly had grown up to be a person who could contemplate loving enemies, even foreign oppressors, and thus when confronted with his own prejudice, he sees it for what it is and seeks to move beyond it.

This is the sort of thing that Jesus as a human being like us can be seen doing in the Gospels. Is there any miracle attributed to the "divine Jesus" that is more impressive than this, the miracle we witness when a human being who was raised in a culture steeped in prejudice, with the dehumanization of others taught even in his own sacred Scriptures, nonetheless learns to overcome it and appreciate another human being in spite of all this?

What's Wikipedia Worth?

There have been some recent discussions and disagreements between scholars in my field about the usefulness or otherwise of Wikipedia. Two recent articles (here and here) show what anyone would have expected - that those with vested interests actively engage in biased editing of its pages. This is no surprise, and anyone who doesn't understand this facet of all Wiki sources should not be using them. For educators, this means we need to ensure that our students understand the nature of these sources. [Visit this page to use the actual web software that tracks which big companies and agencies are editing Wikipedia]

But of course, the same technology that allows corporations, for instance, to edit out information detrimental to their image also allows those who are disgruntled to edit it back in. Certainly one can imagine a large corporation being able to afford to pay a significant number of workers to edit these pages. But unless they do something about the issue itself, they will have growing numbers of disgruntled customers, including some who will take an interest in making their views and experiences known in Wiki forums also. And then there will be the general users interested in impartiality. All of this, in theory, ought to allow these sources to continue to be useful, provided (once again) that users understand their character and their limitations. Of course, in my own field of Biblical studies, this is one of the hardest to maintain serious scholarly information on Wikipedia in the face of the general ignorance in the general public and among churchgoers, many of whom would gladly remove anything that casts doubt on the Bible's historicity, for example. And since so many people use Wikipedia, if scholars are genuinely concerned about what the general public, including our students, read about, then we cannot ignore Wikipedia and other sources like it.

Technology always gives power and takes it away at the same time. Should we then, like Job, respond to this by saying "blessed be the name of technology"?

[Since I first posted this, other blogs have addressed the topic: New Testament Gateway and Agapeseis, as well as Ben Witherington's]

The Bible - Rated R?

I thought I'd share another old post (below), in light of Hong Kong's Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA) issuing the following press release in May of this year:

The Bible is a religious text which is part of civilisation. It has been passed
on from generation to generation. TELA considers that such longstanding
religious texts or literature have not violated standards of morality, decency
and propriety generally accepted by reasonable members of the community.
Therefore, TELA will not submit the Bible to the Obscene Articles Tribunal for
classification.

When discussing the books of Joshua, Judges and 1-2 Samuel in class, I have on occasion asked my students who they would get to direct the stories. My own suggestion is to have Mel Gibson direct Joshua, which has a Braveheart epic sort of feel to it, while Judges is definitely more up Quentin Tarantino's alley. Both books would clearly deserve an 'R' rating. My assignment for that part of the semester is to have students reflect on the difference between reading these stories as adults and their exposure to them as children. Many details they don't remember from their childhood are mentioned, without fail including that they were not told as children that Goliath was decapitated by David.

Should Bibles have parental advisory labels affixed to the cover? Would we really want out children to put what they learn from these parts of the Bible into practice? (On a related note, I came across an entertaining spoof site, The Society of Christians for the Restoration of Old Testament Morality, that some readers may find amusing, as well as thought-provoking satire). Earlier this year I heard someone tell a story in church about how, as a child, they had been inspired by the story of David and Goliath to fling a stone at a large bully's forehead! The interesting thing is that it is hard to see why this wouldn't be a perfectly appropriate application of the story!

Although one can find plenty of books presenting liberal Christian values for adults, it is hard to know what to give one's children to read. Presumably there is an age or stage of development before which distinguishing between historical/factual and symbolic/metaphorical stories will not be helpful, but when and how does one start making the distinction? For those of us who want to expose our children to the Bible and the Christian tradition in a way that does not set them up to lose their faith when they learn about history and science, what resources are available? As I find such materials I will mention them here, and in the mean time I would appreciate comments and suggestions from readers who may have things they can recommend.

Two posts on the Talpiot Tomb "Jesus" inscription

There are two posts (both on the same blog) about the inscription on an ossuary that allegedly is the name of Jesus son of Joseph. The most recent and directly relevant on this inscription, with photos, is here; the other is here. These will be of interest to anyone trying to continue to follow the scholarly discussion of the Talpiot tomb, irrespective of one's own conclusions.

The plain sense of the Bible

In March of this year (when I first posted this), the student group VERITAS brought Terry Mortenson to campus to speak about evolution. I will not discuss the biological aspects of his presentation, but will leave that to biologists and other specialists. Mortenson was exposed as talking about things (such as the meaning of Hebrew words) that he really knows little about that isn't parrotted from other sources, and it would be foolish for me to make the same mistake.

When it comes to the Bible, however, Mortenson made claims that are easily tested. He claimed that not only Genesis 1-3, but other passages such as the stories about the birth of Jesus, are historically factual narratives that may not use modern language, but which accurately describe things as they actually happened. He said that this is the plain sense of these stories, and that context showed this to be the case.

I would ask anyone genuinely interested in understanding the Bible to take a look at Matthew chapter 1. Matthew 1:17 says that "all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations" (RSV). The plain meaning seems beyond dispute: these are all the generations in question, and in each group there are fourteen. This is the plain meaning, and it is clearly false. On the one hand, one only has to count them in order to see that there are in fact two groups of 14 and one group of 13. On the other hand, one only has to look at the genealogies in Kings and Chronicles to see that in order to get 14 in one of the groupings he had to leave out some generations.

If Mortenson is correct that the Bible should be read as providing factual data when this is the plain meaning to a modern reader, then the Bible is false, unless one wishes to propose a special "Biblical mathematics" in which 14 sometimes means 13, as well as a special Biblical linguistics in which "all" sometimes means "some". There is, however, another solution. My own view is that the desire for historical, factual information, and the assumption that this is what will be provided because it is mose important, are modern perspectives these authors did not share. The number 14 is the numerical value of the name David in Hebrew, and that seems to me to explain why the author went to such lengths to emphasize this number - even to the length of making the text numerically and genealogically inaccurate! The point is about symbolism, and not history, nor is it about math. But the latter, to a modern reader, seems to be the plain meaning of the text.

Is Mortenson correct that if we cannot trust the Bible on math, or history, or science, then we cannot trust it on anything? Absolutely not. I am tempted to use Mortenson himself as an example, but I will instead use myself. I am not inerrant, and I do not always get my facts right. I try to be honest, but the paradox is interesting that if I claimed I was always perfectly honest I would be dishonest in doing so! Wouldn't we all? Does this mean that I am totally untrustworthy? I certainly hope not - again, wouldn't we all?

What if the Biblical authors were not pope-like figures who, when writing Scripture, became infallible and wrote infallibly, but were ordinary people without this superpower? What if they wrote in their human, fallible way about life-changing experiences they had, and tried to express this in words as best they could? Would that make their testimony about this worthless? Not at all - it would just make it human testimony. The reason I am a Christian is that I have had an experience of being born again that seems to me to be what these authors at times talk about. But in studying the Bible I have learned not only that the Bible is not inerrant, but that it is spiritually dangerous to think of the Bible as inerrant. This is not only because it is idolatry (attributing divine attributes to something created), but because it leads to arrogance and a conviction that (at least as long as we "stick to the Bible") we have got it all figured out, we have all the answers, etc. I say this as someone who felt this way himself. I used to give talks very much like the one Terry Mortenson gave last night. What changed? I studied the Bible, not just superficially but in a serious, intellectually and spiritually rigorous way, reading books by experts in these areas who were not all carefully chosen because they said what I wanted to hear. I also was fortunate enough to read books by biologists who took the time to explain why some of the arguments used by creationists are incorrect, and others are outright lies.

These latter books also explained what science is, and that the appropriate scientific response if we find that evolution through natural selection turned out not to provide a completely adequate explanation of biological diversity would be to keep looking, keep researching, keep trying to understand and explain. That is what science does. It would be entirely inappropriate for scientists to throw up their hands and say "we do not yet have a complete explanation, and so let's just say that God did it and be done with it." What would have happened if, because of the plain meaning of the Bible's reference to the sun standing still, science had stopped investigating the possibility of the earth moving around the sun? Would we be better off? Would scientific progress have been possible? It saddens me when I see history repeating itself, and these same battles being fought again. When will Christians learn their lesson? The answer is, when the majority of Christians realize that they are reading the Bible selectively, and instead of ignoring so much of what the Bible says and what the Bible is, begin to take it seriously. That is not what literal six-day creationism does. It is what Biblical scholarship does, and although I do not expect the majority of Christians to learn the Biblical languages and study for degrees in Biblical studies, is it too much to ask that you include on our reading lists books written by serious scholars, genuine experts in the field. Choose serious Christians from your own denomination by all means, individuals who have a deep, spiritual commitment to Christ, and are not merely academics and professionals. But inform yourselves.

Let me close with a quote from Proverbs 18:17. "The one who states his case first seems right, until another comes forward and questions him". I had, back in my teenage years as a fundamentalist, immersed myself in one particular perspective, and fell into the trap this proverb warns us about. The truth is that there are atheist scientists who become Christian young-earth creationists, and there are Christian young-earth creationists who become scientists and atheists. There is movement in both directions. But the suggestion that these two extremes are the only options is simply false. There are other options, and even among fundamentalists there are few who take their alleged Biblical literalism to the extreme of asserting that the earth is flat - and if one combines different references, a circle with four corners. Even most fundamentalists are not at the extreme end of the spectrum, even though they often use rhetoric that denies the existence of a spectrum at all, and claim that there are only two options. My own opinions were changed by studying the Bible and by reading (as an amateur, I admit it) books by biologists, some of whom are themselves Christians and find no necessary conflict between being a Christian and believing that biological evolution occurred. I am under no illusion that anyone who evaluates the evidence will necessarily reach the same conclusions I have. But I do think that anyone who studies the evidence in a serious way will not tend towards the extremes. I am also convinced that in having one's views challenged by the evidence from both the Bible and science, it will open up to you a scary and disconcerting but also exhilarating and liberating experience, in which you can consider new evidence without fearing that your whole worldview will collapse. Finding yourself in that place you may even dare to change your mind, or admit that you don't know, because you will realize that human existence is inherently uncertain, and that trusting God does not make us infallible or make us right all the time. That is the whole reason that humbly casting ourselves upon God makes sense and is so important.

I've been thinking about these matters for quite a long time, but I still have a lot to learn. I am ashamed when I think back to my teenage years, how foolish (and unchristian) I was to believe that, after a little reading of the Bible, some high school science classes and reading a few creationist books, I had all the answers. I didn't even know what the important questions were yet. I am still learning. If there is one thing that the overarching central themes of the Bible and of science work together to persuade me of, it is that in my lifetime I will not have all the answers, and that is OK. No, it is more than OK - it makes one's spiritual and intellectual journey through life meaningful and exciting.

The WOW Signal

As the start of the semester approaches, I may find less time for blogging, and make shorter entries when I do. Today I wanted to make sure I shared Jerry Ehman's account of the famous "Wow! signal", one of the best candidates for a radio signal detected from outer space that is of intelligent, deliberate origin.

LITERALLY Exploring Our Matrix?

When I chose the name for my blog, the Matrix films were still a hot topic for discussion. But because our context can be designated a 'matrix' in other senses as well, it seemed that it would be appropriate even in the longer term and from other perspectives.

It seems, however, that there are some philosophers and other individuals who take the 'Matrix Hypothesis' very seriously (i.e. the idea that we are living in a computer simulation). Take a look at the article in today's New York Times, "Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy's Couch".

Religion and Science Fiction

I watched Masters of Science Fiction on ABC for the first time this past weekend. Featuring not only Terry O'Quinn (who plays John Locke on LOST) but also the cigarette-smoking man as the U.S. president and narration by Stephen Hawking, I was quickly hooked. The episode that aired this past Saturday, "The Awakening", was based on a scenario in which aliens with religious overtones make contact, initially through the descent of mysterious pods. The aliens within the pods send out a telepathic beam that puts individuals in a coma, in which they engage in automatic writing that produces verses from various world Scriptures, and eventually they speak in unison in a similar fashion. The references (such as Biblical ones about turning swords into ploughshares and making war no more) are taken as a demand that humankind disarm, but the U.S. military leaders are reluctant to do so, and this leads to tensions between the U.S. and other countries.

Perhaps most interesting, though, is the question of whether this in fact represents God getting in touch with humanity. And so, for instance, when the U.S. president blurts out that a demand for disarmament is unreasonable, the representative of another nation asks whether God has to be reasonable! In the end, the religious aspects are left somewhat mysterious, but very poignant points are made about the root causes of warfare and international conflict.

I also just finished watching season 3 of The 4400 on DVD, and this too has religious overtones, as when one key leader of the returnees is resurrected and takes on a Messianic status as "the preacher" (presumably also with a nod to Dune).

There was a time when people raised their eyebrows (in Spock-like fashion) if one mentioned "religion" and "science fiction" in conjunction with one another. Now it is hard to think of a current series that completely lacks religious themes, overtones or symbols.

The Unicorn Museum

In a splendid parody of the "if it's in the Bible, it must be true" viewpoint that lies behind such institutions as the Creation "Museum", someone has created the Unicorn Museum.

Childlike Faith

It has often struck me that many people assume that "faith like that of a little child" is one that simply accepts what is said, without questioning. This interpretation assumes that the child in question is of a certain type and age. However, more common to our experiences of childhood (whether our own or that of our children) is the tendency not to accept everything, but to question everything and always ask why. It is the child that points out that the emperor has no clothes on. If we ignore these elements of a child-like disposition, surely we will end up construing such faith as something other than - and perhaps the exact opposite of - what it is.

In the original context in which Jesus held up little children as an example, the most likely emphasis was on their status as 'nobodies', rather than on anything to do with their attitude. Nevertheless, many great minds have pointed out that our loss of the ability to ask fundamental 'why' questions about very basic elements of our world and the way it works often leaves us failing to pursue the most promising lines of inquiry and investigation that will lead us to a better understanding.

So my recommendation is this: let us continue to hold up child-like faith as a positive example, but let us not forget what children are actually like, in their blunt statements of things adults would like to conveniently ignore, and in their ever-questioning "WHY?"

Tasty Revelations With Cheese

It was just after midnight when the Flying Spaghetti Monster (parmesan and heapings of sauce be upon him) appeared to me in a dream (or I dreamed he appeared to me - who can tell the difference?). He said that if I went quickly to the kitchen and boiled pasta for 7 minutes until it is al dente, he would prove to me that Intelligent Design is incompatible with theism. Who could resist such a revelation? I quickly boiled the pasta, strained it, and set it on the table. This is what he showed me:

ID premise 1: Life is irreducibly complex
ID premise 2: That which is irreducibly complex requires a designer
ID premise 3: Designers are intelligent (hence the name 'intelligent
design')

1. Intelligent beings are a form of life
2. If God is a designer, then God is intelligent
3. If God is intelligent, then God is alive4. If God is alive, then
according to ID, God must have been designed.

ergo either God has been designed, or God is not alive, or ID is based on
flawed premises.

This was remarkable - I was overwhelmed, and fainted. Then I was taken up to the third layer of lasagna (whether in the tomato sauce, or in the white sauce, I do not know). There the Flying Spaghetti Monster (garlic and sprinklings of fresh olive oil be upon him) appeared yet again, and promised to show me that quantum physics is incompatible with theism. This was too much for me, yet I was fascinated. This is what I was shown:

1. Quantum physics claims that an observer brings about the collapse of the
wave function.
2. Prior to human observation, there are uncollapse wave
functions.Therefore:
3. There is no supernatural being observing quantum events.

I was overwhelmed, not knowing what to make of all this. Then I was told that if I returned to my kitchen and covered the pasta I had boiled earlier with a four-cheese sauce, I would receive a proof that Pastafarianism is not affected by these arguments. I suddenly found myself lying on my kitchen floor. I took the four cheeses (I am forbidden to reveal which ones...it is a secret recipe) and made the sauce, and poured it over the pasta.

Then, I was told that whereas an undesigned designer undermines the arguments of Intelligent Design theory, this does not affect the Flying Spaghetti Monster (showers of fresh basil and oregano be upon him), since he arose from a vermicelli-like singularity. And he is unaffected by the second argument, since pasta, as everyone knows, is delicious when served al dente in a secret recipe four cheese sauce, but it doesn't obseve quantum phenomena.

I was shaken by this experience, so I did what anyone else would do in the circumstances. I ate the pasta. It was delicious.

------------------

The above post (which appeared on my old blog on April 1st and which I thought I'd share to bring some comic relief to those preparing for the imminent arrival of the start of the semester) is of course a bit of silliness (apart from the pasta in a four-cheese alfredo sauce - that is very real). But I used that opportunity to raise what I think are a couple of genuine issues relating to ways in which people try to interconnect religion and science.

Intelligent Design argues that life (being irreducibly complex) requires a designer. The problem is that any proposed designer (apart from a natural process of evolution through natural selection, of course) will be alive, and thus will be irreducibly complex, and will thus require a designer. One certainly can introduce the concept of an unmoved mover to start the whole process, but that is a philosophical concept. All that an intelligent design argument can lead one to is another life form that itself requires explanation. I'm not sure why it took me so long to realize this fundamental flaw (I certainly was aware of others sooner!). Again, this is not proof that there is no intelligent designer, but simply proof that intelligent design does not work as a scientific (or even satisfactory logical) explanation, since all it does is posit an explanation that, based on the presuppositions of intelligent design theory, itself cries out for explanation.

My second little point on the relevance of quantum mechanics is a response to Amit Goswami's quantum argument for the existence of God, or more precisely, for a Hindu-style universal consciousness. Rather than proving a universal consciousness, his argument, if correct, would disprove it! My own suspicion, however, is that we are wrong to think that it is merely the presence of an observer that causes the collapse of the wave function.

At any rate, to attempt to use science to prove the existence of a designer or a universal consciousness is intrinsically problematic. As Paul Tillich famously asserted, discussion of God is not merely discussion of one being among others - such as a Flying Spaghetti Monster - but is a discussion of Being itself.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Intelligent Design vs. Quantum Computation

I think it was Van Till who called creationist views just another variation on the old trick 'heads I win, tails you lose'. If the universe has characteristics that can lead to life and complexity coming about through natural processes, this is taken as evidence that the universe is designed and fine-tuned by a creator. If the universe does not have such characteristics then life is improbable and thus must have been supernaturally created. Heads I win, tails you lose.

Pointing this out is not intended to detract from the legitimate point that life and complexity, and indeed existence itself, are wondrous mysteries. My biggest criticism of most creationist viewpoints is that they treat a mystery as though it were an explanation.

The image of the heads and tails comes from a coin toss, providing two binary possibilities - a bit, as it were. Now Seth Lloyd, in his book Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos, suggests that such bits of information (with their inherent ability to compute) may be more fundamental to the nature of the universe than previously realized. Let me offer just a few highlights from the book, which is extremely thought-provoking, even as its fundamental thesis seems, like evolution through natural selection, incredibly obvious once one has thought about it. The book is full of humor as well and an enjoyable read.

First, one important observation I do not want to skip, even though it is extremely basic, is that meaning only exists relative to some scheme of interpretation (p.25). I had the misfortune earlier of having to listen to the static of my modem trying to communicate through my phone lines even after it ought to have disconnected. But of course, it wasn't "static", although to my ear there was no distinction. An intelligent signal only reveals itself to be such when we know the language and other relevant information. DNA, with its four letters in endless chains, is thus not all that interesting, information-wise. What is interesting is that these long chains of only four letters are interpreted within cells into complex tasks. It is the interpretation that is interesting and not the long chain of letters per se.

The creation of "specified complexity" by random chance is often compared to monkeys typing at typewriters. Lloyd suggests that this image is the wrong one, and that in our universe the monkeys are typing at computers. Reality itself is computational, and random code will occasionally turn into something interesting - just as a monkey at your computer, even though it may not produce Hamlet, may set interesting processes in motion.

The most interesting result of Lloyd's research is his conclusion that "quantum mechanics, unlike classical mechanics, can create information out of nothing" (p.118). If he is correct, then this will blow the ID argument about information out of the water altogether. The book is devoted to exploring how quantum computation might potentially provide a "Theory of Everything", how it can potentially integrate both relativity and quantum mechanics, and how it relates to other topics such as the origins of life.

It is still too early to know whether observational data will confirm or contradict the possibilities explored in the book. But at the very least, it shows that science has genuinely interesting and plausible things to say about questions that proponents of Intelligent Design regard as unanswerable in naturalistic terms.

On a final note, those readers of this blog who are interested primarily in Biblical studies and/or early Christianity will find themselves connected to the book in one more way: Elaine Pagels is mentioned more than once, since Lloyd studied and worked with her late husband, the physicist Heinz Pagels.

The New Perspective on Paul

In the latest issue of Christianity Today, Simon Gathercole offers a somewhat appreciative but also critical evaluation of the new perspective on Paul. For me, the new perspective's major conclusions (such as that "the works of the Law" in Paul's writings were not good works in general but symbols of the separateness of the Jews as God's chosen people over against the Gentiles) seem completely sound conclusions that are right on target. This is not merely because Paul affirms judgment by works in Romans 2, nor because whenever he talks about "works of the Law" he tends to then shift into discussion of Jews and Gentiles. If one thinks about circumcision, the work of the Law that Paul uses as an example most often, it is absolutely the worst example Paul could have chosen if he had in mind those works people do to earn favor with God. Circumcision is done when a Jewish male is 8 days old, and is done to rather than by him. As I always tell my students when we cover this subject, I don't remember being concerned to earn my salvation when I was 8 days old (although I also admit my memory of that time in my life is spotty), and I also emphasize that if they learn nothing else from the class, it should be not to give sharp objects to babies!

The classic Lutheran interpretation had the effect that, when I first read Galatians, and arrived at the point where Paul lists the works of the flesh and says "those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God", I thought either I had misunderstood or Paul was not being consistent. When I read James D. G. Dunn's work on Paul's writings, suddenly they made sense.

One might perhaps ask why, if Paul had in mind the 'ritual' laws that distinguished Jews from Gentiles, he didn't use precisely such a distinction as some of his later interpreters have between 'moral' and 'ritual'. The answer is simple: he didn't because he couldn't, not merely because moral and ritual overlap in laws such as that regarding the Sabbath, but also because the covenant was a whole and one could not simply pick and choose from it. But, having set it aside so as to incorporate the Gentiles, and for that reason alone, one could still look to the Law for moral guidance, since its moral principles were the same as those under the new covenant. And so it is that Paul cites the Law as authoritative on moral matters and even says what are otherwise incomprehensible things like "circumcision doesn't matter - keeping the commandments does". All of this makes sense from the perspective of the "new perspective".

Michael Behe on The Colbert Report

Those who interested in intelligent design will want to see Michael Behe's appearance on The Colbert Report...

Intelligent Design and its Critics

Metanexus has made available a wide selection of articles on intelligent design representing key supporters and critics' views. Those unfamiliar with this web site will find much more on it that is interesting and useful.

The Heart Of The Matter: What Does God Do?

I've been reading several books on evolution, intelligent design, and related subjects, as I seek to decide on representative readings to assign for my religion and science course this Fall. It seems to me that the differences between many viewpoints centers around the question of what God does.

Naturalistic explanations of various things in the world around us have always challenged religious beliefs. The monotheistic God of the Abrahamic traditions continues to have adherents precisely because of the flexibility and all-encompassing character of this concept of God. While Zeus' thunderbolts are now the domain of meteorology rather than metaphysics, the God who is responsible for everything does not disappear so easily. Yet the question must be asked by any religious believer: if you believe in God, what do you envisage God doing, and how?

For Michael Behe, the answer must be that God at least does certain things that set in motion the subsequent evolutionary processes. If everything from the start of the universe can be explained in natural terms, then the concept of God becomes irrelevant and obsolete. For this reason, he spends his most recent book looking for The Edge of Evolution. That he is involved in the unceremonious and begrudging retreat of the God of the gaps further and further into the distant past, and thus further and further away from us, seems not to bother him. Nor does the moral objection to Intelligent Design, which has existed since before Darwin, to which he responds dismissively by stating that "Revulsion is not a scientific argument" (p.239). This is certainly true, but neither is the desire to find something for God to do in the world, in contrast to other things that God doesn't do. Having opened the door to the possibility of design, and thus the inclusion and integration of metaphysics, philosophy and theology into history, Behe then balks at either providing an answer to this moral objection or drawing the apparent implication that the designer is either malevolent or inept.

Much more helpful is Francis Ayala's book Darwin's Gift To Science and Religion, which is appreciative of arguments such as those of Paley, even when disagreeing with his conclusions. Paley, after all, was working with the best scientific knowledge available in his time. Paley was also an opponent of slavery, which Ayala helpfully notes - it is easy to regard those whose views we disagree with as foolish, particularly authors in the past, and so it is helpful to be reminded of other aspects of their life and work, to remind us to be appreciative of their place in our intellectual history, as well as of the fact that no one alive today will not seem as off target as Paley to some future author writing with the benefit of centuries of hindsight.

Ayala takes completely seriously the evidence for evolution, and the fact that, now that we have DNA evidence, there really is no more doubt about common ancestry and evolution than about the criminals we put away on the basis of the same sorts of forensic evidence. Even Behe acknowledges as much.

The reason why Ayala is able to embrace not just the current state of scientific knowledge, but science as a way of knowing, is that he is able to regard statements about God and statements about the natural world as complementary. The danger here, of course, is that such language can become at best superfluous and at worst meaningless. All our language about God is metaphorical. But we still need at least some clarity if we wish to speak about events in the world, even or perhaps especially those that have natural explanations, as simultaneously 'acts of God'. Does this mean that we really see them as willed expressions of a personal deity, or as sacramental events that, even without outside tinkering, disclose transcendent aspects of the nature of reality to us?

One thing is fairly certain. If one lives in North America, Western Europe or Australia, and in a number of other places as well, there is no use deceiving oneself about the character of one's theology. Just as there is no one in any of these places who believes in Zeus in the way that the Ancient Greeks did, so too there is no one who believes in God in precisely the same way that the early Christians did. Our worldview has changed, and attempting to will oneself into an outmoded view of the universe "by faith", even if it were possible (which it isn't), still would not be the same thing as taking that view of the universe for granted.

What is the fundamental difference between the various approaches to theology and to the intersection of religion and science today? The question of what (if anything) God does, and by what means. Answers to such questions will by definition involve metaphor - the challenge is to find metaphors that do justice to our deepest religious experiences and insights in a way that also does justice to not just the present state of our scientific knowledge, but the fact that science's track record suggests that natural explanations of things currently unexplained will one day be forthcoming.

What Paul Meant

The Busybody blog asks in today's post how Paul or Isaiah would feel about our reinterpretations and/or contextualizations of their writings. If it is possible to speak of authorial post-mortem indignation, then presumably it is also possible (presumably more so) to speak of authorial intent! :-) Here are my few thoughts on the subject:

When we ask what Paul and Isaiah would make of our reinterpretations and contextualizations of their writings, I suspect that the answer depends on how aware they were that they themselves were doing the very same thing to earlier writings and traditions. And it is widely agreed that the process of reinterpreting and contextualizing both the writings of Isaiah of Jerusalem and the Apostle Paul already begins within the canon itself.I find the two extremes of naive realism and pure relativism both unattractice and unpersuasive. I believe there is a real world out there, but am humble about whether or not I have actually perceived and described it accurately. I think it is meaningful to speak about what Paul or Isaiah meant even if we cannot be absolutely certain that we have accurately uncovered it. The main point is that it is useful to try, because it can helpfully check our tendency not merely to read the text in light of our own cultural context and horizon, but our tendency to read texts that carry some weight or authority as saying what we want them to say, however much in tension that might be with some details in the texts themselves.

Philosophy of Teaching

I am currently working on a statement of my teaching philosophy, and decided (as with most other things I do) to share it on my blog, in the hope both that I may receive helpful feedback, as well as in the hope that it may be helpful and useful to others. As I worked on writing it, I found that I could not simply repeat all of the statements I had made in the past, even though much has remained the same. By sharing not only my present outlook and approach, but also commenting on where it has remained the same and where it has changed, it is my hope that this teaching statement will be more meaningful.

I have emphasized, ever since I began my teaching career, the importance of critical thinking, as the most important skill I seek to cultivate in students. In light of the use of the phrase “critical thinking” and the concept of “fairness” in attempts to undermine science education and introduce subjects such as intelligent design into science classrooms, I feel it is essential to clarify what such concepts have come to mean to me over the course of my teaching career thus far.
At the outset, I considered my role as a professor of religion to be, ideally, that of an impartial moderator, and when necessary also devil’s advocate. My aim was, first and foremost to stimulate student discussion of key primary and secondary literature that they were assigned to read. My own views on religious matters I felt ought to be kept outside the classroom, lest I cross the border between teaching about religion and be accused of bias or even indoctrination. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that this is unrealistic. Even my starting position, that critical thinking and scholarly study are appropriate undertakings for all my students, including those with personal faith commitments, is itself a value-laden viewpoint, and in teaching from this perspective, I was not, as I had supposed, engaging in a value-free, purely intellectual activity. In the field of Biblical studies, as in all other areas of academic inquiry, there are things that we know with as great a degree of certainty as is possible, and others where even experts differ on the implications and interpretations of the relevant evidence. I thus now emphasize not only the need for critical thinking broadly defined, but also the essential skill of identifying credible sources. This is particular important in an age when web sites representing every conceivable opinion abound, and it is to the internet that students first turn as a source of information. By learning to distinguish between mainstream and fringe viewpoints, and understand why a majority of scholars in a given field reach a particular conclusion, is also an essential component of critical thinking. Without a clear understanding of the evidentiary basis of different scholarly views, and of why legitimate disagreement arises where it does, students’ critical thinking skills will be at best incomplete, and at worst prone to argue for a conclusion based on personal preference without due concern for either evidence or potential consequences. To provide an example, no serious historian doubts Jesus’ existence, just as no credible historian thinks Jesus spoke exactly as he is presented as speaking in the Gospel of John. On such matters, the evidence is relatively clear cut, and the fact that students can find someone with a PhD who holds an alternative viewpoint and repeat their arguments does not, in and of itself, represent critical thinking. The missing component is an understanding of why there is near unanimity about particular conclusions, since these are especially striking in a field such as history, which deals only in probabilities. Also missing is an awareness that fringe viewpoints are regularly driven by and based on ideological motivations rather than evidence. Thus it is that my emphasis on instilling in students the ability to think critically about important issues, and draw their own conclusions, has not changed, but has nonetheless been tempered significantly by an increased emphasis on understanding the reasons for scholarly consensuses and disagreements – the former suggest that the evidence we now have points strongly to a particular conclusion (although new evidence can always unseat old certainties), while the latter suggests that there is a degree of ambiguity in the evidence currently available that leaves room for more than one interpretation thereof. Having made these points, I now feel comfortable reiterating what has been my approach from the outset, using words I crafted for a statement of my teaching philosophy in preparation for a teaching workshop I participated in three years ago: I am more interested in how (and of course that) students think, than what they think. Students should become familiar with the texts and the issues related to their interpretation, in a manner that provides them with the skills necessary to tackle unforeseen questions in the future. Rote learning and memorization are near the bottom of my list of priorities. Rather, I am most interested that students understand issues, and show themselves capable of adjudicating between different scholarly hypotheses and viewpoints in an intelligent and respectful manner.

I am very much aware of issues such as Myers-Briggs personality type differences as these relate to the different approaches to learning found among students. My own approach to both learning and teaching has been developed both through the use of the wisdom of others working in the field, and through my own experience of teaching students who represent not only different personality types, but also cultures other than my native one. I am thus convinced, above all else, of the need for flexibility as regards one’s style of teaching. I consider it important to contextualize the material I am teaching, and to obtain regular feedback from students throughout the duration of a given course, since every group of students is different. I have taught the exact same material to two groups of students in essentially the exact same way, and found one group extremely responsive and the other not.

For this reason, I feel that the interactive element of the classroom is the key to successful teaching. Although I myself am something of an introvert, I have worked very hard to ensure that my classrooms are forums for interactive learning and not mere lecture halls. I seek to find out where students are coming from and begin where they are, leading them on step by step from there, while having an arsenal of different angles and approaches ready at hand whenever possible, that I can switch to if a particular approach is not engaging a group of students in the desired manner. It is also crucial to incorporate a variety of approaches in every course, and whenever possible in any given class, since every class is inevitably made up of individuals with different approaches to learning. For example, in the classroom I seek to encourage interaction and co-operation between students in the context of small groups, to introduce practical examples and relate theoretical learning to concrete cases, and to use visual as well as oral methods of communication. I have found that, while I myself (like many teachers) am an INTP, by obtaining feedback, being approachable, encouraging discussion, and relating topics to concrete practical situations wherever possible and appropriate, I have managed to create an environment in the classroom in which students of various personality types and approaches to learning can do well and benefit from the course in question. I also seek to offer multiple forms of assessment, so that no student finds themselves evaluated solely on the basis of a particular form of assessment that they find frustrating or ill-suited to their own learning style.

My goal as an educator is above all to provide an example of academic excellence, of the integration of learning and lifestyle, and of a fearless quest for truth and understanding that is not incompatible with faith, in my own life and teaching. The role model I seek to emulate as an educator is that of the “teacher-scholar”, one who not only comes prepared to lecture about certain topics, but whose own research is contributing to the field and what is known and taught worldwide, and who can thus draw on an ever-updated familiarity with the field and its developments.

Friendly Atheist's Soul Bought By Friendly Christian On eBay

I just finished reading the book I Sold My Soul on eBay: Viewing Faith through an Atheist's Eyes. It is about an atheist who said he would attend church as specified by the highest bidder on eBay. He provides insights on what goes on in churches from the perspective of an atheist raised in a Jain family, and thus with no Christian background to make many Christians' various strange customs seem more familiar. This is definitely recommended reading for both Christians and Atheists. It is always encouraging to see that serious and respectful conversation is possible between friendly Atheists and friendly Christians, as do the author and the highest bidder (a pastor) in the book and on their web sites.

Another book I read recently is Where's My Jetpack? A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived. It is about the inventions sci-fi promised us, some of which are possible now. Although I still want a ray-gun, they are still too big, so I'll gladly settle for a Skycar.

Down With Secular Mathematics!

On my old blog I made a tongue-in-cheek reference to the need for a special "Biblical mathematics" if one wishes to attempt (even though it is futile) to be a "Biblical literalist" - defining pi as 3, allowing 13 to equal 14, and so on. Apparently I am not the only person to have this sort of idea - there is a nice parody of "creation science" in the mathematical realm in the Bollingbrook Babbler.

The Three Laws of Robotics

I'm actually writing something on religion and science fiction, and found myself pondering Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics. On the one hand, such laws seem like a necessity. On the other hand, if we manage to create sentient, self-aware artificial persons, then would they not have rights? Could we in essence impose our will on them in this way, or would their right to the same freedoms other persons have lead to the Three Laws being overturned by some future courts? Alternatively, what would we make of a world in which similar laws could be encoded into human brains? Would the world be a better place as a result?

As I write this, one toy company has decided to come up with its own laws of robotics. Is this bad news for organic persons?

Saving Mother Earth From Her Worshippers

The idea of the earth as mother is not as alien to the Bible as one might have heard. It is quite clearly present in Job 1:21, when Job says "naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will return there." It is also in the background when God, in Genesis 1:11 and 1:24, is said not to create living things directly, but by commanding the earth to bring them forth out of its creative potency.

Yet having pointed this out, I wish to also express my hesitancy about the usefulness of this idea in our present context. While reading What Does God Look Like in an Expanding Universe? in the hope of finding exciting new insights and creative thinking, I was disappointed how many of the contributors thought that, by shifting to a Native American or Buddhist or vague New Age spiritual perspective, they had made progress. But the truth is that none of these traditions is any more obviously in keeping with modern science than is Christianity. Of course, we've all encountered books and articles on the similarities between modern physics and eastern philosophy. But the similarities are superficial and far outweigh the differences. Speaking about reincarnation is no more obviously compatible with a scientific perspective than hoping for the resurrection of the last day.

If one looks at India, for example, the belief that the Ganges is the manifestation of Ganga and is divine did not serve as a sound basis for protecting the river from pollution. On the contrary, it was hard for anyone to imagine that human beings who depend on the benevolence of the goddess could be doing her harm. The Christian idea of 'dominion' can be interpreted so as to emphasize stewardship, and the Hindu idea that rivers are expressions of the divine and above needing our care can be interpreted so as to emphasize the need to show honor to the life-giving Ganga by not mistreating her. Neither is inherently in line with either science or environmental concerns, but both have the potential to be, assuming those who adhere to these ideas actually care about the world of which we are a part and the shape in which we pass it on to our children. In the end, it all comes down not to mythology or dogma, but to compassion or the lack thereof.

Waiting to get LOST

I'm glad I had the last season of Doctor Who to tide me over this summer - and I'm now taking a look at season 3 of The 4400 on DVD. But I am still eagerly awaiting the return of LOST, and am happy to have found some tidbits of information about new characters and a new Dharma video. The video, which can be seen on ABC's official LOST page, is fascinating and includes some interspersed frames that will require a closer look. Interestingly enough, given my recent discussions about Doctor Who, it looks like time travel, parallel universes, or something else of this sort might be a part of the way LOST develops in the next season. Stay tuned!

More Blogs Discuss The New Doctor Who

It seems there is a veritable surge of Doctor Who fandom overtaking Biblical scholars across the globe. Mark Goodacre (on a new personal blog) and Loren Rosson both have new entries on the subject. The recent seasons are not simply the continuation of a classic series for the sake of fans - it is great television, pure and simple!

Why Orthodox Christians Cannot Be Young-Earth Creationists

I just happened across a verse in reading a book today - 2 Esdras 6:42. It says:

Upon the third day thou didst command that the waters should be gathered in the
seventh part of the earth: six parts hast thou dried up, and kept them, to the
intent that of these some being planted of God and tilled might serve thee.

Could anyone who regards this verse as sacred Scripture be misled into thinking that the Bible is a science textbook?

Blogging the Bible: Call for Contributors

This brief post is to share an interesting book project on blogging as it relates to academia and Biblical studies. Whether you are a potential contributor or just a reader of this blog, the project will presumably interest you!

Did Jesus Exist?

Anyone who has ever visited an atheist discussion forum will know that there are plenty of atheists and "freethinkers" who take it as a given that Jesus didn't really exist, that he is a composite figure created from a patchwork of earlier mythology, and so on. If you ask a professional historian whether Jesus existed, however, you will never receive an answer other than "yes".

Given that history is all about probabilities, how can historians be so certain? The answer lies in a simple fact that casts all serious doubt aside: the crucifixion. There was nothing that more automatically disqualified someone from consideration as God's appointed savior than being tortured and executed by the foreign overlords who were ruling over his people and their land. It is simply unimaginable that someone would start with the idea of the Messiah and then, in attempting to invent one from scratch, would come up with the crucified Jesus.

This is not to say that we do not have serious uncertainties about what precisely Jesus said and did, or that we are not sure beyond reasonable doubt that he did not say and do certain things attributed to him in the Gospels, or that the possibility is not a real one that his earliest followers either miunderstood or deliberately miscontrued him in places. But it is to say that, in historical study, where certainty is all but impossible, this is a delightful instance where something is as certain as one could ever hope for. To deny Jesus' existence would be to deny certainty about everything in the past.

Fundamentalist Christians are ready to assume that Jesus said and did everything the Gospels said he did (even, as Ned Flanders famously said on an episode of The Simpsons, "the stuff that contradicts the other stuff"). Atheist fundamentalists are happy to dismiss his existence altogether. The mainstream of serious historical investigation, as well as of faith, recognizes that our knowledge of the past cannot be obtained in such leaps. Each piece of evidence must be examined on its own merits, and whereas 'picking and choosing' what to believe from the Gospels on the basis of personal preference is questionable from most standpoints, recognizing that historians will inevitably be persuaded by the evidence for some things and against others is crucial to any attempt to treat the Gospels and other early Christian sources seriously from a historical standpoint.

If Possible Deceiving Even The Elect

One of the biggest challenges students seem to face is identifying reputable sources of information. This is particularly true when they are using their favorite resource, the internet, but the problem does not disappear in those few instances when some few bright sparks among them actually enter a library. One suggestion I make (apart from choosing books published in the past half a century - I'm surprised how often students have chosen as their main source a relevant book from almost a century ago) is to look for scholars who have an affiliation with an accredited university and expertise in a relevant field.

It is for this reason that I am particularly dismayed by the deceptive attempt of an organization calling itself "The Jesus Project" and which clearly has a sensationalist agenda (despite its claims to the contrary) to falsely claim the involvement of reputable scholars in relevant fields as part of their research consortium (or whatever it in fact is).

The internet and electronic media are not the problem, just the means. I am delighted to be able to express gratitude to members of the X-Talk discussion list, and to various blogs, for drawing this to our attention. If frauds and urban legends are disseminated ever more widely in our electronic age, those detecting them and combatting them share all the same tools and possibilities.

Returning to the theme of students finding high-quality resources, I'd be perfectly happy if they use resources by any of the genuine scholars of ancient literature and/or the study of the historical Jesus listed on the home page of the Jesus Project. The key is to read something actually by a credible author who is an expert in their field, and not merely something by a group that lists such individuals as participants in a conference or project.