Quote of the Day (Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz)

"The 'non-eschatological Jesus' seems to have more Californian than Galilean local colouring" (Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998) p.11)

The Social Soul

Yesterday in my Religion and Science class we talked about what is meant by the 'soul' and how it relates to other terminology such as 'mind' and 'brain'. One of the students, Andrew Gillen, had some thoughts that were so interesting I just have to write them down and also share them. (That's the great thing about blogs, of course - you can do both those things at once).

We were discussing some excerpts from the book Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature (edited by Warren S. Brown, Nancey Murphy and H. Newton Malony; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998). More than one of the contributors to that volume mention that the Hebrew/Biblical idea of persons as souls is fundamentally relational. The soul has to do with the ability of persons to relate in a personal manner to themselves, to other human beings, and to God.

Andrew's insight was to relate this to animals and human beings from a modern scientific perspective. When we bring an animal, such as a cat or dog, into our family, we "enable its soul" in two ways. First, we provide for its needs so that it does not have to spend all its time concerned to find food and in other ways provide for these basic necessities of existence. There has been research on the connection between human beings achieving the possibility of leisure time and significant cultural developments. Second, we relate to the animal in a personal way, and most of us have seen this elicit what appears to be reciprocal personal interaction from animals, to however limited an extent.

There also seem to be converse examples, of human children raised in the wild, without human socialization (or at least without normal or even adequate socialization) whose behavior is primarily 'animal'. There are more legends than well-documented cases of such 'feral children', but what is known is certainly significant.

In Andrew's view, all living things have 'souls' to some extent (even plants). The question is whether they have the opportunity to develop and cultivate these facets of their existence or not. I would want to qualify that, in light of the evidence from psychological studies of feral children and clever animals (to allude to the study by Douglas Keith Candland, whose 1993 book by that title, published by Oxford University Press, is available online via Questia). What evidence there is suggests that, while nurture is clearly important, particularly in crucial early years, nature is also significant, as is obvious to anyone who compares how far humans have the potential to develop linguistic and social abilities compared with most other animals. John McCrone's short piece "Feral Children" in The Lancet 2.2 (February 2003) 132 summarizes the situation nicely.

Our society is committed to the equality of, and providing equal opportunities for, adult human beings. Some also fight over the rights of those still in the womb. But the most neglected group are those in between, from birth onward. In those formative years, how one is treated, one's social interactions, whether one is read to - so many factors determine whether one will enter adulthood on a level footing or with an unfair disadvantage. If we wish to have equality for adults, we must do more for our society's children. We must provide opportunities for their cultivation - whether we call it their minds or their souls. It is not enough to give those who manage to graduate high school equal opportunity at college - we must find ways of providing all the forms of stimulation the very young need in their most crucial formative years - stimulation mental and musical, social and spiritual.

This is simply the advice found in the Tao Te Ching (Nowadays spelled Daodejing): "Take action before things get out of hand. The tallest tree begins as a tiny sprout". If we do not take care of issues when they are small, we should not be surprised when we confront major ones later on. (This, by the way, was the original sense of the saying found immediately after the passage I quoted, "A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single foot step."

The importance of these issues seems clearer now: it may be the soul of our nation is quite literally at stake.


For more information on this subject, there is a site dedicated to the topic which includes online text of journal articles as well as a chapter from a PhD thesis on the subject. There is reason to think that claims of humans "raised by wolves" essentially from birth are implausible, but even the instances of apparent 'adoption' at a later stage are interesting - which is why so much has been written on this subject over the past several centuries.

Does The Universe Have A Purpose?

The Templeton Foundation has asked a number of scientists this question: "Does The Universe Have A Purpose?" The varied answers they received vary are shared on their web site.

(Thanks to millinerd for sharing this on his own blog).

What Would Jesus Read?

In response to a post about Scripture and canon on the Emerging from Babel blog, I suggested we might approach a text like Ecclesiastes in the following way:

I suppose one way to approach it is to recognize that Ecclesiastes is both somewhat marginal in the canon, but nonetheless necessary. Faith without any element of doubt easily becomes credulity. Maintaining the tension in some sense seems crucial.

I now want to question my line of reasoning there, not because I'm convinced that my point was mistaken, but because I've found myself thinking about whether a Christian approach to the text means approaching the books of the Bible the way Jesus approached people.

Is it ever appropriate to consider the view of one of the Biblical authors marginal? Jesus welcomed sinners and the ritually unclean at table with him (and, with a little coaxing, praised the faith of a Canaanite woman); his followers expanded this to include Jews and Gentiles, not to mention slave and free, rich and poor.

Dare we marginalize Ecclesiastes? Could an approach to the text that gives preferential treatment of some voices over others be considered a genuinely Christian approach to the text? If we don't think Jesus would marginalize people, then on what basis could we legitimate treat the voices of some human beings as marginal, just because they are a minority within the canon?

My concluding point in the earlier comment was about not losing the tension, and I think that point still stands. But I still find myself asking whether it is not appropriate to apply Christian principles about the marginalized to the books of the canon of Scripture. To sum it up in a short question: What would Jesus read?

What is a mystic?

A mystic is someone who knows what he or she isn't talking about.

Quote of the Day (Albert Einstein)

"Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth" (Albert Einstein).

These words were apparently spoken by Einstein about Gandhi. Can anyone help me find the source of the quotation? Last night we showed the famous Gandhi movie for students taking the South Asian Civilizations course that I and a few other professors teach. I hope to post some thoughts about Gandhi and Jesus sometime soon.

Genesis Rewritten

In the beginning, God spoke
but there were no ears to hear
nor was there an atmosphere to carry the sound.
God said, "let there be light"
but there was no eye to behold its brightness
or to discern and distinguish its rainbow colors.

Billions of years passed,
and now there were people who could see, hear and create,
and so they imagined God doing all those things.
Some saw the moon, that it was beautiful,
and the sun, that it was inexplicably bright,
and worshipped them.
Later some rolled the forces of nature all into one
and worshipped the one God they perceived behind them all.
They fought with one another, and fought, and fought some more.

Then some separated the light from the darkness;
They saw the light, that it was good,
and chose light over darkness.
Eventually they left the darkness behind.

Several trillion years later,
their descendants understood
that God is nothing like anything their ancestors imagined
or could have imagined.
God was and is so much more...

Was Jesus "More Apocalyptic" Than His Mentor?

I don't post often enough on my current research area, the historical study of Jesus, so I'm glad when a conversation turns my thoughts (and my blogging) in that direction.

A recent comment mentioned one of the classic arguments for an 'apocalyptic' Jesus - i.e. one that proclaimed the imminent 'end of the world'. The argument is that it makes little sense to have an apocalyptic John the Baptist, followed by a non-apocalyptic Jesus, followed by an apocalyptic early Church.

I've started thinking that perhaps Jesus may have grown more apocalyptic than his mentor over time. John predicts one who is coming who will carry out judgment. Is that necessarily an apocalyptic vision of the future? It involves God, but does it involve the end of history as known up until that point?

I wonder whether John did not expect something to happen within history by human players with God's aid, rather than a climactic divine intervention that would bring human history to a close. Jesus' action in the temple, if it was carried out during the period before John was imprisoned as the Gospel of John suggests, might have been an action he undertook while still under the auspices of John's ministry, delivering, as it were, a message from his mentor.

After this, and after John is imprisoned (perhaps because of the stir one of his disciples had created by doing this), we might envisage Jesus withdrawing to Galilee and finding himself interacting with people who didn't meet John's righteous standards, but impressed him nevertheless as more open to God and to change than many of the religious leaders, who were not enamoured with John and his message. As a result of this, and of increasing activity as an exorcist, Jesus becomes persuaded that the time has come not simply for a radical change in the direction of Jewish history, but the end of history itself.

These are just some thoughts and speculations at this stage. I present them here not as a statement of conclusions I have drawn, but in the hope that they will promote discussion (which may in turn help me to draw conclusions!)

Quote of the Day (Jeremy Campbell)

"Newton gave us a God of awesome power, sovereign, absolute. He was Lord of Dominion, ruler supreme. At the same time, he was given specific, somewhat menial tasks to perform, among them making periodic corrections to the motions of the celestial bodies" (Jeremy Campbell, The Many Faces of GOD (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006) p. xvii).

The quote continues: "The Church made the mistake of accepting this role for God. When it became clear that the heavenly bodies did not need divine intervention to keep them on an even keel, the Church was left stranded and defenseless against the arguments of atheists, that a God with nothing to do is no God at all"

Number of Non-Religious Supporters of Intelligent Design has risen at least 400%!

The number of supporters of intelligent design who are not religious seems to be rising rapidly. I remember when there didn't seem to be any. Now there is an organization/blog for such people. ICON-RIDS stands for "International Coalition of Non-Religious ID Scientists & Scholars".

The blog has two contributors. Add that to one person I spoke to on a blog forum once (although it may have been one of the two people already mentioned, let's assume it wasn't) and someone mentioned in one of their blog entries, that brings the grand total to 4. That is a rise of 400%, and thus not to be scoffed at.

[snicker]

Quote of the Day (Jesus)

"To take away a neighbor's living is to murder him; to deprive an employee of his wage is to shed blood" (Wisdom of Jesus son of Sira, 34: 22).

Apologies if anyone assumed from the post's title that I meant some other person named Jesus. It was a common name, you know...

Young-Earth Creationism isn't Science, but a Cult!

There has been a lot of discussion of the recent retraction of an old scientific paper by its author, Homer Jacobson. His reason for doing so is that the paper contained errors and inaccuracies, and yet it was being quoted by 'creation scientists' as supporting their position.

Why didn't he retract it sooner, you might ask? Because as long as it was a question of what scientists might do with it, he had little to worry about: they would either ignore his work, or they would seek to reproduce its findings and discover the flaws and publish them, and the matter would be resolved. In science, the scientific community provides critical scrutiny, which is why retractions are rarely needed.

This case tells us something important about young-earth creationism, though. Clearly in the decades which have passed since the paper was written, during the time they have been quoting it, either they did not do any actual experiments to test the paper's claims (in which case they aren't doing science) or they have been doing the research but have kept it under wraps because it invalidates their claims (in which case they are being dishonest). In the latter case, there would presumably be a top secret creationist vault somewhere with all the results of 'creation science' research that actually supports mainstream evolutionary theory. I bet Dan Brown could weave an entertaining yarn with that scenario!

It is clear that young-earth creationism is not honest and not science. If they wanted to retrieve a modicum of respectability, they could retract some of their past false claims. But they never do. They regularly post updates on their web page saying not to use a particular argument any longer. But they never admit they were wrong about anything.

What are the implications of this? In conservative Christianity's own terms, young-earth creationism is clearly a cult.

A cult is usually defined as a group that twists scripture, and often it is one that rejects some field of knowledge that the rest of the world accepts. It often claims that if you look at the Bible or other areas without the help of their own literature, you will stumble into darkness. These are precisely the sorts of claims young-earth creationists make. I know - I used to be one.

Parents, please protect your children from this dangerous cult. A group that teaches its adherents to claim that they are right even when the evidence says they aren't does serious harm to the psyche, to say nothing of the soul.

The Cat Is Out Of The Bag - And It Is Wearing An ID!

Apparently the (comically unsuccessful) conspiracy that some proponents of intelligent design had been engaged in, to obscure their connection with particular religious traditions and outlooks, is breaking down. Michael Behe has made the connection explicit (in the process he calls Ken Miller a proponent of intelligent design as well). Bill O'Reilly also made the connection between ID and religion explicit, as did Ben Stein.

To most people it was perfectly obvious anyway. It certainly was to its supporters in pews. But it also came across in other more subtle ways, such as when a book like The Spiritual Brain claimed to be an unbiased look at the evidence for the soul as traditional conceived, but paid little attention to any evidence (such as ghosts or memories of past lives) that would not fit well in a historic orthodox Christian worldview. My point is not that such evidence is strong or weak, but it certainly exists and would be of anyone merely doing scientific research on the soul or related areas. To set such evidence aside, when many have found it persuasive or at least intriguing, shows that there is indeed an ideological bias, and it isn't merely in favor of religion in general, but of a particular tradition understood in a particular way.

On his blog Thoughts in a Haystack, John Pieret helpfully points out that "Well, yes ... science does discriminate against ID ... and phlogiston theory, geocentrism, and planetary crystal spheres." He also shares an article from an Arizona student that has been getting some attention recently. I've been thinking lately that, while Philip Kitcher is in one sense right to define young-earth creationism and intelligent design as "old science" rather than "non-science", one needs to add that the attempt to revive an old, overturned and/or discredited bit of science for ideological reasons, without evidence that justifies doing so, is not only non-science but anti-science.

Those who appreciate irony will enjoy reading about Michael Behe's criticism of Ken Miller's theological objections to Intelligent Design. There are both scientific and theological objections, and Miller has been consistent in making both, and in keeping them distinct. Behe's objection is ironic because it is the proponents of ID who have argued for science to embrace non-materialist approaches, and who have now had their religious motivations made even more public. If you are going to try to incorporate God into your science, then you should not complain when your work meets religious objections in addition to all the many scientific ones!

A Three-Billion Year Curtain Raiser?

In my discussion with colleagues about Philip Kitcher's book Living With Darwin we discussed the concept of the history of the universe thus far being hard to understand as merely a "3-billion year long curtain-raiser" to get us to the main act, which is us, humanity. Certainly some religious language and traditions may give this impression or even embrace this viewpoint. If you ask me, I doubt that the curtain raiser is over yet. This is still the overture, the prelude to Act 1. I realize that this will perhaps lead some to make comparisons between God and Wagner, and perhaps such comparisons would not be entirely inappropriate. Some are interested only in shows that are short and sweet, where the plot is easy to follow. Epic stories, however, take a long time even to introduce, and even longer to tell the story in all its important details and dramatic elements. The story of the universe is just such an epic story.

When will 'act 1' of the history of the universe really begin? Perhaps when we make contact with other civilizations, and we begin to have a genuine interconnectedness on a galactic rather than merely a terrestrial level. That would be a major step towards the next major evolutionary development in the history of the universe, what George Zebrowski called Macrolife.

The mistake, then, is not in thinking that there could be a period of billions of years that is but an introduction. The error is in thinking that the introduction is over, that humanity in its present form, still struggling to figure out how to live together, is the climax of the universe's story. The story is far from finished. It has barely started. And what still lies in store we can scarcely imagine. Nevertheless, imagining it is important, for without attempts to imagine our unimaginable future, we cannot take the tiny steps that are our part in the universe's ongoing history.

The overture is still playing, and we are the orchestra. If we stop playing, if we live as though our musical introduction is all there is, then instead of a 3-billion year curtain-raiser, we shall have a 3-billion year unfinished work that ends tragically.

Quote of the Day (Vishal Mangalwadi)

"As Jesus hung upon the cross of Calvary, it was literally the sin of the world that was hanging there at that moment of history. The people who physically saw that crucifixion, whether or not they were Christ's followers, saw that it was not the justice but the injustice of man that was being carried out that day. In the arrest, trial and crucifixion of Christ, man's sin was more than visible: man's disobedience to God, man's rejection of truth, man's cruelty, his lies, his hate, his greed, his vested interest, his oppression, his exploitation, his abuse of power, his deliberate choice of evil were all there on the cross for everyone to see, hear and feel. That is why the Biblical statement, that Jesus became the sin of the world, is not some theological mumbo-jumbo, but a statement of historical fact. It was not Jesus who was judged on that cross, but the sin of mankind that was judged and condemned" (Vishal Mangalwadi, Truth and Social Reform (Spire, 1989) p.15).

Red Letter Christians

"Things fall apart", and one thing that rapidly seems to be disintegrating is the Evangelical identity as typically understood in the second half of the 20th century. Here I've been talking of late about the "radical middle". On the Parchment and Pen blog, there has been a discussion of what other terms, such as "historic Evangelical", might allow one to distinguish one's views from those of others (such as Joel Osteen). At Sojourners the term "red letter Christian" has been proposed, as a way of indicating that their focus is not on everything in the Bible, but first and foremost the teaching of Jesus.

I think I like what the latter group stands for, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find myself bearing that label at some point. My professional work as a New Testament scholars, however, leads me to ask some further questions about the banner under which they are gathering. Those of us familiar with the Jesus Seminar will be aware of their parody of the tradition of having red letter editions of the Bible, offering editions of the Gospels that include the Gospel of Thomas and rate sayings as red, pink, grey or black depending on whether, after a vote of the seminar's fellows, it was felt that the saying was most likely authentic or inauthentic.

For a well-informed, educated Christian in our time, who wants to take seriously the teaching of Jesus, it will not be enough to focus on the words in red letters in a traditional red-letter edition. I am not persuaded that focusing on the red (or even the red and pink) sayings in the publications of the Westar Institute one has resolved the problem either, since I have found myself in some instances to not only to be persuaded of the authenticity of sayings they rated black, but also have doubted the authenticity of at least one phrase that they ranked as red.

I don't think that the various scholars, theologians and other leaders connected with the "red letter Christians" movement intended by this to associate themselves with an uncritical approach to the Gospels, and I am not intending to criticize them at all in this respect. I am simply observing what it might mean for someone who is open to historical critical insights and approaches to wear this label, and also wondering whether certain Christians who might like the emphases of the "red letter Christians" might find these historical questions, if they are addressed openly, deeply upsetting.

The key point, however, is one that I endorse without hesitation: if one focuses on the actual teaching of Jesus - whether simply taking the Gospels at face value, or assessing each saying using the tools of historical investigation - one will end up with a set of beliefs and practices that are very much at odds with the values of those who have in recent times labelled themselves as "values voters" or the "moral majority." When it comes to this point, acceptance or non-acceptance of an academic historical approach matters little, because the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels so consistently and overwhelmingly challenge the outlook and values of the so-called "religious right.

Quote of the Day (James D. G. Dunn)

"To demythologize the ascension is not to deny that Jesus "went to heaven"; it is simply to find a way of expressing this in language which takes it out of the realm of current or future space research" (James D. G. Dunn, in his article "Myth" in the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downers Grove: IVP, 1992) p.568).

Seeking Textbook Recommendations For A Course On Paul's Letters

Next semester I will be teaching my course on "Paul and the Early Church" again. The last time I taught it, I got students to share the work, researching select passages from a given letter and then making their summaries available. This time, I'd like to try something different. I've looked at a number of overviews of Paul's life and several shorter academic commentaries, but I still don't feel as though I've identified ones that are clearly appropriate for an undergraduate course that covers several letters (I intend to at least cover Galatians, Romans, and 1 Corinthians) and does not expect students to know Greek. Indeed, for most of the students in the class this will probably be their first real exegetically-oriented class (since in the introductory Bible class, we survey so much that we do not spend all that much time on any given passage, and cover a wide range of excerpts). I nevertheless want to get into some of the details of the letters, and am not looking for something that is superficial or gives only one interpretative option. The Cliff Notes for Paul's letters are available online, but that isn't the sort of thing I'm looking for! :-)

Does anyone have any particular recommendations? Any suggestions regarding either books or online resources would be most welcome!

Quote of the Day (Hanson and Hanson)

"An event that has been just around the corner for a thousand years is a non-event. Thinking Christians should not behave as if the Parousia was a genuine possibility" (Anthony and Richard Hanson, in Reasonable Belief (Oxford University Press, 1981) p.196).

For those not theologically trained, the Parousia is a technical term for the 'second coming of Jesus'. The first time I read this statement by the Hansons I was shocked that someone could say something like this so bluntly, without any equivocation. To me now, it seems like something quite natural and rather obvious. It presupposes, of course, that figures like Tim LaHaye and Hal Lindsay are not "thinking Christians", but I don't suppose that is necessarily that controversial...

LOST: The Beginning of the End

They have released a title for the premier episode from LOST's upcoming season. "The Beginning of the End." That's a great way to keep interest and get speculation started up again, but the title doesn't really tell us anything.

I did come across something that was significant in some book or other that I read recently. Fans of LOST will know that the name of the person whose funeral Jack went to in the flash forward sequences in last season's finale seems to have been Jeremy Bentham. The actual philosopher by that name was famous for a number of things, but one is his hedonic calculus. This lists seven considerations a utilitarian should weigh in deciding whether a course of action maximizes pleasure/minimizes pain for the greatest number.

Recall that LOST's mythology from the beginning centers on the opposing forces of light and dark. Ben famously referred to his group as "the good guys". Could the struggle be over a power (whether technological or magical) that could destroy humankind, unless those who know about it are willing to sacrifice some in order to save others? This possibility has been hinted at elsewhere in the LOST storyline.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled patient waiting until February, in which (in keeping with Bentham's calculus) you put LOST out of your mind to minimize the pain of waiting until the new season begins...

Darth Vader In Love

Many thanks to the blog SF Signal for sharing this. It has no obvious theological, religious, philosophical or academic implications. It is just funny, that's all.

What Makes For An Influential Blog?

Apparently, it is all in the links. A new study has attempted to rank blogs in these terms. Since we can only read so many blogs, the question was which 100 would you pick that would give you an overall impression of what's going on in the blogosphere generally.

That's why, rather than write something myself, I'm sharing this link. And this one from a science blogger who is persuaded it is bad math, since it lists his old (now defunct) blog rather than his new one.

That's also why you will want to post a link to my post about this on your own blog, and post a mention of your post linking to my post in the comments section here.

Wow, who knew that making one's blog influential involved so much running in circles?

Interpreting the Bible Ethically: The Case of King David

What David did (in particular the infamous story about him and Bathsheba), many of our national leaders have done, and what happened to David has happened to lots of politicians. It would be quite plausible to suggest that the stories about David were at least partially composed with this audience of rulers and government officials in mind. But what were they expected to learn from these stories? I am going to make some seemingly plausible, and at the same time seemeingly ridiculous, suggestions. Then we can discuss what, if anything, is wrong with them.

Lesson 1: Politicians are indispensible in a way religious leaders are not, and the moral failings of politicians are thus more readily forgivable in the eyes of both God and society. Hence Uzzah touches the ark when seeking to do something good, and pays for his life (2 Samuel 6), while David commits adultery and commits an illicit census, and other people are punished instead of him.

Lesson 2: Your public actions should be magnanimous. Make a public show of forgiving Shimei and Joab - you or your son can pay them back later (1 Kings 2:5-6,8-9). In other words, choose your moments. Once your fame and positive reputation is certain to be preserved for posterity, you can literally get away with murder. It helps, of course, if you let others do your dirty work for you. You can even punish them for doing things that were beneficial to your position, and thus give the impression that you yourself are innocent (see e.g. 2 Samuel 4).

Lesson 3: A public show of repentance, especially when coupled with a personal tragedy, can redeem you in the eyes of the nation (2 Samuel 12:13-19).

Lesson 4: Historians in the long term will focus on your accomplishments rather than your failings. They will leave at your misdeeds with women, and will blame your other failings on Satan rather than you (1 Chronicles 21:1).

Lesson 5: If you are remembered to have done the right things religiously, your other failings can be overlooked. David brought the ark to Jerusalem and made preparations for the building of the Temple. Isn't the message of the Deuteronomic History (which runs from Joshua through to the end of 2 Kings) that kings are judged by whether they centralized worship and eliminated idolatry, and not by other moral failings or atrocities they may have committed?


One doesn't have to be a Biblical scholar to feel that the "lessons" listed above are not the message that readers of these stories are supposed to take away with them. But why do we respond this way? It has little to do with anything explicit in the text, and in some cases it would seem reasonably plausible to read the text in the ways I have suggested.

What seems wrong is simply that we have certain moral sensibilities that we bring to the text. Of course, those who continue in our time to overlook the overindulgences and failings of the rich and famous may not react negatively to the interpretations I've suggested. But I suspect that many who are happy to overlook celebrities' shortcomings might still find objectionable the idea that the Bible teaches them that they can expect to get away with such things.

A comparison may be made to the debates over slavery that led to the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention by the slave-owners who felt their right to keep their slaves was protected in the Bible. The exegetical arguments on their side were not insubstantial, and were not in any obvious way wrong in terms of specific texts interpreted in their immediate literary and historical context.

What the abolitionists had in their favor was the fact that, whatever Paul or others writing in his name may have said specifically about slavery, there were fundamental principles in the Bible that undermined it. If one takes seriously the Golden Rule, to do to others what you want them to do to you, then you cannot possibly enslave someone or keep them enslaved.

The keys to interpreting the Bible ethically are:

1) to look to general principles rather than specific passages,

2) to be suspicious of our motives when we come to the Bible seeking proof texts to justify what we want to be the case, and

3) to not, on the other hand, ignore the moral sensibilities we bring to the text.

This last point is important. Although many modern prophets of apocalyptic doom continue to maintain that society is on a continuous downward spiral, that things are getting worse and worse and always have been, the truth is that in many areas if not all, the moral standards that we hold ourselves to nowadays are often higher than, or at least as high as, they ever were before. Certainly for those who read the Bible to regard human history as one of perpetual decline is fundamentally ironic, and shows the selectivity of many modern interpreters. Tim LaHaye can say that the end is near, since he seems to read only the Book of Revelation, and does that in a very dubious manner. But the prophet Amos (who is, I hope you agree, more likely to be a true prophet than Tim) would probably be delighted by the progress we've made in some areas like human rights and social justice. This is not to say that we do not still have a long way to go. And, ironically, it seems to be those who most praise the importance of the Bible who often seem most out of touch with its key principles and emphases.

Thank You, Blogger! Now You Can Be Notified Via E-Mail Of Subsequent Comments!

Blogger seems to have added a feature that allows you to be e-mailed when there are follow-ups to your comments. This is good news! May it turn this blog into the forum for ongoing discussion that I have always hoped it might be!

Keywords

A couple of other blogs I read regularly have mentioned some of the surprising keywords that brought visitors to their blog (one of the more tame, but nonetheless interesting, sets of keywords was "Jesus please remove the evil from my PC"). I doubt that those same people would have happened across my own blog through their various keyword searches. My interests (and my blog) are not focused on hot topics, nor is the style and format sufficiently sexy to lure in people with a deep desire for the latest news and pictures. The keywords that lead people to my blog are just the sort one might expect.

The truth of the matter is that some topics are sexy and some are not - and some are sexier than others. My current research on oral tradition is unlikely to have much draw. I do try to avoid unnecessarily technical and academic jargon - why write XXX when 30 will do? No need to use Roman numerals rather than Arabic. Yet we often make things more complicated than we need to.

The fact that my blogroll includes many biology-related blogs means that perhaps someone looking for information about horny toads might happen across this one. But on biology blogs, just one spelling error can be the kiss of death. A quick typo that turns organism into orgasm can make one's blog a laughing stock, especially if the post was already about mating habits and genitalia.

But for the most part, the types of academic intercourse that typify this blog are not going to lure people in. And I, for one, refuse to prostitute myself just to increase the size of the 'number of visitors' figure. After all, does size really matter? Is bigger better if all one is doing is increasing the size of a number rather than the community of the genuinely interested?

In a pornographic society, people really do choose a picture over a thousand words, but I think that it is the words and not the pix that draw people to one's blog. The thoughts I share are free - no credit card required, no password, no hidden fees. No dirty tricks or naughty tactics to deceive people into visiting. I know that if I pretended to be able to help people get jobs, to secure the position of their dreams irrespective of whether they are guys or girls, age 18 or age 69, people would flock to this site. But I can't do it. A little commentary on science fiction and fantasy, genuine personal as well as academic interests of mine, is as far as I'll go.

This is a blog for intellectuals. Many visitors probably graduated summa cum laude. At the very least, I have a serious shot at attracting visitors of that sort. You never know who you might touch. There are lots of amateur opinions out there - and so a pro in any given field who has a blog can become master of all he or she surveys.

I don't want to become the sort of person who is anal about his blog. I do hope my posts may may achieve penetration into settings and audiences I might not have anticipated. But I know that if I blow one chance at doing so, I may not get another. Fortunately, blogging is not a job, but only a passion. Indeed, sometimes I feel like a slave to my blog, in utter submission to its whims. I do not do this out of a lust for fame or fortune. This is just a spanking brand new forum for the exchange of ideas, and I want to be a part of it. The potential is huge, and can only increase. Class, race and sex do not constitute barriers in the blogosphere. Asian and European, American and African, all interact instantaneously through the web. Gay, lesbian or straight, one often doesn't know due to the anonymity the web provides (as long as you turn off your webcam). And yet because one interacts with people from far and wide, one may feel free to be oneself. It is always a pleasure to get to know new people.

Men and women of every tribe and tongue may someday visit my blog. Why shouldn't I get excited? Of course, I don't wish to make an ass of myself either. But no one who presents their views publicly can avoid doing it from time to time. That is one reason why, instead of beating their breasts, bloggers must keep abreast of the latest news videos.

The internet need not be viewed as the Great Whore of Babylon. Any form of technology can be perverted. But those who pervert it are not using it in the only possible way. In a sick society, there is a need to reclaim what has been lost. The naked truth, without clothes that hide its true character, undressed and laid bare for a voyeuristic culture to gawk at. No attempt to massage the truth to make it fit someone else's expectations. There is nothing particularly deep about this. It is all right there on the surface. Beauty may be only skin deep, as they say, but who decided what is beautiful? There are all sorts of enemies who might oppose the dissemination of information, but a dedicated blogger can lick them every time. Bloggers arouse deep seated feelings in their readers. How could it be otherwise?

Just because I don't mention George Bush or Dick Cheney doesn't mean that my blog has no appeal. But of course, some of the things I say are tongue in cheek. I don't, as a rule, make politicians the butt of my jokes. Humor is all a matter of taste. It really sucks when people don't get my jokes.

There are so many other topics that I would love to post on, if I only had the time. Have I ever mentioned that I enjoy bird watching? It has only been a couple of years since we put the bird feeder near our window, but we've seen pileated woodpeckers come land by it (the climax of my birdwatching experience thus far), as well as the usual tits and jays and sparrows and other much more common birds. If you watch, you never know what you might see.

I hope readers of this post won't be too hard on me. This is just a random rambling about the many things that won't grab potential readers. But who knows? It all depends what people are looking for. In the blogosphere, keywords can be the key.

Quote of the Day (J. K. Rowling)

"I don't take any responsibility for the lunatic fringes of my own religion" (J. K. Rowling).

This is from an press conference in which she discusses the Christian imagery and background to the Harry Potter series.

Creatio ex nihilo

The doctrine of creation out of nothing is an interesting point of divergence between Jewish and Christian theism as usually defined today, and proponents of views such as process theology.

Ken Schenck, in a recent blog entry, recognizes that the doctrine is not strictly Biblical, and enters the Christian tradition later (and the Jewish tradition much later). He nonetheless asks what the relationship between God and the universe looks like if one accepts this doctrine on faith. I've posted a reply to his blog entry on this subject, and invite readers here to pay his blog a visit and join in the conversation that will hopefully ensue.

The Music Delusion

I just have to share this wonderful parody of the arguments of The God Delusion, applying them to music. I know some of you love a good parody as much as I do. Enjoy!

More From The Middle

I am starting to think that the blogosphere may have some form of intelligence or higher order of organization. It seems like disparate blogs intersect on the same theme around the same time. Yesterday I noticed this in relation to my post on the incarnation. Today I've found several people have mentioned ideas related to my post on the 'radical middle'.

The idea of a 'radical middle' is not to occupy an absolute centrist position, as if that were even a meaningful concept. To do so would require two clearly-defined extreme ends of the spectrum, but of course, all the terminology of 'liberal' and 'conservative' is comparative by definition and does not delineate precise positions. The point of taking up a stance in the 'radical middle' is to

Anyway, Jim Wallis offered a message to all "values voters", repeating his longstanding emphasis on the fact that neither of America's main parties really addresses all the values that many of us consider important, nor do they do so in a consistent fashion. Abandon Image also drew attention to this. Scot McKnight's blog Jesus Creed has been interacting with Brian McLaren's recent book. Jesus Politics asks whether Christian activists will form a third party, which is not an attempt to stake out the middle ground (quite the opposite!), but perhaps at least perhaps it would enrich American politics by diversifying the parties and positions represented.

I hope that over the coming days and weeks (and months and years...) we can further explore what it means to be the 'radical middle'. For now, I'll just suggest that it means (1) rejecting extremism, and (2) listening to, and being willing to draw from, things people have to say on 'both sides' of the religious, political and economic spectrum, without following any party line uncritically or dogmatically.

The Radical Middle

I never thought I'd say this, but America might be better off if it had more prominent Fascist and Communist parties. In most European countries there are more than two parties that have a serious chance of having someone represented to parliament or an equivalent representative body, and the prime minister is usually the representative of the party with the most seats. In most European countries, the major "conservative" and "liberal" parties are aware not only that they are to the right or left of another major party, but also that they have other parties on their other flank as well. In other words, in the UK for instance, both Labor and the Tories know that they do not represent extreme positions on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Because in the United States we have two main parties, extremists who want to have a serious chance of election will tend to find room for themselves among either the Republicans or the Democrats. The result is that this pulls each party further along towards an extreme than it might otherwise be. If the views of more extreme positions had parties more clearly connected with their chosen identity, there would be less confusion, and less likelihood of centrist parties being connected with extremism. There would also be more recognition of the need for cross-party cooperation, as few parties in Europe have a clear majority of the votes, and so they have to form governments in alliance and collaboration with other parties.

Our justice system regularly intervenes to prevent unfair monopolies from strangling the competition that is required for a healthy market. I wonder whether they could do something similar in the political realm and break up the political parties that monopolize American politics.

I was once asked (in a job interview for a faculty position at a seminary), because I seem to like the 'middle of the road' position on many things, what if anything I get excited about. I thought it was a great question, and I would still answer it the same way now as I did then: I am excited about finding and maintaining the middle ground. Being an extremist is easy; keeping balance is far more challenging. My approach to theology, I realized, has a lot in common with the music I tend to like most, that of the Late Romantic era. It is music that is refusing to renounce being melodic, but is being daring with the harmonies. Finding a way to be genuinely Christian and contemporary, finding ways to do things that are good for both the poor and for the economy as a whole - those are challenges that take creative thinking and hard work. Picking one and ignoring the other is easy by comparison.

The Buddha spoke of the middle path. Jesus spoke of the narrow way. I am inclined to envisage the narrow way as one that runs right down the middle of the broader thoroughfare. We most often hear warnings about the "slippery slope" from people who are persuaded they occupy the moral high ground, who claim that once you lose it, you will be with the godless liberals and atheists at the bottom of the cliff face, wishing you could get back up, but unable to. In reality, it seems more plausible to envisage a narrow road with a slope on either side, so that the closer you get to the edges, the more likely you will slip down the sides. The image here is of a stable middle ground between extremes that represent the 'low points' towards which one "gravitates" unless one is determined to keep to the middle and maintain balance.

I don't know if I'm trying to start a movement. I certainly am not the one to get an organization started (since organization, although in this instance a noun, has a related verb which does not, for the most part, characterize me). But I am hoping to start a conversation. I'm trying to occupy the "radical middle", and I mean it seriously when I say this is radical. If you are an extremist, you have critics largely on one side, and you are probably so far away from them in your presuppositions that none of their criticisms will carry any weight - assuming any of them take you seriously enough to engage you in discussion. For those in the middle, criticisms will come from both sides, and the criticisms will often have points that we can and should learn from.

Maintaining balance takes challenge, whether you are walking a tight rope, riding a bike, governing a country or formulating ways to express your faith. If those who are passionate about the middle (whether politically or theologically) united in some public and organized fashion, and work together, what might be accomplished?


[Finally, to give credit where credit is due, the reference to the "radical middle" in the title is inspired by a phrase used by Gary Eberle, whose book Dangerous Words I mentioned recently. Given the emphasis on the meaning of words in that book, I do wish to clarify that I did not understand Eberla to be applying the phrase to anything other than the religious/theological middle. Any criticism of its application to a wider range of subjects should thus be directed at me!]

Is the Incarnation part of Christianity's core?

In discussing Philip Kitcher's book with other faculty, one colleague referred to the 'core of Christianity'. When I asked what the core consisted of, the two things he mentioned were incarnation and resurrection. To many, these might seem like absolute essentials, without which one is not dealing with anything that could be called "Christianity".

This initial impression may well be wrong. In this post, I will focus only on the first mentioned 'core component', namely a doctrine of incarnation. The term 'Christian' is closely connected with the Acts of the Apostles, and Luke's two-volume work does not present Jesus as God incarnate. Indeed, I once shocked a fellow student by saying that the only person presented as claiming to be God incarnate in Luke-Acts is Simon Magus! We can go even further, after noting the points of intersection between Luke and John, and speculate that Luke's portrait of Jesus may not have been merely traditional (or 'primitive', as they used to say), but may have consciously rejected the sorts of developments to which the Johannine literature witnesses. Luke's portrait emphasizes a human Jesus, who grows in wisdom as well as years, and does amazing things because of the Spirit at work in him.

Since Luke's writings are in the canon (indeed, they represent a substantial portion of it), it becomes all but impossible to argue that incarnation is a sine qua non of Christian identity - otherwise, we would have to say that part of the Christian canon was authored by someone who wasn't in fact a Christian.

This need not lead to the other extreme, of a rejection of the doctrine, and of other doctrines that in turn result from and depend on it. For instance, the doctrine of the Trinity presumably would not exist, had there been no doctrine of the incarnation.

Personally, while I don't feel that one can argue in a straightforward manner from the historical figure of Jesus to the doctrine of the Trinity, I nonetheless have great appreciation for Trinitarian theology. Perhaps this is a result of reading works by Staniloae, Moltmann and others who have made this particular symbolism come alive. Provided one is not overstretching what we can hope to know, and overly confident in our ability to define the nature of the divine essence, the symbol of trinitarian language can be extremely powerful and helpful. It allows for Christian theology to make the claim that God is eternal love. Since love that is not egocentric requires more than one person, the interpersonal nature of the depiction of God as Trinity incorporates this element in a central way. It also can helpfully symbolize the fact that, while we may say (with Hans Küng) that God is "at least personal", we also need to add that God is "more than personal", and this tripersonal symbol can be helpful in pointing us not merely to personal language but beyond it.

Authorial Intention

What is the role of an author's intent in the interpretation of texts? As J. K. Rowling has weighed in on the details of the latest Harry Potter film (currently in production), this has been used to illustrate the broader interpretative issue, from the Constitution to the Bible.

Let me also share the Free Rice web site, which will donate a tiny amount of food to the poor via the UN for each word you can correctly define. Thanks to Iyov for pointing this out.

The Blog vs. The Book: Smackdown

Why blog? This is a question I am sure that many bloggers' spouses ask them and/or themselves. In the case of academic bloggers there can be a further question: Why not spend this time writing a book. I have never seen the two as antithetical to one another (and still don't). On the contrary, I think one can flow naturally into the other. Nevertheless, having heard the question asked, I thought it might be useful to answer the question "Why blog, when you could be working on your next book?"

1) When you write a book, you only know how many copies have been sold. With a blog, you can know how many people visit it, from what countries, and other such information. Apparently someone from Azerbaijan has visited my blog. One day (thanks to the Pharyngula blog pointing visitors my way) I had nearly 2,000 visitors.

2) When a blogger mentions how many visitors he has had, other bloggers can help deflate his ego by leaving comments and telling them how paltry his numbers are compared to their own. I eagerly await the comment that says "You got excited about that many visitors in a 24-hour period?! Dude..."

3) The comments feature in general is fantastic. It was one of the major reasons I moved to Blogger from having a blog hosted on the university web server - although for anyone reluctant to do so, there are scripts that will allow you to add the comments feature to a blog that doesn't have it built in. Anyway, if someone scribbles something in the margin of their own copy of a book I wrote, I will probably never get that feedback. On a blog, one is more likely to hear directly from one's readers, and to interact in a more conversation and personal way.

4) On a blog, you have the chance to comment directly on current events as they happen (or, more likely, as soon as other blogs clue you in to what has been going on). I am not sure if and when my book on the burial of Jesus will see the light of day, but it certainly doesn't look like it will be able to ride the crest of the wave of interest generated by the documentary about the Talpiot tomb.

5) As far as academic writing is concerned, a book I read recently by Bernard Haisch quoted the statistic that the average number of readers of any given scientific paper is .6. It is no surprise, then, that there are so many science blogs! Although I'd like to think that in Biblical studies and religion the number might be higher, writing short (or even long) blog entries will make what one has to say accessible to an audience that would probably not read one's academic papers and articles.

6) A blog is (or at least has the potential to be) complementary to a book. It is a great way of testing ideas and getting feedback while working on a larger volume. Conversely, it is a place one can take a book one has written and discuss it further. Moreover, writers have long been given the advice to write every day. Authors and composers as a rule discard more than they publish. Not only is a blog one place to practice the discipline of writing regularly, but there is a wider audience that can help by sharing its wisdom and insight into what should be thrown out and not pursued further.

Are there other reasons that you can think of? If so, I'd love to hear them. Is there something I've been writing about here that deserves to be pursued in a book? Probably not - but I'll probably do it anyway. Your input might, at the very least, help me choose to pursue a topic that at least one potential reader is interested in!

Meaning and Syntax

Perhaps the meaning in life is its syntax. The meaning of DNA comes not from the four letters of its 'alphabet', but from their interpretations in longer 'sentences'. Likewise our words take on precision and depth when joined with other words.

Syntax is not something added to the words, but something that arises from their being placed together in frameworks of meaning. Perhaps the same is true in our relationships to one another. There isn't another substance added to the relationships, something we could examine and analyse. There is just meaning in the arrangement.

The question then becomes whether this meaningfulness, the existence of which few of us would doubt, depends on a higher level of organization that 'reads' the sentences of our lives.

In other words, meaning seems not to require what we might call a belief in the 'supernatural', in a dualistic sense. But it does seem to require the existence of the transcendent.

DNA cannot see its own meaning. Cells cannot observe the organism of which they are a part. Words cannot understand sentences. But if they could think, and reflect, as we do, would they have the ineffable religious experiences that many human beings have had, the sense of connectedness with a greater reality, that gives their existence meaning?

Dangerous Words

I have just finished reading what I would go so far as to say is one of the most helpful books I've read in recent years: Dangerous Words: Talking About God in the Age of Fundamentalism by Gary Eberle. Perhaps the unique contribution it makes is due to the fact that it was written by an English professor rather than a scholar of religion, theology, philosophy, history or any of the other topics that authors of books on religion are usually specialized in.

Eberle's book focuses on religious language, and what is problematic about the literalistic approaches of both fundamentalists and modernist skeptics. He helpfully presents the radical shift that was introduced by the invention of the printing press, before which the lack of widespread literacy meant that most people did not even have a concept of 'word for word accuracy', or if they did, it could not in practice mean anything like what it means today. Indeed, studies of primarily oral cultures show that oral storytellers may well say that they do indeed reproduce their stories 'word for word', but when they tell the story again, it doesn't reflect what modern literate people mean by 'word for word'.

Eberle also traces the shift of the meaning of the English word 'truth' in response to such changes. In earlier times the word, like 'faith', meant loyalty rather than having something to do with precise accuracy (p.54).

In discussing what myth can offer, Eberle suggests that whereas science tends to divide things up into disciplines for analysis, myth integrates. While science (the quantum world aside) tends to deal with 'either/or', myth deals with 'both/and'. Where science enumerates, myth evaluates (see p.93).

As I read the book, one thought that occurred to me is how important it is to be able to not only test and analyse our beliefs, but also act quickly and intuitively in situations in which the time for such analysis does not exist. Seeking evidence is important and appropriate, but other types of language and thought may enable us to deal with those aspects of life in which we do not have all the evidence we might like (see p.107).

One example of the sorts of powerful, thought-provoking things said in the book is the following:

Conditioned by a hundred years or more of secularism, we distrust religious
language and the religious impulse. In becoming religious, we are asked to
exchange our modernist lens, which seems so reliable and sure, for something
that feels quite older and less reliable. Yet, in many ways, the religious way
of looking at the world has been better tested, over a longer period of time,
than any of the modern hard or social sciences in which we now place our faith.
That is, long before there were pills for depression, mythology and religion -
the narrative way of knowing our existence - were helping people pass through
the stages of life and all its travails. There is something deeply powerful in
this narrative way of knowing, which, at its best, helps us to understand our
lives, to function in the world, to accomplish works in the world that are
perceived as meaningful, to relate to others in the world, to make committments,
and to get through life's vicissitudes, successfully leading what we call "a
good life".

There are many other powerful and important sections - for instance, pp.141-150 have a very helpful treatment of the tradition of American civil religion, and the meaning of God-talk in public contexts, intended as a broad, vague, and all-encompassing expression - something that may not be possible or appropriate in our very different (and in particular much more pluralistic) context today.

Like Borges' perfect map that is as extensive as that which it describes, and thus useless, modern approaches to religious language - both the fundamentalists and those who reject it - miss the purpose of myth, metaphor, and map. "Metaphor, like a stylized map, highlights only certain aspects of what we are trying to describe and, in doing that, it inevitably obscures others" (p.178). For this reason, "If our God-language is too sure, too particular, too confident, or too definitive, then we can be certain we have descended into superficiality and have made an idol of the divine" (p.181).

For those seeking to articulate the value of religious traditions in a way that has the power to combat the very appealing but ultimately idolatrous and dangerous language of fundamentalism, this book is a wonderful resource and potential source of inspiration. It not only informs about the history of how our language in the modern era has left behind earlier meanings and nuances, but it also presents an inspiring vision of what it means to speak of God today, as well as the need to appreciate silence.

An important contribution Eberle makes is to help individuals in this category to not feel guilty for not being fundamentalists. Because, despite its claims to the contrary, fundamentalism is not about faithfulness to the very words of Scripture, not even about fidelity to the literal wording of selectively-chosen verses. Fundamentalism takes language that is richly metaphorical and symbolic, and flattens it out. That is anything but faithfulness to Scripture, and in many cases effectively undermines its meaning, even while all the while claiming to do the very opposite.

What's The Funniest Verse In The Bible?

What verse in the Bible do you find most amusing? It doesn't have to be intended to be amusing - no need to restrict the question in that way. I'm just asking what verse you find most amusing, humorous or entertaining.

For me, for a long time it has been Hebrews 13:22, where, at the end of thirteen chapters of some of the densest and most complex theological discourse in the whole Bible, the author says "Brothers, I urge you to bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written you only a short letter." This guy cracks me up.

Which verse would you pick? Tell me by leaving a comment!

The Meanings of Life

What is the meaning of life? I finally feel I can answer this question, even if only partially, in the plural: life has multiple meanings.

The meanings of life include...

...the feeling you get in your soul (even if you aren't sure you have one) when listening to Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony.
...the joy you experience when you see your child's smile.
...the filling of the cathedral with the sounds of the choir.
...the taste of acacia honey and butter on freshly-baked bread.
...the expression on someone's face when you deliver good news.
...feeding the hungry.

I could go on, but I suspect some may already object that none of the things mentioned above is a satisfactory explanation of our existence. I would go further than that: they aren't explanations at all.

Part of the confusion we experience when thinking about "the meaning of life" is that we fail to distinguish between meaning and explanation.

Physicists are seeking an explanation for the way the universe is. As we discussed Philip Kitcher's book today in a faculty reading group, one of my colleagues mentioned the concept of "unexplained explainers". Goedel's famous theorem demonstrated that no equation or system can be entirely self-contained.

However true this might be, it may be besides the point in an important respect. Even if it turned out, as Douglas Adams suggested, that the answer to the ultimate question is "42", such an answer should not be entirely surprising if we are dealing with the realm of explanation. Scientific explanations will point to causes and produce formulas and equations.

Meaning is something else entirely. I was not altogether happy with Keith Ward's references to God (in his book Pascal's Fire: Scientific Faith and Religious Understanding) as the "ultimate explanation". I am more inclined to agree with another colleague who suggested to me that, in general, when we talk about God we are not adding anything additional by way of explanation to whatever it is we are talking about. If we connect God with each sparrow that falls to the ground, have we in fact explained something?

For me, God is about meaning in an ultimate sense. Even when life seems meaningless to us on our level, I am persuaded that it is not genuinely meaningless, because it is part of something greater.

Nevertheless, meaning is in principle something that is produced in concrete actions and events. It is a product of how we live, rather than an explanation for why we are alive. We could all point to individuals, whatever religious or philosophical tradition we might belong to, who assented on some rational cognitive level to the teachings of that tradition, and yet lived lives that did not seem meaningful either to them or to those around them. They may find meaning within the big picture, or in relation to others, but this does not change the fact that, for all the 'right beliefs' they may hold, they are not themselves living and acting in a meaningful way.

I am in favor of seeking explanations. But saying that God made human beings by molding dust with his hands, or that God created us through evolution, or that evolution gave rise to us without there being any reason to mention God, we are still focusing on attempting to offer explanations. But whichever account of our origins one may subscribe to, it does not automatically lead to one living, or not living, a meaningful life.

For our lives to be meaningful, we must make them meaningful, by filling them with meaningful experiences, and engaging in meaningful actions.

There is also a connection between meaning and beauty, but the latter seems to be literally in the eye (or more precisely the brain) of the beholder. It is an amazing fact that the universe has evolved conscious beings that can look at it and find it beautiful. So, like the famous question about whether a tree that falls in a forest makes a sound if no one is around to hear it, we may ask whether the universe is full of beauty even when no conscious organisms behold it and find it beautiful. If not, then it becomes true to say that each of us gives meaning and adds meaning to the universe in every moment we stop to observe and appreciate beauty.

Is Intelligent Design A Joke?

The Uncommon Descent blog posted a link to a page that the author of the post thought was worth looking at as an illustration of the problems with evolution. If you visit the original site, you will see that it is clearly an attempt at humor, not a critique of science.

Apparently even some proponents of Intelligent Design cannot tell attempts at humor from their own attempts at "science". Does this prove beyond reasonable doubt that this form of ID is in fact a joke?

Taking the Bible Literally - ALL OF IT!

Given my penchant for discussing Biblical literalism on this blog, I must share this piece of news. Apparently a book has recently come out about the experiences of one man who tried to take the whole Bible completely literally - in every detail - for a year. I simply must read this book! It is by A. J. Jacobs, and the title is The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.

There is a debate about it on Slate, and a sample chapter and video on MSNBC.

Robots in the News

For science fiction fans, there is plenty of good news. New Star Wars TV shows are in the works. The plural is correct - there is both a 3D Clone Wars featuring familiar characters, and a live-action series on which work has only just begun, but which will not focus on the Skywalkers or other main characters from the movies. Although I haven't watched them yet, the "flashback" mini-episodes that are paving the way for the start of the new season of Battlestar Galactica have begun to appear on the Sci-Fi Channel's web site. New Star Trek and X Files movies are also drawing closer.

For droids that were hoping to think, the news is bad, even though the prospects haven't actually changed. A Yale University professor has, according to the subtitle of an article on the subject, argued that machines will never be conscious.

If you read the article, you will discover that he has in fact argued no such thing. He has asserted it, but the truth is that no one knows what the result may be if we are ever able to make an artificial brain which replicates the sheer number of neurons and connections between them found in human brains. The article thus may cause flashbacks to Beauregard and O'Leary's book The Spiritual Brain which is based on similar assumptions, it would seem.

While some are presupposing impossibility, others are imagining what the possibilities may be. There is a new book out called Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships which I plan to read. I've actually done some writing recently on the topic of religion and artificial intelligence, and questions like these will need to be answered long before philosophers are able to define consciousness, much less tell us whether a machine is capable of it. People are already having online second wives, never mind affairs. Will sex outside of marriage with a robot be considered adultery? The first divorce lawyers to deal with a case of that sort will have their work cut out for them.

Enlightenment and the Enlightenment

I have just finished reading Philip Kitcher's book Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith (for an earlier post inspired by the first half of the book, click here). I feel a bit like someone who has just watched a movie where the ending came completely out of the blue, an attempt to introduce a final twist and wow the viewer which in fact leaves one feeling that the ending of the wrong movie has been displayed. I am still sitting, staring at the screen, as the credits roll, wondering what happened and how to respond.

I did not dislike the ending of Kitcher's book. That wasn't the problem. It was just the sudden turn from science and biology into a consideration of the Enlightenment worldview in general came abruptly, and showered the reader with a spray of results from Biblical criticism and historical investigation that were startling, given the slow, steady, methodical treatment of evolution.

Personally I think the "Enlightenment case", as Kitcher calls it, needs to be taken seriously. Focus on Darwin is an attempt by some religious believers to pretend that, if this one opponent can be overcome, their own brand of fundamentalist religion will have emerged victorious and will then be able to go back to business as usual. Kitcher rightly points out that this sort of fundamentalism has been shown to be bankrupt not merely in terms of its view of biology and the age of the earth, but by history and many other fields of inquiry that all derive from the Enlightenment approach.

Indeed, one concern I have with some religious believers who embrace postmodernism is that they see it as a way of bypassing or ignoring the issues raised by the Enlightenment. But if there is to be any sort of healthy postmodernism, it cannot represent a pure naivite: it must be (as Ricoeur put it) a second naivite. It must represent the mature attitude that comes after adolescent questioning and rebellion, and not an attempt to remain with old comforts in a state of perpetual immaturity.

As I reflected on Kitcher's points about the Enlightenment, I found my thoughts turning to the importance of that key term Enlightenment in the very different context of the Buddhist tradition. Clearly what it means to be "enlightened" may depend on a more fundamental value judgment. Yet the two are certainly less at odds than are the Enlightenment and fundamentalist Christianity (not surprisingly, since the latter exists only as a response to and attempt to negate the former, all the while working in ironic fashion within the Enlightenment paradigm). Buddhism emphasizes rightly perceiving the world, and a right perception will lead one to realize that there is only one ultimate reality, that one's sense of self and of the separateness of things is an illusion, and that it is our clinging to these impermanent and illusory things that causes our suffering. Many of Buddhism's insights have been confirmed in striking ways by physics. Although I do not think this justifies the New Age combinations of the two, as though Buddhism is simply physics or vice versa, nevertheless the convergence tells us something extremely important. It shows that meditation and contemplation can grant us surprisingly accurate insights into the nature of reality.

Buddhism's approach is much easier to integrate with science in some respects, because although it is a deeply spiritual tradition, this does not mean that it is fundamentally supernaturalist in the way that C. S. Lewis defined the term and the Enlightenment critiqued. This struck me recently as I was reading the book The Buddha in the Robot by Masahiro Mori. He defined the essence of religion, from a Buddhist perspective, as good brain function (p.8). I doubt many Christians could conceive of religion in these terms.

Nevertheless, there is a movement within Christianity to interpret its tradition in a way that takes the Enlightenment critique and scientific data completely seriously. Kitcher often speaks about "spiritual religion" as a form of retreat by religion in the face of advancing encroachments by knowledge in general and science in particular. This is, however, something of a caricature, since within all the religious traditions with which I am familiar, the emphases of "spiritual religion" on the inner life and transcendence rather than historical and scientific claims are central to at least some branches that are very ancient. Indeed, some have claimed, in both ancient and modern times, that such inner experience is the heart of religion in general as well as of religions in their specific concrete expressions. Thus, while Kitcher might regard a move in this direction as a retreat, others might equally regard is as a return to a neglected core, one that mystics in the various traditions have often seen as something that united them across boundaries of dogma and denomination.

The most important question Kitcher asks, in my opinion, is what, if anything, religion understood in these terms can offer that cannot be found in secular humanism. I wish to offer an answer not because I am certain it is the right one or the only one, but because it reflects my own perception of the matter. My answer is not intended to be definitive even for myself, much less for others. Nonetheless, I hope that by laying my cards on the table a discussion may be started that will aid myself and others in thinking about this important question.

My own answer is that religion encourages us to let go where a purely secular approach might lead us to cling and seek to control - not in a malicious sense, but merely as part of a program aimed at understanding nature and allowing it to be subjugated both intellectually and practically.

In order for such letting go to be conceivable, there must also be a conviction that, in some ultimate sense, we inhabit a reality that is benevolent and that we can therefore surrender. This ultimate context, this ultimate reality, is affirmed to exist in spite of the world as we perceive it often being anything but benevolent. Beyond that which we perceive directly with our senses and the sufferings that assail us, religion perceives ultimate goodness. Religion, then, if one takes this approach, is about affirming that there is a reality to the goodness that we perceive mystically, and the practical outworking of religion is the attempt to live in light of this perception of the ultimate.

Kitcher quotes John Dewey, appropriately so, since he is John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. I went to John Dewey High School and am not as acquainted with Dewey as I ought to be. One quote Kitcher offered from Dewey struck me as similar to a point made by Tillich. Dewey wrote, "It is the claim of religions that they effect this generic and enduring change in attitude. I should like to turn the statement around and say that whenever this change takes place there is a definitely religious attitude. It is not a religion that brings it about, but when it occurs, from whatever cause and by whatever means, there is a religious outlook and function" (A Common Faith, p.17). Rather than competing over religious doctrines, I suspect that both Tillich and Dewey might agree that those who are united in this desire for such enduring change ought to make common cause. Yet I suspect that Tillich would affirm, as would I, that spirituality's focus on self-transcendence is conducive to this in a way that makes its contribution invaluable.

Kitcher suggests merely creating more secular spaces for open, honest discussion, for grieving and being comforted, would eliminate the need for religion. He nonetheless recognizes that, since science does not offer comfort, hope, and meaning in the way religion does, it is not surprising that religious believers are unimpressed by what it has to offer. What "spiritual religion" can offer is an enthusiastic embracing of both science and knowledge on the one hand, and value and transcendence on the other. It offers, in one sense, a non-secular humanism. Might it not then plausibly be suggested that such religion does indeed continue to have something to offer?

Religion and science can work together in seeking to understand this not unintelligible but nevertheless perpetually mysterious universe we inhabit. This universe is our "matrix", the womb that gives rise to us and remains our context as long as we exist. What, then, is the common goal of religion and science? Nothing other than exploring our matrix.

Souls, Life, and Abortion

There is a wonderful articulation of a serious and balanced pro-life position in Jonah Goldberg's most recent piece in the National Review Online, "Life Matters". He says up front that there is much he does not know about the soul, its relationship to life, and what we mean by it in the case of a recently-fertilized egg. He also acknowledges that, if one is talking about consciousness, then life does not begin at conception. He thus has no passionate feelings about "Plan B" and other methods of terminating a pregnancy within a few hours or days of conception, but does feel strongly about other issues like partial-birth abortion.

I think there is on this topic, like so many others, room for an alliance in the middle between those who reject both extremes. There are many people who are pro-choice only in the sense that they object to abortion personally on religious grounds, but do not feel it is appropriate to legislate for others on the basis of those religious views. There are some who are pro-choice because, although they regard abortion as an evil, they also acknowledge that there may be instances in which it is the lesser of two or more evils. And there are those who are pro-life in the sense that they object strongly to procedures that would end the life of a healthy baby in the advanced stages of development because this is convenient, without having similarly strong opposition to ending a pregnancy in a period in which most pregnancies spontaneously cease anyway.

Anyone who has suffered a miscarriage even in early stages of pregnancy knows that there is a sense of loss. Very few who make arguments about life beginning at conception would be opposed to a D&C being performed in the case of a molar pregnancy, in which clearly an egg has been fertilized, but no baby will every develop from it.

Perhaps the reason there is such passionate debate about this issue is our desire to bring clarity to a foggy domain. The problem, as Goldberg points out, is that it seems easy to give answers about a newly-fertilized ovum and a baby about to be born, but the development that takes place continuously in between makes it hard to figure out where to draw the line. But the result is that both sides may end up pushing the line so far one way or the other in a desire to counter the apparent unreasonableness of their opponents that more harm is done to the living - and by this I do not mean just the baby - than either side would approve of in another situation.

This is a tough issue, with a lot of uncertainty, but most people agree that there are distinctions to be made, even if they aren't sure where to make them. Turning to the Bible for answers not only doesn't resolve the issue (since it has little to say on the subject that is clear, apart from in Numbers 5:11-31, where abortion seems to be mandated) , it shouldn't resolve the issue. We know far more about human development in the womb than any Biblical author could have.

The terrain is continuous. Many wish to stake out a position in the middle. If we are to do so, we must draw our own lines. How do we decide where to draw them?

Wisdom of Solomon 2: An Apocryphal Prophecy About Jesus?

Among the set texts for today's class on the Bible was Wisdom of Solomon chapters 1-3. We discussed one particular excerpt in class (2:12-20):

Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us
and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the
law, and accuses us of sins against our training. He professes to have
knowledge of God, and calls himself a childa of the Lord. He became to
us a reproof of our thoughts; the very sight of him is a burden to
us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his
ways are strange. We are considered by him as something base, and he
avoids our ways as unclean; he calls the last end of the righteous
happy, and boasts that God is his father. Let us see if his words are
true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his
life; for if the righteous man is God's child, he will help him, and
will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. Let us test him with
insult and torture, so that we may find out how gentle he is, and make
trial of his forbearance. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for,
according to what he says, he will be protected.

Students were asked to compare this, and try to account for the similarities to, Matthew 27:39-43, which says the following (in the context of an account of Jesus' crucifixion):

And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, "You
who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If
you are the Son of God, come down from the cross." So also the chief
priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, "He saved others;
he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from
the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him
now, if he desires him; for he said, 'I am the Son of God.'" And the robbers
who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.

The students came up with one answer I expected, namely that the passage in Wisdom of Solomon is a prophecy about Jesus. Even Protestants were inclined to view the passage in this way. But of course, this should raise questions about the canon, inspiration, and prophecy for them in particular.

I asked the students to consider another possibility, namely that Matthew knew the passage from Wisdom of Solomon and intentionally alluded to it in the way he depicted Jesus. By placing Jesus in the role of the righteous man in that text, and the Jewish leaders and other opponents in the role of the wicked, he reinforced one the major points he was seeking to make.

This seems, in fact, to be what Matthew is doing in most if not all of his allusions to the Jewish Scriptures, and not only in ones that are strictly prophetic in character. Matthew's use of the Jewish Bible seems to be about typology rather than claims that Jesus was predicted in those earlier texts. Christians read them as though Matthew was claiming they are predictions for the simple reason that few today know the wider context of the verses Matthew quotes.

For instance, Matthew 2:15 quotes from Hosea 11, where it is clear that the son who is called out of Egypt is Israel. Likewise the children for whom Rachel weeps in Jeremiah 31:15-17 (quoted in Matthew 2:17-18) are the exiles who have been taken away to Babylon, and not children killed by King Herod. None of these passages that Matthew quotes is unambiguously a Messianic prediction, and some clearly are not, at least if one takes the original context seriously.

Some have been persuaded that Matthew was trying to pull a fast one. But if so, he wasn't very smart and had little chance of getting away with it, since these passages were fairly well known. More plausible, in my opinion, is that the author of this Gospel knew that he was engaging in typology, and it is modern readers, who can't pick up on the intertextual echoes on their own and never look at footnotes, who mistake his intention.

'Tis But A Scratch

I just looked once again at Sean Carroll's short piece from Science Magazine, "God as Genetic Engineer", which is a review of Michael Behe's latest book. I had forgotten that he used this analogy. It must have embedded itself in my subconscious, because it came to mind (but without the proper attribution to its immediate source) when I wrote my own comparison of young-earth creationism to Wile E. Coyote, "Creationism's Cartoon Physics." The next step, I suppose, will be to create a video game in which the Black Knight and Wile E. Coyote face off against one another.

Several recent interactions with representatives of positions that bear the label "Intelligent Design" have made me more aware of the importance of terminology. Terms like "creationism" can be confusing. If it means someone who believes that the universe is ultimately dependent on God for its existence, then not only the vast majority of Christians but possibly even Buddhists could be included. So also could process theologians who do not think that the creation was brought into existence out of nothing and who, like theistic evolutionists and a wide range of other viewpoints, also embrace the scientific account of the development of life on this planet.

"Intelligent Design" is perhaps an even more confusing label, since it is used by people and movements with a range of different viewpoints. On the one end, there are young earth creationists trying to get around the reputation of and legal decisions about their teachings by adopting a new, and they hope more respectable, terminology. On the other end of the spectrum are those who would say that evolution was "front-loaded" and given direction, but in the laws of physics rather than in multiple interventions into the history of life on Earth. Many even among those who might disagree with the latter viewpoint would not object to it in the way they object to viewpoint elsewhere along the spectrum.

Lots of people assume I'm not a Christian because I am persuaded by the evidence of evolution, and so I want to not make assumptions when I interact with others who bear a particular label. How can we clarify the range of viewpoints without resorting to an even more confusing display of headings and acronyms to make the various important distinctions?

The Synoptic Problem and Student Papers

Studying the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) is great preparation for being an educator. I'm convinced this is true even if your field has no direct connection to Biblical studies.

Student papers can at times closely resemble each other or other possible source material. Learning to recognize lengthier agreements in order, and distinguish numerous agreements of wording from that which can occur through memory or chance, is very helpful.

I can't help wondering if any student in a course on these Gospels has ever tried to use them as an argument when caught plagiarizing - "If Luke can do it, why can't I?"

Google Reader

I can't believe it took me so long to discover Google Reader. It is like having a web version of Outlook for your blog feeds, making clear which of the blogs you follow have posts on them that you have not read yet in much the same way that Outlook draws unread messages to your attention - bold print plus a number to indicate the number of unread posts.

What's more, as some readers of this post already know but others may not yet have discovered, you can add a widget to your blog that will let you share those posts from other blogs. That is the widget that has appeared very recently on my own blog, and which I admired for a long time on Marc Goodacre's blog before figuring out where he got it.

Everything I Need To Know About Evolution I Learned In Kindergarten

Let me say up front that I do not mean by this title that I learned all the biology I need to know in kindergarten. That is definitely not true. Rather, in alluding to the title of a famous book, I am suggesting that there are basic principles that we learn early on that some voices in current debates about evolution seem to be missing. Here are just a few of them.

1) Teachers know more than we do. There are individual exceptions, but this basic principle about our teachers, taken collectively, is presumably valid. It is even in the Bible, in Luke 6:40. So what should someone do in light of this principle if they cannot understand why the overwhelming majority of biologists, geneticists and other scientists find the evidence for evolution persuasive, there is a logical action to take. Read more books by biologists! Take remedial biology! The appropriate response to not following an educator's argument is not to disbelieve it but to get some tutoring. Being willing to critically examine what a teacher says is a virtue. Assuming that the educated are generally wrong is not.

2) Don't spend all your time looking at picture books. It may not matter that much in kindergarten, I admit it, but if you don't start reading as advanced books as you are capable of reading, you will not keep progressing and will consistently be at a disadvantage. Similarly, if you spend all your time reading ancient literature and books by lawyers and hydraulic engineers instead of books by biologists, it won't be surprising if you find yourself at a disadvantage in understanding the more academically challenging arguments and perspectives of experts in the field.

3) Your best friend today may not be your best friend next week. There was a time when physics was felt to be the enemy of faith and biology its ally - the former seemed deterministic, the latter seemed to provide evidence of design. Today, the tide has reversed significantly, and far more feel comfortable relating physics to religion and they do in the case of biology. Rather Orwellian in one sense, but it is a basic truth we learn early on.

4) You'll understand this when you're older. We all hate to hear that. But sometimes, even though we don't like that answer, we can at least become aware that our minds often change over the course of a lifetime, and perhaps burn fewer bridges when we are still young.

5). Don't pick your nose. This has nothing to do with evolution. Not everything that is important does. But it would be a shame to focus so much on evolution that we forget how many other things are important. Plenty of religious groups and associations have an official position on evolution, but have no official position on other important issues like torture.

Don't Be Too Righteous

I think that, when there are debates over the nature of the Bible, too much time is spent focused on debating whether historical details can be confirmed or whether cosmological and biological details match up with data from the sciences. In my class on the Bible yesterday, we discussed Ecclesiastes. Students expressed the same surprise (or in some cases shock) I felt when I first encountered the book.

Perhaps the most startling of all is the advice in chapter 7 to be neither too righteous nor too wicked - but to hang on to both. This is not what students were expecting the Bible to say.

The fact that it doesn't merely ignore the afterlife, but rejects it, was also a cause for some astonishment. This is particularly clear in chapter 3 (in the section after the famous words that became lyrics to a song by The Byrds), where he also says that human beings are but animals and share the same fate.

I'm glad Ecclesiastes is in the canon. Not only does it highlight that these are books that illustrate human reflection about God and meaning, but it communicates that questioning and even doubting can be part of one's journey of faith. It makes these points more clearly through its presence in the canon than any amount of historical or scientific evidence outside it could, at least from the perspective of religious believers who have a high estimation of the Bible.

The Genesis Creation Stories and the Environment

Let me join others who are focusing on the environment for this blog action day. It was the pressure of an unanticipated exam question that forced me to relate the implication of academic (especially source critical) study of the creation stories in Genesis to the issues of environmentalism.

The question asked whether the creation stories justified human exploitation of the environment. I had prepared to talk about a lot of aspects of the creation stories, but that was not one of them. So I started thinking. Here's the gist of what I came up with:

The earlier of the two creation stories in Genesis, the "J" story which begins in Genesis 2:4. This earlier story focuses on humanity's close relationship to the earth. The theme of stewardship is also present, since the human is depicted as in some sense a gardener, tending God's garden.

It is in the later creation story, the "P" story which begins in Genesis 1:1, that we meet the language that has sometimes been used to justify exploiting nature: the language of "dominion".

Let us not forget, however, that the "P" story is added almost like a prologue to an already-existing and already-known story. It qualifies that story, rather than completely dismissing or rewriting it. The historical context helps explain why its author may have felt it appropriate to emphasize this theme of dominion.

The "P" source is usually dated to the early post-exilic period. At this time, many Jews returned to lands from which their parents or grandparents had been carried off a generation or two before. It would have been overgrown and neglected. The author, in that context, presents readers with a divinely-appointed mission: subdue the earth. In other words, reclaim the land, bring order to the chaos, just as this story depicts God bringing order to chaos in God's own creation. In context, the language of dominion is a call to reclaim order from chaos, not to exploit.

Creationism's Cartoon Physics

Wile E. Coyote heads towards the cliff but doesn't see it. We've all seen the cartoons - he can keep running, until he looks down and notices there is no longer anything beneath his feet to support him.

This is, in essence, the situation of the young-earth creationist movement. Every single objection that did not consist of pointing at unanswered question - and even some of those - has been answered by scientists, and still more evidence than we might have hoped has been forthcoming. Young-earth creationists have complained about the paucity of fossils of transitional forms, and we have been fortunate enough to find many good examples. Young-earth creationists claimed that they eye could not have come about in stages, yet we now know of organisms with all the intermediate stages we could imagine being part of ocular evolution. They claimed that the earth is young, but radioactive dating proved them wrong. They claimed that the flood deposited the fossil remains, but then came the reply: ferns cannot run.

When science disappeared from beneath their feet - although it was never strictly there - they kept running, assuming the Bible to still support them. But they did not consider the consequences of taking the flood story literally. The waters above would have blocked out the wavelengths of light needed by plants. The human and animal inhabitants of the ark would have had to carry all the infectious diseases that depend on them (unless they want to claim that God replentished the world with viruses and deadly bacteria after the flood). In addition to the difficulties and inconsistencies in their interpretation of the story of Noah, and their ignoring of the clear evidence that the Mesopotamians had a version of the story written down before the Israelites wrote theirs, they also cannot take the creation stories literally. Most of them only read the Bible in English translation, so they can ignore the dome, ignore the fact that people do not only reason with their hearts but feel compassion with their bowels, and for all these ancient authors knew, such statements were literal. Historical study has shown that, far from being something that science appeared on the scene to combat, science gave rise to the forms of fundamentalism and attempts at literalism we now find. In earlier times, "truth" was (like "faith") about committment rather than factuality and precision, since most people did not deal in texts and alphabets. When Young-earth creationists are asked to provide some explanation of how the various stories mentioned could be literally true in the modern sense, in light of all the relevant considerations, they rely on the fact that most people haven't thought the matter through in detail. They rely on the fact that many religious believers want them to be right, and so if they provide but a few plausible-sounding responses (such as boxcars on the ark) they trust that their supporters will not examine other more troubling details.

All the scientific evidence that was amassed already in the 19th century changed the minds of skeptics, like Charles Lyell and Adam Sedgwick. Far from the scientific establishment being hostile to faith, initially most were disinclined towards Darwin's theory because it was assumed that science would match up with Scripture. But there is a key difference between the initial skeptics of Darwin's theory and modern anti-evolutionists. The former saw the evidence that was provided already in their time and changed their minds. The modern young-earth creationists, on the other hand, continue to make ridiculous objections and obscure the issues in spite of much more evidence that has come to light. And the few pieces of possible evidence that they had been able to claim provisionally - the small amount of moon dust, human footprints alongside dinosaur tracks - did not hold up under scrutiny.

They have gone over the edge of the cliff, like Wile E. Coyote. Neither the Bible nor science is holding them up. The only question now is, how long will they be able to keep going before they finally look down? Can this cartoon go on forever? They remind me as well of the Black Knight from the Monty Python movie: "Tis but a scratch".

Many of the above thoughts have been inspired by reading the first half of Philip Kitcher's Living with Darwin. I highly recommend the book. For more on cartoon physics, click here.

Ruffled Feathers

I seem to have ruffled some feathers. The blog Telic Thoughts has posted what is not so much a response to what I wrote recently as a complaint. Mike Gene felt that I painted with too broad a brush in my earlier post in which I suggested that proponents of Intelligent Design are dishonest.

I don't think that my statements were completely unjustified - indeed, some will probably say I didn't go nearly far enough - but I will add that in every movement there are always exceptions, and at times it is hard to be completely certain whether one is fringe or mainstream. Certainly when I speak from a Christian viewpoint, I often wonder how many other Christians would actually agree with things that I say.

Today in Sunday school my class talked about the old saying that "all that has to happen for evil people to get away with whatever they wish is for good people to say and do nothing". We were up to that passage in John 12 where it mentions that many leaders believed in Jesus but were afraid to say anything for fear of being thrown out of the synagogue. Moderate Muslims have been criticized for not being as vocal as they could be in opposing extremists in their tradition. My expression of my views on this blog, hopefully most of the time with arguements to support them, is aimed at precisely this: to allow me to express my own views in a way that I do not always feel is appropriate in the classroom, and to articulate a balanced moderate Christian viewpoint. When people look to see what Christians have to say, I do not want them to miss the diversity. It would be ironic if, in seeking to do this very thing, I have painted others with too broad a brush. If so, I certainly regret it.

Be that as it may, I still remain persuaded that the mainstream of Intelligent Design (there may be exceptions) is incompatible with the Christian faith. For instance, Michael Behe in his recent book compared Mount Rushmore to another mountain and said that the difference is that the former is designed but the latter is not. This, it seems to me, shows precisely the problem with the typical ID argument. According to Psalm 95:4-5 God is the one whose "hand holds the depths of the earth; who owns the tops of the mountains. The sea and dry land belong to God, who made them, formed them by hand." According to this psalm, the mountains are a divine creation, and not just the parts of biological organisms that seem to some to defy explanation. To put it another way, Intelligent Design doesn't seem able to do justice to the Bible's viewpoint that God's creation looks like Mount Everest rather than like the sculpted Mount Rushmore.

Of course, the standard response might be "it doesn't matter if its conclusions are incompatible with Christianity, because this is science, and we will pursue it wherever it may lead us". But the point of my earlier post was precisely that many of the voices in the ID movement seem unwilling to do that. If a non-materialistic science is possible, one that can lead to a designer, then asking about what the designer did and why surely must follow. These were the very questions that earlier generations of scientists addressed.

I hope to write more about this once I finish Philip Kitcher's recent book, Living with Darwin. One of its most helpful features is that it reminds us that, far from being the result of a conspiracy of materialists, the scientific establishment very reluctantly changed its views on the age of the earth and the evolution of living things. Even though originally wedded to flood geology and unique specific creations, the views of scientists changed for one basic reason: the ever-increasing amounts of evidence that supported one view but were incompatible with the other.

Michael Behe vs. The Mousetraps Video Game

One reason Intelligent Design has trouble being taken seriously is because it lacks what all cool things must have nowadays: its own video game. To show that I have nothing personal against the proponents of ID, I thought I'd help by rectifying the problem.

In the game I created, using MIT's Scratch program, you play Michael Behe (yes it really is him, but you have to look really closely), being chased in a nightmare by four of Ken Miller's mousetrap tie clips. As you avoid them and navigate the maze, you pick up dots marked ID to score points with the Intelligent Design crowd. Get the bacterium with the irreducibly complex flagellum for bonus points. Click the green flag to start, then choose as many mousetrap enemies as you wish, then click GO. Use the arrow keys to move.

Learn more about this project

If the Java applet above doesn't work on your browser, click on the image below to go to the Scratch site and play the game there. Have fun!

Which is worse: Dishonestly claiming knowledge, or dishonestly claiming ignorance?

The Intelligent Design movement accuses biologists of claiming to know more, and with a greater degree of certainty, than they do. I would like to suggest that the proponents of ID are claiming to know less than they think they do. No true scientist, whether driven by intellectual curiosity or the desire to be famous, would claim to have found evidence that there was intervention by some powerful intelligence in our world, and then throw up their hands and say "but we have no way of knowing whether it was a deity, an alien, or what." That isn't an instance of humility, but of strategy, and we all know why the strategy is being used: to wedge ID into science classrooms by disconnecting it from religion.

If the proponents of ID were truly indifferent about where their "purely scientific investigations" lead, they would be eagerly exploring areas that they are currently avoiding. I return once more to the mole. William Dembski claims not to accept universal common descent. If ID were like any other form of science thus far developed, its researchers would be asking about the implications of such a view. The mole has non-functional (and in some cases skin and fur-covered) eyes. What are the options? Perhaps it was created by a being intelligent enough to create life but not quite smart enough to realize that an eyeless organism makes more sense than one with non-functional eyes. Or it was created by a being whose organism do not stand the test of time and are "devolving" (a claim that creationists have often made). Or it was created by a being who, when angry at humans, punished all living things as well (another claim creationists have made).

These are all logical possibilities that follow naturally from ID's premises, arguments and assertions. What an exciting research opportunity! If this is a purely scientific investigation, then any of the above outcomes would be equally welcome. But of course, it isn't. Yet I'll be criticized, in completely hypocritical fashion, by proponents of ID if I mention that evolution avoids some of these unpleasant implications and is theologically preferable.

Intelligent design is intended as a wedge to get materialism out of science and society. But in fact it is a wedge that, if used, will break apart Christian faith even more effectively. Genuine science, on the other hand, does indeed require that we rethink our beliefs, but its effects on faith are far less destructive than those of young-earth creationism and intelligent design. As Pascal famously said, "A little science distances one from God, but a lot brings one back."

Interview on Religion and Science Fiction

An interview of me has just been posted on the TheoFantastique blog, on the subject of religion and science fiction.

Rush and Religion (Peart's Poetry)

Last night, as continued my ongoing struggle to solve the mystery of the black screen after login on Windows Vista, I put on R30, the DVD of a concert the band Rush issued to celebrate their 30th birthday. I've liked Rush's music since the first time I heard it, which was the album Grace Under Pressure, which relatives put on in the car when we visited them.

It was the combination of good music with lyrics that were worth listening to over and over again that made the impression. Particularly for a science fiction fan, many tracks on Grace Under Pressure are appealing. The lyrics of Rush songs are written mostly by the drummer, Neil Peart, and they regularly deserve to be classed as serious poetry. Striking inversions of common metaphors, such as the phrase "too many hands on my time", are just one example.

When it comes to religion, there is much in their songs that is worth exploring and reflecting on. If I had to, I would guess that Peart had some encounter with Christianity when he was young that turned him off to it. In "The Weapon", a track on the 1982 album Signals, we find hints of this:

He's not afraid of your judgement
He knows of horrors worse than your Hell
He's a little bit afraid of dying
But he's a lot more afraid of your lying

I find particularly interesting the contrast between the lyrics of "Freewill", which seem to rebel against the idea of determinism, and those of one of my all-time favorite Rush songs, "Roll the Bones" (from the album of the same name), which seem to have come to view randomness as something not entirely positive. The most powerful stanza is the second:

Why are we here?
Because we're here

Roll the bones
Why does it happen?
Because it happens
Roll the bones

Faith is cold as ice --
Why are little ones born only to suffer
For the want of immunity
Or a bowl of rice?
Well, who would hold a price
On the heads of the innocent children
If there's some immortal power
To control the dice?

We come into the world and take our chances
Fate is just the weight of circumstances
That's the way that lady luck dances
Roll the bones

Although this could easily be dismissed by a religious believer as simply blasphemous rebellion against God, it is actually a profound line of thought that is deserving of serious theological consideration. Conservative religious believers claim the literal historical factuality of Biblical stories, in which God is constantly intervening to assist people - not merely parting seas and leading slaves to freedom, but making poisoned stew edible and sending a bear or a lion to kill someone that has offended or disobeyed him. Yet when we observe the world, we find, as Job did, that this simplistic way of viewing things does not fit our experience. Which, in the end is more blasphemous, to deny that there is a God of the sort that "holds the dice", that determines what happens in human history, or to claim that there is such a God but that he does not do for people today the sorts of things they claim he once did?

Modern physics, and science in general, seem to be working towards striking a balance between randomness and determinism. It is at the interface between law and chance that freewill and free actions become possible.

Let me conclude with some of the most entertaining Rush lyrics, in my opinion. They are from the song "You Bet Your Life":

THE ODDS GET EVEN -- You name the game
THE ODDS GET EVEN -- The stakes are the same
YOU BET YOUR LIFE

anarchist reactionary running-dog revisionist
hindu muslim catholic creation/evolutionist
rational romantic mystic cynical idealist
minimal expressionist post-modern neo-symbolist

armchair rocket scientist graffiti existentialist
deconstruction primitive performance photo-realist
be-bop or a one-drop or a hip-hop lite-pop-metallist
gold adult contemporary urban country capitalist

Even these have a point - no matter what your ideology, philosophy, religion, political allegiance, citizenship or creed, we all devote our lives to something. People stake their lives on there being a heaven, or there not being one. People stake their lives on the relative importance of combatting evolution versus feeding the poor and stake their lives and their money on it. All of our competing worldviews seek to provide a meaningful framework for our existence.

When we are all staking our lives on our ultimate convictions and values, is it any surprise that we find it so hard to evaluate them critically and discuss them dispassionately, never mind actually changing them?

Thanks, Rush, for the chance to think about serious subjects and have it accompanied by great music!

Jesus' Illegitimacy and the Gospels

The question of whether Jesus was, or at least had the status of, an illegitimate child is one that has been widely discussed in recent scholarship, including by me (in an article published in the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus). Today I received an e-mail from someone who had read my article and wanted to ask a follow-up question. Here is the e-mail and my response:

Dear James McGrath,

I have a question on your JSHJ article on the possible illegitimacy of
Jesus' birth. Would it be accurate to add that those of illegitimate birth were
prohibited from entering the community of the Lord (Deut 23:3) and thus Jesus
going up to Jerusalem to celebrate the feasts in the Temple as he is reported to
have done by the Gospels is inconsistent with him being of illegitimate
birth?

cordially,
XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Dear XXXXXXXXXXXX,

Thank you for your interesting question! My initial reaction was that it is hard to imagine the Jerusalem authorities policing such matters. But as I thought about it, it seems to me that any measures that might be taken would be taken by the local community that one was from. Other residents of one's village or town would, as had traditionally been the case, be responsible for what today we'd call "law enforcement", and if one did something that was clearly against the Torah, such as bring an illegitimate child up to Jerusalem to enter the Temple, there would surely have been an outbreak of "righteous indignation", presumably resorting to violence if necessary. Going up to Jerusalem "in secret" would not solve the problem, since travel without reliance on a network of relatives and friends was difficult and rare.

So, in short, I think your hunch is correct - Jesus having the reputation of being illegitimate is incompatible with his having gone up to the Temple, and participated in the life of the synagogue, in the way the Gospels depict.

Best wishes,

James McGrath

The Spiritual Brain

I had to force myself to pick up The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary, since my expectations were not high, largely because I was not impressed with the views O'Leary has expressed, and the way she has expressed them, on her own blogs and on Uncommon Descent. The reason I have started reading it anyway is twofold: First, its subject matter is of interest to me generally, as someone whose personal faith is rooted in having had a life-changing spiritual experience - in other words, having been born again. Second, the subject of neuroscience, religious experience and the soul is one that is part of my course on religion and science.

When I say I am disappointed with the book thus far, I wish to be clear that my disappointment stems largely from the fact that, even though Beauregard and O'Leary have some very important and valuable things to say, the acrimonious tone and ridicule leave a bad taste in the reader's mouth. Moreover, the authors seem to leave no room for any middle ground or additional options other than their own and the opposing extreme of reductionist materialism.

Here's what I appreciated about the book: It highlights the fact that some are claiming that experiments on the neuroscience of religious experience are claiming more than is justified by the evidence currently available. I genuinely agree with the authors when they object to those who suggest that, because we are animals, there is nothing genuinely distinctive about us (pp.41-42). Such "nothing buttery" or reductionism is unjustified. To provide a famous example, the band The Bloodhound Gang sang a song which said "You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel". When people use (or rather abuse) scientific conclusions in this, it is not inappropriate to object. We clearly are able to reflect on our actions and not follow our instincts in a way that is, as far as we know, unique among the life forms on our planet.



I am thus happy that, whereas a reviewer in the most recent issue of the Reports of the National Center for Science Education felt disappointed that she was unable to find three good things to say before offering criticism when reviewing one of O'Leary's earlier books, I was able to find one. Alas, I must immediately qualify it. Creationists and proponents of Intelligent Design regularly point to things that are still unknown about the details of evolutionary history and the mechanisms that drove it, and then draw the completely illegitimate inference that this indicates something wrong with the theory itself. The fact that we do not know certain things about religious experience and the brain does not mean that we will not know them, nor does it make hypothesizing based on what we do know inappropriate.

To claim that the only way to account for spirituality and genuine personhood is to posit an immaterial soul is a non sequitur. It is like saying that, since neither hydrogen nor oxygen is wet, when God creates water he must add an immaterial "soul of wetness" to it. It is much more scientific, and much more plausible, to suggest that the properties of water are emergent properties. We can say that water is not just hydrogen and oxygen, without having to deny that it is made up of hydrogen and oxygen, or posit something additional added to it. This is the concept of emergent properties. Why viewing water, or the soul, in this way would be felt to be reductionistic materialism is hard to fathom. The author of Genesis viewed Adam as a psychosomatic unity, an animated body rather than an incarnate soul. What Nancey Murphy calls "non-reductive physicalism" has been an interesting place of intersection between modern science and Biblical studies, as Joel Green has noted in several studies. The authors of this book, on the other hand, take the typical ID approach: matter, they say, cannot account for mind, so it must be something metaphysical. But if explosive hydrogen and combustible oxygen can, in combination, quench our thirst, and if silicon in a complex arrangement with other elements and materials can be manifested as a video game, then why is an explanation of mind in terms of the physical felt to be impossible by definition? They are certainly right that most of our questions about mind are unanswered. But rather than follow ID in stopping the search for understanding, I express my gratitude to the scientists who are doing the studies which, although they will probably not provide the answer to these questions, are making the progress necessary so that future generations of scientists will have a serious chance to do so.

Neurotheology is a topic of widespread interest, and Beauregard and O'Leary had the opportunity to communicate clearly the difference between what the scientists currently know and what the media sometimes claims about their results. Instead, other authors, including ones who struck me as genuinely seeking to not go beyond the evidence, are ridiculed, if you can believe it (take a look at p.60 if you can't), for inserting words like "may" and "possibly" into their work! Serious scientific publications such as Scientific American have looked at this topic, and present the subject in an appropriately balanced way. Ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, it is better to look there than in Beauregard's own book to get a balanced understanding of his research and what it does and doesn't prove.

The book is reviewed much less appreciatively (to say the least) on the Pharyngula blog, which also exposes where some of the numbers and other factual claims made in the book are not merely incorrect, but so far from the mark as to undermine any claims to credibility the authors might have had. I will nonetheless try to finish the book, even though it seems more and more likely that it is laced with too much pseudoscience to be useful either personally or professionally. But what disappointed me most was the irate tone. Perhaps this is one of the greatest ironies of the Intelligent Design movement. They complain about the philosophy and ideology of mainstream scientists, but claim they are "just doing science" themselves. And when push comes to shove, many proponents of ID seem willing not only to deny that they are motivated by Christian beliefs, but set aside Christian teachings about behavior, in the pursuit of their goals. How the doctrine of an immaterial soul can be considered more fundamental to the Christian faith than loving one's enemies is not explained. Personally, I expect those who claim to represent a Christian viewpoint to not merely (and not necessarily) reach different conclusions, but to demonstrate a certain kind of character in the way they go about their research and in the way they articulate their conclusions.

Let me conclude with what might deserve the "most ironic moment" award, the authors' mention of cognitive dissonance (p.42). It is certainly true that all of us at times deal with the tension between what we think we know (often because we've heard it from an authoritative source) and what we see/experience. But that anyone could mention this without using movements such as creationism and intelligent design as illustrations of this phenomenon would be a missed opportunity. But for a proponent of one of these views to use this as an argument against their opponents without realizing that it applies to them - now that's irony. The inability of the proponents of ID to be self criticial and to accept criticism from peers shows that the movement is neither scientific nor Christian in any genuine sense.

When Cosmologists and Biologists Speak of God

In my religion and science class yesterday, we compared the different feelings that scientists seem to have about the appropriateness of bringing God-talk into the discussion in cosmology and in biology. Has anyone else noticed that it is relatively uncontroversial for Einstein, Hawking, Davies, Peacocke, Polkinghorne and many others to mention God in discussions of cosmology. Certainly they would disagree in their attempts to articulate what they mean by such language, but it is not felt to be inappropriate in the same way that it is in biology.

I think this has something to do with where the limits of each field is. Biology clearly runs into chemistry and physics on the one side - there is no doubt that biological organisms are composed of molecules, however one may think that came about. On the other side, the border seems to be adjacent to fields such as anthropology and psychology, which study the complex behaviors of complex organisms with complex brains. It thus seems to be expected that biology itself will be able to provide explanations more-or-less as a "closed system", with no gaps.

Cosmology, on the one hand, runs into physics on one side, but on the other side there is a boundary with questions science cannot answer in principle. Even if future developments in cosmology remove the question "What happened before the Big Bang?" from the table, there will still be the question of why anything exists at all, rather than nothing. Cosmology, in other words, runs into philosophy and religion at its far end. Since we are dealing in this instance not with gaps in our knowledge so much as limits of our methods, it seems much less inappropriate to bring in other approaches to knowledge.

We still should ask, however, what the appropriate way is to use such language. To suggest that God is an explanation remains problematic. Positing a God who is allegedly self-explanatory is not going to be an intellectually satisfying explanation. But many of those who use the language of God in these contexts are not intending to provide a logical explanation, but to point to a mystery and find some way of talking about it in our limited, inadequate human language.

This seems to be a key difference between the relationship between religion and biology on the one hand, and religion and cosmology on the other. Scientists have been successful in filling in gaps in biology thus far, and it thus seems problematic to do research in biology under the assumption that the inexplicable will remain that way. But to speak of God in relation to cosmology is not the same sort of "God of the gaps" or "design" argument. Here we are dealing not with a gap in the current state of our knowledge, but a limit to the discipline of science itself. To speak of such things and to explore beyond them, language that is humble, symbolic and poetic will be essential tools.

History: Playing By The Rules

I had a letter to the editor published in today's issue of a local newspaper, NUVO. It was in response to a letter to the editor that appeared the previous week, claiming that Christianity was invented in the time of Constantine.

Here's the letter I wrote:

I certainly agree that “faith” cannot and should not be used as an excuse
to rewrite history (Letters, “America’s Collective Craze to ‘Trust God,’” Oct.
3-10). This is something Christians ought to accept: as I often point out,
Hebrews 11:1 says “faith is the evidence of things not seen” — it doesn’t say
that faith is a basis for believing that things seen do not exist.

It is unfortunate that Corya, rather than adhering to his stated
principles, simply substitutes one faith for another: faith in the sort of
claims found in The Da Vinci Code instead of faith in the Bible. Neither sort of
faith reflects the approach historians take to their sources. Historical study
is not an all-or-nothing enterprise. Corya’s claim that all the biblical
documents are “the least reliable historical documents on Earth” is no more true
or false than the opposite claim that they are accurate in all their details —
the latter is just as easily shown to be false.

The truth is that even excellent historians make errors, and even works
of fiction can include accurate information in describing places, customs and so
on. In historical study, each piece of evidence, each claim, must be assessed on
its own merits. There is at least one thing about which there is no doubt
whatsoever, however, namely that Christianity existed prior to the time of
Constantine. We have New Testament manuscripts that are significantly earlier
than that.

I am certainly a strong believer in the need for Christians to
accept the historical evidence and not dismiss it or rewrite it. But I also
believe that the same rules apply to everyone else, including atheists.

Intelligent Design and Gnosticism

I thought it might be fitting to offer a few brief words of appreciation for that ancient movement, which has not entirely disappeared even today, which took the argument from design completely seriously. I am thinking, of course, of the Gnostics. They were Biblical literalists to boot, taking at face value the references to God's apparent ignorance of where Adam and Eve were, and other details that usually are taken as symbolic anthropomorphisms. When that was combined with their "design theory", it led them quickly to the conclusion that the highest God known through philosophy cannot be the same as the creator of this material world, with all its flaws and imperfections.

Having pointed out that Biblical literalism is the fast track to atheism, it seems only fair to point out where the Intelligent Design track leads...

What Do You Love More Than Life?

In the Sunday school class I teach at Crooked Creek Baptist Church, we found ourselves spending much time on a single verse, John 12:25, "Whoever loves his life will lose it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it unto eternal life". For my wife, when she lived in Romania during the Communist era, it was clear what this meant - Christians were aware that they could be arrested, imprisoned, and perhaps even "disappear" if they were vocal about their faith, or even went so far as to try to promote it.

But what does a teaching like this mean in other contexts, including the United States, where we sometimes hear religious believers whine about persecution if someone disagrees with them, or if they don't always get their way? I think the saying is ultimately about our values, and I found myself revisiting the subject raised in The Lucifer Effect in the context of our discussion. In a society like that in North America, one's freedoms are protected. But in some ways, it is much more straightforward to make a decision about what is important knowing in advance that one might face severe consequences, than to never know quite when one will find oneself in a situation where it might be expected that we will act in ways that may depart from our core values. Before we know it, we have gone along with something that we never would have foreseen.

The Confucian sage Mencius famously wrote, "I love life, but I also love righteousness, and if I cannot have both at the same time, I will sacrifice life to have righteousness. I love life, but there is something that I love more than life, and thereforeI would not have life at any price." Mencius makes a comparison with having two menu choices that one likes (fish and bear paw). Since bear paw is not as popular nowadays in most English-speaking countries, let me suggest substituting a hamburger and lobster. I like both, but if I have to choose, I definitely prefer one to the other. Mencius is not concerned with the afterlife, since Confucianism does not place its focus on such uncertain matters. He simply loves doing the right thing more than living a long life, if he has to choose between them. It is not that he will not take both if he can, and in the same way the saying of Jesus in John 12:25 presumably is not a call to willful self-destruction. Since something else is ultimately valuable, life is viewed as a means to righteousnss, rather than an end in itself.

The key to not getting pulled along with things we will regret with hindsight is to have our minds made up in advance that we love something not only more than life, but more than reputation, more than popularity, more than anything. After all, eternal life in the Gospel of John is not simply about afterlife, but about a particular way of living in the present. Even in relation to ideas like rewards in the afterlife, sometimes all that we see is a shift of selfishness from a short-term focus on the present to a willingness to go for "what's behind door number 2". But when we understand "eternal life" as a different set of values, then it challenges us to make a much more fundamental change, and to regard going along with something that we never thought we could as a "punishment" in and of itself.

Last night's episode of "Chuck" also explored these themes in an entertaining way. The episode began with a painting which was described by a series of individuals as "crap" and "looks like it was painted by a 5-year old", but people were still killing each other for it. As it turned out, they were after plutonium hidden in the frame. The picture was just a means to an end. But plutonium isn't an end in itself. It is a means - to wealth, to world domination, to destructive power, to something else. But are those really ends? What, we need to ask ourselves, is ultimately valuable to us?

The character of Chuck poses this question at the episode's end when he asks "What's the good of being a hero if nobody knows it?" Sara answers, "You know it...and so do I." The concepts of honor and shame (how others view us) were important ones in the development of human moral sensibilities. But perhaps best of all is when it is sufficient that we know it, and are satisfied with having done the right thing even if no one else ever finds out. Even reputation can be less than ultimate.

So what do you ultimately value, and why? What do you love more than life?

Has Creationism's Appendicitis Been Cured?

An interesting piece of science news in recent days was the proposal of a plausible function for the appendix. Clearly this clinches the argument about its design by a supernatural being. Just consider all these characteristics of the appendix:

• It apparently reboots the good bacteria in the gut if they are wiped out by another disease.
• It keeps the human population from growing too large by eliminating members of the herd now and again.
• It provides ongoing gainful employment for doctors who are regularly paid to remove them.
• What could be stronger proof of its design than the fact that it has a purpose, yet you can remove it with minimal ill effects.

What does this prove? That it is possible to "see" design in whatever one beholds. I am not against that per se, but I do find problematic the attempt to argue that this somehow implies science's inability to come up with a natural explanation, or that the argument leads naturally (if you'll excuse the pun) to a supramaterial creator.

If Intelligent Design is really open to aliens and time travellers being the designers, how does that match up with their express goal of combatting materialism?

At any rate, I was not surprised that the proponents of Intelligent Design were quick to mention this. What is interesting is the acknowledgement implicit in the recent post on the subject on the Uncommon Descent blog that this fits well with evolution through natural selection: its continued presence suggests that, if it does not have an essential function at present, it had one in the very recent past.

Detecting design isn't that hard - in fact, it is too easy. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that is strictly speaking considered incompatible with intelligent design by its proponents.

Sometime soon I hope to explore a related question head-on. In what sense, if any, is appeal to God an explanation?

Genesis (the band as well as the book)

Last night I had the chance to watch Genesis - The Video Show. The first album I ever bought was Duke on cassette, and I decided to learn to play keyboards after seeing the video for "Follow You, Follow Me". (I even attended Bible college with the drummer in the band that eventually split to become, on the one hand Genesis, and on the other hand...nothing. Presumably the band members have met Kevin Bacon, so...you figure it out). I have tried listening to some contemporary progressive rock bands, but I can't think of one that really impresses, much less moves, me the way Genesis does.

Is this just nostalgia, or is the old music really better? As I watched the videos, I found I even enjoyed the ones from Calling All Stations (which featured only two of the original members) more than much other music I've heard lately. I might also mention that Tony Banks has offered some classical compositions to his fans recently - his album Seven: A Suite for Orchestra was released on the Naxos music label.

I found myself wondering if nostalgia is also the reason why some Biblical authors found they couldn't let go of earlier imagery of creation, like that of God fighting the sea monster, and why many people today feel they cannot let go of particular Biblical language even when it doesn't seem to reflect our present experiences or understanding of the world. Like Jesus' parable about the wineskins, when offered the new, we all have the tendency to say "the old is good".

For those of us who used to (or still) play Dungeons and Dragons, there is a role playing game set in Biblical times called Testament, published by Green Ronin Press. Taking some Biblical statements such as "there were giants in the land in those days" completely seriously, this game allows adventurers to encounter 30 new monsters in advenstures set in the Biblical era. I wonder how this might be used as a teaching tool. I also wonder how a character who is a Levitical priest might talk his way out of an encounter with one of the Nephilim. I've never seen this particular game, much less played it, but I will try to do one if not both of those things in the near future.

Finally, not least in order to make up for failing to include the Higgaion blog in my blogroll, even though it is one I try to visit regularly, let me draw attention to a recent post about a novel that does to the Hebrew Bible what The Da Vinci Code did to the New Testament. Anything, it seems, can be "browned".

May The Zero-Point Field Be With You

I just finished reading Bernard Haisch's book The God Theory: Universes, Zero-point Fields, And What's Behind It All. I must confess that I was a bit concerned before I started (and for a little while after that, too) that this was going to be one of these kooky, New Agey types of books blending scientific ideas and spirituality into a half-baked hodge podge. But this book, refreshingly, isn't like that. Instead, Haisch is very up front about what he thinks the evidence proves about science and religion, what is as yet unproven but consistent with what we currently know, and what is his own speculation.

Haisch is first and foremost an astrophysicist, although he did at one point briefly attend seminary. His recent work is particularly fascinating as it relates to the Zero-Point Energy, the rather mysterious nature of what is still sometimes called, and was once thought to genuinely be, a vacuum. (To avoid confusion, I don't mean an electric device for cleaning floors). "Empty space", as it turns out, is full of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence.

Although I ought to be most interested in what Haisch has to say about religion, I was most fascinated by work he has done together with Alfonso Rueda to confirm that Newton's postulate F=ma can be derived from the Zero-Point energy.

If inertia is a result of the Zero-Point field, then presumably so is gravity. We may thus have witnessed the first opening of the door that leads into the antechamber of the Grand Unified Theory. Perhaps even more remarkable, one aspect of this field, stochastic electrodynamics (SED), may in the end show that the uncertainty at the quantum level is also a result of the Zero-Point field acting upon subatomic particles in a way that can be expressed in terms of classical physics.

I find myself fascinated by Haisch's pioneering research in physics, and impressed by his humility when it comes to his religious assertions. He is not willing to simply say "the Zero-Point Field is God" (p.116). What he does say confidently based on science is thought-provoking, whether it relates most to the nature of the universe or to spirituality. For instance, he offers the intriguing insight that, from the perspective of a photon, space and time do not exist. At the speed of light, everything is instantaneous - no time passes, no distance seems to have been covered. Thus "space and time are created when you leave the reference frame of light" (p.119).
Although the Zero-Point Field reminds one of the force ("it surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together," to quote Obi-Wan Kenobi's famous words about duct tape), it is unlikely that we will be able merely by an act of will to use that energy to move objects and bend weak minds. Then again, my midi-chlorian count is low, and that may be the real reason for my Han Solo-like skepticism.

Then again, maybe it is my lack of great ability when it comes to mathematics. Those interested in the work Haisch and his colleagues have done on these cutting-edge and pioneering aspects of contemporary physics should read his actual scientific papers. At one point in his book (p.85), Haisch places the average number of readers for any given scientific paper at .6, so you could play a part in making Haisch's numbers above average!

The Dangers Of Dihydrogen Monoxide

Sometimes it takes a young, independent thinker to really make us aware of scientific issues in our country. Student Nathan Zohner decided to devote his science fair project to the circulation of a petition to band Dihydrogen Monoxide. As the web page which made him aware of the issue points out,

Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless and
odorless chemical compound, also referred to by some as Dihydrogen Oxide,
Hydrogen Hydroxide, Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid. Its basis is the
unstable radical Hydroxide, the components of which are found in a number of
caustic, explosive and poisonous compounds such as Sulfuric Acid, Nitroglycerine
and Ethyl Alcohol.

...

Each year, Dihydrogen Monoxide is a known causative component in many thousands of deaths and is a major contributor to millions upon millions of dollars in damage to property and the environment. Some of the known perils of Dihydrogen Monoxide are:

Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.
Contributes to soil erosion.
Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.
Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.
Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.
Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.
Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks.
Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S.
Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.

All of the above is true, and yet it is of course the willingness of so many individuals to sign the petition that is most worrying, since Dihydrogen Monoxide is another way of denoting that familiar chemical formed from two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule, H2O. In other words, water.

Zohner was fully aware of this, and his science experiment was to test his classmates' gullibility, lack of scientific knowledge, and willingness to sign a petition to ban something vital to their existence based on a fully accurate but clearly "spun" description of its properties.

Is it any surprise that so many people will sign petitions that seek to oppose or undermine the teaching of evolution? The reasons for doing so are the same in both cases - lack of scientific knowledge coupled with a "phobia" towards science and anything that involves multisyllabic chemicals or scientific jargon.

I am indebted to Neil deGrasse Tyson's recent book Death by Black Hole for drawing this story to my attention. Tyson's book is a compilation of a number of his essays. They are all interesting, although his treatment of religion (in Dawkinsesque fashion) as being an approach to knowledge fundamentally opposed to science is somewhat disappointing (p.347). It is hard to blame him, though, when so many people do indeed oppose science in the name of religion. And even here, he is far more balanced than Dawkins in his treatment of the topic. Because Tyson's statements are carefully nuanced, for the most part, they usually communicate important points accurately and clearly. So let me conclude with what I felt was the most important statement in the book in many respects: "When scientifically investigating the world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier" (p.292).

Something to keep in mind the next time we're presented with a petition to ban Dihydrogen Monoxide.

Savants and the Mysteries of Mind

I'll comment at some later point on the book that led me to this topic - The God Theory by Bernard Haisch. In the book, Haisch brings up Savant Syndrome as evidence that the mind seems to be something that 'shines through' the brain rather than merely an epiphenomenon thereof. Or, as someone at the conference I attended in Romania put it, the brain is more like a radio than an Ipod. I am not persuaded, since I don't feel as though Haisch does justice to the notion of emergent properties. But he is certainly right to draw attention to the remarkable mathematical abilities of someone like Daniel Tammet (who provides math answers without apparently needing to go through intermediate stages of calculation), or the musical abilities of someone like Leslie Lemke (who famously played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto after hearing it only once). Their abilities are evidence of just how mysterious the functioning of the human mind is to us, and how much it is capable of. I am reminded of how Commander Data's "daughter" Lal on Star Trek: The Next Generation spontaneously developed emotion as a result of a "flaw" in her positronic brain.

Below is just one of a number of clips related to the phenomenon of Savant Syndrome on YouTube. Remarkable individuals such as these are a helpful reminder of how little we understand even about the workings of the very parts of us responsible for our very attempts to understand.

Oceanic Flight 815 Was Shot Down

I have to admit, the bit about the nanobots in the quiches was pretty funny. But the top moment in this past week's episode of "Chuck" has to be the allusion to LOST, when Chuck, revealing various government secrets, adds to the list "Oceanic Flight 815 was shot down..." Exactly what he says after that is not entirely clear, but apparently the closed captioning was clearer: the continuation was "by a surface-to-air missile". Fans got excited on forums around the internet, but this is presumably an attempt at humor (and a really good one, I might add), rather than a different network offering something 'canonical'. As one commenter on a particular forum pointed out, to take it too seriously might lead one to expect that next we'll learn that Sawyer went to jail for conning Earl on "My Name Is Earl", and that Shannon was one of Rachel's friends on "Friends". :-)

I wonder if the makers of Chuck offered this hommage as a way of thanking the LOST powers that be for the fact that, come 2008, LOST will be up against Bionic Woman, depending on the time it airs, but will not be moved to Monday nights when it could potentially compete with Chuck! But it is probably just a nod to what has proven to be a significant cultural phenomenon of our time, with a huge fan base.

So thank you, script writers for Chuck, for keeping us entertained in the present. I love LOST, but so far I am enjoying Chuck, not least because I don't have to wait until February to watch it! :-)

The Lucifer Effect

There is a very interesting post on the Quixotic Infidel blog about a new book by Philip Zimbardo called The Lucifer Effect. There is also a talk by Zimbardo available online. His lecture (and apparently the book as well) focuses specifically on how good people end up doing horrendous things. Although this is his primary interest, he does actually talk about Lucifer as a figure in Jewish mythology, also using Escher's "Angels and Demons" as an example. The talk is extremely powerful, and shows just how quickly we can find ourselves doing things that we earlier explicitly said "No way, I'd never do that".

The entry on Quixotic Infidel also shares a particularly striking photograph of Nazi soldiers enjoying blueberries at Auschwitz. In the Zimbardo lecture, the specifically religious aspect comes up in a discussion of Jim Jones, and it seems quite clear that the ability to manipulate people to do evil is not limited to religion - and the evidence also shows it is not limited to men, either, contrary to the expectations many might have. The key issue is authority. Where religion becomes something that can lead to evil is when religion teaches us unquestioning obedience to authority. We all influence children to respect authority. The challenge is how to teach our children, and how to create communities (religious and secular), and how to live in such a way that we can exit a situation in which, if we remain, we shall do (or have things done to us) that are unthinkable.

Ways the Bible Speaks to us

Below are two stories that may or may not be well known, and which can be encountered in different versions. They are not intended as a recommendation on how to read the Bible - just for amusement purposes only.

A man has been in business for many, many years and the business is going
down the drain. He is seriously contemplating suicide and he doesn't know what
to do.

He goes to the Rabbi to seek his advice. He tells the Rabbi about all
of his problems in the business and asks the Rabbi what he should
do.

The Rabbi says, "Take a beach chair and a Bible and put them in your
car and drive down to the edge of the ocean. Go to the water's edge. Take the
beach chair out of the car, sit on it and take the book out and open it up. The
wind will riffle the pages for a while and eventually the Bible will stay open
at a particular page. Read the first words your eyes fall on and they will tell
you what to do."

The man does as he is told. He places a beach chair and a Bible in his
car and drives down to the beach. He sits on the chair at the water's edge and
opens the Bible. The wind riffles the pages of the Bible and then stops at a
particular page. He looks down at the Bible and his eyes fall on words, which
tell him what he has to do.

Three months later the man and his family come back to see the Rabbi.
The man is wearing a $1,000 Italian suit, The wife is all decked out with a
full-length mink coat and the child is dressed in beautiful silk.

The man hands the Rabbi a thick envelope full of money and tells him
that he wants to donate this money to the Shul in order to thank the Rabbi for
his wonderful advice.

The Rabbi is delighted. He asks him what words in the Chumash
(Torah) brought this good fortune to him.The man replies, "Chapter
11."

______________________________________________________________

A man and his wife were having an argument about who should brew the coffee
each morning.

The wife said, "You should do it, because you get up first, and then we
don't have to wait as long to get our coffee."

The husband said, " You are in charge of cooking around here and you
should do it, because that is your job, and I can just wait for my
coffee."

The wife replied, "No, you should do it, and besides, it is in the
Bible that the man should make the coffee."

The husband replied, "I can't believe that; show me!"

So she fetched the Bible, and opened the NewTestament and showed him at
the top of several pages,that it indeed says.......... "HEBREWS"

What is great about both stories is that you don't need to get beyond the big words in bold print at the top of the page in order to get guidance!

Biblical Literalism: Fast Track To Atheism

Personally, I am fundamentally (if you'll excuse the pun) convinced that there are no genuine Biblical literalists in the world today - not even Ned Flanders on the Simpsons, who on the brillian episode "Hurricane Neddy" famously claimed "I've done everything the Bible says - even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff". No one believes in the dome. No one believes that 14=13, that pi equals precisely 3, and so on. But to acknowledge that interpretation is always a factor does not seem black and white enough to some, and certainly isn't a good advertising strategy, and so claims of being a Biblical literalist continue to be made, in spite of their inaccuracy and (in at least some cases) dishonesty (since I assume some of those using such rhetoric know enough about the Bible that they ought to know better).

My strongest reason for opposing these misleading claims about Biblical literalism and inerrancy is that they are a fast track to atheism. Many preachers say one must choose: "Either the Bible is the perfect, inerrant word of God, or it is a load of garbage and should be thrown out". This sets up anyone who decides to study the Bible seriously and has been told this to either pretend the problems aren't there, and thus compromise on honesty, or to do what they were told and throw out the Bible. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What happens if one tries to take various Biblical stories literally has been demonstrated more than once. Noah's ark and the Exodus are but a couple of examples.

So, if you really want to encourage rather than discourage people from believing in God, then I'd drop the rhetoric of inerrancy and literalism. It is not only dishonest, it is spiritually toxic.

The Evolutionist Conspiracy

For either young earth creationism or intelligent design to be on the right track and genuinely scientific, both movements have to posit a conspiracy in the ranks of the scientific community to prevent "the truth" about creation from getting serious scientific attention. In my view, this it is not strong enough to say that this is false: it is laughable. Let me give you my strongest reason for making this strong statement: Fred Hoyle.

Hoyle was a great scientist, but as an atheist, he felt that the new "Big Bang" theory sounded too much like the Christian doctrine of creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo). Indeed, he came up with the designation "Big Bang" as a way of poking fun at it. He thus worked to support the alternative known as the "steady state" theory. During Hoyle's lifetime, the Big Bang theory became the almost universally accepted scientific account of cosmological origins. Why? Certainly not because of an atheist, materialist conspiracy. But neither because of conspiracy by Christian astronomers and astrophysicists. No, the reason is much simpler. The Big Bang has prevailed because it fits the evidence. There are still alternative proposals and unanswered questions, but the most basic points of the Big Bang theory still remains the most plausible account, because of the evidence that has accumulated.

We know the universe is expanding because our scientific knowledge has kept expanding. Science works, because it tests everything against available evidence. Anyone who claims that they cannot get a fair hearing for their work because mainstream scientists are conspiring against them are either liars or delusional. Science is a great field for new ideas and overturning consensuses. All that is required is evidence. If young earth creationism could actually offer evidence for their positions, they would get a hearing. But they do not have evidence. What they offer, instead, are attempts to explain why the overwhelming evidence for evolution doesn't really mean what it seems to. They are the ones engaged in a conspiracy, and not the mainstream scientific community.

What We Know And What We Don't

I am currently grading assignments that asked how the Israelites came to be in the land of Canaan, specifying that I am expecting historical answers and not merely a retelling of the Biblical narrative. Students often equate the existence of debate or the suggestion of uncertainty with a situation in which nothing is certain. I am still trying to find ways to communicate the actual state of affairs more clearly, and would welcome comments and suggestions on how to do this.

When it comes to archaeology and Israelite origins, we do not know for certain whether the Israelites ever lived outside the land, and whether any armed conquests were involved in the very early stages. But we do know some things for certain. We know that at least many of the individuals who made up later Israel were not of a distinct people, with distinguishable genetic lines, from the Canaanite population. We know that the story told in Joshua is not purely factual, even though there are a number of possible conclusions one might draw about it (it could be a story that compresses events that took place over many centuries into a single narrative; it could also be a story that was based on earlier legends and ruins existing in the author's time). We know for certain that the cities said to have been conquered by Joshua were not destroyed all in the same period, and that some are also said to have been conquered at other times in the Book of Judges. We know that no Egyptian source mentions the Exodus (unless it was a very different event than the Bible suggests). We know that Ramses II did not drown in the Red Sea, and that his eldest son did not die from a plague. We know, in other words, that Biblical inerrancy is false. There is plenty to debate over specific details. But there is also much we know. It is not the case that everything is uncertain.

The same holds true for evolution. There is certainly room for debate about the pace of evolution, whether it at times acts "sporadically" from a geological perspective (i.e. punctuated equilibrium). There is room for debate about the relative importance of various mechanisms. But there is no doubt about the approximate age of the earth, or that all living things are related, or that evolution has occurred and continued to occur. A favorite strategy of the anti-science crowd is to point at individual uncertainties and then declare victory for their side. This is dishonest -it is like saying that because a batter missed the ball, the game is over and the other side won. There is plenty of room for us to learn more - that is why biology is such an exciting field - but there is a great deal that we know for certain.

This means the news is good all around. On the one hand, we do know a great deal. On the other hand, there are lots of exciting opportunities for further research and discovery. The only people likely to treat this as bad news are people who think that books written a long time ago and in many cases long after the events they claim to describe should be treated as factual even when there is overwhelming solid evidence from genes, fossils, artifacts, archaeology, and countless other sources.

My students often say that this is where "faith" comes in. Certainly I agree if they mean that this is the point at which it is appropriate to rely on God in the midst of unsettling uncertainty. But if they mean that by strongly wanting something to be factual, "faith" allows one to bypass questions of historical evidence, then I cannot go along with that. Hebrews 11:1 says that faith is the evidence of things not seen - not that it is evidence that the things seen don't really exist. Affirming the genocide depicted in Joshua, or denying the genocide carried out by Hitler, are both equally examples of people being willing to deny more than sufficient evidence on the basis of ideology and wishful thinking. I do not think that the content of such beliefs matters, because if one can be persuaded to believe one thing in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, then one may next time be persuaded to believe something else, something far more insidious.

Strongly wanting something to be true is never a sound basis for rewriting history. There is certainly a lot we don't know, and a lot that is at best probable. But that is the way history works, and some of the things mentioned above as "certain", while only certain in the sense of "proven beyond reasonable doubt", are as certain as anything in historical study can be. To deny them would be to throw out history and science altogether.

Eric H. Cline

I first encountered Eric Cline in the wonderful documentary on Joshua and Jericho in the Ancient Evidence series. Now that I have read his recent book From Eden to Exile, I am all the more impressed. His book simply sets forth the current state of our knowledge. He treats even amature archaeologists with respect, even though not endorsing most of their conclusions - even in mentioning Ron Wyatt, words like "con" and "artist" are never used (either separately or together). Cline clearly feels that at times the evidence from archaeology does not support the accuracy of the Bible. He nevertheless presents the diverse views of scholars and experts fairly, and presents them in a way that is accessible and clear to non-specialists.

The topic he covers that I know the most about is the archaeology of Israelite origins. He emphasizes what is most crucial: the destructions of various cities, even if they are connected with the Israelites, do not line up. They happened over the course of centuries and perhaps even more than a millenium. And so, even if one takes a "maximalist" approach to the Bible, the most one can claim is that the stories in Joshua compress events over a much longer period of time into a single lifetime. Lachish clearly was not conquered until after Israel had emerged in the land (as the cartouche of Ramses III that was found there indicates). Hazor is the only city that might fit a conquest scenario at the generally-accepted date for the Exodus and conquest. Yadin's dates, however, have recently been questioned.

More plausible, however, is that the story told in Joshua should simply be removed as reflecting the ideology of the era of Josiah. So many cities that were supposedly conquered by Joshua are said to have been conquered later in the book of Judges. And while the details of the stories cannot be confirmed, the general picture of isolated groups coming to dominate in diverse areas is at least more consonant with the archaeological evidence. To laypeople, it can seem like historians pick and choose. Unfortunately, they do indeed have to when details are incompatible with one another, as well as in those instances where some details are at odds with the archaeological evidence.

Cline mentions the "Andrews Way" of doing archaeology, named after Andrews University in Michigan. Randall Younker, a key faculty member in Biblical archaeology there, emphasized the following principles (Cline, p.187):

1. Be forthright with findings. Do not minimize problems of stretch interpretations of data to explain things away.
2. Do not make claims beyond what data can support.
3. Be quick and complete in publishing results.
4. Engage and work within mainstream scholarship.
5. Include a diversity of people and specialists.
6. Take the history of the Bible seriously, but do not place upon archaeology the burden of "proving" the Bible.

I was genuinely moved to read this. Cline, I feel, lives up to these aims enough to reproduce this challenge. I share it in admiration of his work and all others committed to such a high level of scholarship and of honesty.

C. F. D. Moule

New Testament scholar C. F. D. Moule recently passed away. He was nearly 99 years old, and rightly famous in his field. Obituaries have appeared in the British newspapers The Independent and The Telegraph. Since he could be called my "Doctor-Grandfather" (since he was Jimmy Dunn's Doktorvater, and Jimmy Dunn was mine), I thought I'd share links to some online books and articles by this great scholar:

The Birth of the New Testament

The Meaning of Hope

Christ's Messengers: Studies in the Acts of the Apostles

The Sacrifice of Christ

Worship in the New Testament

Man and Nature in the Old Testament. Some Reflections on Biblical Ecology

"Further Reflections on Philippians 2:5-11"

"The Influence of Circumstances on the Use of Eschatological Terms" (JTS 15 (1964) 1-15)

Lectures On Line

Sean Carroll is one of the many top-notch scientists whose public lectures and presentations can be found on YouTube.

Ken Miller, Barbara Forrest, and many others also appear:

The institution Carroll is connected with, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, sponsored a series of lectures on the subject of evolution and religion:



There are many other interesting clips on YouTube that relate to this subject - those provided above are just a few that feature some top-notch scientists.

Creature Comforts

Last night Sean Carroll began his public lecture with scenes from Nick Park's Creature Comforts. Park's brilliant idea was to interview members of the British public, then to provide animation to accompany the actual voices of the public expressing its views on various topics - including evolution. I'm including the clip here. Enjoy!

Don't Just Honor The Book - Read It!

Many fundamentalists (including, but not limited to, young earth creationists and proponents of intelligent design) spend a lot of time emphasizing the greatness of the Bible, its importance, and so on. Yet there is a serious dearth of actual knowledge of and about the Bible in detail. Sure, people hear a lot of sermons, read a lot of popular books. But how many study a particular Biblical book with the help of a commentary - a good serious academic commentary written by someone in their own denomination or tradition? If one says the book is important, then one should study it in depth. It is a lack of knowledge that plagues the extremes in many modern debates.

The same holds true for evolution. The proponents of Intelligent Design devote much time to proclaiming that the genetic code is information-rich, and they feel this has certain implications with respect to design. But what they are failing to do, but other biologists are doing, is read that information. It provides a lot of information about how we work as organisms in the present, how closely or distantly related we are to other branches on the tree of life, and many other wonderful things. It is all there - in writing, as it were - but the proponents of Intelligent Design are so busy proclaiming the wonderful design of the book that they seem to have no time left to open its covers and read.

Young Earth Creationists like Henry Morris claim that evolution is the root of all evil. In my Bible it says that the love of money is the root of all evil. Could it be that by focusing on a distracting issue like evolution, some Christians hope that no one will notice that this clear-cut Biblical issue, the love of money, is a serious blind spot in contemporary Christianity? One thing is for sure - focus on young earth creationist and intelligent design issues is a dangerous distraction, making an idol of a prescientific worldview instead of seriously studying the Scriptures and trying to understand them in all their depth and richness.

Linguistics Undermines Scriptural Truth

Having vanquished the unholy proponents of chemistry, we may turn our attention to the next great bastion of falsehood. I am starting another new organization: Linguistics Undermines Scriptural Truth (also known as Scriptural Linguistics Upholds Truth). Our aim is simple: to prove that just as chemistry and biology make no sense without God, the same holds true for linguistics.

This is not simply a question of upholding the truth of the Biblical account of the Tower of Babel, however important that might be. Skeptics are quick to object that the story cannot be taken literally, pointing to alleged conundrums of logic such as the problem of how husbands and wives communicated after the confusion of tongues. What these willfully ignorant critics miss is the obvious fact that, even within the same country and linguistic context, husbands and wives clearly speak different languages that hinder communication anyway. In our view, it is most unlikely that husbands and wives noticed any difference after God confused the tongues.

Skeptics also object that languages have continued to evolve since the time of the Tower of Babel. But this is mere microevolution. We sneer at anyone who claims to speak French, or Italian, or Romanian, or Portugese. They speak Latin, and their claims to speak distinct languages are mere attempts by the godless regimes of these nations to undermine the truths that we courageously uphold.

Our primary focus is on the idea of irreducible information contained in languages, not only semantically but grammatically. Is it really conceivable that human beings, who (since the Fall) are naturally lazy, developed on their own a complex grammar such as that found in German, or that they invented a language with multiple tones such as Cantonese or Hausa? The trend is clearly towards simplification. The complexity of language can only have come about through divine intervention.

The godless linguists, on the other hand, would have us believe that language can come about in stages and develop from a simple proto-language to a complex language with all its grammatical structures and extensive vocabulary.

But we will - sorry, what's that? Yes, dada is here. Sorry, that was my young daughter. She keeps interrupting me at crucial moments like this. Go find MAMA, MAMA. Now, where was I? Oh yes, languages simply CANNOT develop in stages, and more than human beings can. Each individual language, like each individual human being, must be brought into existence fully formed.

You can, of course, guess what our next battle will be - yes, taking on the secular reproductionists!

Sean B. Carroll

I had the privilege of having lunch today with a couple of my colleagues and Sean B. Carroll, who is doing some of the most interesting work at the cutting edge of biology, more specifically in the field of evolutionary developmental biology (or evo devo for short). I had students read a significant number of chapters from both Carroll's recent book The Making of the Fittest as well as Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution. Today I learned that Carroll very recently published a review of Behe's book in Science magazine. There is also a video interview with Carroll on the New York Times web site. I wish I could figure out a way to include it here.

Various blogs have been drawing attention to this topic. Adaptive Complexity rightly expresses appreciation for Carroll's willingness to demonstrate to a wider audience the weakness of the Intelligent Design position, weaknesses that are much more readily visible to experts than to laypeople, especially ones inclined to sympathize with ID for religious reasons. ID proponents have also been quick to respond, providing selective sympathetic quotes from Behe (since they are experts at quote mining) without undermining in any way the substance of Carroll's critique.

Carroll is not alone in showing that Michael Behe is not doing first-rate science, to say the least. Ken Miller (who clearly is a top-notch biologist) has done so more than once. I will not pretend I can add to the scientific critique of Behe. But I do think I understand why he is so persistent in advocating his viewpoint.

History was once expected to provide proof of the claims of the Christian faith. Historical criticism ended up doing the opposite, showing that the Bible is at the very least not inerrantly factual, and proving unable to demonstrate that miracles happen. It is not surprising that many have turned to science to provide such an evidentiary basis where historical study cannot. At least science can investigate modern claims to miraculous healing, weeping statues, and - some hope - miraculous creation. The most fundamental problem in the latter case, however, is that it seems far too soon to declare the avenues of possible scientific explanation exhausted. And until they are, the "must have been God, then" argument seems premature. But even more fundamentally, it seems misguided (as Sean Carroll said at lunch) to bet one's faith on science's inability to explain something. It has been done before many times, and that is why such bets nowadays are considered long shots.

Figuring out what science, history and the Bible can and cannot do is of prime importance if there is to be an intelligent treatment of these subjects. I thus concur with a recent blog entry that emphasizes this point by talking about one of the many ways the Bible cannot be trusted. For instance, it is not intended for use as a floatation device. The disclaimer at the bottom of all my syllabi makes the same point.

Keeping Track of Comments

One feature I wish my Blogger blog had was the option to subscribe to comments, which would allow the comments section of the blog to become a forum for ongoing discussion and conversation, should anyone desire to use it that way. Many blogging sites do not offer this option, however, which is why I thought I'd mention a few alternative ways of keeping track of comments (and not merely blog entries, which one can easily track with RSS feeds).

First, there is Commentful, found at http://commentful.blogflux.com/usage/ This will allow you to add and track comments through Firefox, an RSS feed, or in several other ways.

Next, CoComment, found at http://www.cocomment.com/, allows one to add additional features to many blogging platforms, as well as track comments from various sites and forums.

Third, yet another place to look for a similar service is Co.mments.com at http://co.mments.com/

Lara Croft, Indiana Jones, and Eric Cline

I wonder how many readers of this blog entry are thinking "OK, I know the first two, but..." In a recent article with the nice title "Raiders of the Faux Ark" there is a call to take back archaeology from the crackpots. Biblical archaeology may be the hardest to recover, since its name gives an indication of its origins as a movement to prove the Bible's validity using archaeology. But to the surprise of many who were initially encouraged by discoveries such as those at Jericho, the evidence at times failed to match up with the Bible and at times seemed to blatantly contradict it.

So now one usually has to look for archaeologists working on "Israel" or "the Ancient Near East" rather than "Biblical archaeology" if one wants to get a sense of what is going on. Looking for proof to confirm what one wants to believe tends to "find" just what it is looking for, but often it is a case of producing or spinning evidence rather than finding it and trying to take the relevant evidence completely seriously.

Not too long ago I read parts of a book that seems to do an excellent job of addressing Biblical archaeology in a way that is fair and balanced. It is called The Controversial World of Biblical Archaeology: Tomb Raiders, Fakes, & Scholars (Religion and Modern Culture: Spiritual Beliefs That Influence North America Today). It really does a remarkable job of explaining how archaeology works (explicitly addressing the misguided notion that Indiana Jones and Lara Croft are archaeologists, for example), some of the major controversies, the relevant evidence, and how each viewpoint interprets that evidence. This book is wonderful for adults and anyone interested in the subject, and would be a great textbook or resource for a younger audience as well.

There are some useful video clips of Eric Cline talking about archaeology on YouTube. Those below are just a couple of the clips available:

When Reality Mirrors Parody

I recently offered a parody of intelligent design on my blog, trying to show what it would be like if the same logic and arguments were applied to chemistry. It was then pointed out to me that at least one group seems to have made a similar argument, but intending it to be taken completely seriously! I'm no longer laughing (although perhaps I'll contact them and see if they will link to my web page - if they did, perhaps I could still find this amusing). But what does it mean if parody and that which is being parodied become scarcely distinguishable? It is like having conservatives everywhere tune in to the Colbert Report - but for pure news commentary rather than entertainment.

For instance, it the following a parody, or is it intended to be taken seriously? The fact that it is so hard to tell is deeply disturbing!