Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Random Designer VI

    Chapter 16 of Random Designer turns a bit of a corner, though it is a logical progression. I get the impression that some of the non-Christian readers will turn aside at this point, as Dr. Colling progresses into the theological. The chapter titles are “Created for Connection,” “Cosmic Loneliness,” “Where is God, Really?,” and “Embedded Files.”

    I don’t mean that this negatively, but we need to be clear that this book looks at the science of origins from a Christian perspective. There’s nothing wrong with making extrapolations that go beyond what can be scientifically tested, so long as they don’t involve putting a stop sign in the road. It is important, however, to remember just where we crossed the border.

    Dr. Colling starts his answer to the question of purpose in these chapters. I am again afraid to summarize, because it is very easy to misunderstand these things, and is even more so when someone tries to summarize. I’m going to have to make some generalizations, however.

    These chapters address the question of whether God, as random designer, has created human beings for the purpose of connection. Since Dr. Colling has already told us that humanity is biologically fully related to other animals, just how does this work? He suggests that the answer to the question of where God is, is right inside our minds. I may be doing the explanation a disservice, but it seems very similar to saying that we have a spiritual nature that coexists with our biological nature, somethings known as the presence of a soul, combined with God within us. This is not as a natural part of us, but rather something from outside.

    While some philosophers such as Daniel Dennet explain human conscience and spiritual inclinations entirely on evolutionary grounds, and others would try to deny biology its role, Dr. Colling suggests a dual role for these functions. Yes, they can be selected for biologically. Altruism, for example, plays a role in the survival of population. But for him they also provide part of a connection between us and God.

    I may modify my own response here as I read, but I sense that my own theology on this leaves God a little bit more distant. I would not suggest that humanity is the specifically intended product of evolution, but rather that just as you will likely get life if you have enough planets with the right conditions you will also get intelligence in a certain number of cases. My theology then suggests that God would reach out to any such creatures. We are special in that we have those characteristics, but I stick with the concept of randomness in terms of where and when such a thing would happen.

    I’m glad Dr. Colling is reading this series of blogs, because he can correct me if I’ve misunderstood him, or simply misrepresented him inadvertently. I find his approach to this intriguing.

    In my next post we’ll be continuing with chapter 20. “A Choice or a Chance.”

  • Wright and Piper on 2 Corinthians 5:21

    A fair number of pixels have been lit up over the issue of how 2 Corinthians 5:21 is to be interpreted, and specifically how this relates to our understanding of justification. N. T. Wright has an interesting article on how “the righteousness of God” should be understood in this passage. This article was dismissed by Adrian Warnock as “wholly unconvincing” though he fails to tell us why.

    Somewhat more interesting is Piper’s response to the article in his book The Future of Justification. (A PDF of the book is available here.) In the introduction he calls the article “one of the most eccentric articles in all his work” (p. 24). He dedicates chapter 11 to a response.

    There is a fundamental assumption that Piper makes, that there is one, and only one way to understand justification. For him, justification is a fact, not a metaphor. It is the core reality. Metaphors can be used to describe it, but it is the real thing. I emphasize this repeatedly, because it underlies many of the arguments that Piper makes. For him, it would be quite inadequate to suggest that a different metaphor was in play in a different verse, and thus perhaps it might be understood differently.

    (more…)

  • Random Designer V

    With my previous post I completed reading the first section of Random Designer. Up to this point, while we have been touching on faith, the primary purpose of the material was to outline what evolution is, and the areas and strength of evidence for it. Obviously, in any reasonable sized book, Dr. Colling could not actually cover all the evidence, but he does provide us with the categories and with overviews.

    Having established that evolution is based on overwhelming evidence, he begins to look at how evolution relates to faith, primarily to Christian faith, though he does cover other elements. As I read it, however, the links have been established in the earlier chapters. Essentially, as a Christian reader, I have already been presented with the choice between the Random Designer, who created a universe with natural processes that would produce the variety of life we now know, and a “tinkering God” (my phrase) who does it all in detail. The overwhelming evidence of the world around us tells us that God is the Random Designer and not the tinkerer.

    Of course, any reader of this blog knows my choice. I already accepted the Random Designer before I read the book by that name, though I didn’t have that good of a name for him! Many Christians, however, will feel that there are many problems left open. For some it will feel as though they are being told that their faith, and particularly their Bible is absolutely wrong, and that they must make a choice between faith and science. I suspect that in that case many would choose their faith.

    But no such stark choice is presented. What Dr. Colling invites readers to do is to expand their understanding of God, and to see the beauty of the plan of creation which is revealed by science. To put this in my own words, we need to look at our faith and see where it can be improved and strengthened by what God has revealed in the natural world. Since both the natural world and scriptures are said by Christian doctrine to result from (or be) God’s word, we should find value in both.

    From the introduction to Part II:

    The problem, as I see it, is that we tend to squeeze God into small rigid boxes of our own making to keep Him conceptually consistent with our traditional religious beliefs. Unfortunately, this approach to religious faith is fraught with liability because it prevents God from truly being God–a creator capable of using any means He chooses for His creation. [emphasis in original]

    Now technically in Christian theology we can say that when one source of revelation (the Bible), conflicts with another, we can examine what we know from either. In other words, if science contradicts the Bible, one can check one’s science, or one can check one’s understanding of the Bible, or both. I would suggest its more important to check which one is the appropriate source for a particular type of information, but I’m using a more traditional formulation.

    In the case of evolution, however, we’ve seen that the evidence is overwhelming, and thus we have to look back at our faith, assuming that we’ve made some form of unscientific view of origins part of that faith, and we have to see where this really does fit. If we do so, I think we’re in for an enlightening journey. In Random Designer, that begins with chapter 12, “Who is Adam? The Birth of Humanity.” This chapter basically goes from biological development to consciousness, remaining with the basic claim that humans are biologically fully related to the rest of creation, but nonetheless looking at what sets us apart from other creatures on earth.

    Chapter 13 expands on consciousness and discusses our perception and cognitive abilities. I really can’t summarize it. It’s already short enough! Chapter 14, “An Honest Faith” talks about the problems of credibility and the importance of honestly admitting and addressing the evidence. He notes that the conclusion that there is a Master Designer, or God, is not a scientific conclusion. He is enlightened in forming that conclusion by science, but it is not something to be scientifically demonstrated.

    Chapter 15 then talks about the image of God. This is one of those very hard questions to deal with, because so many Christians attach the concept of God’s image to something physical. Often people who will deny it when asked directly, still think as though there is something physical about God’s image. But the concept of a Random Designer need not contradict the idea of God’s image in humanity; in fact, it can link with it very well.

    I’ll continue in my next post with chapter 16.

  • You Might be a Fundamentalist If . . .

    John at Shuck and Jive has some ideas on how to identify a fundamentalist, especially if that’s YOU. I’m thinking his standards are a little tougher than mine, but his are a bit closer to a “dictionary” definition, always provided you locate just the right dictionary.

    I’ve been enjoying Rev. John’s blog lately, though he’s off to my left. But it’s a good relief from reading people to my right who annoy me!

  • What Do These Three Blogs have in Common?

    1. Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog from the Reasons to Believe ministry
    2. Herescope, dedicated to hunting heretics, presumably such as me!
    3. Adrian’s Blog, to which I have responded many times.

    Can’t find the similarity? Here it is: All three of them prefer to operate without any user response. Now I find that a bit more honest than some blogs, like Uncommon Descent (to which I do not link), which censor their comments such as to give a completely false impression. But I nonetheless find it interesting how people feel that they need to provide “the truth” to people one way. I also find it interesting that all three have, within very recent history, demonstrated feet of clay.

    Now please don’t get the idea that I don’t have feet of clay. But you see, you can tell me about it in the comments section, and unless your comment is illegal, or would tend to lose me a family friendly rating, I won’t censor it.

  • Differences of Opinion, Lies, and Seeing the Other Side

    I got started this morning on this topic by reading this post at Quintessence of Dust. Dr. Matheson is looking for a good model to use in referring to creationists and their arguments. The temptation is to regard all false statements as lies. But at the same time we have to ask why people who are otherwise honest, and doubtless wouldn’t cheat on tests or steal from their neighbors nonetheless would say so many things that are simply not so.

    Matheson is looks at the model of folk science. I left a comment on his blog in which I question just how well this works. But I’m working on this one myself. I have to ask myself how a microbiologist, for example, could manage to believe in creationism. There is always Kurt Wise (paleontologist), who admits the strong evidence for evolution, but believes that the Bible must be true, and thus no matter what the evidence looks like, eventually he’ll find the proper evidence for young age arguments. Now I can at least understand the mental process in Dr. Wise’s case, though it still astounds me that one could look at the strength of the evidence and study it as a paleontologist and still come out not just a creationist, but a young earth creationist.

    I had already bookmarked his post for a link, if not a substantial response, when I came across this article (HT: It seems to me ….) In a weird sort of way, this article is making a point similar to what Dr. Matheson is making, though perhaps with greater humor and less finesse–there are some beliefs and viewpoints that are comforting to us, and we cling to any means by which we can avoid losing those beliefs.

    I think it’s quite possible that many creationists simply cannot imagine a world in which man is not a separate creation, especially put here by God with a unique and special relationship. It is quite possible that their lives would lose meaning–or at least they feel viscerally that they would–should any element of this prove wrong. If one’s identity is at stake, just how much might one be able to rationalize?

    Just as I was preparing to write this post, I found this post on Pharyngula, in which the Discovery Institute is shown to have taken e-mails out of context (gasp!) regarding the Gonzalez case as ISU. Here, of course, we have a greater level of interpretation involved, but it still is hard to see how the DI got what they did from their source. Liars? Good PR men? Different point of view?

    And immediately after that one, my RSS reader turned up another one, titled Gene Duplication and the GENE project’s … Duplicity?. Again, the author, generally a very polite man and one I respect after reading quite a number of his substantial blog entries, is having trouble finding out just what you call it. ICR is gathering scientists to study the genome, and their going to conclude–you guessed it–that humanity is not related to the other animals. And they haven’t even started yet!

    Now I know that it is very easy to regard a difference of opinion as good evidence of skullduggery on the part of one’s opponent. Sometimes opinions are simply so different that it’s hard for us to imagine that the other guy can possibly have good motivations or can be honest. After all, we know that we are careful with the facts, and our brains are all highly logical. So if we come to conclusion A, and they come to conclusion Z, it can’t be a legitimate difference of opinion–it has to result from questionable morals.

    Of course, sometimes things are what they appear to be on the surface. Not always, perhaps not even frequently, but sometimes. There are people who hold a particular position to keep their power, or because they just can’t admit to having been wrong. But I think there are relatively few people who consciously say, “I know that X is true, but I’m going to say I believe Y instead.” Whatever the motivation, one is going to think of it in some very different way. Which leads us to this question: Is it a lie if the person telling it deceived himself first, and believes he’s telling the truth? I do know one thing–if a person believes he’s telling the truth, it will be hard to influence him by telling him he’s actually a liar. “Truthful” is part of his self-image.

    I would say something to creationists, however. I once was one of you. I made it about half way through college. When I was a child, I started collecting creationist books and reading them. I was totally convinced that evolution was not only evil but stupid, so stupid, in fact, that only evil people could possibly believe it. To me, as is still the case for many creationists, evolutionists were great liars and conspirators, since the truth that God created the earth in a literal week 6,000 years ago was so plain.

    Now I first encountered the problems with the facts when I looked at Biblical genealogies. In doing so, I spent enough time with ancient chronology to see that the hardline young earth position, about 6,000 years (not 10,000!) was in conflict not only with geology, but with archeology, and even with written history. Civilizations would have drowned in the flood, civilizations that had clearly done no such thing.

    But then I was faced with the science side. Now I spend a great deal of time reading popular level science. But I’m a high school dropout, so I never had high school science. I took a GED test and took as little science in college as I could get by with, which turned out to be one year of chemistry. My college allowed one to make it up with math, which I did. So when I first started, the vast majority of the “science” I knew came from those young earth creationist books. How was I to judge the material?

    Well, I concluded I wasn’t very qualified to do so. What I was qualified to do was to see how well creationists represented evolution. What I found out there was that the presentation of evolution in creationist books bore no resemblance to the presentation in books favoring evolution. They were, in fact, talking about two things. Further, when creationists quoted scientists, they generally got the quotation wrong. For me, that was pretty substantial evidence that there was a problem in the creationist camp.

    Since then, I’ve found nothing to suggest to me any differently. One of the best arguments against creationism for the layman (in scientific terms) is that the creationists can’t get their facts straight about evolution. I personally think Dr. Matheson is right, and they don’t do so because they’re congenital liars, but rather because they’re engaging in some form of “folk science.” Or perhaps it’s Santaism as defined in the Ship of Fools article.

    Bottom line: differences of opinion, lies, and failure to see the other side? It’s damn hard to tell the difference!

  • Good Teaching or Mockery?

    This case should turn out to be interesting. As it is, it cries out for context. (See also this on MSNBC).

    A Christian high school student is complaining that his AP history teacher is mocking his faith. His mother became concerned when the teacher said that American was not founded on Christian values. Since I’d agree with the teacher on that one, I wonder a bit about the rest. Perhaps some of these statements were made simply to provoke discussion, and if that was the case, I would have no problem. If only Christianity was challenged, that would be another matter. If one religion was mocked throughout the class, that would also be a problem. I don’t like it when Christian teachers do this to atheists or other non-Christians, and I don’t like it when it is done to Christians.

    So my initial reaction is tentatively against the teacher. But we do need to hear the context of all this. I’m assuming the principal and school board will listen to the tapes and determine just what the teacher was doing. While the student should not be mocked, challenging discussion is good. I recall once in a Bible class challenging a student about his faith and doing so effectively enough that he eventually yelled, “You won’t believe no matter what I say!” So I pointed out that I was his Bible teacher and already did believe. He thanked me afterward for the challenge.

    I will be keeping my eye on this case for sure.

  • Two Paradigms for Church

    Many of us have discussed the problem, as we see it, of young people leaving the church when they become adults, and sometimes–too rarely–returning at a later time. Sometimes people have complacently told me, “Oh, they’ll be back when they have children of their own, but it doesn’t always work that way.

    In this video Bill Lizor uses a couple of Bible stories to provide a paradigm for our relationship to life in the world and to church. The reason I’m linking to this here is that it is such an excellent example of working with Bible stories and finding applications in daily lives.

    I think this presentation is excellent, both for its content and its method.

    HT (and a big thanks) to Hit the Back Button to Move Forward.

  • Christian Carnival #202 and My Highlights

    … has been posted at Lo-Fi Tribe.

    As usual, I want to highlight some posts from the carnival.

    • Since I’m an egalitarian, I read this post from Pseudo-Polymath with interest. The discussion that follows is also substantial and interesting. I hope I can find time to respond in a post. I hate making comments that are several pages long. Mark is always worth reading, especially when I disagree.
    • Rewriting Daniel 7 is definitely worth a read, but be prepared to spend some time thinking about it.
    • I’m not inclined to agree with this post, but since when has one’s inclinations had any value in determining the truth? Frankly, Jeremy is quite correct. I, an ardent free-willer, regard everything that happens as ultimately part of God’s will so that one can use both the terms “chance” (largely from our point of view) and “providence” to refer correctly to the same event. If God left it to chance (not to say that there necessarilyis any chance from God’s point of view) then the result is still God’s will. So much for inclinations!

    That will have to do for today!

  • Christian Carnival #302 Posted

    . . . at Lo-Fi Tribe.