Pete Enns has posted an interesting review of Davis Young and Ralph Stearly’s “The Bible, Rocks and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth.” This comment from the review is true and encouraging IMHO: “In brief, what remains sorely needed in my opinion is deliberate conversation between biblical scholars and scientists (not just geologists, but physicists, biologists, anthropologists, etc., etc) on the question of origins.”
Category: Science & Technology
This new resource from the Faraday Institute looks like it will be outstanding.
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A Rabbi on Darwin and Design
A nice article from the Chief Rabbi of the United Congregations of the Commonwealth in the UK.
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Groothuis on McGrath
Douglas Groothuis’ review essay on natural theology (Books & Culture, July/August 2008) is disappointing, particularly in its treatment of Alister McGrath’s work. Groothuis considers McGrath’s “In the Twilight of Atheism” to be “unphilosophical.” Twlight, however, is more of a historical than a philosophical argument, as Groothuis observes. For philosophical arguments, Groothuis should have turned to McGrath’s “Intellectuals Don’t Need God (and Other Myths)” as well as McGrath’s more pastoral work on these themes, “Doubting.” Concerning very specific historical, philosophical, and theological arguments against the “new atheists,” Groothuis could have read McGrath’s “Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life” and “The Dawkins Delusion.”
Groothuis does refer in an off-handed footnote to McGrath’s “The Science of God,” but he apparently completely misunderstands McGrath’s Scientific Theology project, which is fleshed out more fully in three massive volumes that Groothuis fails to mention. Far from “remov[ing] the possibility that [natural theology] provides evidence for the existence of God apart from the Bible,” McGrath states explicity, in the very pages cited by Groothuis, that “[o]n the basis of a detailed survey of the biblical material, it seems that a knowledge of God [from nature], however limited, is indeed presupposed.” (Science of God, p. 79.) McGrath then carefully demonstrates, followingThomas Torrance, why Karl Barth’s wholesale rejection of natural theology was an overreaction to some of the intellectual currents of Barth’s day. (Science of God, pp. 82-91).
McGrath concludes the section on natural theology in The Science of God by affirming that “the human mind possesses the capacity to recognize [God’s] work of creation as such, and to draw at least some reliable conclusions concerning the nature and character of God from the created order.” (Science of God, p. 89.) Groothuis’ real beef with McGrath’s Scientific Theology seems to be McGrath’s careful conclusion that this affirmation is not a “‘necessary truth of reason,'” but rather rests on some presuppositions that can be known only through revelation. This is hardly a “redefinition” of natural theology, pace Groothuis, but rather is fully consistent with the Reformed tradition concerning human noetic limitations.
While it is inexcusable that Groothuis gives such short shrift to McGrath’s earlier work, it is inconceivable that Groothuis missed McGrath’s magesterial new book, “The Open Secret: A New Perspective on Natural Theology.” McGrath there lays out a detailed, balanced, nuanced, and thoroughly Reformed and Biblial natural theology, summarized as follows: “A Christian natural theology is about seeing nature in a specific manner, which allows the observer to discern in what is seen the truth, beauty, and goodness of a trinitarain God who is already known; and which allows nature to function as a pathway towards this same God for secular culture as a whole.” (The Open Secret, p. 148.)
One wonders whether Groothuis’ real problem with McGrath is that, unlike many American rationalistic apologists — including Groothuis — McGrath consistently refuses to buy into the false notion that analytic philosophy can provide logical proof of God or that “strong” intelligent design theory adds anything meaningful to reasoned apologetics. In fact, in his anti-Dawkins books, McGrath properly takes the strong intelligent design program to task as a warmed-over version of William Paley’s long-discredited “watchmaker” argument. It seems that, in some circles, any theologian who questions the strong intelligent design lobby gets “expelled” from the discussion. Yet, McGrath is warm to the Reformed and Patristic understanding that nature displays “intelligent design” in its beauty and regularity, and that the “fine tuning” of the universe for human life “corresponds to a Christian understanding of the nature of God.” (The Open Secret, p. 244). It is a shame that Groothuis’ own limited horizons blind him to McGrath’s signficant contribution to developing a natural theology for our times.
A very cool site that allows bloggers to show free documentary films: SnagFilms.
Daniel S. Greenberg is a seasoned science journalist who has been reporting on research and industrial science for over forty years. In Science for Sale: The Perils, Rewards, and Delusions of Campus Capitalism, Greenberg explores the web of relationships among academic science, private industry, and government.
The primary strength of Greenberg’s approach to this question is his journalist’s ability to tell colorful stories, often based on personal interviews with key players, which elucidate both individual personalities and big questions. For example, Greenberg has Drummond Rennie, an activist and editor of prestigious medical journals, explain a key problem in scientific publishing: “’What we’re talking about . . . is the influence of money on research that my journal and other journals publish. The distorting influence of it. And this distorting influence is huge.’” This sort of first-hand testimony – and there is much of it in this book – is a powerful indictment of the supposed Mertonian neutrality of academic-industrial-government science.
The primary strength of Greenberg’s book, alas, is also a major weakness. Very often, the book reads like a string of tedious, unending anecdotes and quotations lacking a cohesive vision for reform – which is a fair description of the book as a whole. In a very brief concluding section on “Fixing the System,” Greenberg suggests “transparency” is the key to reform, but he never explains what this might mean. In a major omission, he does not examine at all whether “open access” publishing models might help push things towards greater transparency. Moreover, his dismissal of the Bayh-Dole Act and other legal developments that have encouraged universities to privatize their research through patent protection is so cursory that it flies by almost unnoticed. Yet the tension between “open” and “property” models of scientific research surely is both a driver and a symptom of the problems Greenberg exposes in his anecdotes and interviews.
On the whole, Science for Sale contains some useful source material for those who are interested in the sociology and business of institutional science in an age of money. It also will open the eyes of those who naively assert the neutrality of the scientific establishment. It does not, however, provide any meaningful proposals for reform.
I’ve been working on a narrative statement of faith — something that would tell the story of the historical Christian faith, which could be used in a church setting in lieu of the usual bullet-point summaries evangelical churches often favor. I wouldn’t say this is necessarily what I think of as the core of the core of the core of the faith, but it expresses for me the contours of what I think it would be good to express as the basic story in which a local church becomes embodied. It probably is still too “propositional” and not “narrative” enough, and I don’t claim to be an authoritative source, but here is what I’ve come up with:
There are many different kinds of “Christians,” but we all share at least one very important thing in common: “Christians” seek to follow Christ. As Jesus taught us, we are learning together how to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. This kind of love is the grand summary of everything we want to be about at [insert name] Church.
But the story starts much farther back. When we speak of “God” we speak, in many ways, of a mystery: the “triune” God, or “trinity,” of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons in one God. God always was, and he never needed anything. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit danced together and could have gone on dancing without us.
But in his goodness and love, God made room for – created – the heavens and the earth. Everything that exists is the result of God’s choice to create. Things continue to exist because God in his love desires it to be so.
Human beings are a very special part of God’s creation. He made each one of us to live in loving relationship with Himself, each other, and the created world. Yet from the very beginning, human beings have rebelled against God. Each of us continually turns away from the good things God has planned for us. We each try to go our own way, even though our ways lead to brokenness, injustice, and the separation of death. We all sin.
But God pursues us. In the person of the Son, Jesus, God became a person like us. He experienced hunger and pain, loneliness and temptation, separation and loss . . . yet, unlike us, he did so without rebelling against God. In fact, we proclaim a mystery: that Jesus became fully man and yet remained fully God.
As the God-man, Jesus died a terrible death on a Roman cross. His death is a paradox because, unlike any other death in history, Jesus’ death was a victory. In his death, Jesus took on himself all of the consequences of our sin. All of the hurt we have caused, and all of the hurt we deserve, he willingly suffered.
Jesus’ death was a victory because he did not remain in the grave. We shout, along with all the generations of Christians who have lived during the two thousand years from the time of Christ until today: “He is risen!”
Christ left the Earth but lives today and reigns with God the Father. Christians wait eagerly for the time when, as he promised, Christ will return to Earth to “make all things new,” to wipe every tear from our eyes, to complete the victory he won on the cross over sin and all the brokenness it causes. We live now in a time-in-between – a time of hoping, waiting, working, expecting, rejoicing-in-part, seeing-in-part, and sometimes suffering – while we wait for the time of restoration and peace Jesus called the “Kingdom of God.”
We are not alone in this twilight time. God the Holy Spirit dwells in each person who trusts in Christ, to empower, comfort, guide and correct. The community of all Christians through the ages forms a family called the Church. We meet together in local representations of this global community, in churches like [insert name] Church and in countless other varieties, to worship God, to support each other, and to learn how to love more like Jesus.
In addition to the community of His people and the presence of the Holy Spirit, God gave us his written word, the Bible, to teach and direct us. The Bible is the ultimate norm for Christian faith and practice. It is the standard for all our thinking and teaching about who God is, how He expects us to relate to each other, and how He expects us to love and worship Him.
When we meet together as the local Church, we practice certain customs that Christians have always found vital to the life of faith. These include singing songs of worship and praise to God, offering back to God a portion of the wealth with which He has blessed us, and receiving the proclamation of the word of God from the Bible. These also include special symbols or “sacraments” given by Christ to the Church, in particular baptism and the Lord’s Supper. In baptism, those who have trusted Christ publicly confess their faith and demonstrate how they have been brought up from the dark waters of sin into the fresh air of the new life of faith. In the Lord’s Supper, the bread and wine remind us of the body of Jesus, broken on the cross, and of his blood, spilled for our sins.
As we meet together, God the Holy Spirit acts in and through us to change us and to change the world. In this way, we “already” experience the Kingdom of God, even as we know the “not yet” completion of the Kingdom awaits Christ’s return. We do this soberly, knowing that the powers of selfishness and evil actively oppose it, and that God will honor the choices of those who reject the free gift of forgiveness and grace He extends through the cross of Christ. Yet we also do this eagerly and joyfully, knowing that it is the very work of God in bringing peace to the world.
For a short while, I fancied myself a theistic evolutionist. I realize now that I can’t really carry that label. First, I hate labels. Second, the one label I do want to carry is “Christian.” I don’t think being a Christian necessarily commits a person to a particular view about “evolution,” if that means simply that organisms change gradually over deep time and all of life shares a common genetic heritage. Those facts, it seems to me, are irrefutable. But I do think being a Christin commits a person to a particular view of humanity, and particularly of humanity in relation to God. We surely don’t know all the details of exactly what it means that God formed man “out of the dust of the ground” (Gen. 2:7) or exactly in what ways the Biblical references to “Adam” and the “Garden” are literary stylizations. But, fundamentally, I think being a Christian entails a theology that asserts (a) humans are in some way unique among the creatures of the earth; (b) humans at their root, in their first representatives created by God, had a special relationship of fellowship with God and each other; and (c) the first human representatives broke that relationship and this has affected all of us in relation to God, each other, and the rest of creation, ever since. This is what sets the stage for God’s relationship with Israel and for the cross of Christ.
In this regard, I’m really troubled by Karl Giberson’s summary on Steve Martin’s blog of his forrthcoming book, “Saving Darwin.” Now, I want to be careful here, because I haven’t read Giberson’s entire book yet. The book was blurbed, with some reservations, by John Wilson, Editor of Books & Culture, whose judgment usually is sensible. Maybe some context will help, but, in his guest post, Giberson says this:
I suggest in Saving Darwin that we must abandon the historicity of the Genesis creation account. Adam and Eve must not be thought of as real people or even surrogates for groups of real people; likewise the Fall must disappear from history as an event and become, instead, a partial insight into the morally ambiguous character with which evolution endowed our species. Human uniqueness is called into question and we must consider extending the imago dei, in some sense, beyond our species. These are not simple theological tasks but, if we can embrace them, I think we may be able to finally make peace with Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.
To me, this is an important place at which Christian theology has to “push back” at science in dialectical tension. It seems to me that Giberson here advocates that we concede a central motif of the Christian story. I don’t think this is an “evangelical” issue; it seems to me to be a “Christian” issue.
If this is what it means to be a theistic evolutionist, I am not one. I’m not sure what that makes me — I respectfully reject young earth creationism, I think old earth day-age creationism isn’t fair either to the Biblical or scientific records, and I think much of the contemporary “intelligent design” debate — much, not all — just recycles William Paley’s theologically and scientifically discredited watchmaker arguments. Maybe a real synthesis and “peace” between “faith” and “science” in some respects simply is not achievable in this life. I don’t like it, but maybe a humble, respectful, but firm patience here is part of the “not yet” walk of faith.
An older, but equally excellent, Stackhouse post that mirrors much of my own thinking:
First this:
There are only two respects, then, in which “creation versus evolution” makes sense: first, when certain Christians insist that “creation” must mean “creation science” and thus rule out any divine use of evolution; and, second, when certain evolutionists insist that “evolution” must mean only what Darwin thought it meant, namely naturalistic or atheistic evolution. For then, of course, “creation versus evolution” really amounts to “theism versus atheism.” Put this way, however, we should recognize that we are dealing now with a religious and philosophical issue, not a scientific one. Science cannot, in the nature of the case, rule out God as somehow supervising evolutionary processes.
.. and then this:
Maybe evolution, theistic or otherwise, can explain all these things–as Christian Francis Collins believes just as firmly as atheist Richard Dawkins believes. But we must allow that evolution has not yet done so.
And that’s a pretty important set of allowances to make—as the ID proponents, as well as the creation science people, rightly insist. Indeed, the late evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould himself agreed, sufficiently so that he and Niles Eldredge postulated “punctuated equilibrium” as a theory to explain the last problem on that list. The creation science and ID people simply aren’t wrong about everything—and their opponents would do well to heed their criticisms, even if they hate their alternative theories.
All of this is right on, IMHO, and it echoes on of Stackhouse’s themes about epistemology and apologetics, which I greatly appreciate: it’s ok to say “I don’t know” sometimes.
The fact, which we evangelicals need to face, is that the basic outlines of contemporary evolutionary theory seem to be sound. All of life does indeed seem to be genetically linked, the amazing and beautiful facts of how genetics operate show that organisms can and do change over time, and contemporary evolutionary theory seems to provide sound explanations for what we find in the record of life on earth.
However, the grand narrative of evolution with a capital-E is inferential and does not in itself account for some important beliefs and affirmations that Christian theology brings to the epistemic table. The evolution-with-a-capital-E metanarrative raises very important questions about “chance,” God’s action in the natural world, and, probably most importantly, about human nature and sin, in ways that seem to require some “push back” or dialectical tension / conversation with theology. So, it seems to me, we have an obligation not to dismiss or ignore basic and well-established principles of how life on earth ordinarily works, but at the same time we do not have an obligation to accept the entire evolutionary meta-narrative. Did God “intervene” at some key points in life’s development? How exactly do Christian affirmations about the uniqueness of humanity, sin, and “the Fall” relate to the ordinary development of life on earth? We don’t know exactly — and that’s ok — we’re not obligated to resolve either end of this tension or to state what we hold and affirm about all aspects of it in stark “either-or” terms. All we really have to admit is that we’re limited in what we can say for sure about how this all works together.
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Colliding Galaxies
This visualization is amazingly cool: