February 18th 2008
One of the characters in this video is displaying some serious spiritual naivete, a dangerous disconnection from reality. My question for you is, which one, and why?
(The clip is 2 minutes, 38 seconds long. Use this alternate link if the video fails to display properly–it hasn’t always been behaving today. I have another question specifically for followers of Christ to discuss at my Strategic Christian blog.)
Hat tip to Joe Carter
February 18th 2008
“Not tonight, dear, I have to reboot.”
Artificial-intelligence researcher David Levy projected a mock image on a screen of a smiling bride in a wedding dress holding hands with a short robot groom. “Why not marry a robot? Look at this happy couple,” he said to a chuckling crowd…. In his 2007 book, Love and Sex with Robots, Levy contends that sex, love and even marriage between humans and robots are coming soon and, perhaps, are even desirable.
Related:
… and any article you see on same-sex “marriage.”
February 17th 2008
Science and Christianity–are they at odds with each other? Is science the kingly road to knowledge, and is religion a matter of mere belief? Do they speak to each other, or do they occupy (as Gould said) non-overlapping magisteria? To the heart of the point: can a Christian really take her faith seriously in this scientific age? Can a scientifically-minded person take religion seriously?
I’m convinced the answers to these questions all point in positive directions for both Christianity and science, properly understood. My convictions come in large part from J.P. Moreland’s Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical Investigation. First published in 1989, it is the best non-specialist’s overview of these issues I have yet seen. There is a 1999 edition available, but my dog-eared earlier version–which though it predates the term “Intelligent Design” remains relevant to all today’s issues–has been my standby.
I run the risk of contradicting myself by my own actions here, for I want to persuade you to buy the book, study it, and absorb it; for a full, extended treatment is well worth your time. Yet I am also going to blog from the book, in a series beginning with this post. If I cannot convey the range and depth that the book can, I can at least raise some issues for discussion and whet your appetite for more.
Moreland begins by asking what is the definition of science. That’s certainly still relevant: Is Intelligent Design science? How would we know? What characteristics must it have to qualify as such? What is it about ID that causes so many to declare it is not science, and do these characteristics really disqualify it? Ideally, there would be some descriptors of science that, taken together, would clearly mark out what it is and does, and exclude other fields of study.
An early “creation science” trial, the McLean case in 1989, shows that the answer is more elusive than many think. Judge William R. Overton wrote in his opinion,
“More precisely, the essential characteristics of science are: 1) It is guided by natural law; 2) It has to be explanatory by natural law; 3) It is testable against the empirical world; 4) Its conclusions are tentative, i.e., are not necessarily the final word; and 5) It is falsifiable.”
Presumably what meets these criteria is science, and what does not meet them is not. But the first one is ambiguous: does it mean that science seeks to explain by natural law? If so, it is redundant with (2). Does it mean “motivated by a desire to find a natural explanation”? Moreland reminds non-scientists may have the same goal, for example philosophers seeking to find a natural explanation in evolution or the brain for morality. On the other hand Carl Linnaeus’s (1707-1778) pioneering work in taxonomy, while clearly science, was “motivated and guided by his belief that no natural explanation was available for the existence and nature of living organisms.”
Mathematicians often refer to non-supernatural laws of mathematics and logic, yet their work is not science. And scientists often appeal to brute fact, not law, as explanations: the Big Bang and various physical constants being examples. (The discovery, after Moreland wrote this edition of the fine-tuning of these constants adds extra interest to that point.)
Do Overton’s points (1) and (2) mean that science only deals with “the world of physical things having only physical properties that are part of one spatio-temporal system?” If so, it’s not at all clear that psychology is a science. Whether it deals with just physical properties and events is a matter of considerable controversy. If it were someday settled that thoughts, feelings, morality, the unconscious, etc. are not just physical, would that mean that every psychologist in history had been a non-scientist? Hardly.
Overton says that science involves empirical testability, apparently meaning that theories may be subjected to observational confirmation or disconfirmation. But theories may be empirically equivalent, for example, certain competing views of quantum phenomena, or (some forms of) theistic evolution compared to naturalistic evolution. More crucially, there is no such thing as observation independent of theory, so testability just by observation alone is impossible. Further, other disciplines appeal to observation: history, literary scholarship, and philosophy.
Is science defined by being tentative? Since Moreland wrote this, we have been treated to the Michael Ruse’s terribly tentative shout that “Evolution is fact, FACT, FACT!” Apparently evolution is not science. Moreland asks, “Was Newton tentative about his belief in the existence of forces? Would any contemporary scientist seriously question the theory that blood circulates?” And is science the only discipline that uses a principle of tentativeness? “Christian theologians are often tentative, that is, open to new evidence about a number of issues ranging from interpretations of specific passages to the inerrancy of the Bible and the existence of God.”
Finally, is science necessarily falsifiable? Many of us are skeptical of evolution’s falsifiability. Evolutionists say that one good fossil anachronism would be sufficient to falsify it. But they remain impervious to failed predictions, like Darwin’s prediction that the fossil record’s gaps would be largely filled in, or that there would be at least one observable instance of a new structure or function evolving under laboratory or field conditions. Moreland if extremely helpful on this.
The nature of falsifiability in science is often difficult to clarify. For example, seldom if ever are individual scientific propositions tested in isolation from other propositions or theories…. let H stand for [a given hypothesis], and let Ci – Cn be the various auxiliary assumptions involved. Then these are related to the experimental observations O in the following way:
(H & Ci & Cj & . . . Cn) –> O
___________Not - O__________
Therefore, Not - (H & Ci & Cj & . . . Cn)
The experiment shows that H or Ci or Cj or … Cn is mistaken. Which is it? Falsifiability is not always as simple as it seems. I learned in high school that the famed Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887 proved that light does not propagate through an ether. In fact, the ether theory lasted a long time after Michelson-Morley as scientists adjusted their auxiliary hypotheses to fit. It took Einstein to finally settle the question; and it took several years before Einstein’s theories were observationally vindicated. They’re still working on the cosmological constant, in fact.
Other disciplines can point to falsifiability as part of their criteria. Historians’ theories can be falsified by new documents. Christianity could be falsified by the discovery of Jesus’ bones, though identifying them would be hugely problematic. Moreland clarifies,
Now, world views can be falsified in principle, at least some of them can . . . but doing so is very difficult, because their epistemic support is so multifaceted. Broad research programs in science are like this as well, and they are not unscientific for that reason.
All of Judge Overton’s criteria fall short. And so do several other definitions of science Moreland offers as examples. Now, lest you think this conclusion is just the anti-faith position of some Christian apologist, in fact Darwinist Michael Ruse came to the same conclusion in the 1996 edition of But Is It Science, the volume he edited in the wake of the McLean case. There is an updated edition of this book available, too, but it’s very new and I have not read it yet. It’s unlikely to say anything different, for philosophers have agreed that the demarcation problem–finding what clearly demarcates science from other disciplines–has no one simple solution.
In the end, Moreland, one of whose degrees is in chemistry, is not saying we can never tell science when we see it. He’s saying that the charge, “It’s not scientific” may not be as clear-cut as we have thought. More than that, though, he’s laying a careful groundwork to begin his investigation into Christianity and the nature of science. We’ll continue to follow him through that investigation in future blog posts. On the way, we’ll also take a short detour into a more recent court’s definition of science.
Related, February 26, 2008: On Blogging a Philosophy Book
February 17th 2008
Gene Nichols resigned as president of the College of William and Mary–just five miles or so from my office–this week. In his resignation letter he listed four things that he thought had led to College’s decision not to renew his contract for next year, which in turn led to his stepping down. The letter includes:
First, as is widely known, I altered the way a Christian cross was displayed in a public facility, on a public university campus, in a chapel used regularly for secular College events — both voluntary and mandatory — in order to help Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and other religious minorities feel more meaningfully included as members of our broad community. The decision was likely required by any effective notion of separation of church and state. And it was certainly motivated by the desire to extend the College’s welcome more generously to all. We are charged, as state actors, to respect and accommodate all religions, and to endorse none. The decision did no more.
[From Statement from Gene Nichol: Feb. 12 | University Relations]
A teacher at church this morning said that in effect, Nichols had decided the cross’s presence in the chapel was illegal, exclusivistic, and odious to other groups. (There’s more on that controversy here.) What strikes me is that he did not even address whether the cross represents any actual reality. Whether the Cross of Christ speaks of any truth seems to have become irrelevant. It didn’t even enter into his decision.
Facts and values continue to be separated by miles.
February 16th 2008
We saw in earlier posts in this series that Jesus Christ lived to show us the way to live, died to rescue us from the trouble we have gotten into by not living right, and rose again to defeat death and to give new life. Christians believe in eternal life for those accept it from God, but just to say life never ends is not enough. Life in Christ begins the moment one receives it from Him.
And this takes us back full circle to where we started. The question was whether we really need Christ for day-to-day living:
The thing that bugs me about this is that it’s so anti-humanistic. Humility I can understand, but, to me, this is perverse.
When people achieve difficult objectives, they ought to get credit for doing so.
I hate the way Christianity tells people they’re nothing, makes them feel bad, then offers them a convenient promise to soothe their soul. And to top it off, Christianity takes credit for any success those people have at solving their own problems.
Sure, we can solve many of our own problems. We can (many of us) keep jobs, take care of our homes, have families and enjoy them, deal with pain in our lives, contribute to a better world. Not all of us have that capacity, but certainly many do who are not Christians, and not all believers are successful with all these things.
So yes, it’s possible to make it on your own, with discipline and some good luck (your genes, your socio-educational background, and the opportunities you meet). And you can get credit for that, which I would not deny.
Credit is a key issue, though. To give oneself the credit for where one is in life misses most of the point. The Bible asks, “What do you have that you were not given?” The good luck I mentioned above–how much of it can you take credit for? Suppose you’re a college graduate–did you make it there because you’re smarter or better than the farmer in Thailand, or the inner-city youth with no hope of college? Even if you could say yes to that, how did you come to be smarter or better? What do you have that you were not given?
The Christian life takes a radically different stance on human accomplishment than this. We take all of it, even our own successes, as grounds for giving thanks to God. We understand the mess we were in. We understand the sacrifice He made for us. We know we are dependent on God.
Is this “anti-humanistic”? Well, we also know that God created us in an incredibly privileged position of relationship with Him. We have dignity from being in His image; dignity that far outshines what evolution would say we are. We know that we are loved, and that love has real meaning–it’s not just evo-psych and brain chemicals. We know that among the things God has given us, there is personal responsibility for our choices, and that our choices matter for eternity. The most basic choice of all, of course, is what will we do with what we know about God?
Sure, it’s paradoxical–it’s both humbling and exalted. The Bible even says, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”
In the meantime, there is considerable evidence that this paradoxical life is a good one: that humbling ourselves before Christ leads to greater emotional, relational, and spiritual health, and to success in other terms besides. Perverse? Anti-humanistic? I don’t think so. For me, it’s a matter of recognizing what is true, and enjoying the love of God as I live in His light.
Part of a Series: What Christ Does For Us
Related: How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions. This post elicited a short question, to which I’m writing a very long answer in the form of this series.
February 14th 2008
There have been complaints about overzealous proselytization–even abuse–in the U.S. military. Brian Trapp comments:
The story portrays this to be a widespread phenomenon. For example, the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation claims to have 6,800 accounts of this sort of abuse at the hands of Christians in the military. But a Pentagon spokesperson quoted says that there have been only 100 formal complaints filed over the past two years. Let’s crunch the numbers here. If the higher number is correct (and I do not concede for a moment that it is), then of the 2.88 million members of the U. S. military, less than a quarter of 1 percent of them have suffered abuse at the hands of these dastardly fundamentalists. If the lower number is correct, then it’s about .0035 percent. You will forgive me if I find the offended specialist’s remarks about those who want to “create a fundamentalist Christian theocracy” in the military a bit over-dramatic.
Meanwhile, from the newspaper in the next town over from here:
The shortage in Virginia mirrors the National Guard’s overall shortfall of 350 chaplains out of the 700 it is authorized, said Chaplain Randall Dolinger, spokesman for the Army Chief of Chaplains Office in Arlington. The Army Reserve has filled only 220 slots of the 650 allotted, he said.
The wartime needs of an expanding military are a big reason for the shortage, Dolinger said. Active-duty units without their own chaplain often request a Guard chaplain to fill the post when deployed overseas.
Guard chaplains not only accept those assignments, but are “double-volunteering” - accepting deployment more frequently to make up for the chaplain shortage, Dolinger said.
You gotta wonder if there’s a connection…
February 14th 2008
Christian Carnival CCXI (211): The Valentine to God Edition, is now posted at Brain Cramps for God.
February 14th 2008
Geoff Pullum of Language Log tries to unwrap what Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams really said about Sharia law in Britain:
Under the headline “Rowan Williams says Sharia law unavoidable” the Telegraph newspaper says:
The adoption of some aspects of Islamic Sharia law in Britain “seems unavoidable”, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said.
Did he say that? No, he didn’t. Language Log has gone to the text of his lecture to see what he really said.
[From Language Log: The archbishop, the law, and the press]
Their conclusion: He didn’t say what the press said he did. It’s considerably (and I mean considerably) more complex than that. Language Log’s reason for jumping into the discussion was partly because Dr. Williams’ language needed deciphering in several places. (”Got that clear and sharp in your mind?” Pullum asks at one point, tongue firmly in cheek. “Probably not. It is a bit suboptimal syntactically.”)
Dr. Williams was not just capitulating to Islam, as the press implied he was doing:
The newspapers’ behavior (that of The Sun particularly) was abominable. That of Dr Williams was merely a little out of touch with what the prevailing culture was likely to make of things.
Language Logger Bill Poser followed up with a shorter analysis, including:
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent mention of the role that Shari’a law might play in Great Britain has aroused considerable controversy, in part because many people did not understand what he said, as Geoff explained. I too would oppose in the strongest terms the general application of Shari’a law. This does not mean, however, that voluntary recourse to Shari’a law ought not to be permitted to those who wish to avail themselves of it. This is really no different from the use of other alternative means of dispute resolution, such as arbitration. In fact, there is precedent for the use of religious courts in the United States for the resolution of non-religious disputes.
I recommend both articles to you. Neither author at Language Log endorses Sharia law, and neither do I. At the same time, neither author at Language Log endorses media distortion of facts. Neither do I.
February 12th 2008
From the Washington Times, via Family Scholars Blog, comes this news on portable polygamy:
The British government has cleared the way for husbands with multiple wives to claim welfare benefits for all their partners, fueling growing controversy over the role of Islamic Shariah law in the nation’s cultural and legal framework…. a panel of four government departments has decided that all the wives of a Muslim man may collect state benefits, provided that the marriages took place in a country where multiple spouses are legal.
And from the NY Times, a report on portable same-sex “marriage:”
A New York appellate court ruled Friday that valid out-of-state marriages of same-sex couples must be legally recognized in New York, just as the law recognizes those of heterosexual couples solemnized elsewhere. Lawyers for both sides said the ruling applied to all public and private employers in the state.
So the trend is that whatever “marriage” you can find someone to approve somewhere, has to be approved even where such a “marriage” is illegal. The polygamy issue calls to mind a difficult question that sometimes arises in missions: what to do when a man with many wives converts to Christianity. Obviously the Biblical standard is one wife with one husband, but for a second, third, etc. wife to be thrown out can place incredible hardships on her. I’ve been aware of discussion on this in the past, but I’m not current on how that issue typically gets resolved, or if there’s one preferred solution.
Nevertheless, this trend toward approving in one place whatever is approved anywhere else is destabilizing, and especially in the case of same-sex “marriage,” it encourages immoral relationships. It’s not a healthy direction to be heading.
February 11th 2008
This is completely off the usual topic, but I just scanned and uploaded an article (PDF, 1 MByte) I wrote in 1994 for The Toastmaster: “Loud and Clear: Microphone Technique for Public Speaking.” It might be useful to someone.
