Looking Forward To God's Surprises

There's been an ongoing bloggersation about pluralism, universalism, inclusivism and so on involving this blog and several others. I've already posted a quote of the day for today, but then I came across this:

I can't help but think of the scenario in Jn 8.1-11 involving the woman caught in adultery. I wonder, if at the moment of judgment, once we have been fully confronted with both our own sinfulness, our own complicity in the broader structures of sin, and the ways in which those who sinned against us have been sinned against, if what will result is similar to what happens to the woman. In 1 Cor 6.2, Paul tells us that the saints will judge the world. I wonder if this means that God will say "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone." I wonder then, if we are unable to throw stones, if God will also say to those being judged, "then neither do I condemn you. Come now and leave your life of sin."

This comes from a blog belonging to Dan (HT Chrisendom). It represents an impressive attempt to think about some troubling aspects of the Bible in relation to its more fundamental principles, and thus seems to me to illustrate nicely how one might apply today's "quote of the day" to our ongoing bloggersation.

UPDATE: Another blogger, Prophets and Pop Stars, has joined the bloggersation.

Quote of the Day (Harold S. Kushner)

"We are always entitled to call the Torah to witness against itself, that is, to apply its own moral standards to some of its passages. We do it no disservice when we let it teach us the highest moral principles, standards so high that the Torah itself - the work of human hands and minds and the product of its own age - sometimes fails to live up to them. We show no disrespect in reading the Bible critically in this manner, providing we do it to separate the valid from the inaccurate, the permanent from the transient, not to refute the Bible's claims upon us" (Harold S. Kushner, When Children ask about God (New York: Schocken Books, 1989) p.134).

LOST: in need of a constant

Tonight's episode of LOST was wonderful. We learned how Daniel Faraday, in 1996, was working on an experiment that would allow the consciousness of a living thing (in practice, a rat named Eloise) to be "unstuck" in time. He meets Desmond, after his future self tells him to go find him at the Department of Physics at Queens College in Oxford. We later learn that Desmond will be Daniel's "constant" in both times if something goes wrong, just as he advises Desmond to find his own.

If LOST has been well planned from the beginning, we need to go back through Desmond's flashes and piece together his story. He was dishonorably discharged from the military - presumably because of his time-travel episodes that kept getting him into trouble? He doesn't call Penny, but he sees her at least once or twice before the boat race.

By this time, Penny's father knows about the Black Rock, from the journal of someone on board which had been owned by Tovard Hanso, and then auctioned for a remarkable sum of money. Who were the other bidders? Did Widmore already know about the island somehow by this point? At what point does Penny know that Desmond's consciousness has become unstuck in time? Presumably Desmond himself will give Penny the frequency of the Looking Glass station in this method, perhaps even tell her about the island, tell her to have researchers look for a large burst of electromagnetism, and give her the frequency to contact the boat (where someone else will warn George Minkowski, in charge of communications, not to answer). George too, we learn, has come unstuck in time.

The symbolism of the episode is powerful. We all feel unstuck in time and space, and we all need an anchor, a constant. Our constant can be a person - indeed, it is hard to see how anything could anchor us in the way the love of another human being can. Perhaps this also clues us in to one of the biggest mysteries of the island. It is a source of magnetism, and it seems that the soul or consciousness of those who have died are prone to reappear there - and that those who die there may appear elsewhere as well. Jack's father, Charlie, Ben's mother: that which can become unstuck by the power of the island and move about in time (and space?) presumably can move about in this way even when the body is gone. And so the show will presumably explore not only time travel but immortality. Indeed, it has begun to do so already.

Finally, I'll just mention that Penny's number in London is 7946-0893. Given the importance of numbers on LOST, I'd be surprised if there is no deeper meaning to them, and to Daniel's frequencies.

Quote of the Day (Doug Chaplin)

"There is no gospel that does not wear cultural clothes, no simple faith that owes nothing to general education for its expression and understanding. It is a necessary corollary of the Word made flesh, that the message of Jesus wears the clothes of Jerusalem and Athens, Illinois or Cambridge" (Doug Chaplin, "The rhetoric of Athens and Jerusalem", blog entry on Metacatholic. I recommend reading the whole post).

Teach Yourself Mandaic

It will not take you very far, and is focused on the modern spoken dialect, it would seem, rather than the classical form of most interest to scholars. Nevertheless, the resources recently made available on a Mandaean site in Australia for learning the Mandaic language are still a welcome addition. Thanks to those who've made them available!

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?

April DeConick proposed having a "blog co-op" on the theme "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Before proceeding to the source of this quotation, good old Tertullian, I do want to share an anecdote. I distinctly remember (although I cannot remember precisely when) suddenly realizing that "Joppa" (which I remembered from the movie Clash of the Titans) was "Jaffa" in the coastal region of modern Israel. Although it is not clear that this site was associated with Andromeda before the first century C.E., it nonetheless shows that Greeks were aware of sites in the historic homeland of the Jewish people, just as the Jews were aware of the Greeks and their literature and culture by this time too. To see connections between Athens and Jerusalem, between Greece and Judea, one doesn't have to look very hard. All one has to do is watch the right movies...

Now, on to Tertullian, who famously asked "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?", by which he meant "What has Greek thought and philosophy to do with Christianity and its Biblical heritage?" Tertullian himself provides a wonderful example of the fact that denying a connection puts one in a situation in which one is likely to make just such a connection without realizing it.

Tertullian's most famous contribution to Christian theology is connected with the doctrine of the "Trinity" ("threeness") of God, which he applied to this subject. Tertullian seems to have been the first to use the language of substance in relation to what provided the underlying unity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

What must be noted is that Tertullian's background was in Stoic philosophy, and without that background he most likely could never have suggested this terminology. Other schools of thought and traditions did not define spirit as a substance, however rarified.

And so Tertullian is instructive. It is possible to deny one's dependence on or influence by one's culture, one's place in history, the schools of thought one is surrounded by, but that doesn't mean one actually is not influenced. Indeed, it could be argued that it is those who deny such influences who are most prone to have blind spots in this regard.

In short, if someone is denying that Athens and Jerusalem have any connection, one should be highly skeptical. This applies not simply to faith and philosophy but other areas as well.

The Hand Of God

Yesterday's episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, was arguably the most powerful yet, at least as far as the series' exploration of religion and artificial intelligence is concerned. If anything, the episode could be criticized for overplaying this aspect - often times a subtle approach is best - but in in the end it seems to work.

The episode explores, among other things, the question whether the apocalypse in the Bible and that predicted by Sarah Connor could be the same. And the hand of a robot reaching out, accompanied by the words "Come with me if you want to live", is likened to the hand of God reaching out to humanity in the Sistine Chapel. Much is said about the soul, but in terms of living on in our offspring - which is not entirely unlike the artificial beings we may create. Indeed, at one point a distinction is made between our human imperfections, which make us human and define our humanity, and our "perfect" creations which are therefore not human. But how can that which is imperfect create that which is perfect?

At the end of the episode, Sarah's voiceover reflects on things machines (at least at that time) cannot do: "They cannot possess faith. They cannot commune with God." But for a change does not seem to exclude altogether the possibility that these things can be learned. If machines can learn to appreciate beauty, and create art, then (Sarah's voiceover continues to tell us) "they won't have to destroy us. They'll be us."

Some final thoughts about the notion of "the hand of God" in this episode. This machine hand, which is our own creation, stronger and "better" in some ways than that declared "very good" in Genesis, is recalled reaching out to humanity, in a parallel and yet a reversal of the Sistine Chapel painting: the "perfect" creature reaching out to its imperfect creation. The very notion of God having hands is anthropomorphism, thinking of God as though a human being. God has no hands, other than the hands we give him - whether by painting them on the Sistine Chapel, or being them in reaching out to those in desperate need of a miracle.

Around the Blogosphere

Everyone (well not quite but lots of bloggers) are talking about the recent Pew Forums study on religion. The study itself can be found on the Pew Forums web site.
The Quixotic Infidel has a nice chart (and post) about the development of the New Testament canon.
The Bad Idea Blog focuses attention on the hypocrisy in churches that condemn homosexuality and tolerate divorce.
Sun and Shield has an interesting post on the moral status of embryos.
Pharyngula shares statistics on the extent to which high schools are teaching evolution (and other things beside).
The Panda's Thumb documents still more quote-mining by cdesign proponentsists.
IO9 shares stunning photos of Titan, Saturn's moon.

Finally, let me offer this entertaining clip of dueling musicians...

God's Battered Wife

A student in my class on Paul's letters had a very thought-provoking reaction to the summary of Israel's experiences wandering in the wilderness in 1 Corinthians 10:6-12. There a series of actions in violation of the Law are listed, and the punishments that resulted. For this student, the text was a description of how each time the Israelites did something displeasing to God, God got violent with them. Israel in these stories, the student suggested, seems like "God's battered wife", being smacked around whenever he found her displeasing.

What do you make of this reaction? Our views about the appropriateness of violence and corporal punishment have certainly changed since the ancient world. What does it mean to take this changed context seriously when reading accounts such as this one? Is this just another instance, like the passages that claim God ordered genocide (and assisted with its carrying out), that the simplest solution is to repudiate what the Biblical author has written? What are the different possible ways of addressing the concerns raised by this student's reaction?

We also reached that neglected verse from this letter, 1 Corinthians 8:2: "If anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not yet know as he ought".

A Muslim Who Loves Jesus (Part Of A Continuing Bloggersation)

Doesn't exclusivism inevitably place the focus for salvation more on assent to doctrine than on either one's attitude to God or one's behavior?

Thus far I've approached the subject from the standpoint of passages in the Bible that seem to me to be relevant. Let me in this post try a different approach. I suspect that Quixie, who has now joined the conversation, may find this approach easier to dive into than the "in-house" one we've been having so far, which was primarily about Christianity and its Scriptures, although I do return to the latter once again at the end of this post.

Ken's recent post emphasizes free will, and I think that is an important aspect of this topic. It is possible, based on such considerations alone, to regard those who are eagerly seeking God, but whose views are shaped by other cultural and religious heritages than one's own, may thus have the will to know God and experience salvation that is so fundamental. Once again, we can distinguish between those who embrace God based on as much or as little information as they may have, and those who reject God (with comparable degrees of knowledge or lack thereof).

I wonder how one makes sense of the existence of Islam from an exclusivist perspective, unless one is persuaded that right doctrine is ultimately what matters. For if anything else is important, it is hard to reject outright this religion which promotes the worship of the God of Abraham, Moses and Jesus, and calls people to live ethically as accountable at the resurrection, and claims to have been mediated in the first instance by the angel Gabriel. If one believes that how one relates to God is important, and how one lives, and that one honors not only God the Father but Jesus as the one whom he sent, then Islam's emphasis on submission to God seems to be a potentially positive contribution to human history. It is only if one regards it as a Satanic lie intended to distort the truth that one can view it in a completely different way. And in doing so, one is saying that what matters most is assenting to the correct propositions and dogmas. Otherwise, why would a deceitful spirit inspire Muhammad to proclaim one God, abandoning idols, living righteously, caring for the poor, and all the other things Islam teaches in common with Christianity? It just doesn't make any sense.

Of course, there are things that Christians have historically believed about Jesus that we can make a very strong case are correct - such as Jesus having been crucified - and it is absolutely appropriate to explain why they are important. But there are people and groups we disagree with in terms of their entire worldview, and others that we recognize as united with us in some key fundamentals, with whom we discuss our different views on the details in a rather different way (hopefully). Is it inappropriate for a Christian to adopt a positive view of those who express their life's desire to be to honor God (and Jesus) and do what they require? On a visit to India, a Muslim autorickshaw driver we met, on learning that we were from the United States, took pains to emphasize to us how much he loves Jesus. If that is not enough, when combined with all the other things that Muslims and Christians have in common, then what is?

Before concluding, let me be clear about what I am and am not saying, lest our growing conversation find itself recovering the same ground we've already been over. I am not making a universalist claim that Islam and Christianity are equal paths to God, that all Muslims have a genuine relationship to God, or anything of that sort. One major criticism of pluralism is that it claims a God's eye view of religions, so as to know that they are all equal. I cannot claim that - I have no way of claiming anything more than the limited horizon that all human beings have. My own experience of God has been shaped in a Christian framework, just as my thinking has been shaped by theological and religious studies in the context of British universities that stand in a particular cultural and religious heritage. I cannot judge Islam objectively, and more than I can judge Christianity objectively.

What I can do is seek to be fair, to be appropriately self-critical when it comes to my own views and assumptions, and appropriately open-minded and willing to be appreciative of others. In doing so, I've come to find that there is much I appreciate in Islam. I began studying Islam in order to teach a class that touches on the subject, and I began with many common stereotypes in my own mind. Having taken a closer look, there is much that I can appreciate, not in spite of the fact that I am a Christian, but because I am a Christian. Anyone who cannot value a tradition that shares with Christianity not only an emphasis on one God, Jesus, prophecy, accountability before God, resurrection, God's concern for the poor and for social justice, mercy, and forgiveness both divine and human, must have an artificially either/or view of the universe. Obviously this does not mean I agree with everything I find in Islam, and I suspect that from their own standpoint many Muslims would object to certain views that I hold and opinions that I have expressed. Another (seemingly fair) criticism of pluralism is that it regards as unimportant precisely the distinctive features of various religious traditions. But this doesn't help in practice, any more than it helps mutual understanding between different cultures to make a sweeping assertion that all such cultural differences are unimportant.

The differences are important. But so are the similarities. How would an exclusivist make sense of the fact that other traditions exist that share so much in common with Christianity? How would an exclusivist relate to such traditions, and what if anything suggests those particular ways of relating to these other religious are required by the Biblical witness? Let us not return to the example of Paul calling people to reject the worship of idols and sexual immorality and experience salvation in Jesus. We know he did that. But what is the relevant evidence when considering how he related (or might have related) to an individual or a tradition that emphasized one God, righteous and merciful, who demands our submission and will hold us accountable for our actions?

We know the answer to this question. Once again, I find myself drawn back to Romans 2, where Paul claims that those who have received divine revelation through Scripture and are part of the people of God, but do not follow its teachings, are further from God than those who have only God's general revelation and respond to it positively. Paul states this as clearly as one could hope.
To turn around and claim that people who bear the moniker "Christians" (and perhaps even assent to the historic creeds) and fill the world with hate have an advantage over those who bear other labels but stand for love for God and neighbor is to betray what Paul stood for, and more importantly, what Jesus himself taught.

I think now we've found the crux of the matter. Is it what one believes about God and Jesus that saves a person, or their attitude towards God and Jesus, and putting into practice of what they have understood about right and wrong, good and evil? On the one hand, other religious traditions have different views of Jesus. On the other hand, some Christians twist the words attributed to Jesus in the New Testament to mean something other than they do. For instance, conservative Evangelicals teach kids that the story of the wise and foolish builders is about "building your life on the Lord Jesus Christ", whereas in Matthew 7:21-27 the point is about hearing Jesus' words and putting them into practice. He even says that there will be individuals who call him Lord who will be cast out as evildoers.

A devout Muslim will regard Jesus as the Messiah, born of a virgin, but from the perspective of some conservative Christians, that isn't good enough, because he is not acknowledged as divine. But he isn't viewed as divine in most of the New Testament, and so presumably it would be better to clean up our own house first and deny that the authors of the first three Gospels were saved, if we're going to take that approach?

A devout Hindu will regard Jesus as God incarnate, but from the perspective of some Christians, that isn't good enough, because he is not acknowledged as uniquely God incarnate. But even according to the Bible, the Word that was made flesh as Jesus was repeatedly "coming into the world".

So here is the crux of the matter, for Christians thinking about this subject. Based on the Bible, Christian tradition, and experience - the three main sources of Christian doctrine - what should we think that God cares about most, when viewing both those within the Church and those outside it?

I wrote this before Michael replied, but I would have made these same points anyway, sooner or later. Let me simply add, in response to one detail in his post, that I am not persuaded by his argument that what was necessary was "perfect obedience/righteousness", and since no one had that, the point becomes moot. Alas, such a view will not do justice to statements in the Bible to the effect that Job was righteous, and that others who clearly were not perfectly righteous (such as David) were viewed as forgiven. This approach begins by saying "the death of Jesus must have been necessary for salvation" and then proceeds to artificially create an insoluble problem where there wasn't one so that Jesus can be the only answer to it. But I guess that's what happens when one sneaks a letter like the Epistle to the Hebrews into the canon under false pretenses. That tangential and just barely canonical work becomes the dominating framework for interpreting everything else in the Bible. Yet those who give Hebrews' view of Jesus' death such priority rarely regard its Platonic presuppositions as authoritative, or its lack of interest in (or even room for) any sort of bodily resurrection.

R. T. Jones has now joined in the bloggersation too (on his blog and in a comment on Michael's blog). It is great to see this grow and involve an increasing number of bloggers! I had to mention the post at Communal Feast, since it is not all that often that I read the words "I am agreeing with just about everything James is saying"! :-)

I realize this post treads on controversial ground. I hope it stimulates interesting discussion as the bloggersation continues! Apparently others around the blogosphere have been discussing related topics, such as "Evangelical universalism", and may decide to join in this conversation.

UPDATE: Most recently, Owen at Renewed Theology has joined the bloggersation. Welcome! Pomomusings also has a post about pluralism.

Between two Worlds explores whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God.

Ken Brown has contributed to the ongoing bloggersation here.

Michael Halcomb is seeking to inject new life into the bloggersation by asking "Is Confessing Christ Really Necessary?"

Quote of the Day (Senator Mitch McConnell)

Sen. Mitch McConnell referred to the Democratic race as being between "a New York senator who was born in Illinois, and an Illinois senator who was apparently born in a manger" (Reported in the Washington Post via Commonweal; HT Obamianity and Melissa Rogers).

Rated M For Meme

I'd like to thank Ian for awarding me (or should that be "infecting me with"?) the "Rated E for Excellent" award - which is also a meme, since you then pass it on to ten other blogs, and so on until the word "excellent" in reference to blogs eventually loses all meaning, or the meme runs out of steam. The latter seems more likely in view of the number of blogs that exist and their growth rate.

I'd like to make the first award to Jim West, who is on his third blog (that I'm aware of), the previous one having recently been maliciously hacked. Although his latest blog is 'new', surely a sequel will always be as good as its predecessor, right? :-) Plus, I know how much Jim loves memes...

I'm making the remaining awards mainly to Biblical scholars with blogs that make a contribution to the quality of discussion in the blogosphere of the Bible and other ancient literature from the same time period:

Mark Goodacre - who is certainly a pioneer in the realm of web resources for Biblical studies and biblioblogging - for his NT Gateway.

April DeConick's Forbidden Gospels

Christopher Heard's Higgaion

John Hobbins' Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Jim Davila's Paleojudaica

Duane Smith's Abnormal Interests

Jim Crossley's Earliest Christian History

Stephen Cook's Biblische Ausbildung

Doug Chapin's Metacatholic

It was hard to limit myself to these ten. Even among those blogs that deal with topics related to Biblical scholarship, there are others that deserve mention, like Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed, Sansblogue, Targuman and Evangelical Textual Criticism. If I nominated you and you value those blogs, perhaps you'll award them!

Just one more question...Should the "E" icon be added to my sidebar?

Relegated to the Fringe (The Bloggersation Continues)

Michael has responded and suggested that I am 'blurring the lines'. I would like to counter and argue that I see the lines as already being blurry, and feel that Michael is trying to make them clear and obvious where they aren't.

In discussing my earlier invocation of the evidence of Acts 17, Michael takes what I feel is a typical conservative 'either/or' approach. Paul was evangelizing the philosophers in Athens, and so James' view must be that Paul was saying that 'they were all OK'. Obviously the latter view is not what the text says, and so Michael can declare victory for his own viewpoint.

Not so fast.

There are multiple parties present on Mars Hill, we are told. Paul is encountering Stoics and Epicureans. Even so, I wish to point out that he is not without common ground. But note who is missing: Socrates and his heirs, such as the Platonists. Where are they?

If we take Luke's depiction of Paul in this story completely seriously, we could be forgiven for concluding that Paul is representing "their side" in this debate. He is depicted as being accused of "advocating foreign gods", the very accusation levelled against Socrates. The echoes of Socrates are noted in many commentaries (and in online articles) and need not be rehearsed here. The line that Michael wishes to draw so clearly seems to run into the Greek philosophers' camp to embrace Socrates over against the other views Paul argued with in the story in Acts 17. Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria would not be surprised, I imagine. My point was never that Paul thought "everyone was OK" and represented a universalist approach. My point was that Paul found genuine faith and experience of God to cut across every conceivable boundary marker that separates people. This is what I think of as "inclusivism", for want of a better term.

It is when Michael gets to figures like Abraham and Melchizedek that it becomes clear how much his presuppositions dominate his understanding of these stories. Melchizedek, we are told, rejected the idols of Canaan and worshipped only one God. Perhaps. A more likely scenario is that he was a devotee of the Canaanite high God, El, as was Abraham himself. More striking still is Michael's willingness to sacrifice even Abraham's salvation to his presupposition that there can be no salvation outside of Christ. Where I feel confident that Paul was looking to Abraham as by definition a paradigm for the people of God who are defined (in one way or another) as his children, Michael seems happy to make subtle distinctions between being 'righteous' and being 'saved'. I think the way I am reading the text is far more natural. I would welcome input from other readers who may wish to assess both our readings, and perhaps propose still others.

I asked at an earlier point in the conversation whether the coming of Christ is understood to make it harder to come to God. Michael has at last come right out and said that his answer is "yes":

We might take the view that the cross, since it was established before the foundations of the world, covers those prior to it (at least in God’s mind) who were faithful to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. However, after the cross event, this cannot be the case as “belief” and “confession” in Christ are a MUST.

So apparently individuals like Abraham were acceptable to God before Christ came, but are now unacceptable to God because Christ came, even though Paul uses Abraham as a paradigm for saving faith in the present. Once again, this exclusivist reading does not seem to me to be an obvious way of understanding the text - any more than a universalist one. An inclusivist, on the other hand, can regard the coming of Jesus as a way of inviting those formerly excluded to be included, without thereby excluding those who were previously acceptable.

Let me conclude by saying that the author of Hebrews was not "probably Paul". I doubt I am alone in recalling, as a Greek student who had tackled passages from the authentic Pauline letters, getting to Hebrews and suddenly feeling overwhelmed (and learning very quickly to expect to meet the genitive absolute construction repeatedly). I doubt that anyone who has studied these letters in Greek, whether in modern times or in the ancient Church, really thinks Paul wrote it.

Drew is now a full-fledged participant in the conversation, and since he made the point about what it means to have heard better than I probably would have, I will simply direct readers to his post.

Finally, I noticed that the last post was the 500th since I moved my blog to Blogger. Yet another reason to celebrate!

Paul and Pluralism (A Reply to Ken Brown, Continuing the Bloggersation)

Thanks, Ken, for your insightful reply. I certainly would agree to a large extent with you (and Michael) that Paul saw himself as inviting people to experience redemption from the powers of the present evil age in and through Christ. To deny that this is central to his worldview, and his writings, would scarcely be plausible. What I'm trying to focus on is, in a sense, twofold:

(1) I am trying to ascertain whether there is any indication how Paul might have viewed those who were the equivalent of a Melchizedek or other such individuals who are recognized as having faith in one supreme Lord that is in essence equivalent to the Israelite understanding of God, and who understand the appropriate way of living in light of this conviction to be to pursue uprightness and justice.

(2) How might we apply Paul's writings to parallel or at least similar situations today.

To begin with the second, my suggestion was that there is a parallel between Paul's argument addressed to the Jews of his time, and what one might say to the church today. In both instances, the focus has come to be on a particular group as exclusive possessor of salvation, so that those within the boundaries are 'saved' even though they fall far short of what God demands of them, while those outside the line are 'lost' even though they may be seeking God with all their might. The parallels are too striking to ignore, as is the irony that the community that supposedly looks back to Paul as an authority so closely resembles those he was arguing against.

As for the first point, Paul generalizes about the earlier lives of Gentile Christians that they were living immorally and in ignorance. I have no doubt that Paul might generalize about individuals today in the same way who responded to his proclamation. But the question must still be asked what Paul might have thought about Gentiles who, through the study of philosophy, arrived at the conviction that there is one supreme God and that certain moral norms are appropriate which matched Paul's own.

Luke certainly seems to have a view of what Paul thought about this: Paul is not only depicted as being like Socrates in Acts 17, but Paul is depicted as quoting two passages about Zeus as speaking truthfully about the God whom he worships. Presumably, like the author of the Letter of Aristeas who makes a similar equation, Luke (and perhaps Paul) was of the opinion that it was not the name or designation used to refer to God that mattered, but the basic concept.

In concluding, let me ask a question that helps to highlight what in fact matters most. How do you (that is, Ken, Michael, and anyone else reading this who wishes to join in) view the status of Muslims? The example of Islam places the question into focus, since any devout Muslim has a view of Jesus that is presumably not lower than that of his earliest followers. If Jesus is acknowledged as prophet (which was a widespread early view of him), as Messiah, and the emphases in his own teachings are adhered to, would the belief that Muhammad was also a prophet, or that Jesus didn't die on the cross (a view that some early Christians held, and it is presumably from them that the Muslims derived the idea) hinder salvation? If so, how do we determine which conclusions about history and theology are decisive and which are not?

Once again, I direct attention back to Paul's example, the faith of Abraham. But given the importance of Abraham for Muslims as well as Christians, and the many points we agree on, it is important to at least ask the question whether Paul (if he lived in our time) would have spent his time arguing with Muslims about the points of disagreement he had with them, or would have focused on those who, from both a Muslim and a Christian perspective, were living lives of alienation and estrangement from God.

So, in asking questions about the salvation of Muslims from the perspective of the Bible, I am speaking, of course, about those who have had a genuine experience of God, and live in the pursuit of social justice and other concerns emphasized in both the Bible and the Qur'an. To talk about "Muslims" in general or "Christians" in general is to fall back yet again into the approach Paul was combatting. It is not the group to which one belongs that is what matters, but the attitude towards God and towards other human beings. That defines the people of God, and that definition seems to me to cut across the boundaries between churches, mosques and the spaces outside, just as Paul saw it in his day to cut across the boundary between Jews and Gentiles.

This is my essential point: I am not suggesting that Paul did not focus fully and utterly on Christ as the one through whom God was drawing the Gentiles together with the Jews into a united people for himself. I am suggesting that he was seeking to identify the children of Abraham as including all those who had a faith like Abraham's, in a way that allowed the Gentiles who were assumed to be excluded to be included. My concern is that, if we limit the implications of Paul's argument to the precise specific groups and issues he was addressing and/or applying it to, rather than going back to his overarching principles, we may find ourselves repeating the sorts of arguments that have been used to justify preserving traditional views of slavery, or of women, or whatever.

So the question I come back to is this. Did Paul really mean it when he said that the children of Abraham are those with a faith like Abraham's (Galatians 3:9; Romans 4:12)? If so, then can those of us who are Christians not recognize in individuals outside of the boundaries of Christianity the occasional individual who has a faith like Abraham? Is it not appropriate, when we hear the selfless prayer of the Sufi mystic Rabi'a, to echo the words of Jesus? "Verily I have not found such faith, even in all of Christendom".

UPDATE: While I was writing this, Michael and Ken were continuing the conversation here.

Michael has responded here.

Ken has not only responded but provided a table of contents to the discussion so far.

Brief Reply To Michael Halcomb

This is my reply to Michael Halcomb's most recent contribution to our ongoing bloggersation.

First let me address an apparent misunderstanding. You suggest that I think Paul is addressing legalism, when in fact I asserted (or meant to assert) the opposite. Perhaps I was unclear - indeed, I may have assumed that you would take for granted the classic Protestant understanding of Paul. At any rate, I too am persuaded by the new perspective on Paul. At least we seem to agree on something! :-)

All I will add in this short post is that the apostle Peter, as depicted in the Acts of the Apostles, seems not to agree with your depiction of the "univocal" expression of all New Testament figures, when he is presented as saying "I now realise how true it is that God does not show favoratism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right" (Acts 10:34-35). In the same work, Paul is depicted as saying "I believe everything that agrees with the Law and the Prophets, and I have the same hope in God as these men [i.e. his Jewish accusers], that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked" (Acts 24:14-15). I'd also be interested to know how you interpret the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew's Gospel as reflecting the view that "When it comes to right standing with God, the NT writers are univocal: Christ alone!"

I look forward to further clarification of how you understand the new perspective, if you have time, as well as the passages I've just mentioned, when you have time. My own treatment of the new perspective can be found here and here (as well as tangentially in other posts on my blog).

UPDATE: To tide us over until offering a longer reply, Michael has this brief humorous one, including a cartoon I had been hoping to share at some point...

LOST: The Island and the People

Are the mysteries of the island on LOST ultimately irrelevant?

Any true fan will of course be ready to hurl a can of Dharma Initiative baked beans at me for even thinking such a questions, much less putting it in writing. But please hear me out. I am not suggesting that the mysteries of the island are not interesting, nor even that they are not important. What I wish to propose instead is that the mysteries of the island may be distracting us from the most important thing going on on the island: human lives being lived.

One reason why LOST has the ability to keep the attention of fans is the depth to which we come to know the characters on the show. I wonder if, ultimately, that is what the show is supposed to be about: people in difficult and challenging circumstances responding to them in a way that acknowledges Jack’s guiding principle, “live together, die alone.” Most of us have had the experience of forming deep friendships with individuals with whom we would not normally have done so, because there was some shared bond that was more important than all the differences of personality and interest between us. As our lives move on, and the shared experience that united us fades into the past, sometimes the relationships themselves can fade. When they do, we can feel like Jack in the earliest flash-forward scenes. We may be inclined to start drinking, or at the very least to grow a beard.

The questions raised by the island’s mysteries, on the other hand, include many of the standard questions that people ask about “Why are we here?” These are metaphysical questions, and they do not have easy answers, if indeed they have answers at all. Among the big questions on LOST are the following familiar ones:

Do we have free will?
Are we alone?
Is time travel possible?
Do other universes exist?
Is immortality possible/real?
What happens after we die?
What is the nature of good and evil?
What is the meaning of life?

These are questions that are typically asked within a religious setting, often with very specific answers being given. Debate and conflict regularly breaks out between individuals and groups with differing viewpoints on how to answer these questions.

In a recent episode, Ben provoked Locke by suggesting that he is in the same place again as he has been in the past: trying to get answers and finding his quest frustrated. Locke is so desperate for answers that he placed a hand grenade in Miles’ mouth. Locke has identified himself as a “man of faith”, and perhaps this is the most fundamental challenge that LOST sets before us: is being a person of faith about getting to the bottom of life’s mysteries and answering all the questions, or about how we relate to people? Is salvation about getting off or even staying on the island? Or is it about working through the issues and experiences that have left scars on our lives, so as to become better people in the present and future?

If the point is about people, and indeed to challenge the way the mysteries of the universe and questions about the meaning of life can distract us from focusing on human beings and the ways we relate to one another, then perhaps LOST will end like The Sopranos. (Of course, it might be necessary to borrow the ending from The Sopranos anyway, if there is another writers’ strike the year LOST is supposed to end, but that is a different issue.) Perhaps Locke will be the last one on the island. Everyone else has either left or is dead. He confronts an apparition of someone he once knew, and demands to know what is really going on, and what the smoke monster is. “You really want to know?” comes the reply. “All right, I’ll tell you.” Then the screen goes black, and the final LOST logo appears for the last time.

Then we’ll have to ask ourselves whether the hours we have devoted to watching the show, and talking about it, and pondering its mysteries have led us to become better human beings and relate to one another in more positive ways. It would be ironic if the lesson which many of the survivors of Oceanic 815 learn on the island is not taken to heart by the show’s viewers.

“Live together, die alone”

Continuing Diablogue about Salvation and Christianity

This is a reply to some of the points Michael Halcomb made in responding to my previous post in this "blogalogue" (or is it "diablogue"?).

Michael wrote:

Paul is arguing that to trust in God is to trust in Jesus and Jesus only. It is not simply a social marker or some identity issue at hand—though these aspects are certainly a result of what’s going on.

First, to clarify, I would never assert that anything is simply social, but that does not mean that there is not in pretty much everything some social connection.

As for Paul's discussion of "works of the Law", I don't see how it could be any clearer that Paul is talking about the works that defined Jewish identity and separated Jews from Gentiles. Presumably if he were talking in general about "good deeds" that one does "in an attempt to earn one's salvation", he wouldn't have used circumcision as the "work of the Law" par excellence that he refers to. Not only do we know from Jewish literature in this time how circumcision was viewed, but it was also done to Jewish males (rather than by them) when they were a mere 8 days old. Even though it would have been an adult decision on the part of Gentiles in Galatia, this is still a rather odd choice of which work to focus on if Paul's point was about self-righteousness and legalism.

As for the definition of trust in God is "trust in Jesus and Jesus only", I don't think even the Gospel of John goes quite that far. It does assert that one cannot have just the Father without the Son, but Michael's statement goes even beyond that. At any rate, Paul doesn't make such a claim, and his use of Abraham as an example makes it impossible to assume that he did. Saving faith, for Paul, is faith like Abraham's. What Jesus has accomplished is to draw in Gentiles. The goal for Paul was to welcome in those previously excluded, without requiring of them the distinctive markers of Jewish identity such as circumcision. That many Jews responded negatively to this influx of Gentiles pained Paul greatly, but he was convinced that in the end this would merely provoke the Jews of his generation to jealousy, and all of them would come to salvation before the end came (Romans 11:25-32). Those who ignore Paul's expectation of the imminent end (one more thing about which he turned out to be mistaken) leads some to understand Paul as envisaging the hardening and as a result damnation of multiple generations of Jews, with a mass conversion in the last days. But what Paul more likely envisaged was similar, but expected within his generation. That is why he never gave up his conviction that his message would turn out to be good news for Jews as well as Gentiles.

Michael also wrote:

It is fact that one must trust in Jesus alone for salvation

Let me simply state that the source of and basis for this assertion really needs to be clarified, and not simply taken as self evident, since in a very real sense this is the heart of the discussion. The question is not whether, from a Christian standpoint, God is understood to have reached out to humanity through the life of Jesus, but whether in doing so God has restricted access to grace so as to exclude people who were otherwise acceptable. In the Jewish Scriptures (the Christian Old Testament), Abraham (whose faith is the model for Christians, according to Paul) recognized the Canaanite priest-king Melchizedek to be a worshipper of the same God he himself worshipped, just under a slightly different name. In the New Testament, we find Paul depicted in echoes of Socrates in Acts 17, and in the Gospel of John, often understood to give clearest voice to exclusivism, we find the assertion that the Word that became flesh in and as the human life of Jesus was the light that illuminates every human being coming into the world.

I also wish to question the identification of religious experience as limited to speaking in tongues and other such specific phenomena. Nevertheless, it is evident that glossalalia, prophecy, and other such specific spiritual manifestations were an almost universal part of early Christian experience. To downplay this, I suggest, is to downplay parts of the New Testament that often make modern Christians who are not Charismatics or Pentecostals uncomfortable. And if there are no parts of the Bible that make one uncomfortable, then one is surely not reading it in all its diverse detail! Be that as it may, I had in mind the sort of life-changing conversion experience that gets one started in the life of faith, and not the phenomenon of spiritual gifts, which Paul acknowledges to be diverse and not universally experienced.

Is it appropriate to allow the faith and life-changing experience of an individual who does not fit one's preconceived notions of "the saved" to change one's views? Paul seems to have thought so: at the heart of his letter to the Galatians is the fact that they experienced the Spirit while uncircumcised. God had accepted them - who was Paul to object (Galatians 3:2-5)? It seems to me too easy to say one will "leave judgment up to God" and then carry on as though all those who are not Christians stand condemned. It is more in keeping with Paul's argument to allow the evidence of a real experience of God akin to what Christians have experienced to challenge our assumptions and cause us to rethink our views.

I doubt Michael will agree with me on many of my points, and I hope we can focus on the meaning of specific passages in detail, since I agree with him that the meaning of texts is not "an anything goes type of game". But, contrary to Michael's assertion, I have not offered an interpretation of what Paul wrote that subsumes his argument under an imposed framework from the social sciences. Insights from the social sciences have certainly played their part, but no more so than in every case when an interpreter suggests that cultural and historical background is relevant to making sense of the text. Key Evangelical scholars like James D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright understand Paul's meaning when he refers to "works of the Law" in this way, and I am largely building on their work. This matter cannot be settled simply be dismissing the methods or the assumptions of the interpreter, but only by seeing who makes the best sense of the text.

Lest I be accused later of not having said this up front, the question of what Paul did or didn't write is not the only consideration for me. Historically, Christians have arrived at conclusions using Scripture, tradition and reason. I do not define Christianity as believing or doing (to quote Ned Flanders) "everything the Bible says - even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff". The Bible does not speak in only one way about the subject we are discussing. When we become aware of this diversity, we realize that we cannot simply reproduce the Bible's affirmations, because they are themselves multiple. Instead, we must allow ourselves to be challenged by these diverse voices, while seeking to adopt the underlying approach that led them to their diverse conclusions in drawing our own, in our own very different historical setting.

Michael has replied here.

Quote of the Day (Discovery Institute)

"The misreporting of the evolution issue is one key reason for this site" (Discovery Institute's Evolution News and Views site.

At last, something we agree on. The Discovery Institute does indeed maintain that site for the very reason specified: to misreport the "evolution issue".

HT John Pieret

Community of the Saved, or Salvation of the Community? (A Continuing Bloggersation)

I am grateful to Michael Halcomb, Ken Brown (twice) and Drew Tatusko for replying to an earlier conversation-starter of mine about Christianity, salvation and other religions. Since these responses are each rather different, I find myself wondering how to best reply. Rather than take each in turn, I want to try to ask a question that may address views and presuppositions that lie behind things that these other bloggers and I have written.

Is the Christian community to understand itself as a community that seeks to ensure that those within it have the characteristics of salvation and a genuine relationship with God? Or are those who have salvation and a genuine relationship with God those who are part of the Christian community? In other words, is this a body that is like a fan club, which certainly does not consist of all fans of whatever band, individual, team or whatever the club is dedicated to, but within which one would expect everyone to share this characteristic of fandom? Or is the Christian Church more like the Supreme Court? If you are a part of it, you are a Supreme Court Justice. If you aren't, then you aren't, whatever your views about or appreciation of the Supreme Court may be.

These are simply two examples chosen because they were the first ones that came to mind to illustrate each category. I'm sure there are better ones. But I hope this will illustrate two different ways of viewing that nature of the Church as Christians. If we take the former view (as I do), then it is not that Christianity is a group that one enters because only therein one can find salvation, but one enters it either because it offers a community of those who have had a particular experience of God and are united by it, and invite others to have it.

Let me now apply this to the case of Cornelius, whom I used in my earlier example. Is Cornelius, in this story, being given an opportunity to know God, of coming to experience salvation? This seems a potentially problematic way of understanding the story. If the Christian message is about proclaiming grace, mercy, forgiveness and liberation to those who need it, then why single out this individual because of his righteousness as a person to whom to proclaim this message? Is it not more natural to read it as an instance of someone who is already in a relationship with God, and is thus being invited to join a community of those who share this sort of experience, while in so doing also crank that experience up a notch, as it were?

It is problematic to discuss this subject in relation to the writings of the New Testament, since the term Christian was a relatively new one, and many of the writings in the New Testament do not use it. The 'church' is, in most cases, the congregation, which means a gathering of people. And so it is interesting to read Paul's letter to the Romans as it addresses the nature of the "people of God" in relation to the historic status of the Jewish people in that role.

In Romans 1-3, Paul defines very clearly the point of his argument. He begins with a typical condemnation of sins thought in a Jewish context to be characteristic of Gentiles, only to then build on that to declare that sin is not absent when one looks at the Jews. What Paul is doing is challenging the demarcation of the 'saved' and 'lost' as following precisely the boundary between Jews and Gentiles. Those outward features that symbolize Jewish identity (such as circumcision, food laws, and the Sabbath) cannot be the defining markers of the people of God. It must be those who do what the Law says is most important, and not simply those who have the Law and some outward symbols of their connection to it.

What would this sound like if Paul wrote it today? I would guess that Paul would probably say that it is the doers of the teaching of Jesus, and not merely the hearers or possessers of that teaching, that stand in a right relationship to God. Presumably he would have written today the equivalent of what he wrote then: "God will give to each one according to what he has done: to the Christian first, and then to the non-Christian". Ironically, Evangelical Christians today seem as a group to have placed themselves not where Paul redefines the people of God to be, but in the situation of those Paul is critiquing. I could easily imagine him saying that salvation is about faithfulness to God (one meaning of pistis), and not about "works of the Church" - whether not smoking and drinking, or carrying a big Bible, or belonging to the "right denomination", or in other ways being identified by things that are not the central focus of the Bible.

When Paul defines faith, he uses the example of Abraham. It is hard to imagine any way that Paul could have made clearer that what he means by "faith" is not believing Christian doctrines to be true, or even necessarily having explicit knowledge about Jesus. Although Paul is focused on Christian faith, through his choice of Abraham as an example he avoids doing what many Christians today seem to have done: simply replacing one group with superficial boundary markers with another. Instead, he makes the defining characteristics the trust in God (another meaning of the Greek word pistis) that Abraham showed, even though he didn't believe in the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atoning Sacrifice, or any other doctrine distinctive of Christianity.

I think that Paul would have been the first to recognize in those outside the Christian community who showed the defining features of true faith in God (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control...) individuals who knew God and stood in a right relationship to God. His emphasis was on calling people from living according to the flesh to life in the Spirit, and from defining themselves in ethnic or communal terms rather than according to things that really matter. In other words, I understand Christianity to be about the gathering of individuals who are characterized by and agree on the importance of the goals and emphases of the Bible's most foundational principles, rather than about the attempt to claim that only those who are Christians have those characteristics.

I suspect that in our ongoing conversation, one key focus will be on the different ways that each of us is reading the same parts of the Bible. While I am certain that we have different views of Biblical authority, I suspect that even if we were completely in agreement on this point, we might still find ourselves disagreeing on the interpretation of the same passages. At any rate, I look forward to continuing the conversation!

UPDATE: Michael has responded on his blog, and I in turn have responded here.

This Is The Word Of The Lord

Marcus Borg (in his book Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001) p.33) disusses the custom of adding "This is the Word of the Lord" after Scripture readings. After amusingly suggesting replacing the statement with "Some thoughts from ancient Israel" or "Some thoughts from the early Christian movement", he expresses his appreciation for the words used in the New Zealand Anglican Book of Common Prayer: "Hear what the Spirit is saying to the church".

Those words are, of course, derived from the Book of Revelation. Yesterday in my class on Paul's letters I came across another phrase from the Bible that could perhaps be used in the same context: "I give an opinion as one who by the mercy of the Lord is trustworthy" (1 Corinthians 7:25). Although I am to a large extent kidding, would there be anything inappropriate about using such a phrase? What confusion can potentially arise if, after reading 1 Corinthians 7, the reader concludes with "This is the Word of the Lord"? How does the latter phrase need to be clarified in its meaning so that it is understood in a way that does not conflict with that Scripture claims about itself, and in other ways shows itself to be?

Let me end with the well-known joke about another affirmation and response. A minister rose to his feet to begin the morning service, approached the microphone, and said "The peace of the Lord be with you". No one could hear him, since the microphone was not working. Fiddling with it, he says in a slightly louder voice, "There's something wrong with this microphone".

Automatically, the congregation gave the response: "And also with you!"

Blogrollingeniouserfriendly

Since I started using Google Reader, I have tended to add new blogs of interest to my feeds there, without in most instances adding them to my blogroll. The result is that my blogroll is rather out of date. If you know I read your blog (or think I should if I don't), and your blog is not on my blogroll, please leave a comment here and I'll probably add yours. If you notice any that are up there which have gone defunct, do feel free to draw those to my attention too. Thanks!

Tenure

Minutes ago I received a letter, delivered especially to my office, letting me know that the Butler Board of Trustees has approved the recommendation that I be granted tenure and promotion to associate professor.

This calls for a size of font I have not used before on this blog...

WOO HOO!!!

:-)

Take The Flaming Meteorite Challenge (Starting a Bloggersation)

Michael Halcomb and I have decided to have a 'blogversation' (or is it a 'bloggersation'?) about Christianity, salvation, pluralism and other subjects that are of interest to both of us and about which we seem to disagree. We are going to try doing it in 'blog-to-blog' form, like the 'wall to wall' feature on Facebook. So when Michael replies to this post, I will post a link to his reply at then end of this post, as well as at the beginning of my subsequent reply to him. That way, one can follow the discussion in a linear fashion. Once it is done (assuming it ever is), we can both gather the links to all the posts and offer a 'table of contents' - or decide that it is over and time to move on, depending on how it goes.

There is a sense in which the conversation (sorry, bloggersation) has already started in the comments section on Pisteuomen. There I mentioned a few points I've also mentioned here before, such as the relevance of Paul's use of Abraham as an example of faith, and the importance of what Paul wrote in Romans 2 about judgment on the basis of what one has done. But let's see if we can give this a fresh start...

There is a thought experiment that I recommend for those Christians who wish to figure out whether they are exclusivists or inclusivists - i.e. whether they, as Christians, think that people absolutely cannot be saved unless they have made a conscious decision to believe in and follow Jesus, or whether God has other options, as it were.

Here's the test, which I call the "flaming meteorite test". Basically, it involves a reenactment of the story from Acts 10 about Peter being sent to communicate the Gospel to Cornelius, a non-Jew who has nonetheless been righteous enough to be noticed by God.

Now, imagine that, as Peter is on his way to tell Cornelius about Jesus, a flaming meteorite appears in the sky, heading towards Cornelius' house. BAM! It is levelled and all inside are killed.
So, the question is, how do you view Cornelius? On the one hand, he had already through his righteous life achieved recognition in God's eyes. On the other hand, he had still not been told about Jesus. If you think that God can have a place for Cornelius in his kingdom, then you are an inclusivist. If you think that Cornelius came close, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades but not salvation, then you are an exclusivist.

Things are, of course, more complex than this. Karl Barth was an exclusivist, believing that salvation is only through Christ, but at the same time did not see that as necessarily incompatible with universalism, as long as one believed that everyone would be saved through Christ. It is also possible to be an inclusivist but not a universalist, and so on.

Also, by the way, if you think that this thought exercise is a waste of time, and the question is unnecessary to ask, then you're probably a pluralist... :-)

Was this thought experiment helpful in thinking about this topic? Is it problematic and open to criticism? Let me know what you think! Presumably there is no particular reason this bloggersation has to involve (and thus link to and from) only Michael and I, so others who are interested, please join in the bloggersation!

Michael Halcomb's reply to this post can be read here.

Ken Brown's reply can be read here with a further follow-up here.

Drew Tatusko's reply can be read here.

My reply to the replies can be read here.

Jim West Returns!

Someone hacked Dr. Jim West's blog, and so it is a sad day in the blogosphere for all who value intelligent discussion of serious issues related to theology and the Bible. But there is happy news: he seems willing to start over! [UPDATE: Bob MacDonald at Sufficiency has made an archived version of the posts from Jim's old blog available here. Thanks Bob!]

I'm involved in a continuing discussion of salvation and different religions at Pisteuomen. Check it out!

In other news, Bill Dembski seems to think that, if prominent physicists expressed doubts about Darwinian evolution, then all the biologists, geneticists and paleontologists must be wrong. What a strange argument...

Episcopal Cafe highlights how, when it comes to money, the Bible belt is quite happy to not take the Bible literally.

And Francis Collins on the Colbert Report, like anyone on the Colbert Report, is definitely worth seeing.

Eclipse

When the moon moves across the face of the sun
We see it in ways we could not otherwise
We see other things blotted from view by its brilliance.
When the moon darkens and turns red
We become aware of the shadow we cast.
When the possibility of proof becomes elusive
The importance of story comes into focus.
When certainty slips away
The question of meaning in the present takes center stage.

We do not exist forever in eclipses
They come and go, a fascinating momentary break
from the ordinary, the routine.
But they leave in their wake
The need to rethink our understanding
Based on the certainties and regularities
Now challenged, unsettlingly, by such glaring exceptions.

Quote of the Day (Philip Hefner)

"The question about which story is truer is not equivalent to which story is more factual, because we weave the facts and the stories in the same cloth, like warp and weft on a loom" (Philip Hefner, Technology and Human Becoming (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2003) p.69).

Random Acts of Silliness (and Sorrow)

Some of you may have noticed that from time to time I turn words here and there throughout a post into links to all sorts of silly pages around the web. Earlier today, in doing that, I unintentionally gave the impression that I was connecting that page with someone I was disagreeing with. I apologize for that, and will be more careful about such links in the future - it was added by going back through the post and finding an apparently suitable word to stick the link on, without thinking about how it might be interpreted in context.

Hopefully I can console myself with the knowledge that, of the few people who may have actually read the post in that form, few of you will have bothered to click on such random links!

Wisdom and Foolishness, Pride and Judgment

Two recent posts nicely illustrate how creationists claim to be wise and how (a la Romans 1:22) they have in the process become fools.

1 Corinthians 4:3-5 includes some favorite verses conservative Evangelicals love to apply to themselves, but less willing to apply to the case of others (as I can say from personal experience):

It does not concern me in the least that I be judged by you or any human tribunal; I do not even pass judgment on myself; I am not conscious of anything against me, but I do not thereby stand acquitted; the one who judges me is the Lord. Therefore, do not make any judgment before the appointed time, until the Lord comes, for he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will manifest the motives of our hearts, and then everyone will receive praise from God.

But clearly such words should make us more self-critical rather than more certain of ourselves and more apt to condemn others. Our conscience may not tell us we are doing anything wrong - but that doesn't mean we aren't. Romans 14:10-13 has similar warnings about judging someone else's servant:

Why then do you judge your brother? Or you, why do you look down on your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written: "As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bend before me, and every tongue shall give praise to God." So (then) each of us shall give an account of himself (to God). Then let us no longer judge one another, but rather resolve never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.

Evolution is an obsession for many fundamentalists, but in seeking to impose their views on everyone, they succeed only in placing stumbling blocks in the way of others coming to faith - and in giving headaches to educated Christians.

It may be that you cannot see how evolution and Christian faith are compatible. Others can. Who are you to judge others of Christ's servants? Have you never had to admit that you were wrong about something, never had to change your mind? Why do you insist that, whereas Paul made room for the weak and the strong in the Christian community, you know what is best for everyone and it just happens to be what you think? Such arrogance is unbefitting of anyone who calls themself a Christian. Then again, the verses above don't get the attention they deserve among those who claim to be "Bible-believing Christians". So much for not picking and choosing...

Sometimes They Go Bad

Monday's episode ("Dungeons and Dragons") of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles explored further the comparison between child rearing and the perils of artificial intelligence. This may have been too subtle for some viewers to pick up on, though. Key lines in the episode include the following:

• The reference to Skynet by its maker as having become frightened and insecure, to the extent that it couldn't be reassured.
• The statement "Sometimes they go bad. No one knows why".

Both could easily be said of our children.

Here are other sites worth looking at about this episode:

IGN
IF Magazine
TV Squad
A.V. Club
IO9

The Golden Rule vs. Slavery

I have long had an interest in the Bible and slavery. The same arguments that were used by slaveholders to justify the institution are recycled again in later times in relation to gender roles, homosexuality, and other issues.

This subject illustrates nicely the difference between those who at least claim to focus on the details of specific passages, and those who focus on the foundational principles. Once one's focus is on doing unto others what you would have them do unto you, how can one enslave another human being? Once our focus is rightly on the Golden Rule, what other changes and decisions will we have to make if we wish to keep that as our highest aim and ideal?

See the blog In A Godward Direction for an excerpt from what a bishop had to say on the subject in 1861. It is not the case that times have not changed since then. But it is the case that many of us, having "learned from the past" in one area, continue to approach other topics and issues as though the light of these earlier events has no relevance to them.

Around the Blogosphere

Pisteuomen shared a YouTube video of George W. Bush, intending it to cast aspersions on his religious views, because they don't match up with one particular Evangelical understanding of salvation. In fact, if anything, it makes Bush look better than he might have otherwise. You be the judge. R. T. Jones, by contrast, shows that the classic position of Christian orthodoxy is very different than that of modern fundamentalists.

A recent interview Bart Ehrman gave is being discussed by Mystical Seeker, Alan Lenzi, and Duane Smith. Jim West's post about Ehrman, like all his others, have been hacked. :-(

Nathan Rice offers thoughts about a commonly-used circular argument. Theo Geek tackles the odd way many people today think about Sodom and Gomorrah.

Northstate Science has posted on archaeology and the Bible.

It seems like bad arguments and misreadings of evidence are being challenged all over the place - including in Florida! This is, of course, why we blog.

Clearly the United States needs more political parties. Why should it matter if McCain is "too liberal" while Huckabee wants to rewrite the Constitution? Let's have more parties, representing a wider range of views, so that we can get past this two-party system (which is but one step away from a one-party system, and that can't be good).

Future Scanner

If you are wondering what the future will bring, you no longer need a time machine to find out. Future Scanner will give you the best of the web and the blogosphere not for the years that have already been, but for those that are still to come. It's worth a look!

Thanks for the Help, Satan!

Today in my class on Paul's letters we discussed the passage where Paul tells the Corinthians to hand a particular individual over to Satan. Here's what one student blogged about it (developing further on a comment she made in class):

1 Corinthians 4:5. "...you are to deliver this man to Satan 4 for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord."

Paul suggests giving people over to Satan for the destruction of their flesh, so that their spirit can be saved. I was struck by this. Satan is surprisingly helpful here; you can count on him to do you favors.

"We've got this guy, and he's kind of corrupt. Ah.... if you could take him and give him back when he's better... yeah. That'd be great. Right, also, if you could come in on Saturday to take away our incestuous pagans? Greeaaat."

Shoehorning Evidence

Denyse O'Leary still doesn't get it. Although if she is correct in claiming that Charles Walcott willfully ignored the implications of the Burgess Shale, which he discovered, then there might be an appropriate criticism to be made. But given that he gathered tens of thousands of specimens and returned to the site repeatedly, he was hardly interested in covering up his discoveries. Rather, he may perhaps (if Stephen Jay Gould is correct) have imposed the categories of known phyla on the fossils, rather than proposing that they were new ones. But this, if anything, shows the power of prevailing paradigms, and the dangers of compartmentalization in the sciences and the academy more generally (perhaps a biologist would have more quickly realized these were new phyla than this paleontologist did).

But the utter irony is that O'Leary is criticizing an individual scientist for doing what young-earth creationists and proponents of intelligent design do as a rule, consistently, all the time, namely refusing to take seriously the evidence against their views, and allowing their views to be shaped by older paradigms that have been replaced in mainstream science by ones that better fit the evidence.

If only O'Leary had learned the basics of Christian humility, perhaps she would have recalled when writing this the old childhood lesson that whenever you point the finger at someone else, you have three fingers pointing back at you. Instead she directs criticism at others that applies as well if not better to the movement for which she is a spokesperson.

Fundamentalists' Worst Nightmare? Religious Education

There is an interesting post at The Secular Outpost responding to objections issuing from the Discovery Institute about (wait for it) introducing discussion of religion into the biology classroom. Why? Because it isn't the right kind of religion.

Talking about religion in public education has never been unconstitutional. Information about the Bible as literature can be and is taught, although many avoid it because of fear of controversy. But there is nothing that can combat fundamentalist extremism than knowledge, including knowledge about the Bible. If more people understood that there is no one thing that can easily be called "the Bible" - in whatever form most of them encounter it, it is a translation trying to make sense of some of the many readings found in different manuscripts, and in places represents the translators offering an educated surmise about the meaning of unintelligible Hebrew - they might not be as prone to make vast sweeping overconfident assertions that turn out to be inaccurate.

I hope to say more about the Midwest SBL meeting this past weekend in the near future. But these thoughts are not unconnected with that experience, since there I encountered this quote attributed to governor of Texas Ma Ferguson in the 1920s: "If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" While this quote might seem to illustrate the depths of ignorance to which people can sink, it actually illustrates it in a rather unexpected way. This is yet another "quote" that circulates even though it cannot with confidence be attributed to its source. Not only the religious fundamentalists, but also their critics, need to learn to do a better job at critical thinking, seeking evidence and documenting claims.

Nevertheless, it remains the case that without religious education, ignorant dogmatism cannot be combatted. Even with its help, it is an uphill struggle, because so many prefer ignorant and mistaken confidence and the illusion of certainty, to the uncertainty they would have to face if they really studied the Bible and sought to understand it in more than a superficial way.

Quote of the Day (Noreen L. Herzfeld)

"Cybernetic immortality is the dream of a few highly educated North American white men. It provides a model for the continuance of the thoughts of a few but seems an unlikely way to offer immortality to the masses" (Noreen L. Herzfeld, In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Spirit (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002) p.75).

Quote of the Day (Ritva H. Williams)

"Our deep immersion in cultures in which communication occurs primarily through print and electronic media that require high levels of literacy, together with the fact that the only extant artifacts of the Jesus movement and its successors are texts, have blinded us to the reality that the latter were produced in predominantly oral cultures" (Ritva H. Williams, Stewards, Prophets, Keepers of the Word (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2006) p.6).

LOST Latest

As usual, this post is one big collection of spoilers if you missed tonight's episode, which revealed Sayid to be one of the Oceanic Six. This is a brief list of the most crucial clues and further mysteries in this episode.

Sayid is an assassin, and we learn at the very end of the episode that he is working for Ben, and doing so in order to protect his friends. But which friends? The other members of the Oceanic Six, or ones still on the island? Since we don't know when these future events take place in relation to other things we've seen, we can't say for certain whether this means that the person whose viewing Jack went to wasn't Ben. Indeed, given Sayid's line of work, it could well have been him, for all we know.

Naomi was wearing a bracelet with the inscription: "N. I'll always be with you. R. G." Was Elsa wearing the same bracelet, or at least a similar one?

The cabin is gone (though the line of pebbles or ash is still there).

Regina on the ship fires a rocket with a stopwatch. It arrives 31 minutes later with the clock no longer syncronized to the one Dan has.

In Ben's house there is a secret room with money and passports from all sorts of countries. And clothes.

The hotel where Elsa is supposed to meet her employer is called Hotel Adlon. This is presumably an anagram. It can spell out "And to hell" (and online one can see all the possibilities).

Lots more mysteries to be solved. LOST more mysteries...

The Valentine's Days Of Our Intelligent Design

I wasn't sure quite how to include Valentine's Day and Days of our Lives and Intelligent Design in a single title. But it is Valentine's Day, and there is not a lot of love between some individuals in the blogosphere, and in particular between two individuals connected with Uncommon Descent: DaveScot and Denyse O'Leary. See what DaveScot had to say about her over at PTET.

At first I thought this had to be a case of someone impersonating DaveScot from Uncommon Descent? If it is the real DaveScot who has been commenting at PTET lately, then his language would presumably alienate many of the home-schooling fundamentalists that provide the support base for the Intelligent Design movement. Or if it doesn't, it should. But he is there at Uncommon Descent to stay, one presumes, because he is their token agnostic, and that adds to their street cred...or so they think.

At any rate, Uncommon Descent is not just a censored site for pseudoscience anymore. It has the makings of a soap opera. And this in addition to the rancor expressed in a recent parody of the peer-reviewed blogging logo. See the logo at the top right of this entry? That's the nice version...

Happy Valentine's Day...anyway!

LOST in the Blogosphere

A recent visitor to the blog asked about the city reflected in the water in the LOST commercials and other promotional materials. We know they're "not in Portland", right? There has been a lot of discussion of this topic, but with no clear answers yet. Could it be LA? Is it supposed to be the lost city of Atlantis? Is it a real-life city on Earth in our time, a futuristic one, or something else? We don't have enough information yet to know what to make of this clue, but its significance will presumably fall into place in time. Now, on to other news...

Mystical Seeker explores further a reason I expressed gratitude for evolution.

There is a video by Al Gore that articulates well why the separation of church and state in public schools is so important.

Ben Witherington's collection of humorous sayings is worth a look. I particularly like the "Senility Prayer": "Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference".

Wired has a nice piece on the ongoing public debates over Darwin, and a particularly well-articulated conclusion emphasizing that this isn't a debate among scientists about the merits of the prevailing theory (which owes every bit as much to subsequent studies in genetics as it does to Darwin's insight). Wesley Elsberry has a piece on how antievolutionists get Darwin wrong...again.

TheoGeek talks about how the Christian view of works has done a 180. R. T. Jones talks about why the Bible is not for children (a subject I'll be talking about in class again soon).

Happy Darwin Day: Thank God For Evolution!

Today we'll be having a lunchtime pizza chat entitled "Thank God For Evolution?" Richard Dawkins has expressed gratitude for Darwin's theory, as making it possible to be an intellectually-fulfilled atheist. But Francisco Ayala is one of many who has expressed gratitude for evolution as making it possible to be an intellectually-fullfilled Christian. If one had to believe that God directly created parasites to feast on other organisms and devour them alive, it would lead to a far more problematic view of God than evolution does. One simply cannot avoid rethinking one's views about God in light of scientific knowledge, but without evolution, the things we know about biological organisms might necessitate the abandonment of any notion of a benevolent deity.

Here is a selection of other recent Darwin Day posts:

John Dennehy is gathering Darwin Day posts too.
John Pieret offers a quote from a biography of Charles Darwin. There is much more than a single post on this subject on his blog.
Wesley R. Elsberry has been covering the public part of the discussion on science education in Florida. Also at The Panda's Thumb.
Jason Rosenhouse disagrees with Richard Harries on the subject of evolution and religion.
Scott Hatfield shares his Credo as well as a post about Darwin Day.
Paleoblog shares the introduction to a museum exhibit on Darwin.
P. Z. Myers wishes you a Happy Darwin Day (and Valentine's Day).
The Dispersal of Darwin has lots to offer, including information about Darwin Day e-cards.
Duane Smith offers Darwin a hesitant happy birthday.
Ian sums up the event hosted by the Center for Inquiry at the University of Oklahoma.
The Panda's Thumb offers a dancing panda and invites us to learn more about biology.
Hyper-Textual Ontology wished to say more.
WickedEye's Quotient offers a belated happy Darwin Day.
Michael Barton's whole blog is relevant to this event.
Pondering Pikaia starts with a great quote from the man himself.
Peggy has a post on Darwin and Science Fiction.
IO9 shares the news that a hot planet with organic compounds has been found outside our solar system. New Scientist also featured that story, as well as one about the ongoing controversy in the public sphere about Darwin's theory. That article also alerts us to a new web site to watch...next year.
Vridar has an interesting post on the wiring of our brains and the three-tiered view of the universe.
If Darwin Had A Web Browser, He Would Never Have Written The Origin...

The Brave One

Last night I watched The Brave One, Jodie Foster's most recent movie. It provides an interesting opportunity to reflect on the meaning of the Bible in a modern American setting.

In the Biblical epoch, there was little other than vigilante justice. Murders were not resolved by impersonal criminal investigations by professional police, and tried by professional judges or impartial juries of the accused's peers. In the Biblical era, and in particular that of the Hebrew Bible, justice was in the hands of the local community, and of the family. If a member of your family was murdered, you were responsible to exact justice and carry out vengeance. The statement that vengeance is the LORD's was a reassurance that, even when there was no human being to carry out justice, God would not leave the guilty unpunished. But such cases were hoped to be the exception.

This puts the modern reader of the Bible, viewing The Brave One, in something of a predicament. Is the Bible's vision of how justice is to be carried out better, simply because it is in the Bible? Or is it appropriate to acknowledge that this was simply the way things were done then, and our way is legitimately different? Can we go even further, perhaps, and suggest that our society has improved upon the Bible?

How do we decide which is "better"? Do we even have a clear concept of what "justice" is and why it is important, and what it is supposed to accomplish? Erica Bain didn't want to be on a vigilante killing spree, hoping ultimately to repay those who killed her beloved fiancee (played by the actor better known to many as Said on LOST). She didn't want to be the person she had become. But violence and evil had made her fearful, and she could remain afraid or become a different person, one that took self-defense (and ultimately capital punishment) into her own hands.

Is our system of justice too impersonal? Do those who seek justice in our time through the legal system we have in place feel satisfaction and closure, or frustration? If our system is better, then why do we as viewers take the side of Erica Bain?

Perhaps the answer is that our system is better, but it is far from perfect, and that is why, even when we know who the "good guys" are, to quote the movie, "it doesn't feel that way" at times.

But it is our modern setting that spreads fear even as it also changes our perspective on matters such as justice. It is harder to murder someone in a cultural context where everyone knows one another in a village or small town, and where the family of the victim will take the matter personally and seek you out. Yet statistically, it may well be that we are far safer from harm than people ever were in the Biblical era. But whenever something does happen, it is on the news and in the headlines. We can easily be safer, and not feel safer. How else can it be explained that we may have moments of fear getting in a plane, when we were far more likely to meet our demise in the car on the way to the airport?

The desire to live in safety seems to be a human universal. So too does the concept of justice, that some penalty must be imposed by someone on those who harm us. Yet in the New Testament, there is also a call to let go of vengeance, and to let go of fear.

As Erica's neighbor in the movie says at one point, there are plenty of ways to die. It is finding a way to live that is the challenge. And those spiritual teachings from the Christian and other traditions that empower us to live free from the stranglehold of fear and an unsatiable desire for revenge can be a great help in doing just that. Perhaps with respect to some things, the old is good.

One-Stop Evolution Weekend Blogging

This post will make available links to all the blogging related to Evolution Weekend that I can find. If I miss something, please leave a comment and let me know there is more to add!

A Guy In The Pew: Evolution Weekend
An Evangelical Dialogue On Evolution: Et Tu Tony? A Critique of Tony Campolo’s attack on "Darwinism"
Jim West points to a Thoughtful Essay on Evolution and Christianity and also offers a great quote about Intelligent Design.
Pastor Bob Cornwall offers an Evolution Sunday Sermon: Time To Change The Light Bulb, as well as other posts on related topics.
Mike L has a post for Evolution Sunday
Gabriel McKee offered two posts: A Collection of the Best of GodTube on Evolution, and an assessment of the theology of Robert J. Sawyer's thought-provoking novel Calculating God.
Henry Neufeld explains why he isn't, and yet sort of is, participating in Evolution Sunday
John Pieret's contribution is entitled "Majesty" (and he has another post on Darwin's Place)
Quixie offers $.02 Worth
Northstate Science gives us some insights into Evolution Weekend in Northeastern California
Drew has a post on the Consumer Society. How much does it relate to Evolution Weekend? I'll let you be the judge...

There is also a collection of Darwin Day posts being compiled.

And as usual, Denyse O'Leary misses the point. How many people who are persuaded by the evidence for evolution also agree with E. O. Wilson on other subjects is irrelevant. Scientific matters aren't decided based on the philosophical views the scientists happen to hold, but on the basis of the evidence. And on the other side of the fence, Atheist Revolution notices that not everyone involved in an Evolution Weekend event was clear on the concept behind it.

My Isn't Rebecca David Generous? NO!!!

Just a warning for all the gullible fools out there. That this one is a scam is very easy to spot. It claims to come from someone in Kuwait yet is sent from an address at Yahoo! Japan. The clearest evidence, though, is the fact that NO ACTUAL PERSON WOULD REALLY CONTACT YOU OUT OF THE BLUE TO TRANSFER MONEY TO YOUR ACCOUNT! If, in a desire to get rich quick you take these e-mails at face value, you will GET POOR QUICK!

Here's the text of the message:

Dearest in Christ,

I am Mrs. Rebecca David from Kuwait. I am married to late Mr. Richard David, who worked with Kuwait Embassy in Ivory Coast for Twenty-Six years before he died in the year 2003,after a brief illness that lasted for only five days.

We were married for Eighteen years with a daughter (Hannah) who later died in a motor accident. Before the untimely death of my husband, we were both born again Christians. Since after his death I decided not to remarry or get a child outside my matrimonial home, which the Bible is against. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of (US$2.5M)(Two Million, Five hundred Thousand United States Dollar) in a General Trust Account with a prime bank in Abidjan Cote d'Ivoire. Presently, this money is still with the bank. Recently, following my ill health, my Doctor told me that I may not last for the next eight months due to my cancer problem. The one that disturbs me most is my stroke sickness. Having known my condition I decided to donate this fund to a Christian organization (Church) that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct herein, according to the desire of my late husband before his death. I want this fund to be used in Christian Activities like, Orphanages, Christian schools, and Churches for propagating the word of God and to endeavor that the house of God is maintained. The Bible made us to understand that "Blessed is the hand that giveth". I took this decision because I don't have any child that will inherit this money and my husband relatives are not Christians and I don't want my husband's efforts to be used by unbelievers. I don't want a situation where this money will be used in an ungodly way.

This is why I am taking this decision. I am not afraid of death hence I know where I am going. I know that I am going to be in the bosom of the Lord. Exodus 14 VS 14 says that "the lord will fight my case and I shall hold my peace". I don't need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health hence the presence of my husband's relatives around me always. I don't want them to know about this development. With God all things are possible.

As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the bank in Abidjan. I will also issue you the documents that will prove you the present beneficiary of this fund. I want you and the Church to always pray for me because the lord is my shepherd. My happiness is that I lived a life of a worthy Christian. Whoever that Wants to serve the Lord must serve him in spirit and Truth. Please always be prayerful all through your life. Any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing another Church for this same purpose. Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I Stated herein. Hoping to receive your reply. Remain blessed in the Lord.

Yours in Christ,
Mrs. Rebecca David.

Nice online course site about Jericho

A student of mine found the following archived web site on Jericho, the Bible, and archaeology, which I thought I'd share with others who might find it interesting.

Evolution...Sunday...School

I really enjoyed teaching today's Sunday school class, focusing on the compatibility of the Christian faith and evolution. I was most impressed simply by the spirit of loving fellowship among everyone present, which included (in addition to many of the usual participants in my class) new church members, the youth group, and other guests to the class. There were certainly different viewpoints represented, but the approach to these differences was one of dialogue, humility and exploration. That, in my thinking, matters more than what any individual thought before they came to class, and whether or not they thought the same way afterwards as they did at the start. My own views on this subject have changed radically, and a point of view that I once held but now no longer do was characterized by arrogance. That is one reason I am persuaded that being aware that there is so much that can be known that each of us does not know is paramount. The details can be sorted out later if this most crucial foundation is there.

Our discussion (which I am sorry to say I hogged more than I intended to...sorry!) ranged from the creation stories to flat-earthers to the dome to fossils to Tiktaalik to macroevolution to the second law of thermodynamics to music to genetics and beyond. Hopefully the conversation will continue outside the class and in future classes.

I hope many other churches had similarly positive experiences of talking about addressing these topics!

Quotes for Evolution Weekend (Francisco J. Ayala)

The following quotes are from the leading Biology professor Francisco J. Ayala, who is also a Christian. His book Darwin and Intelligent Design (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006) is the source of the following quotes, which are sure to brighten your Evolution Weekend!


"There is probably no other notion in any field of science that has been as extensively tested and as thoroughly corroborated as the evolutionary origin of living organisms" (p.40).

"It is now possible to assert that gaps of knowledge in the evolutionary history of living organisms no longer exist...The virtually unlimited evolutionary information encoded in the DNA sequence of living organisms allows evolutionists to reconstruct all evolutionary relationships leading to present-day organisms, with as much detail as desired" (p.41).

"The missing link is no longer missing. Hundreds of fossil remains belonging to hundreds of intermediate human ancestors have been discovered since Darwin's time and continue to be discovered at an accelerated rate" (p.43).

Evolution Saturday: Resources from the National Center for Science Education

It is Evolution Weekend, and so to help you celebrate this "Evolution Saturday", here is the text of the latest circular e-mail from the National Center for Science Education, packed full of useful resources and interesting articles:

_______________________________________________
Kevin Padian argues in the pages of Geotimes for improving evolution education by starting with the textbooks. The United Church of Christ embraces evolution in a major new statement on faith, science, and technology, and the American Fisheries Society adds its voice for evolution, too. NCSE's Glenn Branch explains why Darwin Day and Evolution Weekend are worth celebrating -- and it's just about time to celebrate them!

PADIAN ON IMPROVING EVOLUTION EDUCATION

In a commentary published in the February 2008 issue of Geotimes, Kevin Padian argues that the way to improve evolution education is to start with the textbooks. Discussing his testimony in Kitzmiller v. Dover, he writes, "In reviewing for the judge the creationist 'textbook' Of Pandas and People, I explained in some length -- and in conversational language -- the actual evidence for how birds evolved from dinosaurs, how whales evolved from land mammals, and how vertebrates came onto land, as well as the methods that we use to test our hypotheses. The judge and the reporters covering the trial were intrigued by this testimony and that of all of the expert witnesses. Most of what we know of the history of Earth and its life is not being taught to Americans -- despite their desire to learn it."

But, Padian continues, "They're not getting it in textbooks, not even the ones that focus on evolution and paleontology, as I found in a recent study." Diplaying a figure like those he used in the Kitzmiller trial (which are available on-line), he writes, "It shows the fossils themselves, so people can see the basis for our work. It shows the comparable parts of the skeletons color-coded, so the evolution of form is clear. It gives reconstructions of the animals in life. And it bases all this on an evolutionary tree that is derived from independent evidence. It illustrates what we practice: a highly integrative science that depends on the reconciliation of many independent lines of evidence." He concludes, "Let's fight the anti-evolutionists by putting the right evidence in front of the public and alleviating ignorance."

In addition to serving as president of NCSE's board of directors, Padian is Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California at Berkeley and also Curator of Paleontology at the University of California's Museum of Paleontology. He testified for the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v. Dover, where he was the only expert witness with any expertise in paleontology. In his decision, Judge John E. Jones III wrote, "Dr. Padian's demonstrative slides, prepared on the basis of peer-review[ed] scientific literature, illustrate how Pandas systematically distorts and misrepresents established, important evolutionary principles." He also noted that "Padian bluntly and effectively stated that in confusing students about science generally and evolution in particular, the disclaimer makes students 'stupid.'"

For Padian's commentary, visit: http://www.geotimes.org/feb08/article.html?id=comment.html

For his testimony in Kitzmiller v. Dover, along with the slides he used, visit: http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/exhibits/Padian/Padian_transcript.html

For the slip opinion in Kitzmiller v. Dover (PDF), visit: http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf

UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST EMBRACING EVOLUTION

In a new statement on faith, science, and technology from the United Church of Christ, evolution is described as a matter of fact and a way in which God creates. Entitled "A New Voice Arising: A Pastoral Letter on Faith Engaging Science and Technology," the statement contains a paragraph reading:

***

Evolution helps us see our faithful God in a new way. Our creator works patiently, calling forth life through complex processes spanning billions of years and waiting for us to awaken and respond in conscious participation in God's own overarching dream for all living things. Evolution also helps us see ourselves anew, as creatures who share a common origin with other species. Today we know that human bodies and brains share the same genetic and biochemical processes with other creatures, not just mammals but insects, plants, and bacteria. How then should we understand ourselves as evolved creatures, sharing much of our DNA with other species, and at the same time as distinct creatures in the image of God?

***

The general minister and president of the United Church of Christ, the Reverend John H. Thomas, told The New York Times (January 31, 2008) that the statement was in part intended to counter "the creationist approach, the continuing caricature of the opposition of evolution and religion."

According to a January 29, 2008, press release, "A New Voice Arising" is being distributed in February to each of the UCC's 5,700 local churches as part of a new campaign aimed at the scientific and technological communities, intended to promote the UCC's belief that science and religion are not mutually exclusive and to express the denomination's welcome to "persons who devote their lives to scientific inquiry, no matter the discipline." Included in the campaign is a pro-science poster (PDF), with the motto, "For too long, science and faith have had a combustible relationship. But even churches evolve."

For "A New Voice Arising" (PDF), visit: http://www.ucc.org/not-mutually-exclusive/pdfs/pastoral-letter.pdf

For the story in The New York Times, visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/31church.html

For the UCC's press release, campaign, and poster (PDF), visit: http://www.ucc.org/news/seeking-an-end-to.html
http://www.ucc.org/not-mutually-exclusive/
http://www.ucc.org/not-mutually-exclusive/pdfs/pro-science-poster.pdf

AMERICAN FISHERIES SOCIETY ADDS ITS VOICE FOR EVOLUTION

At its annual meeting in September 2007, the American Fisheries Society adopted a resolution concerning the teaching of alternatives to evolution affirming "that the theory of evolution is the only current scientific explanation for the diversity of life on earth for inclusion in the science curricula of public schools," expressing its opposition to "policies that would allow the teaching of creationism, intelligent design or other political or faithbased doctrines in public school science classes," and encouraging "citizens, educational authorities and legislators to oppose such policies at the appropriate federal, state and local levels of government."

Explaining the rationale for the resolution is a background document that concludes, "As a society whose members work with natural resources, we should find it particularly disturbing that the theory of evolution, the best available scientific perspective from which to understand natural ecosystems, continues to be the target of political efforts to bring issues of faith and social values into public schools. As a profession that promotes the conservation and sustainable management of aquatic resources through the application of the best available science, our voice should be added to the others speaking out to protect science education in public schools."

Founded in 1870, the American Fisheries Society is the oldest and largest professional society representing fisheries scientists. It seeks to promote the conservation, development, and wise use of fisheries; promote and evaluate the development and advancement of all branches of fisheries science and practice; gather and disseminate to its members and the general public scientific, technical, and other information about fisheries science and practice through publications, meetings, and other forms of communication; and encourage the teaching of fisheries science and practice in colleges and universities and the continuing education and development of fisheries professionals.

For the AFS's resolution (PDF), visit: http://www.fisheries.org/units/education/Documents/Evolution%20Resolution.pdf

For the background document (PDF), visit: http://www.fisheries.org/units/education/Documents/Evolution%20Resolution%20Background.pdf

BRANCH ON DARWIN DAY AND EVOLUTION WEEKEND

NCSE's deputy director Glenn Branch was invited to contribute a piece on Darwin Day and Evolution Weekend to Beacon Broadside, the blog of Beacon Press. After describing a host of innovative ways in which people are celebrating, he turned serious: "Why make such a point of celebrating Darwin Day, as opposed to, say, Einstein Day on March 14? A crucial reason, particularly in the United States, is to counteract the public climate of ignorance of, skepticism about, and hostility toward evolution."

Beacon Press is the publisher of Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design is Wrong for our Schools, edited by NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott and Glenn Branch, and including essays by them as well as by Nick Matzke and Paul R. Gross, Martinez Hewlett and Ted Peters, Jay Wexler, and Brian Alters. Reviewing it in BioScience, Randy Moore wrote, "If you read just one book about this subject, read this one. Then give the book to others and urge them to do the same. "

For Branch's essay, visit: http://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2008/02/dust-off-your-d.html

For information about Not in Our Classrooms, visit: http://www.ncseweb.org/nioc/

DARWIN DAY APPROACHES

And speaking of Darwin Day, there are only a few day remaining! Colleges and universities, schools, libraries, museums, churches, civic groups, and just plain folks across the country -- and the world -- are preparing to celebrate Darwin Day, on or around February 12, in honor of the life and work of Charles Darwin. These events provide a marvelous opportunity not only to celebrate Darwin's birthday but also to engage in public outreach about science, evolution, and the importance of evolution education. NCSE encourages its members and friends to attend, participate in, and even organize Darwin Day events in their own communities. To find a local event, check the websites of local universities and museums and the registry of Darwin Day events maintained by the Darwin Day Celebration website. (If you're speaking at or organizing a Darwin Day event, please let NCSE know -- and also register it at the Darwin Day Celebration website!)

And with Darwin Day comes the return of Evolution Sunday -- now expanded to Evolution Weekend! Hundreds of congregations all over the country and around the world are taking part in Evolution Weekend, February 8-10, 2008, by presenting sermons and discussion groups on the compatibility of faith and science. Michael Zimmerman, the initiator of the project, writes, "For far too long, strident voices, in the name of Christianity, have been claiming that people must choose between religion and modern science. ... Together, participating religious leaders will be making the statement that religion and science are not adversaries. And, together, they will be elevating the quality of the national debate on this topic." At last count, 800 congregations in all fifty states (and nine foreign countries) were scheduled to hold Evolution Weekend events; they are listed at the Clergy Letter Project website.

To find a Darwin Day event, visit: http://www.darwinday.org/englishL/home/2008.php

To register a Darwin Day event, visit: http://www.darwinday.org/englishL/regevent/index.php

For information about Evolution Weekend, visit: http://www.evolutionweekend.org/

And for information about the Clergy Letter Project, visit: http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/religion_science_collaboration.htm

Thanks for reading! And as always, be sure to consult NCSE's web site where you can always find the latest news on evolution education and threats to it.

Sincerely,

Glenn Branch
Deputy Director
National Center for Science Education, Inc.
420 40th Street, Suite 2
Oakland, CA 94609-2509
510-601-7203 x305
fax: 510-601-7204
800-290-6006
branch@ncseweb.org
http://www.ncseweb.org/

Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools http://www.ncseweb.org/nioc

Eugenie C. Scott's Evolution vs. Creationism http://www.ncseweb.org/evc

NCSE's work is supported by its members. Join today! http://www.ncseweb.org/membership.asp

Evolutionists, Darwinism and Crackpot Theories

Recently someone told me they were "not an evolutionist". I was less surprised by the "not" than by the term "evolutionist". In my mind, for there to be an "ist" there has to be a corresponding "ism", yet I am not familiar with the term "evolutionism". There is "creationism", which deserves the "ism" at the end. But "evolution" is no more of an ideology than "biology", unless one treats it (as Daniel Dennett does, for instance) not as the explanatory framework that unites our scientific knowledge in biology, genetics, and paleontology, but as a "universal acid" that cannot but change the way we think about every subject. But addressing that sort of "evolutionism" is something that many biologists and philosophers of science have themselves taken on (e.g. Mary Midgley).

"Darwinism" is another example of the attempt (mostly on the part of the opponents of science) to depict evolution as though it were an ideology, the vision of a single individual (like "Marxism" and "Leninism") that one can take or leave, rather than the dominant scientific understanding representing the consensus of by far the vast majority of experts in the relevant scientific disciplines.

In my class on the Bible, a student reacted to the suggestion that the Israelites might themselves be Canaanites by saying this sounded like a "crackpot theory". This provided a nice opportunity to ask just what a "crackpot theory" is and how to recognize one (since I'd be much happier if students leave my classes with that ability than if they lack it but have memorized the dates for king Jehu's reign).

With respect to some questions (whether they be in the realm of science, history, or something else) the experts are divided and have competing explanations for a particular phenomenon and the relevant evidence. In such cases, the best a non-specialist can do is try to grasp the underlying issues, and conclude that at present the evidence underdetermines the conclusions, and is most likely compatible with more than one possible explanation. This doesn't mean that there is nothing that is certain - just that there is, over all, some legitimate uncertainty.

In the case of other questions, the vast majority of specialists agree. In such cases, the only thing a non-specialist can conclude (and rightly so) is that the evidence and its implications must appear pretty clear-cut to those with the relevant expertise and knowledge. Evolution fits into this latter category, not surprisingly (at least for those who know anything much about it). The possibility of evolution was being discussed before Darwin's time. The diverse variations within types of similar animals, the evidence of fossils, and other sorts of evidence was making some sort of evolutionary scenario seem likely by the 19th century. What was missing was an explanatory mechanism, and Darwin helped provide more than one of these, drawing attention not only to natural selection (variations benefitting survival because they give an advantage in getting food or escaping predators) but also sexual selection (a peacock's impressive plumage won't help it find food and may make it more visible to predators, but the fact that size matters to peahens gives an advantage in passing on genes to another generation). There are legitimate debates within the scientific community about the relative importance of various mechanisms, and there may yet be contributing factors and influences on evolution that we do not yet know about. But the fact of evolution itself is not denied by anyone who understands the relevant data and the predictive power and accuracy that this explanatory framework (or "theory", to use the scientific term in the appropriate scientific rather than the popular sense). Genetics had not even begun to be understood in Darwin's time, yet not only did the means of transmitting data to the next generation discovered by Mendel fit Darwin's theory, but more recently comparative DNA analysis has essentially settled the matter in a way that individual fossils could not: all living things on this planet that have been compared in this way are related, and the distance of relationship considered genetically matches the predictions of evolution. There is no longer any serious doubt.

Yet there are not merely individuals but groups that insist on pointing to things that scientists do not yet know and imagine that somehow the fact that there are still unanswered questions invalidates prevailing understandings. Clearly those who make this argument don't understand science. Science is the quest to explain and understand, and to point to things we do not yet know as proof that a scientific explanation is wrong, rather than wonderful opportunities for further research and investigation, shows that such views are not merely not scientific but anti-scientific.

Webster's Dictionary defines "crackpot" as "an eccentric person". Eccentric literally means "not having the same center", but more figuratively means deviation from an established norm, usually in one's behavior. I have no interest in discussing which scientists may or may not be crackpots as far as their behavior is concerned. But one that is clear is that it is those who call evolution a "crackpot theory" who are themselves the eccentrics, the crackpots. There is no mistaking it. Evolution is central to the mainstream understanding of biology, genetics, anatomy and paleontology (and one might perhaps add other fields). Young-earth creationism and intelligent design are on the fringe - indeed, it is debatable whether they are even in the same circle, but for now suffice it to say that they do not have the same center.

Of course, some people who have been labelled "crackpots" have had their views vindicated. But let us not make any mistake about how eccentric views move from the periphery to the center. It is always through investigation using the appropriate disciplinary methods.

No one is going to overturn a prevailing scientific theory by getting widespread support from churches or multiplying web pages. If you are reading this and think that the majority of scientists are wrong and you (perhaps together with a small minority) are right, then I congratulate you: you are a crackpot! But let us not assume that you cannot persuade the scientific community. Let me therefore explain to you how to do it: Get relevant degrees, including a PhD, in a relevant scientific discipline. Understand the basic data and relevant approaches used in that scientific field. Do careful scientific research. Scientists who have had unusual and unconventional ideas and have done these things have at times provided evidence for their hypotheses that won the assent of the scientific community. Because that is how science works. It isn't a popularity contest, it isn't about popular opinion, it is about data, and about making the best possible sense of all the relevant data which scientists know in greater detail than anyone else.

So the choice is yours, crackpot! You can do serious scholarship and provide the evidence that can persuade the experts that you are right. Or you can stand on your soapbox like a sore loser and denounce the hard-working scientists and researchers whose hard-won conclusions do not match up your presuppositions. You are free to choose either path. But if you choose the latter, be aware that you will remain a crackpot forever. Because in science, history and other such areas of human knowledge, what determines crackpot status is not your views, but your willingness to subject them to critical analysis and test them against the relevant evidence.

Don't Forget About The Evolution Weekend Blog-A-Thon!

Don't forget that this is EVOLUTION WEEKEND! If you have a blog, please blog about evolution and religion at least once this weekend! Now, on to a recap of some recent activity in the blogosphere...

Stranger Fruit has a post that should not be missed, about a conference at which a scientist connected with the Intelligent Design movement acknowledged he came up with results that support evolution. The International Society for Science and Religion has issued a statement about Intelligent Design. IO9 has a post on the speed of evolution compared to genetic engineering.

A blog I hadn't heard of before, Orcinus, has a piece about recognizing the signs that a millenialist group is headed for the dark side (HT Secher Nbiw). Merkavah Vision Biblioblog introduces us to a new word.

Andrew Tatusko points to a multi-post discussion of The God Delusion at kai euthus.

Mystical Seeker quotes Spong on the Bible. Just an apprentice asks about exclusion (and expulsion) and embrace. Mike L asks about the future of the Emergent Church.

Lots of bloggers are talking about Rowan Williams' statement about Sharia law. Ruth Gledhill and Faith & Theology are but a couple of recent examples. Jim West addresses the issue of politics and biblioblogging.

Finally, while it isn't the first manga version of the Bible, there is a new one that certainly stands out...

LOST in Speculation

This is a post that will give free reign to some probably ludicrous speculations about LOST. Feel free to read and to critique them.

Who is Ben's man on the freighter? And why have they come here on a freighter rather than some other kind of ship? Michael, some have observed, could well be Ben's man on the freighter. Walt is another option, since Michael genuinely seemed doubtful when Ben told him to follow a particular course and he'd "find rescue", whereas Walt had been with the Others, was already on the boat hiding, and seems to be inspiring Locke to protect Ben from the newcomers. Plus Locke mentioned that Walt was taller - does that mean that Walt is a bit older now, and is thus rightly called Ben's man on the boat? Or is it a future Walt that appeared to Locke? Perhaps neither of them is "Ben's man", since Ben would still need to have known where the freighter would be in order to send the boat in that direction. But Walt remains the most promising candidate: communications were being jammed, yet whoever was on the boat was able to pass information about the people on it to Ben, and so perhaps the method of communication was not a conventional electronic one.

Why recruit a 'ghostbuster' or spirit-talker for this mission? Does that give us some insight?

It was shown in the season premiere that Hurley saw Christian Shepherd in the cabin, where we would have expected Jacob. Are they one and the same? Let me offer another possibility. What if it was indeed Jacob, played by the actor who plays Christian Shepherd, but not because Jacob is Christian Shepherd, but because he looks like Christian Shepherd, his father? Jack is a nickname, and one obvious name for it to be a nickname for is Jacob. Christian Shepherd, just as an aside, then becomes Jacob's father, and in the Bible, Jacob's father was Isaac, who is often regarded as a type of Jesus because of the story of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. (This is the speculation I feel has the least probability, since a figure dressed the same way as the 'Christian Shepherd' in the cabin was seen by Jack, and is the same one who refers to him as his son in "So It Begins". Unless the time travel thing means he is his own father, but I'm not about to go there).

In the previous season we were given an easter egg in the phrase "Only fools are enslaved by time and space" on the brainwashing video when it is played backwards. Clearly there is a literal aspect to this - figures like Walt, Richard Alpert, and apparently now the polar bear, are all able to move or age in ways that show this freedom vis-a-vis the space-time continuum. But is there more to it? The letters of this phrase can be rearranged to make "Ben fly Adam Eve corpses to island". Is that intentional? If time and space are irrelevant, then perhaps Jack and either Kate or Juliet will be the "Adam and Eve" found in the cave in season 1.



Finally, the gas masks. Someone involved in sending these four to the island knows about Ben, knows about the Purge, knows about the Dharma Initiative. There have been hints that we'll see the scientist from the Dharma videos at some point, and so we should expect to learn of a connection between him and Matthew Abaddon.

Confirmed LOST

Why name the latest episode of LOST "confirmed dead"? An overview of the episode will help answer this. Be warned - this post is basically one big collection of spoilers, an overview of the episode.

As I guessed, the images of what was supposedly Oceanic Flight 815 at the bottom of the Indian Ocean featured in the flashbacks of the new arrivals on the island. These individuals are fascinating additions to the show.

Daniel Faraday is a physicist, although he doesn't like to be pigeonholed. Dan sees the footage of remote probes sent down from the treasure-hunting ship Christiane I that show the plane and finds himself moved - but he can't explain why.

Miles Straune is a ghostbuster. He goes to get the ghost of one Ms. Gardner's grandson, who was murdered, to leave her house. He makes contact with the ghost and finds money the boy had hidden.

When Naomi radioed and said "Tell my sister I love her", this was a code that she had a gun to her head.

Charlotte Lewis (or more precisely C. S. Lewis) is an anthropologist. In Medenine, Tunisia she visits a dig that has uncovered a polar bear, and a collar with a Dharma logo (presumably the Hydra station, since the emblem features a hydra). Whatever technology was used to bring a rabbit from a parallel universe into ours could presumably also be used to transport a polar bear through time and space. But was this testing on animals aimed at eventually using the same technique to transport people, and if so has it been done? When, where, and to whom? And where and when did they go? All such questions remain unanswered - for now.

Frank Lapidus is a pilot (who apparently also drinks, not too surprisingly when we learn more about him). He was supposed to be piloting Oceanic flight 815 the day it crashed. The person he swapped with always wears a wedding ring, and so when he sees an image of someone who is supposed to be the dead pilot, the only body they can see and identify, isn't wearing a wedding ring, which the pilot Seth Norris always wore. He calls the hotline to say that this isn't who the TV report said it is.

Ben shoots Charlotte, but she's wearing a bullet-proof vest. A box that fell from the helicopter of this team included gas masks, and they all carry guns. Dan says that he can't say rescuing the survivors is their mission's primary objective. Before the episode is over, we find out what their primary objective is.

Ben says he has answers and shouldn't be killed. So Locke asks him what the smoke monster is - at gunpoint - and Ben says he doesn't know. But he does know the exact identity of the whole team that is on the island, because he has a man on their ship and knows their mission. Their mission is to get him, Ben himself.

They were hired by Matthew Abaddon, who is adamant that there are no survivors from Flight 815.

Buddy TV has a fascinating series on LOST Easter Eggs. The biggest revelation is that the man in the cabin that Hurley saw is...Christian Shepherd! In the most recent episode, we learn that the direction that Locke wants to go to pass by a cabin is a different direction than the cabin Hurley saw - which apparently disappeared. Is the ring around Jacob's cabin to make it stay there? Are there multiple cabins with ghosts in them that appear around the island?

Next week apparently there will be an enhanced version of this episode, plus a new episode in whic one more of the Oceanic Six will be revealed.

So why is it called "confirmed dead"? I assume it is ironic (although we may learn more and have to revise that conclusion). The adamant assertions that the plane that had been found was Oceanic 815, and that there are no survivors, is in fact disconfirmed, unless there is some sense in which being alive on the island is a form of "deadness". But the fact that some of them will leave the island suggests that the Oceanic Six are indeed alive, as are the others, and that they will leave with this team that has come to rescue them - and, more importantly, to find and bring back Benjamin Linus. So, in short, "Confirmed Dead" is what Oceanic Airlines claims, even though they cannot recover the plane or the bodies, and the one body they show on TV suggests it is not really Oceanic 815.

One last intriguing question. Who knows about Ben that isn't on the island, and how? When has Ben been off the island, and where did he go? What is the significance of the fact that these individuals are not looking for the island per se, but Ben? Does this mean that Ben himself is somehow more significant than the island with its various intriguing properties? How does their mission to locate Ben Linus relate to flight 815 from the perspective on Abaddon and of those on the team? There is so much more to the story than we know at this point!

Uncommented Descent

Someone on the forum After The Bar Closes has drawn attention to the "Comment Policy" at Uncommon Descent. It is in fact the comment moderation policy, and I find it fascinating. This is how the moderators there understand their role:

"The main thing to remember is that moderators are editors and it’s their job to make people’s words disappear before anyone else sees them."

There is then a list of three categories into which commenters are placed, the first two of which are as follows:

"1) Trusted - you have to earn a place on this list by consistently submitting constructive comments. Once on it your comments appear immediately after submission.
2) Potential Trouble - newly registered users go on this list at least for their first comment and if you are an ID-critic you’ll probably stay on it. Anyone from the trusted list who has gone astray also ends up here. People on this list must have all their comments approved by an editor before they show up on the blog. "

Did anyone else notice that "constructive comments" and "ID critic" are in separate categories by definition? Critical analysis is potential trouble. Constructive comments means toeing the party line. Can anyone say "this isn't science"?

Linked from that page are two other pages. One of them is a list of arguments that they do not allow one to make on their forum (this page is entitled "Put A Sock In It"). The second page about moderation has an "explanation" from Dembski as to why he ruthlessly moderates comments. It is an e-mail he received from someone he banned:

William,

Is there the slightest possibility you might open your ID forum to dissenting views?

You have some very dedicated apostles stroking your online ego, and insulating these young scientists from the Borg is very Christian of you indeed; however, to many of us on the outside your questionable editing practices suggest little more than self-aggrandizing censorship.

You are a curiosity, your theory a religious oddity, and your designer is wearing your hat.

Respectfully,

[snip]

The person who wrote this e-mail was extremely insightful, and the banning of this individual shows what everyone knows or ought to know about Intelligent Design. It cannot stand criticism or critical analysis. This is antithetical to science, but typical of many religious believers' attitude in our time: "That's what I believe. Don't show me evidence. Don't ask me difficult questions I can't answer..."

If your faith can't stand up to critical scrutiny, it is self-delusion. If your science can't tolerate critical scrutiny, it isn't science. And if you do expose your view to scientific evaluation and is shown to not fit the evidence, then it is destined for the scientific (s)crap heap. But many religious believers and pseudoscientists manage to gather communities around themselves into societies offering mutual self-congratulation. The Bible warns about this:

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3)

That's the ID and young-earth creationist crowds in a nutshell. In order to avoid criticism (because, to be able to take criticism, one needs the Biblical value of humility, which is not highly valued in these circles) they find teachers who say what they want to hear. We don't need to rethink our views. Everyone else is wrong and we are right. Our kids aren't going off the rails because we've failed to be good parents - we can blame evolution! It doesn't matter where the evidence leads - we can define our own truth and most Christians are insufficiently educated on biology or Biblical studies to realize how we're twisting both science and Scripture.

Let the above post be the caption to the picture Nick Norelli recently posted...

Around the Blogosphere

I'm wondering if I should just rename these regular posts sharing other interesting items from other blogs should be permanently renamed "Lost in the Blogosphere". For the next several weeks at least, it is unlikely that any of these posts will fail to mention LOST. At any rate, I have no particular speculations about tonight's episode, except that all the recent references to the finding of Oceanic Flight 815 at the bottom of the ocean may suggest that the newcomers are somehow connected with, or at least motivated by, the recovery of a plane that has been identified as Oceanic 815. Off The Pink has a nice post on LOST and storytelling (HT SF Signal). You may also find Terminator vs. Highlander: The Sarah Connor McLeod Chronicles amusing.

Pisteuomen has a thought-provoking post on why it is inaccurate to say that Jesus "predicts his death" in Mark's Gospel. Theo Geek has an entry on Jesus and the apostles on homosexuality. Northstate Science continues its review of Eric Cline's book From Eden to Exile (which I also mentioned here). Reclaiming the Mind announced an exciting treasure trove of New Testament manuscripts that has been found.

There is always interesting science news, but an announcement about progress increasing the lifespan of worms is particularly noteworthy. Although any consequences for human life extension are still very far off, it is already interesting to speculate on how such technology, if it one day becomes a reality, will impact religious traditions which in our time have placed the focus of their message on living forever.

Quote Of The Day (SBCOutpost)

"All I’m asking is for evangelicals in the Republican Party to give James Dobson the same kind attention we would give to our senile and increasingly erratic grandfathers.

Love them. Listen to them. Laugh with them.

Then make sure they take their medicine" (SBC Outpost blog entry "Focus on the Folly")

(HT Bene Diction Blogs On)

When The Cdesign Proponentsists Set Their Mind To Doing Real Scientific Research

The blog All Too Common Dissent has a blog entry about the Discovery Institute setting up The Biologic Institute to undertake real, serious scientific research. The institute was established in 2005. It is now 2007. What have they accomplished thus far?

Apparently not even setting up their web page...

Who needs parody, then the reality is so hilarious?

Make Your Own Cartoons

For those who love a good cartoon on a topic of interest, there is no longer a need to either wait for one to appear in the paper, or wish you were a better artist. Now there is Toonlet, which facilitates making short comic strips. I haven't tried it yet, but I plan to. If you use it, please do leave a comment pointing to the results!

(HT Bryan Hayes)

The Argument From Incredulity

"I can't imagine how this could possibly have happened. Therefore, it didn't happen".

The argument from incredulity is a classic used by young-earth creationists, and more recently by cdesign proponentsists. Dave Scot at Uncommon Descent begins by posing the question "which came first, the caterpillar or the butterfly" and then goes on to present this as evidence against evolution. The question itself is obviously wrong-headed to begin with - even a religion professor with no degree in biology can see that if he has taken the time to inform himself about evolution! The theory of evolution doesn't say that there used to be just eggs and caterpillars, and at some point eggs evolved the ability to hatch chickens, and at some point caterpillars evolved the ability to turn into butterflies. The evolution of metamorphosis is a legitimate area of inquiry, and while poorly-informed bloggers are throwing up their hands and trying to divert attention elsewhere, scientists continue to work on these questions, and not without results.

As an organism evolves, the precise details and stages of it embryological development will change over time. This field, of how embryos evolve with the ability to become various fully-developed adult forms is central to evolutionary developmental biology, or "Evo Devo" for short. When it comes to metamorphosis, we do have evidence of intermediary forms in organisms that currently exist - a range from no metamorphosis through partial metamorphosis to complete metamorphosis. It does not take much searching online to find evidence of the fruitful scientific research on this subject. From popular presentations to journal articles. Lynn Riddiford is clearly a key name in this particular field, and it is unclear why Dave Scot was unable to find the article she published in Nature in 1999. But this is typical of various forms of anti-scientific creationism: they do not stay up to date on scientific research, because they are rooting for science to fail and don't want to draw unnecessary attention to those places where it "fails to fail" contrary to their desires and predictions.

But if scientific explanation is incompatible with belief in God, then the battle is already lost. We can understand that the genetic code that cdesign proponentsists attribute to a Designer carries the instructions that turn fertilized ova into full-grown organisms. If that is a competing explanation to being "knit together in one's mother's womb", then there is already a problem. We understand much about meteorology, and even if we still have trouble predicting the weather we have no problem explaining it in scientific terms. If meteorology is incompatible with the belief that God sends the rain, then religion is already in serious trouble.

My advice to religious believers is this: Stop trying to fight science's attempts to explain things, and focus instead on asking whether or not your religious views are compatible with the scientific data. If not, then you need to either change your religious beliefs or discard them. But to pretend that the issue is limited to evolution and does not relate to the whole range of science and human knowledge is dishonest, and to try to drag us back to earlier times of ignorance because you do not have the courage necessary to rethink and reformulate is unhelpful - to say the least.

Christians With Closed Hearts And Minds

Mystical Seeker has drawn attention to the e-mail which a pastor received after announcing his participation in Evolution Weekend. The gist of it is "If evolution is true then these various beliefs of mine and other Christians are wrong; therefore, evolution cannot be true". This is doubly problematic. First, just because something else being true would have the implication that you are wrong does not mean that that other thing is not in fact true. Any time we cease to be willing to entertain the possibility that we are wrong, then the possibility of learning is entirely brought to a halt, and no one, not even God, can teach us anything. Presumably that is not where Christians should be.

Second, to assume that a new piece of information is incompatible with one's whole belief system is too far a leap. Certainly evolution means that there was death as a natural part of the created order. But guess what. Genesis teaches that too. The presence of the tree of life makes no sense if human beings are naturally immortal.

If Christians spent more time actually studying the Bible in something more than the superficial way that is typical in our time, a lot of the time and effort wasted on unnecessary conflicts and debates could be devoted to things the Bible actually focuses on.

Positive Blogospheric Interference

After a student mentioned seeing Exodus Decoded to me after class today, I found myself thinking about one positive aspect of scholarly blogging, and of web-based scholarly publications and sites in general. When a documentary, a book, an article or an interview appears making sensational claims, the response is immediate in a way that was not possible even a few years ago. Once upon a time, a sensational claim would be made on TV or in a book, and then perhaps a few scholars might get interviewed by newspapers about it, and eventually books and articles responding to the claims would appear in print.


Today, we have live-blogging of documentaries, as scholars and other individuals watch a documentary and comment on it as it happens. If anything, the danger is that we may respond too hastily nowadays.

Potentially, this is a good thing, but I still wonder how many people interested in a given subject find the scholarly critiques and analyses in the ocean of the web.

In other news, Bill Dembski continues to make ludicrous claims. Note that he claims there is a "mafia" that attacks cdesign proponentsists. Isn't it interesting that excellent scientists like Ken Miller, Francisco Ayala, Francis Collins who happen to be Christians don't find themselves persecuted for the open adherence to the Christian faith? Unless, of course (like some American Christians with a persecution complex), you define persecution as anyone disagreeing with you.

I've addressed the clear evidence against an "evolutionist conspiracy" before. Given that the idea is so ludicrous in face of the evidence, an obvious question to ask is why it continues to be not only made but believed. The answer is obvious. The alternative is to acknowledge that the vast majority of scientists and other educated individuals are rejecting Intelligent Design based on its merits (or lack thereof), and that is too painful for Bill Dembski and those on his bandwagon to bear, and so an implausible accusation of conspiracy helps soothe the pain to their egos.

The good news is that this gives us a clear definition of the difference between scientists and a cdesign proponentsists. Scientists are people who at least aim to be so dedicated to the pursuit of truth and understanding that their ideas must be subjected to careful scrutiny and abandoned if they do not meet their discipline's stringent criteria of evidence. Intelligent Design is about being committed to a five-year plan to promote one's ideology and shield it from criticism, even if one has to make ludicrous accusations in order to do so.

Parenting Robotic Offspring

Tonight's episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles made the link between artificial intelligence and parenting more explicit than previously. We make creatures in our image and delude ourselves that we can control them, but we cannot. Sarah characterizes humans in distinction from machines as unpredictable and irrational. Which do we really fear? The irrationality our children and our sentient creations may be capable of? Or the cold, emotionless rationality that is also a possibility, to a greater or lesser extent?

The episode also mentioned the Jewish legend of the Golem, which is interesting since this theme also features prominently in Anne Foerst's recent work on A.I. Indeed, she mentions that there seem to be a surprisingly large number of descendants of Rabbi Loew working in the field of artificial intelligence!

LOST in the Blogosphere

Beliefnet had a recent entry on "spiritual moments" in LOST (HT The Lead and In the Open Space). For those eager to find the latest previews and spoilers from LOST, there is a whole blog devoted to them. It looks like this week's episode will fill us in more on the finding of Oceanic 815 (or a plane that is claimed to be Oceanic Flight 815) in the ocean. But will that be in flashbacks or flash-forwards? One question I'm still pondering is whether the storyline of the series on the island will continue to a point that overlaps with the period we're seeing in the current flash-forwards, in which six of the survivors have made it off the island. Perhaps at some point the story will be taking place mainly back in the U.S. with flash-forwards and flashbacks of things happening on the island.

Mystical Seeker has a discussion of what "Progressive Christianity" means. Also, thanks to JPS for pointing out Lark News, a sort of Christian equivalent of The Onion. The current issue features a pastor who sold his congregation on eBay...

The Panda's Thumb offered a challenge to cdesign proponentsists to identify human design in particular genetic strands. They were unable to rise to it. The most natural conclusion? The methods that Intelligent Design has put forward for identifying design do not work. This does not mean that one cannot find design in the genome...if one has a sense of humor.

Nick Norelli has a caption contest. Here's the picture:

What about "This is so not what I thought Christianity would turn out like"? Maybe (in light of my next topic) one possible caption would be "I praised people for their great faith, not for their gullibility..."

That leads us here: For those who need it, here's another scam e-mail warning. It claims that Yahoo! is simply giving away money to people who happen to have sent e-mails. What makes such a claim seem plausible to anyone is beyond me. Here's the text of the e-mail anyway. I continue to get loads of visitors reaching this blog searching for information about such hoax e-mails. I can only hope that some of them will read things I have said about critical thinking in the past. Just searching for information about each e-mail is like treating the symptoms. Learning to think critically and not be gullible is a vaccine that will protect you from most of these phishing attempts.

This one may turn out to be particularly nasty. It asks for name, address, and other less confidential information first. Presumably this is to lure in those who know to be wary of requests for more sensitive information. But it can be presumed that anyone who answers this e-mail will get a request for a bank account number or other such information. Don't give that information to anyone via e-mail, ever! E-mails pass through multiple computers en route to their destination, and no bank, credit card, social security or other such numbers should ever be included in an e-mail.

Here's the text of the e-mail

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Yossi Nagar, Forensics and Israelite Origins

A while back I joined as a contributor to the Ancient World Bloggers Group. Today, at long last, I made my first post on that blog, which I am also reproducing here. It relates in particular to the work of an Israeli anthropologist who is featured in a documentary, part of which my class on the Bible watched today.

The results of recent forensic investigations of DNA from ancient Canaanite remains and modern inhabitants of that region are featured in the documentary on Joshua in the series Ancient Evidence. Yossi Nagar speaks briefly about his work in the documentary, and his 2003 book presumably presents his findings. The book in question, entitled Mi anahnu? : sipuran he-`atik shel ukhlusiyot Yisrael, is currently available only in the modern Hebrew original, and for that reason appears to not be having the impact on Biblical studies in the English-speaking world that it might otherwise.

Have any of the speakers of modern Hebrew reading this blog read the book? I'd invite you to share a synopsis and/or comments here. Are there plans to translate the book into English? His conclusions based on genetics, that the Israelites and Canaanites were the same, separated not by biology but only theology, are relevant to the historical and archaeological questions that many Biblical scholars are investigating, and would presumably make an important contribution to the discussion if made accessible to a wider audience.

As I noted a while back on this blog, there are a couple of other genetic studies relevant to this topic, although without including the forensic evidence from ancient Canaanites. One is "The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East", and the other is "The Origin of Palestinians and Their Genetic Relatedness With Other Mediterranean Populations". The data from such studies need to be part of the discussions of historical questions about Israelite origins.

Eli Stone

I taped Eli Stone after watching the season premiere of LOST, not only to see the Oceanic Airline commercial that was promised to feature in it. The series is about a lawyer who begins having 'visions' or 'hallucinations'. It is discovered that he has a brain aneurism - as his father presumably had, but it went undiagnosed and everyone assumed that he was simply a drunk.

The pilot episode was not particularly gloomy, given that the main character is disgnosed with an inoperable condition that could result in his death at any moment. It is moving, but also lighthearted at times. Particularly amusing is the acupuncturist Eli visits, who turns out to be a well-educated individual who found that his degree in philosophy didn't lead naturally to employment, and thus he put on a Chinese accent and put on a good show while also giving people genuine counselling and advice.

Eli's initial assessment of his situation is what might be expected. The things he has seen and heard (like George Michael singing in his living room) are "just my defective brain playing tricks on me". The "acupuncturist" gives a helpful reply. There are two explanations to everything, he says. Science may diagnose Eli as having a brain aneurism, but that doesn't rule out the possibility that his experiences, including but not limited to his visions, are also something more than that.

This is precisely the sort of question we must ask about religious experience in our time. Let's say it turned out that Paul, the apostle, had an aneurism or epilepsy or anything else of that sort. Would that make his life and his writings any less significant? What if something similar turned out to be true of Moses, and Jesus, and Mohammad, and other prophets and visionaries of various sorts down the ages?

Eli replies once more that, unlike other prophetic figures, he doesn't even believe in God. Yet again there is a sage reply: "Sure you do. You believe in right and wrong, in goodness, in love..."

The show promises to be thought-provoking. Perhaps its most controversial element was the focus on a case involving a link between a mercury-based preservative and autism. The trial in question, however, merely suggests that it would make sense to err on the side of caution if there is even the possibility that there is a link in even some cases. Just to be safe, though, at the end they added a disclaimer that the events depicted are fictional, and viewers were directed to the web site of the Center for Disease Control for more information about autism.

Oceanic Airlines Commercial

I will post about Eli Stone soon, but found I needed to devote a whole post just to the Oceanic Airlines commercial aired during the show. It talks about the "golden pass" allowing one to fly anywhere. The "Oceanic Six" are given such passes (Jack mentioned using his every weekend). Someone who looked vaguely familiar manages to break through the broadcast and say "Can't trust these people. Oceanic Flight 815 - we found it".

There is an older official site for Oceanic Airlines which is worth taking a look at. It says that, as a result of the crash of flight 815, they have ceased all service. Perhaps part of the lie the survivors tell after being rescued is a story that doesn't tell what really happened but exonerates the airline, thus allowing their business to resume. One can track flights on the page - in fact, the only flight one can track is flight 815, and in doing so one reaches this page which includes the words "give us the boy", the words Tom spoke when he took Walt. If you want to dig deeper, there is an in-flight magazine with a subtle link that takes you to a quiz which then lets you sign up for e-mails about the show.

A newer site for Oceanic Airlines says that service has resumed. It is also worth a look.

There is another older site for Oceanic Airlines which may not be official. At present the page has a coded message !F?2EC7 ;GJJ 3AA96] } ICC2 C=C G7 2CCBCB] The message has been deciphered on fan sites and Lostpedia.

LOST in a Zoroastrian Multiverse

As I continue thinking about the possibility that LOST is exploring issues of the meaning of life and morality in an infinite multiverse, I find myself compelled to conclude that this universe has a balance of good and evil, as well as of order and chaos. In the Star Wars universe the thinking seems to be closer to Taoism, in which there are two fundamental principles, the light and dark side of the force, which need to be kept in balance because both are necessary, and it is extremes, the dominance of either, that is bad.

LOST seems more like the outlook of Zoroastrianism. There are two opposing forces, we are told in the pilot episode of LOST, light and dark, but these really do represent the forces of good and evil. There is the hope, indeed the expectation, that good will in the end be victorious.

In a multiverse scenario, presumably there will be a universe where good and evil are finely balanced, which could go either way (perhaps, more problematically, there will be an uinfinite number of such universes, but that is not a scenario we can explore in the present context). If that universe did move in a slight but decisive way towards one or the other, and if universes can intersect and influence one another, then the fate of that universe could determine the fate of the entire multiverse, as slowly but surely the influence of good (or evil) spreads and becomes dominant. Somewhat like the Popcaps game Pax Galaxia.

It is plausible that the "Others" really are trying to be the "good guys", to ensure that good triumphs. But of course the question that is then raised is whether the ends justify the means, whether goodness can be spread on our planet or across infinite universes using means that are not themselves good. Battlestar Galactica has explored the same theme in its recent special: if the military become a razor that does whatever necessary to make it possible for themselves to eventually be merely human again, do they lose their humanity in the process in an irretrievable way? On Chuck too the scenario is explored in a more comical way, as undercover agents give up on the American dream so that others can have it.

But perhaps this is too deep a topic for a weekend post. So let me share the understanding one college student had of Zoroastrianism as written on an exam - and shared with a wider readership in Anders Henriksson's hilarious book Non Campus Mentis (New York: Workman Publishing, 2001, p.8):

"Zorroastrologism was founded by Zorro. This was a duelist religion".

Religion and Morality in an Infinite Multiverse

In a recent post about LOST, I explored the possibility that the mystery of the island being explored in that series may relate to the idea of parallel universes. In this post I want to explore further, albeit very briefly, some of the issues raised by the view (put forward by some physicists, cosmologists and philosophers) that we inhabit an infinite multiverse of which our own universe is but one of an infinite number of universes.

It is often said that, given an infinite amount of time and infinite space, not only anything can happen, but everything will happen that is possible. However, the implications for religion and ethics are rarely explored. Wouldn't this mean that, in at least one universe, a being like the God of the Bible would exist? Would it not also mean that, in at least one universe, people would believe such a deity rules their universe and be wrong?

In an infinite universe, there will be other yous and other mes, nearly identical - at least that is what we are usually told. Does this not mean that, however much I strive to be a good person, there will be another me that is the mirror image (as in the Star Trek episode about parallel universes, "Mirror, Mirror") who is trying just as hard to be bad? And that when I try and succeed, somewhere else I've tried and failed? And, of course, vice versa...

In last night's episode of LOST, Charlie appears to Hurley and says that he is dead, but he is also really there. In an infinite multiverse where the possibility exists for universes to intersect and closely overlap, this would be true. In some universes, in fact, immortality would be a reality, one presumes.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing for religion and for ethics? If the idea of multiple universes of infinite number is correct, does this give comfort, because somewhere the things you believe really are true, and somewhere a version of your loved ones and of yourself will live forever? Or is it disheartening because somewhere Hitler was victorious, and somewhere there is a version of you that is opposed to everything the you that is reading this stands for?

The multiverse cosmology may not be correct, but it is not inappropriate to explore what if questions about the meaning of existence if it turns out that it is.