Libertarians tend to take property as a given, as if it were natural or existed prior to any government. But defining what can be owned, what owning it means, and keeping track of who owns what — that’s a government intervention in the economy that dwarfs all other government interventions. You see, ownership is a social thing, not an individual thing. I can claim I own something, but what makes my ownership real is that the rest of you don’t own it. My ownership isn’t something I do, it’s something we do.

[Aside: This is why it's completely false to say that government programs primarily benefit the poor. Property is a creation of government, so the primary beneficiaries of government are the people who own things -- the rich.]

Weekly Sift, Why I Am Not a Libertarian

Many whom God has the Church does not have; and many whom the Church has, God does not have
– St. Augustine, paraphrased by Karl Rahner

(h/t: The Very Rev Samuel T. Lloyd III, Washington National Cathedral; the sermon, on inclusivity, touches some of the same points as an earlier sermon by the Orthodox Very Rev. Archimandrite Ambrose Bitziadis-Bowers)

Chris is his usual well-balanced self, but Lindsey, whether he’s just being a devil’s advocate or, as seems more likely, actually believe in strong neo-atheism, displays a rather… disconcerting attitude. He reminds me of a friend’s observation that some Mensans have a hard time accepting that the average person is less rational than them (which itself is a flaw on their rationality — insisting that everyone else sees thing the way one does, rather than more dispassionately trying to understand belief formation) — first by assuming that any non-confrontational dialogue between religion and science is a subtle attack on science itself (and assuming that organizations such as the Templeton Foundation are immutable and thus their past flaws are proof of a continuing sinister intent), then by, incredulously, asking if, indeed, getting religious believers to accept scientific findings has to involve an appeal to emotion as well as to reason, whether atheist scientists should not *shame* religious people into abandoning their beliefs!

With the display of hubris, lack of empathy, and misunderstanding of basic psychology on offer, neo-atheists like Lindsey (and Richard Dawkins) are really doing themselves and science a disservice — perpetuating a distrust between atheists and religious people, and making it harder to engage and change the mind of people on important, time-critical issue such as climate change. Because to them, irrationally, nothing is as important as first wiping off religious belief from existence. Which begs the question — why the irrational hatred?

She was believed to be an anchoress attached to the church of St. Julian in Norwich, England — of her personal life we know almost nothing, save from her visions and her remarkable theological explorations of them — in a near-death experience, Blessed Julian received visions of Jesus Christ, which she wrote down as what we now call the Short Text; the expanded version, which she wrote several decades later, the Revelations of Divine Love, is believed to be first book written in the English language by a woman.

This fact alone is quite remarkable — what makes it even more so is how hopeful and progressive her vision was. Amidst Black Death epidemics and revolts, her vision is that of a God of Love, not one who punishes the wicked. In a patriarchal society, she casts Jesus as a universal mother. This love is expressed in her most oft-quoted line: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well — a remarkable and soothing expression of trust!

The collect for the day, from the Episcopal church’s Holy Women, Holy Men. In Rite II (contemporary language), since that’s what the Order uses (those who, like me, have an attachment to the language of the King James Bible can find that version in HWHM):

Lord God, in your compassion you granted to the Lady
Julian many revelations of your nurturing and sustaining
love: Move our hearts, like hers, to seek you above all
things, for in giving us yourself you give us all; through
Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and
the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Find out more about Dame Julian on the Episcopal Church’s HWHM blog — and if you feel drawn to the vision of this remarkable woman for the church, the Order of Julian of Norwich and the Friends of Julian would love to hear from you.

In joining a religious community you bring along your past religious experience. What are the significant elements of that past which you would like to retain? What elements would you prefer to drop?

I got started on religious diversity early on in life — I was born in France, a mostly-Catholic but highly secular country, and came back to Indonesia with my parents at the age of 5. Mom’s Roman Catholic, dad’s a lapsed (and sometimes Christmas-Easter) RC. Due to logistics my younger brother and I ended up at an evangelical mission school, while by the time my sister (the youngest sibling) is old enough for school, we’ve been there long enough for her to attend a good Catholic school.

So — Indonesia is a majority-Muslim country, my family’s Catholic, my brother’s evangelical, my maternal grandmother Chinese Baptist :p. I got turned off the strident literalism taught in school — once getting into a polemic with a preacher during RE class by questioning the unjustness of babies and gentiles going to Hell for eternity (it’s even more troubling because, unlike those growing up in the West, most of us are recent converts).

My first brush with the UU tradition is probably by watching, and later reading, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. I later moved to Singapore for school, and attended Methodist, Presbyterian and Catholic churches — churches of all stripes tend to be more theologically conservative in Asia (my Methodist school brought in a Young Earth Creationist speaker once and force all of us to listen to his drivel), though the Catholics tend not to be so involved in culture wars yet, so between that and my affinity for the liturgy, I found myself closest to Catholicism at the time. No organized UUs in Singapore, AFAIK.

It was only when attending university in the UK did I first go to Unitarian services (in Cambridge and York). And it’s not until I went for my Master’s in Indiana, USA that I started attending church regularly — by that time I’ve narrowed down my choices to the more liberal denominations — US Methodists are reasonably liberal, but my experience in Singapore disturbed me enough to stay away — so it’s basically the Episcopalians, UCC and UUs.

I’m now a baptized Episcopalian, an associate in the (Episcopal) Order of Julian of Norwich, which focuses on the loving aspect of the divine, and, as of earlier this year, I’m happy to count myself a CLFer as well. After years of searching, I find that I’m most settled with one foot in each tradition.

In joining a religious community you bring along your past religious experience. What are the significant elements of that past which you would like to retain? What elements would you prefer to drop?

I find Simone Weil’s position on this most useful — that there are many valid spiritual paths, but it pays to have a coherent tradition of one’s own (that being said, I don’t think it’s necessary that everyone in a congregation follows the same tradition — what I love the most about UU is precisely that openness for everyone to find themselves). I personally retain an affinity for the Anglo-Catholic liturgy, as well as the monastic tradition of prayer and contemplation; and find it most uncomfortable when some “old guard” priests still teach the orthodox interpretation of a literal resurrection, rather than seeing them as metaphors (to their credits, a lot of Episcopal clergypeople are in the latter category).

When attending UU services, having visited several congregations, I find that I like it the most when it’s humanistic — drawing on lessons from various traditions — but does not try to be one or the other. The chalice-lighting, personal meditation, and scholarly sermons are probably what I find most attractive in UU (besides the people drawn to it).

I’ll close with sharing Weil’s quote on God, that fittingly, I discovered through Rev. Gregory Stewart at UUSF:

A case of contradictories, both of them true.
There is a God. There is no God.
Where is the problem?
I am quite sure that there is a God
in the sense that I am sure
my love is no illusion.
I am quite sure there is no God,
in the sense that I am sure there is nothing
which resembles what I can conceive
when I say that word.

Simone Weil, Waiting for God, as quoted in UUSF‘s sermon podcast Hidden Treasures: The Bible as Poetry

Today being Document Freedom Day, I’m taking stock of how unencumbered my digital lifestyle is — both on the consumption as well as on the production side. I’ll try and explore alternatives for each category. But before that, one must first explore why proprietary and patent-encumbered formats are bad,

Update: see also fellow UUpdates-syndicated Scott Wells’ post on the subject

In a major policy shift, the 47-member United Nations Human Rights Council yesterday unanimously adopted a Resolution on Freedom of Religion or Belief (full text) which omits any reference to the concept of “defamation of religion” and instead focuses on the individual’s right to freedom of belief.  Reuters and the Washington Post both quote the U.S.-based Human Rights First campaign that called the resolution “a huge achievement because…it focuses on the protection of individuals rather than religions.” For many years, the Organization of the Islamic Conference had pressed to create a concept of “defamation of religion” that has been widely criticized in the United States and by a number of other Western countries. (See prior posting.) Muslim countries set aside that 12-year campaign and joined in approving yesterday’s resolution.

The recent post by Michael P. Stafford on capital punishment is a good example:

…
Today, the criminal most likely to be executed is a poor minority, represented by a public defender, convicted of killing a Caucasian in the South. It is impossible to separate this fact from the implications inherent in its historic context. In the words of David Gushee, “the death penalty is a public policy that fails the most basic standards of justice.”

Cardinal McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington, has written that “…the death penalty diminishes all of us, increases disrespect for human life, and offers the tragic illusion that we can teach that killing is wrong by killing.”

There is evidence that the death penalty is applied in a discriminatory and arbitrary fashion within the United States today. There is an unacceptable risk that innocent persons will be executed. And even the very worst criminals among us never cease to be human beings.
…

An eye for an eye is already against the faith imperative to be charitable; there is a difference between seeking justice and seeking revenge. It makes it worse that some eyes are more equal than others…

I first heard about it from Scott Aaronsson, made an experimental short-term commitment to exercise regularly, and proceeded to forget about the site afterwards. Until Radiolab’s episode on cutting deals with yourself, which discusses drastic measures people take to force themselves to stop smoking, finish a long-overdue book, etc. Then started a frantic effort to jog my memory to find the commitment site I used before — I could have saved the trouble by just checking the comment thread for that podcast, but where’s the fun in that? — which has the side-effect of rediscovering Scott’s blog, since I used to read it before “The Great Google Reader / Feedly Unification”, and it mysteriously disappeared during the transition. A friend of mine is getting interested in quantum computation, and Scott being a quantum complexity theorist, it’s a timely rediscovery.

Unlike the featured Radiolab personalities, who cut deals with themselves, with stickK you basically have an escrow — nominate who gets your money if you fail (a charity you like, a charity you dislike — i.e. anti-charity, a friend, etc.), how many instalments, and how much money is at stake at each. You can nominate a referee (but can’t change it without appealing to the site admins), presumably when you’re still full of optimism at the beginning and thus won’t think twice about nominate someone who won’t be swayed to cover for you; if either you or the nominee reported failure, or if you failed to report, the money for that particular instalment gets sent. Like Scott, I thank Dubya for so far being successfully committed!

And now, to the Old Catholics, or more properly, its main body, Utrecht Union of Old Catholic Churches. They might be unfamiliar to English speakers — mostly limited to the Netherlands, Germany and some neighboring countries (Switzerland, Austria, Czech and Poland). The smaller groups adopting the Old Catholic name in the UK and US seem to be as quixotic as the various Anglican splinter groups in the US! Which is quite a good comparison, because the Old Catholics are, in a sense, quite similar to Anglicans, at least as found in the US/UK/Canada — relatively non-doctrinaire in theology, liturgically traditional, and socially progressive (e.g. ordination of women, married clergy, tolerance of homosexuality, contraception and remarriage left up to the individuals).

They split off from the Roman Catholics at a later stage than the Anglicans, not during the Reformation but starting with the Counter Reformation; the autonomous Bishopric See of Utrecht in the Netherlands having been considered extinct by Rome, after Calvinist suppression, the grants of autonomy are not considered binding anymore. Some of the surviving Catholics beg to differ, though the majority acquiesced to this loss. The centralizing trend, partly in response to the rise of secular states, continues, culminating in the First Vatican Council promulgating the doctrine of Papal Infallibility — the Pope being inerrant when speaking ex cathedra on matters of church doctrine. That triggered the establishment of Old Catholicism in Germany — interestingly, it began with a public meeting in Nuremberg, where I now live (the local congregation is small but quite welcoming).

Old Catholics are considered by the Vatican to have valid orders and sacraments — unlike the Anglican Communion, which is considered by Rome (but not by Anglicans themselves) not to have valid orders due to an alleged break in apostolic succession due to the overly-purged language used in consecrating bishops in its early days, though that has since been rectified. I thus expected a more Catholic liturgy than is typical in Anglican and Episcopal churches — more kneeling, for example. To my surprise (though not an unpleasant one), there was no kneeling — the small chapel didn’t have kneelers — and the wine was white, like used by Lutherans. Though unlike modern-day German Lutheranism, and more like was the case in Luther’s own time, they do celebrate the Holy Eucharist on a regular basis (i.e. at least weekly); it is ironic that, while in the past it is Roman Catholics who do not regularly provide the Eucharist for the laity, these days it’s the sacramental churches (Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Old Catholic and High Lutherans) who practice this regularly, and the Reformed churches that do not.

(part of the reason I started attending is precisely this — as a lay associate in the Order of Julian of Norwich, I am obligated to seek weekly communion if possible. The Old Catholics are full communion partners with the Anglicans, while the Roman Catholics are not; and Lutheran churches, while easier to find, do not celebrate the Eucharist often enough. It’s quite a blessing as it drives me to be more ecumenical!)

While at mass this morning, I meditated on what it means, in this age, to have a spiritual practice rooted in Christianity. The ease of communication that modern technology affords us seems poised in balance with the decline in interest in traditional denominations. Even in the US, the growth among Catholics is attributable to recent immigrants, and among the Protestants, even the Southern Baptists are no longer growing strongly. Leaving the vacuum worryingly filled by televangelists preaching the “Prosperity Gospel”, and socially reactionary folks who home-school their kids in fear of the secular public education system.

It seems to me that we need to recover an authentic spiritual practice that is not rooted in dogmatism, like the belief in Biblical inerrancy of the evangelical right. A practice that is not overly concerned with administrativia (budget this, meeting that) but that allows space for contemplation, and engagement in the sacramental transformation of our society — to quote John Richard Orens, on sacramental socialist pioneer Stewart Headlam:

From these principles, Headlam fashioned a theology at once social and sacramental. Like more traditional Anglo-Catholics, Headlam championed the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. Every child brought to the font, he insisted, is there proclaimed a child of God and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven. But, he continued, this was more than a promise of otherworldly reward. It is the foundation of a just society. “The Catholic Churchman,” wrote Headlam, “is bound by his doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, by his practice of Infant Baptism, to be inclusive, democratic.” Indeed, “an old-fashioned clergyman, whatever his politics . . . , was by the mere fact of baptizing the labourer’s little baby, bearing witness to the truths of equality in a more far-reaching way than any French Revolution did.”16 And, Headlam argued, it is these same revolutionary truths that are set forth in the holy eucharist.

— To Thaxted and Back: The Fate of Sacramental Socialism, The Anglican Catholic vol. XVII, summer 2005, pp. 3-19

And perhaps a new monasticism is part of the solution: anchored in a locality, where members regular set an example by adhering to stricter rules than lay members are bound by; the lay members living in the world and witnessing by their charitable work there. This model seems to me more scale-free than traditional church-planting, at least in secular post-Christian societies. Paraphrasing Jesus’ Parable of the Sower, perhaps sometimes we need a different kind of seed for a different kind of terrain!

I view my association with OJN as part of this goal; likewise, my membership in the UUA’s Church of the Larger Fellowship. And I’m experimenting with creating a society for contemplative tech-heads — the Order of Reflective Analytics, borrowing its name from a Cory Doctorow short story, The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away. Unlike the ORA in the story, though, hopefully we won’t be recluses, nor tools of the authorities, but rather thoughtful participants in the free culture, privacy advocacy, and open source software movements, contributing to the public commons. If you are interested, do contact me at michel «AT» reflective-analytics.org! (the website is not ready yet ATM).

Peccantem me quotidie, et non me paenitentem, timor mortis conturbat me:
Quia in inferno nulla est redemptio, miserere mei, Deus, et salva me.

While I am sinning every day, and yet do not repent, the fear of death overwhelms me. For in hell there is no redemption. Have mercy on me, God, and save me.

Matins Responsory for the Office of the Dead [nationalcathedral.org]

Sin is a concept that Christians and post-Christians grapple with at all time, but especially during the Lenten season. As UU minister Rev. Ellen Cooper-Davis wrote in Why Religious Liberals Need Lent,

The season of Lent, beginning with Ash Wednesday, is an invitation to be honest with ourselves about the ways in which our lives, as lived, do not align with the love and compassion and wholeness of which we are all capable. It is an invitation to look at hard truths, to name our mistakes, and make a commitment to real, measurable change. And it’s an invitation to do this not just for a few guilt-inducing moments, but over a significant period of time–a period of time which is culturally mythologized as being long enough to make real progress toward changing something.

The various denominations rooted in the Christian faith have a diverse attitude towards sin — Catholics and conservative evangelicals emphasize personal sin, while differing not only in what are considered sinful, but also how one can be redeemed. Liberals — from Episcopalian all the way to UU — tend to put more emphasis on societal sins. From another Unitarian minister, Rev. Daniel Harper, in Reluctantly reexamining personal sin:

I have never thought all that much about personal sin. After all, I’m a product of Social Gospel Unitarianism. Sin, for many of those of us who were raised within the Social Gospel world view, is located outside the individual, in society. This is why people like me don’t spend much time worrying about our personal sinfulness, nor do we spend much time trying to achieve personal salvation. Instead, we spend a great deal of time worrying about the sin that is out there in the world, and we spend lots of time working for the salvation of the world. Prayer on bended knee admitting what nasty individuals we are? Nope, we don’t do much of that. Saving the earth from climate change, saving the whales, saving land from being strip malled? Oh yeah, we do lots of things like that.

Recently, I was talking to a friend, another religious liberal, who has been beset by small-minded people intent on doing damage to this friend of mine. My friend, in a moment of anguish, said something about the sinfulness of these small-minded people. This assessment contained the truth of my friend’s personal experience: these small-minded people were full of sin. The sin lay in two things: they did not treat my friend like a full human being, and when they had a choice about the way they could act, they chose to act hurtfully.

It is understandable that a lot of liberals have an allergic reaction to the word “sin”. UUism is rooted, among others, in New England Puritanism; and Episcopalians often defined themselves as “we don’t do Catholic guilt” — the hair-splitting of mortal sin vs venial sin. Yet we need to claim this language. Rev. Harper quoted his liberal friend arguing for the existence of personal sin; Rev. Ellen quoted from James Luther Adams (see linked post) on the hubris that occured when religious liberals ignore the concept of sin, a quotation that reminds me of the naïvité of Voltaire’s Candide.

I’d invite each of us to, instead of the pessimism of puritans and futurist eschatologist, and the unbounded optimism of early 20th century liberals, to adopt, to borrow another homage to Voltaire, pessoptimism (cf. Emile Habiby’s The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist). We are sinful creatures, often putting ourselves before others. Society is broken, in that its rules are often rigged to serve the powerful rather than the dispossessed. But we have to believe, to have faith, in our capacity to better ourselves. To strive towards bringing aspects of the ideal Kingdom to fruition, here on earth. With Christ as our guide — given our limited, imperfect understanding of him, whether as a historical figure, or as the metaphorical embodiment of the transcendent.

Going back to the communion anthem, Peccantem me quotidie, isn’t it the case that, whether there is an afterlife or not, we do care about our legacy — how we are remembered, how we raise our offsprings, what kind of world they inherit from us? Faith does not equate certainty (far from it!), and atheism does not equate nihilism either. There is too much that is sinful and broken; these problems ought to unite us, regardless of creedal differences. You don’t need (to believe in (the same)) God to be good – or to acknowledge that sin exists and to aspire to not be ruled by it..

An informational video released by the Episcopal Church as part of its season of prayer in the run-up to next month’s referendum in Sudan

It might seem odd for scientists to have a patron saint — indeed, the concept of sainthood itself has become quite controversial these days. As an Episcopalian, my idea of what sainthood entails certainly does not involve the power to intercede with the Almighty; nor does the Episcopal Church require someone to have performed miracles to be commemorated; only that three successive General Conventions assent to it (one learns useful tidbits like this from being in a Discernment conference with three priests, one of them previously a Catholic
nun!).

Ironically that is actually harder than it is to be beatified and canonized in the Roman Catholic church, since John Paul II opened the floodgate by his 1983 “reform”…

So what do we know about Albertus Magnus? He was a Dominican friar from Bavaria, who served as Bishop of Ratisbon (Regensburg); he had a reputation for humility, refusing to ride a horse, and resigned after three years. A polymath, he is renowned for his breadth of knowledge, especially his commentary on Aristotle; despite being a theologian, he argues for a study of nature free from supernatural suppositions:

“In studying nature we have not to inquire how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work miracles and thereby show
forth His power: we have rather to inquire what Nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass”

– De Coelo et Mundo, I, tr. iv, x

To me, Albertus Magnus symbolizes what it means to be a Christian and a scientist: cultivating rationality, having faith that what we discover about how Nature works glorifies, rather than diminishes, our Creator. He was a man of his time — as reflected by his interest in subjects that modern-day scientists would consider bizarre, such as astrology and phrenology — but the scientific process is iterative, not a big-bang revelatory process; indeed, the same is true of theology, despite its mischaracterization by both religious fundamentalists (who insist in a perfect, eternal, revelation) and fundamentalist atheists (who insist in the irrevocably flawed nature of revelatory religions).

As scientifically-minded Christians, may our faith evolve as we discover more of the splendor of God’s creation. And may we be witness to others, through our work, to the complementary role of faith and science, and thus help heal the long-lasting, acrimonious split between the two camps.

With two dozen Episcopalians from around Europe (except for Rev. Kate Harrigan who flew in from Pennsylvania), the picturesque and historic Villa Palazzola in Rocca di Papa (“Papal redoubt”) across the lake from the Pope’s summer residence, and a weekend lived in discernment in a Eucharistic setting, the discernment conference organized by COMB (Commission on the Ministry of the Baptized) was a wonderful, blessed experience. Truly the Spirit was among us.

As a liturgical denomination, it is natural that our discernment process is shaped by the Eucharist’s fourfold nature — we meditate on what ministry we “take” to the altar, the talents and resources we are “blessed” with, our brokenness and challenges (“break”), and affirm, in groups of three, each other’s ministries (“give”) as we discern them.

It was a wonderful experience, being surrounded by so many earnest co-religionists, each with their unique spiritual path — indeed, in this case, all our paths lead to (just outside) Rome. The Collect for Richard Hooker, whose Feast Day was on Nov. 3, reads, in part, “Grant that we may maintain that middle way, not as a compromise for the sake of peace, but as a comprehension for the sake of truth”. And after more than two years of becoming an Episcopalian, I finally see my church as that — not a compromise, not “Catholic Lite” (cf. Robin Williams), but a vibrant, moderate, open-minded, living body of Christ.

One’s ministry does not necessarily lead to ordination — but as the life, death, and resurrection of Christ reconciled us with the Divine, so are we called to a mission to the wider world. I heartily recommend anyone who is exploring their calling to go to the next discernment — and to keep discerning. Just as the Holy Spirit continually reshape our life, so might opportunities arise to which we might be called.

The former group, known as accommodationists, seeks to carve out areas of knowledge that are off-limits to science, arguing that certain fundamental features of the world—such as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the origin of the universe—allow for God to act in ways that cannot be detected using the methods of science. Some accommodationists, including Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, suggest that there are deeply mysterious, spiritual domains of human experience, such as morality, mind, and consciousness, for which only religion can provide deep insights.

Rather typical of the “new atheists” to attempt to paint everyone who disagrees with them with the same brush. Or rather, two brushes: one is either an “accomodationist” or a “religious fundamentalist”. The article also insinuates that accomodationists are just cowardly refusing to let go of their faith — well, what about agnostics and atheists who also advocate a reconciliation with moderate religion? Secular humanists of all stripes are divided on this issue, this is more than just between scientists who hold religious delusions and those who have been “enlightened”. Just look at, for example, the recent secular humanism conference, and the heated exchange between Chris Mooney and PZ Myers. And from one of the key new atheist, Richard Dawkins’ own article on the Beyond Belief conference:

For others, the idea that it is somehow unacceptable for scientists to maintain a religious belief was going too far. “They’re doing science, they’re not a problem,” said Lawrence Krauss, a physicist based at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Scientists are not a special class of humanity, he pointed out, so it is hardly surprising that a small number of academy members are also believers. “It would be amazing if that figure were zero,” he said. “Scientists are people, and we all make up inventions so we can rationalise about who we are.”

Krauss himself is not religious; you don’t need to be to seek an understanding with religion. See what he has to say for yourself: science should enrich faith by moving us beyond faith. It is incompatible with blind belief, but can inform faith. We don’t need to respect all aspects of faith, but criticize it when that is called for (e.g. the earth is not 6,000 years old, and if one’s faith is based on that then one is in trouble!).

It seems like Krauss and mainstream Christians would be both reviled by the fundamentalists; I’d highly recommend Sinclair Lewis’ novel Elmer Gantry for examples of unfortunately all-too-typical diatribes by the latter against higher criticism, and anything not justified by a narrow, subjective, moralistic interpretation of the Bible. Religious fundamentalism is not new and is, unfortunately, part of every faith tradition; likewise, militant atheism is not new either — just look back at the French Revolution’s Cult of Reason.

Let’s look at another claim Singham makes:

Accommodationists frequently brand us new atheists as “extreme,” “uncivil,” “rude,” and responsible for setting a “bad tone.” However, those accusations are rarely accompanied by concrete examples of such impolite speech. Behind the charges seems to lie the assumption that it is rude to even question religious beliefs or to challenge the point of view of the accommodationists. Apparently the polite thing to do is keep quiet.

Hm. We have PZ Myers calling Francis Collins a “clown”, and people who don’t share his “truth” “liars”. Not mistaken, or deluded, mind you. It’s as if there’s a giant anti-science conspiracy out there, and us moderate religious folks and moderate scientists are a fifth column! And surely one does not have to be religious to see the desecration of a faith’s precious symbols (Myers again) to be “rude” and “uncivil”? Sure, Myers burned a book of Dawkins’ God Delusion book as well to claim he’s impartial. But I’d suggest a closer parallel would be smashing down a statue of Richard Darwin, or Isaac Newton, or Albert Einstein. Figures that are revered in the scientific community — secular saints, almost, though naturally it does not follow that what they say are automatically true. Even in my most agnostic phase I’ve always been Kraussian in feeling that gratuitous attacks on religion are counterproductive at best and a sign of fanaticism at worst! And I happen to feel strongly against book burning, no matter which book it is: people still burn books in America today, and it’s bad form to encourage them.

One has to suspect that tactical considerations are at play here. The majority of Americans subscribe to some form of faith tradition. Some scientists may fear that if science is viewed as antithetical to religion, then even moderate believers may turn away from science and join the fundamentalists.

The only nod Singham makes towards seeing us as anything but illogical people. While the religious scientists are holding two incompatible positions in their head, the agnostic ones like Krauss are insincere and just tactically wish to appease moderate believers for fear of radicalizing them. Needless to say, it’s a sad misunderstanding, showing a lack of familiarity with moderate religious traditions, where one does not blindly apply one’s interpretation of scripture. The history of Christianity is one of tension between dogma on one side and reason on the other; in the American context, even the early Puritans, who are dogmatic in their anti-Papism, gave rise to the Congregationalists (now part of UCC) and the Unitarians (now part of UUA), two of the most liberal denominations there are. My own Anglican / Episcopal tradition is likewise quite progressive, and preserve rich rituals from our long church tradition, showing that reason and tradition can be intertwined harmoniously. There is a rich tradition of Torah commentary in Judaism, and while the interpretations of the historical rabbis necessarily have much authority, like the writings of our Church Fathers, as long this is a living tradition rather than a dead one, with followers blindly applying pronouncements made centuries ago to their daily lives, we have much to gain from both our religious traditions *and* our scientific tradition.

As George Santayana said,

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Us religious folks should not blind ourselves to the possibility that morality is impossible without a belief in God; if we believe that we are all God’s creations, then surely God in His/Her wisdom imbue us with a conscience that is not the same as that instinct for religion that, apparently, some people lack? As Frans de Waal observed in his New York Times article Morals Without God?, even primates and some other animals are capable of altruism; and they most probably do not possess the intellectual capacity for religious belief! If they can be altruistic, surely we can be moral creatures.

Likewise, those of us who are scientists should refrain from adopting the worst tenets of fundamentalism and seeing things only in black-and-white terms. Some of us, rather than trying to show that one *can* be moral without God, tries to go further and say that since there are moral atheists, therefore religion is completely wrong and should be dismantled! When the common mindset is dualistic — science vs religion, right-wing vs left-wing, etc. — sadly it is the voice of reasoned moderation in the middle that all too often get trampled by both sides. But whoever said faith (likewise, science) was supposed to be easy?

In the weak sense, scientism is the view that the methods of the natural sciences should be applied to any subject matter. This view is summed up nicely by Michael Shermer:

Scientism is a scientific worldview that encompasses natural explanations for all phenomena, eschews supernatural and paranormal speculations, and embraces empiricism and reason as the twin pillars of a philosophy of life appropriate for an Age of Science (Shermer 2002).

And I’m perfectly fine with people embracing a different philosophy of life than myself — I am, after all, a scientist myself, and an empiricist in most aspects. Being a follower of scientism as thus defined, however, surely does not necessitate having a strong allergic reaction to any expression of religiosity, just as being religious does not require rejecting empiricism out of hand?

Of all the feasts in the liturgical year, I must admit that Pentecost is the one that traditionally causes me the greatest discomfort. I’m very uncomfortable with the Pentecostals’ practice of speaking in tongues, and interpreting the speech. It felt too undignified, a crass parody of a divine mystery that could be interpreted in many different ways, of which speaking a “divine” language on a regular basis is but one interpretation. Not to mention that it is unheard of for someone to speak in a multitude of languages during a Pentecostal service, as the Bible records happening on that first Pentecost.

A symbolic reading would consider Pentecost to be the anti-Babel event. Just as pride leads to the fall of humankind, to people misunderstanding each other, to enmity and hatred and destruction, so does the Divine Love of God, through Christ and the Spirit, for us, is a healing power that should encourage us to see the Christ in each other, whatever our denominations, languages, race or religion (or lack thereof). We are all God’s creation, and as the pinnacle of such creation (until evidence shows otherwise) we are entrusted to behave responsibly in our dealings with each other, and in our stewardship of the earth and its resources — mineral, vegetable and animal.

We do not have a single language, have not had one ever since we spread out of Africa, though at one time or another a particular language gains prominence over others — whether Latin, Sanskrit, French, English or Mandarin. There is not even a single liturgical language for all Christendom — Latin, Greek, and Old Slavonic are but a few examples. Yet people have invariably managed to communicate, when they really make an effort.

Languages carry historical baggages with them. It is convenient for us Christians that, in many cases, the liturgical language is either a dead language or the vernacular, and thus it carries no colonial connotations. It is more problematic in some other religions. And there is invariably something lost in translation: from biblical Hebrew to Greek, from Aramaic and Greek to Latin, from Latin to modern languages, and even from the original sources directly to our vernaculars. Historical circumstances change as well, so even if we could recapture the exact meaning of our scriptural texts, we would still have to reconstruct the historical context. Reading a text involves having a conversation with it, and as in conversations between human beings, even those nominally speaking the same language, misunderstandings often ensues.

Some people, myself included, find the idea of auxiliary languages — such as Esperanto — to be a potential solution to communication problems due to our language soup. Rather than requiring everyone to learn a second natural language to communicate across linguistic barriers — a language that is native to some people, and therefore put the rest at a disadvantage, one instead encourage the use of a language that is native to nobody (there actually are native Esperanto speakers, but it’s a very recent development) and therefore put everyone at an equal footing (though, even in this case, one is more equal than others if one starts out speaking an Indo-European language). But all the wars humankind has fought between belligerents that are co-linguists — the American War of Independence, the Civil War, the War of Roses, the wars of Yugoslav partitions, and many others — certainly should discourage us from thinking that language division alone is the issue dividing us.

The message of Pentecost is one of unity. Language is the example used in the story, but we should not narrowly interpret it to be the key issue. For such misinterpretation, despite reading the text in the vernacular, is itself a self-illustrating example.

In Somalia, Too Many Get Caught in Crossfire of U.S. Policy

Too often the U.S. and other Western nations are so caught up with today’s violent troubles that they fail to act to prevent tomorrow’s violent troubles. For twenty years, Somalia has always been at the top of humanitarian aid agency agendas, but in the middle of humanitarian donor and political mediators’ agendas. Only when body counts rise from rocket attacks or famine do the donors and mediators really get involved.

In St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, he compared us to the different parts of the body — see this really good analysis of the passage on Magdalene’s Musings.

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.¹³For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

14 Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. ¹⁵If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. ¹⁶And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. ¹⁷If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? ¹⁸But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. ¹⁹If all were a single member, where would the body be? ²⁰As it is, there are many members, yet one body.
…
I Corinthians 12.12-31,
One Body with Many Members [oremus]

Indeed, our empathy extends further than our own local congregation, local community, or even the worldwide Church. We feel a connection with victims of natural disasters we see in vivid details on television, or read about in our newspapers; with victims of war and persecution. Yet this connection, unlike that talked about by St. Paul, often does not last. Out of sight, out of mind, as the old saying goes.

Philanthrocapitalism, in a wonderful blog post that managed to both correct certain misperceptions about Adam Smith as well as criticize how we donate, has this to say:

Effective giving needs the head and the heart. As all our hearts go out to the people of Haiti, we offer three thoughts about how to give. First, give money. This may sound obvious, but aid agencies are swamped at this time with offers of food, clothing and other goods. Even when these goods are needed, it is far more cost effective for charities to buy and ship exactly what they need than sorting out gifts in kind. Second, give it to an organisation with a track record of effective action. Thanks to the internet, it has never been easier to find out who those organisations are. Third, why not match fund what you have given to Haiti with a gift through kiva or globalgiving to someone suffering just as much, but less dramatically, elsewhere in the world?

To this Aid Watch’s Laura Freschi reminds us further:

1. Don’t restrict (or earmark) your donations to be used only in Haiti, but rather allow your chosen NGO to spend the money you donate as they see fit. If you don’t trust them to allocate your funds effectively to where they are most needed, then why are you giving them money in the first place?
2. Take up the Philanthrocapitalism blog’s advice to give an equal amount to “someone suffering just as much, but less dramatically, elsewhere in the world.”
3. Space out your giving. Organizations with a history of working closely with Haitian communities will still be there in six months. They will probably be there in a year, and probably in five years too. They will need your money then as well, when the spotlight has shifted to the next disaster.

May we learn not only to give generously, but also effectively.

Latest case in point, from Indonesia Matters, about the recent spate of anti-church-building demonstrations in Bekasi:

The clerics said that if we didn’t sign (a petition against building a Batak church), they wouldn’t recite prayers at our funerals. I insisted on not signing it, but most of my neighbors were cowed by the threat.
Rudi, 38, a moderate Muslim

At night, their singing disturbs the locals’ sleep
Murhali, Bekasi FPI leader

For more about FPI, the Islamic Defender Front, look up Wikipedia. Your humble author does not wish to go through Indonesian libel law by stating it out in print. Suffice it to say that Murhali’s claim is rather preposterous, given that Christians do late-night services at most twice a year (Christmas Eve and Easter Eve), whereas, as Indonesia Matters’ Ross pointed out, local mosques blare out calls to prayer before dawn each morning.

Read the rest, and weep. We are all God’s creations, but some of us clearly have not gotten the memo yet.

Just as Christmas falls shortly after the shortest day of the southern solstice (winter solstice in the north), and thus the birth of Christ is associated with rebirth; thus Easter falls after the first full moon following the vernal equinox, and marks the fulfillment of the promise of Christmas. Which leaves us with the Lent period, the forty days preceding Easter. What, you might ask, does it symbolize?

Lent is a period of preparation — of prayer, penitence, self-denial — and it does, like the other two, have agricultural associations, to the period when food stored during the autumn is beginning to run out, what gardeners call the hungry gap. The day before Ash Wednesday, Shrove Tuesday (or Mardi Gras in French), is thus traditionally the last day for frivolities before people buckle down for the period of semi-fasting, so much that the name “Mardi Gras” often refers to the entire Carnival season, instead of the day itself.

We are blessed to live in a world where, for most people in developed and emerging countries, food scarcity is no longer a perennial issue (though that’s not the case as late as 19th century Sweden, which led to the interesting discovery of epigenetics. Genes aren’t everything, as it turns out). And yet, too many of us assume that therefore the reverse is true: that there is no scarcity of anything — some because of a blind faith in divine providence, and some a similarly blind faith in technological progress.

Our excesses already have measurable impacts, some of which are more severe than others. We caused ozone depletion, though to humanity’s credit the countries of the world managed to coöperate to rectify the problem. Our food supply is increasingly dominated by large agribusiness companies — Food, Inc. is a terrifying reminder of how far gone we are, with practices that torture animals, poison our land and food supply, and where GM contamination results in the victim being prosecuted for intellectual property violations, rather than the companies and the lack of proper regulation of GM use. And our carbon-burning lifestyle is causing our climate to get increasingly more erratic over the years.

We could use the transition from Mardi Gras to Ash Wednesday to contemplate a change in our lifestyle. Turn off that lightbulb when you leave the room. Set your electronic devices to sleep when inactive, and turn them off if you won’t be using them for a while. Don’t make symbolic changes that actually damage the environment more — such as turning in a decent used car for a new one that gets only slightly better mileage — but learn to drive more efficiently, and use public transport whenever possible. Eat less meat (especially those from large meat-packers), and avoid fast-food joints, who collectively created the demand for large meatpackers and thus the unhealthy industrialization of animal farming.

Some of these changes are costly, and will remain costly as long as government incentives favor our current agricultural regime. There were critical responses to the UU World’s call,  Thanksgiving 2008, to switch to organic turkey. We cannot be holier-than-thou in our effort to better ourselves, and must realize that for the poorer among us, the budget simply is not there. But we can act. By buying the right kinds of produce, thus sending the right signal to food producers and supermarkets (even Wal-mart is paying attention now). By writing our Congressperson or MP. By donating healthy food to soup kitchens and orphanages. By, if you’re Jamie Cullum, teaching people healthy cooking, and reforming prison diets.

And it’s not all about food, though, as Napoleon once said, an army marches on its stomach. Today marks the birthdays of Svante Arrhenius, the Swedish chemist who discovered electrolysis (1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) and formulator of the greenhouse law still in use today:

if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.

ΔF = α ln(C/C₀)

Fittingly, the discovery of electrolysis leads to the fuel cell, which might or might not form part of the solution in our impending transportation switch away from carbon-based fuels.

The Old Testament’s beginning is steeped in mythology — from the account of the creation, all the way to the stories about the early patriarchs (see a 1995 Time article for an introduction, and also Asimov’s excellent Guide to the Bible). The historical accounts in the Books of Kings and the Chronicles are certainly exaggerated — just as the book of Genesis underpopulates the earth, the historical books certainly describes an overpopulated Levant in which hundreds of thousands die at each battle. The final books are considered apocryphal by most Christians, starting from St. Jerome’s Vulgate translation to Latin.

We are called to humility in the practice of our faith. Subverting science teaching in public schools is not part of it, let alone falsely claiming persecution while in fact persecuting a family that brought this abuse to attention, in the end driving them out of town. As written in Exodus 20.16:

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour

As Jesus himself instructed, in Matthew 22.21:

Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesars; and unto God the things that are Gods

Religion (as opposed to faith) corrupts itself as it gets mixed up with temporal affairs — we have the right, and in fact, responsibility — to act out of our moral concerns, but at the same time, having a near-sighted literalist belief, combined with the hubris of acting on G-d’s behalf, is surely un-Christian. The adage that power corrupts (and absolute power corrupts absolutely), sadly has been reinforced by examples too many times, and all too often, by people who think of themselves as righteous Christians.

At the same time, the acceptance that certain books may not be what they are on a surface level, actually opens our eyes to their deeper truths. Like Aesop’s fables, biblical writings do not have to be factually true to be instructive. One case in point is the Prayer of Manasseh, which calls us to penitence. It is almost certainly not written by Manasseh himself, yet we, as sinners, readily identify with its message despite the misattribution. Read more about the wonderful history of this prayer here.

In truth, the design of the space shuttle was a flawed compromise [astronautix.com] from the very beginning, a fact belatedly acknowledged by NASA, which is now retiring the remaining three orbiters. Still, we can thank this venerable design for launching the Hubble Space Telescope as well as the International Space Station, among others.

Inquisitiveness is not a trait unique to Homo sapiens. Other animals exhibit curiosity and ability to learn. Wild chimpanzees actually learn how to make tools — and pass the skill down as part of their culture. What is unique to us, at least among the extant species, is our language skill. Language, in turns, enable the construction of our modern society, with its advancements in culture, science and technology.

There is a legitimate concern that our scientific and technological prowess is increasing at a pace that outstrip the evolution of public morality and legal constraints; at the most extreme, this is expressed by denunciations of “godless science”. Yet the bible itself, while certainly not a science textbook, and not meant as such, is not anti-science either. As written in Genesis 2.19 (RSV, from Oremus):

So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.

This is long before Carolus Linnaeus’ foundation of modern taxonomy. Naturally, life is messier than this narrative portrayal, and it’s not as if our entire body of knowledge has been codified before our ancestors’ purported exile from a mythical Garden of Eden.

In the long entangled history of religion and science, two of the major conflicts occur in the fields of astronomy (Copernicus, Galileo et al.) and biology (Darwin et al.). In case of astronomy, we have a rather ironical situation in which the church set itself up as the defender of the outdated, overcomplicated geocentric model — developed by Greek philosophers and decidedly non-Christian — against the more accurate heliocentric model, developed by scientists who are at pains to reiterate their loyalty to the church’s religious teaching (as opposed to scientific meddling).

In truth, religion and cosmology has a lot in common. If we accept the distinction between religious and other emotions [Jacob Needleman, Religion Dispatches], then it’s hard to find, as a body, a group of people as suffused with religious awe, wonder, and humility at the Creation, as astronomers and cosmologists, regardless of religious affiliation (or lack thereof).

Whether we see ourselves as God’s agents on earth, or see our consciousness as an emergent behavior, and our purpose in spreading consciousness across the universe, a set of biblical passages seem to apply:

Genesis 9.7 — And you, be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it.

Genesis 11.1-9 (The Tower of Babel)

While the first reading might be construed to tie us down to this earth, it should be emphasized that biblical authors hardly know any other material place. The tower story could then be seen as an allegorical warning, against putting all our eggs in this one earthly basket. We have a responsibility to be stewards of the earth, but part of our responsibilities, both to ourselves and other earthly creatures, and mother earth itself, is surely to keep our ecological footprint at a sustainable level, and to exploit raw materials available in lifeless worlds. A well-funded space program is essential, regardless of past setbacks. And then it will be as said in Genesis 32.12:

Yet you have said, “I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted because of their number.” ’

Gassendi, a Doctor of Theology, made significant contributions to the fields of both philosophy and science. For more details on his life, I recommend his Wikipedia entry, and for his philosophy, his entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Far be it for me to attempt to outdo the two excellent sources above; instead, I’d just like to highlight his work reconciling Epicurian atomism with Christianity, and placing the spiritual above the material:

Indeed, insofar as Gassendi considers pleasure to be a materially-realized phenomenon, he shares Hobbes’s view of the morally correct as something that can be defined in physical terms. However, according to Gassendi and the lessons he draws from his Epicurean and Stoic sources, any spirtually-related pleasure trumps any materially-related one (O II 710a-b). The truest pleasures—hence goods—are defined along the lines of Epicurean ataraxia (attainment of tranquility) and Christian virtues, including in particular love of God, and friendship and good will among persons. The guarantee of our ability to seek tranquility or fulfill these virtues is our free intellectual judgment (libertas). Such a freedom consists in the ability of our intellects to choose between good and evil, and this is turn yields our capacity for volition, or free will (O II 821b-822b).

Fisher, Saul, “Pierre Gassendi”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

In our current time, all too often religion and science does not see eye to eye. Science is not taught sufficiently in our public schools, and too many people of faith, even among the leadership, persist in advocating outdated tenets that so obviously contradict modern scientific discoveries, that it is inevitable that scientists are more likely than the average person to be atheists.

This cleavage is dangerous, and indeed, as demonstrated by Gassendi and others, not even necessary. We should all honor the past, certainly, but not idolize a non-existent, illusory religious nirvana. For is that not idolatry itself?

The elevator is to go on to revolutionize city planning: after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the city’s downtown was rebuilt in a more systematic way that better made use of scarce land; once electricity becomes available, thus making elevators more practical, skyscrapers started being built all over town. To this day, Chicago architect bureaus dominate the market for skyscrapers.

It should be noted that the idea of skyscraper is age-old: while the modern, structural definition dates the first skyscraper back to 1870, tall urban towers certainly exist: Roman insulae reach more than 10 stories, and the taller of the two Towers of Bologna reach 97m. And the Old Testament, of course, contains the myth of the Tower of Babel.

We must be careful not to interpret this myth literally, as some fundamentalists did after 9/11: to claim, as these people are wont to do, that the tragedy was divine retribution for our hubris and pride would be, apart from being self-righteously judgemental and insensitive, providing moral justification for terrorism. Likewise, invoking divine wrath for Carribean hurricanes (such as devastated New Orleans, Cuba, Haiti) is a cop-out: the (disproportionately poor) victims are blamed for supposed moral degeneracy, whereas it was actually the more well-to-do, all over the world, who contributed to the severity of modern-day hurricanes by pumping so much greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that the oceans are warming up.

Which brings us to a full circle: having been created in God’s image (Gen 1.26), we are called upon to be the steward of God’s Creation. And that requires responsibility, humility, even, in the way we use up the earth’s resources.

Skyscrapers certainly has a role to play in urban planning: coupled with efficient public transportation systems, they allow for high-density cities, reducing urban sprawl and therefore our environmental footprint. But the recent trend, starting with Malaysia’s Petronas Twin Towers, of skyscrapers being built as status symbols, without sufficient consideration for transportation problems.

The Dubai skyscrapers, of which Burj Khalifa is the latest incarnation, demonstrate this charge. Dubai is a city built around cars and air-conditioners, with nary an eye to sustainability: crossing the road, for example, often requires lengthy detours — in the desert heat. The city epitomizes the worst side of capitalism: a now-burst construction bubble, badly treated migrant workers, and obnoxious luxury catering to the global nouveau riche. This, even though the official story is that Dubai, oil-poor by Gulf standards, is trying to wean itself off the black gold and morphing itself into a business hub! Contrast this with the neighboring Abu Dhabi’s sustainable Masdar project.

The bible is a rich source of allegories, and the point of allegories, including this one, is to impart moral lessons that ought to change our behaviors. And the moral of the Tower of Babel is that we bring disaster to ourselves if development is not balanced with conservation. If we continue building Towers of Babel (of various kinds, not all of them buildings), we’re condemning ourselves to our own Flood — though, in our imperfect world, it’s going to be the poorest and least powerful among us who, as usual, will be bearing the brunt of rising sea levels — small island communities, low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, and the billions of people, mostly in the Third World, who will be affected by water shortage.

Twenty words you can’t say in Alabama

EVERY politician says something he has to walk back once in a while. In the case of Bradley Byrne, a Republican candidate for governor of Alabama, it was

I think there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be literally true and parts that are not.

We at Christians for Scientific Inquiry obviously stand by Mr. Byrne’s original statement, and regret that the vagaries of polarized politics as practiced in the US of A means that he had to recant this statement, which, hard as it might seem to outsiders, is a courageous one to make as an Alabaman Republican.

This sort of ignorance is precisely what CScI was founded to counter. All too often, fanaticism combines with (relative) illiteracy. Anyone who has perused St. Joseph’s purported genealogies, according to St. Mark and St. Luke, would realize that the bible cannot possibly be “true. Every word of it.” (according to Mr. Byrne’s recantation). Any Muslim who can bother to Google would find that the term Allah is not exclusive to Islam, and in fact predated it, having been used by pagans, Jews and Christians in Arabia before Islam existed.

Sadly, people go to extremes in order to maintain archaic dogmas. In ancient, pre-scientific times, it might make sense to extrapolate from the claim that some writings or prophecies are divinely-inspired, to the claim that therefore they are infallibly true, word for word; in this day and age, these kind of assertions are not only quaint, they are decidedly dangerous.

We pray for:

• our one earth, so that we are moved to perform our custodial role and turn from our rapacious ways
• the people who labour to improve the welfare of all lifeforms on earth: for activists, agricultural reformers, conservationists, political and religious leaders, scientists, social workers
• the poor, lest they be forgotten by the rest of us: that our leaders remember their redistributive duties and the rest of us, our charitable ones
• all your churches, that we focus on the commonalities that bring us all together, and not the issues that divide us
• ecumenical dialogue, and also for a better understanding with those who profess no faith
• the victims of persecution by religious fundamentalists of all faiths. Especially those in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, N. Ireland, the USA and Yemen
• for the persecutors, that You may open their eyes and soften their hearts

Grant these our prayers, O Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake,
our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.

Professor Hawking, a Fellow of Cambridge’s Gonville and Caius College, was until recently the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. Like his US counterpart, the late Carl Sagan, he did much to popularize science, most notably with his best-selling A Brief History of Time

In a way, the choice of Hawking is an apt one: like Charles Darwin, he denies being an atheist (though his ex-wife attributed such views to him). Both men’s work — Darwin on natural selection, Hawking on cosmology — could be perceived to be anti-religious, although I will argue that they only repudiate literalist interpretations of many faiths’ holy books.

Hawking is a prolific author, and I would be doing him a disservice if I were to attempt to summarize his work. I’d instead point you to his archive of public lectures and academic publications. His works on singularity and on the origin of the universe are well known, so today I would just highlight a more esoteric part: what Hawking has to say on multiverses.

The battle between religion and science has for centuries revolve, partly, around the particularity of human existence. Copernicus and Galileo encountered stiff opposition from the Roman church for promoting a cosmology in which the earth is not the center of the universe; likewise, modern astronomy seemed to suggest, until quite recently, that our star is a rather pedestrian one, in a provincial corner of a fairly typical galaxy.

Balanced against that is the discovery that support for life is actually quite tenuous: if the key physical constants were to differ by small amounts, life as we know it would not have been able to develop. Recent work has shown that more drastic modifications might actually yield a life-supporting universe, but at the same time affirm that a key constant, the Hubble constant, still appears to be peculiarly finely tuned.

If our universe is the only one that exists, the very fact that we are here to observe it might suggest that it was put in place so that intelligent life might evolve, and depending on how unique our solar system is in the universe, us humans potentially occupy a lofty, if indeed lonely, position.

The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics, however, points to the existence of multiple worlds, indeed, multiverses. In this interpretation, every possible outcome of every event exists in its own “world”. And here’s where the Hawking connection comes in: he stated that if we assume that quantum theory applies to all reality, then the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics is trivially true.

And if our current universe branches off into virtually endless universes, depending on the outcomes of quantum events, then it certainly makes the idea of other universes with altogether different physical laws less exotic, in fact, quite plausible.

But what’s the religious significance of all this, especially for us Christians? Modern cosmogony is quite speculative up to 10^-12 seconds after the Big Bang, and certainly quiet on what took place before that. A God that is outside of space and time, preexisting before our universe was created, certainly is not incompatible with science, and if such Divinity were to set up the ground rules in such a way as to give rise to humanity, then (S)He is worthy of worship indeed. Even divine intervention after the early phase of the universe, by subtly influencing key people, is possible; I tend towards a non-Hegelian view of history, in which things do not unfold through historical necessity, but that the right person at the right time could influence its course. We cannot disprove the existence of a Creator; we cannot prove it either, but that is why it’s called faith, not fact.

The MWI is actually more troubling: if everything that could happen, actually happens, then where does it leave free will? We are simply pawns, then, having the illusion of making choices in our lives whereas it might just be that we experience making the choice that led to the subset of the multiverse in which we experienced the effect of the choice.

Would the more deterministic Copenhagen interpretation, infamously criticized by Einstein “I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice”, be more reconcilable? After all, perhaps God does not actually throw dice, but subtly guide a probabilistic universe so that at key moments, the dice is actually loaded? Such a universe, familiar to readers of Asimov’s Foundation series, could indeed preserve room for maneuver.

That being said, one lesson we ought to learn, after millennia of religious people putting faith-based theory before scientific evidence, and thus hindering our common scientific progress, is not to interfere as experts in their field continue to improve our understanding of our earth, and indeed our universe. The bible is not a science textbook, and the Church is changed for the better overtime it adjusts itself to scientific discovery instead of fighting it.

Evolution vs Creationism: Anecdotes

One only needs a bare minimum acquaintance with modern cosmology to realize that the cosmology of any faith in the world — at least, faiths that predate modern science — cannot be taken literally. The order of creation according to Genesis certainly does not correspond with our modern understanding — it was very geocentric, with the world *and* plants created before the sun and the stars. This, as opposed to what we know from science, that the elements we find on earth are the byproducts of nuclear fusion in the first generation of stars; that planets are formed from the leftovers of stellar formation; and that the early earth is hot and dry, with water only deposited later, from comets.

And then there is the matter of age; According to Young Earth creationists, for instance, the world is not older than 10,000 years (The error bar between different creationists’ posited age of the earth is much larger than the difference between various predictions made by physicists, which, over time, converge happily to a rather tight range). Their literalist reading of the Old Testament led them to attempt to subvert the scientific process: because they insist on the literal truth of the Bible’s materialist claims, thus inserting the Divine into our everyday space and time, they have to discredit scientific methodology that threaten their precarious position.

Barely a month after Copenhagen, I cannot help but note that attempts by YECs to “prove” the existence of a global Biblical Flood actually ended up demonstrating, in stark terms, the runaway effect of pumping the atmosphere full of greenhouse gases (as we are doing now, and as big agro and big oil want us to continue doing).

We call ourselves Christians for Scientific Inquiry. Not to be confused with either Christian Scientists, nor with that popular TV show that shares our acronym (honestly, I was not consciously thinking about it when picking the name, it just rolled off the tongue). We are a non-denominational grouping — though not anti-denominational; for instance, I’m an Episcopalian. What brings us here is our common faith as Christians *and* our scientific background.

We believe that science and religion *can* be reconciled; indeed, given that a substantial proportion of the world population profess a faith in a Divinity, it is imperative for us, religious scientists, to make sure both camps understand each other. Our world is too fragile, and our development of exploitative technologies too advanced, that our Christian calling to be stewards of the earth — a calling shared with members of other faiths and with secular humanists — compel us to attempt to dispel certain misperceptions about science, especially as held by some Christians. Such as that congressman who cited the Bible as evidence that we do not need to act against climate change, because God has promised Noah not to send another flood…

We hope to run a regular “Science Friday” column, with the first installment due tomorrow. We will also publish special articles on dates of importance — name days of Christian saints who happen to have connections with science, or important dates in the lives of important scientists, especially those whose work affect or are affected by religious prejudices.

Tomorrow being the birthday of Stephen Hawking, your editor plans an article on cosmology. Do leave your comment for suggestions on further column topics, if you want to contribute, or if you have something to say.