Seeking Truth vs. Seeking Victory

I'm just sharing there to set them side by side, because the contrast is noteworthy. If the humanities are less 'scientific' than the natural sciences, clearly Intelligent Design is not even in the same league with the humanities.

On the one hand, there is a beautiful statement that April DeConick made on her blog, about what scholarship in any field should be about: seeking understanding and following the trail of evidence, even if it leads us to unexpected places.

On the other hand, there is a statement about Intelligent Design winning made by Denyse O'Leary on Uncommon Descent. She is annoyed by the argument she is criticizing, but she never suggests that the goal of Intelligent Design, allegedly a form of science and scholarship, shouldn't be about winning, but a quest for truth no matter what the truth turns out to be.

You be the judge...

Biblical Studies Carnival (You'll Have To Hurry!)

Reposted from Abnormal Interests without modifications, since the time is short!

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Please help Tyler with this month's Biblical Studies Carnival. He is willing to pick up a bouncing ball for us but he also needs our help. You should submit your nominations for the Carnival, including your own posts, at BlogCarnival.com ASAP.

Tyler just sent the following urgent email asking for help with this month's Biblical Studies Carnival,

Hi everyone,
I just heard today (!) that the individual scheduled to do this month's Biblical Studies Carnival is not able to do it.

I am willing to step in an put together a carnival, though I would need some help from you. If you could nominate some posts that would be great. Please do not be modest; you are the best judge of what posts you may have written in the month of November are noteworthy. Please submit some of your own posts as well as some posts from other bloggers.

The posts need to have been uploaded in the month of November and must be able to be called "academic biblical studies" broadly understood.

Also, if you could put a call for submissions on your blog that would be great.

I will not be able to get the Carnival uploaded for December 1 (tomorrow!), but will aim at early next week (Monday?)

Alternatively, if anyone wants to volunteer to host it, please let me know asap. If not, I hope that you will take the time to email me some submissions (the more information you can give me the better: title, url, blog name, author name, and even a one sentence summary).

You can also make submissions via the submission form at BlogCarnival.com or you may email them to biblical_studies_carnival AT hotmail DOT com.

For more information, consult the Biblical Studies Carnival Homepage.

THANK YOU!!!

I sent him my suggestions. Please do likewise.

Animator vs. Animation II

There is a game, and now a movie, based on animation that rebels against its maker. No theological analysis for now...just entertainment. Enjoy!

(Embedding it didn't work, so you'll have to click the link)

Battlestar Galactica: Razor

I finally watched BSG Razor last night and it was fantastic. Battlestar Galactica has been fantastic in raising key issues and challenging stereotypes, forcing viewers to ask difficult and uncomfortable questions that apply not simply to humans and cylons in the far-off reaches of space but to us today.

Spoiler alert: I will be talking about the details of Razor in what follows.

One instance of such a challenge relates to Admiral Cain. We encounter her as a hard-nosed, seemingly bitter and heartless leader, and have littly sympathy with her. When Razor begins, we find her giving that impression but as a way of testing the mettle of those under her command - as when she gives late-arriving new recruit Kendra Shaw a hard time, but chuckles about it with her colleagues after the recruit leaves.

Certainly the most astonishing revelation is that Helena Cain and Gina (the cylon) had a relationship. This explains not only Cain's torture of Gina after the truth is revealed, but her bitterness and suspicion. We are reminded that people are not bitter without a reason.

Cain's advice to Shaw gives the title to this BSG special. You need to become a razor, to have the ability to be sharp and to cut, in order to survive. Because if we don't survive, then we don't have the luxury of becoming simply human again. This is powerful stuff. Being 'simply human' isn't a given, it is a "luxury". But if we sacrifice our humanity in order to survive, has humanity in fact survived? Doesn't the bitterness become permanent?

The special also features old-style cylon centurions and raiders as remembered from the original Battlestar Galactica series. We also encounter "the hybrid", perhaps the equivalent of the Imperious Leader from the old series, who says his children regard him as a god, offers forgiveness to Shaw for killing civilians in order to carry out her orders, and warns that Kara Thrace is the harbinger of the apocalypse, leading humanity to destruction!

One last thought-provoking moment. When discussing the report that needs to be written about Shaw, and whether to give her a posthumous commendation, Cmd. Adama says that if he believed in the gods he would say that she would be judged by a higher power. But since he doesn't, history will offer its own judgment. And history begins with their report and logs.

See further SF Gospel's post "Choosing the Good in Battlestar Galactica: Razor". I've also just discovered some specifically Battlestar Galactica blogs: Galactica Sitrep and Battlestar: Galactica Review Blog, as well as the less interesting Battlestar Blog.

News From The Heavens: On Titan's Tots and Taurus' Teens

I just want to share a couple of exciting bits of news from Scientific Blogging.

One post announces the discovery of organic molecules in Titan's atmosphere. Titan's atmosphere resembles that which the early earth is thought to have had, and the molecules in question are the same sort created by humans in the lab, when trying to explore plausible scenarios for the emergence of life on earth.

The other post relates to evidence of some of the youngest solar systems yet detected. The number of extrasolar planets we're aware of just keeps growing, but so does the diversity of types of solar systems detected.

This coincides nicely with the reading I assigned to the students in my class on religion and science for the next time it meets: any of the last four chapters in the collection Many Worlds, published by Templeton, which explores the possible theological implications of extraterrestrial life.

Learning Mandaic

OK, it is official - I will be spending time learning Mandaic between now and the end of next summer, and trying to move from there to doing some work on the Mandaean texts (perhaps revisiting the question of connections with the Gospel of John, from the perspective of the most recent research and resurgence of interest in the Mandaeans).

I noticed that many of the key texts would be difficult to find, and I imagined myself spending long hours photocopying out-of-print interlibrary loan books.

Then I came across this - a group called the "Ecclesia Gnostica Universalis" has scanned a number of E. S. Drower's key publications of the Mandaic primary texts as well as translations thereof, and made them available online in Acrobat format. The Gnostic Society Library also has a collection of texts.

These groups have done a great service to scholars eager to get into this neglected area of study that connects in multiple interesting ways ancient and contemporary concerns. Thank you!

If anyone has learned (or attempted learning) Mandaic, and has advice to offer, I would welcome it!

What's So Great About Evolution?

Gordon J. Glover, who has the blog Beyond the Firmament and a book by the same name, has shared a series of videos offering intelligent, articulate and respectful explanations of evolution aimed at Christians who have heard it blamed for atheism and the evidence supporting it called into question. I am posting the first one here.



In other news, the blogosphere is responding to a story about someone at the Texas equivalent of the department of education who was forced to resign after forwarding information about a presentation by Barbara Forrest. Censorship is indeed a big issue, but it isn't the young-earth creationists and cdesign proponentsists who are the victims. You can learn more at The Austringer, Pharyngula, Panda's Thumb, Further Thoughts and Traveling from Kansas.

To cheer yourself up after reading that news, and in the process see a wonderful example of what living organisms have evolved to be capable of, take a look and see what this squirrel can do...

Finally, there is a new interview with Philip Pullman, the atheist author of a well-known series of children's books, one of which has been made into a movie about to be released in December. (Hat tip: Internet Monk and In The Open Space: God and Culture). Read it to find out what it means to him to be "a 1662 Book of Common Prayer atheist", what he thinks of Narnia and Lord of the Rings, and other interesting things he has to say. I haven't read any of the books so I won't be commenting until I've at least seen the movie, but I will note that there have been interesting suggestions that the deity that is the focus of the stories is essentially the Gnostic demiurge. There is a book about Pullman's books (i.e. another book I have not yet read) that apparently explores this theological aspect further, called Killing the Imposter God: Philip Pullman's Spiritual Imagination in His Dark Materials. A blog I just discovered called Asking the Wrong Questions has an amusing summary of the series, as well as commentary on other works of literature and television, including Battlestar Galactica: Razor, which I still haven't seen yet.

We Wish You An Intelligently-Designed Creationmas

While priest and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin waxed poetic about his majestic vision of the universe and our place in it, I noticed that there seemed to be no young-earth creationist or intelligent design poets and hymn-writers (unless you count the guy who sings in the PBS Evolution documentary...[shudder]). So I poked around the internet and "found" this. I can't remember where I found it, and if it looks like another song but with some changes, I had nothing to do with it:

We wish you a Merry Creationmas
We wish you a Merry Creationmas
We wish you a Merry Creationmas
And a happy new year (the first of which was less than 10,000 years ago)

Don't stop at the manger
Don't stay at the cross
On your way to creation -
Or you might just get lost!

We wish you an intelligently-designed Creationmas
We wish you an intelligently-designed Creationmas
We wish you an intelligently-designed Creationmas
And an irreducibly complex new year

All cdesign proponentsists
Be ye of good cheer:
We'll be changing our name again
Within the next year!

We wish you a Merry Creationmas
We wish you a Merry Creationmas
We wish you a Merry Creationmas
And a happy new year (no need to acknowledge other calendars)

Just drive your big cars
With us you'll get far
We deny global warming -
Not just the distance to stars!

We wish you a Merry Creationmas
(is it me or is it getting warm in here?)
We wish you a Merry Creationmas
(Wow, no snow yet? Huh!)
We wish you a Merry Creationmas
(Gee, is that a Tsunami?)
And a happy...RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

For another Christmas song parody, click here.

Practice Makes Permanent (Bionic Birdwatching)

In last night's episode of Bionic Woman, Jamie Sommers found herself stuck in the role of the only person available to take over the role of a dead assassin whose mission was to kill a nuclear scientists about to sell state of the art technology to North Korea. Great throw-away lines abounded, such as Jamie's question "Don't they already have a nuclear bomb?" to which Jonas replies "This one would actually work."

Jamie cannot bring herself to pull the trigger, since she cannot do what Jae recommended, and not think of the target as a person. She and her sister had spent a few hours on a gondola with this man, Vincent, and his son. It is when we dehumanize others that we cease to value their lives the way we would want ours to be valued, forgetting that devaluing and dehumanizing also works both ways.

When Jae promises that "it gets easier", Jamie wisely responds "That's what I'm afraid of".

I've recently heard a violin teacher say "practice makes permanent". We all know the more familiar "practice makes perfect", but in fact practice only makes perfect if you are practicing correctly. Bad habits can also become permanent, and if learning is hard, the unlearning that sometimes needs to take place before we can learn is harder.

I'm sure other birdwatching fans noticed the sound of an Eastern Wood Pewee - which may suggest that the episode wasn't actually filmed in Montana, where it was set. We had a pewee along the creek behind our house for most of this past summer, and its entertaining song is highly recognizable to me now. I've learned to recognize a lot of the regular avian visitors to our bird feeder and our neighborhood, with time and some effort. Practice makes permanent.

(I have a feeling the pewee annoyed the film crew, who tried to get as much footage without its distracting call as they could. They give it a final salute at the very end of the episode, suggesting that it made an impression on them.)

Confucius had some wise words to offer about practice and permanence towards the end of his life:

At fifteen I set my heart on learning; at thirty I was firmly established; at forty I had no more doubts; at fifty I knew the will of heaven; at sixty I was willing to listen to it; at seventy I could follow my heart's desire without transgressing what is right.

What we do regularly will become second nature to us - even the habit of not spending time on any one thing.

To make a choice to not let killing someone become easier, to not dehumanize, is commendable in itself. To do it consistently, so that it becomes second nature to treat others as we would want to be treated, is a real accomplishment. Well done, writers of the script for Bionic Woman - I hope you get the raise you are seeking!

A Review of God and Evolution

God and Evolution: A Reader, edited by Mary Kathleen Cunningham (New York: Routledge, 2007)

If there is a hurdle that often confronts those seeking to understand and think through the relationship between God and evolution, it is an awareness and appreciation of the range of views on the subject. Cunningham’s reader goes a good way towards providing an up-to-date collection of key excerpts from the most important representatives of various positions and viewpoints in this area. More often than not, people are more aware of the positions that present the choice as “either/or” than with those that see the situation as “both/and”. This aspect of popular understanding particularly affects educators like myself, since it represents the starting point of the majority of students in any given class addressing the topic of religion and science. Generally, professors have to put together a packet of readings much like this one, and thus a reader such as this one provides a useful resource for use in classes.

Cunningham’s reader is divided into seven sections: methodology, evolutionary theory, creationism, intelligent design, naturalism, evolutionary theism, and reformulations of tradition. A particular strength of the collection is that it seeks to do more than provide a selection of contemporary viewpoints. A historical perspective is offered, including important excerpts from the past as well as more recently. The authors whose works are excerpted include philosophers of science and theologians as well as evolutionary biologists. Having a single volume whose contributors include Charles Darwin and William Paley, Michael Behe and Richard Dawkins, is itself impressive. Each section begins with an introduction that helps guide the reader to important similarities and differences between the selections, filling in useful background knowledge that makes the readings themselves more accessible.

The first part, methodology, is focused primarily on method in theology, with a consideration of how language and method in theology relate to language and method in science. This section would have benefited from the inclusion of a discussion of what science is, and how it works, written by a philosopher of science or a biologist who was not specifically concerned with the relationship to or comparison with religion. Nevertheless, what is included is extremely helpful. Some of the excerpts are primarily focused on religion and science in general, rather than specifically on God and evolution, but this broader framework is helpful, in particular for those coming from a background of greater familiarity with either religion or science, but not both.
In the introduction to this section, some creationists are characterized as “espousing a literal interpretation of Genesis”. Such language is extremely common, but it grants to the groups in question a “high ground” that they do not in fact occupy. Perhaps it is more evident to scholars in my own field of Biblical studies that the claim of some creationists to “believe the whole Bible” and “take it all literally” are in fact false. I have yet to meet someone who understands the dome in Genesis 1 literally, or who believes that human beings are literally made from soil. The list could continue. All literalism is selective literalism, and by this I am not referring to the entirely appropriate distinction between parts of the Bible that are poetic and others that are not. Even within the creation stories that are supposedly being “interpreted literally”, details that are incompatible with other aspects of modern science and technology are conveniently ignored or spiritualized, since Christians who use cell phone are well aware that the rockets that launched the satellites they depend on did not bump up against a literal firmament in which sun, moon and stars were set. This is important, because as long as conservative Christians remain under the illusion that they are being faithful to the Bible and interpreting it consistently, it is hard to make any further progress in discussing topics related to evolution.

The first excerpt is from the 19th century Protestant theologian Charles Hodge. Although Hodge’s name is quite likely unfamiliar to most people today, it still carries weight with those studying theology in fundamentalist seminaries. This excerpt is thus significant, since it illustrates well the fact that, when Christian fundamentalism first developed, it did not regard a young earth as one of the fundamentals that gave the movement its name. This selection also illustrates some of the principles of Biblical interpretation that distinguish popular piety from the approach taken by theologically-educated Christians and scholars of the Bible (e.g. the assumption that the Bible cannot contradict itself, as opposed to the scholarly approach that lets the evidence in the Bible itself to determine the conclusion that at times it clearly does).
The other excerpts in this section are by Sallie McFague, Mary Midgley and Ian Barbour, and reflect a more mainstream approach to religious language and theology. While religious fundamentalists pride themselves on their alleged literalism, most theologians are aware of the danger of idolatry inherent in such an approach, and even for those who are seeking to avoid this pitfall. Most religious traditions define God as beyond human understanding, which means that all human statements are at best symbols and analogies which point to a transcendent, ineffable reality. While such disclaimers may seem out of sync with popular piety, it is no more necessary or appropriate to treat religion in terms of popular understanding, than to define science by what most people understand or think they know. It must be asked whether a lack of education about their own religious tradition often plays as much a role in the attitudes people have towards evolution, as does a lack of accurate scientific information.

Part two presents evolutionary theory, with excerpts from Darwin’s Origin of Species as well as works by Francisco Ayala and Michael Ruse. The latter are appropriate choices, since these individuals illustrate that a Christian can be a prominent evolutionary biologist, and that an atheist philosopher of science can see no inherent incompatibility of evolution and Christianity. Ayala spends some time talking about the evolutionary views of Church Fathers as well as more recent papal pronouncements on the subject. Both Ayala and Ruse distinguish between the fact of evolution (which is as far beyond doubt as any scientific fact could hope to be), the path of evolutionary development down the ages (some parts of which are more certain than others), and the mechanisms that drive evolution (which are much more controversial, although no one regards natural selection as either totally irrelevant or a complete explanation on its own). The distinctions are important ones that are often overlooked when people discuss “evolution”. Although perhaps an excerpt from some cutting-edge scientific work in areas like evolutionary developmental biology might have nicely illustrated the current state of work on the genetics behind biological changes, for professors using this as a textbook, adding a supplemental excerpt is not difficult.

The third part, entitled simply “Creationism”, is rather more problematic. The terms creationist and creationism, used on their own, are often misleading, since in and of themselves the terms simply affirm the belief that what exists depends on something greater than itself, without necessarily implying that the creator worked through causes other than natural processes to bring about the current state of the universe. Be that as it may, this section consists of only two readings. The first is simply the first two chapters of Genesis. On the one hand, it was a good choice to use the translation of the New Revised Standard Version, which neither presupposes that the creation described was a creation out of nothing (the Hebrew in Genesis 1:1 is ambiguous on this point), nor tries to cover up elements of a pre-scientific worldview such as the dome. On the other hand, just as the section that follows on intelligent design will highlight the problems with ID’s conclusions, here too it would have been useful to provide an example of scholarly treatment of these chapters. I regularly use an excerpt by Gordon J. Wenham, a British Evangelical who is a leading expert on Genesis and helpfully shows how the point of these stories, rather than relating directly to modern science, has to do instead with the understanding of the world held by many in the time the stories were written. Without this scholarly analysis, showing that the order of the days has more to do with parallelism than chronology, and that there seem to in fact be two creation stories in these chapters, it is that much harder to get young-earth creationists (the real focus of this part of the book) over the hurdles that keep them from accepting the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution. It might also have been useful to include here something written by a young-earth creationist author. In teaching my religion and science class this semester, I found that nothing was more effective in persuading students of the bankruptcy of the young-earth creationist approach than allowing them to read what they have to say, as well as the insightful scientific and theological analysis of their arguments by Ken Miller. But while additions such as those suggested might have improved the book, the historical overview of young-earth creationism by Ronald Numbers is very helpful. It shows that antievolutionism as it exists in the U.S. today is a relatively modern phenomenon, and certainly did not have anything like its present influence until the 20th century. Numbers’ chapter also helpfully highlights a problem that confronts all those interested in this topic, namely figuring out what the majority of Americans actually think. Many surveys ask questions that do not allow for sufficiently-nuanced answers. One wonders how many theistic evolutionists have answered a survey in a way that gave the impression they were young-earth creationists, because the other option gave the impression they were atheistic metaphysical naturalists. Asking the right questions, and leaving room for nuanced answers, is particularly important for those of us trying to stake out middle ground at any point between the extreme ends of the continuum. Numbers also provides illustration of the in-fighting between various types of creationists, as well as highlighting the importance the blaming of evolution for moral decay has as a motivating factor in the controversy. Attempts to settle the issue on the basis of scientific evidence alone are likely to have limited effect as long as the motivation for antievolutionism is not that scientific evidence, but something else altogether. Nevertheless, this chapter also gives cause for hope that the scientific evidence can indeed change minds (as the author himself can attest). The leaders of the young-earth creationist movement devoted much effort to establishing their own schools of “science”, because those who were sent to get degrees from ordinary universities regularly defected to other positions, compelled by the overwhelming scientific evidence.
Part four deals with intelligent design, and helpfully includes the most famous excerpt from William Paley’s writings, his argument for design. It is interesting to note the presupposition of the argument, which arises in the writings of Michael Behe (an excerpt of which is also found in this section). Finding a watch is compared to finding a stone, the latter of which could easily be imagined to have “lain there forever”. The historic viewpoint of Jews and Christians is, of course, that God made rocks and mountains, and not merely living things. The focus on living things, in all their complexity, is understandable, because (as Richard Dawkins writes in a later chapter) their complexity cries out for explanation. Nevertheless, the fact that the historic understanding of creation does not make this distinction is worth noting, as it shows that proponents of the design argument are out of step not merely with science but with their own religious traditions as well.

The chapter by Behe is one of his best, in the sense that it makes the case for intelligent design as well as it possibly can be made. This makes the response by Miller in the chapter that follows, which shows how much of the evidence Behe says would be needed to overturn his argument has actually been found, all the more effective. As Miller points out, if one simply took the (on the surface potentially plausible) arguments of Behe at face value, one might never check the scientific data, which does in fact contradict Behe’s claims. This, as Miller helpfully warns, “is the real scientific danger of his ideas” (p.163).

Part five presents proponents of a more sweeping naturalism than merely methodological naturalism, as well as some responses to them. The excerpts from Dawkins and Dennett are excellent samples not only of their viewpoint but of their delightful writing style. Dawkins (perhaps to the surprise of many readers) is extremely appreciative of William Paley’s design argument. It was the best one could do based on the evidence and understanding available in Paley’s time. The problem with Paley’s argument is not that it viewed biological complexity as crying out for explanation: it is simply that it got the explanation wrong. Without Darwin’s explanation of how complex organisms could evolve, there was no real viable alternative. Dawkins also offers an argument that completely knocks down intelligent design altogether. To argue from complex organisms that they must have an intelligent (and thus presumably complex) designer can only lead to an endless chain of designers or to a complex being whose existence is a mere brute fact – which of course, puts theism and atheism on a much more similar footing (p.185).

Dennett presents Darwinism as a “universal acid” that affects every area of human life and knowledge. On the one hand, Dennett makes a useful distinction between different kinds of naturalism, and some of the fears of reductionism that are quite plausibly labeled “unreasonable” (pp.211-213). On the other hand, Mary Midgley’s short piece helpfully points out that Darwin himself denied that natural selection is an all-encompassing explanation in biological change over time, much less in economics and other areas. Another (very short) excerpt from Ruse rounds off this section.

Part six is entitled “Evolutionary Theism” and presents a fairly diverse group of theologians united in their acceptance of the contemporary scientific understanding of evolution and their openness to incorporating the relevant scientific data into their theological reflections. Howard Van Till points out the irony of the position of both young-earth creationists and proponents of intelligent design, namely that both feel that claims that the universe has the potential to give rise to life and complexity undermine rather than uphold religious faith in God as creator. Such arguments assume that a deity who, to use an analogy from shooting pool, needs to pot each ball separately, is superior to, and more worthy of worship than, one who can pot them all in a single shot. Another irony is that both sides in the “creation vs. evolution” debates seem to agree on the dichotomy that either one has a natural explanation and God does not exist, or one does not have a natural explanation and there is room for supernatural activity. Neither acknowledges the long-standing theological viewpoint, which popular piety seems to equally allow for, namely that what is meant by “divine action” does not by definition have to be something that involves the inexplicable or even the extraordinary.

Arthur Peacocke’s piece nicely complicates the oversimplified view of Darwin’s theory and faith that many have, pointing out that there were many in the religious community who embraced evolution, just as many in the scientific community were exceedingly skeptical. Peacocke provides further historical and theological background illustrating Van Till’s point that natural explanations and divine action were not, historically, regarded as competing, alternative explanations.

Jürgen Moltmann’s contribution is important not only because he is a renowned theologian who is not exclusively or even primarily focused on matters of creation and evolution, but also because his work on the theology of creation (explored in a book-length treatment) is exciting and creative. For students without a background in theology, much that these theologians have to say may be new, but Moltmann certainly has a knack for creating excitement with innovative new (and rediscovered old) ideas that interact with and seek to do justice to key points in the Christian theological tradition. One important idea he draws upon is the Jewish Kabbalistic doctrine of creation known as zimzum. Since by this stage the idea of creation out of nothing had been accepted, the question then became, if God is omnipresent, how there can be any ‘nothing’ out of which for God to create. It is therefore suggested that God retracted the divine presence and created in this “God-forsaken space”. This is a powerful image of God leaving room for the universe, and for us as parts of it, to have our own independent existence and freedom. This is combined with the notion of kenosis from the Christian tradition, i.e. the idea that God emptied himself in the incarnation, taking a humble human form with all the implied limitations. If Jesus is, for Christians, the revelation of God, then this can be taken to reveal that God is self-limiting on a wider scale, including in creation. The result of this line of argument is a powerful formulation of a Christian doctrine of creation that is not only compatible with modern science, but moving and inspiring as well. The final piece in this section, by Elizabeth Johnson, not only complements the others by discussing concepts such as the soul, but also includes numerous important (and in some cases famous) quotations by others.

In beginning the seventh and final section of the book, I found myself puzzled by the editor’s decision to place an excerpt by John Haught here rather than in the previous section. Haught represents a Roman Catholic theological outlook very much in line with those offered in the preceding section – indeed, Haught draws heavily on Moltmann’s ideas in places, and is a panentheist just as is Arthur Peacocke. The other pieces in this section – by Sallie McFague, Ruth Page, and Gordon Kaufman – sit more comfortably under the rubric of “revisionists”. McFague explores the idea of the universe as God’s body, combining a number of already-existing models in innovative and creative ways. Page suggests that it is more appropriate to speak of God being with everything than in everything in what may perhaps be the least helpful excerpt in the collection, since Page seems to run together the idea of everything existing in God (panentheism) with the idea that God is in everything (see e.g. pp357-358). Finally, Kaufman suggests that it is more appropriate to think of God as creativity rather than creator in the context of our current state of scientific knowledge. While creator is too anthropomorphic, creativity need not be understood to imply that God is merely an impersonal force. The creativity at work in the universe is mysterious, and thus points towards a transcendent creativity that is mysterious and not reducible in any obvious sense to either personal or impersonal imagery.

On the whole, this is a useful reader. In any reader on the subject, one could debate the choice of which items to include. Although some example of a non-Western perspective might have made the diversity of the book richer still, for most American readers with some background in or contact with conservative Christianity of an anti-evolutionary sort, this book will provide useful information that will enable them to understand what is at stake and navigate the current debates in a more well-informed manner.

Uncommon Plagiarism?

I just noticed something ironic. I read most blogs in a feed aggregator, and the feed from Uncommon Descent adds the following to each post:

_____________________________________________________________________

Copyright © 2007 Uncommon Descent. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@www.uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.

_____________________________________________________________________

In view of the recent discussions about Bill Dembski's use of animation made by someone else, without giving credit to its source, isn't it seriously ironic for them to threaten legal action against those who reproduce their posts in a form that presumably at least gives credit whether credit is due?

Around the Blogosphere

Here are some snippets from around the blogosphere...

At Thoughts In A Haystack, John Pieret suggests that the Discovery Institute is yet again acting in a way that belies what it publicly denies, namely that Intelligent Design is religious in nature. There is also a post about the Guillermo Gonzalez tenure case on Further Thoughts. The Austringer suggests that the Discovery Institute's new help belongs in the "with friends like these" category.

Genomicron shares that the full text of a recent book on evolution (Evolution: Education and Outreach) is available online (hat tip: Pharyngula). Also, an article in Discover apparently makes progress on a big question some of us have: if evolution is true, why am I not more handsome?

Tim Jones at remote central has a post about a forthcoming paper by Lawrence Krauss and James Dent that discusses the implications of dark energy for the fate of the universe. Some had apparently understood him to be claiming that observing the universe not only collapses the wave function in the quantum realm, but may actually shorten its lifespan. He denies this, and says that the forthcoming paper is simply about the implications of what has been observed, and not a causal effect of observation. In other astronomy news, a star cluster has been observed moving through the galaxy at inexplicably fast speed, according to an article in NewScientist.

The Lead tells about a letter from Muslim scholars to Christians and a letter written by Christian scholars in reply. ThinkChristian shares a link to a provocative photo comparison of what people in different societies spend on food, and eat, each week.

The Bad Idea Blog responds to A Guy In The Pew about the 'war on Christmas'. Apparently there is war over the war on Christmas. I will not comment, lest I start a war about the war over the war on Christmas. Millinerd shares an excerpt from The New Republic on egotism in religion and atheism. There is also apparently a First Church of Atheism. Notes From Off Center has a discussion of faith and atheism/naturalism.

Peter J. Leithart has several posts about Hegel's understanding of the Trinity. On Faith has a number of posts on religion in relation to our society's obsession with sex. And of course, USA Today had a piece recently on religious blogging.

Sects in the City

A colleague of mine has been having his students develop a web site, called "Sects in the City", about the various religious communities around Indianapolis. The project was undertaken with support from the Butler University's Center for Faith and Vocation.

I've long tried to use computing and the internet in teaching, and in particular getting students to produce work that can be made available on the internet. The quality varies, of course, but students sometimes take their work more seriously if they think that it will be 'published' and potentially read by a wider audience. I started when I taught in Romania back in the late 90s, because there were so few good academic resources for Biblical studies available in Romanian. So I got students to make some translations. One funny story from the experience was having a student do what was otherwise an excellent translation, but she stumbled at the phrase "pan-Gnostic theory", not recognizing that 'pan' was a Greek rather than English word. The resulting Romanian phrase was essentially 'the frying pan Gnostic theory' (teoria gnosticului tigaie)!

In a class on Paul and the Early Church (which I'll be teaching again in the Fall) I had students submit commentaries on passages, thus making a fuller web-based commentary as a collaborative effort. More recently I was able to use WikiBooks for this purpose in a class on the Gospel of John, getting students to create and edit an open-source commentary on the Gospel of John. In addition to getting feedback from one another through the editing process, this gave the students greater insight into what a Wiki source is, which is important in and of itself in our time, when students turn to places like Wikipedia first when in search of information for their assignments.

Felix Just has long had student work posted as part of his excellent web site on the Gospel of John. More recently I also saw my friend Ken Schenck mention that he is using blogs in some of his classes.

For an amusing illustration of the potential for a Wikipedia entry to not have a neutral point of view, click here.

I'd welcome comments on the effectiveness of these tools in teaching, whether the things that are posted prove useful for subsequent generations of students, and creative ideas for use of web-based resources in education.

Evolution Weekend 2008

8 - 10 February 2008 -- Evolution Weekend

Evolution Weekend is an opportunity for serious discussion and reflection on the relationship between religion and science. One important goal is to elevate the quality of the discussion on this critical topic - to move beyond soundbytes. A second critical goal is to demonstrate that religious people from many faiths and locations understand that evolution is sound science and poses no problems for their faith. Finally, as with The Clergy Letter itself, which has now been signed by more than 11,000 members of the Christian clergy in the United States, Evolution Weekend makes it clear that those claiming that people must choose between religion and science are creating a false dichotomy.

Through sermons, discussion groups, meaningful conversations and seminars, the leaders listed below will show that religion and science are not adversaries.

If your congregation would like to join this international event in 2008, please send a note to mz@butler.edu. We welcome your participation.

To examine some of the sermons that members of The Clergy Letter Project have delivered on this topic and to view some of the resources they have found useful, click here.

More information at http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/rel_evolution_weekend_2008.htm

I'd also like to propose that bloggers who regularly write about religion (and perhaps even those that do not) devote a post to the subject that weekend.

Quote of the Day (John Macquarrie)

"When we hear the words ascribed to Jesus in John's Gospel, 'I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me', we do not hear them in a narrowly exclusive way. In John's gospel, let us remember, the words of Jesus are the words of the Logos, not just of the individual human being, Jesus of Nazareth. That Word or Logos enlightens every one who comes into the world. Those of us who are Christians believe that we have heard it loud and clear in Jesus Christ and that we need not look beyond him. But we do not deny that the Word finds expression in other traditions, and, indeed, in the whole creation" (Jesus Christ in Modern Thought (London: SCM, 1990) p. 422).

I wanted to share a quote of this sort because we discussed this aspect of the Gospel of John in my Sunday school class this past weekend. The above quote from Macquarrie follows soon after a proposal to expand the list of those with faith in Hebrews 11 to include the following (pp.421-422):

By faith Mohammed, when he saw the people of Mecca degraded by idolatries, brought them the message of the one invisible God who is righteous and merciful.
By faith Gautama Buddha, when he had perceived the damage done to human life by undisciplined desires, taught the multitudes of Asia to restrain desire and learn compassion for one another.
By faith Krishna brought the presence of the high God among the hosts so that they might know God cares for them.
By faith Confucius, living among the warring states of China, had a new vision of the blessings of rationality and sought to build up human relationships in accordance with the will of heaven...
And what more shall I say? For the time would not be sufficient to tell of Gideon and of Barak, of Zoroaster and of Lao-tzu and of Nanak, who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, quelled agressors.

If I had to put a label on my own viewpoint, it would have to be 'inclusivist' rather than pluralist or exclusivist, simply because I evaluate other traditions and other worldviews from the perspective of my own, and I cannot do otherwise, and so I do not have a neutral framework from which to declare them all equal or to declare all others inadequate. Nevertheless, I do hope that I am willing to allow my encounter with other perspectives to challenge and broaden my own worldview. And approaching other religious traditions from the perspective of my Christian faith, I find much in them that I can appreciate, value and learn from.

How To Spot A Scam: Fondation de France

I continue to have visitors reach my blog because they have been contacted by Sterling Who's Who and invited to sign up with them. I am sure one reason my complaint was resolved so quickly was the fact that my blog features so prominently on search engines, and thus the post on my blog was being found by many of the company's would-be customers.

Let me, as a public service of sorts, share another e-mail I just received, purporting to be from an organization called FOUNDATION DE FRANCE.

THE FOUNDATION DE FRANCE(FDF)
http://www.fdf.org

The Fondation De France(FDF) would like to
notify you that you have been chosen by the
board of trustees as one of the final recipients
of a cash Grant/Donation for your own personal,
educational, and business development.

The FDF, established 1977 by the Multi-Million
groups and now supported by the Economic
Community for West African States (ECOWAS),
United Nations Organization (UNO) and the
European Union (EU) was conceived with the
objective of human growth, educational, and
community development.

In conjunction with the ECOWAS, UNO and the
EU, We are giving out a yearly donation of
US$1,350,000.00 (One Million, Three Hundred
And Fifty Thousand United States Dollars)each
to 100 lucky recipients.These specific
Donations/Grants will be awarded to 100 lucky
international recipients worldwide; in different
categories for their personal business
development and enhancement of their
educational plans. This is a yearly program,
which is a measure of universal development
strategy.

You are required to contact the Executive Secretary
below, for qualification documentation
and processing of your claims. After contacting
our office,you will be given your donation pin
number, which you will use in collecting the
funds. Please endeavor to quote your
Qualification numbers (FDF-444-6647-9163)in
all discussions. You are also required to contact
the executive sec.with the following requirements

DONATION REQURIEMENTS:

1. Full names:
2. Residential
address:
3. Phone number:
4. Fax number:
5. Occupation:
6. Sex:
7. Age:
8. Nationality:
9. Present Country:
10.Next of kin
name/address

Executive Sec. Mr.Desmond Richards.
Email: desmondrichard101@hotmail.com

You are by all means hereby advised to keep
this whole information confidential until you
have been able to collect your donation, as
there have been many cases of double and
unqualified claim, due to beneficiaries informing
third parties about his/her donation.

Regards.
Maria Riccardo
(Foundation officer)

What are the clear signs that this is a phishing scheme? First, the person who is supposedly the director has a Hotmail address - a sure sign in and of itself. Second, if you go to the organization's web page and are fortunate enough to know French, they in fact warn about fraudulent e-mails circulating in their name. Third, the English spelling of 'foundation' is used at several points in the e-mail, instead of the French one. Fourth, no one will e-mail you out of the blue to give you money, much less a large sum of money. Fifth, there is the statement that you should not tell anyone about this until you've sent in your information.

This is a scam, and I'm posting this in the hope that people who might fall for it will do a search first and find this. Hopefully this one is obvious enough that only the ridiculously gullible will fall for it - and if they read this, perhaps not even them.

Theology, Ethics and Fully Functional Androids

Today was the day this semester for the students in my religion and science class to engage in speculation about the future of technology. They are asked to discuss in small groups whether a husband who has a "fully functional" female android hidden away in his closet can sue for divorce on grounds of adultery. I address this topic in a forthcoming chapter entitled "Robots, Rights and Religion", which I circulated to them prior to class. What do you think?

One student rightly pointed out that, if the android can't get pregnant, then it isn't fully functional. The Cylons on the new Battlestar Galactica series seem much more fully functional in this regard. The Daily Galaxy recently featured a post on the theology of Battlestar Galactica, and SF Gospel offers a helpful further reflection on the subject. While such situations are far off, science fiction slowly but surely is turning into science fact, as evidenced by a recent article on how monkey brains have been able to be connected to robot legs.

Also in the realm of science fiction meets science fact, astronomers have found the largest ever 'hole' in the universe, a huge void that some physicists think could be evidence of the existence of another, parallel universe. Loop quantum gravity, one area of cutting-edge research in physics, predicts that black holes will issue out into another universe (as some early researchers on the phenomenon in fact speculated).

There is now a blog devoted to Doctor Who, entitled A Journal Of Impossible Things.

Leaps of Faith in Science and Religion

Is treating existence as meaningful a 'leap of faith'? Is our experience of meaning sufficient to make it something other than a blind leap in the dark?

Is treating existence and meaningless, a brute inexplicable fact, also a leap of faith? Is the experience of tragedy and chance enough to justify it? Do such experiences make it any more reasonable a leap than those that people with a religious outlook take in the opposite direction?

Paul Davies wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times recently entitled "Taking Science on Faith". His main point is that science proceeds on the basis of "faith" that the universe is rational. I'm actually not sure I agree. Einstein assumed the universe would be rational and opposed quantum mechanics on that basis. There is something that is at least arational about having something be inconceivable, with the best we can come up with being "sometimes it behaves like a wave, and sometimes like a particle." Of course, if quantum mechanics ends up being incorporated into a larger framework that explains its oddities as having to do with our perception and measurement, then science may once again point to a universe that is rational and logical. But it will point to it rather than assume it. Science, it seems to me, points to a universe that is mathematical and intelligible (if not always subject to analogy and conceptualization). And perhaps it is the case, as Goedel's theorem suggests, that our mathematical universe is inevitably 'incomplete' and thus points beyond itself. And if we are to avoid an endless regress, then we must situate it within another sort of reality. But even if we could make such a case, the larger framework, the transcendent reality, will be the ineffable one of the mystics rather than the anthropomorphic one of popular piety.

Davies' piece is discussed in many places around the blogosphere and the web in general: Evolving Thoughts, Uncertain Principles, Edge.org, Cosmic Variance, Pharyngula, The Bad Idea Blog, Adventures in Ethics and Science, The Reference Frame, Ontogeny, A Guy In The Pew... OK, so maybe I won't list them all. But the amount of discussion that has been generated indicates not only that this is an interesting and important subject, but that many scientists find Davies' argument not merely unpersuasive but uncomfortable. I can understand why they feel that way, and as I have said above, I'm not sure whether I agree with the exact way Davies has formulated his point. He could well be wrong - he is, after all, a physicist (and physicists are sometimes wrong) and a human being (and human beings are sometimes wrong), and he is branching off into philosophy of science. But what he has written has people talking, and thinking, and that cannot be a bad thing. Even if science does not have faith in a rational universe, it certainly presupposes that a universe exists, and that something rather than nothing exists is itself an awe-inspiring mystery, one that regularly leads cosmologists to use the term historically applied to the ultimate mystery, i.e. God.

Either Tim LaHaye or the Antichrist is an Idiot: You Decide

Experimental Theology (hat tip: Find and You shall Seek) has an entertaining but also thought provoking post, asking why dispensational premillenialists assume that the antichrist will be someone who never reads the Book of Revelation (or the Left Behind books).

Excerpts from a 23rd-Century Bible Translation (and a 20th-century poem)

My friend with the time machine has brought me back another gem, this time a 23rd century translation of the Bible. I was going to post the whole dynamic-equivalent translation of the Sermon on the Mount (in an approximation in modern English), but decided to just share a few highlights instead:

• Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the galaxy.
• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall have it replicated unto them in abundance.
• If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, and the other, and the other - as many as your species may have.
• If a Klingon compells you to go with him one parsec, go with him two.
• Whoever hears my words and puts them into practice is like a wise species that built its civilization near the galactic perimeter...

On a more serious note, I hope to discuss with my religion and science class next week what the possible implications might be for terrestrial religions if we made contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. One possible response is found in this early 20th-century poem:

CHRIST IN THE UNIVERSE
by: Alice Meynell (1847-1922)

WITH this ambiguous earth
His dealings have been told us. These abide:
The signal to a maid, the human birth,
The lesson, and the young Man crucified.

But not a star of all
The innumerable host of stars has heard
How He administered this terrestrial ball.
Our race have kept their Lord’s entrusted Word.

Of His earth-visiting feet
None knows the secret, cherished, perilous,
The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet,
Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.

No planet knows that this
Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,
Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,
Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.

Nor, in our little day,
May His devices with the heavens be guessed,
His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way
Or His bestowals there be manifest.

But in the eternities,
Doubtless we shall compare together, hear
A million alien Gospels, in what guise
He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.

O, be prepared, my soul!
To read the inconceivable, to scan
The myriad forms of God those stars unroll
When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.

Quotes of the Day (Arthur Peacocke and Howard J. Van Till)

"The processes revealed by the sciences, especially evolutionary biology, are in themselves God-acting-as-creator. There is no need to look for God as some kind of additional factor supplementing the processes of the world. God, to use language usually applied in sacramental theology, is "in, with, and under" all-that-is and all-that-goes-on" (Arthur Peacocke, "Biological Evolution - A Postivie Theological Appraisal", reprinted in God and Evolution: A Reader, ed. Mary Kathleen Cunningham (New York: Routledge, 2007) p.254).

Howard J. Van Till (in "The Creation: Intelligently Designed or Optimally Equipped?" reprinted in the same volume) writes: "The kind of divine action we pray for is discernable only by those who have eyes (of faith) to see it. The natural sciences have no instruments with which to measure the level of effectiveness of God's blessings" (p.247). Throughout this helpful study he notes the irony of Christians presuming that the inability of that which has been created to organize itself in remarkable ways into material, living and ultimately intelligent things, is assumes to point to a creator more than evidence that matter has such a potential in itself. He asks "Has our concept of divine creative action been unduly affected by the "special effects" industry? Perhaps so" (p.248).

Discount Q Puns

Since my current research is not on Q, I thought that perhaps others for whom this is more their area of expertise might like to make use of some of the following puns (which I will gladly part with to the highest bidder) in posting on this subject:

• J'aQQQQQQ...Mark Goodacre
• A Qmulative Case for a Hypothetical Sayings Source
• Qrious Arguments for Luke's Use of Matthew
• Source Criticism in Hebrew Bible and New Testament Scholarship: Minding Our Ps and Qs
• Cute Thomas Parallels
• Qpid's Arrow: Reconciling Opposing Solutions To The Synoptic Problem
• Q-dos to Recent Spanish Scholarship on Q2
• Drinking the Q-lade: Self-Destructive Tendencies in Anti-Q Scholarship
• Thinking Outside the Qb: Innovative Solutions to the Synoptic Problem
• I'll Be Seeing Q
• oQpational Hazards in Synoptic Scholarship
• Q Nay If Form Criticism Yea?
• Thank Q For The Music: On Hypothetical Sources and Oral Epic Folksong Traditions
• Seek and Q Will Find
• You Missed Your Q
• Q Gotta Be Kidding
• Smoking Q Bans in Michael Goulder's Scholarship
• Conned Q Binds in Austin Farrer's Publications

There are also ones available for those working on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Did you hear the one about the recently discovered text, 10QVeryMuch, and its hypothetical precursor, Ur-Welcome?

I don't have any puns available for scholars working on the texts from cave 4, since I refuse to engage in profanity simply to get a few laughs.

A Q Puncture?

Is there any evidence for Q that could puncture "the case against Q" which seems watertight to its proponents? Perhaps the Lord's Prayer will answer the prayers of Q supporters everywhere.

The Matthean version of the prayer is better known and longer. It is easy to envisage the author of Matthew adding these comments as clarifications. It is much harder to imagine the author of Luke removing them. Why shorten a reference to our Father in heaven to simply 'Father'? Why remove the reference to God's will being done? The latter makes sense, on the other hand, as an addition that explains what it means for God's kingdom to come - i.e. when one prays for the kingdom to come, one is praying for God's will to be done on earth the way it is in heaven.

Moreover, these are just the sorts of explanatory glosses that we find Matthew adding at times to Mark's material. For instance, where Mark (in chapter 13) speaks of the 'desolating sacrilege' standing where it ought not to be, Matthew clarifies things for the reader: the 'desolating sacrilege' is something that Daniel wrote about, and the place it ought not be is the Holy Place, i.e. the Temple. Let the reader understand.

Such evidence seems to tell strongly against Luke having used Matthew, and that is the most common viewpoint among Q skeptics.

Does the case against Q have a flat tire - or as they say in Britain, a puncture?

The Jesus Seminar and Civil Disobedience

I mentioned once before that I was surprised to find myself doubting the authenticity of a saying which the Jesus Seminar voted RED. I had always viewed their results as a fairly skeptical bare minimum.

The issue relates to some material that is in both Matthew and Luke (and thus attributed by most scholars to the 'Q' source). Matthew's version, included in the Sermon on the Mount, is for that reason more famous. In fact, this part of Matthew's Gospel has contributed two sayings to everyday English usage: 'turn the other cheek' and 'go the extra mile'.

The version in Matthew's Gospel includes additional details that allow the whole section to be interpreted as instructions for engaging in 'passive resistance' (it is not active civil disobedience in the strict sense). Matthew's additional details (the right cheek, the law court) indicate a power distance that is not explicit in Luke.

Matthew also adds a third bit of teaching along the same lines, not found in Luke: when a Roman soldier compels you to go one mile (as they were allowed to do to non-citizens under Roman law), you should go two.

In each case, the person without power has an opportunity to reclaim a measure of dignity or control, or to make a point and challenge the injustice, rather than merely being passive or resorting to violence. The person being slapped humiliatingly with a backhanded slap can turn the left cheek and ask to be struck the way one strikes an equal. The person having his next to last piece of clothing away can offer the very last and through his nakedness shame the one to whom he is indebted. When the person carrying the soldier's equipment passes the mile marker, he becomes a willing helper, a benefactor even, rather than someone under compulsion.

If such an interpretation were possible in only two of the cases Matthew depicts, I would have doubts. Its presence in all three suggests it is intentional on the part of either Matthew or his source.

The next question is whether Matthew's or Luke's version is the closest to what Jesus actually taught. Neither is intrinsically more probable - it is just as likely that Luke 'toned down' this controversial teaching as that Matthew added it. Indeed, the former might seem more likely, and a similar change could have occurred in the transmission of the teaching by someone who didn't grasp the significance of the subtle message of these instructions.

Vishal Mangalwadi (in his book Trust and Social Reform, Hodder & Stoughton, 1989, pp.3-5) interprets Jesus' acts of healing on the Sabbath and touching the unclean as acts of 'civil disobedience'. The power establishment is shown by his actions to be more interested in ensuring Sabbath observance than in the individuals who for years, perhaps decade, have sat neglected and in need by the roadside.

The question I have is whether it is more likely that Matthew's unique element, the part about 'going the extra mile', is his own contribution, or whether Luke has omitted it together with other details Matthew includes. Two things make the former somewhat more likely, in spite of the Jesus Seminar's judgment to the contrary. One is the fact that Matthew regularly expands on and adds explanatory comments to the 'Q' material as well as in his use of Mark (just compare the beatitudes, the Lord's prayer, or the saying about the 'desolating sacrilige', for instance). The other is the fact that Galilee was not under direct Roman rule in Jesus' time, and so it is appropriate to wonder whether he would have offered teaching specific to that context.

What do you think? Does civil disobedience as a way of changing the world owe its greatest debt to Jesus, or to the creative adaptation of Jesus' teaching by the author of Matthew's Gospel.

Welcome, Richard M! (Guest Post)

I'd like to welcome Richard M to the blog - and since he commented extensively on a discussion on the Debunking Christianity blog about something I wrote, and does not have his own blog, I am offering today's "guest post" which compiles some of his recent comments. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have, and that perhaps the ensuing discussions will, if not persuade Richard to have a blog of his own, or to begin writing in some other more widely published format, at least to offer a regular guest post on this and/or other blogs.

Now over to Richard. Keep in mind that what follows is a compilation of comments, and thus Richard is often responding to other commenters and is participating in a multi-person conversation. Anyone who has tried making sense of Paul's letters will know, without the other side of the conversation, what was presumably originally clear and focused can seem less so. I hope this collection will encourage readers to investigate those conversations and appreciate Richard's comments even more...

Hi, James. Im new here, though we crossed paths briefly a week or two ago on another blog. I was intrigued by what you wrote there and thought I'd check out your own blog out. Glad I did!

Full disclosure: stictly speaking, I'm an atheist, though "religious naturalist" is the term I currently prefer, meaning that although I dont believe in any God understood as anything other than a projection of human ideals, I nonetheless often find "God-talk" (some of it, anyway) meaningful and, for me, often salutary. IN other words, talking about God as Tillich or Buber might is, for me, an evocative way of talking about many things I consider important.

Anyway, I was interested in your post here because I have often had similar thoughts. Religion, I think, when it works, works by doing a lot of this: sensitizing us to what we have, to the good and beauty that is always there, somewhere -- into what Jewish theologian Eugene Borowitz calls the "piety of the ordinary." We are creatures of habit and are easily acclimated to our environs. Religion -- done right! -- can function to combat this tendency. By calling our attention to what we have, and to what many in the world lack, we can hopefully step off the treadmill for a minute and smell some roses (to mix and then puree a few metaphors). This sort of awareness requires discipline, and deliberate decisions, and religion is a discourse that can encompass both of these things.

And what I like about this idea -- this approach to thankfulness -- is that it does not even require one to believe in God. I have only a cursory familiarity with Bonhoeffer, but I have come across this idea in another context. Everybody's favorite legend from the Talmud runs something like this (this is the Cliff Notes version): several rabbis were debating about a point of law. Disputes were supposed to be settled by majority rule, but Rabbi Eliezer wasn't backing down. In quick succession he called upon a carob tree, a river, and the walls of the building to declare him correct, and indeed the carob tree uprooted itself, the river reversed course, and the walls bent. But the other rabbis refused to yield. Finally in desparation R. Eliezer called down God himself to intervene -- and God did. But the other rabbis simply retorted that by God's own rules, the rabbis were given jurisdiction to decide, not God, and His testimony was summarily dismissed. So Eliezer lost.

Sometime later, another rabbi is in heaven and, wide-eyed, asks Elijah what God's reaction had been. Elijah said, "He laughed with joy, saying 'My children have defeated me! My children have defeated me!'"

I love this story. It gives me chills every time I read it. And the message is clear, and exactly what we would expect, really, if we took the metaphor of God the Father seriously. What do we as human fathers wish for our children? Do we want them to do the right thing because they are told to, and have to be continually told to, all their lives? Or do we want them to think for themselves, internalize their ethics, and do the right thing because it is the right thing? Ethical maturity means, I do think, as you put it: live before God as though God were not there.

Theodicy is still a sticking point with me. But the pragmatic critique moves me past it. What difference does it make whether the gratitude and joie de vivre that I feel for my family and my life and all the good in the world, comes from an awareness of a transcendent being, or an awareness of the intrinsic preciousness of those things?

None. Don Cupitt wrote that life is a Gift without a Giver. Just so! Or maybe not. Who can tell? But the proper response is still the thank-you note of a life well-lived and a world made better.

. . .

I think Dr. McGrath offers a fine reason for why he is a Christian, much better than we usually hear. In fact, maybe the only honest one. Let me say where I'm coming from: I am an atheist, but one with sympathy for liberal religion. So I will offer here a limited defense of liberal religion’s right to be.

I think the problem with the view of many less-sympathetic atheists is that it suffers from a “positivist bias.” I.e., their criticism rests on the assumption that religion must be about metaphysical and historical propositions that are either literally true or false – or else nothing. Since the conclusion is that the claims are false, the religion is dismissed or declared vapid.

But I think that gives away much too much to the fundamentalists; it lets them define the rules of the game. For those are the same questions that they are interested in, they just reach different conclusions. Someone said to me once that they thought Bart Ehrman (whom I love) was a fundamentalist atheist. We’ve all heard this sort of thing before, and it’s a stupid criticism --- *but* it does correctly suggest a similarity of focus. I.e., he is still addressing the historical claims of Christianity.

But my view is that liberal religionists are asking different questions. They are much less concerned with whether it is true or false and much more concerned with what it means, and how it gets you to live your life and be a better person. Liberal religion is not committed to the historicity of Jesus’ alleged resurrection. It’s the ideas embodied in that myth that matter. Liberal Jews could care less whether there was an actual Exodus. Its what the story has come to mean to them. I.e., its about freedom and self-determination and all that. What we need to do is ask the liberals themselves why they do not give up the label?

The reason is usually because they relate passionately to the symbol-system, ideals, images, rituals, etc that comprise their religion. It’s a mistake to consider ourselves, implicitly, as many secularists do and I myself tend to do, to be somehow abstract, disembodied rational agents. That’s a holdover from Enlightenment and its not really true. We are emotional human beings in a specific context and historical place, which has shaped us and the things we relate to. Yes, a lot of its arbitrary. But so what? Logically, rationally, I know that there is nothing about my family that is superior or better than any other. But do I really need a reason to prefer my family to others? Is it not enough to love it best just because its mine? Yes, its an accident of fate that I was born there and somewhere else. If I were in another family I would love it best. But that does not change the flesh-and-blood reality that *this*, and not somewhere else, is where I was born, and *these*, and not others, are the symbols that relate me to my ideals. Why do I need any better reason?

Because the truth-claims of Christianity are literally false, says the critic. But, again, so what? Liberal religion is not tied to prepositional claims. Its about what it means to you. So doesn’t that mean you could find equal guidance and inspiration in any number of religions? Well, theologically, yes, but again, at issue is what symbol-system moves you. I could experience the ideal of trying to improve myself ethically through the example of Christ (as depicted in the myths), if I am a Christian, or through Yom Kippur, if I am a Jew. Many have observed that liberal religions have more in common with each other than they do with the conservative members of their own faith. But that does not erase the meaning that my religion has for me, because of accidents of history.

For those interested in this idea I would recommend a book by Eugene Borowitz called Renewing the Covenant. Borowitz is the leading theologian for liberal/reform Judaism. He offers a good analysis of this sort of “embeddedment” and what it means for the symbol systems you relate to. He believes in a liberal God, but there is no reason someone who does not (such as a Reconstructionist Jew) could not also use the very same approach. His book constitutes what he calls a “postmodern” interpretation. Actually, there's very little thats postmodern about it (thank god; I have little use for po-mo anything) other than the emphasis on the historically situated self. I.e., the enlightnment ideal of the “universal” rational agent is, really, a myth itself. We do not experience the “view from nowhere”. Our human/emotional/symbol-responding selves are inevitably situated in our context in the world, which are accidents of course – but, the message is, that’s okay.

I fear I am beginning to ramble, so let me end with an example. I assume many readers here celebrate Thanksgiving (at least the US readers). Well, imagine for the sake of argument that some intrepid young scholar were to prove, to everyone’s satisfaction, that the Mayflower never existed. There were no pilgrims, and hence no first thanksgiving. He came explain how the holiday emerged -- say, gradually over the 19th century from harvest festivals -- but all the actual legends are false.

My question is: would that change anything? Does our celebration of this holiday depend in any way on the history? Does it not depend, rather, on our own individual involvement with it, our experiences with it growing up, the memories, the food, etc, as well as the collective meaning it has for our culture?

Let me push this analogy a bit further: many families celebrate this holiday by talking about what they are thankful for. Analogous, perhaps, if you will, to a bit of “theology”, the meaning of the holiday, apart from the rituals. Some larger meaning that has to do with our-relationship-to-the-world-and-our-life. Of course, in part we read this meaning into the holiday, obviously. We generally feel that it is good to be appreciative for what you have. So we fit it into this holiday. My question is: does that invalidate its meaning? Does the fact that we could create such a holiday, with the same meaning, in any culture somehow suggest its disingenuous to celebrate it?

I think Dr McGrath has the best reason to be a Christian anyone can produce. Of course, its not a reason that has much persuasive power to someone not already inclined to respond to Christians symbols and ideals – but that’s not what its about, I suspect. I imagine he would feel little compulsion to try to convert a liberal Jew or Hindu or secularist.

. . .


Joseph Campbell said somewhere that fundamentalists say religious stories are the truth, atheists say they are a lie, and liberals say they are metaphor. I'm probably paraphrasing rather loosely, but you get the drift.

Woundedego, when you mentioned mining the Bible as one would Shakespeare, that is precisely what I had in mind. I think that is indeed how most liberals approach it. Imagine a family of people who really love Shakespeare whose family tradition is to gather round and read Hamlet on, whatever, Denmark's independence day.

Seen in that light, griping because Hamlet isnt factually correct rather misses the point. Protesting that you cant cherry pick Hamlet to elevate some lines for their potential wisdom ("to thine own self be true") is also misplaced criticism. Why couldn't you so cherry-pick? Hamlet is not intended to be factually correct and inerrant, whole cloth. Its intended -- well, to do a lot of things, but not impart history. Show us our nobility, show us our foibles, entertain us, make us think. And if Hamlet moves them more than, say, Hemmingway, then what's the objection?

I am not saying that "ultimate truth" is not possible [though I should mention that the best philosophical thinking about science does not consider science to be "ultimate truth", either -- theories are understood to be tools, handles on the world. And I should also point out that it is unseemly to be so indiscriminate in your criticism of all religion, one the one hand, and then import their dualistic terminology.] Anyway, what I am saying (re: liberalism) is not that truth is possible, nor that truth is not possible. I am saying liberals are not talking about truth, they are talking about meaing and value.

The reason I defend liberal religionists here is that I think they are far and away more like us than not, and that positivist bias I mentioned above sometimes seems to make that hard to see. They share, I believe, the secular/humanist/atheist's basic value orientation, which is essentially enlightnement values -- i.e., the centrality and universality of reason, rejection of authority qua authority, individual autonomy, etc. And this makes all the difference.

At the risk of turning this discussion political (I find the theological much more interesting!), this is my main objection with the views if folks like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. Much as I respect them otherwise, I think they err grievously when they lump liberal religionists with conservative ones. Atheists and secular humanists will find no better friends in the world than reform Jews, Unitarians, and the like -- they will be the ones who join atheists to vote for atheist candidates, push to keep ID out of schools, promote critical thinking and science education, support liberal social causes, welcome Hindu prayers in congress, support physician-assisted suicide, support same-sex marriage, ban coercive prayer from public schools, and jump at the chance to send Pat Robertson a one-way ticket to Sheol.

If I were a liberal Christian, I would say something like this: "Maybe Jesus didn't think he was the messiah, and maybe there is no God, and there are no miracles. So what? I still find the stories in the Bible salutary and inspiring and thought-provoking. I find the concept of imago Dei, ennobling, even (perhaps especially) if God is just the projection of human ideals. Adam and Eve are a wonderful myth about the way all humans are of a family. The stories, rituals, and community make my life richer and inspire me to make the world better."

. . .

McGrath is certainly correct in noting that religion has always seen its terms and ideas evolve. Surely we, as atheists, aware of religious history, know this as well as anyone. Mordecai Kaplan, whom I mentioned in another post, was a Jewish theologian who developed a "theology" with no supernatural elements whatsoever. He gave explicit definitions of what he meant by things like God. But he also noted that religious ideas had always evolved, usually over many years and therefore unconsciously in the community. I.e., it is the most natural thing in the world. He called that process “transvaluation”. He proposed that for modern religionists, who find their religion valuable but cannot accept orthodoxy, this is no longer possible, mainly because they are aware of the process. So he suggested the term “revaluation” -- the conscious altering of meanings and definitions to "reconstruct" the religion. This is what folks like McGrath are doing -- doing consciously what has always happened unconsciously.

This is obviously not everyone’s cup of tea. Some will see the better path to simply abandon institutional religion altogether. This is perfectly fine. It just doesn’t feel adequate for everyone. I think atheists, as believers in religious tolerance, have it incumbent upon them make their own internal peace with whatever negative assessment he or she might have of religion in general, and make common cause with liberals, because it is the fundies who are the real danger.

. . .

When I deconverted from fundyism to liberal Christianity, on my way to atheism, my family (who remains evangelical) denies that that is Christianity. This caused me no end of consternation, so I had to think it through. Here’s what I came up with.

Wittgenstein exhorted us to abandon the search for a essential meaning of the words we use, “out there” as it were, a la Platonism. His example: there is no single definition of the word “game” that encompasses all and only instantiations of what we consider to be games. No single set of criteria unites football, chess, tag, World of Warcraft, peek-a-boo, military wargames, and solitaire. His point: look to the use, not the meaning. Our language is not a mirror of nature, it is a tool for accessing nature. Games are not “carved-out” by nature, they are carved out by our use of the word “game.” In his terms, they share a family resemblance, not an inner essence.

The implications here for Christianity are obvious. Even more so since, as we atheists believe, there is no God for it to be in the mind of. Therefore, there is only this Christianity, and that Christianity, not “Christianity” in the abstract. There is no “Form of the Christian.”

To borrow from relativity: just as you don’t mean anything by terms like simultaneity unless you specify a reference frame, so too in religious identification you don’t mean anything unless you specify a reference group.

Who is a Christian? Doesn’t the answer have to depend on who you ask? Church of Christers don’t think Catholics are Christian. Catholics return the favor. Neither of them think John Spong would be a Christian. They all disagree about the definition. But how could we ever resolve this definitional dispute? I could give you my opinion, and rock-out argument… thereby join my voice to the dispute, not settle it. It is obvious that there is no higher authority to appeal to, no empirical test to run, to settle the question as to which definition is “correct.”

So, since you cant get to the “bottom”, because there is no bottom, you must specify a reference group when asking who is a Christian. There is no bigger or better or more solid answer than that. Is McGrath a Christian? According to who? To Baptists, probably not. To the early “Christians”, no, probably not. To his own congregation? Most surely.

It doesn’t get any better than that. So if you have a reference group that claims you, and you self-identify as a Christian, then you are a Christian.

At least, according to me.

. . .

..."Christian" is not a Form in the mind of God. It is not a "natural kind", like the periodic table, wherein nature itself tells us where the joints are. Its a human designation and you thus will always have to specify a reference class. Deviation from majority use certainly makes this even more important, but it does not make it invalid.

. . .

I would please be careful with the analogy of schizophrenia, which is a distinct clinical condition which is the result of specific neurochemical abnormalities in the brain. Believers do not have these abnormalities. They may be wrong in what they believe, but they are not clinically psychotic. The difference between most religious believers and schizophrenics (as well as those with delusional disorder) is one of kind, not degree. Schizophrenics are not by any reasonable description playing "pretend". It think its important to remain clear that we are talking epistemology here, not pathology, because that way madness lies (pun intended). (I don’t think you meant anything untoward, I am just aware of these things because I have a clinical background.)

You say McGrath "actually believes these experiences to be real". Think about that! Are you trying to say they are actually unreal? That he thought he had an experience, but actually did not?

He did have an experience. His self-report establishes that. Neither you nor I nor anyone is in a position to tell him that he did not experience *something*. I think what you mean to say, and what I am taking pains to distinguish (because it is important), is that it there is a question as to whether there is anything "out there" that answers to that experience.

Granted! I wholly agree. It is a fair and necessary question. I think we quickly get into some deep epistemological waters by delving into the issue of whether he is "allowed" to accept this experience at face value -- i.e. like it feels, which is that there is something out there -- or whether he is epistemologically "required" to reject it (or whether he can suspend judgment on the issue). But we don’t really have to, necessarily, because I think that McGrath (at the risk of speaking for him -- I invite him to correct me if I am wrong in this) would not claim *certainty* in his interpretation of his experience. Perhaps he does conclude a supreme being explains his experience, but he will not likely tell you he is sure about that, that that clinches the issue, and that you had better convert too, buddy. I think that that issue -- certainty -- is all the difference in the world between fundies and liberals and why they (liberals) are more like us than not – i.e., the tacit falliblism that opens up room for compromise, the finding of common ground, shared values, and at times even democracy itself. And why we ought to let up on them.

For my part I think liberal theology works even if you deny entirely that there is anything “out there” that answers to the experience. Religious naturalism, as it is called, works quite well in this framework. It involves, in a nutshell, an appreciation of the beauty and grandeur of life that finds its best expression – for such an individual -- in the symbol-system of religion. Mordecai Kaplan, a Jewish theologian in the 1930’s worked out such a system that went on to become Reconstructionist Judaism. Don Cupitt in the Christian tradition did the same for Christianity (though he later evolved his thought in other directions).

I disagree with you that liberals “actually think the pretend games are real” (BTW, I think Campbell probably meant lie in the sense of false, not deception). I think they know they are probably false. I think they simply do not care whether they are true or false. That’s the whole point. It doesn’t matter, for their purposes.

The central issue that I think you’re missing is that in most liberal religions, at least in my own humble experience, there is so little emphasis and concern placed on (what you mean by) the question of “whether the pretend games are real” that it almost drops out. For some, like John Spong, it has totally dropped out. But again – let's clear up the language. The pretend game itself is quite real. The experience it is designed to reflect, is real. The thing that it reflects, is also real – something outside the self that occasions the experience. Is that thing supernatural? I think the liberal does not care.

And finally, as to why call it religion when religious thinking can lead to violence – well, again, it just isn’t obvious to me why the game ought to be conceded to the fundamentalists. I think that’s like saying that since much harm can come from the use of government we should quit using it and turn it over to the dictators, who get to tell us what it means. No, we should fight to make it better, to rid it of the destructive elements. Maybe that’s a pipe dream – but no less so than the eradication of religion altogether.

. . .

Whoever claims to be able to perform the calculus that weighs the good with the bad from religion had better have some pretty knowck-down arguments to back it up. Dont get me wrong -- the natural history of religion is long and brutal and obscene. I don't mean to downplay that or minimize that in the slightest. My family is Jewish, and nothing sensitizes you to the question of religious barbarism than looking at the history of Jewish persecution under Christian rule. The Inquisition killed 100,000 Jews, forcibly converted 100,000 more, and drove the rest out. I look at my son and daughter and want to burn the world.

But I still think the dividing line is between those who are sure they are right, and those who admit fallibility. Awareness of fallibility breeds humility, a willingness to compromise and work together. I think the better route is to work to eliminate the psychological events that occasion fundmantalism, and thereby clean up religion from within. Then, if people wish to leave it, they will, and those who remain will be on our side.

For my part, I think religion is like fire, technology, sex, government -- everything depends on how it is used.

. . .

"...science, in and of itself, doesn't make value judgments. It can't. Christianity not only makes value judgments, it's designed to."

Ah, but whose Christianity? ...The gist is that there is no Christianity in the abstract, only Christianity as defined and practiced by individual groups. I suspect McGraths Christianity would make alot of value judgments many of us would agree with. Altering the content of a religion when it makes value judgments we cannot accept is exactly what McGrath and other liberals try to do.

Moreover misinterpreting a value judgment, and invention one where one does not exist, is a difference that makes no difference. You still have people acting bad under the perceived influence of the system. People have done awful things, not just using science, but in the name of science -- eugenics, Tuskegee. They thought science backed their value-decision. We may say they are mistaken, that that is not actually science, but that makes no difference to the lives of those affected.

I am not at all a social constuctivist, but there is some truth to the idea that our "reality" is our experience, and it may or may not line up with the way the world really is. Epictetus said: "men are not moved my things but by the opinions they take of them."

Religion is the like this, in this respect. I agree it considers values as a part of its range of discourse, but again we are creating the value system in first place.

My own feeling is we need to be blaming ourselves for the bad things that happen in the world. I will concede that the interaction between humans and religion is dynamic, and each shapes the other, and bad religion can have powerfully and undeniably bad effects. But why is it obvious that we must blame religion, qua religion, whole cloth, rather than bad religion? If we correct and educate those who think science justifies bad behavior, and correct relgion when it seems to license bad behavior, is the result not the same?

If religion is, as we agree, wholly human invention, who is ultimately to blame for what it looks like?

. . .

...that is an question for the individual. Whether a person relates meaningfully to, say, the Muslim symbols and ideals is for him or her to decide, and there is no right or wrong to it. Those symbols and images can be put to right or wrong uses, of course, but we are presuming (for this discussion) the liberal view, which makes misuse not the issue. So, if I feel that a given story is relevant to my life, wherever it is found, then I think that settles the matter. How can I be wrong about whether i find something relevant?

Let me put it this way. Liberals commonly take the Bible to be poetry. So, imagine a poem. Your argument, then , is that this poem is "irrelevant" to moderns. Don't you think thats a rather hard argument to make? Whether a poem is relevant or not, to me, is my decision. That's my whole point.

Richard M

A New Look (same old content)

I thought I'd try tinkering with the blog's layout and appearance a little. With Matrix in the title, I thought maybe what you now see might be a bit more appropriate. Let me know if you have an opinion about it. I'm probably not done tinkering with it for good, so if you make a suggestion, who knows, you might just get what you ask for! I also wonder from time to time whether the various widgets and newsfeeds on the blog are useful and interesting to anyone. Please leave a comment about that too!

In other news, I've been welcomed into the Christian Century network of blogs - independent blogs that have in common the discussion of theology, which of course is something we do here pretty regularly. Anyway, that's the reason for the additional logo on the web page.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving and Theodicy

Thanksgiving reduces the need for theodicy.

I don't mean the holiday that is celebrated in the United States today - although presumably one could attempt to formulate an argument for the existence of a supremely benevolent deity on the basis of turkey, cranberry sauce and stuffing. But those with scarcely enough to survive could legitimately question whether the argument is valid, based as it is on such a small segment of human experience. Nevertheless, even if it wasn't the most persuasive argument for the existence of God, it might well be the most delicious.

What I'm talking about, however, is the fact that many of those who are making do with little are nevertheless thankful for what they have, sometimes more so than those who have an abundance. It seems to me that it is more often those observing the suffering of others who lose their faith in God, than those actually passing through hardship. It is possible, in the midst of any situation, to find something to be thankful for. This doesn't mean to accept the situation as just, nor to assume that God has ordained it to be so and thus to accept one's lot in life and not challenge the status quo. Being thankful even when hungry doesn't mean one necessarily stops hungering and thirsting for justice.

But what preachers sometimes call 'an attitude of gratitude' can change one's outlook; while on the other hand, it is possible to be ungrateful even in the midst of abundance.

As a rule, I don't thank God for things the same way I might thank a benevolent donor who gave me a large sum of money to support my blogging habit (That hasn't happened yet, but it can't hurt to fantasize - and to drop hints). When someone remains healthy when everyone else around them gets sick, or survives a plane crash when others were killed, and thanks God and talks of how good God has been to them, I have serious problems with the implicit corrolary: that God has been bad to the other people in the situation. For me, the point is to be thankful - not to thank God as though you have been singled out for abundance and others singled out for want. It is something of an accident of history and circumstance that some in our time have born into relative affluence and others into extreme poverty. The appropriate response is to be grateful for whatever one has, and to realize our own responsibility for ensuring that resources are equitably shared. It is easy to point to the billions in India and China and blame population size. But the truth is that all of them together do not consume what we do in North America. Let us all be thankful that we have a world that provides for us in abundance, and let us all work together to figure out ways to ensure that, with all this abundance available, no one has to do completely without the basic necessities of life.

I discussed the problem of evil with colleagues recently. Yesterday as I revisited the subject in my mind, I found myself thinking about Pakistan's democracy. Pakistan has made a number of attempts to get a genuinely democratic government on its feet, but each time issues or inklings of corruption, threats to national security and other destabilizing factors have led the military to intervene. I can't help wondering if that is what people wish God did. Imagine if during World War II, as atrocities were planned and nations prepared for war, a voice came from heaven saying "Go to your rooms and don't come out again until you're ready to play nice."

Does this scenario take the idea of God as parent a bit too far? Perhaps it doesn't take the metaphor quite far enough. If our parents never let us fail, never let us mess things up, there are some lessons we will never learn. I have long felt Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ideas to be incredibly challenging. Bonhoeffer suggested that God desires mature children, who can get along without him. God, according to Bonhoeffer, wants us to live before God as though God were not there - etsi Deus non daretur. It is a shocking idea when one first hears it, but the more one reflects on it, the more it seems obvious rather than shocking.

Skeptics who reject the idea of God on the basis of the problem of evil sometimes remind me of adolescent children - begrudging a parent's intervention as meddling, begrudging lack of intervention as lack of concern. For those who look on the world without thankfulness, neither the idea that God is acting nor the idea that God isn't is satisfying. But they do have a point. In one sense, it is all too easy to attribute one's abundance to God - certainly much easier than treating it as simply good fortune, which comes accompanied with responsibility for those who have been less fortunate.

I don't want to offer a free-will defense that seeks to protect God from blame for various misfortunes and disasters that humankind has experienced. I simply want to be thankful - for a universe that has produced not only life but us, with the free will that we so often use so poorly, and with enough resources to sustain us all if we can only figure out how to deal with them and with one another equitably.

It is a great responsibility and a great challenge. But it is also a lot to be thankful for.

Quote of the Day (N. Katherine Hayles)

"the creator doesn't always need to be as smart as his creatures" (N. Katherine Hayles, My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts (University of Chicago Press, 2005) p.196, referring to the ability of computer programs to come up with solutions to problems that had not occurred to the programs' creators).

I found this quote interesting both because it has some relevance to intelligent design and other subjects that interest me. In the specific case that the author referred to, it is not obvious to me that the programs were "smarter" than their creator. At the very least, though, they were faster, and if we do create genuine artificial intelligence, it will have the potential to not simply outsmart us but to develop relatively quickly to the stage where we cannot even understand it. And some evolutionary programs have been given a task and come up with a solution that worked, but the creators of the program don't seem to be able to offer an explanation of why the solution works.

Shooting For All Ten

I recently accused proponents of intelligent design of serious violations of the moral principles their organizations claim to be fighting to uphold. Apparently someone noticed that I was unable to list all the commandments and has taken measures to rectify the matter.

A number of blogs such as ERV, Pharyngula and Paralepsis are currently suggesting that Bill Dembski has added theft to the list of sins of which proponents of ID can be accused. Although we all knew they are willing to ignore the context of the quotes they mine from mainstream scientists, apparently they are also willing to take simulations others have created and use them for purposes antithetical to that for which it was created, without permission or royalties.

I am not going to get too excited about the fact that Bill Dembski seems to have engaged in plagiarism. Although I doubt anyone would ever mistake the clip from the Simpsons or something else I use in class for my own creation, there is a bit of grey area regarding what constitutes fair use. But certainly if Dembski has taken credit away from where it rightly belongs, that deserves to be pointed out, at the very least. And if someone can fine or sue them and get some of the money that is being wasted on intelligent design to be redirected towards something more useful, more power to them.

But can anyone really be surprised at proponents of intelligent design being accused of plagiarism? After all, which of their ideas could ever have been seriously considered new?

New Biblical Studies Journal

THE ORTHODOX CENTER FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF BIBLICAL STUDIES (OCABS) is pleased to announce the launching of its new, on-line academic journal, The Journal of the Orthodox Center for the Advancement of Biblical Studies (JOCABS).

The mission of JOCABS is to promote scholarship in biblical studies, homiletics, and religious education among Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians around the world.

Although submissions in English are preferred thus ensuring greater accessibility, academic papers in other languages (especially Arabic, Armenian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, and Spanish) will be considered by our multi-lingual editorial board and its international associates.

Articles may be submitted in the following areas:

• Old Testament and Cognate Studies. Including (but not limited to) critical studies in Hebrew Bible; Septuagint; Pseudepigrapha; Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture; Syro-Palestinian Archaeology.
• New Testament and Cognate Studies. Including (but not limited to) critical studies in New Testament; Early Christian Literature; Apocryphal Literature and Traditions; Classical Studies; Archaeology of the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
• The Bible in Homiletics and Christian Education. Including theoretical and methodological studies dedicated to the practical applications of biblical scholarship to both preaching and pedagogy.
• Book Reviews. Submissions of critical reviews of books related to the field of biblical studies will be accepted and invited.

JOCABS is committed to promoting scholarship among scholars and graduate students and encourages them to submit papers to its peer-reviewed process. The first issue will appear in the Summer of 2008, and semiannually thereafter.

For additional information, please contact Dr. Nicolae Roddy, at nroddy@creighton.edu or Fr. Vahan Hovhanessian, at vartabed@stnersess.edu.

To submit an article online, please visit http://www.ocabs.org/journal.

Some Disenchanted Evening

Our ancestors viewed the world very differently than we do. This is not because they were crazy, deluded or primitive. It is because we are further along on the journey of learning and discovery than they were, and we have the advantage of standing on their shoulders. They experienced the Earth as static and unmoving. We experience it on a day-to-day basis precisely as they did, yet also know that in fact it is rotating, even though it doesn't immediately appear to to us. Additional knowledge has forced us to acknowledge that what at first glance seems to be the case is in fact not the case.

Our ancestors perceived the world as an enchanted place. God or gods were manifest in everything, because all manner of things moved and often they moved in ways that affected people, just as actions of agents affect us.

The experience of the earth's stability was rethought in response to a wider framework that requires us to adjust our thinking about it. How should we rethink the enchantment of the world around us in light of our changing knowledge? On the one hand, there are instances in which we've simply misperceived the nature of reality. But in others, we need to be sure that we find new ways of thinking about the world that do justice to the way we experience it. Deciding which is which is often a challenge, but it certainly does seem that evolution has endowed us with an instinct to detect agency that is so sensitive that it regularly leads us to treat as agents objects that are not. And some traditional religious ideas that are based on the impression that lightning bolts and hurricanes were aimed at someone will need rethinking in light of new information.

For how many people today has the world in fact become a disenchanted place? Charles Taylor, in his book A Secular Age, makes a distinction between experiencing God's non-existence and not experiencing his existence. Many older atheists are in the former category. I recently read somewhere that Jean-Paul Sartre once said "God doesn't exist...the bastard!" Sartre was conscious of God's non-existence. He felt it as a loss, felt that God ought to exist. I wonder how many still feel that way, and how many who are atheists or agnostics simply live in a non-enchanted world.

The world can seem differently to different people, and sometimes it is appropriate to learn to appreciate enchantment even where we do not ourselves naturally perceive it. I think it was in the Christian book about marriage entitled Marriage Takes More Than Love that I read about a conversation between a wife and husband that ran something like this:

WIFE: That moon sure is bright.

HUSBAND: Bright enough to hit a golf ball by.

What the wife meant is that it the moon was romantic, and the husband's response was interpreted as a lack of romance/interest or something of that sort. The husband was a "literalist", one might say, and thought that the subject of the conversation was albedo and the resultant visibility. If such a marriage is to succeed, the literalist might very well need to broaden the range of language-usage that he can appreciate.

The debates between fundamentalists and atheists seem very different from this conversation between husband and wife. In this conversation, both sides are literalists or are attempting to be. As a rule, the atheists are more consistent at it, but the framework and assumptions are not that different. For instance, Philip Johnson appreciates having William Provine as a debate partner, because both agree that the question of whether God exists is to be answered by looking for inexplicable gaps. But the main example (which, surprisingly, I don't seem to have mentioned on this blog before) comes from John Dominic Crossan. He describes the debate between the typical fundamentalist and the average skeptic as like a debate between two individuals about Aesop's fables. One says, 'See, this text shows that in ancient Greece, animals could talk!' The other replies, 'No, it shows that in ancient Greece people were stupid enough to believe animals could talk'. Neither is recognizing that there are other options, that perhaps these are a different sort of story altogether.

At any rate, what most mystics have perceived is not, it seems to me, the 'everyday, mundane' enchantment that characterized ancient religiosity. It is rather a sense of the connectedness of all things, which many who perceive enchantment and divinity behind or in everything do not perceive. Mystics have always known not only that the superficial sense of enchantment can appear to vanish, but that it must do so if we are to get beyond such surface epiphenomena to a mystical intuition of the depth of all being.

Still, for the mystic, there is something about the experience of the world that needs to be done justice to, and in the context of a disenchanted world, the language we use to express this may need to be very different than that used by past generations. It seems clear that the world around us is not enchanted in precisely the way that most of our ancestors thought. But is there an aspect of reality that corresponds to that experience of enchantment? Is the mystical perception of the interconnectedness of all things in any way dependent on that understanding of enchantment?

I'd like to suggest that it is a higher-order organization, which unifies the universe in some way, that the mystic intuits. It is similar to how emergent properties help us to account for that aspect of human existence traditionally referred to as 'the soul'. It may not be a separate substance supernaturally inserted, but that which was referred to by this term corresponds to a genuine aspect of our experience. In the same way we can talk about life as an emergent property, and although there may be no elan vital, that which we referred to by it is there - this animate matter really is 'animated', even if by processes that were in previous epochs not understood and misidentified.

How do we do justice to that higher order of emergence in our experience that we have traditionally referred to as 'God'? The framework within which we speak of such things has changed, and our ideas will thus need reformulation. But in the end, until the experience of the earth's apparent immobility was accounted for, no satisfactory understanding of its motion could be formulated. In the same way, we cannot adequately rethink the nature of reality without doing justice in some way, even if a radically rethought and reformulated one, to the sense of meaning, purpose and transcendence that many human beings have experienced and continue to experience.

Western civilization has become secular. It has become disenchanted. This can be viewed as a sort of 'falling away from God', and many do view it in these terms. But it can also be viewed as a sort of 'dark night of the soul'. Many who enter that stage of their spiritual life never make it out the other side, and certainly that is a danger for our society. But if we do not get stuck in this 'adolescent' stage of development, and refuse to view it as the end point of our civilization's progress, then maturity awaits us on the other side.

The True Spirit of [CENSORED]mas

I just had to share this gem from Qalmlea's blog.

Life, the Universe and a U2 Song

What sort of universe do we live in? We live in a universe that has U2. And I don't think there will ever be a universal explanation in terms of the laws of physics that allows one to account for the existence of this band. It is a combination of law and chance, which if we wound the clock back, would never arise again in precisely the same way.

More importantly, I don't really think that I'm looking for explanations any more. Not that explanations don't interest me - they do, very much - but they aren't what is of ultimate interest. I have a rough sense of what sort of universe I live in now, and the best I can do is keep up to date on the trickle of information coming in that offers explanations of how things work, and how the current state of things came about.

We live in a universe where people can try to make a difference, and sometimes succeed. I lived for a while with a family in Dublin, one member of which went to school with the members of U2. The claim to fame of the mother in the family was that she once saw the person now known as The Edge as a child, messing around on top of a skip/dumpster with a guitar, and asked 'Who does he think he's supposed to be?' I doubt even The Edge guessed the answer to that question at the time, in the way it can be viewed with the benefit of hindsight.

We live in a universe that had given rise to people who make music. And a universe in which people like me hear U2 play a song like "Bad" and are moved somewhere deep down in that part of us traditionally called the "soul".

I admit, I'm interested in understanding what this part of me is, that is almost certainly not a separate spiritual substance inserted into my physical being. Understanding has its place. It is not at all unimportant.

But I want to focus my attention on living in a meaningful way in the sort of universe I experience this to be. I cannot live in the future aboard a starship exploring strange new worlds. I cannot live in the past and inhabit the sort of world the Biblical authors perceived themselves to live in. I live in a different world, an in-between world. It is a world that is fully of joy and sorrow. And it is full of music. And there may be explanations of why certain music moves us the way it does. But it is not enough to take the car apart and understand how it works. I want to be driven somewhere. I don't just want to understand the process of composition that led to the song, to analyze the chord progressions. I want to let myself be inspired.

U2 – Bad

Let Evil Be Evil

Today our faculty book discussion group continued its discussion of Philip Kitcher's book, began Charles Taylor's monumental A Secular Age, as well as a couple of articles by Mackey and Swinburne on the problem of evil thrown in.

If there is one key thought I'd share as regards faith and the loss or lack thereof, much revolves around the depiction of God as a person very much like us, and the correlated problem of evil.

My advice to people of faith is as follows. Don't try to suggest that appeal to God makes a tragedy into something other than a tragedy. Don't suggest that an afterlife, or God's inscrutible plan, or some other unseen factor makes the senseless loss of life into something intelligible.

If one or the other of those doctrines helps you personally, that is fine. It was, indeed, to make sense of such things that the doctrine of the afterlife was first introduced into Judaism. But certainly the two together are somewhat redundant and lead to problematic conclusions. It makes sense, on a certain level, to suggest that God will compensate his faithful martyrs. It may appear to some to make sense to say 'everything happens for a reason'. But to suggest that it was God's will for people to be martyred because it is for a greater good, and that the individual in question will be rewarded, seems overkill. If you have to try that hard, it is probably a sign that the solution is not particularly satisfying or effective.

Take to heart the message of the book of Job. Interpreting the suffering of others is always a bad idea. If a particular doctrine helps you work things through yourself, that is one thing. But to offer interpretations of the suffering of others is unlikely to lead anyplace helpful.

I suspect that many people have lost their faith over the problem of suffering and its apparent senselessness. But I also suspect that for many it was the incongruity of the genuinely painful and inexplicable circumstances and pain they were passing through, combined with the confident pat answers offered by the 'faithful', that have often been the key catalyst to a loss of faith.

As long as Job's friends sat with him quietly, I suspect that their presence was a comfort to him. May we be granted the wisdom and strength to follow their example that far and no further.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Shows

The Higgaion blog pointed out an article in the LA Times about Christians praying...for the end of the writers' strike! Although these seem to have been industry insiders, the story led me to wonder how many other Christians around the United States are offering up similar prayers. I doubt that many of the Christians who have been praying in this way have thought about issues of justice and fairness when doing so. They just want their TV viewing to continue uninterrupted.

I'm tempted to pray that the strike will continue, because of all the things these same Christians might find they suddenly have time to do if they can't vegitate in front of the TV:

• play with your children
• learn a language
• read a serious academic book about the Bible
• read a serious academic book about theology
• read a serious book about the history of the Church
• read a serious academic book about science
• go to a museum
• look at your spouse instead of sitting next to your spouse while staring at the box in the corner of the room
• listen to a symphony
• go to a concert
• watch birds
• look up at the sky

Why do I have a funny feeling that anyone trying to do that last one would at the same time be wondering what would have happened on Desperate Housewives if it hadn't been for the darned strike?

Quote of the Day (William Cleary)

"Verbal prayers make sense, I think, if you know in advance that talking to God is like talking to your dog. You say human words to your dog, but he pretty much ignores that in favor of how you smell. Similarly, whatever divinity there is hears your words of prayer but very likely ignores all you say in favor of the aroma of your heart: your kindness, your compassion - for both your own poor soul and for your have-not brothers and sisters in the world. But the words of your prayer do matter to you: they give shape to your thoughts; they warm and give color to your soul and spur you to a focused listening" (William Cleary, Prayers to an Evolutionary God (Woodstock: Skylight Paths, 2004) p.xi).

The Atheist Contribution to World Civilization

I find myself becoming somewhat weary of opponents of Christianity and of religion in general who point to its flaws but offer no appreciation of its strengths, who criticize its failures but make no mention of its successes.

I thus wish to offer an open post today in which I ask a question: What is the atheist contribution to world civilization? What have atheists offered that was not offered before them by philosophers who believed in some sort of God, by Liberal Christians, by Deists or Pantheists or others who have some God concept as part of their worldview?

Please post your answers as comments, and feel free to use that forum to discuss the answers that have been given.

Hopefully the focus can be kept on this specific question, without getting sidetracked into the shortcomings and negative contributions that any impartial observer would acknowledge exist on all sides.

Quote of the Day (Jeremy Campbell)

"There is no one image of God that works in all circumstances" (Jeremy Campbell, The Many Faces of God (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006) p.270).

News Flash: Behe Admits He Was Wrong!

Apparently Michael Behe, after only 105 days after being challenged on it, has conceded he was wrong about a particular scientific claim. Read more about what else he and others did in the mean time here.

Quote of the Day (J. P. Moreland)

“In the actual practices of the Evangelical community in North America, there is an over-commitment to Scripture in a way that is false, irrational, and harmful to the cause of Christ, and it has produced a mean-spiritedness among the over-committed that is a grotesque and often ignorant distortion of discipleship unto the Lord Jesus” (J.P. Moreland, “How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What Can Be Done About It”, presentation to the 2007 Evangelical Theological Society meeting in San Diego)

Living In Between

We exist in the middle, in between.

Stretching out beyond us in one "direction" is the micro-world, where we discover that matter and life and love all arise out of energy, and we lose track of what is going on, or at least the ability to imagine what it is like, as we enter the realm of quantum uncertainty.

Stretching out beyond us in all directions is the macro-world. The Max Planck Institute created the millenium simulation to extrapolate from the visible universe what its large scale structure might be like. But the full, big picture we cannot see. We know that we are connected by gravity to the most distant objects in our universe. But what the universe as a whole is like we cannot ever hope to see.



We are the most transcendent form of existence on our planet. But are we part of something bigger? How do we live in a way that does justice to the fact that the right combination and arrangement of energy gives rise to matter, that the right combination and arrangement of matter gives rise to life, that life gives rise to mind, and mind gives rise to bloggers (among other things)? Should we stop at the level of humanity or of sentient beings like us, or should we surmise that we are transcended by, and part of, something bigger, something that arises out of the combination of energy, matter, life and mind to make something more transcendent still? What metaphors can we use to express the mysteries of existence, without claiming either that we know more than we do, or that we know less than we do?

Discussion of "Why I Am A Christian"

There is a discussion of a post of mine from a couple of months ago, "Why I am a Christian", taking place on the Debunking Christianity blog. Come on over and join the fun!

Show Me The Manuscripts

A while back I wrote a letter to the editor of a local free newspaper, responding to a letter by another reader who claimed that the Bible was written in the time of Constantine. The author of this initial letter has now responded once again, asking where the manuscripts are from before the time of Constantine.

Although I can hear gasps of disbelief (and perhaps a few guffaws of laughter) from historians and Biblical scholars, I think it is important to answer such claims clearly, and I wish to do so here.

We have several manuscripts that are earlier than the start of the fourth century, and some seem to be quite a bit earlier.

Where are the manuscripts? P52, a small fragment of the Gospel of John, is in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England. It is from before the middle of the second century. P66 is usually dated around the year 200. P72 and P75 are also before the time of Constantine. All of the last three papyrii are at the Bodmer Library in Geneva, Switzerland. The Chester Beatty papyrii, P45, P46 and P47, are (with the exception of small fragments) in the Chester Beatty collection in Dublin, and they are from the third century.

For those curious about methods of dating, most of our earliest manuscripts are dated using paleography. Anyone who has ever read a letter from their grandparents' time will be aware that handwriting styles change over time, and thus the writings style itself can provide a good indication of the time period in which something was written.

The fact that we have early manuscripts demonstrates nothing about the historical factuality of their contents. For that, historical criticism is required. But it is precisely that approach that Corya seems to wish to bypass by making outlandish claims about textual criticism.

An Immoral Godless Pseudoscience

I am posting today about a dangerous teaching that is passing itself off as science, when in fact it is an anti-religious philosophy that has the potential to undermine the moral foundations of our society.

I am referring, of course, to Intelligent Design.

Let me begin with the many ways in which it is antithetical to Biblical morality, before moving on to address the ways in which it is opposed to key American values as well. We may as well begin with the ten commandments. The first two commandments warn against the worship of other gods and the making of idols. The intelligent design movement is guilty of breaking both of these.

Very few Christians are tempted to make golden calves and bow before them. There is a general agreement that the idols that tempt us most today are wealth, fame, power, and other such things that can take God's place in our lives. This is in keeping with other Biblical teachings, such as that "the love of money is the root of all evil." But most proponents of Intelligent Design proclaim an alternative message, that evolution is the root of all evil. This is not surprising. So many in our society seek a justification for greed, and both Christianity and science often get hijacked to this end. Christianity is regularly hijacked to distract and comfort Americans with regard to their most common sin. But to build a multi-million dollar museum promoting ideas that are neither scientific nor scriptural, when so many in our world face a daily struggle to find enough food and clean drinking water to survive, is not merely un-Christian. It is antithetical to every Biblical principle of morality.

Indeed, to jump to another commandment for a moment, proponents of Intelligent Design are complicit in murder in several ways. By taking funds away that could (if people were emphasizing what the Bible says) be used to help the needy, they cause the deaths of many hungry people. Second, by opposing science, which has helped prevent and treat countless diseases, they are causing the deaths of still more people. If we added to this anger, which is identified in the Sermon on the Mount as a form of murder, we could find still more evidence on their blogs and in other contexts.

Returning to the second commandment, proponents of Intelligent Design also commit idolatry by suggesting that only their narrow, impoverished view of a Designer is an adequate view of God. That God could work through natural causes (as the Bible often says God did), that God could (to use the famous pool table analogy) pot all the balls in one shot rather than needing to do each individually, is adamantly denied. Replacing the God about whom St. Augustine said "If you understand it, it isn't God" with their flawed human reasoning is certainly a form of idolatry as well.

More than this, some proponents of Intelligent Design actually mock the Biblical creation stories. Denyse O'Leary, in a recent blog entry, made fun of people who believe that "mud-to-mind" is compatible with their faith. Genesis 2 says precisely that, that God made human beings from 'dirt'. Unless you believe God literally has hands and did a lot of molding, squeezing, bending and pressing, then the question of how God did so remains open. But O'Leary shows the same disdain for the Bible that she does for science and for polite and informative discourse.

Returning to the ten commandments, the recent Dover trial showed clear evidence of how they are willing to bear false witness and take God's name in vain in order to do so. They also presumably covet the status evolution has as a reputable scientific theory, but are unwilling to do all the hard work evolutionary biologists, paleontologists, geneticists and other mainstream scientists did which led to evolution having that status.

This leads me to conclude with their opposition to a key American value. Intelligent Design is opposed to the American ethic of hard work. Scientists have worked hard to contribute to our knowledge and our well-being, our health and our standard of living and our comfort. Instead of being appreciated, they are denigrated, by people who do no such hard work themselves and make no such contribution to our society. Hard workers do not deserve to be demonized and denigrated by those who covet their position in this way.

If you are a Christian, take a good hard look at Intelligent Design and ask "What Would Jesus Do?" Can you imagine Jesus being here today and going around talking about Intelligent Design?
It is appalling that so many American Christians support a movement that is, in general, characterized by principles that are opposed to those of both Christianity and America.

Question for Denyse O'Leary, Phillip Johnson and Casey Luskin

I just posted this comment on one of Denyse O'Leary's blogs, where, instead of providing her own usual antiscientific tirade, she reproduced one in the form of a dialogue between Phillip Johnson and Casey Luskin. The claim that was being made was that those who say evolution and faith are compatible are falling for a trojan horse scam which will eventually undermine their faith.

Here's what I wrote to her, and since I would like to those involved in the dialogue reproduced there to hear it too, and since I doubt the comment will actually appear on the blog, I'm reproducing it here, and invite anyone involved in promoting Intelligent Design to respond to it as they see fit, whether here or elsewhere:

Claims to Biblical literalism result in more people losing their faith than evolution ever will. Countless preachers tell the faithful that either the Bible is completely without error, or you may as well throw it away. When they can't keep denying there are errors, they do what they were told to, and throw it away.

In the same way, people like you cause more people to lose their faith (or to not come to faith) than any Darwinian biologist ever could. You tell people evolution is nonsense and present it as incompatible with faith, and some people who don't know any better actually believe you. Then when eventually the mountain of evidence finally gets their attention, they lose their faith, because people like you told them that was the only other option.

Do you fear God? If so, do you think you will not be held accountable for putting unnecessary stumbling blocks in the way of the faithful and those who could believe if it weren't for people like you driving them away from God?

I know this is a harsh way to speak. But their hypocrisy must be challenged. To claim that evolution undermines values and to use dishonesty to combat it is hypocrisy. To combat evolution on the grounds that it destroys faith, while promoting fundamentalism which does at least as good a job, is hypocrisy. That they won't listen to scientists I can just barely understand, even if disagree with their doing so. But why don't more Christians notice that these cdesign proponentsists won't listen to Jesus either?

O'Leary and Behe are perhaps the most culpable: in addition to ignoring Jesus and ignoring scientists, they are also Catholics who ignore what the Pope had to say about evolution.

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes

“Mommy why do they say it is science when they haven’t done any testing yet? They should test their ideas first” (9 year old homeschooled child in a Christian family, reacting to the claims of proponents of Intelligent Design as depicted in the NOVA documentary "Judgment Day").

I just had to share this second 'quote of the day'. It was left in a comment on Panda's Thumb by the child's parent, who was proud of their thoughtful and clear-sighted response. I concur.

Quote of the Day (N.B.)

"I wonder what Mr. Rogers, Elmo, and the Teletubbies have to say about PBS's leftist atheist agenda?" (N.B., an anonymous blogger)

I've been made aware of a new blog belonging to a pharmacy student, and he had this great quote in response to the Discovery Institute's accusation that PBS had "turned to the usual suspects" to promote their "agenda".

If the usual suspects are a basis for judging, their agenda is to educate people with information from credible sources. If only all media had such an agenda. If only young earth creationists and cdesign proponentsists had that agenda. (By the way, I am determined to keep calling them that from now on. If it gets old, let me know).

On both Panda's Thumb and Pharyngula, P. Z. Myers has drawn attention to the Discovery Institute's response to the documentary, and notes that it doesn't address the charges that were at issue in the Dover case, and thus in the documentary. Very few of its complaints about minor details, even if they happened to be correct (at least some of them clearly are not), would affect the substance of the issues about either the Dover trial, the evidence for evolution, or the status of intelligent design.

Let me give Michael Behe the benefit of the doubt for the moment and treat intelligent design as science in the same sense that astrology is: the formulation of theoretical explanatory frameworks positing causal connections between seen and unseen forces. On this account, intelligent design is (as Philip Kitcher has suggested) "old science" rather than "non-science". Even if one were to grant this, then it would still be a pre-Darwinian model that has been supplanted by the evidence. And when someone tries to forcibly resurrect an older scientific model because they don't like the supposed implications of a current one, with no actual scientific evidence to justify such a resurrection, then the "old science" in question clearly moves back into the non-science category.

Returning to the quote of the day, to be fair, let me end by noting that this isn't the first time the Teletubbies have been accused of having an agenda...

Reactions to Judgment Day: Some Cdesign Proponentsists Quiet, Others Whining

The National Center for Science Education has issued a press release affirming the accuracy of last night's NOVA documentary "Judgment Day" about the Dover intelligent design trial.

I notice that over at Uncommon Descent they are not mentioning it. Presumably they are keeping quiet and hoping it will be forgotten. Presumably if anyone does try to mention it they will be summarily banned...

The Discovery Institute is lamenting the bias NOVA and PBS have against intelligent design (but, inexplicably, not their bias against astrology, which according to Michael Behe's definition of science is also a scientific theory). They have also posted links to many of their earlier responses/complaints about the Dover trial. They also plan (get this) to see whether the PBS information packet for teachers that accompanies the documentary violates the establishment clause! They are happy to try to circumvent the establishment clause in order to get their own unscientific viewpoint into classrooms, but they object to anyone saying that science doesn't undermine religion, since the fact that science doesn't undermine religion undermines their own position, based as it is on a false antithesis between the two. Intelligent Design presumes God must work through acts that are scientifically inexplicable, even though this is not a historic teaching of Christianity or the Bible. The problem, for them, is that teaching that evolution doesn't undermine religion undermines their religion. They may dress their religious outlook up in a lab coat, but (to quote Men in Black) "It's not much of a disguise, is it?"

Note that none of those whining about how unfairly oppressed they are do so on forums where anyone can comment and highlight the hypocrisy and "breathtaking inanity" of their position.

Meanwhile ERV will presumably continue to deliver scientific punches at Behe. Hopefully before it gets any more painful, Behe will cry 'uncle' and tell her to pick on someone her own size (intellectually, that is). He should have checked his star chart before he pursued this course of action.

Many science blogs have posted something on the show, some even live blogging it.

Anyone who thinks the title of this post contains a typographical error can see my previous one for an explanation.

Transitional Forms as Evidence for Evolution: Tiktaalik and cdesign proponentsists

I just finished watching tonight's episode of NOVA, "Judgment Day", about the Dover intelligent design trial. What I liked best about it was the way it highlighted the predictive power of evolutionary theory, something often denied by creationists of various sorts.

When we hear about the discovery of a transitional form or 'missing link' like Tiktaalik, it would be possible to presume that this discovery came about by accident. In fact, the paleontologists who found the fossil were looking for just such a transitional fossil, having chosen that particular place to look for fossil evidence of the branching off of amphibians from fish based on the age of the rocks exposed in that area and Darwinian evolution. In other words, Darwin's theory makes predictions and they are confirmed (in contrast with intelligent design, which the Dover trial showed clearly knows precisely what experiments to do in order to test its claims, and yet never does them).

This cannot be emphasized strongly enough. This was not simply a find that happened to fit with evolution. This is a case where evolutionary theory made a prediction about where one should look for certain kinds of transitional forms, scientists looked there, and found precisely what evolutionary theory predicted they should. This evidence is as strong as when a witness in a criminal case confesses the stolen loot is hidden in a particular place, the police go search there, and they find it.

Kenneth Miller put it clearly and succinctly in "Judgement Day" when he said " Any theory that can stand up to 150 years of contentious testing is a pretty darn good theory. And that's what evolution is."

A similar example of a prediction made by mainstream evolutionary theory was that the view that humans, having one less chromosome than other primates, had lost one as two chromosomes had fused into one. In one particular human chromosome, one finds not merely a match of genes with two chromosomes found in other primates, but also evidence of the telomeres from the ends of the chromosomes having been incorporated into the midst of the new chromosome formed by the fusion. It is worth noting that the result of this was presumably not mild and gradual. Occasionally such major changes have presumably occurred. We are all mutants, after all.

Another important transitional form mentioned in the documentary was that uncovered in earlier editions of the intelligent design/creationist textbook Of Pandas and People. I had known from reading the book Monkey Girl that they had found manuscripts written just before and just after the judicial decision that outlawed the teaching of creationism in public science classrooms, in which the one before said "creationism" and this was changed in the edition immediately after the decision to "intelligent design". What I hadn't known was that there were "transitional forms" providing evidence of this evolutionary process of textbook design. In the version immediately after the judicial decision, there were places where hasty changes had led to forms such as cdesign proponentsists (see, that wasn't a typo in the title of this post!). The intention had been to highlight the whole word "creationists" and replace it with "design proponents", but the person making the substitutions had failed to highlight the whole word creationists, and thus ended up making a hodge-podge of the two using this cut and paste method. The evidence for deception on the part of the proponents of intelligent design and creationism in the Dover case is every bit as strong and clear as the evidence for evolution.

A sad irony of the viewpoint of the religious fundamentalists who think they know what is best for science education is that they claim to trust teenagers to weigh the evidence and draw their own conclusions, and yet cannot accept it when the vast majority of those who, having done just that not only as teenagers but in careers in science, overwhelmingly find themselves persuaded by the evidence for evolution.

The transitional forms are consistently found where Darwinian evolution predicts they will be, whether in arctic Canada or creationist literature.

Quote of the Day (Masahiro Mori)

"I believe robots have the buddha-nature within them - that is, the potential for attaining buddhahood" (Masahiro Mori, The Buddha in the Robot (Tokyo: Kosei Publishing Co., 1981) p.13)

A Blogmentary On Romans

I don't know if it is a good idea to announce one's plans before one is really able to tackle them, but I've decided to take the risk. For some time I've had thoughts about Paul's letter to the Romans that I've wanted to blog about at some length, and occasionally I've touched on some topics, but not in any great depth.

I know the idea is not new, but I've still been thinking what a great thing a blogmentary (does anyone have a better name for a blogged commentary?) can be. On the one hand, when (if) it is done, I can post a table of contents linking to the various pages in order. On the other hand, I can blog about specific passages when I have time and strong interest to do so. Perhaps what seems most interesting is that readers can not only use it as a commentary, and leave comments on the commentary, but can see how my writing on a particular passage relates to other things I was thinking (and thus blogging) about at that time.

So it may be a while in coming, and it will be a long time until it is finished, but I do hope to pursue a blogmentary on Romans, and perhaps other books of the Bible as well. I will be teaching a course on Paul's letters next semester, and so this will be a nice way both to gear up for that and to reflect on it while the course is taking place.

Judgment Day

Presumably most readers of this blog will already be aware of this, but tonight on PBS there will be a show about Intelligent Design entitled "Judgment Day". I'm sharing a copy of the press release in pdf format for those interested.

Over the past two days we've had John Hart visiting with us from Boston University's School of Theology. In my religion and science class he talked about terrestrial and extraterrestrial environmental ethics, after sharing with the class a chapter of his on that subject from a forthcoming book. It is an absolutely fascinating subject and I only wish we had had more time to talk. I would have loved to discuss the subject of terraforming in relation to theological ethics. But alas, there is only so much time. I guess that's what blogs are for...

Sterling Who's Who Update

I am posting this to update readers of this blog on the status of my complaint about Sterling Who's Who. They have refunded my money, and so I consider the matter closed and have no outstanding or unresolved complaint against the company.

They did at one point threaten to sue me for defamation of character because of my earlier posts, although in a fax they sent they referred to having been able to "amicably resolve" my issue, so I hope that this is no longer their intention. It is nevertheless a further aim of this post to demonstrate publicly that I intend no defamation of character, warranted or otherwise.

Refunding one's money is not company policy at Sterling Who's Who. I was told in no uncertain terms that the policy is to keep 30% for the expenses they have incurred, unless one cancels within 24 hours, and after 48 hours all sales are final. When I pointed out that I was not made aware of this, I was told that as a consumer it is my responsibility to check their web site for such information. I will be honest that when I looked at their web site I did not manage to find the relevant page. But as there was at the very least an initial miscommunication regarding how much this would cost, it was not inappropriate for them to make an exception, and I am grateful that they did so.

I have the impression that they graciously agreed to refund my money in full at least in part because my complaint on my blog is second only to their own site as a search engine result for those who enter "Sterling Who's Who" on Yahoo! and Google.

Their main accusation of defamation of character relates to my assumption that the currently-existing "Sterling Who's Who" is the same company as the one with that name that existed in 1995 and was sued. I do not think this was an entirely unreasonable assumption. To my own way of thinking, it would be rather ill-advised to name one's own new company after one that had been the subject of ongoing litigation. But neither Sterling Who's Who nor any other organization is required to live up to my assumptions. Perhaps it is a result of the fact that articles continue to appear about "Sterling Who's Who" without making any distinction between past and present companies of the same name that leads to my confusion and presumably that of others as well. The recent article in Courthouse News seems to be about the currently-existing Sterling Who's Who; many of those who list themselves as members are referring to the company that existed in the 1990s.

As an anonymous poster on my blog has pointed out, the Sterling Who's Who that currently exists was formed in 2004. I apologize for my assumption that a company with the same name working in the same field was in fact the same company. Clearly there was no intention on my part to defame the currently-existing company's character. It is only natural to assume that there is continuity under a company name unless one is explicitly informed otherwise.

I was told that they are different companies by the person who answered the phone number on their web page during the lunch hour of Veterans Day Monday. He said he was the president of the company. Some might find this suspicious. But one can interpret the fact that I did not first get a secretary or automated system as a positive thing rather than a suspicious one, if one wishes to, indicative of the hands-on, personally involved leadership of this company.

The company claims to be a premier publisher, and that perhaps contributed to my sense that this was an older company. How can a brand new company be the 'premier' anything? But once again this presumably simply reflects my lack of understanding of the world of "Who's Who". After all, how can one publish about the "Who's Who" of other fields if one isn't in that category oneself. It is natural for a Who's Who publisher to place themselves in the Who's Who of publishing. After all, all that seems to be required is payment of the appropriate fee for inclusion. It would be silly of them not to begin by nominating themselves. I should have realized this.

I have decided to follow the usual journalistic procedures for retractions and corrections and leave my previous blog entries posted, with a link added drawing attention to this post that in turn draws attention to the satisfactory resolution of this issue. Were I to simply delete the pages on my blog, the cached versions would remain, without any indication of this resolution. Presumably that is why this is the standard procedure, and so I intend to follow it unless I am advised otherwise.

I also have decided that all my future interactions with Sterling Who's Who will be in written correspondence, should any future discussion be necessary. After all, this whole thing is presumably a result of my misunderstanding a telephone-only conversation, and so a written one is to be preferred. I suggest that anyone receiving a request for payment, subscription or membership by phone do the same, lest they find themselves involved in similar confusion.

Finally, as a gesture of goodwill, I invite anyone who has a positive experience with Sterling Who's Who to post a comment about it here. If there should be additional negative comments forthcoming, the owner of this blog is in no way responsible for them, as comments on this blog are unmoderated.

The Twelve Q-less Days Of Christmas

This is to be sung to the tune of the Twelve Days Of Christmas. All the words fit, provided you sing them fast enough. The next step is for all Bibliobloggers to send me a video of themselves singing the song, and we can put together our first Bibliobloggers YouTube Christmas video...


The Twelve Q-less Days Of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas
Mark Goodacre gave you...
a Christmas without Q!

On the second day of Christmas
Mark Goodacre gave you...
no two source hypothesis
and a Christmas without Q!

On the third day of Christmas
Mark Goodacre gave you...
three Synoptic Gospels
no two source hypothesis
and a Christmas without Q!

On the fourth day of Christmas
Mark Goodacre gave you...
four Evangelists
three Synoptic Gospels
no two source hypothesis
and a Christmas without Q!

On the fifth day of Christmas
Mark Goodacre gave you...
five words verbatim
four Evangelists
three Synoptic Gospels
no two source hypothesis
and a Christmas without Q!

On the sixth day of Christmas
Mark Goodacre gave you...
six key quotations
five words verbatim
four Evangelists
three Synoptic Gospels
no two source hypothesis
and a Christmas without Q!

On the seventh day of Christmas
Mark Goodacre gave you...
seven woes in Matthew
six key quotations
five words verbatim
four Evangelists
three Synoptic Gospels
no two source hypothesis
and a Christmas without Q!

On the eighth day of Christmas
Mark Goodacre gave you...
eight redundant redactors
seven woes in Matthew
six key quotations
five words verbatim
four Evangelists
three Synoptic Gospels
no two source hypothesis
and a Christmas without Q!

On the ninth day of Christmas
Mark Goodacre gave you...
nine Matthean beatitudes (and nine volumes presumed worthless in the Documenta Q series published by Peeters so far)
eight redundant redactors
seven woes in Matthew
six key quotations
five words verbatim
four Evangelists
three Synoptic Gospels
no two source hypothesis (nor any proto-Gospels)
and a Christmas without Q!

On the tenth day of Christmas
Mark Goodacre gave you...
ten discarded theories
nine Matthean beatitudes
eight redundant redactors
seven woes in Matthew
six key quotations
five words verbatim
four Evangelists
three Synoptic Gospels
no two source hypothesis
and a Christmas without Q!

On the eleventh day of Q-mas
Mark Goodacre got from me . . .
...the critical edition of a hypothetical source he can't see!


On the twelfth day of Christmas
Mark and I both give to you...
twelve Kloppenborgs clapping
eleven Griesbachs griping
ten Goulders grinning
nine Streeters striving
eight Tucketts tucking
seven Farrers fighting
six Sanders sayings
five Allisons!
four catching Catchpoles
three studying Steins
two laughing Lachmanns ...
...now let's all go watch Doctor Who!

Synoptic Meme

My post on Q and the follow up post have sparked several responses (at NT Gateway, Dilettante Exegete and Metacatholic, to name a few). One's view on this, of course, is a paradigm and thus one particular piece of evidence, on its own, is unlikely to result in an immediate paradigm shift.

Nevertheless, perhaps it would be helpful to have a Synoptic meme. If you are reading this, and know what the word 'Synoptic' refers to, then consider yourself infected. :-) But seriously, it might be useful for those of us interested in this topic to share a particular passage that persuades us that this or that Gospel preceded the others, or that Matthew and Luke did or did not know each other directly.

Here's one from me to get this started. It is the narrative that finally broke down my resistance to Markan priority, back when I was a fairly conservative student at Bible college. It had this effect not on its own, but as the culmination of the accumulation of evidence pointing in that direction. It is the story of Herod and John the Baptist.

In Mark's version, Herod is protecting John (Mark 6:19-20) from Herodias, who wants to kill John. It is thus no surprise that, when he has promised to give anything asked and is asked to kill John, he is distressed (Mark 6:26).

Matthew changes the way he introduces the story: in Matthew's account, Herod had wanted to kill John (Matthew 14:5), and presumably would have welcomed an excuse to do so. Why, then, is he still distressed in Matthew's version (Matthew 14:9)? Presumably because he was using Mark as a source, and simply copied him word for word here, without realizing the tension he introduced.

It would, of course, be possible to argue the other way, that Mark fixed the tension in Matthew, if all the other evidence pointed towards Matthean priority. That is why I emphasized that this particular passage was, for me, the icing on the cake, the straw that broke the camel's back, the last piece of evidence that changed my view of the Synoptic puzzle.

Share your stories, and when you have done so, post a comment here with a link to your post on the subject. Ask others to whom the meme spreads to do the same. Have fun!

Spoiling Christmas vs. Spoiling Q

Blame Mark Goodacre if you must (who replied, as I hoped he might, to my previous post about Q). But I find that I must provide details that would spoil most fundamentalists' Christmas in order to make my defense of 'Q'. Let me be clear once again that I am not presupposing that Q was a single written document. I do suspect that at least some of the material common to Matthew and Luke but not in Mark came from a written source, in Greek. But I don't think the case for Matthew and Luke's independent use of common source material rather than each other depends on our ability to determine in every instance whether it was a written source in a particular language, much less our ability to reconstruct a precise 'original' form.

The problem with determining relationships is that, even when there is clear use of a written source, none of these authors is likely to have encountered the majority of the stories and sayings for the first time when they read the written work in question. (That Matthew and Luke seem not to have known how Mark's Gospel would have continued beyond Mark 16:8 is a remarkable exception to this rule that merits a separate treatment on some other occasion. Remind me to return to it someday). These authors had heard the sayings, been told the stories, and prayed the prayers. The versions they encountered would have diverged through conscious reworking as well as simply through the natural processes of oral transmission. Since the authors would have had this separate fund of knowledge to draw on as well, not every difference will be due to redaction of a source. In some cases, the difference will simply show that the author knew a story so well already in one form that the different written version in front of him could not supplant it.

I digress. My point about the differences between Matthew and Luke providing evidence for Q did not have in mind simply their failure to overlap. It is the cases of genuine incompatibility that are the biggest obstacle to making the case that one drew on the other directly.

And so, Christmas comes early this year - at least as a subject on this blog. The infancy narratives provide significant evidence of the point I was seeking to make.

We may quickly dispense with the genealogies. Their apparent incompatibility has been noticed since the days of the early Church Fathers. The proposed solutions - such as successive levirate marriages - are not more persuasive than the view that these authors did not draw directly on one another.

Let me acknowledge outright that I can imagine some possible changes that one of the authors might have made to the other. For instance, I can understand why Matthew would change Luke's genealogy to make Jesus more directly the heir to the royal line. I can also understand why Luke would have changed Matthew's, to avoid the problem of Jeremiah's pronouncement that no descendant of Jehoiachin's would sit on the throne (Jeremiah 22:28-30). But neither of these changes explains why they did not keep more of the names the same. The more recent lineage - particularly the name of Joseph's father, which some who were still alive might have actually remembered - could have been left as it was. Indeed, Luke's list of names would have provided Matthew with enough additional names to make his last group of 14 actually add up to 14 (which, alas, as it now stands, it does not).

The incompatibilities run deeper - not simply in the date (Matthew places Jesus' birth before the death of Herod in 4 BCE, Luke connects it with the census under Quirinius in 6 CE), but also in the geographical flow. Matthew's Gospel places the family in Bethlehem from the outset. They flee to Egypt, and then we are told that they wish to return to the place from whence they had left. They only go to Galilee because they fear Archelaus.

In Luke's account, they begin in Galilee. They go to Bethlehem simply for the census. After Mary gives birth, they are there for a little over a month, because they head to Jerusalem for the purification rite (Leviticus 12:4). Then as soon as they've taken care of that (Luke 2:39) they return to Nazareth. Not only is there no time for a detour to Egypt, but instead of being afraid of the king ruling in Jerusalem, they visit public places there and have impressive things said about their infant.

The two accounts simply cannot be reconciled - in spite of the many large groups of children with towels on their heads who have often seemed to do so. I hope this post doesn't spoil your enjoyment of your local church's Christmas pageant. I have nothing against telling the story in its traditional form, as long as one doesn't think it constitutes a plausible historical reconstruction. I doubt most of the children who enjoy participating in it are worried about that.

But presenting these discrepancies is necessary if we are to be clear on why the common material between Matthew and Luke is best accounted for in other terms than direct use of one by the other. That they fail to follow each other precisely is no surprise. But that they fail to be even compatible with one another when there is no obvious motivation for the divergence, that, in my opinion, provides evidence that they drew on a separate source independently of one another.

I look forward to reading Mark's reply - which I hope he will entitle "Christmas without Q". If he does, I will do my best to offer in response a version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" that lists by numbers points of similarity and difference between Matthew and Luke relevant to this subject. I can hear it already. "On the first day of Christmas my Q-love gave to me..."

The Difference Makes Q

The definition of the 'Q' source is the source of the material found in both Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark. But while the similarities constitute the substance of Q, the differences between Matthew and Luke provide the strongest argument for the existence of Q.

If it were simply a question of similarities, one could account for them reasonably in any number of ways - as evidence that Matthew used Luke (or vice versa), that both knew a common written source, that both knew the same oral traditions, that both heard Jesus say the same things, and so on.

It is the differences that make it unlikely that Matthew used Luke or vice versa. It is hard, on the supposition of such a literary link, to understand how they could end up with incompatible genealogies, incompatible infancy narratives, and incompatible accounts of the death of Judas. Differences and alterations could certainly be explained in terms of the hypothesis of direct literary dependence. But agreement on large segments, with variations that make sense in terms of the alteration of a saying for particular reasons, and yet disagreement on narrative and geneological details without any obvious reason for those differences, suggests that we are not dealing with direct literary dependence and redactional alterations.

Of course, indirect knowledge of one Gospel by the author of the other, mediated either by memory or by oral transmission, is a possibility that deserves consideration. The differences seem to definitively exclude only one possibility: that the author of either Matthew or Luke had the other's Gospel open in front of him and used it as a source.

Perhaps on another occasion I'll discuss the difference Q makes. For now, I simply wished to point out that the difference makes Q.

Sterling Who's Who - More On The "Misunderstanding"

UPDATE: I have received information suggesting that the currently-existing company Sterling Who's Who is different from the one prosecuted in 1995. I personally have no way of verifying whether any of the same individuals are or are not involved in the company, but my assumption that this was a continuous company was based on the continuity of name and specialty. If I was in error about this, I certainly do apologize. I do not think that this can be constituted defamation of character, since it is natural to assume continuity of some sort when there is a continuity of name and other features.

I have posted a new entry about the status of the situation. The company refunded my money, and so I now consider the matter to have been resolved. Please click here to read about it.

Now that I look more closely, the signs are all there. Pretty much all the people who, on their web sites, claim to be listed in the Sterling Who's Who either signed up around 1994-1995 (when a company with the same name was sued) or very recently. If you check the internet archive, their web site is pretty much brand new. When I sent e-mails to all those listed on their web page, that to the webmaster bounced back (indicating they have the address but no institutional infrastructure is associated with it) and some of the e-mail addresses are with Hotmail.

Don't be duped! I'm using this opportunity to post this public warning, since I wish someone else had done the same before I was tricked.

Sterling Who's Who

UPDATE: I have received information suggesting that the currently-existing company Sterling Who's Who is different from the one prosecuted in 1995. I personally have no way of verifying whether any of the same individuals are or are not involved in the company, but my assumption that this was a continuous company was based on the continuity of name and specialty. If I was in error about this, I certainly do apologize. I do not think that this can be constituted defamation of character, since it is natural to assume continuity of some sort when there is a continuity of name and other features.

I have posted a new entry about the status of the situation. The company refunded my money. Please click here to read about it.

_______________________________________

I want to warn readers of this blog about a scam (which unfortunately I fell for and will now have to struggle to resolve). An organization that calls itself Sterling Who's Who contacted me saying I had been nominated for inclusion in their "Who's Who". Although it was clear from the start that this was going to be more of a networking than a genuine prestige-related list, I figured someone perhaps had given them my name, and figured it couldn't hurt.

But it can, and does.

There is now a charge for more than $700 on my credit card - not the fee that was mentioned by their representative on the phone. Perhaps people in the business world can afford to pay that much for inclusion in a glorified phone book, but I certain can't, but more importantly, I have no interest in doing so.

I should have checked them out more carefully. An organization by this name was prosecuted at least once before for collecting names and selling memberships in what was supposed to be a prestigious institution, but in fact those contacted were simply those whose names were found on readily-available mailing lists. Other people had picked up on the suspicious character of that organization and what it was offering. But it is easy not to find such information when a fairly large number of people list their membership with pride.

One thing is for sure - having a PhD doesn't mean you won't get duped. Hopefully others who are contacted will see this and think about it before going any further down the Sterling Who's Who road.

Top Ten Verses Of Scripture (Part 2)

Here's the remainder of my list. It was hard to choose, and I suspect I'll think of others I wish I had included...

6. "For he will repay to each one according to his deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favoritism" (Romans 2:6-11)
When I look at a book on Paul's letter to the Romans, I check what is said about this verse. It is part of the irony of some classic views of Paul that this clear statement of Paul's own view is treated as his either speaking hypothetically or adopting the argument of his opponents. But this is Paul himself working, as he does throughout the letter, to emphasize that simply being Jewish is not what God is most interested in. To capture the impact of this passage, we'd have to imagine Paul saying "For those who do good there will be glory - first to the Christian and then to the non-Christian". Indeed, this passage has relevance to how Christians view those of other religions. If you consider yourself a part of God's people, this passage is intended to challenge your reliance on that status, rather than encourage it.


7. "The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for a little while" (Revelation 17:9-10)
It was this verse that brought my premillenial dispensationalist worldview crashing down around me more than any other verse. Not only is Revelation not about our present (the author's distant future), some of it seems to have already been past when this was written!


8. "In him we live and move and exist" (Acts 17:28)
Because it shows clearly that the authors of the Biblical literature did not live or write in a vacuum. They read the literature of their time. They thought about things other people said. This was true even beyond the initial Jewish context (otherwise I would have used Jude's quotation of 1 Enoch, which is also an important illustration of this point). If the author of Acts thought that there was something true in a poem about Zeus, then where might we look for insight today? Then again, perhaps Luke simply engaged in quote mining, and this verse just shows that the practice goes back a long time. I doubt that, however, since there is an intentional comparison made between Paul and Socrates by the author of Acts: both were accused of trying to introduce 'foreign gods'. The story illustrates at the same time the need to be contextual, and the way a tradition begins to develop and evolve when it does so - and shows that to be "Scriptural"!


9. "After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has"" (Job 42:7)
The ending of Job is supposed to surprise us. God says he is happier with Job's questioning of his justice than with Job's friends' defense of it. He prefers honest questioning to pious dishonesty.


10. "Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked" (Genesis 3:7)
This verse about the main characters in the story - Human and his wife - shows that this is a myth about the loss of childhood innocence. When I teach on this story, I ask my students when they first knew they were naked. I have yet to receive an answer. Myth is not simply primitive science; it is a way to talk about things that we cannot pin down precisely using other types of language, yet need to talk about. As a story about the first humans in history the story is problematic; as a story about us, about people in general, the story is remarkably insightful.


I hereby tag the following people/blogs with this meme: Ben Witherington, Marc Goodacre, Scot McKnight, Ken Schenck, Evangelical Textual Criticism, Iyov. If I've tagged someone who has already done it, please simply pass it on to someone else!

Top Ten Verses Of Scripture (Part 1)

I have come to seriously dislike verses. Not specific verses from the Bible, nor the convenience they provide when referring to passages and looking things up. But the fact that so many Christians, when seeking guidance from the Bible, look for relevant verses just irks me, because in the original texts there were, strictly speaking, no verses (Hebrew poetry does break down nicely into two-line units, most of the time, but even here those who create the verse numbering system seem to have managed to split up natural units in the Hebrew text). Looking for a verse to guide you will often lead to two things: either one will take the verse out of context, or one will miss other relevant verses, or both.

But I've been tagged by a meme, calling upon me to choose my top ten verses. This has been interpreted in several different ways by some who have been previously tagged - as favorite verses, or as verses that accurately summarize the book they are from, and presumably other interpretations have been or will be forthcoming.

I find, nonetheless, that I can't quite bring myself to do this simply in a subversive sort of way. But I will provide some favorite verses, some 'great summary of the book/Bible' verses, and some 'this is what one can do with a verse or part of a verse taken out of context' verses. When I can, I will combine them. Here goes...


1. "eat whatever is put before you, raising no questions..." (1 Corinthians 10:27).
This is, of course, a great phrase to use to justify all sorts of eating habits. But in its context, it does in fact summarize a useful (and at times neglected) aspect of this letter, which was typical of Paul's approach as a whole. Paul pragmatically teaches that, on the one hand, food is not an issue, but that, on the other hand, one should think about what doing even minor things like eating or not eating might signify to someone else. It is also important to note that Paul does not seem to be worried about causing offense, which is a rather unfortunate way of translating a Greek word that really means causing to stumble. The issue is not behaving in a way that will satisfy the the most sensitive legalists and those most prone to take offense. It is in behaving in a way that will cause others to act in a way that does not leave them with a clean conscience, even though it may be something you yourself could do with a clean conscience.

Paul's highly contextual approach can be seen in a comparison of Galatians and Romans. In Galatia, Gentile Christians were having details of the Jewish Law imposed on them, and Paul fought it with some harsh words. In Rome, where the Gentile Christians were in the majority and were not in danger or having things imposed on them, Paul encouraged them to make allowances for the minority of Jewish Christians who once again might stumble and fall away as a result of the Gentile Christians' freedom. Interpreting Paul's letters as thought they were systematic treatises rather than pastoral responses to specific needs and issues will inevitably lead to misunderstandings.

2. "I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom" (Matthew 16:28).
This verse summarizes a key emphasis of earliest Christianity, namely the imminent return of Jesus. It is not a verse one encounters quoted out of context, but rather one that is regularly ignored. Yet it is crucially important, since it indicates the humanness of Jesus and/or the authors of Scripture, and can remind us of the extent to which our view of the world is different than the earliest Christians. This is not a theological problem unless one assumes that the authors of Scripture were inerrant, or that our views should be precisely the same as theirs. This verse helps us to see that the Bible itself offers a challenge to those assumptions.

3. "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8:7).
Anyone aware of the textual critical issues here might well cry 'foul' and object to the inclusion of these words as though they are 'from Scripture'. But if Scripture is 'the original form' then none of us knows what Scripture is anyway. This story almost certainly was not an original part of the Gospel of John. That doesn't mean it is not a story that goes back to Jesus. But it doesn't seem to be something written by the author of this Gospel. The story, however, is a challenging one, and that challenge doesn't seem to depend on the questions of authorship, historicity, or canonicity. It is challenging - whoever said it, whoever wrote it.

4. "I rebuked them and called curses down on them. I beat some of the men and pulled out their hair" (Nehemiah 13:25).
This verse always makes me laugh, just because it isn't what most people expect to be in the Bible. But it does say something about the Book of Nehemiah as a whole. Although Nehemiah prays, he doesn't depend on miracles to sort things out, as some other characters in the Bible do. He prays, but he also talks to the king. He prays, but he also pulls hair. Nehemiah is a useful corrective to anyone who assumes that the whole Bible is all about "letting go and letting God."

5. "Do to others what you would have them do to you" (Matthew 7:12).
The Golden Rule (not even a complete verse, but famous in this form) is one of the ways that Jesus is depicted as summarizing his teaching, and one of the ways his followers have summarized the heart of his teaching and life. It also nicely illustrates how Christianity (like any religious tradition, presumably) is neither simply the same as all the others, nor completely and utterly different. The teaching that one should not do to others that which one would not want done to oneself is widespread among humanity's great teachers, whether Rabbi Hillel within Judaism of Confucius in Chinese tradition. But Jesus' version of it, which asks one not simply to avoid doing but to do, is certainly distinctive (if not unique) in important ways. It calls us not to simply do no harm to the person in need at the side of the road, half dead (which always makes me think of "mostly dead"). We are called to do something, to help as we would want to be helped in that situation. This is a profoundly challenging teaching, embodied as I've already alluded to in the parable of the good Samaritan. This story, found only in Luke's Gospel, is usually felt to be an authentic teaching of the historical figure of Jesus, since it coheres so well with this core emphasis of his. In the end, though, it is the story itself that offers the challenge, irrespective of whether we know who ultimately composed it in the form in which it is familiar to us.

"Go and do likewise", the words at the end of the narrative setting of the parable, do not make sense when taken out of context (or better, they make too much sense when read immediately after another verse read at random, such as "Judas went and hung himself"). They don't make sense after Augustine's famous allegorized interpretation. They make sense when we know about relationships between Jews and Samaritans in this period, and think about the prejudices we might include in the story if we composed it today. Historical study raises difficult issues for those used to treating the text as factual after reading it at face value. But careful historical contextual exegesis is the way to find out what the text says, rather than conveniently avoiding its challenging by making it say whatever we would like. It is not the only way to approach a text, but it is not one that should ever be set aside altogether.

These first five have filled enough space. Five more will follow soon. At the end, I'll decide who to infect next...and tell them "Go and do likewise"!

Ironically NOT Expelled From Expelled

Apparently a post I wrote complaining about censorship has appeared on the site of the forthcoming movie Expelled. They presumably didn't catch that I was being censored by proponents of Intelligent Design. (Thanks to The Austringer for noticing this had been posted.) I wonder if they will censor my post about censorship if they realize.

I've also posted a comment on the Expelled blog, but rather than direct you to that, I'd rather share a quote (a 'second quote of the day', as it were) that was posted there by someone calling himself 'Boris':

"Blaming Darwin for the Holocaust is like blaming the Wright brothers for 9/11."

Choosing Between Wealth and Genius

Others were sharing their rankings, and so I couldn't resist finding out.

My blog is worth $37,824.18.
How much is your blog worth?

Clearly genius is not the way to become rich.

Ghostwriting Faith

It is interesting to compare the case of the recent book "by" Antony Flew with an article that appeared in Salon magazine today about the story that is usually told about how George Bush came to faith. In both cases, it seems to be those responsible for ghostwriting books and those responsible for press releases and publicity that in both cases have put words in the mouths of others.

Mel White used to be a ghostwriter, and his book Religion Gone Bad also sheds light on how the presence of a famous person's name on the cover need not indicate that the alleged "author" actually wrote any part of the book.

We live in a time when we cannot trust pictures - they are so easy to photoshop. Now we cannot even trust what we read to tell us about the views of the "author" whose name is on the cover.

Perhaps, at the very least, this will put the issue of pseudepigraphy in the Bible in proper perspective...

Quote of the Day (Michio Kaku)

"It's humbling to realise that the developmental gulf between a miniscule ant colony and our modern human civilisation is only a tiny fraction of the distance between a Type 0 and a Type III civilisation – a factor of 100 billion billion, in fact. Yet we have such a highly regarded view of ourselves, we believe a Type III civilisation would find us irresistible and would rush to make contact with us. The truth is, however, they may be as interested in communicating with humans as we are keen to communicate with ants" (Michio Kaku, "Star Makers", Cosmos, February 2006).

In the article there is a similar quote - and perhaps a more memorable one - from Carl Sagan: "What does it mean for a civilisation to be a million years old? We have had radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical civilisation is a few hundred years old ... an advanced civilisation millions of years old is as much beyond us as we are beyond a bushbaby or a macaque."

Is God's Aim Worsening With Age?

Today in my religion and science class we discussed some readings from Richard Dawkins and Fritjof Capra, but mostly spent time talking about the more fundamental question of what God does, and how science has changed or could change the ideas of God that people have.

One small group discussion moved onto the topic of miracles and 'acts of God'. Apparently two students disagreed about whether to see God's involvement in things like hurricanes.

Not restraining my silly side, I had to ask whether God's aim was getting better or worse. Certainly it is clear that, if New Orleans is the object of his wrath, his attempts to destroy it with hurricanes have been, for the most part, unsuccessful, and even Hurricane Katrina didn't do as good a job as he is supposed to have done in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Are there other options to religious believers besides either rethinking God's involvement in such natural meteorological processes, or concluding that God's ability to wipe out cities that offend him is getting worse? Is there a theological reason why he is supposed to now be using hurricanes when fire and brimstone from heaven were apparently much easier to target and accomplished their goal with much greater precision and efficiency?

What Am I?

I've already talked about being a Christian. Lots of times. But I have also been mistaken for an atheist, and perhaps this isn't surprising. Many of the same arguments that lead Sam Harris to be an atheist are the reasons I cannot be a fundamentalist. And I certainly disbelieve in Zeus-like deities, even if they bear Judeo-Christian monikers. If I had to choose, I would certainly prefer naturalism to superstition - but I'm not persuaded that those are our only reasonable options. I find much in Buddhism appealing - its pragmatic approach to spirituality in an experiential manner. But I don't find reincarnation plausible. I also have learned much from the Sufi tradition in Islam, without finding conversion to that tradition at all appealing, since mainstream Islam's focus on divine sovereignty and rewards and punishments in the afterlife emphasizes exactly the same things I find least appealing in the Christian tradition.

Pomomusings was kind enough to share the music of a band called The American Dollar. I like their style, a hybrid of Rock, Windham Hill or Narada Jazz, Electronica, and other styles as well. So what kind of music is this? Apparently it is called "experimental".

I guess that's what I am too. Experimental. An "experimental Christian" - is that a good label?

Quote of the Day (Deb)

"I believe a mind is like a parachute. The more open it is, the better it works" (Deb, comment on a blog)

New National Poll Seeks Christian Participants

CAROL STREAM, ILLINOIS, November 6, 2007 – A leading Christian publisher launches a new polling initiative to gauge the opinion of a broad range of Christians on theology, politics, and cultural issues in the United States. It is called NationalChristianPoll.com, and polling participants are being recruited now.

The project follows national research commissioned by Christianity Today International and Zondervan Publishers that shows diverse approaches to faith among American adults who identify themselves as Christian. The research indicates that traditional nomenclature—including “evangelical” and “mainline”—is less accurate today as Christians take an eclectic approach to theology, politics, and culture.

Up to 80 percent of Americans call themselves Christian, but their definition of the term varies widely. This research shows that self-identified Christians can be almost evenly divided into five categories based on their views of God and Jesus, the Bible, the church as a center for personal spiritual development, their involvement in church leadership, and community life.

While evangelical, mainline, and Catholic adherents were more prevalent in some categories, the diversity of denominations represented in the categories demanded that new names be developed to identify both the beliefs and behaviors of respondents. Unlike other studies, this survey did not categorize respondents based on their association with a particular denomination, but on their beliefs and resulting behaviors.

These categories are Active Christians, Professing Christians, Liturgical Christians, Private Christians, and Cultural Christians. They represent a broad range of opinion on key elements of Christian faith and practice. A detailed report appears in Leadership journal, a professional magazine for church leaders published by Christianity Today International, and is available online (http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2007/004/1.19.html).

This research prompts a new polling initiative, NationalChristianPoll.com. The views of Christians are often reported as a bloc, but NationalChristianPoll.com seeks to survey the range of Christians on many issues, and to report diverse opinions held by people of common faith. The polling will provide quick assessments of current events and breaking news. Christians who wish to join the polling database can sign up at (http://www.nationalchristianpoll.com/).

Christianity Today International was founded by Billy Graham in 1956. The publisher produces 13 magazines, an award-winning website with 2.5 million unique visitors per month, and a wide array of Internet resources.

Churchgoing as Antidote for Reading

This month's The Writer Magazine's short piece about a poll result indicating that "The United States is not a reading nation" (p.9) is not surprising. But one particular detail, if not necessarily surprising, is certainly striking and thought-provoking.

In the poll conducted by Associated Press/Ipsos, it was found that over the past year, "Churchgoers read half as much as non-churchgoers did".

Disappointing - that's the word I was looking for. Utterly disappointing. But at least I understand why so few churchgoers have ever read an academic book about the Bible or some other aspect of their faith. They simply aren't reading.

But what is the root cause of this fact, I wonder? I cannot figure it out.

Hail Mary (News From The Future)

A colleague of mine, whose work on time travel has been reasonably successful, takes delight in sharing religious news from the future with me. Here is an op-ed piece from ten years from now that he brought back, which readers of this blog may find interesting:

Our Lady Of Wisdom (November 6th, 2017)

"History teaches us that history teaches us nothing." I don't know who said it, but the events that have been playing out before our eyes over the past few months have proven the truth of the proverb. It was only a month and a half ago (it seems like even less than that) when clergy and religious leaders were celebrating the reintroduction of prayer into schools.

All that changed about two weeks ago, when a Catholic priest, representing the sizable Catholic population here in the state of Indiana, took his turn in the rotation and led the children in one local school in saying the Hail Mary.

Now concerned Protestant parents and clergy are taking to the street and protesting, and there have even been outbreaks of violence between Protestants and Catholics in some neighborhoods where the two reside in close proximity. Some Protestant leaders have allied with Jewish community leaders and clergy as well as some atheists to seek a total ban on all forms of school prayer. "It is about our Constitutional freedom of religion" said one parent. "No one else should be dictating what our children pray or who they pray to. That should be left in the hands of parents."
A quick search showed that this same parent, just one month earlier, was using similar language to demand the reintroduction of prayer into schools.

Other parents and clergy are asking that further laws be introduced to ensure that all references to God are generic and not in any way sectarian.

The views of Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers who were Deists would be unacceptable to most Christians today. Ironically, the founding fathers (including Jefferson) enacted laws and amended the Constitution to protect our children from have their views forced upon them.

Perhaps now the true wisdom of the founding fathers will be appreciated. But will we ever be able to make the progress as a nation that they hoped we would, if in every generation we have to recover the same ground and 'reinvent the wheel'?

The Real Me

In my Star Trek-related post I shared a link to a survey with Spock's picture, since he was relevant to the post. But if you want to know who the survey identifies me as...

The Google Meme

The Notes From Off Center blog shared this with anyone interested, and I've been curious about it for a while, so I thought I'd try it and do what was done there - infect yourself if you so choose!

These are some keyword combinations that, when entered on Google's search engine, produce my blog as the top site listed:

• young independent dihydrogen monoxide
• creationism's cartoon physics
• blog book smackdown
• casey luskin dishonest theological
• pileated woodpeckers oral tradition keywords
• antidisestablishmentarianistically-oriented founding fathers

The last one lists my old blog first and my new one second, so presumably that still counts.

Journalism 101

I've just had my second major experience of giving an interview for a journalism student who, when the time came for an article to be written based on the interview, came up with a string of "quotations" (in quotation marks both because the student actually called them this, and because they don't resemble anything I could imagine saying). This has happened to me twice and to other colleagues, and it has reached the point where I am considering refusing interviews with students from now on, or at least vetting their writing ability and understanding of the nature of quotations before giving the interview.

Is this a local issue at the place where I happen to teach? Or is the quality of writing, the understanding of quotations (i.e. that they are not paraphrases in quotation marks), and other such aspects of clear writing (which in journalism are essential) in decline nationwide? I'd appreciate any experiences and comments readers may wish to share.

How far we've come (Things I've Learned From Star Trek)

To get a sense of just how much has changed in the past half century, just watch these bloopers from the original Star Trek series. The part that made the biggest impression on me is the way Capt. Kirk and others keep walking into doors. The automatic door Star Trek led us to hope for has become so common that we easily forget that, when Star Trek originally depicted the idea, someone had to pull the door open to simulate a door that opens automatically.



Of course, there are other Star Trek inventions. It is interesting that the list of the "Top Ten" that appeared recently included Star Trek caskets but not the automatic door. Nevertheless, it is good to see that progress is still being made on turning some appealing bits of science fiction into science fact. (I'm talking about things like the cloaking device, and not the casket, in case you were wondering).

I recently mentioned our moral progress since Biblical times. When I think seriously about the issue of torture, I am struck by the fact that it simply wasn't an issue back then - those in power could do what they liked, and rarely were there even prophetic criticisms of what we would call war crimes after the fact. The fact that it is an issue today is encouraging.

When I think about the issue in more detail, I find myself wondering whether I am wholly opposed to all forms of torture on principle regardless of circumstances. I certainly oppose its application to people who have been rounded up merely on suspicion of wrongdoing. But would I really be sorry if the authorities tortured someone known to be part of a terrorist organization, and who can reasonably be suspected to know the whereabouts of a nuclear device hidden (and set to go off) in a heavily populated city? Would I really put my principles, and the suffering without permanent physical damage of one individual, before the lives of hundreds of thousands and the serious injury of many more? What if there were members of my family in that city? Do not the words of the most famous Vulcan apply here - "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"?

It nevertheless troubles me that many churches and Christian organizations simply trust the government to use its power wisely in this area. It is the loss of ability to be a voice of conscience to our society that is disturbing. It is very much in keeping with the ironies of the 'Pro-Life' position. It really ought to be renamed 'Pro-Breathing'. Just make sure someone has the chance to be technically alive, merely existing, and then show no interest in whether they are living in squalor, or wrongfully detained and tortured, or anything else that has to do with the quality of their life.

The most ironic part of it all is that this position is content to leave human beings merely existing as all animals do, yet it is a viewpoint that claims that human beings are fundamentally different from other living things on this planet.

If Star Trek has taught us anything morally, it is that one day the concept of 'human rights' may not be wide enough. We accept that other human beings are conscious by analogy. One day, we may find we are sharing the world with being that are technological or extraterrestrial in nature. Before we reach that situation is the time to reflect on the broader issues and ask ourselves just what it means to be a person, what rights they should have, and why we are persuaded of this. I am not suggesting that we be absolutists who do not allow for exceptions to many of our ideals. But we shall never be ready for further interaction beyond the human, if we do not first figure out some basic guidelines that we can persuade all human beings, of every culture and religion, to abide by at least in principle.

Before there can be a United Federation of Planets, we have a long way to go in achieving even a rudimentary stability merely on one planet.

These are but a few of the things I've learned from Star Trek. To include more would make this post too long. But I must mention just one more. Don't forget: Gok is best eaten live.

Historical Tradition in the Gospel of Peter

How long can oral tradition preserve information? The available evidence shows that, while the idea of preserving a complete story, word for word, in all its details and in order over even relatively short periods is all but impossible without the aid of writing, small pieces of information and tradition certainly can be preserved. One need not only think of the jokes, nursery rhymes, children's games and assorted customs that have circulated and been passed on from one generation to the next. In the ancient world too we can find evidence of the same bit of local lore appearing in a written work by someone who visited the area, and then again centuries later.

The issue is not how long a tradition can be preserved. Oral cultures are perfectly capable of inventing stories and making things up, only to then pass those stories on faithfully for centuries. The distinction between fidelity of transmission and accuracy of information is crucial to a historian.

In this blog entry, I want to draw attention to a nugget of apparently authentic historical information in the Gospel of Peter, one that I briefly mentioned on a previous occasion. I have no particular interest in claiming that the mode of transmission was exclusively oral or written. The Gospel of Peter, in fact, shows how complex the realities of transmission of information could be. The Gospel of Peter shows knowledge of stories found in the Gospel of Matthew, as well as one that I think was originally found in the Gospel of Mark. But I have no reason to think that the author was sitting with a copy of either Gospel in front of him. Most likely, the stories circulated among most Christians orally, passing from oral tradition into writing and back again, as written Gospels influences the oral tradition.

The detail I have in mind is the reference to the disciples being in hiding after the crucifixion because it was feared that they would set fire to the Temple. I can conceive of no other explanation for the presence of this detail than that it was a piece of relatively well-known historical data that was nonetheless not included in the earlier written Gospels. To my mind, it is inconceivable that a Christian author would have created this accusation against Christians, especially after the Christians themselves had been accused of setting fire to Rome. On the other hand, this detail seems historically plausible in light of what we know about Jesus: he had predicted the Temple's destruction, and so in some ways it was quite natural for the authorities to suspect that some of his followers might take matters into their own hands and forcibly bring about the fulfillment of Jesus' prediction.

This does not mean that the Gospel of Peter is generally reliable. On the contrary, most of it seems like further unhistorical elaboration of material in Matthew that is itself quite likely unhistorical. The historian's job is not to generalize. Even works of fiction occasionally refer to actual historical events; even top-notch historians get things wrong. The Gospel of Peter on the whole does not contain reliable information, but this particular piece of information seems to be absolutely credible.

Taking seriously the fact that, on the one hand, a culture that still maintains a strong oral component can remember and preserve both historical and unhistorical information over extended periods, it is appropriate for historians to sift through not only the canonical Gospels but significantly later sources, looking for nuggest of historical gold. This particular detail seems to be such a nugget.

How Mark's Gospel Originally Ended

I have posted before (twice, in fact) on the question of how Mark's Gospel originally ended, but without really discussing in depth what I think or why I think it. I am persuaded that the original Gospel of Mark did not end abruptly in 16:8 (as our earliest evidence would suggest). The ending is awkward, and no amount of postmodern literary criticism will make it seem better. It promises that the disciples will see Jesus but the women at the tomb must tell them where to go. Unfortunately, they say nothing to anyone, because they are afraid. Satisfactory ending? Not at all. It might just work as an ending to the Jefferson Gospel, perhaps, but unless one argues that the Gospel of Mark was written by an early Christian author who thought that no one saw Jesus after the crucifixion, then the best explanation is that the original ending has been lost. Clearly this is what many of the earliest Christians thought, since at least two different scribes improved the ending by adding additional material, and Matthew and Luke did so too (and some might even add John here, if they think the author of the Fourth Gospel knew Mark's).

The ending may well have been lost before Matthew or Luke used Mark as a source, since Matthew and Luke diverge significantly both from Mark and from each other at this point. Matthew adds joy to the fear the women feel, and ensures they do in fact deliver the message by having Jesus himself appear in Jerusalem (which fits awkwardly after a promise that he'll be seen in Galilee). Luke moves the appearances to Jerusalem.

But what was in that missing ending? I think I know. The answer is to be found, interestingly enough, by looking at two significantly later Gospels, one from outside the canon, the Gospel of Peter, the other the Gospel of John.

The Gospel of Peter is likewise missing its ending (as well as most of its beginning, presumably), but we have enough to have a sense of how it continued past the parallel passage in Mark 16:8. It went from the women's fear to the disciples in Galilee fishing by the sea. This is a natural progression in terms of the flow of Mark's Gospel. The women do not deliver the message, yet the disciples saw Jesus (as was widely circulated already in Paul's time - see 1 Corinthians 15). Presumably the Twelve and many other disciples returned to their earlier lives, but Jesus graciously encountered them there. It is hard to explain why the Gospel of Peter, which is clearly influenced by details from Matthew's Gospel (although not necessarily through knowledge of that Gospel in written form), does not 'improve' the ending as Matthew did. Presumably the author of the Gospel of Peter knew a story like that originally found in Mark, and this version was sufficiently well established that later developments could not unseat that tradition.

The final chapter of the Gospel of John, chapter 21, is often thought to be an epilogue added later. Regardless whether that is the case, it certainly does strike some readers as more like an account of a first encounter of the disciples with Jesus after the resurrection than a later one. For them to be commissioned in Jerusalem only to be then found fishing in the next chapter seems awkward. Thus this part of the Gospel of John most likely reflects the story that was in Mark's original ending (although I doubt the author was actually using a copy of Mark, truncated or untruncated, as a source). The male disciples know nothing of an empty tomb. They return to their earlier lives in Galilee, and it is there that they have the experiences that change the direction of their lives, and of the world, forever.

A final meeting with Jesus by the seashore while fishing would naturally form an inclusio with the first encounter between Jesus and his most prominent disciples in Mark. (Indeed, Luke may have known details from the story about the post-Easter encounter and, not knowing where else they might belong, have placed them in his account of the first meeting of Jesus with Peter and the others).

All of this evidence hangs together plausibly enough that I feel confident that these other Gospels give us a clear idea of how Mark's story continued. The challenge now is to address the historical questions in light of this evidence. How does this affect our understanding of the origins and development of the early post-Easter Christian movement? How does this potentially change our view of the reinterpretations of and additions to the resurrection story found in later sources? This line of reasoning based on the available evidence is hinted at by B. H. Streeter in a famous volume on Mark's Gospel decades ago, but rarely discussed in our time. I am persuaded that it is time for it to be reconsidered.

Quote of the Day (Ian Ramjohn)

"I think the “Pro-Life” movement has little interest in what happens to people after birth" (Ian Ramjohn).

Another blog I read regularly, Notes From Off-Center, also discusses this issue and the article that sparked the above quote.

Taking Things On Faith

In student papers, I regularly read that things are supposed to be 'taken on faith'. In terms of what they mean by this, there is simply no such teaching in the Bible. Neither is what they are proposing a good idea.

The closest one might get to it is the story of Thomas in the Gospel of John. There, however, he gets to see, and his skepticism is not particularly surprising given what he was being asked to believe.

Those who believe without seeing are said to be blessed, but they are not expected to simply believe a story someone tells them. They are expected to experience Christ's life-changing power and perhaps also miraculous healings and exorcisms. There is no expectation that people will simply believe things in the absence of evidence.

The failure of Jesus' contemporaries to believe he was the Messiah is not about belief in the absence of evidence. It is about what they believe based on the evidence they had available.

There is no reason to think that the author of Genesis expected his readers to believe his creation story 'on faith'. He does not dispute the basic facts of the natural world as understood in his time: that the world is mostly land with a large gathering of connected basins filled with water called seas; that there is a dome over the earth; that above the dome are waters; that there are lamps placed in the dome (the moon, like the sun, being viewed as a source of light). He says all of this because it is what people thought in his time. None of it is anticipated to require faith to believe it. What the author offered was an alternative story of creation, not alternative facts about that which was created.

The author of Genesis doesn't even seem to have intended to "prove" that monotheism is better than polytheism. There are no logical arguments. There is simply a story, one that he seems to be confident will be found more appealing than others available in that time.

When people today read the Bible in a non-literal fashion, this is not a retreat from the advances of scientific knowledge. It is rather a return to the classic way of approaching these texts. The only people who are allowing the concerns of modern science to determine the way they read the text are, ironically, the fundamentalists, who seek absolute certain scientific explanations in a text that does not offer them.

If you are looking for inerrancy in Scriptures and won't take no for an answer, I suspect that most Christians would be grateful if you would try Islam or some tradition that at least claims to offer such a text. But please, please stop trying to make Christianity live up to your strange modernistic expectations. Not only will it never do so, leaving you feeling the need to 'take things on faith', but the fabric of Christianity gets warped and distorted even through the futile attempt.

Taking things on faith is extremely dangerous. But what the Bible calls for isn't that. The word 'faith', like the word 'truth', had primarily to do with trust and trustworthiness. The object of this trust was not, in most instances, a text or words, but a person.

The question that we then have to ask next is this: when, if ever, is it appropriate to make leaps of trust? My own answer is that this leap is one that we might make in relation to that all-encompassing reality that we refer to as God. This is not an expectation that supernatural interventions will sort out all our problems, but a confidence that the reality of which we are a part is neither simply hostile nor ultimately meaningless. Even in this respect, however, we make a leap not in darkness and ignorance, but based on intuition and the evidence we have available. As I have said before, to feel that we can go beyond the evidence and the explicable is not necessarily inappropriate, whereas to ignore or deny the available evidence clearly is. To paraphrase Hebrews once again, "Faith is the evidence of things unseen - not evidence that the things that are seen don't exist.

Hebrews lists heroes of the faith, but nowhere on the list are people who by faith 'believed X, Y and Z happened in the past even though they couldn't prove it'. These are heroes of trust, not heroes of belief. Christians today have much to learn about the difference.

A Map Of The World Of Bible Bloggers

The Ancient Hebrew Poetry blog has posted a 'map of the world of Bible bloggers'. It is remarkable just how many there are. It is also remarkable to consider how posts by scholars, students, clergy and others are instantly available to readers from every corner of the globe. I must admit I was pretty happy when I saw my blog had been visited by someone in Azerbaijan!

On the other hand, when one considers the million visitors the Pharyngula blog gets in a month, I wonder how many people interested in understanding the Bible in a deeper and more scholarly way are making use of the phenomenal amount of reliable information and discussion that is currently available. But they very fact that a blog - any blog - can get that many visitors in a month (including repeat visitors, obviously) suggests that academic blogging is indeed a worthwhile way to spend one's time.

Expelled and Infected, All In One Day

Now that I've been banned from Uncommon Descent, presumably I can now confidently talk about pots and kettles and things like that whenever I hear proponents of Intelligent Design whine about censorship. I disagree strongly with Richard Dawkins about a number of things, but I will say this - I posted something critical of his views on the Richard Dawkins forum and, while of course there were many who disagreed with what I said, I wasn't banned.

From now on, I think I won't say I was banned from Uncommon Descent. I'll say I was EXPELLED!

Since we're on the subject of Richard Dawkins, this allows for a perfectly logical segue onto one of his favorite themes: memes. I have been tagged with a replicating blog meme by the An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution blog. I'll give the instructions as I received them, for the benefit of those soon to be infected [sinister laughter]

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

You can leave them exactly as is.
You can delete any one question.
You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is..." to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is...", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is...", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is...".
You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...".

You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions. Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

My Ancestors:

My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite
My great-great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock
My great-great-grandparent is The Anterior Commissure
My great-grandparent is Laelaps
My grandparent is Quintessence of Dust
My parent is An Evangelical Dialogue On Evolution

My Questions (and Answers):

1. The best scary movie in sociopolitical dystopias is: Children of Men [isn't it great when a child agrees with his parent?]
2. The best song that moves me inexplicably in 80s pop is: “All Through The Night” by Cyndi Lauper
3. The best classical story in Historical Fiction is: The Gospel of John
4. The best book appealing to both children and adults in Science Fiction is: Star Wars Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
5. The most fantastic melody of all time is found in: the second movement of Kurt Atterberg's Symphony No.2.

I'll transmit this meme to five friends:

Hyper-Textual Ontology

Sporadic Maunderings

Schenck Thoughts

TheoFantastique

The Quixotic Infidel

These are blogs that I don't think intersect with one another. Hopefully this will spread my version of the meme far and wide. [cue sinister laughter and thunder]

One last bit of news. Some of you know I have a new book coming out. If anyone is interested in buying my first book, John's Apologetic Christology, they can get it at a discount from Eisenbrauns, who is having a special sale on books by bibliobloggers.

Quote of the Day (Casey Luskin)

"identifying the designer can’t be done by science. It is a strictly theological question" (Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute)

I just had to make this my "Quote of the Day" today. Not only did the Discovery Institute respond to my accusation of dishonesty, but they were kind enough to illustrate it!

Luskin goes on to state that “while biological structures may be scientifically explained via intelligent design, the structures themselves have no way of directly telling us whether the designer is Yahweh, Buddha, Yoda, or some other type of intelligent agency.” A whole second page is devoted to elaborating on this question of the designer's identity, trying to salvage the appearance of honesty.

The attempt is unsuccessful. No one believes that a fictional Jedi master from Star Wars created the universe. Buddhists don't believe the universe had a beginning, and so they certainly won't claim the Buddha created it. Guess which option is left... The aim of Intelligent Design, as I said in a post earlier today, is to try to manipulate the impression people have of what the scientific evidence can and cannot prove, and to use it to get people to just the point where they ask 'Who designed this?', at which point they will presumably be told the "Four Spiritual Laws".

The truth is that, if science can say anything about design at all, it can go further than the Discovery Institute wants people to believe. If one can demonstrate design, one can also study the flaws in design. If one can detect the affects of human intelligence acting on the environment, or of water erosion carving channels in rock, it is only because the scientists have some knowledge of those personal and impersonal forces and their effects.

Either the study of design can tell us something about the designer - in which case it tells us things that are theologically troubling - or it cannot tell us that something was designed at all. The assumption of Intelligent Design is consistently that God (oops, sorry, "the Designer") does not work through natural processes. Is it too much to hope that the Christians in the movement might read verses like Exodus 14:21 and broaden their perspective just a little?

It is certainly true that discussions of the actions of persons take us beyond the realm of the sciences. Discussing what a painter 'meant' by a certain painting is not something science can tell us. But could science, as science, tell us that a painting was designed at all? Would an analysis of the chemical makeup of the paints be enough to prove design? Could we tell anything about the paint-maker through such a study? Couldn't we study the presence or lack of impurities in a human-made substance and determine the level of expertise of the maker? Could we tell anything at all about design if we didn't already know something about human beings and the sorts of things we make?

As I've said before, Michael Behe's argument about Mount Rushmore is instructive. The classic viewpoint of the Jewish and Christian traditions expressed in the Bible is that mountains in general are God's handiwork. Ones with presidents' faces on them are what human handiwork looks like. A failure to appreciate this difference, and an insistence on making analogies between God's handiwork and that of humans, seems to be what keeps getting these proponents of Intelligent Design in trouble.

Banned from Uncommon Descent

Apparently I've been banned from posting on the Uncommon Descent blog. Disagreement and questioning is apparently unwelcome there.

Although my aim was to point out problems in their arguments and hopefully prevent some people who were as yet undecided from being deceived, this too says something about that blog. I don't think I was ever rude (although I was sarcastic at times, as always). I just articulated a different viewpoint and tried to engage in intelligent discussion (perhaps that was my mistake). I've never seen anyone get banned from a science-related discussion forum for anything other than obscenity and other similarly inappropriate behavior. Can we take this as yet another piece of evidence that Uncommon Descent is not a site that, like Intelligent Design in general, is not about science?

The Discovery Institute Responds

The Discovery Institute has responded to a post of mine. In it, I accused the typical proponents of Intelligent Design of dishonesty when they assert that one cannot find out about the designer by studying the design. Read the response: You be the judge.

In his response to my post, Casey Luskin calls the question of the designer's identity a "strictly theological question". Don't miss the significance of that: theological. The designer is God, theos being the Greek word for God. Earlier in the piece he claims that the identity of the designer could be anyone (even the fictional character of Yoda from Star Wars - now how would that be a serious option? - or Buddha - showing his ignorance of Buddhism). But his slip shows the truth. The designer is God, because that is the only sense in which it is possible for the designer's identity to be a theological question.

I won't quibble over whether the reasons why ID doesn't identify the designer are 'principled'. At the very least, the principle in question is not honesty. Can anyone really claim I'm wrong about this, when the discrepancy between their official position and the things they let slip are so obvious?

My main point in the earlier post that is referred to was simply this: In the sciences, when effects are observed, causes are sought. Evidence of water flow over the course of long periods of time eroding rock and carrying sediment elsewhere. Evidence of human creation. Evidence of fire. When an effect is observed, a scenario that can explain the cause is the natural thing for scientists to formulate.

Why doesn't Intelligent Design do that? I think it is because that line of reasoning doesn't lead where they want it to lead. They want people to follow the argument to a particular point, but no further. Just that far raises questions to which particular sorts of religious answers can then be offered. But if you follow the evidence trail further, you see all the things that led Darwin to formulate his theory in the first place - evidence that the things that seem designed also seem cobbled together from already-existing forms, for instance. I still say it is a ploy, an attempt to use scientific-sounding language for religious ends. If one listens to data from the sciences, one should do so in a comprehensive way, not merely in a limited fashion to piece together an apologetic argument. The sort of argument they end up with, cobbled together from misused scientific language and hidden theological assumptions, ends up looking about as intelligently designed as the biological organisms scientsts study.