A Third Party in the Dialogue of Science and Religion

Number 8 from the Top Eleven List of topics in science and religion adapted from my book Negotiating Science and Religion in America

It used to be that the conversation between science and religion involved just two parties. But technology has become increasingly crucial in dialogue of science and religion. In fact, for a robust and relevant conversation today, we have begin by taking in the omnipresence of cell phones, laptops, video conferencing, social media, etc., especially as we consider science, especially for emerging adults. 

Simply put, 18–30 year-olds have only known a technologically-saturated world. The presence of technology (and specifically the internet) is the main reason many call the generation born 1995-2012 "iGen." Topics in technology then must be brought to the top three or four topics in science and religion where scientific and theological method, interactions with evolutionary biology, and cosmology once reigned supreme. And why not just call it Science, Technology, and Religion in the process?  

One of these topics is Artificial Intelligence or AI. What is is it? Science Daily defines AI

“The study and design of intelligent agents where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes action which maximizes its chances of success.” Science Daily, Artificial Intelligence

This naturally leads to transhumanism, a term Julian Huxley coined in 1967 to describe the belief that the creation, development, and use of technology will improve human physical, intellectual, and psychological capacities. Transhumanism is hot: Popular culture loves to speculate about what it might mean in the future years. Consider films like Her (about a man who falls madly in love with an operating system) and Ex Machina (about the creation of a beautiful, and ultimately, deadly robot, Ava). 

Ava pondering herself in Ex Machina

And then there's Ray Kurzweil’s vision, which promotes "a Singularity" where artificial intelligence (AI) and human thinking will merge by 2045. Indeed this would take humankind toward something like omniscience. But something, according to Kurzweil, will arrive first: AI will pass the famous Turing Test, a rubicon when computer intelligence or AI and human intelligence are indistinguishable. 

In a 2017 Futurism article, Kurzweil was quoted as follows: 

“2029 is the consistent date I have predicted for when an AI will pass a valid Turing test and therefore achieve human levels of intelligence. I have set the date 2045 for the ‘Singularity’ which is when we will multiply our effective intelligence a billion fold by merging with the intelligence we have created.” Futurist Ray Kurzweil

Furthermore, from this Singularlity, Kurzweil seeks a form of immortality by uniting our (or at least his) brain with the cloud and living forever. I am fascinated by this drive toward immortality as it brings to mind whether religions are indelibly invested in the afterlife. Will religions survive if human beings can survive indefinitely? Put another way, if we can be saved by technology do we need also God to do it? 

And I'm full of questions. Second, is it really possible for an AI to pass the Turing Test and thus become indistinguishable from human intelligence? If so, does this mean we have become creators and therefore like God (Genesis 3:22)? 

Finally, what does AI imply for the existence of the soul? If an artificial intelligence machines seem to us to be interactive and self-reflective, do they have souls? Or maybe neither of us have souls.

These are hot topics, and in this post, I've pushed the scary questions. In my mind, they are worth pondering, especially since high-tech firms are investing mounds of financial capital to produce increasingly impressive AI. And, as these rapidly advancing fields expand, they will create questions with significant implications for those who seek to integrate contemporary technology and science with Christian faith. 

As indeed I do.

Big Data: A Trending, Stealth Topic in Science, Technology, and Religion (A Somewhat Revised Musing)

This comes from my Top Eleven List of Key Topics in Science, Technology, and Religion adapted from my book Negotiating Science and Religion in America. In it, I look forward to topics I hope to address in future posts, which is an appropriate way to begin a new year. 

I move now to #7.

Big Data 

I don’t see much religious writing or speaking in the popular press or in academic circles on this stealth topic. Big Data is (via a reasonably garden variety definition) 

“data sets, typically consisting of billions or trillions of records, that are so vast and complex that they require new and powerful computational resources to process.” 

This new reality bequeathed to us by the power of computing has profound religious significance. Maybe because Big Data is all around and seems powerful, many technologists associate it with the divine.

On a related note, some seem to promote Big Data as the scientific cutting edge with almost religious zeal. Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, commented, 

“Data is the new science. Big Data holds the answers.” Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware

That sounds like a fairly grandiose, even religious, claim. Since this is such a new topic (at least to me), I’ll simply lay out three sets of questions: 1) How do we as human beings conceive of the sheer volume of information? What tools do we possess? 2) What should we do with this information? Who owns each person’s data—the individual or powerful, multinational corporations? This is an especially tricky ethical question with healthcare. 3) How does the Eye of Big Data relate to the omnipresence of our God? Is it benevolent? Does this give us comfort, concern, or some mixture of both? 

Can We See God from Einstein’s Tower?

I've excerpt this post from my recent article for Christianity Today. 

Here's McGrath's book

When I was a grad student in Germany, I remember visiting the city of Ulm. Two particular, commingled sights come to mind: first, pausing at the marker for Albert Einstein’s birth in 1879 (before his family moved to Munich six weeks later); and second, ascending the dizzying heights of the 530-foot cathedral tower. The combination strikes me as instructive: Most of us see in Einstein a mind that seemed to unlock the deepest mysteries of the universe. He sought a “theory of everything.” And many have sought to ascend with him into higher realms of insight, through many tiring steps.

Can Einstein bring us closer to God’s view of the world? Oxford University’s Alister McGrath takes up this question in his book, A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Brief Guide to Einstein, Relativity, and His Surprising Thoughts on God. McGrath—who holds advanced degrees in theology, intellectual history, and molecular biophysics—is a leading light in the dialogue of faith and science.... 

[The article continues and concludes as follows.]

In the final paragraph of the book, McGrath sums it up: 

“I do not suggest that Christianity alone provides a way of seeing things that allows us to hold together these objective and subjective worlds: that would be arrogant and inaccurate. Yet I cannot overlook the fact that it does hold them together and allows them to be seen as a part of a greater whole, rather than disconnected realms of thought.” Alister McGrath

As I worked my way through A Theory of Everything (That Matters), ascending the steps of the intellectual tower erected by Einstein and his many pathbreaking discoveries, I was stunned by the breadth of knowledge on display. McGrath’s command of the facts is truly encyclopedic, and his grasp of Einstein’s theories is firm. Yet I’m doubtful that one can climb Einstein’s tower all the way to the celestial realm. Getting there requires other sources of illumination.

A Park Bench in DC and God's Yes (A New Year's Reflection)

The full version of this piece appeared in our Science for the Church website newsletter. Here's an excerpt.

Physicist Charles Townes had a significant problem. 

Towne's (on the left) with the laser he developed

He’d been trying to figure out a solution to a long-standing conundrum of how to create a pure beam of light—one that’s short in wavelength and high in frequency. More than three decades earlier, the great Albert Einstein had in fact theorized that it could be done. But no one had yet managed the feat. And despite Townes’s best efforts, this brilliant young professor hadn’t figured it out either.

It was 1951, and Townes was in Washington, DC waiting for a breakfast restaurant to open. He sat down on a park bench.

I’ve read this story numerous times, and it seems that this brilliant future Nobel Laureate let his mind wander. That morning, he said No to trying and took a moment to pause.

Last week, I looked at the process of quieting ourselves, of taking Sabbaths as a way to renew ourselves. We need to slow down and stop striving. Not only Scripture, but science teaches us that this changes our brain chemistry in ways that allow for new insights.

That’s the practice of saying No. And this week I want to emphasize the Yes. Scripture also tells that No is never the final word. Instead, God wants us to hear a Yes because in Christ 

In Christ “every one of God’s promises is a “‘Yes.’” (2 Corinthians 1: 20) 

And so when we wait for answers, we wait with expectation. As we read in the Psalms,

“I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word, I put my hope. I wait for the Lord, more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.” Psalm 130:5-6

In Townes’s case, God had a profound Yes for this young Christian physics professor as he waited for an answer. In fact, something happened on that park bench fifty-eight years ago—I would say, Townes heard God’s Yes. Here’s how the event was reported:

“On that bench, surrounded by blooming azaleas, the solution came to Townes, then a 35-year-old Columbia University researcher. It involved a flash of bright light, a population of excited ammonia molecules and a mechanism for limiting the wavelengths they could then emit. On the back of an old envelope, he ‘just scratched it out,’ he said of his brainstorm.”

That solution led first to the development of the maser and then the laser, and ultimately Townes’s 1964 Nobel Prize. Few other modern inventions have had the wide-ranging effect of the laser. They are at the core of home DVD players, military rangefinders and altimeters, grocery store bar-code scanner, and police speed detectors, to name just a few applications.

How might we find God speaking to us in 2020? 

In my view, after we’ve made our “No Year’s resolution,” we wait with hope for God to bring a new vision. Put another way, it is a new year, 2020, and a time to say Yes.

Townes listened to the God who can speak a Yes and who guides our lives… especially when we’re listening. He often spoke about this moment as a "revelation." But maybe it's about how he lived and what he was always ready to hear. In an interview with UC Berkeley News, Townes commented that God was present in everything he did: 

“I feel the presence of God. I feel it in my own life as a spirit that is somehow with me all the time.” Nobel Laureate physicist Charles Townes

May we take his words to heart as we begin this new year.

Pondering a No Year's Resolution

Here's an excerpt from a piece that just appeared on our Science for the Church website.

An enthusiastic admirer once rushed up to the Renaissance artist Michelangelo. What was his secret? How did he sculpt The David, the epic 17-foot statue of the biblical king and hero that now stands in the Accademia Gallery in Florence? 

Michelangelo’s answer was simple and profound: He looked at the unformed block of marble and “chipped away all that wasn’t David.” His indeed was the work of negation—the art of No. And through this Michelangelo found the deeper beauty, the more profound yes. That’s why on this December 31, I’m pondering my “No” Year’s Resolution.

This New Year’s Eve I’m looking to Scripture and science to tell me where my life is a block of unformed marble that needs some chipping away.

It all begins for us with the power of no in God’s gift of Sabbath—whether that’s for a day or something much shorter. In these times, Scripture tells us that God gives us a new vision and energy: 

“For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isa 30:15, NRSV).

Honestly, the brain science behind this is easy to grasp. When we take breaks and reduce stress, we think better. Herbert Benson at Harvard Medical School suggests that this comes from the release of nitric oxide that fires up feel-good neurotransmitters and slows down stress hormones. 

“It’s a matter of learning to shift our internal biology at will so that we increase production of nitric oxide and the neurotransmitters associated with well-being and increased creativity” Bronwyn Fryer, Harvard Business Review

Will you join me in making a No Year's Resolution? 

Three More Trending Topics in Science and Religion

I'm back to my Top Eleven List of topics in science and religion, many of which are trending in importance. They are excerpted from my just-published book (!), Negotiating Science and Religion in America: Past, Present, and Future.

Genetics, medicine, and the specter of eugenics 

This is the first topic that I see trending; that is, entering into the conversation of  science and religion with a new prominence. Here I will note a specific discovery in genetic editing, CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat). Francis Collins remarked in 2019 that CRISPR “came out of nowhere  five years ago,” a technique that works via an “enzyme like what you have in a word processor that does search and replace,” which makes it relatively easy. And he added, “High school students can do this. And that should worry you.” CRISPR makes germline interventions, which affect future generations, unlike somatic cell interventions, which do not. This leads to the question of how to use this powerful and simple technology and whether to cure diseases or create “designer babies.” It also raises issues of what to do about undesirable traits. And who decides what or who needs to be edited out? The specter of eugenics is on the horizon. Finally, who will be given the power to decide? Will religious ideas play any part in these conversations? 

Psychology, neuroscience, and the cognitive science of religion 

Functional Magnetic Imaging Resonances (FMRIs) seem to show what’s happening inside our brains. Is God all in our head? And do the insights of neuroscience finally rid us of believing there’s a soul? Here Buddhist approaches to the non-self, or anatta, and some forms of cognitive science and neuroscience seem to have striking similarities. In addition there’s a growing interest in appropriating the Buddhist practice of mindfulness and its relationship to secular psychology, and especially positive psychology. Finally, the Cognitive Science of Religion, which powerfully brings together the cognitive sciences in the service of understanding religious belief and practice, has also provided fruitful insights for further discussion and research. 

Cosmology and astrobiology 

Key to many religious traditions is an emphasis on the nature of the world, or the  universe, and our place in it. Recent astronomical discoveries have highlighted the vast number of exoplanets (planets beyond our own solar system). In the seventeenth century the scientifically and theologically minded Blaise Pascal considered his “brief span of life” and 

“the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which knows nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed….” Blaise Pascal 

And there are medieval hints and certainly eighteenth-century antecedents. Still, some assert that exoplanets and the possible (or probable) existence of extraterrestrial life mean the sudden death of the Christian scheme of salvation since, according to the biblical texts, Jesus came to save this world (such as in John 3:16). The biblical cosmos was vanishingly small compared to our current understanding. Where is our place in the universe? Conversely, if this seems like a loss for Christianity, could it be a gain for other religions?

Some of these topics I've addressed in this blog, and I'll certainly tackle as many as I can in 2020. As always, feel free to let me know what you think.

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An "Upgraded" Apologetics

This week a piece of mine appeared on the BioLogos website, and I thought I'd give the first two paragraphs and direct you there to read the rest.

When I was a college student at UC Berkeley—and a new convert to Christian faith—my pastor offered this stunning definition of apologetics: 

“Proclaiming the gospel, fully aware of the arguments presented against it.” Presbyterian Pastor Earl Palmer

Honestly, I’m probably paraphrasing Earl Palmer’s insights a bit, but still, I think it expresses the gist of his interpretation of how the church needs to do apologetics. He was talking about C.S. Lewis as an apologist and why he was so effective in the 20th century, and I’m convinced this definition holds for us today. There’s wisdom in moving away from primarily defending the Gospel (which, I admit, is embedded in the Greek word apologia) toward presenting our message with skill. Embedded in our presentation is often a skillful and winsome defense.

And this brings me to the heart of the mission of BioLogos and the question before us: What are the arguments against the Gospel we face today? I am convinced that, if we want to do apologetics in age of science and technology, Christians have to recognize the challenges presented by the arguments swirling around the minds of emerging adults (age 18-30), who are actively leaving congregations in droves and not coming back....

My Top Eleven List in Science and Religion (The First Three)

I've worked up a list of the critical topics for science and religion today and for the future

for my upcoming book. Somehow I just couldn't do it in with a mere Top Ten. 

So here are the first three from my Top Eleven list (stated with brevity and therefore probably some distortion):

1. Religion and Rationality

A common slogan I hear from my college students and read in various kinds of  media is, “Science is about evidence. Faith is about having none, but believing  anyway”; or the gauntlet that Richard Dawkins threw down, “Faith means blind  trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence.” Naturally, many  religions look to an unseen reality, God or gods, while science seeks to understand  the workings of the natural world, and so there needs to be a healthy analytical  independence. Nonetheless, faith in monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity,  and Islam is essentially reliance or trust. Or as C.S. Lewis defined it, “the art  of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing  moods.”  

Certainly, not all religious traditions emphasize faith, and so an antireligious  cavil against “faith” can represent a category error. Buddhism, for example,  focuses on enlightenment, since indeed the word Buddha has as its root “enlighten” or  “awaken.” In addition, Buddhism offers an openness to change its teachings based on new information (cf. the 250 BCE Kalama Sutta). Fruitful conversations need to continue unfolding in at least two directions: how to integrate various sciences and technologies with religious traditions that do not privilege faith; and how to engage with mature definitions of monotheistic faith and avoid simplistic, unhelpful slogans. 

2. God's Action

David Sloan Wilson once commented in a discussion about evolution and religious faith, “I can see how some sort of deity is possible with evolution, but not a personal God who intervenes in the world” (my paraphrase). Not all religions believe in a deity, but for those who do, how do they conceive of God’s action? Quantum physics in supplanting Newtonian mechanics described a new concept of the world, and some thinkers find in  quantum indeterminancy fresh opportunities to frame God’s work. Others, through a process of Whiteheadian metaphysics, portray a deity who is persuasive and non-coercive. And still others take recourse in the more traditional Thomistic dual causation. 

To be sure, I’m listing just three of several possible religious options. Others head in an opposite direction and talk about science as “atheistic,” meaning God doesn’t play a factor (e.g., Lawrence Krauss), which also contrasts markedly with some scientists (e.g., Francis Collins) who see nature as a place to witness God’s creative action. 

The bottom line is this question: does God act in the world? Most religious Americans answer by saying that scientific descriptions should include God’s action and that scientists should be open to miracles.

3. Evolution

To many it’s either the Bible or Darwin. The problem is that the clear consensus of mainstream science is with evolution as a theory that has guided scientific research  in a variety of fields for over a century and a half. The topic of evolution naturally encompasses more than simply origins—i.e., how can we put Genesis 1–3 together
with evolution and the Big Bang? 

This also raises the question of human uniqueness, since evolutionary thought connects all life. Hindus commonly affirm that, “All living things have Atman (self or soul), and all Atman are parts of one Brahman, the one universal mind or consciousness that is the source of all things,” and the Jains hold that “all living things have a soul of jiva.” Which religious views then connect most effectively with evolution?

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G.K. Chesterton on Eugenics

Last night, at the month meeting of the Chico Triad on Philosophy, Theology and Science,

we discussed eugenics in early 20th century. One of the key members of the group, Bill, brought up the work of G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) who produced one of the few, and perhaps only, criticism of eugenics. 

Of course, Chesterton was English, but recall that in the United States, about 12,000 forced sterilizations under the rubric of "negative eugenics" (removing bad genes from the collective gene pool) had occurred by the time he wrote this book, namely 1922. 

Chesterton is always provocative, and for those like me who are pro-science as a rule, it's always good to remember that science, and the theory of evolution, can be used for some very evil purposes. 

I submit Chesterton's is a voice worth pondering, even if we may disagree at particular points.

The thing that really is trying to tyrannise through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen—that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the Government will really help it to persecute its heretics.... I am not frightened of the word 'persecution' when it is attributed to the churches; nor is it in the least as a term of reproach that I attribute it to the men of science. It is as a term of legal fact. If it means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory, incapable of final proof—then our priests are not now persecuting, but our doctors are. The imposition of such dogmas constitutes a State Church—in an older and stronger sense than any that can be applied to any supernatural Church to-day. There are still places where the religious minority is forbidden to assemble or to teach in this way or that; and yet more where it is excluded from this or that public post. G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils

Always worth pondering is the contemporary question: What is our contemporary misuse of science? That is, What is today's eugenics?

CSL on Praise and thus Gratitude and Generosity

Praise and gratitude are happy twins. They join together with God's grace and our generosity--an appropriate theme since I'm posting this on Giving Tuesday.

All this brings my mind quickly to C.S. Lewis's words from Reflections on the Psalms: 

"The most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless …shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits, and malcontents praised least...Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible.…I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: 'Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?' The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what we indeed can’t help doing, about everything else we value. 

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed… If it were possible for a created soul fully… to 'appreciate,' that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude… The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him." C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

These are insights worth pondering today and during this season.

What the Science of Race Doesn't Show

As a part of my research on science and religion in America over the past two years, which resulted in my book coming out next month, I came to take in the recalcitrant history of the science of race.

And, of course, one all-too-common result has been--and still is--racism, which represents another indelible feature of our country and which some have called "America's original sin."

Maybe you know something about this topic already, but I was woefully underprepared. If you'd like a brief intro, here are three articles from the BioLogos website that offer a solid overview of the topic (and are brief enough that you don't have to do copious reading). 

Here are the links to the mini bibliography:

1. Dave Unander, "Race: A Brief History of its Origin, Failure and Alternative" 
2. Deborah Haarsma, "One Human Family" 
3. Brad Kramer, "Science, Race, and the Bible: Coming to Terms with a Messy History"
4. In addition to these thoughtful pieces that offer an overview, here's a scholarly article: Alan Templeton's “Biological Races in Humans” in the 2013 Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, 44 (2013): 262–71

The bottom line (or at least, one critical takeaway) from this research is summarized well by Deborah Haarsma:

No genetic basis for race” is referring to the way we define “race” in our culture. When the census asks you to identify as “white”, “black”, “asian”, etc., those are cultural categories, not scientific categories. While some aspects of these cultural categories (e.g. skin color) are genetic traits, those traits are a small part of all the genes that differ between any two individuals. Yes, there is a genetic basis for the many local ancestry groups. But as geneticist Alan Templeton points out, “If every genetically distinguishable population were elevated to the status of race, then most species would have hundreds to tens of thousands of races.” BioLogos President Deborah Haarsma

I'd be interested to hear your comments.

P.S. While I'm at it, I'll link one more article, this by Karen Norrgard, "Human Testing, the Eugenics Movement, and IRBs."

Being Born Again and Again

Here's a little something pulled from my upcoming book, Negotiating Science and Religion in America.

The topic--a religious revival--is also worth taking in as we watch Kanye West tour the country and bring what many are calling a new surge of God's Spirit. (It's attracted the attention of Joel Osteen and the American Bible Society.) 

I remain open--and I've always liked Kanye's music--but I'm not yet convinced this is really a reviving of our country's spiritual life. At any rate, here I look at the question of whether revivals are beneficial. They certainly are American!

A central component of the story of America is the sensational change that religious revivals promise. As Winthrop Hudson makes clear in his classic, Religion in America: An Historical Account of the Development, one effect of the various revivals was missionary zeal: 

“Above all, this surging tide of evangelical religion supplied a dynamic which emboldened the Protestant churches of America to undertake the enormous task of Christianizing a continent….” The late Princeton University historian Winthrop Hudson

Our country maintains a revivalist zeal and the distinctive hope that life can begin again. To our continual human question, Can I change?, revivals offer a resounding unmitigated Yes. And for a country founded by people seeking the New World, definitive spiritual renewals fit beautifully. As the Romanian poet Andrei Codrescu once quipped, 

“The spiritual pastime of Americans [is] getting born again, over and over.” Romanian poet Andrei Codrescu

A radical moment of change or conversion indelibly marked our consciousness and hopes. Instead of continual incremental change—e.g., the notion of kaizen, cherished by Japanese culture—we applaud radical, dynamic disruption, with lives marked by a specific before and after. But, of course, revivals don’t always deliver.

P.S. Insofar as this is a blog about faith and science, and about what makes a flourishing faith, fully alive, revivals tend to direct Americans away from the rationalizing side of life--the "head," as it were--that we associate with science. America has exhibited a dialectical relationship with science and religion, often expressed with rationality and order on one side in contrast with conversation, feeling, and intuition on the other. In James Gilbert’s view,

Science and religion “are words suggesting two great and opposing philosophic systems—materialism and idealism—that, in a variety of forms, operate as polarities in American culture.” Historian James Gilbert

Head vs. heart? Materialism vs. idealism?  Are these dichotomies that we're facing right now? What would a true revival tell us about how we relate science and religion today?

In the end, this revival (if it is one) may not be so much a rejection of our culture's saturation in science and technology as about Kanye's fame.

Two Hemispheres

I've been meditating on a quotation from C.S. Lewis as he struggled to come to terms with his budding interest in believing in God in Surprised By Joy. Lewis struggled with becoming a believer, finding himself restricted by the influence of a materialist culture around him. 

“The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast. On the one side a many-islanded sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow ‘rationalism.’ Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless.” C. S. Lewis

Partly, this is a science-faith question. It's often where we're left when we take in the natural world that science describes in purely physical terms (which is what it's designed to do) and try to bring that together with our subjective experience, which so often includes non-physical concepts like love and beauty and meaning and, for most people, includes a search for God.

By the way, the quotation was brought to my attention by an Alister McGrath book I'm reviewing on Albert Einstein. McGrath brings together insights from a variety of Einstein's comment like "the eternal mystery of the world its comprehensibility." In other words, why should this world make sense if it is really is just facts and numbers? Einstein's understanding of religion was idiosyncratic, preferring to to hold to Baruch Spinoza's god of the mathematical equations and order in the universe, a deity that certainly didn't engage in human affairs and thus present individual lives' with answers to question of life's meaning.

McGrath then considers the physicist and Anglican priest, John Polkinghorne, who also appreciates science's profound ability to discover the stunning interconnected complexity of the natural world:

"Theology can render this discovery intelligible, through its understanding that the Mind of the Creator is the source of the wonderful order of the world." John Polkinghorne

Does that bring bring together the mind's two hemispheres in a satisfying way? Lewis found his resolution through belief in God. And though not a scientist, he would probably have agreed.

Somebody Else's Problem (A Musing)

I'm part of a conference at Fuller Theological Seminary this week called,"Techno-Sapiens in a Networked Era: Becoming Digital Neighbors." 

While I'm here I've still pondering a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, "Religion and Science," which discovered this. And I'll bold one sentence to make my point.

People’s sense that there generally is a conflict between religion and science seems to have less to do with their own religious beliefs than it does with their perceptions of other people’s beliefs. Less than one-third of Americans polled in the new survey (30%) say their personal religious beliefs conflict with science, while fully two-thirds (68%) say there is no conflict between their own beliefs and science. Pew Research Center

It’s probably not a surprise that the synopsis for the piece reads: “Highly religious Americans are less likely than others to see conflict between faith and science.”

So whether we are "highly religious" or not, when we look at religion and technology (which, for many today, is relatively synonymous with science), I think some introspection is needed. As we ponder technology--and now I'm speaking to older peeps like me--we love the tech we're familiar with, and fear the newer stuff. The laptop was great, but how about VR (Virtual Reality)? We probably have to take a look at ourselves and ask, "Am I the problem? Is my approach bringing an unnecessary conflict?"

Faith, Dogmatism, and Other Atheistic Cavils

I've been reading and/or listening to Sam Harris (for example here) with some Richard Dawkins and a measure of Jerry Coyne thrown in. It doesn't take much time to realize that one of their biggest beefs with "religion" is that it relies of faith, which to them means resolutely believing something when there is no evidence. In fact, many of the arguments of scientific atheists like these three lean heavily on this assertion. 

For them (and in service of their atheism) faith equals blind, dangerous dogmatism. 

May I point out that this is a rickety foundation for their arguments? And that since I actually teaching comparative religion as a profession, that their scholarship is noticeably lacking?

Certainly there are religious people who believe based on no evidence--that I won't deny. But there are dogmatisms of those who have no religious faith as well. Stalin and Mao's purges for the glories of atheistic communism come to mind as do much more mundane examples (like memes on Facebook and Twitter).

Even more, these leading voices misunderstand faith, which is essentially "fidelity, reliance, or trust" exemplified in the key New Testament Greek word pistis and its cognates. As C.S. Lewis wrote--certainly one who has a right to speak thoughtfully about Christian faith--it means trusting in God based on good reasons and then holding on even when times are tough. In this case, faith actually is grounded on rational reflection and open to conversation. At least that's the kind of faith I see among mature Christian believers and the kind I seek to live out.

Oh, why can't atheists be more rational?

Notes on C.S. Lewis: One Outcome from Suffering

I came across this post this week, which lays down a fairly clear challenge to those who

believe in a good God from a senior editor of Free Inquiry, James Haught:

"Actually, there’s clear proof that an all-loving, all-powerful Father-Creator god doesn’t exist. It’s called 'the problem of evil.' Such a merciful deity wouldn’t have created hideous diseases or natural tragedies, and do nothing to save people from them. And he wouldn’t have designed nature to be a bloodbath of carnivorous slaughter. That clinches it for me. It doesn’t disprove a cruel god, but it wipes out a compassionate one." Atheist James Haught

The undeniable presence of evil and suffering offer a strong counter argument to the existence of a good and all-mighty God. But, is that, as James Haught argues, "clear proof"? Moreover, would it make any difference we can find a purpose for evil and suffering? This is an honest question, not simply a rhetorical one. As I write this post, I'm also working on an entry in our online faith-science newsletter, looking this week at the work of C.S. Lewis on suffering (or more specifically, theodicy), the defense of God's existence in light of evil in the world).

Suffering is never something that human beings look forward to. As Lewis phrased it succinctly in The Problem of Pain, “Pain hurts.” We do not naturally seek it. One key realization for Lewis was that suffering breaks down our idea of the divine that we always want to make in our image. Instead God is the great “iconoclast” who breaks down our overly simplistic images. We want to believe in a God who provides us with constant pleasure, what a friend of mine once called a world of “bubbles and kittens.” 

As Lewis writes after the death of his wife, Joy, in his searingly honest struggle with loss, A Grief Observed:

"My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He

shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. And most are ‘offended’ by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not." C.S. Lewis

At the end of the day, Lewis realized that God used pain in his life to form him. As he once wrote about the Christ figure, Aslan, in his Chronicles of Narnia, "'Course he isn't safe. But he's good." God's goodness seeks to make us more into the image of Christ, even if pain is part of that process.

Coda: I realize this isn't, for many, an entirely satisfying response (let alone an answer) to evil. As I worked on this piece, I had an interchange with my colleague, Drew, who told me his concerns about such "soul-making" versions of how to respond to the problem of evil. I replied that, yes, there are problems, but I sense that today we've somehow lost our nerve--Christians of the past would often find strength that God offers a why in the midst of a terrible what. But the question lingers: How do you feel about this concept today?