So is it true?

Here's a few recommended links to blogs and websites which tackle the truthfulness and relevance of the Christian faith in the face of common challenges and modern ethical and spiritual issues. These were all pinged my way after asking for recommendations on a Facebook page, so I thought I'd post them in case anyone else found them useful

https://christianity.org.uk/  website with lots of links, topics and things to explore on spiritual questions.

https://www.rzim.org/watch  lectures on a range of different topics around faith, world religions, science, moral issues etc. Nabeel Qureshi (one of the speakers) is highly recommended

https://benjaminchangblog.com/  good blog by scientist and Christian by Benjamin Chang, with blogs, articles and videos on a range of topics

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings articles by William Lane Craig, who does lots of public debates and discussions on the Christian faith, the evidence for it, and some of the common challenges to it. Lots of videos and other materials on the website.

One that's been around for a bit longer is the L'Abri fellowship, founded by philosopher and evangelist Francis Schaeffer, and they have a vast online library of lectures and talks on modern thought, philosophy, psychology and Christianity. A real treasure trove http://labri-ideas-library.org/index.asp 

'How God changes your brain for the better'. Neuroscience and the Spiritual Disciplines

I once heard J John happily claim that Christians were brainwashed - because if you knew what was inside most people's heads, it certainly needed cleaning up. Browsing the Baptist Times (as you do), I stumbled across this fascinating piece, an interview with a neuroscientist researching the effects of spiritual practices and faith upon the brain.

here's a snippet

Can you talk about some of the evidence for how God changes your brain for the better?

Most of the current scientific literature shows that people who are more religious - often measured by church attendance or self-report - have lower levels of stress and anxiety, lower levels of depression, and better overall health.

Our more specific research has pointed to specific changes in the brain that are associated with being religious/spiritual, or doing certain practices. For example, we showed that doing the Rosary reduces anxiety in people.

And a meditation practice, called Kirtan Kriya, increases the function of your frontal lobes, which in turn helps to improve memory and reduce anxiety. Of course, there are examples in which religion and spirituality can be bad for people, but that is also my hope to help identify the potential problems so that they can be avoided and turned into something more positive.'

I'd be intrigued to know more about whether it's practices, beliefs, or a combination, which makes the most difference. The examples above are all in religious practice: prayer, churchgoing etc., rather than in the sets of beliefs which people hold.

Being in the more word-based, left-brain Protestant stream of things, we're less into practice and more into creedal truth. But an increasing number of writers (Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, John Ortberg) have pointed out the dramatic gap between knowledge and character which exists in many Western Christians, and called for a revival in spiritual practice - the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, confession, solitude etc. - as the means of grace for God to change us more into Christlikeness. It now looks as if this is backed up by science, as well as theology.

Richard Dawkins 'The Magic of Reality' Not Casting a Spell on Yeovil

Yeovil welcomes Richard Dawkins this evening to the Octagon Theatre - at the time of writing, sales for the matinee Salvation Army Christmas Carols are running well ahead of those for Dawkins, with less than half the £6 seats sold. It's maybe that sense that people still don't get it which drives Dawkins latest book. Glossy, packed with graphics and 'quirky' illustrations, 'The Magic of Reality' is yet another go at persuading people to ditch religion and embrace evolutionary science. Mind you, at £20 for the book folk maybe think they've spent enough. (Interesting that a full house spent much more than £6 a head to hear Marcus Brigstocke riffing on God questions for a night in Yeovil, can we only take information if it's packaged as entertainment? )

The thing is, it could just be a very good science book. Dawkins is good at science, it's his expertise. But it's trying to be a book on (i.e. against) religion. And it doesn't do very well. For example:

"To say that something happened supernaturally is not just to say 'we don't understand it' but to say 'we will never understand it, so don't even try' ". Well, no. People have been pointing out for years that science and religion offer different levels of explanation of the same phenomena, just as a brain scientist will describe what's happening in my head right now differently from my description as the person with the head in question. I can believe that God is the prime agent in creation, but still be staggered and enlightened by the detail science discovers about the process. Loads of scientists have understood what they do as 'thinking God's thoughts after him', and seeking understanding doesn't run in conflict with faith.

Another example: Dawkins retells various creation myths about the human race, before giving the scientific account. This presumes that creation myths and science are trying to do the same job. But are they? The early chapters of Genesis are richly theological, they do a lot more than say 'here is the sequence of events, there, Biblical science 101 lesson over'. The most important question they are dealing with is probably not 'in what order and how long ago were things made?' but 'is the universe orderly or chaotic?' 'why is there suffering?' 'what's wrong with us?' 'what does the good life look like?' questions of meaning, purpose and identity. This is what 'myths' do. To compare them directly to the scientific account as if they were equivalent texts doesn't do them justice.

And finally "If something happens that appears to be inexplicable by science you can safely conclude one of two things. Either it didn't really happen, or we have exposed a shortcoming in present-day science." (p264). Now there's a faith statement if ever there was one. And it's ridiculously over the top. I fell in love with my wife and married her. Can science offer an explanation of that? Sort of, but only a very thinned down mixture of chemistry, psychology and random probability. It doesn't explain what actually happened. The scientific account is inadequate, we need other levels of explanation to truly do this justice. There are also several remarkable events in the way we ended up together: there might be a scientific explanation for the dating of the Anglican lectionary, population shifts in Shepton Mallet etc., but 'that was all just coincidence' isn't actually very convincing.

Reviewers of 'The God Delusion' have pointed out in numbers that Dawkins grasp of theology is shakier than his grasp of science. So what is he actually trying to do?

 - he's clearly passionate about science, and doing what he does best, telling the story of the scientific worldview. It's interesting in itself that Dawkins uses story and graphics to try to grab the readers attention (also done well in Bill Brysons 'Short History of Nearly Everything'). The left brain is trying to get the right brains attention.

 - Dawkins sees religion - all types of religion - as opponents of science, and repeatedly tries to hammer home the point that any religious account of reality is wrong, because it's not scientific. At the same time he tries to expound the 'magic of reality' - that we can get all the sense of wonder and awe we need from what science tells us. So he is trying to fill the 'God shaped hole' with a scientific alternative.

There are two problems with this:
a) The 'religious' account of reality is not trying to be scientific. It's a different, and complimentary, level of explanation.
b) the scientific replacement for religion doesn't itself do the job. I know of people who've found in God a level of meaning, purpose, grace and identity they never found in science. I know of another, troubled, individual, for whom none of the answers Dawkins offers would do any good. There is a reason why so many of us are 'superstitious', and it's not just evolution. I was reading the other day about the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, and how a theistic recovery programme for alcoholism has worked for many people in a way no secular approach has ever done.

There's a lot of 'magic' which does need debunking, and I would love Richard Dawkins to share a stage at the Octagon with the clairvoyants and occultists which have been such a regular feature at the place in recent years. There is bad religion, and there's bad science too. And good magic.

And of course, scientists themselves aren't all agreed about reality, as the following graphic irrefutably demonstrates: (ht labspaces, original here.)

Religious Atheism

Interesting take on atheism as a cultural/religous phenomenon in the New Scientist. Here's an extract from an interview with scientist and teacher Bernard Beckett, who writes fiction books based on scientific themes

....you chaired an event for Richard Dawkins and, as a result, shifted your views from atheism to agnosticism. Why the conversion?

The event sold out very quickly. The people were huge fans of Dawkins, and being amongst a group of card-carrying atheists was something I'd never experienced before.

I'd probably have called myself an atheist at the time. But normally, that means going your own way and creating your own response.

Instead, it felt more like being in church. Suddenly, there were a whole heap of people who seemed to be responding as one. To me, that reproduced some of the things I disliked about the church I was brought up in, because leaps are made from atheism to other beliefs that you are meant to have as well.

For instance, the belief that there is something negative about the influence of religion, which I don't necessarily think is true. It's a very complex sociological question that would take a lot of research, but suddenly, if you're one of us, you also have to be against religion.

At that point I feel uncomfortable. I also felt uncomfortable with the idea of wanting to convert people; to atheism in this case. It felt evangelical, and that's not my instinct at all.
There was an issue of New Scientist recently, where Marcelo Gleiser wrote about the search for the theory of everything. Gleiser believes that this is a bit of a hangover from religion.
For some people, like Dawkins, science is about beauty and meaning and truth. I'm really uncomfortable with that. I don't think science is about that at all.

Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting, it's a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.

I can't see any great evidence that humans have any ability to access anything other than the material world. Beyond that, who knows, but there's no good evidence that would take me to any particular belief. And that seems to me to me to be a more rigorous view and one I'm much more comfortable with.

This does strike a chord: just as there's a culture within church circles which contains lots of things which have nothing to do with Christianity, there also seems to be a culture around certain popularisers of atheism which goes a long way beyond science.

However, if you think that you're right and that someone who disagrees with you is wrong, then it seems a bit postmodern just to let everyone have their own point of view, and not get a bit 'evangelical'. I'm not a scientist, but if certain things are scientific facts then it's probably a good thing to teach/persuade other people of them. Ok we can be less sure about the existence or otherwise of God, but if you can only argue for a position if it's certain, how on earth do you discover whether or not it's certain in the first place...?

Being 'evangelical' about atheism logically follows from being an atheist: religion must look like a massive and self-indulgent waste of time, resources and effort, and people are much better being persuaded to do something more useful. The same impulse also follows from believing in God, though for different reasons!

But what Beckett hints at is that, as well as being a reasoned position, evangelical (or 'religious'?) atheism has also become a cultural boundary marker for a certain social/intellectual group. Heck, they've even got merchandise. The church, sadly, has reams of examples of what happens when you forget the difference between a cultural boundary marker, and a core belief. I'm even required by church law to wear some of them.

But maybe that's a feature of any ideology or intellectual movement: the beliefs have to take form within a culture, and be expressed, or else it's all purely theoretical. And once they do that, the outward form of the belief is often the first bit of it that outsiders encounter, and it becomes part of the package. Is 'evangelical' atheism bound to develop its own subculture?

'God: new evidence'

Following the launch of the Test of Faith site a few months ago, here's another web resource on issues of science and faith. God: new evidence focuses on the 'fine tuning' found in physics and cosmology, which points to a design and a Designer in the cosmos. There's a series of videos looking at some of this - one example above, you can (handily) watch the videos in 8-9 minute chunks, or smaller snippets.

It would be good to see a few more articles to complement the video clips, but still, good to see it all up there. By the way, the first main video is mainly the 'experts' introducing themselves and saying how their faith and science backgrounds interact, you only start getting into the meat of the cosmological stuff in the 2nd video.

Boost for 'Ethical' Stem Cells

BBC report today on a new advance in adult stem cell research:

US researchers have found a way to dramatically increase the harvest of stem cells from adult tissue.

It is a practical step forward in techniques to produce large numbers of stem cells without using embryos.

Using three drug-like chemicals, the team made the procedure 200 times more efficient and twice as fast, the Nature Methods journal reported. It is hoped stem cells could one day be widely used to repair damaged tissue in diseases and after injuries.

The more can be done with adult stem cells, the better. The creation of embryos primarily to use them as bit parts for treatment of others is a major ethical problem, and from what I gather, despite it being approved by Parliament last year, there isn't that much funding for embryo stem cell research. If the same therapies can be found through using adult stem cells instead, then that seems to be a win-win.

Faith and Darwin

I'm hoping to get to see the Darwin film in the next couple of weeks, but it seems like a good time to revisit 'Faith and Darwin', a research piece done by Theos earlier this year. They even produced a map based on the results, so that if you want to move in next to a Creationist you know where to look.

They quizzed 2000 people on their ideas about God, science and evolution, and discovered the following:

54% of the sample knew Darwin had written 'Origin of Species'

37% agreed that evolution is proved beyond reasonable doubt (36% said 'not proven', 19% 'no evidence')

75% agreed that science could explain most things, but not everything.

53% believed in God: 8% used to believe in God but now didn't, and the same percentage had made the opposite journey.

Who's Who
The research breaks the sample up into 4 groups, according to what they believe about the origins of life on Earth:

1. Young Earth Creationists (believe earth is less than 10,000 years old) 17%
2. Intelligent Design (evolution, but with specific intervention by God to make certain stuff happen ) 11%
3. Theistic evolution (evolution, but with God as the ultimate agent behind creation) 28%
4. Atheistic evolution (life has evolved full stop, there is no God) 37%
Sorry the picture's a bit faint. The maths-heads among you will have already noted that 10% more people believe God had a hand in the origins of life, than actually believe God exists. The main finding of the survey seemed to be inconsistency: over 40% of the sample gave contradictory answers to questions on the same topic.

Demographics
Amongst those who consistenly fall into the above categories, there were a few demographic differences.

- 'Young Earth Creationists' more females, economic class DE, older people. Oddly, 8% of them don't have a religion.

- 'Intelligent Design' younger and more educated than average

- 'Atheistic Evolution' generally younger, more in the ABC economic groups, and with degrees. There's suggestions here of the middle class atheism referred to in some recent blog exchanges, and this today by Ariane Sherine.

Attitudes:
Some interesting snippets:
- 31% of those in the 'atheistic evolution' category think that Christianity and evolution are incompatible, and 21% that science undermines religion. That leaves a sizeable majority who don't hold to these views, even among folk who don't beleive God had anything to do with creation.

- Only 1/5 of these folk agreed that 'evolution tells us there's no purpose to life'. This gives the lie to the idea that atheists think that life has no meaning or purpose. Most of them clearly do, though whether that's a logically consistent position is another matter. I'm not even sure if 'meaning and purpose' are scientific categories, or unverifiable value statements.

- 18% of the sample believe Genesis is a literal and accurate account of the origins of life. Bizarrely, 22% of the 'theistic evolutionists' believe this, which doesn't really leave much time for evolution to happen!!!

- 85% of the sample believed that science and faith can coexist, though about half of these think that science challenges faith to some degree.

Spiritual beliefs
- 72% 'see a spiritual element in the universe', which is a lot more than the 53% who believe in God.

- Of those who believe in God, 1/5 see him/her/it as an 'impersonal force', and roughly the same amount are pantheists - that God and the universe are the same. Believing in God isn't the same as believing in the orthodox deity of Christianity.

Other spiritual beliefs:
Human soul 70
Heaven 55
Life after death 53
Ghosts 39
Reincarnation 27
Astrology/horoscopes 22
Fortune telling/tarot 15

Quotes:
It highlights that there is an element of confusion, and suggests that many people hold contradictory views. There is also evidence of significant variation in how people form their opinions and how much engagement with the topic they have previously had (p20)

It has been considered by some that Darwin’s theory of evolution has been abused by ‘extremists’ of two very different philosophical positions. From an atheistic position, some suggest that evolutionary belief must disprove belief in God and from a creationist point of view, considering evolution and Christianity to be incompatible has led to suggestions that evolution contradicts a theistic view of God and so theists cannot hold an omnipotent view of God together with evolutionary theory.

This research challenges both the extreme atheists and theists, who frequently join in this debate. In general people do not subscribe to such polarised views, but rather happily hold a spectrum of beliefs reconciling scientific theory and religious belief.

Thoughts:
Richard Dawkins gives the impression in his latest book that vicars are to blame for the prevalence of Creationism, and that if we get our act together, it'll all be sorted. Bad news Richard, there are far more Creationists out there than Anglicans.

There is a lot of confused thinking, and with sizeable numbers believing in astrology and horoscopes, we're dealing with a large chunk of the population who don't form their spiritual beliefs on the basis of reason alone (or even reason at all).

The strength of atheism amongst folk with higher education means that the 'new atheism' will continue to be a favourite of the chatterati* for some time to come. Given that the CofE is middle class, the temptation will be to think that this is the only argument we need to engage with. It will probably be the faith/God position which is held most forcefully, and by those most able to articulate it, but that doesn't mean we should stop listening to everyone else. The majority of the population, vague and confused though their beliefs might be, have a sense of the spiritual, and of life being more than just random acts of biology. These are the folk who accost our Street Pastors with questions about God, who want their kids baptised, and who sing along to Robbie Williams.

This creates a problem. The church needs to communicate with both groups. If we talk in spiritual terms to engage with the majority, there'll be talk of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in postgrad chatrooms. If we talk in scientific terms to engage with the rationalists, that will turn everyone else off. And of course postmodernism means that there'll be people who hold to both worldviews, and several others, all at the same time.

*over 1200 blog posts in, I guess that includes me too.

Science v Religion?

The Beaker Folk have invented a tremendous new game, which now officially replaces all discussions on science and religion. A taster

The players take up a position on either side of the fence. They take it in turns to throw their cards over it. The aim of each card is to trump the other team's previous card. For example, if the Science player plays the "Spanish Inquisition" card, the Religion team might play the "Darwinian eugenics" card. Likewise a "Homophobia" card might be met by a "Gays will burn in Hell" card - or possibly by a "My vicar's gay actually, but he just doesn't shout about it" card. Although the latter card is rare, and only available in the limited Edition "C of E" game pack, where you're allowed to sit on the fence.

For slightly more serious approach, you could try
The Faraday Papers series of free downloads by eminent authors on questions of science and religion.

Test of Faith a new site set up by the Faraday Institute, with study materials, videos, links to a big range of sites discussing science and religion.

This page at the Pew Forum has a transcript of a conference on science and faith, with Francis Collins (former director of the Human Genome project) talking about how he found his atheism challenged by what he discovered as a scientist. Here's a bit:

...I began to realize that even in science, where I had spent most of my time, there were pointers to God that I had paid no attention to that were actually pretty interesting.

One obvious one, although maybe it’s not so obvious, is that there is something instead of nothing. There’s no reason there should be anything at all. Wigner’s wonderful phrase “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” also comes to mind – Eugene Wigner, the Nobel laureate in physics, talking about the amazing thing about the whole study of physics is that mathematics makes sense; it can describe the properties of matter and energy in simple, even beautiful, laws. Why should that be? Why should gravity follow an inverse square law? Why should Maxwell’s five equations describe electromagnetism in very simple terms, and they actually turn out to be true? A thoughtful and interesting question. This is certainly one that Einstein also wrote about quite significantly.

The Big Bang, the fact that the universe had a beginning out of nothingness, as far as we can tell. From this unimaginable singularity, the universe came into being and has been flying apart ever since. That cries out for some explanation. Since we have not observed nature to create itself, where did this come from? That seems to ask you to postulate a creator who must not be part of nature or you haven’t solved the problem. In fact, one can also make a pretty good philosophical argument that a creator of this sort must also be outside of time or you haven’t solved the problem.

So now we have the idea of a creator who is outside of time and space, and who is a pretty darn good mathematician, and apparently also must be an incredibly good physicist.....

For an odd tangent on this whole business, read about the atheist scientist who thinks that a rediscovery of God as 'divine punisher' may help us to get real about climate change.

If it Makes You Happy...

Missed at the time: an experiment to see what makes us happy, by psychologist Richard Wisemen. 26000 people took part, and tried 4 different exercises, plus a control group who were just asked to think about the previous day.

People who were asked to relive a happy memory scored 15 per cent better than the control group on the mood questionnaire at the end of the test. Those who thought about an aspect of their lives for which they were grateful scored 8 per cent above the control group. Those who forced their face into a smile did 6 per cent better. The surprise was found in the group asked to perform small acts of kindness, such as giving a small gift or complimenting a friend. While their mood also improved, their scores went up by 9 per cent less than the control group

tie-in website here, which explains a bit more. Not sure whether that's good news or not: does it give the lie to claims that altruistic acts are simply self-gratifying (because they make us feel good, and that's why we do them), or is it bad news that self-centred routes to happiness are more effective than those centred on others?

The overall finding though, must be that reflecting on what's going on is good for you - whether you're thinking about the previous day, acting in the opposite spirit to your mood, consciously thinking of others, or identifying things to be thankful for. The unreflected life is not only not worth living, it's also more miserable.

via Christian Research's monthly research bulletin, available from admin@christian-research.org.uk

Telegraph #fail on creation and evolution

Steve Borthwick highlights the risible attempt by the Daily Telegraph to name the top 5 arguments for evolution and creation.

I despair, I really do. I am bored witless with arguments about creationism, but it seems impossible to have a decent debate about science and God without the C-word being uttered in the first 3 minutes, and then everyone jumping up and down calling each other morons.

For the record.
- I'm a Christian, I believe God created the cosmos.

- I'm not a 'creationist' - I believe the universe is roughly as old as science says it is, until they get a better measurement. Last I heard it was about 15 billion years.

- I'm convinced that the thrust of the first three chapters of the Bible is not chronology but theology: what kind of world is this, what kind of God have we got, where do humans fit in, what's our relationship supposed to be to God, the world, and one another.

- I would love to hear more from the physicists, if the biologists could let them have a word in. There's lots of fascinating stuff about the origins of the universe, evidence of 'fine tuning' of the cosmos to make life possible etc. There's more to science than evolutionary biology, just as there's more to Christianity than how exactly God made the world. Not all physicists are theists, so it's clearly not a done deal, but there are some good debates to be had in that area.

- I don't know a great deal about evolution, but from what I have read it sounds like there's still some questions not settled, including the phenomenon of evolution happening in short bursts, followed by long periods of stability. It would be interesting to hear what someone better informed has to say about this, as I'm not expert enough to know what that's all about, or how much of a discussion is going on.

Dawkins Calls for the Priest

The Times is serialising some extracts from Richard Dawkins new book 'the Greatest Show on Earth', starting today. In it, Dawkins claims science teachers face a 'dire' plight, with a rising number of children, and parents, refusing to accept evolution, and persecuting science teachers who expound it. He compares this with historians trying to teach 20th century history to Holocaust deniers - which makes a good headline, but I'm pretty uncomfortable with anyone who uses the Holocaust to make a point in an argument.

The main body of the piece is a plea to church leaders (not quite sure why it's just church leaders, I didn't realise all Muslims were 100% behind Darwin on this one) who have accepted evolutionary theory and integrated it into their faith. Here's a bit of it:

To return to the enlightened bishops and theologians, it would be nice if they’d put a bit more effort into combating the anti-scientific nonsense that they deplore. All too many preachers, while agreeing that evolution is true and Adam and Eve never existed, will then blithely go into the pulpit and make some moral or theological point about Adam and Eve in their sermons without once mentioning that, of course, Adam and Eve never actually existed!

If challenged, they will protest that they intended a purely “symbolic” meaning, perhaps something to do with “original sin”, or the virtues of innocence. They may add witheringly that, obviously, nobody would be so foolish as to take their words literally. But do their congregations know that? How is the person in the pew, or on the prayer-mat, supposed to know which bits of scripture to take literally, which symbolically? Is it really so easy for an uneducated churchgoer to guess? In all too many cases the answer is clearly no, and anybody could be forgiven for feeling confused.

Think about it, Bishop. Be careful, Vicar. You are playing with dynamite, fooling around with a misunderstanding that’s waiting to happen — one might even say almost bound to happen if not forestalled. Shouldn’t you take greater care, when speaking in public, to let your yea be yea and your nay be nay? Lest ye fall into condemnation, shouldn’t you be going out of your way to counter that already extremely widespread popular misunderstanding and lend active and enthusiastic support to scientists and science teachers? The history-deniers themselves are among those who I am trying to reach. But, perhaps more importantly, I aspire to arm those who are not history-deniers but know some — perhaps members of their own family or church — and find themselves inadequately prepared to argue the case.

thoughts
1. It's quite possible to make moral or theological points about things without having to say whether they really happened or not - many great novels and works of literature do this. You wouldn't come on stage at the end of Les Miserables and say 'now don't forget everyone, this is all fiction, just a story made up by Dumas, and none of it really happened.'

2. I love the line about 'uneducated' churchgoers. That's a fine commentary on our schools system, unless Dawkins is proposing that the church play a greater role in education? Thought not.

3. I'm not sure it's the place of church leaders to go 'out of your way' to argue for evolution over against creationism. For one thing, there are a lot of other things going on in the real world, and this comes some way down the list of concerns. Secondly, we're not preaching on Genesis 1-3 every other month. I'll happily say from the pulpit (though I'd rather be at ground level) that Genesis is more of a theological document than a historical one, but it's not as though I'll get the chance to go into all of that in fine detail. People can think for themselves.

4. I wonder if that second paragraph has ever happened in reality, or whether it's a figment of Dawkins imagination. If his argument is based on facts, we should know. If it's based on fictions, then we should know. We should be told whether this blithe and withering clergyman ever existed, even as he is used to make a moral point.

5. It's quite amusing, that having systematiclly abused and ridiculed religious people for years, Dawkins is now trying to co-opt us. I'm not sure how he can argue that a) evolution disproves the existence of God and b) people who believe in God should be defending evolution. Huh? That's like asking Flintoff to bowl for the Aussies.

Further reading
Is Richard Dawkins a stage magician? (Uncommon Descent)
'The God Delusion makes me ashamed to be an atheist' (Thinking matters)

Green Christianity?

Upcoming event: "A biblical view of environmental issues"
Thursday 2nd July at 7:30 p.m in St. Johns church Yeovil.

The speaker is Professor Bob White FRS, a Cambridge Professor of Geophysics, and joint author of 'Christianity, Climate Change and sustainable living.' He's also associate director of the Faraday Institute, whose new site on science and faith I linked a couple of days ago.

the event is hosted by the Bath and Wells Diocesan Evangelical Fellowship, where there are a few more details. Should be well worth getting to.

'Test of Faith' - new science and faith resource.

Test of Faith is a new site on science and faith, linked to an upcoming film and book. It's been put together by the Faraday Institute for Science and religion, and promises a release of materials on July 3rd.



The site says:
There is a huge need for accessible materials on science and Christianity for churches, and others who are interested in these issues. With the Faraday Institute starting up at the beginning of 2006, this was the ideal opportunity to fill the gap.

It already has an excellent links section, and promises of short articles, film clips, materials for use in church, interviews with scientists etc. Youtube section here with the above clip, plus other materials. Looks very promising.

Ht Evangelism UK.

Around the TV in 81 Faiths

Channel 4's 'Christianity, A History' and BBC2's 'Around the World in 80 Faiths' both wrapped up last week. I've caught more of the latter than the former, but both series left me frowning.

Christianity: A Good Kicking was an 'interesting' take on the history of the Christian faith, starting with a polemic against anti-Semitism, and ending with the 'science v faith' debate presented by Colin Blakemore, an Oxford neuroscientist who is convinced that science wins hands down. The final programme gave a semblance of even-handedness, but 2 of the 3 Christians interviewed were a young earth creationist and an atheist priest, so it was a bit like watching Manchester United play Lark Rise.

The life of Jesus was dismissed without any reference to the evidence or historical sources, and the debate between science and faith would have been much better serviced by an interview with a prominent Christian scientist like David Wilkinson or Sir John Houghton.

There were also various tweaks on the facts presented: the founding of the USA was presented as a triumph of science over religion, airbrushing out the fact that the Pilgrim Fathers, and most of the founders, were Christians and theists who just wanted to be free from a controlling church. The separation of church and state is based on a view of a different role for religion in civil life, not its complete absence. At the same time the shameful history of the church in persecuting those who didn't toe the dogmatic line is a historic fact, but opposition between science and faith was presented as pretty much the whole story of the last 500 years, and it isn't.

The programme concluded with the faith statement that science would ultimately explain everything, and religion would die out. I remember Marx saying something similar over 100 years ago.

Around the world in 80 faiths concluded in Europe, juxtaposing Christian persecution of Lapland pagans with Communist persecution of Latvian Catholics. It ended by contrasting the decline of Benedictine monasticism in the Italian Catholic heartland with the rise of a New Age community which treats all religions as equals. Peter Owen Jones thesis seemed to be that any inclusive religion/faith is a good thing, and an exclusive faith community is a bad thing.

The series' greatest strength was also its greatest weakness. Watching Jones throw himself into every religious ritual he came across probably gave us more insight into them than someone who stood on the outside and simply watched and analysed. But at the same time there seemed to be little discernment or critique beyond how it felt, or how inclusive it was. Jones spoke about 'the divine' a lot, but after 8 programmes we knew nothing more about 'the divine' than when we started. Whether there were 80 ways to God or just one, you wouldn't have been any the wiser.

Both programmes are, at time of writing, still available on Catchup/Iplayer respectively.

DIY Agnostibus, and David Attenborough on Darwin

Thanks to Maggi Dawn, Alan Wilson and pretty much everyone else, who has discovered the delights of the DIY bus slogan generator.

Caught up with one global treasure and one national treasure on TV over the weekend. Nelson Mandela keeps an incredible schedule for a 90 year old, it's hard not to be impressed with his determination to use his influence for good, and yet to keep on engaging with normal people.

Meanwhile David Attenborough was fascinating last night. In his previous series, he's presented us with evolution as a given fact, and not felt any need to argue for it. Now in Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, he presented an appreciation of Darwins work, and spoke as an apologist and evangelist for evolutionary theory, which itself is a fascinating commentary on where we are.

What I want to know is: why, when Christianity is presented on TV, is it always unorthodox views which get the full treatment (see the current Christianity, A History), but when science (especially evolution) is presented there is never a heretical voice raised? Here's a couple, quoted by John Lennox in 'Gods Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?'

"We are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have quarter of a million fossil species, but he situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky, and ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwins time." (David Raup, Field Museum of Natural History)

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology." (Stephen Jay Gould). Gould also writes "the history of most fossil species includes 2 features particularly inconsistent with the idea that they gradually evolved:

1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking pretty much the same as when they disappear...

2. Sudden appearance. In any local area a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appearas all at once and "fully formed". '

The idea that evolution is signed sealed and delivered, and that all scientists agree on how it works, is equivalent to saying that all Christians everywhere believe exactly the same things. Attenborough hinted at this in his interview with Andrew Marr yesterday, but you'd never guess there was an internal debate in the scientific community from the way evolution is presented on TV.

The Attenborough programme closed with a statue of Darwin being installed in a place of honour in the Natural History Museum, like some secular deity. It would be great if, in this bicentenary year for Darwin, there was a proper debate about his theories, and not merely idol worship.

What Did Darwin Think of Religion

Theos have been busy this week, not only reporting on political God-talk (see below), but rounding up some quotes from Charles Darwin on what he thought of faith.

Also from the Times site, readers letters on creation and evolution in the light of the Royal Society mess, and some words of wisdom from Sir John Polkinghorne.

Creationism in Class?

Prof Michael Reiss, director of education at the Royal Society, has called for 'Creationism' to be explored on the school curriculum:

"Some of my comments about the teaching of creationism have been misinterpreted as suggesting that creationism should be taught in science classes. Creationism has no scientific basis.
"However, when young people ask questions about creationism in science classes, teachers need to be able to explain to them why evolution and the Big Bang are scientific theories but they should also take the time to explain how science works and why creationism has no scientific basis.
"I have referred to science teachers discussing creationism as a worldview'; this is not the same as lending it any scientific credibility."

I hadn't realised that he's a fellow vicar as well, and he seems to have had a busy 24 hours since the story broke! I have 3 observations:

- This whole story reinforces the Dawkins myth that there are only two possible worldviews when it comes to the origin of life - Creationism or evolution by natural selection. So therefore anyone religious must believe the world was made in 6 days. Creationism is a minority view among Christians, but you wouldn't guess that from the way this kind of stuff is reported. Most of us don't have a problem with evolution, and a cosmos many billions of years old. In fact, that cosmos is charged with the glory of God in a way increasingly discovered by scientists.

- By all means teach Creationism as a worldview, but if you're going to be fair why not teach Darwinianism (or Dawkinsism) as a worldview as well? Atheist scientists make faith statements too.

- Part of the debate is whether this belongs in science or R.E./PSHE (personal, social and health education) It's not as though there isn't an explicit worldview behind most of what's in the school curriculum, in terms of what's important, and education as a practical exercise to prepare you as a worker and citizen of a particular sort of society. Everything belongs in RE.

Update: great collection of links at Thinking Anglicans on this story. TA also reports rumours that the CofE is to apologise to Charles Darwin on his anniversary next week. Why? The scientific community gave Darwin plenty of stick too, and soon-to-be Archbishop Temple welcomed Darwins insights. And maybe it's time to re-examine the legend of Huxley vs Wilberforce too.

Monday Links

Bit of a roundup today:

The pic above is from Start the Week, which today covers the youth evangelism fund, a 'director of hospitality and welcome' at Birmingham Cathedral (every Cathedral should have one), and use of the 'Jesus Deck' in evangelism. The Jesus Deck is, to use a very bad description, a Christian version of tarot: except that rather than tell you what the future holds, each card tells part of the gospel story - people choose a card at random, have it explained, then talk about any connections that makes with their life. Very creative.

Madeleine Bunting weighs in in support of faith schools, arguing that a strong ethos is vital to a succesful school, and faith schools find it easier to articulate this than secular schools:

Edward Skidelsky argues that both the secular and sacred "languages"
underpinning the values of self-discipline and responsibility have been badly
eroded. Secular humanism has not found a popular ethical narrative to replace
faith; parents, uncertain how to bring up their children with a sense of
responsibility for others, resort to school Christianity.

Ekklesia, whose Simon Barrow is one of the 'Accord' founders, has a roundup today responding to some of the criticisms and calling for debate, rather than dismissal. I still don't see how Accords position holds together, but if they're opposed by the National Secular Society then perhaps they have got some of it right.

Former SAS man and novelist Andy McNab is doing the rounds highlighting the issue of mental illness in former soldiers. I've avoided the US elections on this blog, but Oliver Kamm discusses Sarah Palins religious beliefs, whether it's right to call her a 'creationist', and what that means anyway.

Looking ahead, the Big Bang happens again on Wednesday, when the 'Large Hadron Collider' starts firing atoms at one another at mind-boggling speeds. The hope is to learn more about subatomic particles, how the universe began, discover new dimensions, and be finished in time for tea and cakes at 3. This Q&A section from the BBC guide makes a bit of sense of it. Here's Rob Bell on subatomic particles and the Trinity

Finally, Andy Murray, what a player.

Unbelievable

I can see why people might vote to create subhuman embryos to research serious diseases, even though there are no fruits to this research yet, and plenty of other therapies (e.g. adult stem cells) are proving really fruitful. However if in 10 years the cures for Alzheimers and MND that have been dangled like carrots over MP's don't materialise, I hope the government of the time has the nous to revisit the legislation. (Kevin Davis, for example, supports the idea of a 'sunset clause' which writes this into the legislation itself.)

I can understand a parent doing everything to save their own child, though to know for the whole of your life that you were only conceived for the sake of your brother, not just because you were wanted for your own sake - I'm not quite sure what that does to you. Ok it was true in a way for Jesus, but he was already around before he was born.

I fail to understand why the abortion limit has to stay at 24 weeks, when babies born before this date are surviving. Why should the law lag behind science in this case, whilst in the rest of the embryology bill it's doing the opposite. Most other European countries have limits roughly 10 weeks below this.

And the cobblers about the 'right' of parents to have a child without a father , well words fail me. The law is supposed to protect the vulnerable, not sponsor social experiments which are already failing. But we've already fed our kids into the mincer in so many other ways. Hey, Labour, leave those kids alone....



Update: this mornings' news headline on 5 live was the Chelsea and Man U fans arriving in Moscow. Never mind the ethics, feel the football.

Abortion and the Embryology Bill

Most of what I want to say is said perfectly well by Cranmer, who also posts this from the Spectator:

Every so often a letter arrives in a columnist's mailbag that throws a hand grenade right into the middle of a long-held view. That happened to me last week following my article in which I urged caution before lowering the time limit on abortion from 24 to 20 weeks.

The letter came from a Registered General Nurse who works on a gynaecological ward that regularly deals with late terminations. She apologised for the "unpleasant and upsetting aspects" of her letter but felt her points needed to be said. I agree, and felt it also warranted a wider audience.Apparently, at 20 weeks, tablets can be given to kill the foetus prior to expulsion. But at 24 weeks it is sufficiently strong to survive the treatment and many are born with signs of life. "It is all too easy for people to picture a clump of cells or mush. People don't want to picture perfectly-formed miniature babies and I don't blame them, I was once the same," says Kay. "But having cut the umbilical cord on one who survived, then had to watch him gasp for breath for ten minutes on the side of a sink before he died, that sight will haunt me for ever."

The reason given for that particular termination was that the mother's current boyfriend had a toddler son who might get jealous of a new baby. It took them 21 weeks to come to that conclusion. Kay adds: "I know of two nurses who went off work with stress as a result of their experience with late terminations. I suffered horrendous nightmares and guilt for months. The guilt comes from the fact that you as a nurse cut the umbilical cord and, as dramatic as it sounds, we felt like murderers."

Kay doesn't believe in hounding or criminalising women who have to make this extremely tough decision owing to severe disability. Her misgivings are reserved solely for those who use termination as a form of contraception. Women who, up until last week, I hoped were few and far between. But, according to Kay, these terminations far outstrip those carried out because of fetal abnormality or genuine emotional distress. She says: "There are girls who come back five or six times demanding terminations and they get them. How can someone coming for their fifth termination be allowed to keep saying it is due to emotional distress? I should imagine in ten years' time the emotional distress of being allowed to have five terminations is going to take its toll. What is going on?"

On the Bill, there are 4 short videos exploring the 4 main ethical issues, posted online by CCFON, with Evan Harris putting 1 side of the debate and Dr. Peter Saunders of the Christian Medical Fellowship responding.

Animal-human hybrids (3m59s) - http://www.ccfon.org/mediacentre.php?avid=81&avap=1
Abortion 24 week limit (3m44s) - http://www.ccfon.org/mediacentre.php?avid=82&avap=1
Saviour Siblings (2m05s) - http://www.ccfon.org/mediacentre.php?avid=83&avap=1
Role of the Father in IVF (1m50s) - http://www.ccfon.org/mediacentre.php?avid=84&avap=1