Evolutionary Christianity Gives Me Hope

Somehow learned of this site recently titled Evolutionary Christianity.  Michael Dowd is interviewing a number of scientists and religious leaders along the general theme not of reconciling evolution and Christianity but of exploring how evolution can aid, inform, and deepen religious faith.  Have listened to interviews with Ian Barbour, Dennis Lamoreaux, Ross Hostetter and Karl Giberson so far.  Very interesting, informative, and enjoyable.

Intro 2nd episode season 2 of NBC The Sing-Off "Use Somebody"

This is pure pleasure.

More Thoughts from Deeper than Darwin

Haven't posted much lately.  Work has been so demanding.  My mind in the off moments has settled on the superficial.  In some brief moments, however, have been savoring . . . slowly . . .  the book Deeper than Darwin by John Haught.  Here are some quotes that jump out or me.

This is for the new atheists:

Only cosmic literalists will claim to have read the world all the way down,  and what they take for ultimate depth sooner or later turns out to be merely  surface.

....

Speaking of Alfred North Whitehead

Physical reality in an evolving universe is  made up, he observes, of moments, events or occasions, not chunks of spatialized stuff.  It is an illusory abstraction to assume, as old-fashioned materialists  do, that the fundamental units of nature are particles of lifeless  matter. If nature is a process of becoming, then its reality is temporal; and  time, logically speaking, is composed of happenings, not atoms. What we  think of as mechanisms or bits of matter are not concretely real, but at best  useful scientific abstractions. If nature is in evolution, then its fundamentally  temporal character can be broken down concretely only into events, not materialized monads.

As one trained and entranced by science and in particular physics, where one goal is the study and the pursuit of the understanding of the tiny bits of matter that constitute everything, it is little wonder that some of us would see the world as mechanism.  But that is not the whole story.  The book his helpful in seeing that.  

The Narrative Texture of Nature - a quotation from J. Haught's "Deeper than Darwin"

Thought provoking reading from Deeper Than Darwin: The Prospect For Religion In The Age Of Evolution

Celebrated academicians, for example, often think of the cosmos as a pointless swirl of mindless stuff on which a patina of life and mind glimmers feebly for a cosmic moment.5 The narrative texture of nature still lies largely unacknowledged. However, once we develop the habit of thinking of the cosmos as a story-as geology, biology and astrophysics now demand that we do-the universe again becomes something to be read, possibly at many levels of depth. We not only now find in nature features analogous to codes, alphabets, grammars and information. We can also make out the outline of a dramatic adventure. But shall we be able to find a "meaning" written there also?

......

Not if we persist in our literalism. Like all texts and stories, nature is susceptible to shallow readings that fail to get to its inner substance. Today, it seems to me, evolutionary materialism is a kind of "cosmic literalism" stuck on the surface of nature, satisfied with groundless claims that there is simply nothing beneath the "fundamental" laws of physics and natural selection. Just as biblical literalism remains content with a plain reading of scripture, the modern decision to understand the universe and the evolution of life as "merely material" is essentially a literalist flight from the depths of nature.

Today, we are all painfully aware of religious literalism and its sometimes hideous consequences. Literalism, of course, is one of the side effects of literacy.

God is moving and working in evolution to reveal his true design for humanity

The title of this post was lifted directly from Jeff's blog, where he gives profound thoughts relevant to my last two posts.  Check it out here.  He abstracted his thoughts from two podcasts he heard. I'll be thinking about it today and let take some time to soak in.

The confluence of these two thinkers - Pichon and Wright, one an orthodox Catholic the other a naturalistic agnostic - are encouraging and uplifting - both pointing, obviously unintentionally, to a reality larger than ourselves or our particular concerns but that "derives down" to imbue meaning and power in our individual existence and especially in those places and ways where we live in compassion, stand for justice, and seek to develop and support systems and institutions that advocate for the weak, the poor, the marginal and the suffering.

Scientific Literalism - An insight from John Haught

Finally, my travels are over for a while.  Last week was in Newport News, VA for a meeting related to turbine engine instrumentation.  The reception Tuesday night included a chef who made a tasty Bananas Foster on demand.  Ummm Good!

On the trip I carried a copy of God After Darwin by John Haught  and Exploring Reality:  The Intertwining of Science and Religion by John Polkinghorne.  Enjoyed both of them but the first book really whetted my appetite for more by that author.  So, while in the waiting room for my annual physical exam at work this morning, I downloaded to my Kindle, Deeper Than Darwin:  The Prospect For Religion In The Age of Evolution by John Haught.  Here is a snippet from an early chapter.  He mentions that not only is a literal interpretation of scripture pursued by many religious people but that there is an analog of that within the scientific community.

However, in a parallel way, a literalist interpretation  of nature-one that goes no deeper than Galileo's quantitative symbols or  Darwin's idea of natural selection-can also lead scientists to dismiss religion  for the shallowest of reasons. Scientific deciphering of nature has been the  occasion for great gains in knowledge, but it has also permitted the emergence   of a most soul-deadening "cosmic literalism." Our recently acquired  scientific expertise in reading the text of nature has led us into such a trancelike   fixation on surface codes and signifiers, and on life's evolutionary grammar,   that we fail to look into the depth that lies beneath them. I hope in the  following pages to burrow beneath both religious and cosmic literalism.  Only in the depth beneath the texts of nature and holy writ shall we find a  way to reconcile science and religion, evolution and the idea of God.

Now that is a new idea to me.  And, wouldn't you know that it connects with my previous post, from different authors, about how people in our age are prone to the literal view of things.   I'm looking forward to learning how he fleshes out this insight. 

Reconciling the Bible and Science: A Primer on the Two Books of God

At the advice of an Abilene Christian prof, I purchased and read Reconciling the Bible and Science:  A Primer on the Two Books of God by Lynn Mitchell and Kirk Blackard.  The two authors come from the Church of Christ.  Lynn is a religious scholar at the University of Houston and Kirk is a retired lawyer.  My prejudice will show here in what I'm about to say.  I didn't expect something this good from authors from my heritage.  The book is not about science but about interpretation of the Bible and how it relates to science.  Their position may be described as falling within theistic evolution which is where I see myself.  They find consonance with the idea that there is intelligence behind the unfolding of our universe.  But have problems with the Intelligent Design movement for various theological as well as scientific reasons.  Much of the content of the book was familiar to me but their organization and narrative was nonetheless helpful to me.  The most striking thought came in a section on literalism.  Here's a quote:

Modern Americans are generally not very good at non-literal interpretation.  Think about how few people enjoy the study of Shakespeare generation, few people enjoy or get much of out Shakespeare now because we've lost so much of our sense of symbolic, metaphorical, and mythological imagination.  We are basically literalists who tend to feel that everything not intended to be read literally is not worth spending much time on because it doesn't really tell us much.

It's been a while, but I have tried to read Shakespeare.  Maybe it was while helping one of my sons study for school.  I'd like to understand it better but it would take some investment and would require personal assistance from some one. 

Anyway, my take is that our Anglo-American heritage is very literal minded and most of us received it from the same place as Hobbes, Bacon, Newton, Locke, Thomas Paine, Thomas Reid, Alex Campbell, Foy Wallace, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Hawking, Daniel Dennett, Chris Hitchens and Sam Harris got it. 

Discovering What We Think by Writing

Have experienced blog fatigue this summer and not posted much.  Wasn't sure why i took up this blog in the first place.  It seemed like an interesting thing to explore.  Sure do enjoy reading the blogs of others.  My my, how the blog universe has changed these six years.  I did know at the beginning that writing is one way to discover and clarify what you believe and how you think.  This is backed up by something I read recently on my Kindle in a book titled Jacques Derrida by Nicholas Royle.  He says:

In the early essay 'Force and Signification' (1963), Derrida quotes the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–61): 'My own words take me by surprise and teach me what I think'

Max Lucado on Fear

Am reading Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear (Max Lucado)
- Highlight Loc. 268-73 | Added on Tuesday, September 14, 2010, 10:35 PM

"Jesus doesn’t want you to live in a state of fear. Nor do you. You’ve never made statements like these: My phobias put such a spring in my step. I’d be a rotten parent were it not for my hypochondria. Thank God for my pessimism. I’ve been such a better person since I lost hope. My doctor says if I don’t begin fretting, I will lose my health. 

We’ve learned the high cost of fear."

Snip from Kindle from Marilynne Robinson from R. W. Emerson

Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (Marilynne Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 148-54 | Added on Sunday, June 06, 2010, 12:39 PM

Recently I read to a class of young writers a passage from Emerson’s “The American Scholar” in which he says, “In silence, in steadiness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself; add observation to observation, patient of neglect, patient of reproach, and bide his own time,—happy enough if he can satisfy himself alone that this day he has seen something truly…. For the instinct is sure, that prompts him to tell his brother what he thinks. He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.” These words caused a certain perturbation. The self is no longer assumed to be a thing to be approached with optimism, or to be trusted to see anything truly. Emerson is describing the great paradox and privilege of human selfhood, a privilege foreclosed when the mind is trivialized or thought to be discredited. The clutch of certitudes that, together, trivialize and discredit are very much in need of being looked at again.
==========

Great Insights by Both Authors.  I underlined something that jumped out to me.

Jonah from the Deep

From a battle on top of the water to an internal battle below and from out of the depths.  Reading Bobby Valentine's blog series on Jonah calls to mind Jonah's prayer from the fish at the bottom of the sea and underneath the mountains!  Jonah says

You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas....

 the deep surrounded me

seaweed was wrapped around my head 


To the roots of the mountains I sank down

Don't be fooled by the literal Vacation Bible School story most of us have internalized.  He, Jonah, is talking on the spiritual level for all of us. 

From the depths of Hell I called for help,
       and you listened to my cry. 

Sounds a lot like Psalms 130, the inspiration for the title of this blog.  Jonah 2 reads to me very much like the Psalms.  Jonah cries from "Out of the Depths".  He vows to make good.  He is all of us is he not?  

Lost Species of Feeling: Sleep under an Oscillating Fan

Don't know if you have felt this or not. But when I was young, very young, I recall Mom having us take a nap during hot summer afternoons on a pallet on the floor in front of an oscillating fan. I have fond memories of the hum, the waxing and waning, the wind on my hair and covering. Sometimes it was while visiting relatives and several of us are sleeping, that is, it was a family communal thing. I remember a feeling of well being. Dreams were pleasant. There was a feeling of special meaning and significance. I don't know why. I was too young to know the meaning of those words but felt them nonetheless. In retrospect the word liminal may describe it, the state of being on the threshold or between two different existential states. Has anyone else felt this?

Bought a Kindle.

Bought a Kindle a week ago. Am enjoying it. Find the book you want, press a button, and you have it. I downloaded a 4000 page collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson's writings that way. Am reading six things at once. Marilyn Robinson's Absence of Mind, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, Some writings of Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, and a Sherlock Holmes collection. Books published a long time ago tend to be free or 99 cents. Newer books often just $9 but many current books are not yet available. Fun to use.

Response to "A Brief History of Time" Post

S. P. Lunger responded to the original post on "A Brief History of Time". Blogger is doing funny things to the both of us. His response was repeated five times. As I was attempting to delete the extras, it removed all of them. So, I'll repeat his question here and then respond. S. P. said,

I'm curious what you mean by Physicists over-emphasizing physics in explaining the Universe. Are you appealing to the Science for it's realm, Philosophy/Religion for its realm? Or do I misunderstand you?

Sorry to be so vague. My statement was influenced by something I read some four years ago in Nancey Murphy's Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda. And I was referring to what might be considered physics chauvinism as against the other sciences. When I originally read the following passage, I was taken aback and felt a little defensive. But now I am more of a convert to the point of view, despite my having three physics degrees. From Chapter 6 Metaphysical Holism and Divine Action and the section Scientific Developments she writes:

It is now becoming widely recognized by scientists working at a variety of levels in the hierachy of the sciences that while analysis and reduction are important aspects of scientific enquiry, they do not yield a complete or adequate account of the natural world. In simple terms, one has to consider not only the parts of an entity but also its interactions with its environment in order to understand it. Since the entity plus its environment is a more complex system than the entity itself (and therefore higher in the hierarchical ordering of systems), this means that a "top-down" analysis must be considered in addition to a "bottom-up"analysis.

Science writer Silvan Schweber claims that recognition of the failure of the reductionist program has contributed to a crisis in physical theory:

'A deep sense of unease permeates the physical sciences. We are in a time of great change. . . . The underlying assumptions of physics research have shifted. Traditionally, physics has been highly reductionist, analyzing nature in terms of smaller and smaller building blocks and revealing underlying, unifying fundamental laws. In the past this grand vision has bound the subdisciplines together. Now, however, the reductionist approach that has been the hallmark of theoretical physics in the 20th century is being superseded by the investigation of emergent phenomena. . . .

The conceptual dimension of the crisis has its roots in the seeming failure of the reductionist approach, in particular its difficulties accounting for the existence of objective emergent properties. ' (ref according to Murphy is - Silvan S. Schweber, "Physics, Community and the Crisis in Physical Theory, " Physics Today (Nov. 1993) p 34-40.

My current opinion is that though there is plenty to be learned regarding things at the quark level and below, and despite how fascinating and mathematically beautiful string theory is, and how astrophysics continues to astound us, we can nevertheless learn about the fundamental nature of reality by exploring conceptual developments in biology and elsewhere. And we can derive benefit from other formerly distinct disciplines like philosophy, religion, and literature.

The emergent and relational nature of reality seems to me fundamental and I'd like to learn more about it.

A Brief History of Time

Picked up Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" over the weekend and it was quite enjoyable. Was more familiar with the early parts from school and experience. Was quite happy to learn that Black Holes are not forever but gradually decay. Can't say I followed every argument in detail but got the gist of a lot of it. One question, well I have many, is why we haven't been able to harness the Casimir Effect for space travel, energy production etc. Suppose I should google it. Hawking is a brilliant physicist and knows what's going on in the field. However, physicists probably emphasize too much the explanatory power of physics for explaining the universe. I know because I am one too. But, that is not the whole story by any means. There are emergent properties of reality that seem to me to be outside of physics and are very important.