Its seems Barbara Walters has done the definitive work on faith and life after death and the verdict is… she won’t give her own opinion. I got bit of a chuckle out of that yesterday when she appeared on Good Morning America and she was asked if she believed in heaven and her answer was, “A heaven with family and loved ones is a very comforting thought to many people.”
Unfortunately I had a long evening meeting so I missed Heaven — Where Is It? How Do We Get There?. I plan on ordering the DVD and checking out what she and her guests had to say. The little I was able to glean from her morning interview and the web site offers some real challenges for those of us who live and grapple with faith in the 21st Century because it seems like many of the people in who responded to the polls and who were interviewed still seem to be living in the Dark Ages.
Faith is not a rational thing and the western world has tried to make it a very rational structure and glossed over inconsistancies, history, and current realities. I say this as I am reading one of the most challenging books I have read in years, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris. Expect a podcast in the new year on it. The core of what he is arguing is that faith, particularly Western Christian liberalism and Orthodox Islam, have an inherent absurdity in many of their beliefs, especially regarding the afterlife, that faith now poses the greatest threat to the future of the human race. Consider the little bit that I know Barbara Walthers shared and other thingsthat I saw – 1 out 4 Americans believe heaven is for Christians only; strict Muslims believe the same except that it is designed for the needs of men and resembles the Playboy mansion; that intelligent design and evolution sounds more like a religious argument on both sides rather than rational science, etc…
You might want to check out this out from Mark Allender. Its a lecture that goes in some of the same directions with those who are wrestling with the disconnects between faith and reason in the 21st Century.
Mark Allender here.
I am a subscriber to the WGBH Forum podcast out of Boston – and their last lecture – a scant 20 minute piece on Science and Religion – has so profoundly affected me that have been forwarding this to many friends and family. I also thought it might interest you.
Here is the podcast link:
http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510007&uid=f14bc329c72603758146504eb2648461
And here is where you can download it if you are interested:
http://cdn.npr-podcasts.speedera.net/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/396/510007/WGBH_4967152.mp3
Again, no obligation but I suspect you might get a lot out of it. It is a very postmodern thing to experience religion through a lens of science. This piece correlates “ideas” to “viruses” that propagate themselves with little regard to their “hosts.” A fascinating way to think about ideas and religion…
Thought i’d share.
mark
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http://zzz.uu.cx
Watch for a podcast on all this after the first of the year. I think Jon Steward summed it all up best when he said this about the theory of intelligent design: “Its not teaching that there is a god, only that there is someone out there with a job description an awful lot like it.”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Hey Tom,
I listened to the “scientist†talk and found at least one aspect interesting. He cannot even conceive of one “Intelligent Designer†for the world but has no trouble expounding on how a parasite can have enough intelligence to design a plan to enter into the brain of an ant, convince it to crawl up a blade of grass repeatedly until it is eaten by a cow, where the parasite will have a better chance of existence. It certainly is amazing to me that this parasite even knows what an ant is, or a cow, or how to design a plan to get each to comply with its plan for survival in the belly of said cow. Then with barely enough time for a breath he moves on to the intelligent parasite that can design a plan to be swallowed by a fish in order to change the fish’s look and tendency toward self preservation so that it can be eaten by the exact bird the parasite needs to infect. Armed with this “proof†for Evolution he attacks the most absurd theological arguments he can find for “Intelligent Design†and claims ultimate victory. While there is certainly reason to continue the debate between Creation, Intelligent Design and Darwinian Evolution, I hope this is not the best debater the scientific community has to offer.
Sorry if I missed how this related to postmodern thought, but perhaps I was infected by an intelligently designing parasite that entered my stomach in the stir-fry chicken I ate at lunch time and convinced my mind to turn off the podcast. Those crazy parasites! How did he know I would be eating stir-fry in that particular place today?
Although it is not politically correct, Merry Christmas my friend.
Something weird happened. I posted the link to the sound file so you folks could find it and now I find out that it actually got sent out on the RSS feed to all of my subscribers. Sorry about that. I guess a link is enough to trigger WordPress to send out the file because I never uploaded it to my server.
Learn something new every day. My apologies to WGBH and the copyright police.
A couple points:
First, for the most part, he is not trying to set evolution up against intelligent design. He (like the vast majority of the scientific community) takes the processes of evolution as a given. The bulk of his talk is about “ideas” and how they behave in the human mind much like viruses or parasites.
Me? I find that a fascinating thing to think about. And that is a postmodern thing to think about IMHO.
Second, in his examinations of the various parasites, he is not saying that they “figured out” how to find hosts. He makes it clear that they have evolved to be this way – no thinking about ants or fish required – it’s just what they do.
By that same token, I would say that humans have evolved to create and appreciate art. Art begets communities and communities make our offspring stronger and more able to survive. Which goes back to Darwin 101.
Just my $.02.
The Christian Church has so often been the last to accept the findings of science. Gallileo and Copernicus are the most famous examples, but there are many others. Unfortunate too. If Jesus is the Light of the World, then it stands to reason that His followers ought to be at the forefront of new science instead of its caboose.
Thanks.
Great show Tom. Keep it up!
Mark
To Mark,
Actually, I think the lecturer is trying to set evolution up against intelligent design, or would be if he thought anything other than evolution had any merit at all. And, I think he is condescending to the extreme. He was so obviously going for laughs from the crowd at the expense of anyone religious that it would be hard to miss.
Perhaps I misunderstood the theory of Darwinian Evolution to say (basically) that species evolve into something better than they were before. That if a species is to continue to exist it must find the ways and means of self-preservation. That does not sound to me like something randomly happening (I. E. – that’s just what they do). I think it begs creativity in the same way that you have attributed it to humans. I think creativity connotes some kind of thought pattern. As for “ideas,†I do not think they randomly come into our minds. I think they are sparked by something/someone else – usually external. Most ideas are purposefully planted in us by teachers, media, commercials, friends, etc. I think only the negative or destructive ones should be compared to parasite or viruses. A scientist who rules out any theory but evolution is just as bad as a fundamentalist Christian who rules out anything but creationism. So maybe I could consider this lecturers ideas a parasite or virus.
I do have to give credit to this scientist, and also to you Mark, for sparking ideas in my mind. My idea is that the concept of Darwinian Evolution is probably just as modern as anything else. Even the schools today refuse to label it as a theory. One school tried by adding a note to their science textbook and was force to remove under a court ruling. Hum! There goes freedom of thought for the children of postmoderns.
As a footnote of my own: There are plenty of Christian Scientist at the forefront of science. And, many of them realize that science can only take us so far, and then we must theorize. That applies even to the proponents of Darwinian Evolution.
I’m just baffled by the constant battle over evolution. There is no conflict between Christianity and evolution. Do you doubt the biochemical processes in your own body simply because God didn’t mention in the Bible that He created them? No, you don’t. The same holds true for evolution. Evolution is simply a creation of God.
To Ben,
As I understand the “battle†(as you called it) and participate in it, to simply use the word evolution is not adequate. Too many people use the word evolution and Darwin’s Theory of Evolution interchangeably. Certainly I recognize the biochemical processes of my own body, but that is not the whole of Darwinian Evolution. I am and will always be a human being. I will not evolve into another species, and do not believe that I could even if I lived another 5 million years. Darwinian Evolution, on the other hand, argues that every species of plants and animals evolved from the same single cell amoeba. Many proponents of Darwinian Evolution will even claim that there are transformational fossils in existence to prove Darwin’s Theory. I am not aware of a single credible one. There are, however, fossils that show a single species (animal or plant) evolving and adapting to it’s habitat, but never changing from plant to animal or even from one species of animal to another. While you may be able to adapt evolution to include God, Darwin left no room for God in his theory. I see no problem between science and Christianity. My problem is how often Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is used to exclude God, and how often Darwin’s Theory is taught without recognizing that it is still a theory.
It strikes me that battle is an apt term for how the debate when you get to the hard core proponents on either side. You have scientists who see the current iteration of evolutionary science as be definitive for all time and christians who see biblical literalism as the sole foundation of Christian faith. Neither is willing to accept any inconsistancies or illogical in their positions and so condemn any criticism as being anti – scientific/Christian. Both positions maintain disconnects with current culture and studies to maintain the illusion of self-sufficiency and supreme knowledge.
My next podcast will touch on this – how willing are we to apply open criticism to our deepest beliefs or do we have separate standards for science/religion/core beliefs.
Good discussion.
I think that there is a prominant misunderstanding among the conservative Christian community of what “science” is and what “scientists” do.
A steady diet of exclusively Intelligent Design literature would lead one to make a few (false) assumptions:
1 – That there is some kind of organized cabal among scientists to try to discredit Christian theology,
2 – That theologians, journalists, and Christian activists have more information on the workings of the earth than those who have studied it for years,
3 – That scientists believe they know all there is to know about the evolution of species, are unwilling to admit mistakes, are unwilling to be wrong, and curiously,
4 – That the word “theory” is somehow the opposite of the word “fact.”
As has often been said, the biggest difference between the theory of evolution and the theory of intelligent design is that Evolution concerns the “how” and Intelligent Design concerns the “who.” And for every other natural science, the “who” questions belong in Religious or Philosophical studies.
Take Chemistry for example. I have yet to sit in a Chemistry class where the question of “who created ionic bonds” or “who keeps an electron around the proton” as a subject of serious study. Chemists have long just observed how these processes work, made theories of _why_ they work, and as time passes, the scientific community becomes closer and closer to understanding what is going on.
On the subject of evolution, the religious community is stuck on it. Because they are threatened by it. Just like the medieval church authorities were threatened by heliocentric theory.
But putting natural science aside, and observing solely as a media consumer, I notice a couple things. Notably, that proponents of intelligent design theory are ALL of a Judeo-Christian background and are ALL of a conservative social agenda.
Or to rephrase, the only ones who support intelligent design are those who have a personal interest in doing so.
On the flip side, there are many many scientists who are devout Christians (my father among them) that support evolutionary theory – and find the processes of evolution of species incontrovertable.
###
For all the talk among the ID’ers about how “the world is too complex for random chance,” the vast majority that I have heard seem to have a fairly simplistic view of it. It is in fact by studying the complexity of the earth that the evolution of species becomes more and more apparent. Here is one example: Large groups of species in specific parts of the world can be shown to have suffered massive extinctions (due to disease, climate change, natural catastrophe, etc) and other previously non-existant species can be shown to populate and take their places. This can be tested and retested by examining occurances and re-occurances over the whole history of the earth. There is no agenda here – no one is setting out to try to discredit Jesus. The evidence is there to observe – the findings have been there to read for decades.
ID’ers make much of Darwin and where he was wrong – and how he was skeptical of his own findings. But you’ll be hard-pressed today to find anyone actually quoting Darwin in current peer-reviewed journals. Same in physics – nobody is quoting Einstein in current science anymore. Or Newton. Or Kepler. These guys (like Darwin) were influential scientists in moments of great discovery. But the current scientific community has moved a long stretch of highway since the Big Guys made their discoveries.
And many many scientists have been proven wrong. My father, for example, studied high-temperature superconductors for his dissertation and theorized as to how high temp superconductors work. And many other scientists and grad students came up with their own theories for how they work. We still don’t know how they work, but a great many of the theories – my dad’s included – later were proven as invalid. Were my dad’s theories bad science? No, of course not.
This kind of conjecture is what science is all about. We learn more, we rule out what had been conjectured before, we realize the validity in other scientific modes of thinking. And – yes -much of Darwin’s original theory still holds up.
ID’ers are big fans of pointing to one specific theory of the origin of species, demonstrating that it has been “proved” wrong, and then postulating that ALL of evolutionary theory is therefore false. And those who push these “evidences” forward do not really understand the method of acquiring scientific understanding.
According to the texts, Intelligent Design and Evolution are totally compatible – because, as I said, Evo asks “how” and ID asks “who.” But ultimately Intelligent Design theory represents a great deal more than it says. Under the guise of talking about an “Intelligent Designer,” the rhetoric is REALLY Anti-Evolution Theory. Evo seeks to explain how it happened. ID seeks to convince that Evo is wrong. And that, at the base of it, is fundamentally what is going on in the debate.
Holy crap I wrote a lot.
Folks, I’m at work. I gotta go!
If you read this far, congratulate yourself with the cookie of your choice.
Thanks.
Mark
Interestingly enough, Mark, I was just finishing my cookie of choice (chocolate chip) from my lunch (also at work) as I read your last sentence. And, I really have no argument with much of what you say, but I am enjoying the back-and-forth conversation so much that I need to respond .
First, I don’t believe that there is an organized cabal among scientists to discredit Christian theology. I do believe, however, that atheistic scientists organize around the theory of evolution to discredit religion. I also might point out that the “scientist†in the podcast was (I believe) speaking to other scientists and was quite condescending to religion in general. I believe there is equal reason to be concerned that “some†scientists make this an “us and them†argument just as “some†theologians do. That is also why I have to take exception to your statement that it is only the religious community that is stuck on evolution. If this were a subject that only the religious community was stuck on then there would be no debate because there would be no one to debate. While there may be merit today for a scientist to say that they are only interested in the “what†and not the “who,†I don’t believe that was always true. Initial debate with Darwinian supporters was just as much about the “who,†or to be more precise the proof of an absence of any “who.†Join together theories like Darwin’s and the “Big Bang†over years of public education without allowing any discussion of God or any kind of divine being and years later there is no longer a reason to debate the “who†because the “who†ceases to be relevant. God goes the way of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.
Second, I do not pretend that theologians know more about science than those who study science; however, I have had first hand experience with people who consider my Masters Degree as inferior to theirs because it happens to be in theology. That is not limited to scientists, but also found to be true among some lawyers, doctors, and general business practitioners. While I may not be able to converse as well in the specific language of science, law, medicine or business, none of that makes me inferior. And, the fact that I am fluent in theology (as opposed to other allegedly more important degrees) does not mean that what I have to say is irrelevant to the discussion. Somewhere in our history the role of Pastor in society has been denigrated to the “nice but not necessary†category. There are many reasons for that, but certainly Darwin and other like theorists coming out of the scientific community had made an impact.
Third, I agree that theory and fact are not opposites, but neither are they synonyms and too often I hear them used as the latter. My point was that public education has lifted evolution to such an exalted status that the words “theory†and “fact†are not even included in the conversation. Again, I would not argue that all species evolve and adapt. My argument is that I have not seen any credible proof that any species has evolved into another. Yet there are some scientists out there who speak about transformational fossils as if they were a fact and not a theory. I don’t point this out because I have some personal conservative social agenda. I point his out because science should be a quest for truth and not simply who can publish the latest greatest paper in a scientific journal.
As I said earlier, I too am at work, and will stop to continue another day. Looking forward to the next time. Peace.
Here is a radio piece on Cleveland Public Radio on the subject of evolution vs. intelligent design:
http://www.wcpn.org/news/2006/01_03/0104kenMiller.html
Features Brown University professor Ken Miller.
Enjoy!
Mark
HMMMM! A university professor and philosopher dares to question the integrity of scientists in the wake of even more falsified data and he is labeled an “idiot” on Mark VanWetterings Site. Here’s the original article in the SF Chronicle.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/01/15/INGMDGMDSV1.DTL
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