Tag Archives: Christianity

A more evolved faith?

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New York Times Magazine has a brief on Michael Dowd, a UCC pastor who has decided that Christians should not just accept the fact of evolution – they should embrace it. Based on the article, and a quick perusal of the website for Dowd’s upcoming book Thank God for Evolution, Dowd’s gospel seems center on the idea that we can better come to terms with our sinful nature if we understand its evolutionary origins. It also has more than a hint of Teillardian influences:

When I speak of evolutionary emergence I’m referring to the fact that ‘the Universe’ (Nature/Time/Reality/God) has consistently, though not without setbacks, produced larger and wider scales of cooperation and complexity over time. [emphasis Dowd’s]

It’s inaccurate, at best, to say that biological evolution has some sort of grand purpose behind it – there may be trends that are visible in retrospect, but these are the emergent result of undirected processes, not evidence of a divine plan. It feels a bit churlish to make that kind of objection, though. Even liberal Christians don’t usually know what to do with evolution, beyond accepting it as fact. No other modern thinker, as far as I know, is actively grappling with the ways in which evolutionary thought might actually inform Christian theology. (The closest I know of is Michael Ruse’s Can a Darwinian be a Christian?, which is excellent, but resolutely agnostic.) If Dowd’s ideas are less than perfect, they do make a good starting point. And Christianity could use a good starting point for thinking about evolution. I might have to track down a copy of Dowd’s book.

Will Huckabee kill the Christian Left?

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The results from yesterday’s Iowa caucus: Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee are the winners in their respective parties, by solid margins. It’s an interesting pairing, because the Democratic victor represents a response to a kind of conservative politics that the Republican victor has abandoned.

Obama is a good representative of the Christian Left – explicit about his religion, but understanding the Gospel to be about economic and social justice, not condemning abortion and homosexuals (neither of which is discussed by Jesus himself). The most public exponents of this position are Jim Wallis and his organization Sojourners.

The political strategy of the Christian Left has been to combat the Christian Right by attacking its wholehearted embrace of mainstream conservative stances on economics and the role of government as un-Christlike. Wallis’s favorite image is of a Bible with every reference to the poor cut from it: basically, a pile of shredded paper. This critique is valid and important, but it also allows the Christian Left to leave more divisive doctrinal positions of liberal Christianity, like acceptance of homosexuals and acknowledgment of the fact of evolution, in the background. Focusing on economics lets Sojourners be bipartisan, because while the Republicans have actively made life worse for poor Americans, the Democrats haven’t exactly made it better.

Huckabee poses a problem for this strategy – he rejects the post-Reagan ties between conservative Christianity and big business interests in favor of a distinctly liberal-flavored populism. But theologically, and on social issues, he’s very conservative: anti-abortion, anti-gay, and anti-science. And there’s the problem – on the issues the Christian Left has emphasized, Huckabee looks to have conceded the point. For Jim Wallis and Co. to oppose him without getting nit-picky about specific policy (though Huck’s “fair tax” looks ripe for nit-picking), they either have to start talking about more than economics, or they have to endorse (or at least not oppose) Huckabee.

So what will the Christian Left do? As of now, Sojourners’ “God’s Politics” blog has two responses to the Iowa result: one, by Diana Butler Bass, that identifies the Obama/Huckabee contrast; and one, by Wallis, that cheers the bipartisan victory of economic populism. Neither takes a position for one candidate over the other – which they don’t really need to this early in the campaign, admittedly. The question is, how long can they wait to choose?

Huckabee’s looney fringe

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I’ve been kind of conflicted about Mike Huckabee. Sure, he’s anti-science and has wacky ideas about taxation, but he first really came to my attention when he said, in defense of offering state tuition assistance to the children of undocumented immigrants, “we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did.” That’s the sanest thing I’ve heard from any Republican candidate on the subject of immigration.

But now it looks like Huckabee’s conservative Christian affiliations have wiped out that little glimmer of goodwill. Turns out he’s willing to take money from Christian Reconstructionists, a right-fringe strain of the faith I’ve bumped into in Moscow, which holds that the U.S. should be ruled by “biblical” laws like these. Including that physicians should not treat patients on Sunday. Wow. I’m actually pretty sure Jesus specifically contradicts the one.

And if Huckabee wants to hang out with that kind of “Christian,” well, he gets about as much respect from me as they do.

NSA: all the trappings of academia, none of the logic

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The New York Times Magazine’s “College Issue” is running a
none too critical story about New Saint Andrews College, the pseudo-accredited hyperconservative school that has been trying to take over my present hometown for years. Highlights include NSA founder/eminence grise Doug Wilson saying that (1) he’d rather vote for Jefferson Davis than George W. Bush; and (2) rather than “woodenly” following the Old Testament commandment to execute homosexuals, “you might exile some … depending on the circumstances and the age of the victim.”

More revealing than those soundbites, though, is a comment from an NSA alumnus: “We want to be medieval Protestants.” Anyone who knows her Church history, of course, will immediately recognize this oxymoron: the Medieval Age of Europe is notably defined by the lack of Protestants. The Reformation didn’t start until well into the Renaissance (Martin Luther tacked up his 95 Theses in 1517). The use of the term “medieval Protestants” therefore implies a rejection of the cultural, philosophical, and intellectual movements that allowed Protestantism, and the Calvinist tradition with which New Saint Andrews allies itself, to arise in the first place.

Needless to say, the Times reporter let this whopper pass without comment.

Mother Teresa’s doubts

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So it turns out that Mother Teresa, the paradigm of Christian charity, had doubts about her faith. What do we conclude from this? Well, based on media coverage I’ve seen, we’re to understand that Mother Teresa was some kind of hypocrite. Because, Lord knows, you just can’t have doubts and call yourself a Christian.

Doesn’t anyone read the Bible these days? Doubt is an integral part of the Christian experience, so much so that we see it in the life of the ultimate Christian exemplar, Jesus. Gethsemane and the cries from the cross aren’t just empty scenes in a kabuki Passion play; they’re real, human responses to the cruelty of the world. If Mother Teresa struggled with belief and continued her good work anyway, then she’s in good company.

Essay: Biology and morality

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My new favorite podcast is Radio Lab, from New York Public Radio. It’s sort of Nova plus This American Life, with a heavy dose of the Douglas Adams sensibilities that I’ve come to associate with co-host Robert Krulwich. And it’s awesome.

What’s on my mind right now is the episode of 28 April 2006, “Morality”. It delves into emerging studies of the biology of human morals – what parts of the brain are involved in moral decision-making, and how evolutionary history shaped them. A key point is that there are two kinds of moral thinking, rules-based decision-making (“Thou shalt not kill”) and calculating (“the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”). And these two kinds of moral thinking take place in different parts of the brain. When they come into conflict, maybe because you’re thinking about killing someone in order to save several other people, a third area of the brain kicks in to decide between the two. This third area is (apparently) entirely unique to humans – not even chimpanzees have it.

But chimpanzees (and other apes) do have the rules-based moral thinking area. It helps them get along with other chimps. Which means that rules-based morality is evolutionarily primitive. If they could write, chimps could probably come up with most of the Ten Commandments! Where does that leave Christian morality? Is it all just pre-programmed behavior wrapped up in unnecessary mysticism?

No. As it happens, I’ve just finished reading Michael Ruse’s excellent book Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? (Cambridge University Press, 2001), which addresses exactly this question. And, as Ruse points out, Christ’s teachings call us to live beyond the Ten Commandments – those moral principles that seem to crop up in every human belief system.

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet those who greet you, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as you heavenly Father is perfect.
—Matthew 5:46-8 (NIV)

In other words, Christians are to exceed the dictates of morality that everyone already follows. We’re to transcend our biology, using that part of our brain that sets us above the rest of the animal kingdom.

So much depends on …?

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Bill Moyers Journal continues to impress. This week Moyers talks to Jonathan Miller about his (Miller’s) new documentary “A Brief History of Disbelief.” It’s a wonderfully frank conversation about faith (or the lack thereof), probably in no small part because of Moyers’s resume includes ordination as a Baptist minister. One thing in particular that struck me is Miller’s description of the events people often associate with spirituality – birth, death, sunsets – as “vulgar”:

I have moments of – I suppose you might call them transcendent feelings; feelings which rise above what is immediately in front of me. But on the other hand, they’re almost entirely the result of what is immediately in front of me. Not birth; not death, though those are extremely important, and do give rise to very strong feelings. But often, just simply seeing that things are arranged in the way that they are. That there are ripples in the sand once the tide has gone out.

To which Moyers responds by referencing William Carlos Williams:

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens

Which exchange is beautiful in ways I can’t really articulate.

And so the question I’m left with is, why is it that Christianity (and the big religions in general) seem to have such a strong association with platitudes on the lines of “sunsets make me feel spiritual” – is it because the mainstream absorbs cliches? Is it because platitudes are part of the luggage we get from our parents, (frequently) along with our religious faith?

Collins versus Dawkins

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NPR’s Fresh Air ran two major interviews on faith and science last week: Richard Dawkins (last Wednesday) followed by Francis Collins (Thursday). Dawkins, of course, made his name as an evolutionary biologist and has recently published The God Delusion, an atheist’s manifesto for the 21st century. Collins is an evangelical Christian who headed the Human Genome Project, now working with the NIH, who has himself just released a defense of scientific Christianity titled The Language of God. The contrasts between the two are informative.

Dawkins comes across as more moderate than I’ve heard him in other interviews; his argument is basically that science explains the physical world better than religion, religion comes with a built-in danger of extremism, and we can find all the meaning we need in science’s explanations of the world. Quoting Douglas Adams, he says that his teenage discovery of evolutionary theory “about wrapped it up for God.”

Collins makes a (to me) highly familiar defense of a theistic scientist’s worldview, making much of his awe before the wonder of the human genome. He points out that science is not necessarily equipped to prove (or disprove) the existence of God, but also persists in talking about “evidence” for the Divine. Citing C. S. Lewis, he argues that faith and evidence are not only compatible, but actually pretty close to the same thing.

My conclusion, after listening to them back to back: they’re both wrong. In this exchange, Dawkins is the more lucid of the two, but his argument founders on his absurd insistence that science’s explanations of the physical world are also adequate to provide that world with meaning. Just because I know why the world is the way it is doesn’t tell me how it should be, especially as regards the best ways for human beings to live together.

Although I’m more in agreement with Collins, his argument feels mushy to me. I can’t agree with his (and Lewis’s) assertion that faith is somehow ultimately based on reasoning from scientific evidence. My judgments of what is (and is not) in accordance with the example of Jesus Christ are far more aesthetic than logical. I can’t quantify why a given behavior is Christly – but I trust that, with prayer, I can make that decision. Likewise, my “evidence” for belief in the Divine is so different from scientific evidence that it probably doesn’t deserve the name. What I have are feelings that are evoked by my experience of Creation and the people in it – this, not scientific fact, is the substance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things unseen.