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A couple of days ago, I blogged on a lecture given at the Florida Center for Science and Religion by Creston Davis, professor of religion at Rollins College. It seems he provided the following solution to the “problem” of science and religion:

1. Both Christianity and Science should relinquish claims to absolute truth.
2. Creation ex nihilo (out of nothing) is logically inconsistent with scientific accounts of the origins of the universe.
3. Understanding the universe as “an expression of God’s being” and the cosmos as “made out of (God’s) love” will resolve the conflict.
4. God must be grounded in inclusivity through differences, which welcomes any discovery.

First of all, I would submit that there really is no “problem” with science and religion. There is a conflict between the religious viewpoint of naturalism and the religious viewpoint of theism. The problem arises when science is encumbered with a naturalistic viewpoint. At that point, the claims of science and the claims of theism clash. When naturalism collars science and colors all its work, science is unable to go where the evidence leads. It must necessarily reach naturalistic conclusions, even if this contradicts the evidence.

So, Davis’ first solution is to have both science and religion abandon claims to absolute truth. This certainly fits in with the current “postmodern” mindset. Let science’s truth be true for scientists and let religion’s truth be true for religious folk. I have a better solution. Let’s let science work out from under the oppressive hand of the religious commitment to naturalism. Rather than abandon truth claims, let’s let truth be truth no matter where it is found.

Concerning the second step of Davis’ solution, how did he come to conclude that Creatio Ex Nihilo is logically inconsistent with scientific accounts of the origin of the universe. I am not aware of his arguments to support this claim. This is only the case if naturalism is the default religious viewpoint upon which science is based. In fact, the Big Bang strongly supports biblical claims of “creation out of nothing”. Understanding the universe as “an expression of God’s being” and the cosmos as “made out of (God’s) love” will resolve the conflict.

Davis next asserts that understanding the universe as “an expression of God’s being” and the cosmos as “made out of (God’s) love” will resolve the conflict. I will not deny that the universe is an expression of God’s being. Perhaps, it is also “made of God’s love”. I’m not sure what practical help this is in reconciling naturalism and theism. I assume he means that we should capitulate to naturalistic explanations of the universe and bring theism in to make us all feel warm and mushy about this cold, hard, uncaring materialistic world.

Lastly, Davis claims that God must be grounded in inclusivity through differences, which welcomes any discovery. I wonder how Davis arrived at this absolute claim about how God must be grounded. This is certainly not a claim of the Christian Bible. I’m certain it is not a claim of science. It seems, nonetheless, that science and religion can be reconciled if God is viewed as inclusive, tolerates all differences, and welcomes any discovery. So, in Davis’ world where we should relinquish claims to what is actually true, it is true that we should view God in this postmodern kind of way. Shouldn’t Davis welcome those who make claims that there is objective truth and we can know it? His solution makes no sense because he must accept those claims which by his own solution bring us right back to the original position.

The last portion of his last point is not far from the mark for the true solution. We should not impose a naturalistic grid on science and exclude any discoveries which do not support its naturalistic presuppositions. We should welcome any discovery which is supported by evidence. We must go where the evidence leads, even if it leads to discoveries which make naturalists uncomfortable. We do not need to abandon truth, only “truth” which excludes any evidence which it finds does not support its religious viewpoint.

Ryan T. Anderson at First Things responds to comments by Chris Bell, Democratic gubernatorial candidate in the state of Texas. Bell invoked Jesus on the side of supporting embryonic stem cell research:

When Jesus healed the lepers, he didn’t consult the Pharisees. I believe God gives us the tools of science and technology to help our fellow man. We cannot let politics stand in the way of curing disease and healing the sick. It’s the right thing to do, and now is the time to do it. What would Jesus do? He would not let political objections stand in the way of healing the sick. Stem cell research isn’t just a good idea; it’s a moral imperative.

In response, Anderson provides a variation on a parable known to all. Rather than quote the whole parable, I would simply link to that post, but I’m not sure there is a permalink to that particular post. So, here it is:

“You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

Chris Bell, because he wished to be elected governor, asked, “And who is my neighbor?”

Consider the Parable of the Good Soccer Mom: An embryo fell into the hands of ambitious scientists after she was left over in the freezer of an in vitro fertilization lab.

A molecular biologist happened to be journeying through the lab. Seeing that the embryo was very small and didn’t look like other human beings, he decided that it was not a human being. And he passed to the other side of the lab and left the embryo for his colleagues.

Likewise a moral philosopher came to the place and launched into an exposition of human embryology and developmental biology. He concluded that the human embryo was a whole human being at the very beginning of her life. The embryo possessed all of the internal resources necessary to guide herself—by a self-directed process—through further stages of development toward the maturity of organismic life. In doing this, the embryo integrates herself so as to keep her unity, identity, and determinateness all intact. No mere part of some other organism—as the sperm and egg cells whose union brought her into existence were—the embryo is both functionally and genetically distinct from any other organism, a whole and complete (though immature) human being. The term embryo is just a way of classifying the early human being, just as the terms fetus, newborn, infant, child, adolescent, adult, and octogenarian all refer to human beings at other stages. These terms, he concludes, refer to the same self-developing, unitary organism: the human being.

While the molecular biologist got the science wrong, the philosopher got it right. But the embryo could feel no pain or pleasure and exhibited no consciousness of any type, and so the philosopher concluded that the human embryo had no moral status and possessed no rights. And he, too, passed to the other side of the lab and left the embryo to the tender mercies of the scientists.

But a Soccer Mom who came upon the embryo was moved by both scientific fact and right moral reason. Aware of the humanity of the embryo as established by modern embryology, she wondered what was owed to the human being in the embryonic stage of life. She thought that whatever was owed to human beings at other stages of life was owed to them at the embryonic stage. For age and stage of development certainly are not morally significant. Older people do not have greater moral status; neither do the more fully developed. All human beings are of equal moral worth, she reasoned, because they are equally human. So, what is owed to human beings? Why, human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, possessing free will and rational natures that make them entities of intrinsic—and not mere instrumental—worth. They are to be treated as subjects and not as objects. Hence they are owed protection, support, and aid. In a word, they are owed love.

She summed up her findings: A human embryo is a whole member of the human species. Each human being entered life as an embryo. And all human beings are subjects of profound, inherent, intrinsic worth in virtue of what they are, not what they can do. And if they are subjects of worth in virtue of what they are, then they bear this worth from the moment that they first come into existence.

The Soccer Mom then rescued the embryo, transferred her to her womb, and cared for her.

“Mr. Bell, which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the embryo?”

He concludes with these words of Jesus:

Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.

Here in my hometown of Lakeland, Florida resides the Florida Center for Science and Religion. The FCSR is funded by Florida Southern College and the Local Societies Initiative (LSI) grant of the Metanexus Institute on Religion and Science. According to their mission statement the FCSR promotes the engagement of issues in science and religion throughout central Florida. Creston Davis, a professor of religion at Rollins College, was the guest speaker at a recent event. He proposed a solution to reconcile science and religion. According to this article in the Lakelenad Ledger, here is his assessment of at least part of the problem:

We’ve seen these unbending (religious) claims to absolute truth, supported by literal readings of Scripture. But also, we hear that science has all the answers and all the right methods.

Cary McMullen, the article’s writer, stated Davis maintains that interpreting the book of Genesis to mean that God created the world out of nothing does not agree logically with science’s account of the origins of the universe. He advocates a more “pluralistic apporach”, a more inclusive approach:

The cosmos is a gift from God because God made it out of love. If God is grounded in inclusivity through differences, any discovery is welcomed.

I must commend the effort to encourage rational discussion concerning the roles of science and religion in society. This is always a good thing. I have been unable to attend the lectures which have been offered by the FCSR, but it seems the preferred solution by almost all the speakers (according to the reviews which I have read in The Ledger) is for Christianity to give up making any claims about science and nature other than these mystic claims such as the one above. Davis believes:

1. Both Christianity and Science should relinquish claims to absolute truth.
2. Creation ex nihilo (out of nothing) is logically inconsistent with scientific accounts of the origins of the universe.
3. Understanding the universe as “an expression of God’s being” and the cosmos as “made of out (God’s) love” will resolve the conflict.
4. God must be grounded in inclusivity through differences, which welcomes any discovery.

In my next post, I will interact with these claims.

I came across several interesting blogs today. Here are a couple worth reading.

Tom Gilson, at Thinking Christian, has a book review of Finding God Beyond Harvard: The Quest for Veritas by Kelly Monroe Kullberg. Here is an excerpt of a speech she gave on “The Bible and Feminism” at SUNY Albany:

As for the Bible and feminism, my assigned talk tonight, I’ve read many origin texts that attempt to tell the story in which we live: Native American, Hindu, atheist, humanist, Buddhist, Islamic, pagan, and Wiccan. I’m suggesting that only one story has the ring of truth–a personal, loving God created men and women equal. They are equal in his image to love him but have secondary differences in order to love and serve one another. . . . Jesus’ offer of forgiveness and new life is the answer to sexism, racism, consumerism, injustice and cynicism. Where there is forgiveness and love, the cycle of evil is broken. . . . God is for us. He breaks down the walls that divide us. Kind of like tonight. We’re here on a cold snowy night, discussing what’s important to us. I had a long drive, but I’m glad I came. Although that wasn’t my first thought when I walked in the room.

There is much more of interest concerning her attempt to bring Christ back into the picture at Harvard.

Al Mohler has an excellent discussion of Richard Dawkins’ new book The God Delusion. He states:

In the end, Richard Dawkins will surely fail in his quest to turn theists in to atheists. His book represents nothing fundamentally new–just the same old arguments repeated over and over again. Dawkins is quick to label his intellectual adversaries as fundamentalists, but he conveniently redefines the term so that it does not apply to his own position. He claims to live life solely on the basis of scientific evidence, but is so fundamentally committed to the theory of evolution that we cannot take his protestations to the contrary seriously.

I am a practicing emergency physician. When a patient presents to the emergency room, a triage form is filled out, upon which is listed the “chief complaint”. It is not unusual to find a chief complaint like this one: “Abdominal pain, fever, spider bite, headache, back pain, feet burning, vaginal discharge, runny nose, I might be pregnant”. There are other variations on the above. You may think I’m making this up, but I’m not. My job is to quickly and efficiently diagnose the problem, treat the patient appropriately, and arrange for disposition. The principle of parsimony, or Ockham’s razor is a tool I use regularly.

I first heard of William of Ockham as a medical student doing an emergency medicine rotation. When I presented the patient to the attending physician and explained what I thought was going on with the patient, I was pointed to Ockham and his famous razor. Instead of the 2 or 3 diagnoses I wished to give the patient, the attending appealed to Ockham to give only 1 diagnosis which would exlpain all the data. William of Ockham was a fourteenth century Englishman who developed this principle of parsimony, as it is also sometimes called. Stated succinctly, it states that “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity”. If a problem can be explained on the basis of one thing, then that is to be preferred over an explanation based on several things.

So, what does this have to do with me and my mind? Ockham’s razor is often used by naturalists or physicalists to support their view that there is no “mind” apart from the physical body, or that there is no “God” other than nature itself, or that there is nothing else “out there” which we need to explain our natural world. God is not necessary. The mind is not necessary. Since we do not need those things to understand our world, they should be shaved off our explanation just as my unwarranted diagnoses should have been shaved off my list. The principle of parsimony demands that we do not multiply entities beyond what is necessary.

There are obvious problems with this application of the razor’s use in this instance. First, this principle provides no guarantee that our answer is the correct answer. Now, I’ve already explained that I think the principle is often helpful and is one I use on a daily basis. However, there are times that the more complicated answer is the correct one. Sometimes, there really are 3 or 4 unrelated processes which account for the symptoms of my patient. I would commit malpractice to always condense the number of diagnoses to the simplest.

Second, Ockham’s razor only applies if both theories have adequate explanatory power. If the theory with only one entity explains the data far less effectively than the one with two or more entities. The theory with more entities may be warranted. In fact, I would submit that naturalism or physicalism provides a very inadequate explanation of the world in which we live. These theories entail convoluted, complicated concepts in order to attempt to explain that which we experience. Our explanation becomes far more complex than the explanation which provides for non-physical entities such as God or the mind. For example, physicalism has to invent new concepts to make its explanation adequate, such as “supervenience,” “epiphenomenalism”, “weak externalism”, “non-reductive physicalism”, “materialist dualism”, etc.

I therefore conclude, that Ockham’s razor actually favors a dualist understanding of reality.

This will be my final weekly Christian poetry post. Hopefully some readers out there have been inspired and uplifted by some of the poems. I know I enjoyed finding new poetry and will probably refer to the archives often. This last poem is from a hymn by Charles Wesley, and it really expresses the desire of my heart. I think it is especially fitting for those of us who feel gifted and called to dedicate ourselves, whether professionally or in spare time, to the rational defense of the faith and engagement with society for good at an intellectual level.

O thou who camest from above,
The pure, celestial fire to impart,
Kindle a flame of sacred love
On the mean altar of my heart,
There let it for thy glory burn
With inextinguishable blaze.
And trembling to its Source return,
In humble prayer and fervent praise.

Jesus, confirm my heart’s desire
To work, and speak, and think for thee,
Still let me guard the holy fire,
And still stir up thy gift in me,
Ready for all thy perfect will
My acts of faith and love repeat,
‘Till death thy endless mercies seal,
And make my sacrifice complete.

It has been approximately one year since Jeremy and I began this website in earnest. We have not tinkered with the design since its inception. We felt it was time. Part of this redesign has to do with new goals for further ministry. At the top of our home page are two paintings from renaissance masters, “The Creation of Adam” by Michelangelo Buonarroti and “The School of Athens” by Raphael Sanzio.

“The Creation of Adam”, painted in 1510, is, of course, the focal point of the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. This past summer I was privileged to stand in the Chapel and gaze upon this masterpiece. The ceiling contains nine narrative scenes from Genesis. It is the fourth scene that contains the creation of Adam. Adam is clearly made in God’s image. At the brink of creation, God’s outstretched finger reaches toward Adam’s passive finger, infusing him with life and intellect.

“The School of Athens” was painted by Raphael in 1509. This fresco is found in a room of the Vatican called The Stanza of the Signatura. It represents an assembly of the greatest philosophers of antiguity. The central two figures are Plato and Aristotle. Others include Socrates, Epicurus, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Euclid, Zoroaster, and Ptolemy. A self-portrait of Raphael is also contained within the painting, as are the faces of Leonardo DiVinci (as Plato) and Michelangelo (as Heraclitus). In this fresco, Raphael reminds us of the great value of reason and philosophy in one’s life.

These two masterpieces were chosen for this website to serve as symbols of our two great sources of truth, namely, revelation (special revelation) and reason (natural revelation). God’s specially revealed truth (the scriptures) and God’s naturally revealed truth which we access by reason are not in contradiction, but both point us toward the God of the Universe. Our website focuses far more on the reason and philosophy side of the equation, and this is by design. Our readers understand we place great value on the revealed Word of God, however we quote few scriptures in our posts. This is because we hope to engage and challenge those who do not accept God’s word as authoritative, and help others to do the same.

The key theme of Nancy Pearcey’s most recent book Total Truth (get it now and read it if you haven’t yet) is the harmful division in contemporary society between ‘facts’ and ‘values,’ where ‘facts’ are generally the things that science can tell us and which we can trust as true and ‘values’ are those things such as moral statements and religious beliefs which are not true in any objective way. Another way she characterizes the split is as a public/private dichotomoy where the only things we can even discuss objectively and publicly are empirical matters and where it is fine for a person to hold religious or moral beliefs so long as she does not make them part of her public life and claim they are true for anyone besides herself. One of the most interesting chapters of the book for me contains an analysis of the way that the founding of America impacted the religious beliefs of Christians in the country. In it, Pearcey discusses the way that Christians, especially pastors, took Enlightenment ideals and the liberal political philosophy on which this country was founded and incorporated them into their teachings about Christianity and religious liberty. Just as political tyranny was overthrown, so must be ecclesiastical tyranny - no one should trust what a priest or preacher or theologian says just because he has studied his whole life or has the backing of tradition; instead, each person must decide what to believe based on their own thoughts and feelings on the matter.

This is an obviously oversimplified statement of what happened, but we can see how these ideas led to a distrust of any objective religious claims and led to the formation of innumberable denominations and an atomistic and individualistic view of the church and religious truth. At any rate, the main point of this blog is just to point out something interesting I came across while doing reading for my philosophy majors’ seminar on Marxism. Namely, that Marx, probably since he was always critical of individualism of any type, already noticed and pointed out this trend that has become so characteristic of our times in his earliest writings, even before the American civil war.

In his review essay of his teacher Bruno Bauer’s The Jewish Problem, he says:

Man emancipates himself politically from religion by banishing it from the field of public law and making it a private right…religion has become the spirit of civil society, the sphere of egoism, the bellum omnium contra omnes [war of all against all]. Its essence is no longer in community but in difference. It has become the expression of separation of man from his common essence, from himself and from other men…For example, the infinite splintering of religion in North America already gives it the exterior form of a purely individual affair. It is shoved away into the crowd of private interests and exiled from the common essence as such. The separation of man into a public and a private man…is not a stage but the completion of political emancipation, which thus does not abolish or even try to abolish the actual religiosity of man.

(Karl Marx: Collected Writings, ed. David McLellan, p.54 (emphasis added)).

September 29-30 marks the inaugural educational event held by Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity. I will be attending and hope to comment here on the proceedings. Dembksi, Wells, Behe, Woodward, and Seelke will be speaking. The event, being held at the University of South Florida’s Sun Dome on the 29th with a potential attendance of 7,700, will be broadcast live on Talk Radio WGUL 860 AM from 7 pm to 10 pm EDT. The program may be heard anywhere in the world at that time by simply visiting http://www.860wgul.com and clicking on the red “Listen Live” button on the right. Hopefully those who are local can attend. If not, hopefully you will be available to listen live. Here are more details about the event.

Several of the “blogs we frequent” have offered commentary on the reaction of Islam to the Pope’s recent speech. Keith Plummer and John Mark Reynolds have two excellent posts. I borrow from John Mark Reynolds intro here:

The obvious question is to wonder about how easily our foes are baited by a very clever pontiff. Is there a radical Moslem with a sense of irony? When they threaten to kill the Pope for “saying” that they are violent, don’t they get a bit concerned about how that appears?

My new idea for capturing Bin Laden is for President Bush to announce that if he does not come out of hiding soon that he is a big, fat scared-y pants. Bin Laden is short to do it on the same swift reasoning being shown by radicals in the Middle East today.

I have also read the entire text of the Pope’s speech. I must say I have newfound respect (not that I disrepected him before) for Pope Benedict XVI. The speech concerns the relationship of faith and reason and was quite instructional. The comments which have enraged the Muslim world are not the focus of the speech. The Pope is telling a story in which he highlights the importance of reason and acting rationally. The fact that much of the Islamic world has reacted as it has does nothing but reinforce the proposition which they wish to deny is true. I just read a CNN article which covers some of the reaction.

Italian media said an al Qaeda group in Egypt called for the German-born pope, who is 79, to be punished by strict Islamic Shariah law for insulting their religion.

An al Qaeda umbrella group in Iraq has also vowed war on “worshippers of the cross.”

Workers at Turkey’s Directorate General for Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, petitioned for the arrest of the pontiff when he makes a scheduled visit to Turkey in November.

n Iraq, where an effigy of the pope was burned Monday, parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani called his apology “inadequate and not commensurate with the moral damage caused to Muslims’ feelings.”

(By the way, What does it mean to cause “moral damage” to someone’s feelings?)

Cardinal Pell attempted to point out the idiocy of the violence stating that it shows:

…the link for many Islamists between religion and violence, their refusal to respond to criticism with rational arguments, but only with demonstrations, threats and actual violence.

According to CNN, Muslims called Pell’s remarks “unhelpful”.