Einstein said, "

Evolution Impossible Without Creation, Asserts Author Michael Ebifegha
PR Web
TORONTO (PRWEB) October 09, 2012

Einstein said, “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”

The debate between evolutionism and creationism is a lively and contentious one, and in his new book Creation or Evolution? Origin of Species in Light of Science’s Limitations and Historical Records (published by iUniverse) author Michael Ebifegha argues that it may be past time to put the argument aside.

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/10/prweb9993261.htm

I'm just trying to work out why this has been flagged, presumably as spam. Elaine099 is an active poster in the "Let's Talk Religion" group, and there is another current thread on Einstein so opening a new thread on a specific aspect of his thought hardly seems inappropriate. Or am I missing something?

Edited to add: Now the flags have disappeared. Magic.

So, a creationist without relevant expertise writes a book attempting to assert that the theory of evolution by natural selection is "unable" to explain the diversity of life.

Meanwhile, the near universal consensus of people who have relevant expertise is that the theory of evolution by natural selection is perfectly adequate to the task asked of it.

And we're supposed to pay attention to the creationist why?

So it's another creationist text, this one self-published. So?

Sorry, John... the other thread is so long and convoluted ...and I like to occasionally toss out a handful of peanuts ...to see if the monkeys will still come out of the trees.

But in reality I do wonder why people on both sides of the question are so vehement ? At this point in the game, other than for the purpose of argument, who cares ? ...or better than that : why does anyone care to argue about what another person believes or doesn't believe?

In this post 9/11 time, rather than building on animosities over something that can not be known, we here in the west might better be spending our efforts to jointly ensure that our right to believe how ever we choose to never comes under serious threat of being removed from us.

I suspect it has something to do with it being a press release.

Nothing more likely to re-energise an argument than saying it should be put aside. You've got to get those last few killings in before the peace treaty descends.

>5 Elaine099: No need to apologise to me, Elaine - I'm the one supporting your new thread! Initially two people flagged it, which is what I queried, but then the flags disappeared.

~2

Not magic, John. This flagging thing is just sort of a reflex for some people. They see a view that they don't like, FLAG IT. Some of these people can think, and thus sometimes reconsider, but it is unusual when all the flags disappear. How many were there?

>9 lawecon: Two.

5: "why does anyone care to argue about what another person believes or doesn't believe?"

Because when creationists insist that public school curricula not teach accurate science, it hurts our students and our country's future. I will not stand for bad education.

Honestly, I'm not sure that's really it. I think it's more the inanity, indignity and injustice of it, and the sense that if this is allowed, what else will be? I can't take too seriously the direct effects here.

>9 lawecon: & 10

I counter-flagged, which would have got rid of one of them. Perhaps there was another counter-flag rather than a reconsideration.

If I like a post that been flagged it's just sort of a reflex for me to counter-flag it.

Spread the word. Counter-flag more.

>13 jbbarret: Thanks, jb. Funnily enough I defended the post but it never occurred to me to counter-flag. Lesson learned for the future.

Further to #13

I typed "If I like a post" I counter-flag it.
I should have added that I counter-flag if I feel that flagging looks inappropriate, in the way that lawecon suggests in #9.

I think that I have seen somewhere here that it takes two counterflags to remove a flag.

Robert

>3 StormRaven: / >4 prosfilaes:

I had hoped to inspire some conversation about the headline : Einstein said, “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.” But so far no one has gone there.

So let me ask : Is science without religion lame or is religion without science blind ?

Or maybe : Did Einstein really say that ? If he did say it, one would have to guess that he was not an atheist. And if he did say it, was he a deist or a theist ?

Or maybe some of our philosophers will comment on the comment of Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy talking about Creationism - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/creationism/

> 17

It's interesting, in that many people would probably run the metaphor the other direction, giving motive power to science (as technology) and vision to religion. I'd tend to prefer the assignments in the quote, though.

Is science without religion lame

No. That was easy.

is religion without science blind

Religion is blind with or without science.

>20 StormRaven:

That is your belief and your opinion and not good science at all !!!

21: Define "good science".

Science without religion works just fine.

Religion provides no actual answers to anything. Just the illusion of answers.

Belief and opinion are the stuff of religion not of science.

I rather suspect that Einstein had some serious science behind the statement of his opinion that “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”

But no one has confirmed that Einstein did in fact say that.

#23: Belief and opinion are the stuff of religion not of science.

Most beliefs and opinions are the stuff of neither.

I rather suspect that Einstein had some serious science behind the statement of his opinion that “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”

Do you know what science is? It's a systematic way of making highly probable assertions about the material world. That statement is simply out of its bounds, and Einstein saying it does not change that, which I'm sure he understood.

But no one has confirmed that Einstein did in fact say that.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein has it listed as a real quote.

24> You said that science is "a systematic way of making highly probable assertions about the material world"...

Something else that Einstein said went something like this... "it is not so much that I am so much smarter than everyone else but that I stay with a problem so much longer than any one else. (I'll check for the exact quote if it is there.)

So in saying that he was speaking outside of his scientific bounds with making such a statement as we are talking about, does that make Einstein a deist, a theist and thus a creationist - since all religions seem to have a mythic creation story?

Or could he still be an atheist and make that kind of statement,..?

Einstein said,

"Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious."

...from Wikiquote > tks to prosfilaes for the site address.

The 'science without religion is lame' quote can be found in context about half-way down this webpage. I have verified the quotation in Einstein's Ideas and Opinions using Google Books.

Einstein spends the immediately succeeding paragraphs proposing that teachers of religion should have the stature to give up the idea of a personal God, which is the main source of present-day conflict between religion and science; they will thereby find (true) religion, refined from the dross of its anthropomorphism, ennobled and made more profound by scientific knowledge. He refers appreciatively in this context to the book Belief and Action by the British politician Herbert Samuel.

(I have no strong view whether that nails him as theist, deist, or atheist. If anything it appears to me compatible with forms of each.)

Belief and opinion are the stuff of religion not of science.

Actually, you're wrong on that. As Feynman said during his famous physics lectures when describing how science works, first you start with a guess about how the world works. An opinion. Then you test that opinion.

In 1838 John Herschel figured out how much energy strikes the Earth from the Sun. He used an umbrella, a can of water, and a thermometer. Exactly what did religion provide to his work? The burden is on you to establish exactly how religion prevents science from being "lame". Or that it even offers anything at all to science.

I rather suspect that Einstein had some serious science behind the statement of his opinion that “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”

Why do you think that? Because he's Einstein? That's just an argument from authority, and that is both a logical fallacy and something that is definitively not "good science".

I suspect he didn't. Einstein, like most other people, said a lot of things in his lifetime that weren't supported by "serious science". Given that he didn't "show his work", we don't have to take his statements seriously at all. What was the "serious science" behind Einstein's dismissal of quantum mechanics by saying "God doesn't play dice with the universe"? He turned out to be dead wrong on that, so why would you think he was right on other unsupported statements?

I don't think you understand science even a little bit.

28> Holy-Schmoly, StormRaven, you have certainly told us all where you believe I fit ...and where you believe that you fit.

...and where Einstein fits as well.

27> Thank you, rwb24. Einstein was maybe well ahead of his time ...being all of the above and none of the above ...and at the same time too.

29: What you manifestly don't seem to understand is that in science there is no privileged authority. Einstein's claims in science are regarded as being correct because they were demonstrated them to be correct. He didn't just write down his General and Special Theories of Relativity and get accolades. Both theories had to be tested, and hold up when tested. Which they were, and they did.

Now, when Einstein makes statements that have not been demonstrated to be true by supporting evidence, those statements get no special deference just because they came out of his mouth. He is just another guy issuing musings. Given that he didn't even explain what he meant by "blind" or "lame" there's no particular reason to take his comment seriously.

Thus far, you've steadfastly refused to actually answer my question: what exactly do you think religion provides for science that prevents science from being "lame"?

I wonder about the initial premise in the OP, that the debate between evolution and creationism is lively and contentious.

At what level is there a debate? Who is debating?

Ask rrp, Richard.

And Elaine, depending on your assumptions about religion, there's nothing to indicate that Einstein's statements about religion indicate a belief in God.

33: There is no serious debate among scientists. There are a handful of people on the fringes, but their numbers are vanishingly small, and no real scientist takes therm seriously.

Why? Because they don't actually provide any support for their claims. Most of the time, they don't even do their own research, they just latch on to someone else's research and try to misrepresent it to prop up their own empty arguments.

The fringe scientists you mentioned - are they arguing over the basic premises of evolution - that life comes from non life and that life forms new species through variation and selection? Or is the argument over more specialist and technical differences?

Lamarkian still perhaps?

Well, depends how fringe you want to go. Try here.

And I was relatively serious about asking rrp. As he's the person on-fora that's made the particular issue something of a hobby-horse, he might be the best one to explain to you exactly what problems he sees with evolution.

36: You can find fringe advocates for any number of positions. Many of the loudest creationist voices in the "evolution creation debate" (such as it is) don't even understand the basics of the science they are attacking, and say silly things like "The Second Law of Thermodynamics disproves evolution".

You can find people on the fringe who dispute the science supporting Big Bang, stellar formation, planetary formation, abiogenesis, the theory of evolution by natural selection, set theory, and any number of other topics. You can find people who think Noah's Flood formed the Grand Canyon, that humans lived with dinosaurs, and that dinosaurs could breathe fire (seriously). You can probably even find some Lamarckists. And so on.

None of their claims hold up to even the slightest bit of scrutiny, and none of them have any kind of scientific leg to stand on.

Well, I was specifically intending to ask about fringe scientists in the field, published. I suppose I was asking about fringe biology research. You are talking about non scientists, or at least non specialists arguing from a non scientific direction.

I don't think that rrp argues against the basic premises of evolution, perhaps the philosophical considerations one might apply to evolutionary science.

Maybe I am wrong on this, but I did not think rrp has a problem with facts of evolution per se - life from non life and variation/selection.

ETA
I think I did not read your (SR's) comment 35 closely enough. You made reference to "no real scientist takes them seriously." I had thought you were referring to fringe scientific positions against evolution by biology specialists. I was asking about those fringe scientific positions, but I think I was asking about a point you had not actually made.

I don't think that rrp argues against the basic premises of evolution, perhaps the philosophical considerations one might apply to evolutionary science.

That's partly right. The issues I have with evolution are indeed philosophical. I think that evolution is an interesting case which exposes some of the core issues at the heart of the philosophy of science.

The first question that needs to be resolved is which particular concept of evolution is the topic under consideration. The word evolution, as a term of language, can mean many things even within biology. The second issue is what purpose it serves. Does it (the particular form of the word evolution under consideration) provide adequate causal explanations of observations of interest? (Which highlights the issue of what exactly is an adequate causal explanation.) The third issue is evolution's status as a shibboleth in science; a role it uniquely plays as a touchstone issue that separates the sane from the crazy (in the view of some atheists.)

As to "fringe" scientists, all scientists hope to be "fringe" scientists in that they hope to be working at the fringes of their field, teasing out novel explanations from the boundaries of knowledge. All of the great iconoclastic scientists of the past were fringe scientists. There are probably "fringe" biologists working on evolution, but we are unlikely to have heard of many of them because they have a hard time swimming against the current orthodoxy (which is a bad sign). There are certainly strong differences of opinion within the orthodoxy, which is a good sign, and we can all hope that some of those contrary ideas will push back the boundaries and prevail.

Note the concurrence between rrp's initial thoughts and the WP link provided.

The third issue is evolution's status as a shibboleth in science; a role it uniquely plays as a touchstone issue that separates the sane from the crazy (in the view of some atheists.)

Given how little true controversy about the subject there is, it does serve as a certain marker to indicate that people are less interested in science and more in religion, yes...

#40: The third issue is evolution's status as a shibboleth in science; a role it uniquely plays as a touchstone issue that separates the sane from the crazy (in the view of some atheists.)

You've got the orientation wrong. It's not unique in separating the sane from the crazy; it's unique in that the flat-earthers and the Earth-centric people have pretty much disappeared, and the homeopaths and astrologers don't try and make head-on attacks on science. Velikovskists aren't considered sane, either, but those that are left hang out with UFOlogists and Big Foot spoters. Creationists are unique in that they are a major group that engage in head-on attacks of science, making attacks on radioactive decay, fluid dynamics and any other science that might get in the way of their chosen theory, they're large enough to make a significant number of Americans listen to them, and they're forcing their theories to be taught as science. They make themselves unique.

There are probably "fringe" biologists working on evolution, but we are unlikely to have heard of many of them because they have a hard time swimming against the current orthodoxy (which is a bad sign).

Or because you don't care to listen. Barbara McClintock was a "fringe" biologists, but because her work just showed how evolution worked, you ignore her. There are tons of biologists doing brilliant original work on evolution, but you don't want to hear of them.

we can all hope that some of those contrary ideas will push back the boundaries and prevail.

They're doing that every day. What they aren't doing is disproving something that's been established for a century. This is how creationists prove themselves unique; people can accept that Einstein was revolutionary, even though he didn't make the solar system Earth-centered again, and basically changed nothing about our understanding of Newtonian physics; everywhere we had looked, they still held, with the exception of 43 arc-seconds per century in the case of Mercury. (43 arc-seconds per century.) Barbara McClintock changed evolution by at least that much, adding a whole new factor in genetics, but she's not "fringe", because she didn't sweep away everything we knew.

#42 What a curious response. It seems to focus on Barbara McClintock and how I am ignoring her work. In what way, precisely, pray tell.

all scientists hope to be "fringe" scientists in that they hope to be working at the fringes of their field, teasing out novel explanations from the boundaries of knowledge

Actually, I think most scientists want novel discoveries, not novel explanations.

You are, as it were, ignoring McClintock by your assumption that biologists working at the "fringe" of the subject are obscure and have a hard time swimming against the current orthodoxy.

I have come across a number of scientists working in evolution who espouse theories counter to the current "orthodoxy". Some of them turn out to be perceptive and innovative (e.g. S. J. Gould, whose questioning of the predominant gradualist model became accepted as mainstream), others turn out to be essentially barking up the wrong tree (e.g. Søren Løvtrup, who proposed various evolutionary relationships between major animal groups that were widely regarded as fairly loopy, and apparently rejects Darwinian evolution in favour of some form of saltationism).

Well, I was specifically intending to ask about fringe scientists in the field, published.

Well, it depends on what you mean by "fringe". There are scientists who have positions that different from the mainstream, but work to try to buttress their claims with evidence. For an example of this type of "fringe" scientist, I would point to Stephen Jay Gould, who came up with the theory of punctuated equilibrium. Few other scientists agreed with him when he put forward his theory, but he kept at it, worked to find evidence supporting his position, and eventually persuaded others in the field of the validity of his theory.

There are a lot of scientists holding similarly "unorthodox" positions on almost every topic right now. Most are wrong. A handful will turn out to be right. But there are a wide array of things that no serious scientist seriously questions, not because they are afraid, but because the evidence so overwhelmingly supports the general consensus position: an old universe, an old Earth, the theory of evolution by natural selection, the theory of relativity, and so on. Scientists often tinker with the details in these areas, but the broad strokes are not debated because there's no evidentiary support in favor of taking a position against them.

On the other hand, you have fringe scientists like Michael Behe and Kurt Wise who advocate for things like intelligent design and an age of the Earth that is 6,000-10,000 years old. But the evidence is so against their positions, and they have produced such piss-poor work in support of their claims, that they are (rightly) dismissed as crackpots. Wise, for example, accepts a young Earth despite all the evidence for it because, as he said, "(I)f all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate." In short, while you can find young Earthers and cdesign proponentists who are scientists, no mainstream scientist takes them seriously, because their work is so shoddy, and the evidence just isn't there to support their claims.

Which still doesn't address the underlying Mr. Smith's initial question as to exactly what it is about evolution that so many Christians in the U.S. have a problem with.

Behe would qualify for what I was asking about a fringe scientist. I have not read Darwin's Black Box. Wise also probably fits what I was asking.

Other though than creationist/intelligent design approaches, are there fringe scientists that contest evolutionary principles on other grounds.

Gould is not fringe, at least not as I am intending the description to mean

Jesse, I was less asking about what problems some have about evolution than I was asking about how the debate between creationists and evolutionists could be described as lively and contentious.

Where is the debate - possibly in the political arena? There is no debate that I am aware of that might be similar say to the debate that occurred between big bang and steady state scientists - a lively and contentious scientific debate.

Seems to me that you may be begging the question there...

And yes, the debate, at this point, is largely in the political arena. Or rrp's posts.

Wait until I finish writing the question. I have edited it four times.

Watch it, though. He becomes very upset when people use evolution as any sort of litmus test.

Mayhap you need to indicate that it's a work in progress.

I am done for right now. I reserve the right to return and change my question at a later date.

This guy, maybe...?

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/creationist-broun-darwin/?utm_source=t...

As a medical professional who denies evolution, do you use medicine that is developed out of evolutionary biology?

While we are discussing this, what of other religious accounts of nature and creation. Should a Buddhist doctor rely on medical treatment by the principles of samsara and karma?

#43: She was a fringe biologist working on evolution against the orthodoxy. And for all her trouble swimming against the current orthodoxy, she won a Noble Prize for her work. The only reason you think evolutionary biologists have special trouble being fringe or going against orthodoxy is because you want them to overturn established fact, in a way that really no one in science has ever done. (Again: Einstein's relativity, in observable astronomy, differed from Newton's gravity in terms of 43 arc-seconds per century in the case of one planet. There is no reason to expect a revolution in evolution to be any different; slight corrections to things we knew, and radical changes in things we were just starting to understand.)

#44 Forgive me, I am trying to understand the point here. Are you saying the Barbara McClintock did nothave a "have a hard time swimming against the current orthodoxy". I though she did. Her Wikipedia article says "Encountering skepticism of her research and its implications, she stopped publishing her data in 1953."

We can be certain that, when Einstein said "Science without religion is lame," he wasn't talking about revelation of any sort—or evolution.

#56 Semi-simultaneous posting there at cross-purposes. I agree McClintock was fringe and eventually got rewarded. That's a good thing and I think we agree it was a good thing.

I also think that having scientists who question evolution, in all and each of its aspects, is a good thing. Some of those scientists, far from being celebrated, get caught in the political correctness trap. McClintock was oppressed by the orthodoxy of her day, she prevailed. At the time, no one thought she was right. Should we, at the time, have encouraged her unorthodoxy or attempted to suppress it? I think we should have encouraged it.

Looking back we can now see she was right, but the orthodox position was that she was wrong. So there must now be unorthodox positions that the science community thinks are wrong, that are in fact right. We obviously don't know what they are, so a general principle should be to celebrate some unorthodoxy, to allow many to survive, in case by our oppression we suppress the odd one that will turn out to be right.

Fair enough, rrp. But how would you feel about encouraging scientists who investigated?

* That the earth was less than 10,000 years old.
* That germs do not cause disease.
* That the earth is the center of the solar system.

My point is not to slam you, but to see how general you're being. I don't think evolution is very far from these positions. Do we differ on that, or on the general question of how "fringe" science can be and still be worth "encouraging."

To continue the thought, whether you agree with him or not, Behe should be celebrated as a Good Thing. He challenges the orthodoxy. At a minimum, he is a foil that allows others to sharpen their arguments, to make their position more secure. If no one challenges the orthodoxy, it gets stale and entrenched.

If Behe was in any other field than evolution, or was not involved with such a politically contentious debate, he would not be so prominent in the public eye. It is precisely because it is so politically contentious that the orthodoxy so vehemently opposes him.

Tim, that deserves a longer reply. But one quick point.

"I don't think evolution is very far from these positions."

That brings me back to my first point above. It depends on what you mean by evolution. Behe clearly believes in and work in the field of evolution. To quote him

"For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it."

"For example, both humans and chimps have a broken copy of a gene that in other mammals helps make vitamin C. ... It's hard to imagine how there could be stronger evidence for common ancestry of chimps and humans. ... Despite some remaining puzzles, there’s no reason to doubt that Darwin had this point right, that all creatures on earth are biological relatives.”

(I stole these from his Wikipedia article.)

#59: So there must now be unorthodox positions that the science community thinks are wrong, that are in fact right. We obviously don't know what they are,

That's not at all true; we know that the world isn't flat, that the Earth travels around the Sun and not the other way around, that rocks fall down, not up, etc.

a general principle should be to celebrate some unorthodoxy, to allow many to survive, in case by our oppression we suppress the odd one that will turn out to be right.

That is a general principle. But on the flip side, there has to be a filter; there has to be some pressure against people holding positions counterindicated by evidence to step it up or go home. We don't need to spending money that could go to valid research on looking for the Loch Ness Monster. Good science only survives if bad science is driven out at some point.

whether you agree with him or not, Behe should be celebrated as a Good Thing. He challenges the orthodoxy.

I'll challenge the orthodoxy of a heliocentric solar system; should I then be celebrated as a Good Thing? The question is is he doing good science? Is his arguments coming out in journal articles and conferences where he's being forced to come up with evidence and handle the arguments of those who disagree with him, or is he making his arguments to a general audience that can't handle the hard data or have the capacity to understand the whole issues? If you look at his Wikipedia page, it's the latter.

If Behe was in any other field than evolution, or was not involved with such a politically contentious debate, he would not be so prominent in the public eye.

Or if Behe didn't put himself in the public eye.

It is precisely because it is so politically contentious that the orthodoxy so vehemently opposes him.

If it wasn't so politically contentious, they would ignore him. There are thousands of people writing books in history, physics, biology, etc., that gets completely ignored by scholars. Historians don't acknowledge the people who argue that an evil scientist created all other races as corruption of the black race. (A real theory promulgated by the Nation of Islam.) They only pay attention to "aliens built the pyramids" theories to the extent they're getting airplay on cable.

And on the flip side, it's only because it is politically contentious that he's there at all. You don't see historians advocating that "aliens built the pyramids" because they don't have an ulterior motive to do so. Behe opposes the "orthodoxy" of evolution because of his religious beliefs.

#63

That's not at all true.

But it was true for McClintock. Are you claiming that those days are behind us?

there has to be some pressure against people holding positions counterindicated by evidence

Ah. That "evidence" word again. Of course, Behe's position is not "counterindicated" by evidence. Neither is the theory that the world is less than 10,000 year old. Evidence is over-rated. But, on the other hand, I agree that counter pressure is a Good thing too.

The heliocentric theory of the solar system is also a very interesting case study. We still talk about it several hundred years after the issue was supposedly settled by Galileo. And it's a Good Thing that we all keep talking about it. As a case study it usefully points to how social pressure has a strong hand in the formation of scientific theories and also is a key example of what is and is not a scientific theory. I don't know if there are any heliocentric scientists out there, but if there were, I'd probably be very entertained talking to them, so yes, a Good Thing if they exist. Ditto, anyone who believes that things other than germs cause diseases (aren't all diseases, to some degree, socially constructed? And it's all in the mind anyhow). Ditto, anyone who has scientific reason to believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old (how long have human's been conscious - by some theories, it takes consciousness to bring reality into being - so the world has only existed as long as there have been conscious beings to create it.) So, yes, crackpot theories are necessary to move science forward - to provide grist for the mill. They are all a Good Thing.

And I seriously doubt that religion is the main reason Behe opposes the orthodoxy. I think it is because he has genuine doubts about the effectiveness of the theory to explain reality.

Would this be an example of political ideology attempting to hijack science? I love the opening spoof:

According to a recent study, giving children tetanus shots will not, in fact, encourage them to stab themselves with rusty nails or be less cautious when playing outdoors. Various political organizations have advocated against the tetanus vaccine, arguing that tetanus shots send the message that recreation is acceptable, and that if children know they're protected from lockjaw, they will be less vigilant about avoiding the kinds of cuts and scrapes that can lead to deadly nervous system infections. Attempts to require tetanus vaccination have met extreme backlash from conservative groups who argue that mandating the vaccine is an assault on parental rights and family values.

Even bills that simply would have made the vaccine free for low-income children without mandating it were vetoed by Republican governors. Doctors hope that these study results, which show that tetanus-vaccinated children are no more likely to engage in unsafe recreational behavior than their unvaccinated peers, will increase the tetanus shot rate for children of parents who fear that tetanus shots encourage risk-taking.

At this point, you're thinking, I hope:

"What in the world is this lady talking about? Everyone gives their kids tetanus shots! You'd be irresponsible not to inoculate your child against tetanus, and you're nuts if you think that giving a kid a tetanus shot will make him be less careful about slicing his skin with filthy rusted metal. And there's absolutely no political controversy around tetanus shots."

You would be right. If only the same were true of the HPV vaccine.

>64 rrp: rrp, when I did my physics degree, nearly 40 years ago now, I was privileged to be lectured at by scientists who were exploring the fringes of human knowledge; Durham University had (and still has, for all I know) a well-respected physics department researching in cosmology and particle physics, amongst other things. But these were not the sort of fringe opinions, "crackpot ideas", which you suggest are a Good Thing. Relativity did not prove Newton wrong; his theory was fine within his observed limits and is still perfectly good for most everyday things. What relativity did was to explain new, more advanced observations, broadening the perspective. String theory, the Higgs Boson and other things which are on the fringe of science will not throw away what has gone before, they will build on it. The age of the universe and the earth are not isolated "theories", they are interconnected with everything that is known about physics, stuff that works for us in all the technology that we use. Similarly, evolution is not some stand-alone thing, but is interconnected with everything that is known about biology, medicine, genetics and much more, again all stuff that works on an everyday basis. No doubt all these theories will be refined as observations are refined. Some theories might even be superseded by a broader theory that covers more ground (as relativity superseded Newtonian mechanics) but they will be built on the existing theories and the existing theories will still work within limits (just as Newtonian mechanics still works within limits).

#64: But it was true for McClintock.

You misunderstand. The success of McClintock's theories says nothing about whether or not there are theories which are basically beyond question. She was working in practically a brand new field, not one 150 years old, not one that has had ten thousand tests thrown against it, all of which it weathered.

I don't know if there are any heliocentric scientists out there, but if there were, I'd probably be very entertained talking to them, so yes, a Good Thing if they exist.

If someone's goal in life is to entertain people, I suggest they become a comedian, not a scientist. I fail to see why entertaining you is a good thing for science. (In any case, I think you meant geocentric; a heliocentric scientist is the norm.) We have sent hundreds of space probes out that got where they were going; I don't understand how someone who denies the geography they mapped could be interesting.

crackpot theories are necessary to move science forward - to provide grist for the mill.

Nothing in your paragraph establishes that.

#65: And I seriously doubt that religion is the main reason Behe opposes the orthodoxy.

(A) There is exceedingly strong correlation between evolution-denying and being highly religious, a correlation Behe does nothing to change.

(B) He is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, which is a well-known organization behind intelligent design for religious reasons. To put it in their own words, from the Wedge Document (Wikipedia) (released under their former name of "Center for the Renewal of Science & Culture"):

The social consequences of materialism have been devastating. As symptoms, those consequences are certainly worth treating. However, we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a "wedge" that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points. The very beginning of this strategy, the "thin edge of the wedge," was Phillip ohnson's critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in Darwinism on Trial, and continued in Reason in the Balance and Defeatng Darwinism by Opening Minds. Michael Behe's highly successful Darwin's Black Box followed Johnson's work. We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.

#64: Evidence is over-rated.

You say science should, and science should, but then you say something that amounts to "I don't believe in science". If you don't believe in evidence-driven exploration of the world, then say that, and stop arguing how scientists should conduct themselves. I don't argue about how monks should conduct their rituals; I obviously have disagreements with them that prevents me from usefully opining on the subject.

And I seriously doubt that religion is the main reason Behe opposes the orthodoxy.

I seriously doubt that you are truthful and honest when you post crap like this. Behe has been fairly open about the religious basis for his stance, and only covers it up because that was the official party line for the Discovery Institute to try to wedge their religious theories into public schools in contravention of established Constitutional precedent.

Of course, Behe's position is not "counterindicated" by evidence.

Actually, it is. Every time Behe has claimed something is "irreducibly complex", he has been shown to be wrong. Every time he has said science "cannot account for" something, he has been shown to be wrong. At the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial he admitted:

- That no peer-reviewed scientific journal has published research supportive of intelligent design's claims.

- That Behe's own book Darwin's Black Box was not, as he had claimed, peer reviewed.

- That Behe himself criticizes the science presented as supporting intelligent design in instructional material created for that purpose.

- That intelligent design seems plausible and reasonable to inquirers in direct proportion to their belief or nonbelief in God.

- That the basic arguments for evidence of purposeful design in nature are essentially the same as those adduced by the Christian apologist Rev. William Paley (1743–1805) in his 1802 Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected From the Appearances of Nature, where he sums up his observations of the complexity of life in the ringing words, "The marks of design are too strong to be got over. Design must have had a designer. That designer must have been a person. That person is GOD."

- That the definition of "theory" supplied by the US National Academy of Sciences did not encompass ID, and that his broader definition would allow astrology to be included as a scientific theory.

- That he had claimed in his book that evolution could not explain immunology without even investigating the subject. He was presented with 58 peer reviewed articles, nine books, and several textbook chapters on the subject; he insisted they were "not good enough."

Note the bolded portion. Without even investigating the subject he claimed that science could not explain it. When confronted with the evidence against his claims, he dismissed it without even looking at it. That's not even close to someone who is conducting scientific research. That's someone who has come to a conclusion and doesn't care what the evidence shows. Behe is a liar and a clown, and a religiously motivated lying clown at that.

You misunderstand. The success of McClintock's theories says nothing about whether or not there are theories which are basically beyond question.

Right. So I want to get from rrp (and others, if you like) just where the "edge" is. Can we all agree that a scientist trying to overturn the spherical nature of the earth cannot be bravely questioning orthodoxy, but advancing stupidity? Where is the line?

I'm not going to wade again into the evolution debate -- my views on this I have made crystal clear before -- because (1) I don't have time for it and (2) it misses the point of Einstein's statement from the OP.

What Einstein meant (I think) by "Science without religion is lame" is an admission that science qua science does not deal with questions of ethics and morality. There is nothing within the scientific method itself, for example, that tells you it is morally wrong to perform heinous medical experiments on human subjects; indeed, as my wife repeatedly acknowledges, the reason she studies fruit flies as model organisms is that there aren't any moral qualms about squishing them up into paste to harvest DNA or forcing two different species to mate in order to study hybridization effects on the genome.

Studies of human biology and medicine would make much quicker progress if we didn't have those pesky ethical standards we have to abide by -- which, from a solely scientific / utilitarian perspective, means we should sweep aside the ethics because they just get in the way.

That, then, is what I think Einstein was getting at. In this quote, "religion" stands in for that half of the human disciplines that deal with these moral and ethical issues -- issues which are not the realm of science properly.

We could rephrase it thus: "Science without ethics is lame." And then we see that it was Einstein's own people in Germany and Austria who suffered the consequences of "science without ethics" -- ever heard of Dr. Mengele?

I would say they also suffered the consequences of "religion without ethics"; it wasn't Dr. Mengele who told Christians to carry out the following actions
"for Jewish synagogues and schools to be burned to the ground, and the remnants buried out of sight;
for houses owned by Jews to be likewise razed, and the owners made to live in agricultural outbuildings;
for their religious writings to be taken away;
for rabbis to be forbidden to preach, and to be executed if they do;
for safe conduct on the roads to be abolished for Jews;
for usury to be prohibited, and for all silver and gold to be removed and "put aside for safekeeping"; and
for the Jewish population to be put to work as agricultural slave labor."

That would be Martin Luther, who propped up a lot of the anti-Semitism that Hitler was later to exploit.

>72 nathanielcampbell: Oh dear, you've mentioned a Nazi. Can we now expect some smug internet "expert" to invoke Godwin's Red Herring and start a flurry of off-topic posts?

(Said with tongue firmly in cheek and definitely not intending to start said flurry of off-topic posts. Please do not reply!)

> 74: (Please forgive this one reply, after which I will return to our regularly scheduled discussion):

Shoot, I keep forgetting. No matter how apt the historical example, we're just supposed to act as if the Nazis never happened. "Always forget" is, I believe, the corollary to Godwin.

> 72

Holy crap, I agree with you.

ETA: The conflation of religion and ethics is not something I particularly condone, but I do think it's happening in the Einstein quote.

#74: Said with tongue firmly in cheek and definitely not intending to start said flurry of off-topic posts.

Funny that; one would assume the way not to start a flurry of off-topic posts would be not to start one, instead of pressing on the issue and telling everyone that you should be the only one to speak on the subject.

>77 prosfilaes:: It's a rhetorical strategy known as "praeteritio"...

>77 prosfilaes: Guilty as charged, Your Honour. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

I suspect you're wrong, Nathaniel. Einstein's ethics were purely natural, and purely human. He said so on a number of occasions. I think he was talking about aesthetics, awe and humility.

#68 etc.

She was working in practically a brand new field, not one 150 years old, not one that has had ten thousand tests thrown against it, all of which it weathered.

Well make your mind here. Either see did have an impact on evolution or she did not. You can't have it both ways. And then you accuse me of not believing in science because I paraphrased a saying by Einstein. Would you accuse him of not believing in science? And I wonder why it is that you seem to have such a hard time believing that not all of those associated with the Discovery Institute are religiously motivated. But moving on...

Tim, in #71 has a good question. "Where is the line?" Where is the line that separates those whose ideas are beyond the pale from those that are moving the fringe forward? I don't know. And neither do you. And neither does anyone. That's the point.

Those colleagues of McClintock thought they knew where the line was. They thought McClintock was on the other side. We are all conditioned by our society. In their case they knew that a Woman couldn't do math. In your case you know that someone religiously motivated cannot be doing good science. In both cases, the social conditioning is wrong. Since none of us can avoid our conditioning, none of us can reliably pick the winners from the crackpots. We should therefore tolerate them all, nay celebrate them all.

That said, I do sort thinkers. I know that I will be biased, but my criterion is the quality of reasons they put forward in support of their ideas. I tend not to be overly impressed by association with impressive institutions (sorry john--Durham is a fine and venerable University) having been exposed to a few crackpots in such places myself. I tend to pick up ideas that intrigue me and listen carefully to what their proponents have to say. I do enjoy someone who bravely questions the received wisdom, who is attempting to show that the emperor has no clothes. Many fail, but the occasional one that succeeds makes it all worthwhile.

I applaud Nathaniel for attempting to bring the thread back to the question of what Einstein meant by "Science without religion is lame" and agree there is certainly a moral component here. But I also think there are components of purpose, value and meaning . I am mocked for lightly suggesting that one of the purposes of science is to entertain. I rejoin by asking what you think the purpose of science is. This is a trick question by the way, because questions of purpose, value and meaning are deliberately excluded from science itself. The answers to the questions "Why to we study science?" and "Why is it that nature is amenable to science?" are questions that Einstein might have categorize as religious questions, at least religious in his sense. They belong to a realm beyond science, that realm of purpose, meaning and value served by religion.

ETA what Tim said. " purpose, meaning and value" + "aesthetics, awe and humility".

>81 rrp: my criterion is the quality of reasons they put forward in support of their ideas

I don't disagree with you, but I think that is implied in the reference to a credible university physics department which is credible precisely because their work is peer-reviewed and the quality of the reasons they put forward is deemed satisfactory.

#81: Either see did have an impact on evolution or she did not. You can't have it both ways.

She did have an impact on evolution; that does not mean her work was on questions resolved 150 years ago. Her field was brand new.

And I wonder why it is that you seem to have such a hard time believing that not all of those associated with the Discovery Institute are religiously motivated.

It's like joining the KKK because you like the clothing. If someone joins an organization that everyone knows is pushing religion as science, then the presumption is that you're joining because you agree with them. You haven't presented a single reason why you would join the Discovery Institute if you disagreed with their main goal.

One of Behe's sons is an atheist, and thus is forbidden from speaking to his siblings. (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/10/07/michael-behes-son-has-a-surpri/ ) So he's extremely religious and close-minded, holds a viewpoint on a scientific issue held mainly for religious reasons, and belongs to an organization that (poorly) tries to hide its religious goals behind what it's pushing. I think you need evidence.

Tim, in #71 has a good question. "Where is the line?" Where is the line that separates those whose ideas are beyond the pale from those that are moving the fringe forward? I don't know. And neither do you. And neither does anyone. That's the point.

Lines are usually foggy in real life. But you're trying to imply that there is no line, whereas I'm pretty clear there is a line. When as much evidence has piled on it as has piled on evolution, reasonable people don't argue against it.

Those colleagues of McClintock thought they knew where the line was. They thought McClintock was on the other side.

Really. Because I don't believe that at all. I think for the most part they thought she was wrong. (I suspect that her gender has a role to play, that her ideas got less play, and that she was never taught to handle and respond in kind to the aggressive arguing that a lot of scientists engage in.) I don't think they thought her ideas were of the type that only crackpots could believe in, of the type that had been long and solidly settled.

In your case you know that someone religiously motivated cannot be doing good science.

Not in the least; I never implied that. But when someone comes to a field with strong prejudgements, especially tied into their belief system, and holds on to those prejudgements despite the vast majority of scientists in his field disagreeing, I do find the claim that they're doing bad science to be more likely then their conclusions based on good science just happened to match their prejudgements.

Since none of us can avoid our conditioning, none of us can reliably pick the winners from the crackpots. We should therefore tolerate them all, nay celebrate them all.

Then why do you act like Einstein matters? If we can't pick winners from the crackpots, why should we celebrate him and not Prosper-René Blondlot? If we can't pick the winners from the crackpots, we shouldn't be spending billions of dollars on science at all, since it can't produce anything.

Science works because we can pick the winners from the crackpots.

I tend to pick up ideas that intrigue me and listen carefully to what their proponents have to say.

Personally, I try and know the limits of my intelligence. In fields I have little knowledge of, I try not to argue with established thought; it's established for a reason, and I don't really have what it takes to tell the difference between looney new ideas and brilliant new ideas in those fields.

I do enjoy someone who bravely questions the received wisdom, who is attempting to show that the emperor has no clothes.

Bravely? There's nothing brave about standing up for something when it doesn't cost you anything, when it gets you a nice cushy job at the Discover Institute. Again, the fact that you enjoy it doesn't make it valuable to society; I would say that creationists have discouraged rational thought* and encouraged an long-disproven theory, at the cost of millions in legal bills and a nation that fails to understand how the world around it works.

(* Teaching children to ask "were you there?" to people explaining evolutionary science is teaching them to use facile arguments against people they disagree with; mature adults interested in encouraging the children to think would push them to think about how we know about things that happened long ago.)

Well make your mind here. Either see did have an impact on evolution or she did not. You can't have it both ways.

That's a false dichotomy, and you are either ignorant or dishonest to make it. DNA analysis was a new field once, and it certainly had an impact on the science of evolution. Just because a field is new doesn't mean it cannot have an impact on an established science.

And I wonder why it is that you seem to have such a hard time believing that not all of those associated with the Discovery Institute are religiously motivated.

Well, perhaps it is because they have all stated that they are religiously motivated. And that the Discovery Institute itself says it wants to replace "material" science with a more religiously nuanced version. And that every political stance they support is a religiously motivated one. But let's not pay attention to that. Because in your world you seem to not be able to actually know anything to any degree of certainty and think advocates for Geocentrism still need to be taken seriously.

And you wonder why you aren't taken seriously.

rrp,
I just wanted you to know that I purchase a copy of Michael Denton's Nature's Destiny. I will not be able to read it immediately but maybe in a month or so.

#82

I don't disagree with you, but I think that is implied in the reference to a credible university physics department which is credible precisely because their work is peer-reviewed and the quality of the reasons they put forward is deemed satisfactory.

I think there is an important point here. We have to recognize that University departments are self-selecting and, despite years of anti-discrimination efforts, still fairly homogenous in terms of the type of people they employ. Basically, as a younger academic, you have to be part of the establishment to thrive; you have to play by the rules. I know, I know, they go to great efforts to appear to avoid the types of social pressures that are common elsewhere, but social pressure to conform is unavoidable. If you can get to having tenure, then you can act more freely, but by then the true radicals have been self-selected out of the system. It is no accident that many of history's great scientists have been outsiders not insiders. I think something is lost by the oppression of this culture, however benign it seems.

#83

I don't really have what it takes to tell the difference between looney new ideas and brilliant new ideas in those fields.

This is precisely my point. Neither do I. No one has. There is a line and it is indeed foggy. No one knows for sure where the line is. But perhaps we can agree that it is a Good Thing that there are people out there working in the fog.

richard,

I haven't read either Nature's Destiny or Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. I will have to add them to my to be read list. But I fear that Denton is yet another example of someone associated with the Discovery Institute who isn't religious. That won't go down well with the partisans.

#86: But perhaps we can agree that it is a Good Thing that there are people out there working in the fog.

In the fog, perhaps. But evolution is beyond the fog.

This is precisely my point. Neither do I. No one has.

Ah, I get it. You're a Eliza-bot. Normally I would think that was a looney idea in a field I'm at least somewhat familiar with, but I guess I can't tell the difference.

Everything to do with evolution is settled; beyond question? I don't think so.

>89 rrp: Everything to do with evolution is settled; beyond question?

No, of course not, and I don't think anybody here has made that claim. The theory will continue to be refined as new observations are made. But that's very different from replacing it with creationism.

We still aren't entirely sure how gravity works -- the warping of space/time, though sufficiently supported by evidence, is still not a crystal-clear theory. Nevertheless, when I drop a ball from my hand, I expect it to fall.

The existence of physical phenomena can be known with certainty despite large amounts of uncertainty about how those phenomena proceed.

But that's very different from replacing it with creationism.

This takes us back to my first point in #40, which was that the words evolution and creation mean different things at different times and we have to be more specific about what we are talking about each time. For example, I am sure john that you are a creationist, in that many have heard you profess belief in a "maker of heaven and earth, of all thing visible and invisible".

We keep flipping between general concepts and specific examples. Let's say Group E wants to make the general case that creationism is a Bad Thing and evolution is a Good Thing. There is a given assumption that others in the conversation know what is meant by creationism and evolution. Another group, lets' say Group D, wants to take a step back and question that assumption, to question the idea that we share an understanding of what is meant by creationism and evolution. Group E takes this questioning as implicit support for the idea that creationism is a Good Thing and evolution is a Bad Thing. Which it is not.

Then we move to specific examples, in this case, the ideas of say Michael Behe. Group E wants to dismiss his ideas as silly, and puts forward general principles to support that claim. Group D questions the generality of those principles. Specifically we have the principles that Behe's work is not accepted by many of his peers and that Behe's motives are religious. Group D maintains that neither of these principles has general validity. Group E again takes this questioning as implicit support for the idea that creationism is a Good Thing and evolution is a Bad Thing. Which it is not.

You ever get the feeling you're not winning any converts with your arguments, rrp?

#92: Specifically we have the principles that Behe's work is not accepted by many of his peers and that Behe's motives are religious. Group D maintains that neither of these principles has general validity.

Maintains, but fails to give any evidence for. I've given you the argument; he is highly religious to the point of letting it break apart his family; he is taking a position that's virtually unheard of among non-religious scientists; and he is part of a group that has stated its religious goals.

If Group D wants to maintain something, they have the responsibility of providing evidence and making their case.

If Group D wants to maintain something, they have the responsibility of providing evidence and making their case.

Or, you know, they could just tell lies about it.

#94

I think, in your anxiousness to condemn Behe, you are not following carefully enough, which is par for the course here. Let me break it down more slowly for you.

1. Group E wants to dismiss Behe's ideas as silly
2. Group E uses general principle X and general principle Y to support that claim.
3. General principle X is : any scientist whose work is not accepted by many of his peers should have his work dismissed as silly.
4. General principle Y is : any scientist whose motives were religious should have his work dismissed as silly.
5. Group D maintains that neither of these principles has general validity, and cannot be used to support the claim against Behe.

So, I hope this is now slow enough for you to see that any evidence about Behe has no bearing on Statement 5.

#96: I think, in your anxiousness to condemn Behe, you are not following carefully enough,

Or you weren't clear enough.

Group E wants to dismiss Behe's ideas as silly

No, they don't. Pernicious, wrong, but not silly.

General principle X is : any scientist whose work is not accepted by many of his peers should have his work dismissed as silly.

His work is not rejected by many of his peers; it's rejected by virtually all of his peers, as a long disproven theory. Yes, that makes it dismissible.

General principle Y is : any scientist whose motives were religious should have his work dismissed as silly.

Again, not silly. And the general principle is that anyone who is supposed to be doing a job, but in fact is working off other motivations should have their work checked carefully. A comic book author who is more worried about pushing political points then writing a best-selling comic book is someone you want to think twice about having on your team of comic book authors. A waiter who is more worried about ethnic purity instead of doing his job is going to cause problems.

Group D maintains that neither of these principles has general validity, and cannot be used to support the claim against Behe.

Group D in this case has refused to accept that anything could support the claim against Behe. Group D's claims amount to rejecting science in toto, by arguing that there's nothing that can put a theory outside the realm of reasonable discussion. This naturally does not limit Group D's behavior in real life; the theory that a comet could make cars come alive and start hunting man does not concern Group D on a daily basis. Nor does Group D really seem to accept its claims, given that it's arguing on behalf of Behe, who has a professorship and is attached to a powerful group pushing his ideas, and not on behalf of people who are advocating (e.g.) Hollow Earth theories and get dismissed without having their books published by large publishers.

His work is not rejected by many of his peers; it's rejected by virtually all of his peers, as a long disproven theory. Yes, that makes it dismissible.

Yet you don't want to dismiss the work of McClintock, which was also rejected by virtually all of her peers. Inconsistent.

And the general principle is that anyone who is supposed to be doing a job, but in fact is working off other motivations should have their work checked carefully.

Actually, having their work carefully checked is appropriate for all scientists not just those who are religiously motivated. Yet being religiously motivated is not grounds for dismissal, unless that is you want to dismiss the work of many of the greatest scientists; Newton say.

Group D in this case has refused to accept that anything could support the claim against Behe.

Not at all. Any claim against the work of Behe should be based on a careful examination of the work of Behe. Which you have conspicuously failed to do. What you have done instead is appeal to i) his rejection by many of his peers and ii) the disputed fact that he is religiously motivated. Both of which are bogus arguments.

Oh, and of course, we should not forget that other religiously motivated scientist, Einstein.

Booo!

>98 rrp: Any claim against the work of Behe should be based on a careful examination of the work of Behe

Well, I don't know about you, but I don't think I'm qualified to do a "careful examination" of the latest research in string theory, the Higg's boson, DNA, biochemistry and a whole range of other specialist fields. What do you realistically suggest other than weighing up what "virtually all of his peers" say? They have already done a "careful examination".

97
You had best dig in prosfilaes; rrp's been carrying the torch for creationism Intelligent Design. since he was a wee homunculus.

#98: Yet you don't want to dismiss the work of McClintock, which was also rejected by virtually all of her peers.

Really. How many scientists named Steve came out against McClintock? There's a difference between skepticism and disagreement, and rejection.

Yet being religiously motivated is not grounds for dismissal, unless that is you want to dismiss the work of many of the greatest scientists; Newton say.

Newton wasn't searching for reality to match his favorite religious interpretation when he was looking for gravity, and all the works written about his search for reality to match his favorite religious interpretation are now dismissed and ignored.

the disputed fact that he is religiously motivated.

If you want to claim it's a disputed fact, then dispute. But just making a bare claim in the face of evidence otherwise is not worthy of anything.

58>

I'm with you Tim, when you said :

We can be certain that, when Einstein said "Science without religion is lame," he wasn't talking about revelation of any sort—or evolution.

Great Discussion going here and I have yet finish reading all plus questions to ask and comments to make but not enough time...

... though I will ask StormRaveon where he was in 1961 ? I was in a BSc degree program and know quite a bit about science.

I rather suspect that he is reading a great deal more into comments made here (and not just mine) than the actual evidence supports... I don't understand why..!

An early edition of Sir Issac Newton's Principia Mathematica has this to say:

It was the most ancient opinion of those who applied themselves to philosophy, that the fixed stars stood immovable in the highest parts of the world; that under them the planets revolved about the sun; and that the earth, as one of the planets, described an annual course about the Sun ... The Egyptians were the earliest observers of the ( heavens and from them, probably, this philosophy was spread abroad. For from them it was, and from the nations about them, that the Greeks, a people more addicted to the study of philology than of nature, derived their first as well as their soundest notions of philosophy; and in the Vestal ceremonies we can recognize the spirit of the Egyptians, who concealed mysteries that were above the capacity of the common herd under the veil of religious rites and hieroglyphic symbols.

I was in a BSc degree program and know quite a bit about science.

I love when people tout that they were in an undergraduate program as support for their expertise in a subject.

Any claim against the work of Behe should be based on a careful examination of the work of Behe.

Fortunately for us, we have a very public examination of Behe's work. It is called the transcript of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, where Behe was the only expert witness for intelligent design. And what did the judge in that case conclude after his careful examination of Behe's claims about intelligent design? Let's look at a few:

"For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the religious nature of ID would be readily apparent to an objective observer, adult or child."

"The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory."

So, it would seem that the examination that you think should be done has been done, and the results run counter to your intelligent design advocacy.

5> "why does anyone care to argue about what another person believes or doesn't believe?"

11> Because when creationists insist that public school curricula not teach accurate science, it hurts our students and our country's future. I will not stand for bad education.

33>I wonder about the initial premise in the OP, that the debate between evolution and creationism is lively and contentious. At what level is there a debate? Who is debating?

Since I joined LT in August 2012 and begun participating in these discussions I have been impressed that the debate is an argument that looks like :

Atheists here argue against all & any kinds of belief in deity ...it gets vehement enough by times that I am strongly determined to rush out to protect the US Constitution and its Charter of Freedom and Rights... even though I am a Canadian.

But I will ask again who cares or maybe whose business is it what another person "believes in" beyond the real problem that Nathaniel addresses in comment #11... which no one has yet replied to head on.

Creationism, as defined and discussed in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy talking about Creationism - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/creationism/ , is a serious problem in the USA, I would say.

Further to my post 108 ...which was cut off some how...

And, I'd say, the public debate is related to the polarity of the US political mentality. i.e.: It is the tail of the dog (the extreme left of the Atheism Belief (for lack of a better way to express the position I refer to) vs the tail of the dog (the extreme right of the 3 Abrahamic Beliefs who believes in the literal interpretation of the Bible) who are debating...

And in that debate against hard core Creationism, hard core Atheists attack or insult all who embrace (or even sit on the fence about believing) in any kind of deity. And the hard core Creationist insult and attack right back... both going round in circles.

I do believe that the problem that hard core Creationism is creating in the educational systems of the West would not be nearly so politically powerful as we fear it is, if the vast majority of the populations were not being forced to pick between the extremes of these two belief positions.

Thus the tails of the 2 dogs wag the rest of the dogs.

Perhaps our serious Philosophers here will help round out this point I am trying to make in the public argument (not specifically the one here on LT) then we might actually get into positive ground.

#101

I don't think I'm qualified to do a "careful examination" of the latest research

That's a very good practical question. Who should check the science generated by those who generate the science? I think we all agree it should be checked. I think we all agree that the science should be routinely challenged. What we have to guard against is an entrenched orthodoxy that doesn't accept criticism. Fortunately, the scientists generally do a good job of policing themselves, but as with any social institution that polices itself (remember the banks?), there is a real danger of the system becoming corrupt. So if someone from within the system questions long held assumptions, that's a Good Thing right? We don't necessarily have to agree with a particular questioner to recognize that the act of posing the question is a Good Thing.

But, in addition to encouraging the insiders to question the system, if the system is powerful and if its product significantly affects us, it is our duty to question the system from the outside. Again, fortunately there are many philosophers who question the workings of science on our behalf. They too should be encouraged. We each individually can't keep up with everything, but our duty is served if we each take on one or two areas that interest us. So outsiders who question the science are also a Good Thing, no?

#110:
That's a very good practical question. Who should check the science generated by those who generate the science? I think we all agree it should be checked. I think we all agree that the science should be routinely challenged. What we have to guard against is an entrenched orthodoxy that doesn't accept criticism. Fortunately, the scientists generally do a good job of policing themselves, but as with any social institution that polices itself (remember the banks?), there is a real danger of the system becoming corrupt. So if someone from within the system questions long held assumptions, that's a Good Thing right? We don't necessarily have to agree with a particular questioner to recognize that the act of posing the question is a Good Thing.

But, in addition to encouraging the insiders to question the system, if the system is powerful and if its product significantly affects us, it is our duty to question the system from the outside. Again, fortunately there are many philosophers who question the workings of science on our behalf. They too should be encouraged. ... So outsiders who question the science are also a Good Thing, no?

Which is, again, something you apply to the areas you're interested in attacking and not elsewhere. Someone takes the non-orthodox philosophical position that black humans aren't people worthy of rights, or that the Holocaust was a good thing, you'd dump shit on him. Someone argues that 9/11 was an alien attack, and you won't do anything about the fact he's being dismissed. This is a position held out of pure convenience, when it supports what you really believe.

Behe's position is at least as much entrenched orthodoxy. He's the one working off the theory that was held by the entire Western World for 1500 years, and which it is literally heresy to not believe in many churches in the US and elsewhere, which has been pushed by the force of law.

We each individually can't keep up with everything, but our duty is served if we each take on one or two areas that interest us.

It exemplifies how the above is self-serving and wrong. You want to stand behind a position that's tens of millions strong, and claim it's about questioning orthodoxy, but don't want the responsibility of actually supporting anyone who's in any danger from orthodoxy. That interpretation of your duty is providing serious support to Behe, but leaving thousands of people pushing non-orthodox positions without any support at all.

You've supported absolutely no one not in your pet cause that's opposing an entrenched orthodoxy. (And by support, I mean words, which are cheap.) People discussing AIDS-denialism to alien construction of the Pyramids to tens of thousands of theories that are neither political or popular enough to be known (and are thus even more getting crushed by orthodoxy, since they don't heard by anyone), all of them are challenging orthodoxy, but you're supporting the one who has a huge organization behind him, who's under no real threat from orthodoxy.

What amazes me about this topic is the emotional temperature it invokes. Here was I trying to keep the discussion at a general level, to address impassionately the general principles in play, and you drag in a whole bunch of irrelevant and emotive topics which obscures rather than clarifies. Are you really suggesting that say denying the Holocaust is in the same moral category as questioning evolution? On what possible moral authority do you base your justification for doing that?

An early edition of Sir Issac Newton's Principia Mathematica has this to say

I was wondering how you'd move from a discussion of Einstein to Afrocentrism. I wonder no more.

I will not stand for bad education.

I just don't buy it. I'm as against creationism as the next guy, but I just don't buy that the heat here is generated by the educational effect. Kids generally and American kids in particular are undereducated in a million ways. Presenting "creation science" alongside evolution isn't going to move the needle that much. Skipping evolution entirely isn't going to either. There are just too many ways of not being well-educated, and there are a lot of topics as important as evolution. And, lets not kid ourselves. It's not like most non-religious, blue-state adults can give a coherent explanation for evolution either.

No, I think worry about education is a smoke-screen for a much more hot, and intractable culture war. Rrp is wrong overall, but he's not wrong about the "emotional temperature."

Tim, You seem to be a very reasonable sort of person, so maybe we are confused about why I am "wrong overall". I am curious. Where exactly do you think I went wrong above?

>114 rrp:

I think you imagine a useful and possibly correct fringe of people and ideas that are more appropriately considered far beyond being either useful or potentially correct.

You have not—so far as I can see—told me where your edge is, or if you have one and how it might be defined. The question is important insofar as it would be one thing to support scientists investigating round-earth-ism, and another to claim that, unlike round-earth-ism, evolution is actually in real doubt. I think they're both wrong, of course, but wrong in very different ways.

>113 timspalding:: "I just don't buy it. I'm as against creationism as the next guy, but I just don't buy that the heat here is generated by the educational effect."

Mine was the comment about not standing for bad education, because I and my wife are both teachers who regularly encounter the ill effects of "creation science" -- I have to deal with it from the theological perspective, while my wife has to tenderfoot around using the "e" word in class and figure out what to do when a student asks at the end of the first evolution lecture if they will be discussing creationism as well in a college biology classroom.

For us, at least, the educational issue is what creates the emotional bother (well, for me, it's the bad theology, too).

#112: Here was I trying to keep the discussion at a general level, to address impassionately the general principles in play

General principles, again, that you've shown no evidence of believing in. I've asked you several times to give a specific example besides evolution of where you believe those principles apply, and you won't. When I give you one, you get outraged.

Are you really suggesting that say denying the Holocaust is in the same moral category as questioning evolution?

Ah. I see; philosophers can draw clear lines, but scientists can't. I don't see anything in your argument that says that orthodoxies of some types are to be attacked, but orthodoxies of other types are to be held sacred.

What amazes me about this topic is the emotional temperature it invokes.

What amazes me--well, not really--is that you would rather make statements about emotional temperature and then resort to outrage; rather then respond to discussion about the "general principles" you brought up. How exactly does Holocaust denial fit into that framework? How do you justify making some orthodoxies as too orthodox to be argued against, and how do you choose those?

#113: Kids generally and American kids in particular are undereducated in a million ways.

Yes, but the easy target always gets shot at. "Redistribution" (aka giving poor kids a shot in hell of getting out of their poverty) is hard to push through. Anything dealing with money is hard to push through. Creationism, however, is a clearly defined target that's easy for a broad spectrum to rally against. If the National Science Foundation calls for more money or time for science, well, naturally they'd call for that and that's going to cost somewhere else. If they call for a change in how science is getting taught, then that's probably internally controversial. But they can stand solidly behind a anti-creationism position and get people to listen and respond and get changes made--changes which should be cost-free for schools.

there are a lot of topics as important as evolution.

It is part of the fundamental structure of biology. If we were talking about evolution against some theory that accepted that we have a 5 billion year old planet in a 16 billion year old universe and that we can trace ourselves and all other life on the planet back to Precambrian ancestors, then the motive power wouldn't be critical. But I think the age of the universe and that we are related to apes are pretty critical subjects in education.

No, I think worry about education is a smoke-screen for a much more hot, and intractable culture war. Rrp is wrong overall, but he's not wrong about the "emotional temperature."

I agree there's a lot of smoke-screen in there. Of course, I think a lot of Rrp's statements are smoke screens about the culture war, and when one or both sides think the other side is being deceptive, emotional temperature goes way up, no matter what the subject.

It is part of the fundamental structure of biology. If we were talking about evolution against some theory that accepted that we have a 5 billion year old planet in a 16 billion year old universe and that we can trace ourselves and all other life on the planet back to Precambrian ancestors, then the motive power wouldn't be critical. But I think the age of the universe and that we are related to apes are pretty critical subjects in education.

I guess I would distinguish between having the right core principles and having the critical thinking necessary to advance in academic and modern life—and put the accent on the latter. Pre-Darwinian scientists lacked the theory of evolution, but they weren't idiots for it. If they were thrust forward to today, the smartest 1% of students in 1850 are still the ones Harvard should let in—way above the bottom of today's students, no matter how firmly these students believe in evolution, or passed the evolution quiz. To skip or unduly question evolution today is indeed a major stupidity for a school to engage in, but I doubt it has a significant effect on students overall ability to reason, let alone all the half-reasoning, half-social skills that make for success in life.

I know I'm swimming against the tide here. I just think that we overestimate the roll of content. I doubt that coverage of evolution in school is well correlated with academic or live success, once we adjust for economic and cultural factors (ie., West Virginians are screwed generally).

Incidentally, I would distinguish between creationism and intelligent design here. Although alike in wrongness, form matters. Teaching creationism is to admit a principle into education that is deeply pernicious—that reasoning through things is to be deprecated in favor of blind authority. (This is also a false religious principle, IMHO.) Intelligent design is deeply bogus, and draws its actual strength from the same well of know-nothingism, but, if taught in a "scientific way," it's merely terrible, stupid science to the students. That's not as bad as teaching students the repudiation of critical thinking outright.

You're drawing a distinction without a significant difference; ID is creationism - it's simply a form that's trying to lie about its fundamentals.

I agree that's its motivation. But form matters.

For example, imagine you were a bigot and a history teacher. You could tell your students you thought Kennedy was a bad president because he was a Irish and Catholic, and there are no good Irish or Catholics. Or you could tell them he was bad because of his inept handling of the Bay of Pigs. The motive would be the same underneath but the former would be change the game—to admit into education not merely bad reasoning, but a different sort of reason (unreason, really), and one more deeply pernicious to education.

Do you see what I am saying?

#115 etc.

You have not—so far as I can see—told me where your edge is.

Fair enough. But I don't see it as an edge; as a white and black thing. I see it more as a fuzzy boundary, fading gradually to black. And then there is the metric we should use to position any given idea in the fading boundary. I agree with the useful part of "useful or potentially correct", although we may have to work a little on what useful means. The "potentially correct" bit causes me to pause a little, maybe because I am not sure what we mean by correct; that one would probably take a lot more work. History suggests that the establishment is not good at picking winning ideas at early times in their history and that sometimes old ideas make a comeback. Because of this and our uncertainty, we should encourage a wide diversity of competing ideas. One might even suggest an analogy with evolution; a healthy population will contain a variety of traits that will allow it to adapt to future environments. A monoculture is fragile.

I also fully agree with your comment that we overestimate the roll of content and should do more to encourage critical thinking. But I don't think that encouraging critical thinking means squashing any and all thinking with which we don't agree. You are right that blind authority does not support critical thinking, but just substituting one authority for another doesn't do it either. I am sure Nathaniel and his wife are more enlightened, but his tone in #116 suggest he is correcting one authority by imposing his own, that of the professor. We all probably agree that we would like to present students with the facts and a set of alternate theories and encourage them to make up their own minds which to believe; we do not want to force the students to believe what we believe.

I agree that's its motivation. But form matters.

But your analogy to a history teacher is inapt here. Teaching children ID is not the equivalent to telling them that Kennedy was a bad president because he was inept at handling the Bay of Pigs. It would be equivalent to saying that LBJ was a bad president because he conspired with the CIA and the Mafia to assassinate Kennedy. After all, we have no evidence that he didn't, so there's no reason not to teach the controversy.

Except for the fact that among actual historians there is no controversy on this score, and conspiracy theorists with no support for their claims are rightly dismissed as crackpots.

Or we could teach the "controversy" that the moon landings never happened and that it was all just a big hoax perpetrated by NASA. Or that Roosevelt knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor but prevented the U.S. armed forces from defending themselves so that he would have a causus belli. And so on. ID is just another groundless claim, no more substantial than the fringe conspiracy theories that we simply don't teach in schools because they are groundless and more or less insane.

You said before:

Kids generally and American kids in particular are undereducated in a million ways.

Maybe they are. But that's no reason to make the job harder by introducing things into the classroom that are unsupported and have been shown to be almost certainly false.

Try teaching that the moon landings were faked or that LBJ arranged to have Kennedy killed and I think you'd get the same "emotional heat" as you get from teaching creationism/ID in schools.

>121 rrp:: "we do not want to force the students to believe what we believe."

No, but what we do want to do is teach students what we actually know about the world. And from the perspectives of both a theologian (mine) and an evolutionary biologist (my wife's), we know that young-earth creationism and ID are inferior models of what we actually know about the world. There are better explanations for how the world works, both theologically and scientifically, than creationism and ID.

And so, if my wife is teaching a biology class, she's going to teach the theories, models, and explanations that actually work. And if I'm teaching a systematic theology class or a class in biblical hermeneutics, I'm going to teach the theories and methods that actually work. If I'm teaching an historical theology class (i.e. history of Christianity), then I will teach the development of theological models of God's role as Creator -- models that included way back near the beginnings of Christianity concepts of grace as evolutionary (see Irenaeus), that understood that Genesis 1-2 cannot be read absolutely literally because such a reading becomes contradictory or nonsensical (see Augustine's The Literal Meaning of Genesis), but that also accepted that account as a fairly accurate picture of world history up the modern era. I would then teach them that, as scientific knowledge about the universe progressed, Christians worked to incorporate or dispute that new knowledge in terms of their own theology in a variety of ways. One of those was ultra-literalist fundamentalism; but many others were quite happy to accept the advances in scientific knowledge, fully believing and trusting that human reason is a gift from God.

If, after being presented with those facts and methods from the history of Christianity, my students insist that an ultra-literalist reading of Genesis is still true, there's nothing I can do to change that. But if some of them learn in my classroom that their Christian faith does not need to be set in conflict with science, and that science can actually strengthen rather than threaten that faith, then I will consider myself a better educator for it.

(Ignore this - I'm only posting so that this interesting topic shows up in Your posts .)

#121: History suggests that the establishment is not good at picking winning ideas at early times in their history and that sometimes old ideas make a comeback.

Like where? Evolution is 150 years old. I don't see ideas that old coming back.

But I don't think that encouraging critical thinking means squashing any and all thinking with which we don't agree.

Let's put evolution off limits. Give me some examples here.

>125 prosfilaes:: "I don't see ideas that old coming back."

I'd just point out that as a theologian, one of my interests (especially in light of modern knowledge about cosmology and evolution) is in what has long been a minority theological tradition known as the eternal counsel / the absolute predestination of Christ. The nitty-gritty isn't important here; what's important is that one of the earliest writers in that tradition (and one of the earliest non-NT Christian writers, period), Irenaeus, has some very interesting ideas about spiritual evolution and alternative soteriologies that I and a number of other theologians are exploring as fruitful possibilities in overcoming certain dilemmas that the evidence of evolution causes for traditional soteriologies (like atonement theory).

In other words, the ideas of someone who wrote 1800 years ago are making a come-back in theological circles because they are useful today.

Theology is a bullshit "discipline" hardly comparable to even "social" sciences.

126

The "predestination" of Christ is one of the things that finally put me off Christianity. Either Jesus had free will like the rest of us, in which case he could have avoided being crucified. Or, in order to fulfil "prophecies" and atone, he simply had no real choice in the matter.

(Apologies both for the lack of sophistication of my post, and for diverting the topic into waters that more rightfully belong in other topics).

127

Why? Biblical scholarship for example, uses the same techniques used by historians, textual analysts, archaeologists, linguists, and other academic disciplines (indeed, many such scholars ARE also historians, etc). To say it's "bullshit" is not a reasoned analysis by any standard.

nathaniel

But if some of them learn in my classroom that their Christian faith does not need to be set in conflict with science, and that science can actually strengthen rather than threaten that faith, then I will consider myself a better educator for it.

This I applaud.

#125 Like where?

Like atomic theory, dead for 2200 years or so.

Give me some examples here.

Remember McClintock?

but I just don't buy that the heat here is generated by the educational effect.

Well, a lot of the heat generated about it here is generated specifically because rrp has consistently misrepresented his positions on these forums. And expended quite a bit of energy arguing a controversy that doesn't really exist.

MikeVail pretty much tags it around post 100 or so.

nathaniel, john and anyone else who has something relevant to add.

I am curious as to the exact current theological position(s) with respect to design. Are those parts of the Nicene Creed which states God is "maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible" and "Through him all things were made" relevant? How are there interpreted? I assume, though I may be wrong, that this implies intention and therefor design at some level. But what level?

nathaniel, john and anyone else who has something relevant to add.

Nice backhanded slight.

>127 LolaWalser:: "Theology is a bullshit "discipline" hardly comparable to even "social" sciences."

You can take that up with the universities that have determined that theology and religious studies are, in fact, important enough to keep around.

(Anyone want to wonder what the response would be if someone responded, "Evolutionary biology is a bullshit 'discipline' hardly comparable to even the Queen of the Sciences, theology"? I.e. if someone decided that their own personal biases were sufficient to dismiss as nonsense that which the academy deems important?)

>128 Tid:: "The "predestination" of Christ is one of the things that finally put me off Christianity. Either Jesus had free will like the rest of us, in which case he could have avoided being crucified. Or, in order to fulfil "prophecies" and atone, he simply had no real choice in the matter."

You misunderstand what the doctrine of the predestination of Christ is all about. It has nothing to do with the crucifixion -- indeed, it offers a radically different soteriology that bypasses "atonement" altogether. Rather, it holds that the Incarnation was part of the "eternal counsel" and was eternally predestined. Later theorists (like Duns Scotus) went so far as to point out that, according to this doctrine, Christ would have become a human even if humans had never fallen. The appeal of this doctrine is that it focuses on grace as the divinization of humanity (Irenaeus' dictum was, "God became man that man might become God") -- rather than being created in full perfection, humans were created as spiritual beings who would "evolve" by grace and the Incarnation towards perfection.

> 135

As the holder of multiple degrees in religious studies, none of which were granted by institutions offering "theology" degrees, I'm calling foul on your attempt to confuse the difference between these. I imagine you know better.

Anyone want to wonder what the response would be if someone responded, "Evolutionary biology is a bullshit 'discipline' hardly comparable to even the Queen of the Sciences, theology"?

Yeah, apoplexy-inducing laughter.

I imagine you know better.

Two-bit megalomaniacs never know better, but the sideshow is occasionally worth the waste of time.

But your analogy to a history teacher is inapt here. Teaching children ID is not the equivalent to telling them that Kennedy was a bad president because he was inept at handling the Bay of Pigs. It would be equivalent to saying that LBJ was a bad president because he conspired with the CIA and the Mafia to assassinate Kennedy. After all, we have no evidence that he didn't, so there's no reason not to teach the controversy.

I agree with your analogy. And I don't want to teach ID, or to "teach the controversy." Teaching either would be bad science. I was constrasting teaching ID and teaching creationism, and saying the latter was more toxic to what education is trying to do.

So, to take your analogy wholesale, to say that the CIA and the Mafia conspired to assasinate Kennedy would be bad. No teacher should say that, because it's a dumb conspiracy theory, unsupported by facts. But to tell your kids that Kennedy was bad because Irish people and Catholics are subhuman would be bad in a different way; it would be to promote the idea that facts aren't important, but something else--bigotry in this case--should decide questions of fact. In the case of creationism, the "something else" is that scripture--a dumb, literal interpretation of scripture, but whatever--should substitute for the normal inputs and tools of science.

The rest of your post seems animated by a misunderstanding of what I said--that I want to "teach the controversy." I don't know how to say it more clearly: I don't.

History suggests that the establishment is not good at picking winning ideas at early times in their history and that sometimes old ideas make a comeback.

I'm not in favor of stopping people from doing scientific work against evolution. Knock yourself out! We know the result--you won't get published, and the only job you'll get will be at institutions devoted to pushing your view for religious reasons. But, hey, whatever you want. If you want to be a crank, be a crank.

But tell me why this needs to be pushed in high schools? As a scientific idea, anti-evolutionism is the far, far fringe. What criterion would one use to argue that high schools should take up this far, far fringe idea? What other far-fringe ideas should 10th-graders be taking seriously, any why?

#130: Like atomic theory, dead for 2200 years or so.

I scarcely find atomic theory parallel; it was not a scientific theory until the early 19th century. The meanderings of philosophers does not scientific theory make.

Remember McClintock?

Yeah; she got the Nobel Prize for her studies, and is now part of the orthodoxy. If you want to prove that your grand philosophic theory has general relevance, give real examples of how it would apply. Right now, I'm concluding that it's a big smoke screen to justify your support of creationism.

#139: I'm not in favor of stopping people from doing scientific work against evolution. Knock yourself out! We know the result--you won't get published, and the only job you'll get will be at institutions devoted to pushing your view for religious reasons. But, hey, whatever you want. If you want to be a crank, be a crank.

But tell me why this needs to be pushed in high schools? As a scientific idea, anti-evolutionism is the far, far fringe. What criterion would one use to argue that high schools should take up this far, far fringe idea? What other far-fringe ideas should 10th-graders be taking seriously, any why?

I was getting around to saying something like that. Behe's "Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid residues" and "Experimental evolution, loss-of-function mutations, and "the first rule of adaptive evolution"" may or may not be good science, but they're taking issues, presenting them in careful detail and putting them before an audience that can understand them

Popular material, especially pressed on children, doesn't. Even if we should applaud non-orthodox opinions, they should be carefully argued to those who can evaluate them. Don't tell me that Proto-Indo-European originated in Ireland or Massachusetts in a quick popular volume; take it to archeologists and people who speak Hittite, Vedic Sanskrit and Tocharian.

136

My mistake - I didn't realise that was what you meant by "predestination". Though my revulsion at the 'fulfilment of biblical prophecy' as a denial of free will still stands (and it wasn't yet an issue for the early Jewish Christians anyway).

If you are familiar with Spong, he regards Jesus as a 'fully (spiritually) evolved human' who was the template of what we all can be, hence the 'Son of Man' epithet he applied to himself. As far as Spong believes in God, he believes in an internal divinity; a position that seems (to me, though probably not to him) closer to Vedic philosophy.

138

"Anyone want to wonder what the response would be if someone responded, "Evolutionary biology is a bullshit 'discipline' hardly comparable to even the Queen of the Sciences, theology"?

Yeah, apoplexy-inducing laughter."

From New Atheists, most probably. But a true and impartial intellectual would feel sad that any position should be represented so crudely and in such an extreme, biased, unscientific, and mindless way.

140

"I scarcely find atomic theory parallel; it was not a scientific theory until the early 19th century. The meanderings of philosophers does not scientific theory make."

Hmm, this point is a bit hazy. Yes, Democritus' theory could not have been tested or measured in any way in his time. But it was somewhat more than "philosophical meandering". The theory is :
"Democritus claimed that everything is made up of atoms. These atoms are physically, but not geometrically, indivisible; between atoms lies empty space; atoms are indestructible; have always been, and always will be, in motion; there are an infinite number of atoms and kinds of atoms, which differ in shape, and size. He said, about the mass of atoms,”The more any indivisible exceeds, the heavier it is.”. He helped to propose the earliest views on the shapes and connectivity of atoms. He reasoned that the solidness of the material corresponded to the shape of the atoms involved. Thus, iron atoms are solid and strong with hooks that lock them into a solid; water atoms are smooth and slippery; salt atoms, because of their taste, are sharp and pointed; and air atoms are light and whirling. Using analogies from our senses, he gave an image of an atom that distinguished them from each other by their shape, size, and the arrangement of their parts. These connections were explained by material links in which single atoms were supplied with attachments: some with hooks and eyes others with balls and sockets. The Democritean atom is an inert solid that interacts with other atoms mechanically. In contrast, modern, quantum-mechanical atoms interact via electric and magnetic force fields and are far from inert.

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/60058/democritus-atom/#ixzz2AIobWJBx "

It was also the Classical Greeks who observed the curvature of the horizon, and using the shadows cast by sticks on sand, calculated a diameter of the Earth that was within 10% of the actual diameter. Yet for historical reasons (the collapse of cultures, war, the rise and fall of empires, a lapse into comparative barbarism), this was lost until Copernicus.

The rest of your post seems animated by a misunderstanding of what I said--that I want to "teach the controversy." I don't know how to say it more clearly: I don't.

The post was partially responding to you, and partially responding to the more general argument that because ID "isn't creationism" we should teach it. And also to the original question as to the "controversy" between creationists and actual scientists.

I'm not in favor of stopping people from doing scientific work against evolution. Knock yourself out!

Not directly responding to you, but one interesting point about people doing "scientific work" against evolution is that they almost never actually do any scientific work. They don't do their own research, they don't do studies, they don't do field work, essentially all the anti-evolution crowd seems to do is parasitically attach themselves to the work of actual researchers and proceed to quote mine and misrepresent their work. Contrary to rrp's claim that anti-evolutionists are somehow brave crusaders going up against the scientific establishment, they really are little more than remoras.

Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth by comparing the shadow of a stick at Syene in Egypt with one at Alexandria. The shadow at Alexandria was 1/50 of a circle. The stick at Syene produced no shadow. The conclusion is that Alexandria is 1/50 of the Earth's circle from Syene.

Aristotle I think accepted that the Earth was a sphere, but he did not accept that the Earth moved.

I do not think the shape of the Earth was the insight that was lost until Copernicus, but rather the motion of the Earth. Many atribute the insistence of a stationary Earth on the force of Aristotle's argument and influence, perhaps along with the position of the Church.

>127 LolaWalser:: "Theology is a bullshit "discipline" hardly comparable to even "social" sciences."

And yet, you seem quite eager to comment in a group called, "Let's talk religion". Why the eagerness, if you think that talking about religion is, in fact, bullshit?

Or is that you have no interest in discussing religion, but only in denigrating and ridiculing it?

Do you also make it a regular habit to dismiss the professions and livelihoods of other people on LT as bullshit?

>135 nathanielcampbell:: "As the holder of multiple degrees in religious studies, none of which were granted by institutions offering "theology" degrees, I'm calling foul on your attempt to confuse the difference between these. I imagine you know better."

Yes, and I apologize. My degrees and experience are from private universities where they still call it "theology" (my specialty is in medieval theology, aka historical theology -- i.e. I straddle that line between history and theology; nothing drives me battier than the theologians who assume that medieval theology is reducible to Thomas Aquinas).

#140

If you want to prove that your grand philosophic theory has general relevance, give real examples of how it would apply.

McClintock is a real example. Her work was dismissed by her peers, until is wasn't. That's the point. At the time, her peers knew her ideas weren't going to win her the prize. Now we know they were. Now, we don't know which current ideas will win the prize.

> 147 drives me battier than the theologians who assume that medieval theology is reducible to Thomas Aquinas)

Few things irritate me so consistently as the lay assumption that I'm a "theologian" for having pursued religious studies.

I have in fact studied medieval theology. Given your specialty, I'm sure you know the work of Barbara Newman. And perhaps you're familiar with Robert Lerner's? They were a couple of my graduate professors. Still, historical theology is not central to my intellectual projects, and I have a thoroughly Feuerbachian regard for contemporary theology.

McClintock is a real example.

And the vast gulf between McClintock and the people you say should be given credence is that McClintock actually did scientific work to establish the validity of her ideas. The remoras of cdesign proponentistsism don't actually do any scientific work in support of their ideas, and as a result no one ever needs to take their parasitical arguments seriously.

When ID proponents come up with a theory that their claims could be tested against and start doing their own original research to validate their claims, they might differentiate themselves from Kennedy assasination conspiracy theorists, "birthers", and 9/11 "truthers".

>149 paradoxosalpha:: But notice what the title is of Newman's first major book (one of the most used in my library, as my focus is Hildegard): Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine. My point is that I do consider myself a theologian and my work theology.

(Before life took us on a different path and I was looking at PhD programs after my Masters (from Notre Dame's Medieval Institute, working under Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and John Van Engen, another one of those medievalist super-couples {ND picked up another while I was there, Margot Fassler and Peter Jeffrey(2)}), I applied to Northwestern to work with her; ultimately, I was accepted into what would have been a better program for me professionally, the Historical Studies in Theology and Religion program in Emory's Graduate Division of Religion ... but life took a different turn when my wife was offered a tenure-track position, so I while away my time adjuncting and doing research.)

146

My mistake. Even the Ptolemaic system which Copernicus refuted didn't rely on a flat earth. And while it's true that much Greek thought (including their science) was lost in the so-called Dark Ages, that doesn't equate even remotely to 'working on the frontiers of known science', but merely ignorance caused by lost work.

> 151 But notice what the title is of Newman's first major book

Yes, I said: "I have in fact studied medieval theology," and I mentioned Newman in support of that. But I'm not a theologian, and my degrees are not in theology. How do you suppose that you are correcting me?

I understand that you are a theologian. From a disciplinary perspective, I declare myself opposed to you and your fellow speculative fantasts.

>153 paradoxosalpha:: Did you ever mention your objection to her speculative fantasies to Barbara Newman? (I suggest you read her recent article, "Coming Out of the (Sacristy) Closet" (Religion and Literature 42 {2010}, a special issue devoted to, "'Something Fearful': Medievalist Scholars on the Religious Turn"), which argues for why religious scholars should remain engaged with modern faith traditions.) As I said, my major field is historical theology, which, you know, studies the history of theology; but does so because it believes that historical theology has something to say to us today. (Thus my point that got us started, to wit: I believe that the soteriological ideas of Irenaeus can be useful today in reconciling modern Christian thought with our modern knowledge about the world we live in.)

Now, if your position is that, as a religious studies person rather than a theologian, you study stuff that is speculative fantasy but don't advocate it, that seems a rather--excuse the expression--academic distinction.

> 154 Did you ever mention your objection to her speculative fantasies to Barbara Newman

No, that would have been rude and irrelevant, considering that she works as a Professor of English Literature with some additional responsibilities in the Religion department. She didn't present herself as a theologian, but as a literary scholar, and she never professed (to me) advocacy for any particular theology. This is not to say that she didn't have some sort of private theological positions, but that wasn't what she was doing professionally. Theological writings are a type of literature, and certainly an important one in medieval European history. I think Newman's researches on the topic are admirable.

> 154 Now, if your position is that, as a religious studies person rather than a theologian, you study stuff that is speculative fantasy but don't advocate it, that seems a rather--excuse the expression--academic distinction.

Hardly. Do you think someone interested in mitigating the effects of drug abuse should omit to study psychopharmacology?

>155 paradoxosalpha:: "Hardly. Do you think someone interested in mitigating the effects of drug abuse should omit to study psychopharmacology?"

Do you think that someone interested in mitigating the effects of drug abuse views the use of all pharmocological products as abusive?

Or can the person who studies drug abuse also admit that some drugs are beneficial, and that treating drug abuse can in fact help improve the safe use of legitimate pharmacological compounds?

Likewise, does the religious scholar automatically assume that all religion is fraudulent and evil? (As an academic, such a biased assumption would seem to me, at least, to be gravely problematic.) Or can the religious scholar recognize the good things of religion, and use their expertise in religion to help improve the practice of religion today?

> 156 Do you think that someone interested in mitigating the effects of drug abuse views the use of all pharmocological products as abusive?

Let me be explicit about my metaphor. Drugs : religion :: drug abuse : theology.

I'm not currently an academic. In fact, I am clergy. But my academic degrees were not furnished as career preparation for clergy vocation; they were liberal studies in the humanities. So you and I seem to have almost precisely inverse relationships to religion and the academy, respectively. I actually serve as an officer of a religious body, where I use the products of the academy to enhance the practice and understanding of my co-religionists. You are in the academy, where you must use the products of religion -- if you are a genuine theologian -- to confuse and delude your colleagues and students.

"It is theism, theology, that has wrenched man out of his relationship with the world, isolated him, made him into an arrogant self-centered being who exalts himself above nature. And it is only on this level that religion becomes identified with theology, with the belief in a being outside and above nature as the true God. Originally religion expressed nothing other than man’s feeling that he is an inseparable part of nature or the world." (Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, 5th Lecture, p. 35)

ETA: I've now given the linked Newman paper a quick read. It was written several years after my interactions with her, and there she declares herself to be "coming out." Nothing in it is very surprising to me. I am (and have been) very sympathetic to the sort of questions that she asks about visionary experience, but I absolutely refuse to suppose that the ultimate or even useful answers to them are theological. Please note, Newman is by no means my Doktormutter. (Indeed, my doctorate is not of this world!) I only gave her as an example of someone with whom I had formally studied theological material.

155

Either I've misunderstood you, or you are actually saying that all theologians must necessarily have a faith position with respect to a particular theology? If so, you seem to be unaware of the distinction between a theist and a theologian.

"Theology (from Ancient Greek Θεός meaning "God" and λόγος, -logy, meaning "study of") is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.1" (Wikipedia).

Now clearly schools of divinity and seminaries have their own raison d'être but universities generally do not, in relation to religion. Nathaniel is a believer; not because he is a theologian, but as a Roman Catholic.

ETA: I hadn't read your 157 when we crossed in the post. I had assumed from your debates with Nathaniel that you are a religious scoffer who nevertheless has done religious studies in the past. Now I realise that you are a clergyman who is a theology scoffer. This is an unusual position (outside fundamentalism), and I would like to know more? Why do you so despise theology?

> 157

I'm not going to get into any sort of semantic contention on the basis of a Wikipedia citation. Suffice it to say that the religious studies professors with whom I had the greatest rapport would bristle at being called "theologians" (and some would use "crypto-theology" as a term of abuse for scholarship that they found objectionable). As far as the way it relates to my own experience and usage, that Wikipedia item is either defining "theology" too broadly, or "religion" too narrowly -- probably both.

158

Wikipedia - despite those who scoff at it - is usually pretty reliable and has rigourous standards of citations for everything it publishes. It may be that in specialist academic circles the term "theology" has a acquired a narrower definition which you are using here. Most non-specialists like myself would probably agree with the Wikipedia definition and use it accordingly.

>157 paradoxosalpha:: "to confuse and delude your colleagues and students."

I confess to being the one confused here. How do I "confuse and delude" my students when I assign them readings from Irenaeus, Augustine, Pseudo Dionysius, St. Benedict, Peter Damian, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildegard of Bingen, The Life of St. Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Christine de Pizan, Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings, Erasmus, Martin Luther, and Thomas More in a humanities survey covering the period from the reign of Augustus through the Reformation, titled "Religion and Empire"?

ETA: Paradoxosalpha posted the edit to 157 while I was writing this; and that edit makes the rest of this post rather irrelevant, as it was simply a long rehash with quotes of the Newman article under discussion. Thus, I have deleted it.

>157ff (paradoxosalpha): I, too, am not ready to hang my hat on a Wikipedia entry, so we will dispense with that. Your edit to 157 made my most recent post mostly irrelevant, except, I think, for its ultimate question, shared in a sense by Tid:

You tell us that you are an officer of a religious body, a member of the clergy -- and yet you seem utterly dismissive of a religious scholar feeling these yearnings for God. Why is that?

This is not meant as a pejorative question, but rather as one of understanding. In order for us to have productive conversations, I would like to be able to understand just what it is about theology that you find so repulsive. Is it, perhaps, that what you define as "theology" and what I mean when I call myself a "theologian" are two different things?

Let me, then, make an attempt to clarify what I mean when I describe myself as a theologian. (1) I study the history of Christian theology. (My specific subfield is thus called professionally "historical theology", as in the name of the program at Emory that I was once accepted to, "Historical Studies in Theology and Religion".) (2) I make use of my knowledge and study of historical Christian theology to explore the questions of my own faith.

(1) is what I do in the classroom and in my research; (2) is, for the moment, confined to my research and private life. Should my researches in (2) ever reach the level of adding to modern scholarship--a distant and perhaps vain hope--then they might also impact the classroom.

>158 Tid:: For the record, I am not Roman Catholic. I was raised high-church Anglo-Catholic and am currently a practicing Methodist.

163

Oops, mea culpa. I wonder where I got the idea you are Catholic from? I too was brought up High Anglican, and they were more Roman than the Catholics in my part of the world (NW England)!

I think you may be right about the different uses of the word 'theology' though. You and I mean it in the normal academic sense, I reckon.

>164 Tid:: "I wonder where I got the idea you are Catholic from"

Probably because I "talk" Catholic, was educated at Catholic universities, and take a keen interest in RC theology today, because often it's the RC's who take the most interest in medieval theology, followed closely by the Anglicans. (It was a big deal for me when Pope Benedict declared Hildegard of Bingen a Doctor of the Church this month, as she is both the center of my research work, the impetus for my personal journey towards becoming an academic, and up until now a long-shot for being accepted by the stodgy conservatives as having a theological authority on par with Augustine and Aquinas.)

>164 Tid: they were more Roman than the Catholics

They say (apocryphally, of course) that the Roman Catholic and High Anglican/Anglo-Catholic masses differ only in one small sentence. At the end of the mass, we papists pass the plate around again and the priest says, "Today's second collection will be for..."

> 113

"I was wondering how you'd move from a discussion of Einstein to Afrocentrism. I wonder no more."

=========
What part of this quotation from Principia Mathematica strikes you as "Afrocentric"?

It was the most ancient opinion of those who applied themselves to philosophy, that the fixed stars stood immovable in the highest parts of the world; that under them the planets revolved about the sun; and that the earth, as one of the planets, described an annual course about the Sun ... The Egyptians were the earliest observers of the ( heavens and from them, probably, this philosophy was spread abroad. For from them it was, and from the nations about them, that the Greeks, a people more addicted to the study of philology than of nature, derived their first as well as their soundest notions of philosophy; and in the Vestal ceremonies we can recognize the spirit of the Egyptians, who concealed mysteries that were above the capacity of the common herd under the veil of religious rites and hieroglyphic symbols.

Newton was pointing out an Egyptian concept which Einstein would later praise in Spinoza, namely: “deus sive natura. ‘

“I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings”.

The quotation above may be Einstein's most familiar statement of his beliefs. These words are frequently quoted, but a citation is seldom given. The quotation can be found in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp (The Open Court Publishing Co., La Salle, Illinois, Third Edition, 1970) pp. 659 - 660. There the source is given as the New York Times, 25 April 1929, p. 60, col. 4. Ronald W. Clark (pp. 413-414) gives a detailed account of the origin of Einstein's statement:

While the argument over his birthday present had been going on, the theory of relativity had been used to pull him into a religious controversy from which there emerged one of his much-quoted statements of faith.
It began when Cardinal O'Connell of Boston, who had attacked Einstein's General Theory on previous occasions, told a group of Catholics that it "cloaked the ghastly apparition of atheism" and "befogged speculation, producing universal doubt about God and His Creation."
Einstein, who had often reiterated his remark of 1921 to Archbishop Davidson-"It makes no difference. It is purely abstract science"-was at first uninterested.

Then, on April 24, Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue, New York, faced Einstein with the simple five-word cablegram: "Do you believe in God?"

"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists," he replied, "not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."

Years later he expanded this in a letter …. "I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza," he wrote. "But I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason."

See:

Arnold V. Lesikar,
Professor Emeritus
Dept. of Physics, Astronomy, and Engineering Science,
St. Cloud State University

>167 quicksiva:: We all know that you have a fixation on any mention of Egypt (or any other part of Africa), even when the mention of it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Ancient astronomy as practiced by the Egyptians is a minor point of Newton's treatise (no more than a footnote really) and, more importantly, has nothing to do with the topic under discussion. Your claim that Spinoza got his ideas from the ancient Egyptians is specious at best and really quite ludicrous.

168

"Ancient astronomy as practiced by the Egyptians is a minor point of Newton's treatise (no more than a footnote recently) and, more importantly, has nothing to do with the topic under discussion."

Would this be an instance of Sun God-win's Law ?

>169 Tid:: {Groan....}

>168 nathanielcampbell:
We all know that you have a fixation on any mention of Egypt (or any other part of Africa), even when the mention of it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
=========
My children tell me that all of the time. I agree. But how would you explain Einstein's endorsement of Spinoza's formulation, "deus sive natura" when forced to explain his ideas to both Christians and Jews in the political climate of the late 1920's?

ETA Without invoking Godwin.

>171 quicksiva:: Einstein was familiar with Spinoza's thought (vis-a-vis God as ground-of-reality, i.e. an ontological principle rather than an anthropomorphized, supernatural agent like the God of the Old Testament) and thought it made sense in terms of his own cosmology.

Neither Newton nor the ancient Egyptians have anything to do with it. (And if you think that the ancient Egyptians conceived of anything like Spinoza's God, then you've sorely misunderstood both Spinoza and the ancient Egyptians.)

Einstein said, “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”

God:Nature:: Religion:Science

>173 quicksiva:: And what does that have to do with ancient Egypt? Or more properly speaking: what has ancient Egypt to do with Spinoza and Einstein?

Unless what you're trying to say is that the ancient Egyptians started doing "scientific" things (i.e. observing the natural world to figure things out about it) because of their religious beliefs. But that hardly makes the ancient Egyptians unique: up until very recently, pretty much all scientific pursuits, regardless of culture, had a religious foundation.

It's as if we were having a conversation about large buildings constructed in the 20th century and you chimed in to remind us that the Egyptians built the pyramids. Well, yes they did -- and the Chinese built the Great Wall of China. What does that have to do with 20th century architecture?

Or if we're having a discussion about our favorite microbrewery and you chime in to remind us that the Egyptians brewed beer. Well, yes they did -- but that doesn't have anything to do with whether I like the new brew from the pub down the street.

Not every subject in the world is reducible to Egypt. You're just going to need to deal with that fact.

#143

But a true and impartial intellectual would feel sad that any position should be represented so crudely and in such an extreme, biased, unscientific, and mindless way.

What position are you talking about? I assure you I consider theology a bullshit discipline in a most mindful way. Or were you talking about the clowns who call it "the queen of sciences"?

#147

And yet, you seem quite eager to comment in a group called, "Let's talk religion". Why the eagerness, if you think that talking about religion is, in fact, bullshit?

Theology is bullshit; talking about religion is a way to pass time like any other.

>175 LolaWalser:: "Theology is bullshit"

Do you regularly dismiss the professions of other folks on LT as "bullshit" just because you don't like them? Or is it that, despite the fact that the academy generally disagrees with your assessment, you feel that your own personal bias gives you the authority to declare theology "bullshit"?

Who went and made you the Thought Police? "I think Nathaniel needs a visit to the Ministry of Truth," eh?

#176

We had a thread a while ago, examining the claims of theology to being a scholarly discipline. Turns out that it's "scholarly" insofar it poaches from respectable fields, such as history, history of religion, philology, literary criticism etc. Take away those and there's nothing but the good old Bible on the bottom. Leonardo couldn't draw a more perfect circle.

>177 LolaWalser:: You should probably inform of all of those universities that still have theology programs that they've got bullshit lying around. Also, all those scholarly presses that publish works on theology, plus all of those academic journals....

You better get busy, Lola -- you've got a lot of academia to attend to! Go into the world and preach the non-study of the Gospel!

You should probably inform of all of those universities that still have theology programs that they've got bullshit lying around.

They don't need Lola to do that for them. They already know.

What's most embarrassing (apart from pitiful references by misguided champions to medieval glory), is the name. That "theos" is a real problem nowadays, since we've come to insist on actual sciences having an actual object of study.

Then again, in 2000 years (give or take...), hardly anyone's pretending theology says anything about anything except about accumulated twaddle about twaddle about twaddle about god.

Let's not forget that "Adrienne's thread" is probably buried in bull shit.

>180 LolaWalser:: "That "theos" is a real problem nowadays, since we've come to insist on actual sciences having an actual object of study."

I'm trying to figure out if it's myopia or hubris to suggest that nobody cares about God these days...

All you poor majority of the world who still believe in God ... well, you're aren't worth shit, at least not according to Lola.

What compassion!

Once again, we see what "tolerance" really means (since it's religious people who are supposed to be intolerant, right?). Once again, we see what liberal thought means .... you are free to think anything so long as LolaWalser decides it's worthy of study. But if you don't pass Lola's litmus test, well, then I'm sorry. Your ideas aren't worth anything.

Not every subject in the world is reducible to Egypt. You're just going to need to deal with that fact.

=========
I never said Egypt was the only civilization 4,000 years ago. There were also Nubia, China, India, Sumer, Babylonia, and the early Canaanites of Ebla .

When he was awarded the Order of the Elephant by the Danish government, Neils Bohr designed his own coat of arms which featured a taijitu (symbol of yin and yang) and the motto in Latin: contraria sunt complementa: "opposites are complementary", Shouldn't this allow me to trace the influences of ancient Taoist beliefs on Western science without being called Sino-centric?

BTW An excellent series in this area is Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilization in China. Another is Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary Studies, by Nathan Sivin. The Tao of Physics is dedicated to Fritjof Capra's Tai Chi master. And then, there is The Dancing Wu-li Masters by Gary Zukav.

Einstein is a mug, anyway...!

175, 177 and passim..

So let me get you straight - if I were to go to university as an agnostic (or even an atheist), I couldn't study theology because the discipline requires me to be a believer in order to study? In other words, I can't study other people's religious beliefs in a dispassionate, academic way purely for the intellectual sake of it?

And as for the "good old Bible" being at the bottom of it all, what if I were a Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist theologian - are you claiming that only Christianity has theologians?

Whatever I privately think of your views, expressing them in the form of "it's just bullshit" isn't going to get me onside. Well ok, if it's UFOs or 9/11 conspiracy theories or Roswell or the Bermuda Triangle, I'd be sympathetic to your POV but I still wouldn't be comfortable with the way you expressed it. Theology, though, is a perfectly respectable academic discipline that, outside the US anyway, doesn't require a belief in God to undertake.

We had a thread a while ago, examining the claims of theology to being a scholarly discipline. Turns out that it's "scholarly" insofar it poaches from respectable fields, such as history, history of religion, philology, literary criticism etc. Take away those and there's nothing but the good old Bible on the bottom.

You are surely aware that "theology" is a engaged in by non-Christians--that SOMETHING is being done at the Hebrew Theological College, Jewish Theological Seminary, at the Theology and Philosophy department of Al-Azhar, etc. But I fail to see the rhetorical advantage you seek to gain through pretended ignorance.

Early on, the Sumerians had an extremely highly developed theology. Magnus Magnusson tell us in Archaeology of the Bible that:

"They were also profoundly devout; innumerable figurines have been excavated showing people in attitudes of reverence, hands clasped, eyes wide with piety and awe, which had been deposited in temples as votive offerings to the gods. The supreme father of the gods was Anu, the source of all order and government. The god of wisdom was Enki (also called Ea), while Enlil was the storm-god. There was a sun-god (Shamash) and a moon-god (Sin). On the distaff side, the most potent of the goddesses was Ishtar (originally called Inanna in Sumer), who would become notorious in the Bible as Ashtoreth (Astarte), the mother of abominations. One of the earliest representations of her is to be seen on the magnificent Uruk Vase, a tall alabaster vessel dating to around 3000 BC, which shows her receiving offerings from a procession of naked priests.

Ishtar was a very complex deity. She was the goddess of fertility and sexual activity, the goddess of war, and in her astral manifestation, she was the Venus star in the sky.

Kathleen Beatty, a Canadian scholar at Birmingham University who was studying Mesopotamian religion, found Ishtar (Inanna) the most intriguing of all the Sumerian divinities. She detected hints that Ishtar was in some way responsible for the selection and sanctioning of the kings of the Sumerian city-states, who acted as stewards of the divine sovereigns. It was this, says Miss Beatty, which gave rise to the concept of sacred marriage, the 'temple prostitution' that the later Bible writers would find so abominable. The sacred marriage was a formal, highly stylised cultic institution, at one and the same time religious and political, enacted between the high priestess representing Ishtar, and the king in the role of high priest representing the city as the vicar of god; and through this act of sacred sexuality, the power of the divinity flowed down from heaven through the king to the people and the land."

>183 quicksiva: and 187: The Sumerians had religion? Wow, I didn't know that! (Sarcasm)

You forgot to mention that 4000 years ago, there were also civilizations in Anatolia and throughout Europe (NOVA this week reran last year's episode on the "Ice Man", a 5,000 year old body found completely intact in the Alps back in the early '90's -- the oldest full remains of a human body ever found in the world were not from the mummies of Egypt or China, but from a late-Stone-Age tribe in the Alps.

And once again, you have failed to tell us what Ishtar has to do with Einstein.

There's a simple yardstick measuring the bullshit of theology--ask yourself whether it takes a "theologian" to do the work in question. For instance, Nathaniel's work on Hildegard of Bingen.

Turns out lots of scholars who DO NOT call themselves theologians (many of whom would be terribly embarrassed or worse if one called them that) do such work. I bet Nathaniel cites plenty of work by various religious studies types, New testament scholars, historians of religion, philosophers of religion etc.

In short, if all "theologians" disappeared overnight, the work they do--insofar it is regular scholarly work--could continue on as if nothing happened, in the hands of experts whose techniques these "theologians" are borrowing anyway.

Theology, far from being a "queen" of sciences, is today an obsolete little corner of religious studies, and an embarrassment to real scholarship. It's not Harvard scientists who are going to remind you their school started out as a divinity school.

#185, 186

Yes, of course there are non-Christian theologies, and of course they are all bullshit, for exactly the same reasons.

ETA: I am assuming universality when I speak of "theology", if that wasn't clear before. And for those who can't help getting mired debating the obvious--do not confuse theology with mythology, philosophy or religious studies in general.

>189 LolaWalser:: So really, you're problem isn't with what I actually study -- it's just with what I call myself. It's the label you're objecting to, not the substance of the scholarship.

A rose by any other name, perhaps?

(I'm reminded at this point of the postscript that Umberto Eco wrote for a later edition of The Name of the Rose in which he admitted that he hadn't ever thought of the Shakespeare reference when he wrote the book, and that it only popped up when Anglophone fans began writing him letters about.)

Unless, of course, what you see as the "useless" work that theologians proper do as opposed to scholars of religion, is that they apply their critical studies to answering questions about living faiths today. Billions of people around the world guide their lives based on religion, and theologians use the tools of scholarship to help in that process.

Is that what you consider bullshit?

Billions of people around the world guide their lives based on religion, and theologians use the tools of scholarship to help in that process.

This deserves a thread of its own. We touched upon it in the defunct thread--looking over the programmes of (Christian) theological studies, it was clear that what little wasn't ordinary history, philology and so on, it was something called "pastoral care".

Not an academic discipline.

>191 LolaWalser:: "Not an academic discipline."

I know some MDiv's who would disagree with that. But then, the issue here isn't what the academy defines as academic disciplines -- it's what Lola defines as academic disciplines. Because you know, Lola has a better grasp of this than the universities do.

>191 LolaWalser:: "it was something called "pastoral care"

That may be part of it, but I think that modern exegesis, systematics, and moral theology are just as much distinct from "ordinary history, philology, and so on" -- to come back to the initial example that touched this off, I was talking about applying one soteriology (the absolute predestination of Christ) which has been historically a minority view in the West, in order to make better sense of the relationship between human evolution, sin, the Incarnation, and salvation.

Trying to figure how to fit together the evidence of biological evolution and modern physical cosmology with Christian perspectives on the relationship between the world and God its Creator and Redeemer seems to be (1) an important intellectual pursuit and (2) not just pastoral theology.

But then, what do I know? It's been made clear that atheists are the ones who are supposed to determine what is and what isn't theology.

193

"It's been made clear that atheists are the ones who are supposed to determine what is and what isn't theology."

Tsk tsk. NOW who's making sweeping generalisations. You surely mean a particular kind of atheist ?

~168

"We all know that you have a fixation on any mention of Egypt (or any other part of Africa), even when the mention of it has nothing to do with the topic at hand."

A perfect example of how the red flag system works. A clear attack on another Librarything poster. No red flags. But, of course, this poster doesn't have his own cult, like some that might be mentioned.

Trying to figure how to fit together the evidence of biological evolution and modern physical cosmology with Christian perspectives on the relationship between the world and God its Creator and Redeemer seems to be (1) an important intellectual pursuit and (2) not just pastoral theology.

It may be 1), 2), both or neither, depending on one's point of view, but it is clearly not good science, i.e. worthy of being an academic discipline (incidentally, you may take it for granted, since your exegetical powers failed you regarding my previous posts, that I'm aware of theological programmes and seminaries offered in various places--there is nothing inherent in the structure of institutions of higher education that precludes teaching bullshit.)

For instance, in the above in typical theological fashion you are assuming the fact of the existence of a Christian god creator and redeemer and proceed to offer a "reconciliation" between doctrines issuing from that assumptions and biological evolution. That may have a perfectly good practical application, insofar, say, it--maybe-- can prevent rabid fundamentalists from burning biology textbooks (or biologists), but it's neither science nor scholarship.

This, as I hinted at before, is the incontrovertible problem with theology and why so many scholars of religion balk at being considered "theologians". (Even when like, say, Elaine Pagels, they are anything but atheist.) Where faith enters, science exits. People who believe that study of theology really IS "the study of god" (as opposed to study of what somebody somewhere said about god) aren't to be trusted nor respected as scholars.

Theology operates with concepts of god, heaven, hell, angels, demons, soul etc. as if these corresponded to something real. Theology comes up with all kinds of "attributes" of these non-proven objects and produces other concepts equally vague and untestable (e.g. the various doctrines of grace, predestination, salvation), and so on in an apparently endless chain. Actually, it's not a chain, it's a circle, beginning and ending with a given holy text.

I've brought up before the piece of theology I've read fairly recently, Luther's and Erasmus' exchange on free will. For both of them the Bible is the obvious and only authority on the question, they quibble about the interpretation of certain verses. For both of them it is self-evident that this "problem" is resolvable on the basis of Biblical teaching.

Well, that sort of thing stopped being self-evident to most of us today, even believers (at least, those supposedly "sophisticated"). However, it is clear that such thinking is still the core of theology, and that's why the latter gets no respect.

196

"it is clearly not good science, i.e. worthy of being an academic discipline"

I'm sorry - you mean only sciences comprise what can be called 'academic disciplines'? So, not history, liberal arts, classical and other languages, music, philosophy, etc? Very strange. Every university in Britain has a science faculty, and also an arts faculty as well. Is it different 'over there'?

I expressed myself badly, but I don't think extensive rephrasing is worth it, considering how much and what I already wrote. Besides, I don't get the impression that you in particular are making any effort to understand what I'm saying (not just in this discussion).

All the disciplines you mention differ from theology in having a well-defined and specific object of study. In that regard they all conform to the ideal of "science", especially if we remember that "science" also means "knowledge". All these disciplines gain specific knowledge about specific things.

Theology doesn't. Stripped of its poaching in real scholarly fields, it becomes obvious its domain is the Twaddle Zone.

~198

So, interdisciplinary studies are now nonscientific? Interesting. Who knew?

198

"I don't get the impression that you in particular are making any effort to understand what I'm saying (not just in this discussion)."

I'm not aware of other discussions. In this one it's just that I thought that your description of something as "bullshit" - on what seemed to be no more firm grounds than representing something which you yourself don't believe in - was no way to conduct a reasoned debate. But then, I don't know you personally, and you may have a consistently 'robust' way of expressing yourself?

As to the validity or otherwise of theology, it all depends on one's attitude to religious belief and experience, I guess. To me, biblical scholarship is carried out by both believers and non-believers, likewise religious studies. Theology I've always regarded the same way, but it may be that it is more dependant on belief than the other religion-based disciplines. I still don't understand why that should make it open to ridicule however.

Exactly. Sure, theology takes methods from history, philosophy, sociology and so forth, but so does Classics, Islamic Studies, American Studies, African-American Studies, etc.

Now, if someone were to say that African-American Studies wasn't "really" a field, and it was apparent the objection was to interdisciplinary studies generally, well, we could all understand where they were coming from—a certain cranky stick-to-itiveness about method. But if that person repeatedly attacked anything having to do with black people, and called them derogatory names, we'd all know the objection was not primarily methodological. In the context of so many posts against religion and religious people, and her recourse to the term "Nazi" to describe ordinary believers, I think we can safely guess the same is operative here.

Theology isn't simply a mix of disciplines (and if it were only that, it wouldn't deserve a special category). As I said above, insofar "theologians" do any proper scholarly work, it is work that could be done by any number of experts who are not called or considered "theologians". So what is it that is "special" to theology?

We were given an example by the resident theologian:

applying one soteriology (the absolute predestination of Christ) which has been historically a minority view in the West, in order to make better sense of the relationship between human evolution, sin, the Incarnation, and salvation.

Trying to figure how to fit together the evidence of biological evolution and modern physical cosmology with Christian perspectives on the relationship between the world and God its Creator and Redeemer seems to be (1) an important intellectual pursuit and (2) not just pastoral theology.

This isn't scholarship, this "fitting" of evolution (or other) to Christian doctrine. It is a political, propaganda job, reminiscent of Communist commissars working on "fitting" everyday reality to Marxist historical schemes.

Functionally, theologians are ideologists, not scholars, insofar their main (usually only) job is to ensure and buttress the authority of the Bible and Christian teaching.

her recourse to the term "Nazi" to describe ordinary believers,

Show me where I called ordinary believers "Nazi" or slather it on your morning dump and eat it.

Here is what Albert Einstein wrote about Man and His Gods by Homer Smith. The Electronic version of this book can be read online for free.

“Professor Smith has kindly submitted his book to me before publication. After reading it thoroughly and with intense interest I am glad to comply with his request to give him my impression.

The work is a broadly conceived attempt to portray man's fear-induced animistic and mythic ideas with all their far-flung transformations and interrelations. It relates the impact of these phantasmagorias on human destiny and the causal relationships by which they have become crystallized into organized religion.

This is a biologist speaking, whose scientific training has disciplined him in a grim objectivity rarely found in the pure historian. This objectivity has not, however, hindered him from emphasizing the boundless suffering which, in its end results, this mythic thought has brought upon man.

Professor Smith envisages as a redeeming force, training in objective observation of all that is available for immediate perception and in the interpretation of facts without preconceived ideas. In his view, only if every individual strives for truth can humanity attain a happier future; the atavisms in each of us that stand in the way of a friendlier destiny can only thus be rendered ineffective.”
- Albert Einstein

~202

So, I guess that political theory, history of political thought, indeed, any intellectual history, philosophy, etc. are also not disciplines or scholarship. There are "ideological" arguments in each of those fields. Indeed, that is "all" that there is. "All" you do is create arguments.

Oh, yes, philosophy of science is also not a discipline.

Who knew? But I, for one, am grateful that you, as the ultimate pragmatist engineer, has let us know.

Try harder.

Show me where I called ordinary believers "Nazi" or slather it on your morning dump and eat it.

I presumed that when you said "It's just your parochial Homo-Nazi religion talking" ( http://www.librarything.com/topic/141657#3581127 ) that you were talking about Catholicism or Christianity generally. The term "Homo-Nazi" would imply a group of people, and since you've never distinguished between me and other believers in your scorn, it is only logical to assume you weren't doing so here either. Can I take it that you don't think Christians and or Catholics subscribe to a "Homo-Nazi religion," but just me?

slather it on your morning dump and eat it

We shall put this alongside "stinking turd" and "rancid shithead" as specimens of your art.

I presumed that when you said "It's just your parochial Homo-Nazi religion talking" ( http://www.librarything.com/topic/141657#3581127 ) that you were talking about Catholicism or Christianity generally.

You presumed far too much, obviously, but it's no surprise, as you'd presume anything and say anything about me. (And did in the past, will in the future.)

I meant "religion" and said "religion". It's no news that I consider your Church the most dangerous bastion of totalitarian fascist ideology still extant on earth. But I see the vast majority of Catholics, what you called "ordinary believers", as its victims, not soldiers. Most people are born into and suffer their religions, they don't choose them, whatever the fads of the New World.

We shall put this alongside "stinking turd" and "rancid shithead" as specimens of your art.

You do that. From someone like you I expect a filing system and a propaganda department to leave the Stasi blushing with shame. You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie.

ETA: We were talking about biology, hence my "Homo" construction, if anyone's wondering. (Posting on the fly, one doesn't always predict the wonderfully diverse readings possible.) My remark alluded to the ideology of Nazi supremacy, likening it to the common (official, as far as I know) Catholic stance of human supremacy over all other species. I heartily dislike all such supremacist ideologies, attitudes, and politics. They are not only scientifically unsound, but deeply immoral as well; a double whammy.

~206

No, it is apparent that I'm not going to overcome your faith. So believe whatever nonsense you want.

>208 LolaWalser: I consider your Church the most dangerous bastion of totalitarian fascist ideology still extant on earth

Wow, what an accolade for us. Not capitalism or the military-industrial complex? Not fundamentalist Islamism or even fundamentalist US evangelical Christianity?

the common (official, as far as I know) Catholic stance of human supremacy over all other species

Ever read anything by Catholic theologian Thomas Berry, or for that matter by St Francis of Assisi or some of the Christian mystics? But I suppose if you don't consider theology to be worth anything, you'll never find out what Christians think and teach, nor why they do so.

Would we do better if we talked about "lame" and "blind" in stead of "religion" and "science"? But I'd now bet there could be no agreement on "better" - for all kinds of non-reasons.

I'm just blown away by all this... I had hoped that I could learn something new and worthwhile in this group.

I'm changing my name to "babe lost in the woods".

~208

"We were talking about biology, hence my "Homo" construction, if anyone's wondering. (Posting on the fly, one doesn't always predict the wonderfully diverse readings possible.) My remark alluded to the ideology of Nazi supremacy, likening it to the common (official, as far as I know) Catholic stance of human supremacy over all other species. I heartily dislike all such supremacist ideologies, attitudes, and politics. They are not only scientifically unsound, but deeply immoral as well; a double whammy."

So, what would you rank your status relative to slime mold? It is bright, shinny and some varieties can even move. Sounds equal, doesn't it.

I suppose if you don't consider theology to be worth anything, you'll never find out what Christians think and teach, nor why they do so

Rubbish, there's tons of scholarship on religion that isn't self-interested "theology"--as I now must suppose you know perfectly well, but for reasons known only to yourself pretend to ignore. By the way, judging by my tag mirror, I have a greater interest in religion than even I knew: more than a thousand books (almost one eighth of my library) tagged "religion" by the membership at large. I'm more sparing with the tag myself, I used it almost ten times less.

Still, I think it's safe to say I'm in no danger on missing out on religious teachings, Christian or other. And that's wholly neglecting the fact, as you already did in the past several times despite my statements, that I grew up suffocated by Catholicism proximal and distant (as well as appalled by Islam, and disgusted by Eastern Orthodoxy). Why you can't accept that I dislike your religion because of what I experienced, because I know it, and not because I ignore it, is anyone's guess.

Finally, how do you think I came to think what I do about theology if not by reading and learning about it? What have you got that would change my (or anyone's) mind? Do you fancy my criticism is unusual, original? Can't take any of the credit--theology's been ridiculed since it existed, not least often by its students. Ever read Rabelais? For instance?

At this point I can only repeat what I already stated. Religion studies are today a gigantic field, far removed from medieval roots. Lots of real scholars are doing real scholarship, which presupposes at least an aim toward objectiveness and neutrality. Theology has neither. Nathaniel gave a good example; we could enumerate any number more. Here's another, concerning a recent purchase of mine, a translation of the Song of songs by Ariel and Channa Bloch. The poem dates from some 900 years before Jesus's birth, but this doesn't prevent theologians, Christian of course, to interpret it as a Christian allegory, singing of the union of Christ and the Church. This interpretation is, objectively, bullshit. It was constructed under the directive to find everything in the Bible testifying to the role and authority of Christianity, the "true" faith superseding Judaism.

And so on. That's theology at work. "Faith-inspired" truth finding. It's a job, and it uses scholarship in the same trivial sense it uses words, but in itself it isn't and cannot be scholarship.

>213 LolaWalser: Why you can't accept that I dislike your religion because of what I experienced, because I know it,

Those two are not necessarily the same. As I have said to you before on one or more threads, I respect your experience. You have obviously had a bad experience of religion, which I regret. Nobody can deny that you know about your own particular experience of religion. But knowing about a particular bad manifestation of religion is not the same as knowing about religion.

You clearly don't know about all the good manifestations of religion. If you have read so widely on religion, I'm surprised about that. Maybe your reading was unbalanced, or maybe it was coloured by your own bad experiences. You seem immune to the good examples given by people here, for example. That's one of the reasons why your posts appear unbalanced to me. While I'm a committed Catholic, I'm perfectly willing to accept the validity of your bad experiences of Catholicism. You appear unwilling to accept that anybody else's experience is valid.

Again, if you have read so widely about religion, you will know that it is not monolithic but contains many strands. You will therefore already be aware of Thomas Berry, Francis of Assisi and the Christian mystics and you will already know how that affects your comments in >208 LolaWalser: on the "Catholic stance of human supremacy over all other species". You'll also, no doubt, be aware of From Stockholm to Johannesburg - an historical overview of the concern of the Holy See for the environment - by Marjorie Keenan.

>213 LolaWalser:: I think that, once again, the root of our problem is terminological. Despite our protestations and best efforts to demonstrate otherwise, you remain wholly convinced that anything that goes by the name "theology" is a false and hollow construct that takes legitimate scholarship and perverts it to fit a deceitful and false ideology.

Let me offer an analogy. Where I grew up, "feminist" was a bad word, a code for someone who wanted to pervert personal morality and responsibility in the false name of "equality."

Then I got an education. I came to know actual feminists, I came to study feminism, and I became myself a feminist. What I came to understand was that, although the pejorative stereotype of "feminist" I grew up with did fit a certain small, fringe group of extremists, it was by no means a universal definition of "feminist". I came to understand that feminism does NOT necessarily involve the perversion of the name of "equality" in order to meet the needs of a deceitful and false ideology. Rather, feminism was about REAL equality, not false morality; REAL justice, not underhanded perversion.

It seems to me that you are stuck in the mode that sees the bad apples that DO pervert the truth in the name of "theology" and applies that standard willy-nilly across the board. You don't seem to want to understand how it is that theology can be constructive; that it can work for justice and the truth, rather than perverting them.

And that means that this conversation is unlikely to get anywhere soon, just as I was unlikely to listen with a sympathetic ear to any self-avowed feminist when I was in high school.

>215 nathanielcampbell: theology can be constructive; that it can work for justice and the truth

Very true. Liberation theology, feminist theology, LGBT theology, black theology, creation spirituality, Catholic Social Teaching, preferential option for the poor...

213

"Finally, how do you think I came to think what I do about theology if not by reading and learning about it? What have you got that would change my (or anyone's) mind?"

Well, there's Don Cupitt, Marcus Borg, John Shelby Spong, Vincent Donovan's "Christianity Rediscovered, An Epistle to the Masai", Dominic Crossan... all very progressive, or part of the Sea of Faith movement. (I did search your library and you don't already have anything by those writers).

That's only in the sphere of Christianity - there must be lots of Eastern philosophy "theology" (something by the Buddhists came up the other day, with the reviewer explaining how the paradox of a "theology" of a non-theist religion was actually not a paradox).

#214

Because I doubt either of us, and myself for sure, care much for entering yet another interminable debate on this subject, I think it's simplest to say that we will never agree on whether the good which you ascribe to religion outweighs the bad. I understand why religion exists (or, definitely, existed); I certainly don't hate religious people, and frankly, I don't think my personal opinion about organised religion should matter to anyone else. I can't even believe that a world devoid of religion would be a better one, that is, I won't waste my time considering such abstract, impossible propositions.

What bothers me is how organised religion operates, what faiths and churches already did and still do in the world. What bothers me about theology is its false claims, and masquerading as scholarship where such masquerading occurs. I've given concrete examples of this un-scholarliness, but nobody seems to want to say anything about those.

#215

Actually, there hasn't been the slightest effort to address any of my criticisms, just a bunch of "is not"s.

You don't seem to want to understand how it is that theology can be constructive; that it can work for justice and the truth,

No, this was never my problem, and not the issue I am debating here. I am objecting to its being considered good scholarship and its inclusion in the academia. Insofar theologians pretend they are merely scholars "like" others, they lie, and there are ways to do good, if that's what is wanted, without lying to people.

rather than perverting them.

Well, Nathaniel, here we get to what I think is our insurmountable difference--I am the type of scholar who could not and would not accept to work with concepts and doctrines such as soul, sin, incarnation, salvation etc., concepts and doctrines unproven, untestable, deriving from a holy text. To me, already the acceptance of such terms is a perversion of scholarship, before one performs any manipulation on them. (Mind you, lest we enter into another superfluous exchange, I better repeat--it is one thing to investigate such concepts from a historical, or literary, or comparative-religious, comparative-literary, linguistic, psychological, etc. point of view. The problem is when these concepts are taken for real--not even models, such as many in philosophy!, but objectively real.)

From MY scholarly point of view the problem with those theologians who debated how many angels could dance on a pin isn't the question in itself, that it is, it is not the first problem. The first problem is that they believed in angels in the first place.

Since you are a modern, by the necessity of when you were born if not by personal inclination, I'm not sure how you regard those ancient theologians, whether you agree they wasted time on rubbish or not. But I don't see that modern theology is any better. The faith, the holy text is still your alpha and omega. And this is unscientific, un-scholarly.

#217

Can you explain why exactly it would be good to read those people, what do you recommend them for? (Genuine request.) As can be surmised from what I wrote, I don't hold theology in high regard because of what I already know about it so I'm not likely to seek out works in theological vein. But I also wrote that there is real work done by some theologians and I don't need additional proof of that--it is not, pace Nathaniel, the label I object to, but the kind of work performed.

218

Happy to. Though they are not all cut from the same cloth, I hasten to add.

Donald Cupitt is part of the Sea of Faith movement, a radical and progressive departure from any traditional basis of religion. Although an ordained Anglican priest, his most famous - and notorious - book was Taking Leave of God which led to "accusations" of atheism. His stance can be summed up as "..rejects all ideas of gaining salvation by escaping from this world of ours. "All this is all there is", he says and he now sees true religion in terms of joy in life and an active attempt to add value to the human lifeworld. ‘Life’ is all that there is and all we have, and must be accepted with its limits as a package deal. We must avoid all attempts to deny or escape the limits of life — traditionally time, chance and death." One who followed in his footsteps is the Rev Anthony Freeman (whom I know personally) who got into trouble with his Bishop (widely reported in the media at the time : "VICAR DOESN'T BELIEVE IN GOD") over a book God in Man, in which he rejects the notion of an external God.

John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg, and Dominic Crossan (the first is a retired Bishop of Newark, Borg is an American Bible scholar and theologian, Crossan is a Doctor of Divinity (Ireland) and Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies in Chicago) are all part of a movement known as Progressive Christianity . I won't weary you with extracts from all of them, but here is one of Spong's replies:
"I do not believe the human brain can speak to the origin of God. We can speak to the origin of the human concept of God, but that is something quite different. That idea I believe is born in the moment that self-consciousness breaks through consciousness in human development. That human idea almost always portrays God as external to this world, invisible or located beyond the limits of our sight, which is what “above the sky” means. This deity is then endowed with supernatural power and is said to be ready to come to our aid if we worship properly, obey God’s rules and pray sufficiently hard. It is what I have called a “theistic” concept of God. Theism is a definition of God from the childhood of our humanity and ultimately it needs to be abandoned. Most of us cling to it tenaciously because we do not know any other way to envision the holy.
I think that we must ultimately move beyond theism into a mystical experience. Atheism does not mean the belief that there is no God; it means that theism is simply a dead and meaningless concept. In Eternal Life , I tried to point my audience in that new direction."

Fr. Vincent Donovan is a Jesuit (your favourite!) who has challenged the traditional Catholic missionary approach of virtually kidnapping children from - e.g. African - tribes, indoctrinating them in the Gospel stories, then sending them back from the Mission, to their tribes to spread the "good news". Instead, Donovan looked to the tradition among African tribes of storytelling, and became an itinerant travelling from village to village, telling them stories of Jesus, then going on his way. When he returned some time later, he found that invariably Jesus had been transmuted into an African villager, whose deeds were in the context of their own lives and to whom - as a kind of 'elder' - some felt able to turn. Catholic dogma, liturgy and catechism formed no part of this.

*****

So that's a summary of various representatives of "modern" or "progressive" theology. Worth dipping into. Whether you define it as theology from your own perspective, is another matter.

Atheism does not mean the belief that there is no God; it means that theism is simply a dead and meaningless concept. (Spong)

As it happens, I find that quite a good way of putting it. I abandoned "theism" some time ago, but I didn't find "atheism" any more satisfactory.

I first read Vincent Donovan a very, very long time ago. It was a real eye-opener, but the opening has been and is a long process.

>218 LolaWalser:: "I am the type of scholar who could not and would not accept to work with concepts and doctrines such as soul, sin, incarnation, salvation etc., concepts and doctrines unproven, untestable, deriving from a holy text. To me, already the acceptance of such terms is a perversion of scholarship, before one performs any manipulation on them."

I think I see now why I haven't been comprehending the distinction you were making between theology, on the one hand, and all other academic disciplines on the other. I had thought that your objection to theology was that it could be used as an oppressive ideology (but then, really any piece of human knowledge can be distorted through power structures into an oppressive ideology).

The real problem here seems to be that you only accept a model of scholarship that is essentially modern -- in your view, Erasmus was not a scholar, nor were Aquinas and Augustine. (We won't let the etymology of "scholar" fool us here: anybody trained in cathedral school and its heir, a university, is not, by your definition, a scholar.) Scholarship, in your view, specifically excludes religious worldviews that you find objectionable.

I'm curious, though, what you think about the scholarship of, for example, Etienne Gilson and Marie-Dominique Chenu? Both are considered amongst the best scholars of medieval thought and religion in the first half of the twentieth century, and scholars of repute (in fields other than theology) consider their work still eminently useful and first-rate today.

Because such men were, by any objective definition, "theologians", was their scholarship therefore inherently corrupt?

In a further effort to understand where you draw the lines of admission to the academy, do eminent church historians like John W. O'Malley, though describing themselves as historians rather than theologians, still get stopped at the door because they happen to be ordained priests?

Show a link between Einstein and Ishtar, OK:

In a 1943 conversation with William Hermanns recorded in Hermanns' book Einstein and the Poet, Einstein said: "As I have said so many times, God doesn't play dice with the world." In the early 40’s the Purim story could have been on the mind of many thoughtful Jews.

On one level, the Purim story represents the annual struggle to end the harsh reign of winter. The original characters appear to have been Babylonian gods: Ishtar, the goddess of fertility; Marduk, the chief guardian of the heavens; and Haman, the underworld devil. Ishtar and Haman, life and death, vie with each other for supremacy. Ishtar triumphs; spring returns; and life is renewed. Yahveh, the Hebrew God, played no part in the celebration, which was filled with theatrical renditions of the contest. Noisemaking and masquerading were necessary to trick the evil gods and to aid the good ones. Sexual orgies promoted fertility. Merriment was the order of the day.

The megilla, or biblical Book of Esther, replaced Ishtar and Marduk with Jewish mortals (Esther and Mordecai); Haman became a Persian "devil." The holiday's name, "Purim," meaning "lots" or "dice," is meant to remind us of how the Ishtar and evil character Haman drew lots to determine the fate of the Jews of Persia. According to the Book of Esther, were it not for the goodness and intervention of Esther ( Ishtar) and her uncle Mordecai in the court of King Ahasuerus, the Jews certainly would have been exterminated by the king's vizier Haman. Purim became the joyous celebration of an epic Jewish victory over anti-Semitism and threatened annihilation — an enactment of the fantasies of centuries of persecuted Jews.

At first, because of the Book of Esther's secular nature — it is the only book in the Bible that does not mention God — it was excluded from the sacred canon. It is likely that political conflict between the rabbis and the Maccabees brought the Book of Esther into the Bible and Purim into the official Jewish calendar. Uncomfortable with Purim but faced with a festival that the people would not abandon, the rabbinic leaders found a way to suit it to their purposes. On the thirteenth of Adar, the day before Purim, Jews celebrated Nicanor's Day, commemorating a major Maccabean victory over a Greek general named Nicanor. The rabbis, to minimize the influence of their rivals, the Maccabees, turned Nicanor's Day into the Fast of Esther, immediately preceding Purim, and gave the playful folk holiday their grudging blessing. Nicanor's Day disappeared and Purim grew more popular. Purim shpiels (plays) and satires allowed ordinary people to "sass" their "betters" and voice grievances that remained unuttered throughout the year. Purim balls and carnivals encouraged revelry and drunkenness.

Rabbinic Judaism continues to celebrate Purim with great festivity. In addition to reading the scroll of Esther aloud in the synagogue to a unique or original trop (cantillation), people dress in costumes depicting the major characters of the story. During the telling of the story, the heroes are cheered and the villain, Haman, is booed and his name is drowned out by the sound of noise-makers or gragers.

For the Humanistic Jews, who provided this information, Purim is a celebration of the heroic in Jewish history, a tribute to human ethical role models. Human courage and ingenuity are at the center of a story about the triumph of good over evil. Humanistic Jews celebrate the heroes and chastise the villains of the world through modern Purim shpiels. Reading the megilla — accompanied by gragers, cheers, and boos — provides a starting point from which to move beyond the framework of the biblical story. The masks of Purim become the faces of Jewish men and women worthy of emulation, from Mordecai to Theodore Herzl and Albert Einstein, and from Esther to Henrietta Szold and Golda Meir. Humanistic Purim celebrations often feature children's costume parades and carnivals. These lighthearted activities have a serious side, recalling the heroism of individuals and the organized resistance to oppression of the Jewish people.

As for Ishtar, "Sedet super universum,"

"Discus mundi sublevatur per quattuor elephantis in gigas turtur"

To quote Bertrand Russell: The kind of philosophy that I value and have endeavoured to pursue is scientific, in the sense that there is some definite knowledge to be obtained and that new discoveries can make the admission of former error inevitable to any candid mind. For what I have said, whether early or late, I do not claim the kind of truth which theologians claim for their creeds. I claim only, at best, that the opinion expressed was a sensible one to hold at the time...

>224 prosfilaes: I claim only, at best, that the opinion expressed was a sensible one to hold at the time...

I suspect many religious people and their theologians could agree with that. Humanity has tried to describe and understand the divine based on the knowledge available at the time, expressed in terms of the language and culture of the time and place. As humanity has developed, so has its understanding of the divine.

>219 Tid: the traditional Catholic missionary approach of virtually kidnapping children from - e.g. African - tribes, indoctrinating them in the Gospel stories, then sending them back from the Mission, to their tribes to spread the "good news".

Tid, I think your characterisation of the "traditional Catholic missionary approach" is a little unfair. No doubt it did happen, but there were many other approaches too. I agree completely with Vincent Donovan and I love his book and the approach he espouses (although it's probably 30 years since I read it). I would say that what he challenged was an existing approach where Christ has to be brought to another culture. Initially the message which was brought was completely alien; later missionary activities involved inculturation, where the message is adapted to be meaningful to the local culture. Donovan's approach was to recognise Christ already present in another culture, a missiology of incarnation.

226

You've summarised it far better than I did (I can only plead I was trying to summarise Cupitt, Spong, Borg, Crossan, and Donovan in a single post!). I did attend an inspirational lecture given by Donovan about 20 years ago, when I was attending Quaker meetings and still nominally a Christian. He said that Christianity has imprisoned Jesus in a "1st Century Palestinian" context, and would never allow him to escape from that limitation. As you say, the problem with Catholic missions, is that they "indoctrinated" (not too strong a word, I think?) the children of a culture, then sent them back into that culture without any further involvement; the result of that, he claimed, was that many such children/young people - attempting to splice a Catholic education onto their own culture's traditions - ended up being rejected by their own. Again as you say, Donovan recognised a completely different approach. Was he the first, or were things already changing by the time he went to the Masai?

>227 Tid: Not really sure whether indoctrinated is the right word. If you mean to teach doctrine, then yes. My online dictionary gives the main meanings as "1. to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., especially to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view; 2. to teach or inculcate; 3. to imbue with learning" and all those are true. But in the other sense, implying brainwashing, or "to accept doctrines, esp uncritically" (my italics), then I would say no. I haven't seen Catholic missionaries in general brainwashing people or asking them to be uncritical; I have seen them teaching Christian doctrine. Of course I don't deny that the former has happened, but I would not say it characterises Catholic mission. And Catholic missionaries are noted more for teaching English, maths, science, etc than they are for teaching religion; Catholic schools are extremely popular because of the quality of education.

Well said!

Not really wanting to re-open the debate on whether or not theology is a "bullshit discipline" (to use the technical atheist jargon introduced to us in >127 LolaWalser:), but I just got the latest alumni newsletter from my own alma mater, Durham University, the third oldest university in Britain and generally well-regarded, and it made mention of the Department of Theology and Religion, and a Professor of Systematic Theology. So it seems that not all in academia agree with Lola.

#219

Thank you, Tid, for the effort. But...

Whether you define it as theology from your own perspective, is another matter.

Indeed. But the question wouldn't be, in view of your quotes, what *I* consider to be theology--my definition is of the most ordinary, any dictionary or Wikipedia will provide it--but where these authors' views fit within the theological spectrum. It doesn't sound like they could represent a religious majority (of theologians or ordinary believers) by any stretch of imagination.

#221

Scholarship, in your view, specifically excludes religious worldviews that you find objectionable.

Inasmuch as these "worldviews" compromise the application of objective, rational and neutral approach to discovery. As for the rest of your post, recall I've already acknowledged (and more than once) that some theologians do some scholarly work; that's not the question. Nor is mere presence of faith a predictor of the sort of work a person is going to perform, obviously. I see no reason why a priest couldn't be a good historian or a good shoemaker, simply because he's a priest. But if he starts explaining Waterloo in terms of sin, apocalypse and salvation, or disdains laces because they are unholy, then there's a problem.

#225

Humanity has tried to describe and understand the divine based on the knowledge available at the time, expressed in terms of the language and culture of the time and place. As humanity has developed, so has its understanding of the divine.

What's this "divine" you are talking about? Where is it? How and why is it? How can we have "developed" any understanding of what you don't even know exists?

231

"where these authors' views fit within the theological spectrum. It doesn't sound like they could represent a religious majority (of theologians or ordinary believers) by any stretch of imagination"

Well, they were a fairly diverse bunch. From Cupitt (who's verging on what might be viewed as atheism, but comes from the larger Sea of Faith movement), to Donovan at the other end of the spectrum, who is a fairly uncontroversial Jesuit from what I understand; the other three are very radical, it's true, but so were Copernicus and Darwin among others. Ahead of their time, or perhaps trailblazers?

"What's this "divine" you are talking about? Where is it? How and why is it? How can we have "developed" any understanding of what you don't even know exists?"

It depends how you define divine. If you mean a clear and unequivocal manifestation of a "God", then nope, the evidence is clearly lacking. On the other hand, if you mean a subjective experience of a "higher level of consciousness" leading to a different view of our own life (at least) or the universe, then the fact it is by its nature subjective - i.e. it has to be experienced - then no-one can point you to it, as it is an inner state.

I'm not defining the "divine"; it's up to those who think we have "developed" an "understanding" of it.

233

Right. Yes, if they claim an "understanding", then absolutely that should be explained.

#234

"If"? I quoted John's post.

235

I went back and read John's post. Yes, his concluding sentence does require clarification, I agree.

If there's such a thing as "mystical experience of reality", then that cannot change over time. (I hasten to add that I haven't had such an experience, but if I joined a Buddhist monastery maybe I would. Or maybe not.)

If there's such a thing as "mystical experience of reality", then that cannot change over time. (I hasten to add that I haven't had such an experience

Then how the heck can you say something so definite ("it cannot change over time") about something you haven't experienced?

237

IF IF IF there is an underlying reality to our existence (I'm not being theist here), then by definition it doesn't change (it would be as real as pi or the speed of light or the atomic structure of elements). If it changes, then it's not reality.

I'll leave you with that (philosophical) thought as I'm off to bed!

> 230

Institutional approbation does not eliminate the stench of cattle feces. The emperor may be naked as a jaybird.

While I understand that it has been difficult for many to grasp my entirely conventional and precedented definition of "theology," there is much less ambiguity about systematic theology. That is the quintessence of what I find objectionable, and I affirm that systematic theology is beyond any doubt a bullshit discipline.

#239

Tag, you're IT!

>239 paradoxosalpha:, 240 So that's two people who, apart from having a very limited vocabulary to describe things they disagree with and an apparent fascination with things scatological, don't think that theology (or systematic theology) is an academic discipline. However it doesn't change the fact that quite a lot of secular universities disagree with you, as they have theology faculties.

> 241

"limited vocabulary"?

Come on, John. You can come up with better and more relevant invective than that!

And I already addressed your issue in the very post (#239) to which you are replying: institutional status is not proof of intellectual validity.

Besides, "universities" don't "disagree" or agree about anything. They are complex institutions composed of individuals with varied opinions. I'll bet there are some Durham faculty who don't think much of systematic theology. For a school to have a chair in systematic theology is like having a racist sports mascot. It may be hallowed by tradition and fully funded, but that doesn't make it right.

Is a limited vocabulary preventing you from addressing the questions in #231, John?

>231 LolaWalser: Sorry, in all the verbiage I missed that question directed at me.

What's this "divine" you are talking about? Where is it? How and why is it? How can we have "developed" any understanding of what you don't even know exists?

Well, there are several thousand years worth of literature on our understanding of something which most/many people do seem to believe exists because they have experienced something which they refer to as the divine. I don't think we need to restart again one of the fruitless discussions on what constitutes evidence, nor on whether one can prove or disprove the existence of the divine.

>236 Tid: If there's such a thing as "mystical experience of reality", then that cannot change over time

But our understanding of it and the way we express it can, and has. Paul Tillich's Ground of our Being has developed somewhat from the OT Yahweh. Tid, you yourself quote Spong and others who express it very differently from, say, evangelical Christian fundamentalists. Somewhere on LT (is it this thread or a parallel one?) there are discussions about whether some of the images of the divine being espoused are even theistic or not. So yes, there are differences in how we see the divine according to historical time period, culture, language, level of scientific development, etc.

244

Yes, I agree. For myself, I wouldn't give mystical experience a 'theistic' slant, as I believe that such experiences are 'translated' into something known to the mind of the person experiencing it, and that is always post hoc. It's rather like the Indian story of the elephant and the blind men - each man is touching a different part of the animal and therefore each describes what he thinks is an 'elephant' differently from the others. Yet it's the same elephant!

"Divine" is a theistic word, of course, which is why I prefer "mystical" which has no necessary connotation.

>245 Tid: Yes, I love the elephant story. The divine (or mystical) is not fully describable using limited human language and imagery, thus any description of it is incomplete. Many of them may be "correct" in as far as they go, but they are all different due to their incompleteness.

246: Even your assertion that "any description of it is incomplete" is based upon nothing more than a presupposition. The amount of actual understanding of the alleged divine that is contained in all of those descriptions can be summed up as zero.

>247 StormRaven: The amount of actual understanding of the alleged divine that is contained in all of those descriptions can be summed up as zero

You correctly state the minority view. Others take a different view. Neither can be proved or disproved. Oh, haven't we been here before?

>248 John5918:

We need a LibraryThing drinking game!

Don't feed the elephant!

248: The conclusion is driven by the observation that even your claim about the "incompleteness" of the description you say there is of the divine is based upon nothing more than a presupposition.

>249 timspalding: Let's drink a toast to Cardinal Puff for the first time...

252

Tap. Quaff. Let's drink a toast to Cardinal Puff for the second time...

"Sky Fairy!"

(guzzle)

> 245

Whether you are a Christian or a Buddhist, a Theist or (as I am myself, thank God!) an Atheist, the attainment of this one state (of mystical realization) is as open to you as is nightmare, or madness, or intoxication. (Crowley on Christ, p. 117)

I concur.

>255 paradoxosalpha: No, we have to start again at the beginning now. You were supposed to say, "I drink a toast to Cardinal Puff Puff Puff for the third time", not "I concur". Actually, come to think of it Tid had already put us back to the beginning by saying "Puff" instead of "Puff Puff". But no doubt the rules differ in different parts of the world.

What's the value of a term--"mystical experience"--when like a hobo's bag it can take any old junk from any corner of the earth, indiscriminately mixed together? (Theoretical value--practically, I'd rather have all the world's "mystics" holding hands and singing Kumbaya than slitting each other's, and maybe mine, throats.)

Where's the connection between "mystical experience and "the divine"?

What the heck is a "ground of being" (sans the mystifying capital letters, please) and what's the point of positing it?

The only thing I see "developing" here is obfuscatory mumbo-jumbo.

257

Anything you don't personally agree with is "obfuscatory mumbo-jumbo". To make it clear then : Buddhists practice for hours each day in meditation and mind techniques, to experience what they describe - non-theistically - as "the Void". That's what I'm calling mystical experience, and unlike a " hobo's bag {of} any old junk from any corner of the earth, indiscriminately mixed together", those techniques and that experience, are open to anyone. It just so happens that "the Void" is dressed up by theistic religions in fancier clothes and terminology, but there is usually quite a uniformity of description among those who actually have those experiences, once you dig deep enough and remove the layers of belief attached to it.

#258

Tid, I think we're doomed to misunderstanding. You seem to operate under a mass of assumptions about what I think and know, and address those perceived notions, instead of simply paying attention to what I'm actually saying.

and unlike a " hobo's bag {of} any old junk from any corner of the earth, indiscriminately mixed together", those techniques and that experience, are open to anyone.

???

No--the point of my metaphor was precisely that "mystical experience" is a grab-bag for whatever one wants to toss in it, from, whatever, Orphism, Sufism, Meister Eckhart, kabbalah, Zen, you name it, it goes in; it is indeed "open to anyone".

I don't know what's the point of singling out Buddhist meditation in this context. It goes in like everything else.

there is usually quite a uniformity of description among those who actually have those experiences, once you dig deep enough and remove the layers of belief attached to it

Yeah, yeah, this is a beloved New Age trope. Doesn't make it automatically wrong on that ground, I'll just say I'm far from convinced it is true, but I don't have a second lifetime to devote to proper study of mystical traditions. However, true or false--it has nothing to do with what I was asking about, which was whether there is or what is the link is between a "mystical experience" and "the divine"!

Recall, John seems to take the evidence of mysticism as the evidence of "the divine", exactly contrary to your "removing the layers of belief".

I don't see the link. Uniformity of what is called "mystical experience", insofar it exists (a question I insist on leaving open), could simply derive from common human psychology. Brain science applies to Hindus and Lutherans alike.

And any number of similarities in cultural traditions are to be expected in a species as young as ours, as mobile and incessantly mixing. Hark back to The golden bough.

(Deleted by poster)

259

"I don't know what's the point of singling out Buddhist meditation in this context. It goes in like everything else."

Only that it is non-theist, and that's the point I was trying to make about mystical experience - it's not defined or constrained by theism. In fact, Happold's study of it Mysticism: A Study and An Anthology includes experiences from ordinary people with no religious belief.

"what is the link is between a "mystical experience" and "the divine"!

Recall, John seems to take the evidence of mysticism as the evidence of "the divine", exactly contrary to your "removing the layers of belief".

I don't see the link. Uniformity of what is called "mystical experience", insofar it exists (a question I insist on leaving open), could simply derive from common human psychology."

John and I don't agree on everything! As a religious believer he might well equate the two things, but I wouldn't. And your remark about human psychology and brain science I would leave open too - I mean, I wouldn't rule it out as a possibility. The philosophical question that would necessarily arise from that is "What is the evolutionary advantage?"

As for the "divine", I don't believe it myself, not in the religious sense it's usually defined by. However, Bette Midler may have granted herself a licence!

>261 Tid: I've been using the term "the divine" to try and get away from stereotyped ideas of an anthropomorphic god, but apparently it hasn't worked!

I make no claims about anything equating to anything, nor that mystical experience is "constrained" by theism, but I would say that mystical experience has been linked to the divine often enough to suggest that many within Christianity, Islam, Judaism and no doubt other traditions have found, er, a link. Others experience the same reality without linking it to the divine.

The philosophical question that would necessarily arise from that is "What is the evolutionary advantage?"

Ascribing agency to things that have none has a plausible evolutionary advantage. Look at your dog when he is startled. It doesn't matter what startled him, he'll go looking to see what it was. Because if it is a predator, then he'll be at least up and ready for trouble. And if it isn't, then he'll lose nothing but a little wasted time looking to see who is out there.

The dogs that didn't ascribe agency to such events didn't look for a causal agent, stayed complacent, and were right 99% of the time, but were wrong once and got eaten by lions.

262

That's where I believe (though it's not proven of course) that the human mind has the - very quick - capacity of referring new experiences to what is already known, and thus translating them into familiar terms. Hence Christians believing "Jesus spoke to them", Hindus Krishna, etc. But there are those who simply say they had a moment where "time stood still", and make no religious link.

263

I follow what you're saying, especially the example of the dog. I'm not entirely sure how that relates to the 'evolutionary advantage' of what we're calling mystical experience? It certainly doesn't seem to rank as a survival trait, but then there are a lot of human activities (art, literature, music, philosophy, history and archaeology, space exploration, and many others) that don't seem to have survival value, at least not at the animal level we would normally measure it. But that may be the problem - perhaps there IS an evolutionary advantage but we just can't see what it is.

>263 StormRaven: One of my dogs is a Rhodesian Ridgeback, a breed which I believe was originally bred to hunt lions.

I've heard they don't really love you as much as other dogs. True?

>267 timspalding: No, actually they seem to be very loyal and loving, if occasionally a bit aloof.

How many dogs? And why haven't you posted photos? ;)

I'm not entirely sure how that relates to the 'evolutionary advantage' of what we're calling mystical experience?

The "mystical experience" is the result of ascribing agency to events. You feel some sort of feeling with an unknown cause, so you ascribe agency to it - it must have been caused by some entity. You're meditating, and you get a "feeling of oneness", and you ascribe some sort of external cause to it.

The original survival value was avoiding being surprised and complacent on the savannas of Africa. You're going to be wrong a lot of times, but the one time is is something dangerous, ascribing agency to unknown events will likely save your life.

>269 timspalding: Only three - the ridgeback, a German Shepherd/Rottweiler cross and a mongrel with a fair bit of terrier in him. When we got the ridgeback we suddenly found ourselves members of the East Africa Kennel Club. We hope to get a ridgeback bitch in a year or so and maybe start breeding them eventually.

I'm glad you put in one of those funny emoticon thingies when asking about photos...

~266

Excellent choice. I personally prefer vizslas, but then we don't have many lions in our area. (The two breeds look much alike, except the Ridgeback is somewhat more heavily built and is more fearless than a birddog - which is what the vizsla was bred to do.)

>272 lawecon: We have a piece of land about 50 km outside Nairobi where lion have been seen recently (along with leopard, cheetah, buffalo, hyena, elephant, giraffe, zebra, Thomson's gazelle), so maybe he'll have to earn his keep one day!

270

Doesn't that depend on your definition of 'mystical experience'? It's possible to experience 'oneness' in meditation (for example) without having to ascribe it to an external cause or agency.

But without ascribing an external cause or agency, one could still ask the question "What is the survival advantage of this?" In fact, there might be none. It could be an evolutionary trait whose ramifications we are yet to fully explore or understand.

Somewhere in the clouds The Dad, The Kid and The Spook are laughing because they know that Einstein (remember him? wheeled in at the start of this topic to give it cred') had no more knowledge on the subject than anyone else on the face of this planet. Yes, for sure, they too would find it all bullshit.

It just occurred to me. Why is there so much interest in what Einstein said about religion than say Darwin or Newton or Maxwell?

Einstein was garrulous and quotable. The others less so.

>276 rrp: And why is there so much insistence on evolution rather than, say, relativity or quantum mechanics?

Well, I guess the obvious answer is that evolution presents a challenge to fundies, and the others don't. Maybe relativity does too—probably someone could drag up a Bible quote about time not being relative?—but nobody understands relativity…

>278 John5918: But surely things like relativity have influenced our understanding of the age of the universe, which the Christian fundamentalists believe happened only a few thousand years ago?

Mmmmm... Yes. But simple geology, fossils and so forth was enough. That fight is roughly contemporary with the fight over evolution. Modern cosmology adds a lot of zeroes, but the principle hasn't changed.

>281 timspalding: Yes, I understand what you're saying about geology and fossils, but it seems to me that science is pretty coherent and that many branches of science consistently reinforce each other. So to challenge the age of the universe and the age of the earth one has to challenge many quite fundamental (no pun intended!) branches of science. And yet we don't seem to hear that from the Christian fundamentalists.

Hi John: So to challenge the age of the universe and the age of the earth one has to challenge many quite fundamental (no pun intended!) branches of science. And yet we don't seem to hear that from the Christian fundamentalists.

Maybe that's because of the scientific evidence available.

>283 Novak: But then why do they only challenge the evidence of one particular branch of science, which is interdependent and consistent with many other branches of science?

#280: But surely things like relativity have influenced our understanding of the age of the universe, which the Christian fundamentalists believe happened only a few thousand years ago?

If you read creationist works, as I did once upon a time, you can find attacks upon radioactive dating which amount to attacks upon quantum mechanics. Ultimately I don't think young-Earth creationists have much of an interest in trying to produce a coherent scientific theory; Behe, and most of the more scholarly creationists are old-Earth creationists, out of simple logical consistency. A lot of the young-Earth creationist material is flat out anti-science and even literally anti-reason, comparing Man's reason to God's Word.

Perhaps that is their limitation and weakness.

Science remains healthy and trustworthy so long as it is constantly challenged.

Unlike religion, which has no scientific base and therefore cannot be proved or disproved so remains untrustworthy for anyone who can think. OTOH If the religion fix helps some people, they're free to sniff it. So that's a good thing too?

(Edited to say this is a reply to >284 John5918: 'cos prosfilaes stole post 285 from me..;o)..)

285

Many years ago I was given to read a young-Earth "science" book by a Jewish convert to fundamentalist Christianity. I read it open-mouthed. When faced with the indisputable age of moon dust, the book's response was "God placed supposedly old dust on the moon to test Man's faith". How can anyone argue against such total nuttiness? It's like trying to disprove the 9/11 conspiracy theory with reason and evidence.. "Ah, but that's what they want you to believe - it's all part of the plot." There is nothing you can say to such people. Nothing.

FWIW, and not to defend him, but Behe is not, at least publicly, a creationist but an advocate of intelligent design. Indeed, he doesn't deny common descend or the action of evolution per se.

>287 Tid:

Yes, that was one theory about fossils--they were put in the earth to test our faith. I think this has one reasonable way of being true—we are all living in a Matrix-like delusion, and basically nothing around us is real, but all of it's a test of some sort. In fairness, however, would explain the otherwise baffling demise of the Twinkie.

>287 Tid: But Tid, how did people even manage to discover the fake moon dust since we know that the so-called moon landings never happened but were just a fake set up by the US government, if not by the UN and the One World Government, as part of a huge conspiracy?

288

"In fairness, however, would explain the otherwise baffling demise of the Twinkie."

Baffling? Oh I don't know - could this be something to do with it?

Enriched wheat flour, sugar, corn syrup, niacin, water, high fructose corn syrup, vegetable and/or animal shortening – containing one or more of partially hydrogenated soybean, cottonseed and canola oil, and beef fat, dextrose, whole eggs, modified corn starch, cellulose gum, whey, leavenings (sodium acid pyrophosphate, baking soda, monocalcium phosphate), salt, cornstarch, corn flour, corn syrup, solids, mono and diglycerides, soy lecithin, polysorbate 60, dextrin, calcium caseinate, sodium stearoyl lactylate, wheat gluten, calcium sulphate, natural and artificial flavors, caramel color, yellow No. 5, red #40

:D

Intelligent design.

289

Haha - of course! I was completely forgetting Capricorn One

FWIW, and not to defend him, but Behe is not, at least publicly, a creationist but an advocate of intelligent design.

Well, "intelligent design" is itself just creationism rebranded to sneak creationism into the classroom. Both the Wedge document and the draft versions of Of Pandas and People (which produced the misprint of "cdesign proponentists") make this abundantly clear.

>5 Elaine099:

"why does anyone care to argue about what another person believes or doesn't believe?"

Fleas will always argue about who owns the dog.