In a ploy to boost Technorati ranking and perhaps get a few freebies that is working, Nick posted that Earth Day is Idolatrous.

If we confuse the earth with God, yes.  If earth day is a chance for us to recognize how humans are not being good stewards of the planet to which God entrusted us then no.  The fact is that humans are doing a fine job of making a disaster of this creation all the way up to space where we have propelled more junk in the name of capitalism that most people are aware.

It is not idolatry as long as the distinction between the creator and the created is secure.

If we do not understand our obligation to intentionally direct our evolutionary history to make this the most habitable planet we can, we are not following a rather clear command of God.

So…

Happy Freakin’ Earth Day to Christians and Idolatrous Pagan Scum Alike!

Nick now owes me a free book.

It’s OK to say that you are a Christian. It’s OK to say that your faith is not rooted in what can be said to be empirically validated through scientific mechanisms. It’s even OK to assert that Jesus rose from the dead. I think that Benedict XVI’s words here are accurate and clear in assessing a continuing problem in the Christian claims to faith that are under attack from the various riffs on the new atheist thematic.

Benedict said the power of the preaching of the Christian faith “has lost none of its internal dynamism. Yet we must ask ourselves whether its full force has not been attenuated by a relativistic approach to Christian doctrine similar to that found in secular ideologies. …”

Secular worldviews, “in alleging that science alone is “objective,” relegate religion entirely to the subjective sphere of individual feeling. Scientific discoveries, and their application through human ingenuity, undoubtedly offer new possibilities for the betterment of humankind. This does not mean, however, that the “knowable” is limited to the empirically verifiable, nor religion restricted to the shifting realm of ‘personal experience.’

“For Christians to accept this faulty line of reasoning would lead to the notion that there is little need to emphasize objective truth in the presentation of the Christian faith, for one need but follow his or her own conscience and choose a community that best suits his or her individual tastes. The result is seen in the continual proliferation of communities which often eschew institutional structures and minimize the importance of doctrinal content for Christian living.”

Recent surveys have found that non-denominational community churches are among the fastest growing churches in the USA, and that many Americans either don’t know or disregard basic Christian doctines.

“Like the early Christians, we have a responsibility to give transparent witness to the ‘reasons for our hope,’ so that the eyes of all men and women of goodwill may be opened the pope said.

I have a new respect for the current pope through reading about his visits and hearing the language he is using to feed the various flocks of the Christian faith. His demeanor is extremely conciliatory in what he knows is a unique pluralistic religious landscape in the US. Yet he maintains that if Christianity is to be what it is, it must not be ashamed of it unique claims to truth that are rooted in doctrine as much as in the experiences of those before us and those among us now.

You can almost hear Paul’s language coming through Benedict XVI’s,

For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

I think he is striking the same chord that Jim West plucks as well regarding the debates over intelligent design. There the assertions of ID are not the problem as much as what they do to the claims rooted in faith on which Christianity is founded. “If you believe God created the heavens and the earth just say so. Don’t hide behind the slick cover of attempting to appear ’scientific’ in a dialogue that doesn’t make sense.” I think that Paul and his unwavering claims to the reality and potency of faith for redemption and reconciliation to God would share the same displeasure.

I am right now reading Borg’s book on Jesus (slowly, it’s low on the priority list and was bumped by William James). I will very much like to follow that up with Benedict XVI’s own work. That should make an interesting comparison indeed.

Jim West puts a finer point on his question here in the comments by asking:

Why would one care what happens to human beings if they are just animals like all the other evolved mammals?

I am zooming in on my response here and expanding it slightly for further debate, if there is even a debate at all.

If our planet is to survive and remain habitable we must, as the top of the food chain and direct cause of environmental toxicity, re-engineer the planet. As human beings who are conscious of evolutionary processes, we are responsible to consciously and intentionally direct evolutionary processes around our obligations to each other and the planet. Dr.’s E.O. Wilson and Peter Ward among others have argued as much. A fantastic resource for these issues can be found here. Even Mr. Bush is catching up with this concept.

Couched in terms of obligation to neighbor, this is not a utilitarian argument wherein one would practice genetic manipulation in order to clean up the gene pool like so many cattle, dog, and plant breeders do. Humans have value to the degree that they can receive the good and flourish by it. Those humans who cannot receive the good such as those in Darfour, are those to whom we are obligated to restructure the conditions for living in which they can flourish and re-claim their humanity.

Human beings are the only species in existence that can claim the responsibility to continue the habitability of this planet. Our uncanny knowledge of evolutionary and physical properties gives us the tools in order to accomplish this feat. It is here where evolution and Christianity meet.

Evolution therefore, has everything to do with love of neighbor and the call to stewardship - it always has.

I ran across an interesting quote in William James’ third lecture on Pragmatism in which he discusses a few metaphysical issues. He places the idea of an intelligent designer of the cosmos in the context of abstract rationalism - as a metaphysical claim. While is has pragmatic value, it clearly bears no scientific or empirical value from James’ view.

Pragmatically, then, the abstract word “design” is a blank cartridge. It carries no consequences, it does not execution. What design? And what designer? Are the only serious questions, and the study of facts is the only way of getting approximate answers. Meanwhile, pending the slow answer from facts, any one who insists that there is a designer and who is sure he is a divine one, gets a certain pragmatic benefit from the term - the same, in fact, which we saw that the terms God, Spirit, or the Absolute, yield us. “Design,” worthless tho [sic] it be as a mere rationalistic principle set above or behind things for our admiration, becomes, if our faith concretes it into something theistic, a term of promise. Returning with it into experience, we gain a more confiding outlook on the future (p. 50).

Intelligent design is therefore a faith claim that satisfies the compunction of the human spirit to discern an order to things even if there is not scientific fact that such an order requires a designer. This discernment comes as a result of a desire for order. Keep in mind that James was quite active in terms of the effects of Darwinism on education and also had strong views on the task of research as well. For him, intelligent design has practical value which makes it different from pure rationalism. It seeks facts even it it has none to confirm it empirically which makes it different from empiricism. He goes on to say:

If not a blind force but a seeing force runs things, we may reasonably expect better issues. This vague confidence in the future is the sole pragmatic meaning at present discernible in the terms design and designer. But if cosmic confidence is right not wrong, better not worse, that is a most important meaning. That much at least of possible “truth” the terms will then have in them (p. 51).

He delivered these lectures in 1907.  This is more evidence that the ID/Creationism versus evolution debate as well as the atheist versus theist debates both in terms of the conflict between empirical and non-empirical ways of knowing is an old one with new vigor. The issue is not God, religion, science, materialism, etc. These are but symptoms. The issue is this question as it was then: What is a legitimate basis for knowledge?

I always have far too many blogs on my radar than I can truly absorb, digest, and comment. No doubt that is true of many folks out there who have glutted themselves with news, information, and conversation. Which leads me to a lead-off question.

I posted a piece that at least I thought was interesting on theodicy yesterday. Kind of an old question from a slightly different angle. If I post something like that I notice that no one comments. Yet if I post something pithy about movies I hate or enjoy, it’s like flies to sugar [not that my readers are flies, it's a relational metaphor ]. This further raises a question that Chris Brady has been exploring here and here about the nature of blogging. I wonder if I am too much a generalist for much of the blog world that would be interested in the topics on which I post? I would ask the additional question of readers why do you read blogs and what are you looking for? What grabs your attention and holds it?

Jan Edmiston reflects on the plight of the dying church. Regardless of how you understand the statistical significance of old mainline churches fading away as the “greatest generation” sadly leaves us, it is an immensely painful situation for a lot of good pastors.

As many of you know Chris Tilling has had a few posts on his own grappling with science and theology here, here, and here. Worth a read for anyone, and especially anyone who is absolutely sure about their current understanding of the compatibility between evolution and creation.

There was an interesting study at the University of Houston which gives a far more scientific result as to the effectiveness of a hybrid course model versus a traditional course model. Rather than come to the standard conclusion of “no significant difference” the result was a better performance in the hybrid course. This is a risky kind of study that faculty with whom I have worked have always balked because of the nature of the control versus the experimental group in the model. I would like to see more faculty take this risk with the same kind of study to get some external validity data. That would do more in the filed of educational technology than the vast majority of other “studies” that have been done in the past. In other Higher education news, encouraging interfaith experiences is discussed at Inside Higher Education.

The Evangelical Philosophical Society posts an interview with Paul Copan, chair of philosophy and ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University, entitled, “Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?“. The subject matter engages one of the arguments among new atheists along the lines of God is Not Great (HT to FQI for this one). While this piece is more or less descriptive of the foundations and character of the arguments, Copan’s piece here is a little more nuanced.

Ryan at Rumblings discusses faith and doubt in the midst of religious tradition.

Identitymixed has the post title of the week: All Things Urine. If you don’t have kids yet, this is the kind of stuff the books don’t tell you!

Julie gives all husbands some rather sound advice on what the best things in life are for a wife, especially after being together for a while.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State includes news about a resolution that passed recently declaring Easter Week to be “Christian Heritage Week” in Alabama. Looks like they did not get the memo in civics class that Sally Kern missed as well.

A few months ago I listened to a fascinating series of lectures by Yale professor Carlos Eire entitled “A Brusque History of Eternity“. In the three lectures he presents his “brusque” history focusing on both the philosophical and socio-cultural developments of the notion of eternity and its implications for the Western world. At the end of the second lecture, he discusses that a major change in the weltanschaunng after the Reformation is a distinct division between the realm of the eternal, infinite, and immortal with that of the physical and material conditions of our existence. He couched this in terms that Berger uses in The Sacred Canopy. I found the similarity to be rather uncanny. Here is Berger’s quote:

At the risk of some simplification, it can be said that Protestantism divested itself as much as possible from the three most ancient and most powerful concomitants of the sacred - mystery, miracle, and magic. This process has been aptly caught in the phrase “disenchantment of the world”. The Protestant believer no longer lives in a world ongoingly penetrated by sacred beings and forces. Reality is polarized between a radically transcendent divinity and a radically “fallen” humanity that, ipso facto, is devoid of sacred qualities. Between them lies an altogether “natural” universe, God’s creation to be sure, but in itself bereft of numinosity. In other words, the radical trascendence of God confronts a universe of radical immanence, of “closedness” to the sacred. Religiously speaking, the world becomes very lonely indeed (pp. 111-112).

As Berger goes on to argue, this split between sacred and profane is a major source of secularization in modernity. With him, and Eire, I would venture an hypothesis that the analysis gives us a two-edged sword in how modernity develops from then on to today. On the one hand, this truly allows for the development of modern science since the cosmos can now be seen as as object that can be studied on its own right. There are no gods, as it were, to worry about when one investigates natural phenomena. On the other hand, by segregating the cosmos from God and eternity in such a radical way, the intimacy of God is eschewed because it is made to be less accessible than before. God’s unknowability takes precedence to God’s revelation in the created order. Hence the dissolution of the Book of Nature that we read in so many medieval spiritual texts like the Cloud of Unknowing. That is to say, via negativa mitigates the efficacy of via positiva to know God.

I should also note that Herbert Butterfield in his classic text The Origins of Modern Science argues this same phenomenon, although in rather different terms. Modern science as it developed in the late 19th Century would have not been possible had it not been for this clear distinction between world and God that Protestantism had introduced into the shape of modern Christianity. Following this, revivalism, spiritualism, romanticism, and the aesthetic nature not only of God, but of morality tried to inject this magic back into the popular ethos about God, truth, beauty, and goodness.

It is easy to see the connective tissue with our current debates between atheism and religion. One side would rather have this sense of magic and mystery forever excised for the good of humanity. The other side also sees its mission to re-inject that dimension of the cosmos for the good of humanity. But in a more specific context, I wonder how well Protestant churches give people a sense of the bridge that the church is here to construct between God’s eternal, invisible, immortal hiding place and the raw stuff of our phenomenal experience? To drill this even further, those churches that are quite intentional about building this bridge, for whom are they building it and are they building it with the true intent of spreading the love of God and the love of neighbor to change the structures of how people understand the stuff of the world in which they live and so, transform the way that people inhabit it?

(This post follows quite circuitously starting here, followed by a direct reference to the post here).

Here it is:

Louisiana has seen numerous attempts to bring creationism into public schools. It was a Louisiana law that mandated “balanced treatment” between evolution and creationism that the Supreme Court struck down in 1987’s Edwards v. Aguillard.

Since then, various Louisiana school districts and parishes have tried other ways to undermine the teaching of evolution. Tangipahoa Parish tried “disclaimer” stickers in biology books. (That failed in court, too.)

Now a Louisiana lawmaker has come up with yet another idea: a so-called “academic freedom” bill that would encourage teachers to examine all sides of issues deemed “controversial” – such as evolution, cloning and global warming.

With that, we should also teach the value of eugenics, the inferiority of women, and the young earth. Why not? They are all controversial too.

This is a topics in science class at best. Still not science. It would confuse the kids who are confused enough already after leaving the dogmatic intransigence of their churches.