Almost a Literalist
-
I think this is one of the best cartoons on so-called Biblical literalism I
have ever seen (HT Experimental Theology). You may need to click through to
get...
9 hours ago
Friday, January 30, 2009
A Teaching Evolution Panel Discussion at Rice
There is going to be a very promising looking panel discussion about the controversial Texas' State Board of Education drafting of science standards this year at Rice University on Wednesday, February 11, 2009, at 7 p.m. in McMurty Auditorium, Duncan Hall. The program is called "The Politics of Teaching Evolution in Texas" and will focus on the political process and its ramifications for Texas. The link is to the "Events At Rice" posting about it. I plan to be there if at all possible. Hopefully I will finally understand how all this really works. Anyway, if you are in the area and interested in the subject it looks like it will be very good.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Tillich, Science, and Being Religious
I’ve been blogging a re-reading of Paul Tillich’s “The Courage to Be” and I have reached the second chapter. It is slow going partly because I don’t have the time to be at it on a daily basis, but also because there is a lot in this book and a lot to think about whenever I want to write about it.
The first subsection of the first subsection of Chapter Two is called “The Meaning of Nonbeing.” It is a prelude to his discussion of human anxieties, which are very important to the rest of the book and are returned to again and again. However, I wanted to talk a bit about “being” and what Tillich’s emphasis on God as one’s Ground of Being has meant for me.
One of my struggles in being pretty much a “modernist” and growing up with a modern scientific understanding of the world around me but also being interested in being religious has been “what is the point of religion in a modern scientific world?” The standard answer among many folk interested in science and religion is that science is the study of how the universe is whereas religion is about how the world ought to be. That answer has never been satisfactory to me, though, because I don’t see how that creates a purpose for religion in our lives beyond the philosophy of ethics. Why not just get rid of religion and study Ethics?
The answer that I feel comfortable with now comes from my understanding of Tillich’s use of “being.” I have come to view the point of religion (for myself) as being about “Being.” I distinguish this from mere “existence” as (I think) does Tillich because “Being” implies action on the part of the individual in a way that “existence” does not. When Tillich talks of “Being” he is using it in the same way that Hamlet does in his famous “To be or not to be, that is the question” speech. When he talks of “The Courage to Be” the “Be” is there used as a verb – it is about doing something more than existing. A stone has existence but it is not clear to me it has “Being.” As conscious individuals we not only exist, but we experience our existence in a way that an inanimate object cannot be said to do. Tillich interprets “being” “in terms of life or process or becoming…” (Courage p. 32)which I suppose is a bit of a nod towards process theology. The experience of existence (or life, process or becoming) is often great, but it has its own inherent difficulties, including the anxieties that Tillich addresses in the rest of the chapter.
This has gone a long way to dissolving my cognitive dissonance between being a scientific modernist and a religious person. Science is about creating theoretical models that you can map on to the physical universe and observe the accuracy of in an attempt to understand that physical world deeper. Religion, to me, is about addressing my human need to deal with my experience of living in the universe with all of its good and all of its anxieties. If science answers questions like “why do we die, how can we prevent it as long as possible, etc.,” religion answers questions like “how do I live with the anxiety of knowing that I am going to die? What symbolic rituals can we develop to cope with it?”
Or, as another example, I think of science as asking (and attempting to answer, always imperfectly) the question what is the universe physically like? Religion I think of asking (and attempting to answer, always imperfectly) the question what is at the foundation or deepest depths of my experience of the universe?
The first subsection of the first subsection of Chapter Two is called “The Meaning of Nonbeing.” It is a prelude to his discussion of human anxieties, which are very important to the rest of the book and are returned to again and again. However, I wanted to talk a bit about “being” and what Tillich’s emphasis on God as one’s Ground of Being has meant for me.
One of my struggles in being pretty much a “modernist” and growing up with a modern scientific understanding of the world around me but also being interested in being religious has been “what is the point of religion in a modern scientific world?” The standard answer among many folk interested in science and religion is that science is the study of how the universe is whereas religion is about how the world ought to be. That answer has never been satisfactory to me, though, because I don’t see how that creates a purpose for religion in our lives beyond the philosophy of ethics. Why not just get rid of religion and study Ethics?
The answer that I feel comfortable with now comes from my understanding of Tillich’s use of “being.” I have come to view the point of religion (for myself) as being about “Being.” I distinguish this from mere “existence” as (I think) does Tillich because “Being” implies action on the part of the individual in a way that “existence” does not. When Tillich talks of “Being” he is using it in the same way that Hamlet does in his famous “To be or not to be, that is the question” speech. When he talks of “The Courage to Be” the “Be” is there used as a verb – it is about doing something more than existing. A stone has existence but it is not clear to me it has “Being.” As conscious individuals we not only exist, but we experience our existence in a way that an inanimate object cannot be said to do. Tillich interprets “being” “in terms of life or process or becoming…” (Courage p. 32)which I suppose is a bit of a nod towards process theology. The experience of existence (or life, process or becoming) is often great, but it has its own inherent difficulties, including the anxieties that Tillich addresses in the rest of the chapter.
This has gone a long way to dissolving my cognitive dissonance between being a scientific modernist and a religious person. Science is about creating theoretical models that you can map on to the physical universe and observe the accuracy of in an attempt to understand that physical world deeper. Religion, to me, is about addressing my human need to deal with my experience of living in the universe with all of its good and all of its anxieties. If science answers questions like “why do we die, how can we prevent it as long as possible, etc.,” religion answers questions like “how do I live with the anxiety of knowing that I am going to die? What symbolic rituals can we develop to cope with it?”
Or, as another example, I think of science as asking (and attempting to answer, always imperfectly) the question what is the universe physically like? Religion I think of asking (and attempting to answer, always imperfectly) the question what is at the foundation or deepest depths of my experience of the universe?
Saturday, January 24, 2009
On Books and Rereading Beloved
Just finished rereading Toni Morrison's great novel Beloved. I had heard that her new novel A Mercy was in some ways a prequel, though not in the sense of being about the same characters but in the sense of being an examination of slavery and its effect on people, but at a time earlier than that depicted in Beloved. It had been a long time since I had read Beloved. It was a more powerful book for me this time, reading it now after becoming a parent. (Without giving away too much, if you have not read the book, it involves something unthinkable that a parent does to a child.) It is a great work and very poetic. It is also brutal - as it should be given it is a book dealing with slavery. So I think instead of moving right into A Mercy, I am going to put it off for a little while to read something a bit lighter - so I am reading April's copy of Gordon Kaufman's In the Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology. I will get back to blogging Tillich's The Courage to Be. I think these two will be interesting to read alongside one another.
Texas Continues its Assault on Reason
Sigh. The euphoria over the Texas School board's vote to get rid of the "strengths and weaknesses" language is gone and the Houston Chronicle headline today reads "Scientists Grim as Panel Tinkers More on Evolution." As I was suspecting a few days ago, the victory is largely negated by new language introduced undermining the idea of universal common descent. The story is on the Houston Chronicle's website now, but with the different headline "Scientists: Board Proposals Undermine Evolution Teaching."
This is the sort of thing that makes me doubt the current conventional wisdom among some folk who call themselves "postmodernists" (though I know not all postmodernists think this way, and it may be a misrepresentation of the PM mainstream) that everyone is equally biased and there is no such thing as an objective point of view. It may very well be that no one's point of view is completely without bias, but there are differing degrees of bias and some points of view are more objective than others. (And of course a bias doesn't always make one wrong. I may be biased in favor of modern medicine over folk remedies, but that doesn't mean antibiotics don't work.)
This Creationist nonsense is the epitome of a biased outlook. Here there are non-experts in the field of biology making decisions about how evolution should be taught not on the basis of any scientific reasoning (they didn't have any experts suggest the language that got added) but on the basis that the mainstream expert opinion is in conflict with their interpretation of their religion. The Bible may be a great book (or it may not) but it should have absolutely no effect on how we teach biology.
This is the sort of thing that makes me doubt the current conventional wisdom among some folk who call themselves "postmodernists" (though I know not all postmodernists think this way, and it may be a misrepresentation of the PM mainstream) that everyone is equally biased and there is no such thing as an objective point of view. It may very well be that no one's point of view is completely without bias, but there are differing degrees of bias and some points of view are more objective than others. (And of course a bias doesn't always make one wrong. I may be biased in favor of modern medicine over folk remedies, but that doesn't mean antibiotics don't work.)
This Creationist nonsense is the epitome of a biased outlook. Here there are non-experts in the field of biology making decisions about how evolution should be taught not on the basis of any scientific reasoning (they didn't have any experts suggest the language that got added) but on the basis that the mainstream expert opinion is in conflict with their interpretation of their religion. The Bible may be a great book (or it may not) but it should have absolutely no effect on how we teach biology.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
New Year, Same Old Battles
The Texas State Board of Education did a preliminary vote today rejecting the retention of the "strength and weaknesses" language regarding the teaching of evolution that creationists like so much. But the whole matter is quite confusing to me. First, I'm not sure what this preliminary vote really does. According to the Statesman.com story about it out of Austin, there is another vote to be taken on it tomorrow and a "final" vote in March. Today's vote (Thursday) was by the full board committee and tomorrow's vote (Friday's) will be by the board itself, as will the one in March. So changes could still be made. Though the headlines in most articles (like this one from the Houston Chronicle) made it sound like a victory for science, the Statesman.com article notes that after the vote to not use the "strength and weaknesses" language
... the board later approved, 9-6, a motion by board Chairman Don McLeroy, R-College Station, to require students to evaluate the "sufficiency or insufficiency" of scientific theories about common ancestry of different species. The prevalent scientific theory explaining the diversity of species is evolution; creationism is the belief that the universe was created by a higher power.This language - sufficiency or insufficiency of scientific theories specifically about common ancestry of different species, sounds as bad, or even worse, than the strengths and weaknesses nonsense. So at this point it seems absolutely unclear to me who is winning what and what the final standards will look like. I will be sure to take a look at what happens at tomorrow's vote and if more sense can be made out of it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
