Templeton Foundation Big Questions series: Evolution and human nature?

The Templeton Foundation has a Big Question series, and the latest one deals with whether evolution can explain human nature. What nice about the way they address this issue is that they offer up a large variety of responses instead of the usual Manichean dichotomy that's so prevalent. I have had a chance yet to read through all of the essays, but I thought I'd throw this out there anyway as a good way to show the range of views regarding this very important issue.

My review of Book of Eli

On my not so used as much lately blog, Irenicum, I've written a review of Denzel's new movie Book of Eli. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Christ and cross centered ethics

Unless our ethics are grounded in the person and work of Jesus Christ, they will either fluctuate from one extreme to the other. On the one extreme our ethics will become so divorced from any concrete grounding that they will become completely relativized. Ethics in this scenario becomes entirely culturally conditioned and has no center. On the other hand, if our ethics has a center apart from the person and work of Christ, even if biblically based, then it becomes too concrete and cannot adapt to the vast variety of cultural contexts spanning human history. That kind of ethics ends up becoming a one size fits all model that forces the facts on the ground to be twisted and contorted in order to fit them into that rigid system.

In contrast to these two extremes, Christ and cross centered ethics offers up a grounding of ethics in the life lived by Christ as our model exemplar. Even the previous revelation given to the Israelites through the law of Moses is seen in a new light because of Christ's incarnation. He both fulfills the law, thus satisfying its demands, but also gives an even higher standard than what the law called for as taught by Moses and the rabbis.

But finally, Christ on the cross gives us a full grounding of our ethics in a way that no other system can ever give. The reason for this incomparability is because Christ on the cross isn't a system, it's a person, God the Creator, entering into history through the person, Jesus of Nazareth, in order to redeem an estranged creation. All of history, whether human or otherwise, is impacted by this radical intervention by our Creator God. No part of creation is exempt from this and thus everything has ethical implications, whether our personal ethics, our political ethics, our economic ethics, or our environmental ethics, which includes both our interactions with the animal and the plant world.

As creaturely beings, along with the rest of creation, we have been radically impacted by this intervention by God through Christ Jesus. God began the work of restoration with Christ's resurrection. It will find its consummation with his return when all things will be made new. That day is not yet here, but we have been given a model in Christ's life, death and resurrection. We partake of his kingdom work when we enter into the mystery of his sacrificial life and death, knowing that we live because he died and lived again. The women and men who surrounded him during his ministry, and whose eyes were opened to who he is, were radically transformed by this new reality. They went from hardened disbelief and arrogance to living lives of self sacrificial service to each other and to all around them. This transformation in their lives proved to be more powerful than anything Rome or Jerusalem could ever wield. That is the same transformation that we have available today if we would only see him for who he is and what he has truly affected.

Pray for Michael Spencer (Internet Monk)

Please keep Michael Spencer, also known as the Internet Monk, in your prayers. He's been diagnosed with cancer and is beginning chemo next week. For those of you who may not know Michael or his writing, he's been a prolific blogger who has been a tremendous blessing to the church, even when he's critiquing the church's failings. In fact, that's when he's been the biggest blessing. This is the biggest challenge Michael has faced and he needs fervent prayer, both for healing, but also for his emotional health. Also, please pray for provision for Michael and Denise, as this sickness has cost him his job at the school and his health insurance runs out next month. Please, if you can, give a gift of whatever size to help them out. Just link onto the chemo link above and you'll see how to contribute. His ministry has enriched my life, and many many others, greatly. Help if you can. He's a brother in need and Christ has called us to bear each others burdens. This is an opportunity to do just that.

What would be the theological impact if we found extraterrestrial life?

I just read a short piece on the BBC's website about how we're more likely than ever to find some sort of alien life forms off of planet earth. As Christians, what would be the impact on our theology? In particular, how would it impact our understanding of our uniqueness as creatures made in the image of God as distinct from the rest of the earthly creation? In popular fiction as well as in various 3rd kind encounters, not to mention abduction accounts, the aliens always look remarkably like us. I believe, by the way, that this is a typical anthropomorphism of our hopes and fears and most likely has no basis in actual reality, but ascribing humanesque qualities to otherworldly creatures. Since westerners largely don't believe in angels anymore, aliens have taken their place. Nonetheless, if there are planets orbiting other stars similar to our own sun that are themselves similar to our own planet earth, and the universe is as vast as we've come to understand, then it makes sense to expect that some form of sentient life forms must have developed on those planets as it has here. And since our planet and star seem to be relatively average in comparison to what we've discovered so far, it seems pretty obvious that it's just as likely that other worlds have evolved just as much as ours if not more so. So with this in mind, if (and I would say when) a new world is discovered that has biological life, what does that do to our understanding of the Biblical text? Are the Judeo-Christian scriptures able to handle this kind of development? I would say that it can. But then again, I'm a Christian. I would say that. Christianity, after all, survived the Copernican revolution. And it seems to be surviving the Darwinian revolution as well, though with some bumps in the journey. Will Christianity adapt to and survive the exo-biological revolution?

The Rise of the Evangelical Evolutionists

It used to be that the terms evangelical and evolutionist were oxymoronic. If you were one, then you obviously couldn't be the other. Evangelicals generally were seen as being the stalwarts of biblical authority, and in light of that authority most evangelicals held to some form of direct (or directed) creation by God of all that currently exists in the world. Some held to the young earth view, which sees the earth and the cosmos as being only thousands of years old, because that's considered by them to be the most plain sense reading of the early chapters of Genesis. Other evangelicals accepted that the earth and the cosmos are much older, as in billions of years older, but nonetheless still held to a form of creationism, which, though divided by their various views in the details, nevertheless all agree in rejecting Darwinian evolution as the explanatory framework to how speciation has come about. Some accept a limited form of evolution, such as micro-evolution, but reject macro-evolution. Some go so far as to accept a limited macro-evolution, but reject that humans are part of that equation, saying instead that humans were specially created by God distinct from all other creatures. And in more recent years, there has been the very popular movement called Intelligent Design or ID for short. They've argued that they accept an ancient earth and cosmos. They also accept limited evolutionary activity, but that certain physiological functions are so complex that Darwinian evolution cannot satisfactorily explain them. Thus these functions are deemed to be "irreducibly complex" as so only an "intelligent designer" can explain their existence.

On the other side of the aisle are the evolutionists.Traditionally they've been seen as holding to scientific materialism. And some certainly do. We need look no further than the New Atheists to see that at work. Though to be fair to many who do hold to scientific materialism, most are not as crass, provocative and dogmatic (dare I say fundamentalistic?) as Dawkins, Hitchens, or Harris. These are the loudest voices, and of course they're going to get the most press, if only because of their offering up the neat dichotomy of faith versus reason. Once again, it offers up the comforting bromide that if you're a person of faith, reason must necessarily be checked at the door, and if you're a person of reason, faith is seen as the foolish superstition that holds poor men and women in its insidious grip for far too long, keeping them in the dark (ages) about origins, sex, and anything else that helps us to actualize our expressive individuality.

But there are those who have advocated for the evolutionary viewpoint who consider themselves to be Christian, or at least theistic. Some have been relatively orthodox in their views, but in many cases, those arguing for the evolutionary viewpoint have come from the mainline denominations and have been considered to be liberal in their theological perspective. To be "liberal" in theological circles, whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, is to so reconcile the scriptural narrative to modern science as to rob it of any supernatural content, such as miracles, the direct action of God on the natural world contrary to how natural laws normally work. Once again, in each of these cases, the false dichotomy has been offered up that faith and reason are diametrically opposed to each other. Theological liberals are guilty of giving up too much to the scientific materialists. Too often theological liberals have ceded clear language of miracles to naturalistic explanations when the writer clearly understood the event in supernaturalistic terms.

Part two coming up.

John Polkinghorne on the dangerousness of scientific and religious belief

There is one important difference, however, between scientific belief and religious belief. The latter is much more demanding and more dangerous. I believe passionately in quantum theory, but that belief doesn’t threaten to change my life in any significant way. I cannot believe in God, however, without knowing that I must be obedient to his will for me as it becomes known to me. God is not there just to satisfy my intellectual curiosity; he is there to be honoured and respected and loved as my Creator and Saviour. Beware! Let me utter a theological health warning or, rather, promise: “Reading the Bible can change your life” John Polkinghorne.

I haven't read any of his books yet, but if this is any indication of who he is then I can't wait. The above quote comes courtesy of An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution. And since Christians across the world are celebrating the birth of our Savior, who is called the Word/Logos made flesh, we know because He is the font of all knowledge. Praise God and Merry Christmas!

It seems our President is an Augustinian Democrat

This morning's speech by President Obama struck me as being the most Augustinian speech by an American politician that I've seen in my lifetime. It did confirm what I had suspected all along: That he was more moderate than either his most liberal supporters or his most conservative detractors thought. His acknowledgment of our fallen human condition, though not expressed in explicitly Christian terms, nonetheless shows that he understands that the hyper idealism that drives many on the left is not what shapes his understanding. Again, he's not the pacifist that either his most left-ward supporters had hoped or the hard right had feared and, I believe, secretly wished for too. The hard right, just like the hard left, both have an overly idealized vision of the world in which they each have the secret "key" to understand everything. This causes them both to see everything in starkly black and white, Manichean terms and also causes them to see the political "other" as an eternal enemy to be stopped at every turn. Thus, when I read or watch the far right in their interaction with Obama, they want him to be as far left as possible. This theme, or meme, gives energy to their cause. Anything that contradicts this is either ignored or seen as being one more example of his dastardly plan. It's typical conspiratorial thinking that predominates in the extremes of the left and right.
Well, this is turning into a post more about Obama's critics than about him. Suffice it to say I was very impressed by his speech today. It illustrated a nuanced understanding of the human condition that has been largely absent in most political discourse. If this speech reflects even a part of who the President is, than I'm very glad he's the man God has placed in power at this dangerous and troubling time. A realist with idealistic aspirations is not a bad combination.

Final Notification

Getting a "Final Notification" from any one of the "Christian" websites I happen to belong to, tells me nothing, except that they seek to coerce me into accepting their terms.
Getting 'final notification' notices is now so common-place, that I ignore the term all-together. It's emotionally coercive. Some of the sites that use this terminology are considered "Christian." Sadly, that means nothing. Coercive commercial techniques aren't considered anti-Christian by these entities. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised. But as a Christian, in my naivete, maybe I should be. I thought being Christian should illustrate something better.

And once again, my savior looks like this.

Genocide and Forgiveness

Tonight I watched the finale of a film about the Holocaust, from the perspective of a survivor who decided to "forgive" the Nazis who experimented on her and her twin sister during the war. Questions were raised about whether she even had that right to forgive those beyond her own experience of persecution. The film gave us a very complicated woman, Eva, who decided for her own sake, to forgive those who had tortured her and her twin sister on behalf of the Nazis. She decided to forgive not only those who had done these crimes against her and her sister, but also decided to forgive the entire German people and the Nazis among them for what they did. Then, later in the film, she, Eva, visited Israel, and more importantly, the Palestinian territory, to try to work her "forgiveness" into their fabric. The experience, however, for her, was unnerving to say the least. She found herself being the person who represented "power" (as an Israeli) being confronted by those who knew no power of any sort. They confronted her with the many crimes that were committed by Israelis against Palestinians on a daily basis, including outright murder. She saw, if I may say so myself, and I don't know I have this right, the discomforting sight of being on the other side the victimization table. I think she was not able to see herself as belonging to a people who could ever do such a thing. She had "forgiven" those who had victimized her from a perspective of innocence. And certainly, as a child, she was indeed innocent. In that sense she could forgive those who had violated her and her sister from a vantage point of actual innocence. In other words, they had no power to resist the violence against them. In this she was correct. Yet, when she ventured to scenarios which reflected a picture which had Jews, Israelis, being in positions of actual power, she did not have the emotional or intellectual framework available to her to allow that her own people could be guilty in the way (though not by any means in the way Nazis had been numerically) other oppressors had been before. And yes, including the Nazis. That's the most disturbing part of this. Could a people, a people victimized so horribly, become a people capable of the same horror?
This is where forgiveness takes into account, and must take into account, that every human being has within himself and herself the ability to forgive and yet also has the ability to be the perpetrator of the greatest crimes known to humanity. This brings to mind that we must always be attentive to what stirs within us as much as what drives those we would be against.

Sun coming out from hiding