Evolution is like a Muscadine Vine & Jab at Dennett's Skyhook Metaphor

Been reading back through A Third Window: Natural Life Beyond Darwin and Newton by Robert Ulanowicz. It is a difficult book. I recognize a kernel of value in many of the things he says but I'm not knowledgeable of things in depth enough to connect the dots in many of his arguments. But here I present a useful idea.

One of today's most strident reductionists is Daniel Dennett who says that evolution is a series of machine cranes stacked up on one another and that no skyhook (God) is involved. Here's what Robert says

Overall, however, I eschew his metaphor as misleading. Like Elsasser and Bateson, I believe that many, if not most , mechanical analogies are procrustean, minimalist distortions of the dynamics of living systems. Paraphrasing the analogy of Oliver Penrose (2005), living dynamics only look rosy (mechanical) because most insist on looking at them through rosy (Newtonian) glasses.

Robert describes an observation from his muscadine grapevines that grow in his garden. The vines grow up from the ground to two levels of horizontal support wires and spread sideways. Eventually, at some point, they send down roots at other locations. Next, the original trunk dies.

It struck me like lightning that here was a more appropriate metaphor for the dynamics of evolution! The muscadine plant represents an evolving system across several hierarchical levels. No skyhooks are involved because the system always remains in contact with a foundation of bottom-up causalities that remain necessary to the narrative. ... later, higher structures create new connections that eventually replace and/or displace their earlier counterparts. Such displacement is a key element in solving the enigma of how emergent structures and dynamics can influence matters at lower levels that had played a role in their own appearance.

To read more you can google-book it over to circa page 100 for further details.

The above provides me with an analogy/metaphor that can begin to explain how human thoughts can control physical body actions. We are provided with a way out of bottom up causality. And, Laplace's conjecture can be tossed aside. This is one aspect of an emergent explanation for our existence. Emergence, for me, is a useful concept for reconciling science and religion.

LifeSpirals

I've been a member of the Stone-Campbell listserve for about 10 years and Harold K. Straughn is likewise a member. His early life involved time at Abilene Christian University and the Herald of Truth. Following many life adventures he is now a Disciples of Christ minister. His book LifeSpirals arrived yesterday. I think I'm gonna like it. Here's what's at Amazon:

Product Description
LifeSpirals assimilates revolutionary discoveries in brain research, learning techniques, and the new field of "wisdom psychology." More than just a self help book, LifeSpirals guides readers through the seven major stages of adult learning that mark the achievements of history's greatest leaders. All the reader needs to maximize his/her own achievement is a greater awareness of how to make use of what he/she knows, which lies buried among your early memories. LifeSpirals shows the reader how to access these lost memories and reconstitute them into a new vision for his/her life that can make the boldest dreams so far seem like tame compromises.

The Case for Working With Your Hands

Marvelous article, The Case for Working With Your Hands, by a young scholar who is now a motorcycle mechanic.

For me, at least, there is more real thinking going on in the bike shop than there was in the think tank.

I make my living as an engineer and can identify with some of this.

Some Thoughts on the Lost Art of Reading Aloud

From an NYT editorial.

Reading aloud recaptures the physicality of words. To read with your lungs and diaphragm, with your tongue and lips, is very different than reading with your eyes alone. The language becomes a part of the body, which is why there is always a curious tenderness, almost an erotic quality, in those 18th- and 19th-century literary scenes where a book is being read aloud in mixed company. The words are not mere words. They are the breath and mind, perhaps even the soul, of the person who is reading.

The only reading aloud I experience is the scripture reading at church and in Bible classes. It seems we are afraid to show depth of feeling when we do that. Its as if we are trying to set some kind of speed reading record.

A Scientist's Postive Use of 'Postmodern Constructivism'

Robert Ulanowicz's view of postmodernism from page 10 of his introduction to A Third Window: Natural Life Beyond Newton and Darwin

He promises to write in the spirit of "postmodern constructivism". About which he says:

However, a relative few among the postmodernists are picking up elements from among the rubble left by deconstructionists and using them to build new ways of visualizing reality. Although narrative no longer requires that one abide by all the Enlightenment restrictions, neither should one forsake rationality in the process. Viewed in a poisitive light, the postmodern critique frees the investigator to search among classical, Enlightenment, and contemporary thought for concepts that can be woven into a coherent rational whole."

This book promises to be pretty good.

Job, Augustine, Nietsche, and Kierkegaard - Truth

The book of Job, we are told, is about the problem of suffering. Why do bad things happen to good people and vice versa if God is Good? So what, in a nutshell, is the answer that Job gives?

Job does not give us and answer that can be summarized in a nutshell.

I am a modern person accustomed to filtering and distilling information in order to arrive at a succinct and useable conclusion. I often need an easily stated and justified rationale for spouse and employer for decisions and requests. In my occupation as an R&D engineer (a quintessential Enlightenment discipline) I couldn't function without this way of thinking.

So why didn't the author of Job trash chapters 3-41 and replace it with one chapter that gives the standard answer? Which is that if you are good, you will go to heaven and experience bliss for eternity thereby making any suffering endured in a short life insignificant. End of proof, QED.

Evidently such would not have been the right thing to write because we do have these chapters with relentless complaint about pains physical and mental, grasping for explanation, elaboration of images and arguments and wrestling with living in the present world.

And near the end of it all what does God say by way of answer?

Look at the world! It is great isn't it? Aren't the stars, mountains, rocks, rivers, and animals way cool? I think they are. You don't know how I did it do you?

Is this a direct answer to Job's suffering? God does not spell it out to Job, nor to us. And it is not direct because the most important truths cannot be directly stated. It calls to mind my June 4, 2008 blog post which presents a Karl Jasper's lecture quote about Nietsche and Kierkegaard and their use of what he calls Masks.

For them masks necessarily belong to the truth. Indirect communication becomes for them the sole way of communicating genuine truth, indirect communication, as expression, is appropriate to the ambiguity of genuine truth in temporal existence, in which process it must be grasped through sources in every Existenz.

And this correlates with a post by Fr. Stephen's blog titled Augustinian Surprises. He starts with quotes from Augustine.

God is He Whom we know best in not knowing Him. - St. Augustine

It is He about Whom we have no knowledge unless it be to know how we do not know Him. - St. Augustine

I have come to a greater appreciation of paradox, contradiction, and mystery. It seems that the further east one travels within the Christian geographical world, the greater is the appreciation fo rthis sentiment. The Orthodox tradition of "apophaticism" emphasizes the unknowability of God as a means of, paradoxically, understanding God. Further West, Protestants and especially the Evangelical types are taught the facts. We must understand everything and make it fit in tight logical bundles. The syllogism quickly wraps up the issues at hand. List the classical proofs of God and we are done. Little about mystery and the indirect.

How to Enjoy the Book of Job

Remember that most of the book is poetry. The introduction that sets up the story is prose. The last chapter is prose. In between, we do not have a logical and rational development of the problem of evil. No, we have an ancient middle eastern love for coming at a problem with a profusion of colorful images and metaphors. The same thing is sometimes repeated but in different combinations and permutations.

The author, whoever they were, lived in our world and loved it. They were not a denier of the flesh as some would be in the early Christian centuries. God and all the interlocutors draw upon what we call the natural world for many of their lessons. Notice how God loves his creation and describes the activities of creatures he has created. He derives much joy from them.

The book is about sense. Imagery from and about all the senses is there. Among his many ills, Job complains about not being able to taste.

We men often have difficulty with expressing ourselves, what we see and how we feel. Job, Jeremiah, and the other prophets are ancient examples of men who expended great effort and spoke from out of the depths of their being. They were not evidently afraid to tell God they hurt and they did not like what He was putting them through. These guys were emotional. They were generally way ahead of contemporary ancient literature in this.

Happy Thoughts on the Book of Job: Nature and Theodicy

My assignment for our Sunday Night Bible Study was Job. Now when you think of Job or you hear that occasional reference to him in a religious setting, you don't usually break out and sing "I'm Happy Today" or "I've Got the Joy Joy Joy Down in my Heart." Or do you?

But in preparation for the class I found something that did make me feel good and start me thinking down a positive and uplifting path. I came across an article by Harry Hahne titled Nature and Theodicy in the Book of Job. His web site links to it.

Here's the opening:

The book of Job has more to say about nature than any other biblical wisdom book. Concepts of nature are woven into the dialogs throughout the book -- in the mouth of Job, Job’s friends, God himself, and in the prologue. Much of the theology of nature is in the form of implicit assumptions that inform the book’s teachings on many subjects.

More later. The morning is moving on, 5:14 am, and I need to get to work.

Experiential Versus Creedal Religion

From Living Gnosticism: An Ancient Way of Knowing by Jordan Stratford.

Gnosticism is an experiential, not creedal, religion - you can't simply announce that you agree with a list of ideas and be saved from the illusion of our separation from God.

While I have some problems with aspects of gnosticism (a catch all term that covers a wide range of sometimes disparate things) I see some value in this statement. The lists of ideas to believe in serve for boundary maintenance between those outside and inside the approved group. They become internalized so that they become crucial to a person's very identity.

With this I promise to move to more positive and uplifting rather than critical comments in the near future.

A Critique of the Church of Christ

Here's one perception/critique of the Church of Christ. About half way down in this blog post, Christianity in a One-Storey Universe, Fr Stephen Freeman describes what he calls Christian Atheism.

Surprisingly, I would place some forms of Christian fundamentalism within this category (as I have defined it). I recall a group affiliated with some particular Church of Christ, who regularly evangelized our apartment complex when I lived in Columbia, S.C. They were also a constant presence on the campus of the local university. They were absolute inerrantists on the subject of the Holy Scriptures. They were equally adamant that all miracles had ceased with the completion of the canon of the New Testament. Christians today only relate to God through the Bible.

Such a group can be called “Biblicists,” or something, but, in the terminology I am using here, I would describe them as “practical atheists.” Though they had great, even absolutist, faith in the Holy Scriptures, they had no relationship with a God who is living and active and directly involved in their world. Had their notion of a God died, and left somebody else in charge of His heaven, it would not have made much difference so long as the rules did not change.

I realize that this is strong criticism, but it is important for us to understand what is at stake. The more the secular world is exalted as secular, that is, having an existence somehow independent of God, the more we will live as practical atheists - perhaps practical atheists who pray (but for what do we pray?). I would also suggest that the more secular the world becomes for Christians, the more political Christians will become. We will necessarily resort to the same tools and weapons as those who do not believe.

That's a little harsh maybe but he gives a basis for an observation I've made. From my experience in the past, I think it has been easier for disenchanted ex-church-of-christers to go the way of the skepticism or atheism than perhaps those of other christian groups.

The Modern World

To help my thinking, here are some notes on "A New Kind of Christian" by Brian McLaren.

This is a summary of what his character Neo says regarding the Modern world.
It was the Era or Age of:

1. Conquest and Control
2. Machine
3. Analysis
4. Secular Science
5. Aspiration to and Confidence in Objectivity
6. Criticism: where you must debunk the others' misperception of what you know to be absolutely and objectively true
7. Modern Nation-State and the Organization
8. Individualism
9. Protestantism and Institutional Religion
10. Consumerism

G. W. "Chick" Allison - 60 years of Preaching

My Dad preached his first sermon about this time sixty years ago. Here is something I've written about him. (Update note: It has now been published in the Arkansas Christian Herald Vol. 28, No. 11, page 4, November 2008)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sixty years ago this November 7, G. W. Allison hitchhiked from Searcy to Dover to preach his first sermon. Also recognized by the nickname "Chick" and "George", he is a Church of Christ minister known throughout Northeast AR. He was raised in Pocahontas where at age ten, he nearly drowned in Mansker Creek. Later, he was baptized there. Later still, he performed his first baptism at that site. He declined a football scholarship at Arkansas State University to study the ministry at Harding University. Between terms, while working in Michigan, he met his wife, Frances Van Hooser. They have four children (Stephen W., Ronald M., Paula R., and Timothy S.) and nine grandchildren. The couple served several congregations in Oklahoma and Michigan from 1951-1958. They returned permanently to Arkansas, working with churches in Pocahontas, Rector, Searcy, Corning, Nettleton, Lepanto, and now completing his ministry in Egypt, where he was born.

He was the original host and is a frequent speaker for “Speaking the Truth in Love” on KAIT-TV. He has held over 350 gospel meetings across the eastern U. S. It is evidence of respect and appreciation for him that he has officiated at well over 1,000 funerals in Northeast Arkansas. G. W. has baptized a similar number in baptistries, creeks, and rivers. As you drive along highway 25 near the town of Strawberry, Arkansas look to your north as you pass over the Strawberry River bridge. In Aug of 1960 that was the site where cars pulled up to illuminate the river so that about two dozen souls could be baptized by him. He is unpretentious and free of affectation. He has no interest in nor places a value on status. For him, each human being is a precious child of God and is special. He has counseled many people. His experiences include wrestling a gun away from a man intent on suicide, preaching love and equality to a local African American church in a way that was ahead of his time , and later, helping to integrate them into his congregation.

One way G. W. has reached thousands of people has been through those he brought to Christ and who in turn are spreading the gospel . A well known example is Jimmy Allen, evangelist and long time faculty member of Harding University. Jimmy credits him as a model that one could be a Christian and still be an athlete and a real man. And, referring to him by nickname he says in his autobiography Fire in my Bones:

“One day before chapel began Chick asked me if I were a Christian ... He was the only one who talked to me personally about my salvation. We became friends and have stayed that way nearly fifty-five years.”

G. W. is also noted for his passion and accomplishments in athletics. He was voted Most Valuable Player on his high school football team, achieved All-State in basketball, and started for the Jonesboro American Legion baseball team that included eventual major league star, Wally Moon. Jimmy Allen who played basketball with him at Harding wrote in the above reference “He was as fast as doubled-greased lightning.” Unfortunately, a tragic car accident in 1960 ended G. W.'s sports participation at age 30. That same year, he began coaching his sons and other youngsters, continuing for many years in all these sports. He always brought out the best in his young athletes by his enthusiasm and positive style. This has been another avenue of his Christian influence. Oh yes, he is a lifelong St. Louis Cardinals fan.

The Semiotic Project - from GloboChrist

Picked up Carl Raschke's GloboChrist: The Great Commission takes a Postmodern Turn. Here's something interesting form a section titled The Semiotic Project.

Western theology has historically been joined at the hip with Greek philosophy, which in turn is built on the Indo-European language structure with its subject-predicate sentence construction, inferential logic, and conceptual classification system.
....

human language is far richer and does far more than the heirs of Aristotle, with their focus on propositions and categories used in rational system building, could envision.

This is exciting to me. It is exciting because it opens up the possibility that there is more to learn and there is room for hope. I kinda think it is this rational system building and language structure that leads to the Dawkins/Hitchens/Bertrand Russells of the world, a world that is a mechanical dead end.

I've struggled enough with German and Greek to know that the language one speaks and knows deeply affects one's World View. The quote and the postmodern turn with its emphasis on language and metaphor provide a new angle that there is more mystery out there.

The Gospel According to Starbucks

The Gospel According to Starbucks by Leonard Sweet is a fun read. Here are some quotes from the book:

The powers of a man's mind are directly
proportional to the quantity of coffee he drinks
---Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832)

Coffee, according to the women of
Denmark, is to the body what the
Word of the Lord is to the soul,
-- Isak Dinesen

A cup of coffee commits one
to forty years of friendship
-- Turkish Proverb

Starbucks is less about coffee
and more about community
-- Market Researcher Wendy Liebmann

I'm scheduled to do the Wednesday night
devotional at church in Nov. and
plan to use this book as a guide in
preparation for that.

Victor Frankl Quote

I read this book when I was 23 or 24. It was great. I wish I had remembered this tidbit. For too many of my middle years did I long for a release from stress, thinking the struggle was for nought.

The quote was in an email from Metanexus.

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

– Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning