Recently in Faith Category

When I was younger I had a tape of Larry Norman's Only Visiting This Planet. A friend had made a tape of the LP for me. I loved it. Edgy, folky, Christian music. I lost the tape, or wore it out, and never was able to get a hold of a quality copy again.

Norman passed away Sunday:

Christian music legend Larry Norman died Sunday of heart failure, according to his brother Charles Norman. He was 60.
Norman, a blonde, long-haired rocker who is often called the father of Christian rock music, was a giant in the Christian music industry, said Chris Willman, senior music writer for Entertainment Weekly.

Here is a YouTube of the classic Why Don't You Look Into Jesus:

Lyrics after the jump

Source.

Heather MacDonald is sick and tired of it. She has decided to speak out and be proud. No longer willing to tolerate the snide remarks and the arrogant condescension, she wants the world to know: she is conservative and atheist and she isn't afraid to talk about it.

There is only one little problem with this purportedly brave stand, it is based on little more than ignorance, arrogance, and a complete lack of historical perspective. I submit that if Ms. MacDonald would like to be taken seriously that perhaps she should study the issue a bit more before she sounds off in public and continues to damage her reputation as an intelligent and thoughtful writer.

If this little dust up on the right interests you, read on.

Fascinating article over at The New Republic by Thomas Nagel. Nagel's jumping off point is Richard Dawkins latest book The God Delusion but the essay is really a thought piece about the merits of the argument from design and a naturalistic or Darwinian approach or about life's big question: "the question of what explains the existence and character of the astounding natural order we can observe in the universe we inhabit."

Nagel covers how Dawkins lays out the argument:

On one side is what he calls "the God Hypothesis," namely that "there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us." On the other side is Dawkins's alternative view: "any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution. Creative intelligences, being evolved, necessarily arrive late in the universe, and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it." In Dawkins's view, the ultimate explanation of everything, including evolution, may be found in the laws of physics, which explain the laws of chemistry, which explain the existence and the functioning of the self-replicating molecules that underlie the biological process of genetic mutation and natural selection.

But he goes on to get down to the fundamental conflict between these to arguments or world views:

All explanations come to an end somewhere. The real opposition between Dawkins's physicalist naturalism and the God hypothesis is a disagreement over whether this end point is physical, extensional, and purposeless, or mental, intentional, and purposive. On either view, the ultimate explanation is not itself explained. The God hypothesis does not explain the existence of God, and naturalistic physicalism does not explain the laws of physics.

Those interested in the intersection of faith and science, might want to check out the Speaking of Faith website and listen in on their recent broadcast on Quarks and Creation. Here is the teaser:

Science and religion are often pitted against one another; but how do they complement, rather than contradict, one another? We learn how one man applies the deepest insights of modern physics to think about how the world fundamentally works, and how the universe might make space for prayer.

The discussion is with John Polkinghorne, the Canon Theologian of Liverpool Cathedral in England and author of Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion. I have a couple of Polkinghorne's books but haven't managed to read them. At one point I wanted to do some serious reading in the field faith and science, but like so many of my plans it faded away. Instead I lurch from book to book with little planning or forethought . . .

Anyway, I plan to listen to the podcast myself and thought others might enjoy it.

If God's Debris was an interesting, if not particularly powerful, thought experiment, its sequel can only be described as simplistic and absurd. The book has an incredibly implausible plot, caricatures instead of characters, sophomoric and unfounded philosophy dressed up as profound insight, and a Utopian ending no more plausible than the plot that leads up to it. In short, I didn't like.

The Religion War finds the deliveryman turned Avatar from God's Debris facing a world bent on destroying itself. It seems the world has been divided up between the Christians and the Muslims. The Christian side is led by General Cruz, a man with a gigantic ego unburdened with doubt who believes he is being used by God to destroy those who threaten his way of life. The Islamic side is led by the terrorist al-Zee who also believes his God is using him to save the world from the Infidels.

Our hero needs to prevent these two leaders from destroying the world. General Cruz is planning to use his superior firepower to exterminate the Islamic side while al Zee is planning on destroying the Christians with biological weapons planted in every major city while he hides in his underground bunker.

For those who, despite my reaction, do want to read the book I won't spoil the ending. But the book is filled with ridiculously implausible events as the Avatar runs around using near superhuman powers to try and stop the two leaders from killing everyone.

As I have noted here before, I am a sucker for quirky little books about faith in the modern world. I am intrigued by unique approaches to thinking about faith in a culture in many ways dominated by science and a materialistic world view (or at least the dominant elite culture). Allegorical novellas, thought experiments, fictional dialogs, you name it, I am prone to giving them a try (For previous examples see here, here, and here.

I stumbled upon just such a book while browsing at Half Price Books the other day: The Religion War by Scott Adams. The Religion War is a follow up to God's Debris which I happened to already own. I vaguely recall reading God's Debris but I decided to re-read it in order to have it fresh in my mind for the sequel. Both books are fictional "thought experiments" by the creator of the Dilbert cartoon series aimed at challenging the readers thinking about the world.

God's Debris is more a dialog than an actual story. A young deliveryman delivers a package to an elderly gentleman in San Fransisco and out of curiosity starts up a conversation. Soon it becomes clear that this isn't just your ordinary lonely old man but a potentially life changing mentor. The rest of the book is just their conversation. The old man proceeds to explain the meaning of life and the key to the universe.

If you don't want to read "spoilers" stop reading, if you can't wait to find out the answers click below.

Quote of the day:

The original aim of the liberal philosophers was to remove the "high" questions, the important-but-unresolvable questions - what is virtue? is Jesus Christ the Son of God? where do we go when we die? etc. - from the political realm, where they had caused so much trouble, and into the private and personal sphere. Politics henceforth would focus on lower matters, and be more peacable because of it. The difficulty, of course, is that over time liberalism lost sight of the fact that the high questions are high, and the low questions low, and came to believe that because everyone could agree, say, that you should respect your neighbor's property and avoid killing your enemy whenever possible, these were the most important questions facing humanity, and nobody - not even essayists and intellectuals - should sweat the other, harder-to-answer stuff. In early liberalism, governments weren't supposed to take positions on Christ's divinity, because the question was too important to be adjudicated by the state; in late liberalism, writers for the Times Book Review aren't supposed to take positions on Christ's divinity, because the question isn't important enough to worry over.

Thought provoking article over at Tech Central Station by Frederick Turner:
Divine Evolution. Turner lays out what he sees as one of the big picture problems:

One important question remains relatively unexplored. Indeed, the value of the debate may be precisely the raising of such questions. The question is this: if, in the opinion of many of the wisest thinkers on the issue, there is no contradiction between the idea of a creative divinity and the theory of evolution, how can this be so? If evolution, as 99% at least of all scientists who have studied biology agree, is quite capable of producing all the lifeforms of the world without outside intervention in the process, what need is there for God?

The awkward issue here is what some cosmologists call the "goldilocks" problem. The initial parameters of the universe -- the speed of light, Planck's constant, the number of families of quarks, the electron volt constant, Avogadro's number, the gravitational constant, the rate of curvature of the universe, the strength of the weak and strong nuclear forces, etc, etc -- had to be "just right" for the universe to have produced life and minds. If, like the porridge or the beds of the three bears, the universe is too hot or too cold, too big or too small, we would not be here to observe it.

[. . .]
This is the problem for anti-design thinkers: though evolution, once it is set in motion, mightn't require further design, design certainly looks like the least implausible explanation for the beginning of the process itself.

But the theological problem for the Intelligent Design advocate is just as awkward. What would we say about a creator who started a universe with the evident intention of producing life and intelligence, but who needed to step in every few billion years, or every few seconds, to fix the process, rewrite the program, give the actors new lines, touch up the brushstrokes of the painting, seize the conductor's baton and introduce a new melody? Wouldn't we say that such a creator was an incompetent artist, that if he knew what he was doing he wouldn't be botching it up all the time and having to come in to shore up the building or fire a midcourse correction burn?

This conception might be called natural providence, and it has some appealing features from a theological point of view. Whereas classical linear cause and effect "pushes" events into happening, enforces them, attractors "pull" or invite them to happen; what happens next is only one of a number of possible outcomes for the system at that moment -- in effect, choice is built into the physical world. This view of things suggests that if there are divine intentions working themselves out, they are incarnate within nature itself. It brings the will of God into the most intimate recesses of our bodies. And yet it does not constrain belief in God -- a hugely important criterion in the Bible, at least, since we must be free to choose to believe. For we can always dismiss the whole process as merely a natural phenomenon.

For those of you so inclined, I would appreciate some prayer. A close relative is spiraling out of control and I am at a loss as to what to do. It is in God's hands - as it always was despite my lack of faith - but the pain and sadness lingers; and I will confess, a little guilt.

Perhaps some day I will explain in more detail but for now just pray. God will know what you mean.