Human Responsibility and Global Warming

 Posted by  Creation and Evolution, Environment, Issues, Religion  3 Responses »
Aug 252006
 

Here’s something I don’t understand:

Religious conservatives in the United States are significantly less likely to believe that the globe is over-heating, or that (if it is) men have anything to do with it.

My problem is this: doesn’t the Bible tell us that we have stewardship over the earth? God said that he gave the earth to us, or more specifically the plants and animals who live upon that earth. He gave us stewardship over them. Stewardship, of course, is a two-edged sword; it implies both power (to do as you wish) and responsibility (to care for and protect your charge). The implication, of course, is that we have it within our power to destroy every plant and animal on the earth, if we use our power carelessly. We know that mankind has been (and continues to be) incredibly careless with regards to fossil fuel usage. We even know from experience that mankind has the power to destroy entire ecosystems.

So why are we so resistant to the idea that mankind might be responsible for the fundamental change of the planet’s climate?

Believing is Seeing

 Posted by  Creation and Evolution, Issues  21 Responses »
Sep 262005
 

The biggest problem with the “evolution debate” can best be described with reference to the following statement made in the New York Times this morning: “Evolution finds that life evolved over billions of years through the processes of mutation and natural selection, without the need for supernatural interventions.” The first part of this statement is more or less correct. Evolution does theorize (and I use that term with its scientific and not its colloquial meaning) that life on earth has evolved over billions of years through the processes of mutation and natural selection. The real problem with this statement is the second part, the “without the need for supernatural interventions”. The statement is misleading and counter-productive, and it is the main cause for debate.

Look, conservative (religiously, not politically) Christians generally have three problems with the theory of evolution: the age of the earth, the specialness of mankind, and the exclusion of God. The age of the earth, and of life on earth, is actually a topic of large debate among Biblical theologians. What does Genesis mean when it counts off the days of creation? Is that a metaphysical distinction used to give the Ancient Hebrews a sense of the order of creation, or is that a literal designation that means 24-hour (or close to it) periods of time? How accurate are the various Biblical genealogies? How many generations are left out of them, if any? How long was Adam in the Garden of Eden? Were there other people there as well? Any wannabe Old Testament theologian worth his salt will have opinions on all of these questions, of course, but ultimately they are just opinions. In fact, they are pretty established questions for debate among Christians and only the most hard-line fundamentalists would go so far as to say that their answer to these questions is the only Christian answer. If this were the only problem with Evolution, the theory would only butt against Christianity to roughly the same degree as did the idea that the earth revolves around the sun.

The second problem, the specialness of man, derives from various Biblical discussions on how mankind is made in the image of God, and how Adam and Eve’s creation was somehow different, and more special, than the creation of the other animals. As a result, many Christians take offense at the notion that humanity is simply a few short evolutionary steps away from a chimpanzee. Of course, any Biblical scholar will tell you that our being made in the image of God refers to our soul and/or our ability for higher cognitive thought, and not to our physical bodies. I firmly believe in my own specialness in God’s eyes, and in the specialness of mankind, no matter from where God got the genetic material to craft our bodies. There are, of course, a lot of Christians who would disagree with me on this point, but again, I don’t think that evolution would be such the cultural flash point that it is if this were the only conflict between the scientific theory and the Biblical creation accounts.

The real problem is the perception, held by many people on both sides of the evolution/creation debate, that the Theory of Evolution is an atheistic theory that precludes God. This is the fundamental premise behind Intelligent Design (ID). ID says that life is too complicated to have occurred randomly, and therefore there must have been some intelligence pushing the world to look like it does. ID gives no guidance on the nature of the God or Gods that designed life. To do so would push it back into the realm of creationism. And ID gives no guidance on how the God or Gods acted. The push to get ID taught in public schools stems from the belief that evolution precludes any action for God and is therefore countermanding any Biblical teaching that the children are getting at home or in Sunday School. ID at least opens the door to that teaching by allowing for the existence of a creator(s), which allows the parents to fill in the blanks about the nature of that creator when the children get home from school.

The lie to all of this, however, is that no such backdoor is needed, because it already exists. Evolution is silent on the existence of a creator. Evolution is silent on why evolution takes place, outside of rough ideas that life responds to its natural environment and that mutations seem to take place somewhat randomly.

Personally, I already believe in some version of intelligent design. All Christians do. I look at my life and I see God working on a daily basis. I look at the lives of my friends and family, and I see God working in their lives as well. I think about the complexity of who I am, of my mind, body, and soul, and I believe that God must have had a hand in making me who I am. Other people, however, will look at my life and see no such thing. They will see natural processes at work where I see supernatural ones. They will come up with what to them are perfectly reasonable explanations for how I am what I am, and how the world is what it is, without reference to God at all. But that’s the nature of faith. The faithful see God working all around them all the time, whereas the unfaithful do not. The Bible talks about the unfaithful blinding themselves to God’s work. The same thing happens with evolution. Personally, when I have evolutionary processes described to me, and I look around and see the results of those evolutionary processes around me, I think that of course God must be involved. Of course He must have had a hand in creating our world. Others don’t, and that’s their prerogative. But I can believe that without being taught about ID in school, because I was taught about faith and about the nature of God at home and in church.

In other words, if you think that evolution is driving kids away from faith in God, or that science and religion are antithetical, then you ought to ask yourself what you are really teaching those children. God gave us the minds and the drive to push for scientific inquiry; the desire to know about His creation and to figure out how it works. If you see your children being driven away from God by their science classes, then you first ought to ask yourself if you have really taught your children to have faith in God, or if instead you have taught them to hold dogmatically to your set of beliefs. On the other side, for any scientist to say that evolution disproves or precludes God is just to expose your ignorance of the power of faith, and to do their own cause disservice. We don’t need to teach intelligent design as an alternate to evolution, because intelligent design is already there for any who want to see it.

Admission Requirements to Public Universities

 Posted by  Creation and Evolution, Education, Issues, Religion  4 Responses »
Sep 032005
 

Recently a coalition of private religious high schools has filed suit against the University of California system; you can read about it here . The issue at stake is that UC requires certain classes as pre-requisites to admission to the university . Recently, the University ruled that a biology course at a private Christian high school did not meet the curricular requirements to qualify because of its emphasis on intelligent design over evolution. Because of this decision, several students will be unable to attend UC schools this year.

The Association of Christian Schools International claims that this is a violation of civil liberties. The claim is that students at this school are being denied access to a public (i.e. taxpayer supported) institution based upon their religious beliefs. This would be a violation of all sorts of laws. For a recap of these arguments check out this editorial from the University of Virginia’s Cavalier Daily (see how I try to make the UVA contributors to leftfielder happy by linking their alma mater…).

Now, civil liberties are something I take very seriously, but in this case I tend to fall on the side of the university. The purpose of the requirements is to ensure that all students coming into the UC system have the background knowledge and skills necessary to be successful in the top public colleges in California. The UC has to set requirements for minimal skill sets that students should have before matriculation to ensure the quality of the student body. Students need to be literate, they need to be able to do basic math, and they should have some understanding of central and key scientific theories. And according to the National Center for Science Education evolution is the organizing principle behind all of biology . As such, a biology curriculum that neglects evolution is comparable to a math curriculum that neglects addition. The word ‘biology’ in the title of a class doesn’t ensure the rigor of that class; UC needs to be able to regulate that students taking a biology course — especially in a non-standard educational setting — are actually learning the requisite body of knowledge.

It isn’t as if UC is rejecting people on the basis of their religion, or on the basis of a person’s religious beliefs. They are doing so on the basis of their qualifications. And that is fully legitimate. The UC is designed to accomodate the top 10% of students in terms of preparation. If a high school curriculum is designed such that the students going through it do not reach that level of preparation, California offers other university options such as the Cal State Universities and the Community College system. Additionally, free public high school which does provide an approved curriculum is available to any student in the state, regardless of religion or any other social status. In the end, maintaining standards for admissions is best for the university, the students, and the state of California.

Intelligent Design

 Posted by  Creation and Evolution, Issues, Religion  10 Responses »
May 132005
 

I just finished a book by Lee Strobel entitled The Case for the Creator. The book itself had a number of problems, although I won’t go into all of them here. My main objection, however, was how the author approached the problem of biological origins. It seems that he, and many other advocates of intelligent design or creationism, sees a lot more conflict between religious and scientific accounts of biological origins than I do.

Strobel sees two possibilities for biological origins. One of them is Darwinism, or basically the idea that life evolved from a common ancestry through a combination of natural selection and random variance that ultimately lead to where we are today. The other possibility is that life is intelligent design, or that life is simply too complex the probabilities too minute, the theories too complicated, to conclude that life as we know it was not the result of intelligent intervention. Strobel, and it seems that many creationists and other believers of intelligent design, believes that these two theories are mutually exclusive, which would mean that Darwinism implies atheism. Certainly Strobel believes that Darwinism implies atheism; after all he credits high school biology with leading him away from God. Of course his only “evidence” to back up this claim is that proponents of both evolution and intelligent design state that these theories are mutually exclusive, which is really no evidence at all. There is no such thing as proof by assertion, even when those assertions come from people who disagree.

I see the whole thing differently though. First of all, I should say that intelligent design makes me very nervous from a Biblical perspective. God makes it very clear that He reveals Himself through faith and to the faithful. God has given us free-will to believe in Him or not, and therefore I do not believe that God can be proven in any form. It is like a miracle. Imagine some women goes to the doctor, gets a spate of tests run, and all of them say that she is dying of lung cancer. Her church prays for her, she goes back to the doctor, they run another spate of tests, and the lung cancer is gone. The woman’s preacher looks at her and says “AHA! My faith has been justified, here is a bonafide miracle and proof that God does exist!”. Then a research doctor studies the case, and soon discovers some previously unknown and exceedingly rare enzyme that ate away the cancer in her lungs. The research doctor then says “AHA! See, there is no God, no miracle, simply this enzyme which we can research and understand.” In this case, however, both the doctor and the preacher are wrong. Both assume that miracles happen, that God works, though supernatural means. But I believe that God created our natural laws and that He usually works within them. But just because something is explainable through those natural laws that God created does not mean that God did not have a hand in it.

So that is the lens through which I view all mathematical and scientific discovery; it is about discovering God’s laws. Science does not replace God, it teaches us about Him. In my mind, this applies to evolution as well. I don’t know the state of the scientific debates about biological origins. But I do have faith that the scientific process will eventually lead towards truth, whether that truth is Darwinian or not. But the more that “mainstream evolution” comes under attack from religious leaders, the more I think that causes them to dig into their positions, and the more the scientific process is hampered. Similarly, scientists have no right to say that creationism or intelligent design is obviously right; all science can do is say what happened, not say why it happened or who might or might not have been responsible for it.

Still, intelligent design is gaining a lot of proponents lately, so what am I missing?

What Are They Fighting For?

 Posted by  Abortion, Creation and Evolution, Education, Homosexuality, Issues, Religion  8 Responses »
Feb 282005
 

Perhaps never in the history of the United States has there been so many people mobilized in such a large, organized and systematic way, to do so little. Most analysts believe that the religious right is the group most responsible for President Bush’s reelection and the Republican Party’s solid victory. And yet they elected these people to go into office with very little mandate. The big issues for the religious right are abortion, gay marriage, public displays of religion, teaching evolution in schools, and euthanasia. This list comes mostly from personal experience, and also by visiting some of the Focus on the Family and Christian Coalition websites to see what issues they were talking about most. I also chose to ignore the Christian Coalition’s non-Christian (note that I did not say un-Christian) positions, like supporting Bush’s tax and Social Security reform plans. (Side note: visiting their website, I was shocked at the extent to which the Christian Coalition has become a partisan mouthpiece for the Republican party, supporting conservative positions without even giving a modest go at supporting those positions Biblically.) So, one by one let’s look at these issues:

  • Abortion: Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, I think most people would agree that too many abortions are performed in the United States. Look at most of the pro-life suggestions, however, and they really focus on changing society’s stance regarding abortion without actually making a significant dent in the number of abortion procedures. Peruse the aforementioned websites, and you will learn that the important abortion battles are parental notification, partial birth abortion, and the recognition of a fetus as a life in criminal court. Parental notification is fine and all, but I’m not sure if it will actually prevent more than a handful of abortions. Partial birth abortion is a purely symbolic issue; it outlaws only one of several possible procedures. And fetus recognition is all about some vague goal of “changing societies perception with regards to the unborn” or something like that. Again, pure symbolism that doesn’t actually save anyone’s life (though it does arbitrarily raise the sentences of certain murderers). But even more than that, almost all of the important parts of these issues are being fought in courts and not in legislatures. They’ve already passed most of these laws, the question now is whether those laws are unconstitutional.

    To be fair, I should mention two things. First, the pro-life movement is fighting, in the long-run, to legally ban all abortions. This is a major goal and certainly would have a tremendous impact on society, although I am a bit skeptical that a legal ban will have a positive effect on society unless you also change the underlying social forces which drive women to want abortions in the first place. Also, of course, a legal ban on all abortions is not on the horizon anytime soon (overturning Roe v. Wade, which is remotely possible in the next few years, would simply throw the issue back to the states, and then you get all sorts of nastiness like Kentucky passing laws to keep Planned Parenthood from busing women to Ohio to have abortions). Besides which, voting for a Congressmen because you want the Supreme Court to change stances on an issue is completely absurd. Second, there are many ways of reducing the number of abortions that these conservative Christian groups don’t even consider (like, say, mandating affordable healthcare for all pregnant women and young families).

  • Gay Marriage: The important thing here is to mobilize people in Alabama, Florida, and Virginia because there might be gay marriages performed in Massachusetts, New York City, and San Francisco. Oh, but wait, they do have to ensure that those marriages won’t be recognized, so they passed that law. And, it always helps to pass redundant laws and redundant amendments to state constitutions, right? And, you know, we could amend the federal constitution, cause that’s a good idea. The only way that such an amendment might pass is to forbid marriage but allow civil unions, at which point the entire amendment becomes semantic (you can give access to all legal rights of marriage, but can’t call it marriage). Again, it all strikes me as political mobilization to do very little.
  • Public Displays of Religion: Because the most important thing we can do for our children is allow them to listen to their teachers pray in school and to have them see the Ten Commandments on display at courthouses! These issues affect the well-being of millions of people! Well, or maybe it just makes us feel better as we horde our possessions and gossip with our neighbors to think that at least we are fighting the good fight for God somewhere, right? And again, these are currently battles for the courts and not for the legislatures.
  • Teaching Evolution: Already hit that one, but it basically comes down to much ado about very little. Because it isn’t like kids read their textbooks or pay that much attention to their teachers anyway, and all we’ve done is scared teachers away from actually teaching good science, into teaching one side or the other’s dogma, or just skipping the subject all together. Besides which, this is an issue for local school boards, not for national elections.
  • Euthanasia: This seems to be the next big debate, right now in Florida and Oregon, but soon coming to a statehouse near you. Still, I’m not sure that any of the national Republican leadership was elected to do anything about this.

So, in other words, it seems that this well-organized, extremely mobilized group sent the Republicans to Washington in order to possibly appoint a couple conservative judges, and to give good speeches about a lot of issues they can’t, or won’t, affect. And we wonder why the neo-conservative hawks and the Wall Street financial brokers are running the country.

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