The public flashpoint between religion and science is found in the issue of creationism and evolution. Other issues, such as the sun revolving around a stationary earth, are now found in the dustbin of history. As visible as this issue is in public life, I have come to believe that other, more subtle, factors fuel the discomfort and conflict between the two fields. What brought me to this awareness was reflecting on my discontent with sermons.

Even the occasional superb sermon—important topic, clear formulation, and engaging presentation—left me with a low-level vexation. It took years to focus on this ongoing annoying feeling and, then, even longer to identify its cause: not what was said, as I kept thinking, but the process shaping what was said. That, then, led to focusing on the different ways that scientists and ministers work, think, and articulate their views.

Minister’s sermons are, almost without exception, deductively shaped. Deductive reasoning works from the general to the specific, often called the ‘top-down’ approach. As a deductive endeavor, sermons follow the pattern of a Bible verse read, followed by an exposition, which often takes the form of three points. That deductive thinking process becomes ingrained both by listening to sermons and in seminary training.

In contrast, there is inductive thinking. I learned the difference in college philosophy; a difference, though, that never worked its way into my everyday consciousness. Inductive thinking moves from observations to generalizations, a ‘bottom-up approach.’ Inductive thinking is more the mode of scientists, and starting out to be a scientist, it is natural to me

Actually, I don’t think anyone is fully encased in either deductive or inductive thinking. Both types of thinking are used in the crucible of daily life. A child constantly lying will lead a parent to generalize about the cause (inductive). At the same time, a firm parental curfew is often imposed, with consequences, for disobedience (deductive). Parents engage in both kinds of behavior. Opinions and decisions in our daily lives are based both on gut feelings, intuitions, emotions, impulses and learned skills (inductive) and on the logic of reasoned conclusions, principles, and convictions (deductive).

Yet, I believe that for religious and scientific professionals, working in their respective fields, either deductive or inductive thinking dominates the habit of mind. It may be that the tendency to one or the other mode of thinking is a given in infancy, but each is honed in professional education and in professional work. Thus, inductive and deductive reasoning—having a marked impact on beliefs and values, decisions and actions—are so ingrained that someone speaking in the other mode can seem strange, foreign, or even wrong.

Acknowledging this difference in our mode of thinking is a way for religionists (predominantly deductive thinkers) and scientists (predominantly inductive thinkers) to begin a more fruitful dialogue. Attending to the truths that we derive from ancient texts expands our own wisdom. Attending to the truths that come from generalizing on our experiences and experiments leads us into important knowledge that adds to the ongoing wisdom of human life.

Reading a text of a new scientific discovery continues to be more satisfying for me than listening to a sermon. However, with my new understanding of why that is, I find I am more relaxed at sermon time. Now I wonder if the minister with whom I shake hands notices a difference.

Bob Tucker

September 2010

Once, on leaving a gathering, my wife commented: “Scientists are so much more alive when they talk with each other than are ministers.” Taken aback, but alerted, I began to pay attention and discovered that her observation was largely correct, and I began to wonder why that was the case. On further listening, I believe that a significant aspect of the difference is each one’s educational immersion in a different time zone.

With ministers, conversations are rooted in the present, illuminated by the past; with scientists conversations draw the present into the future. The former has the solid, but static, quality of the tried and true; the latter contains the intriguing anticipatory question, ‘what’s new?’ Numerous subsequent listening-observations confirm this time zone divide.

The education of the scientist does not require the reading of Isaac Newton’s 1687 publication of the Principia, even though that book lays the groundwork for most of classical mechanics. Nor are mathematicians required to read the thirteen books of Euclid’s Elements. Yet, for the theologian, being immersed in ancient texts and the writings of past authors is an absolute requirement—the study of the Bible and the christological controversies sixteen centuries ago being just two examples.

The standard for truth is also wrapped up in different time zones. For something new in religion to be verified, it must meet the criteria in the ancient holy book or in the ancient formulations of doctrine. For science, truth is what is verified by observation and experimentation, activities found in the future.

When I walk into the office of a scientist or physician, there are often teetering stacks of journals with paper markers noting articles on current research; whereas on the library shelves in ministers’ offices, I find the theological tomes left over from student days and current literature on the practical tasks of church administration, church growth and sermonizing.

The theology of all three major western religions was formulated in a pre-Copernican world. Important Christian figures—the Pope, Martin Luther and John Calvin—all condemned Copernicus’ replacement of the earth with the sun in his 1543 book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Although no one disputes the fact of our sun-centered planetary system, the heresy hunters will follow any person who advocates a theology forged in a post-Copernican sun-centered universe. I shudder to think of what the response of traditional believers would be if a theology, reflecting the quantum world, were articulated.

Religion offers many benefits—community, a belief system of ultimate meaning, comfort in life’s ills, and a path for  compassionate caring—but the difficulty in maintaining credibility with a theology rooted in an outmoded understanding of the universe will continue to erode Christian legitimacy. Moving into the future with one’s eyes unwaveringly fixed in the rearview mirror invariably leads to collisions with the future.

Anne Rice has made news again. She is mainly known for her gothic novels. Her books have sold around 100 million copies, making her one of the most widely read authors in modern history. It came as a shock in 2005 when she returned to the Roman Catholic Church, which she left at 18. Now, in another shock, she has renounced her membership in that Church. This announcement came in three posts to her Facebook, each only hours apart.

1. “For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”

2. “As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.” [17]

3. “My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.”

The energy of her renunciation is felt both in her words and the three rapid postings. Her statement, “I refuse to be anti-life” is most telling.

Disturbing, for a person advocating a non-literal and non-dogmatic contemporary theology, is Anne Rice’s seemingly ignorance of a Christianity that is not ‘anti-life.’ There are numerous Christians and churches that are progressive and liberal dotting the landscape of America.

Such liberal and progressive churches are off the radar screen for most people since the media always portrays Christianity as the voice of the F-E-COTs (Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, Conservatives, Orthodox and Traditionalists). Pick an issue, and the spokesperson is invariably someone who espouses an adamant anti-life stance.

Anne Rice is reminiscent of Mahatma Gandhi, one of the most respected leaders of modern history. A Hindu, Gandhi nevertheless admired Jesus and often quoted from the Sermon on the Mount. Once when the missionary E. Stanley Jones met with Gandhi he asked him, “Mr. Gandhi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?” Gandhi replied, “Oh, I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

For more information on Anne Rice see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Rice

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was recently back in the news. The president of an organization wanted Wright’s help in obtaining government funding for African relief and earthquake-ravaged Haiti. Wright wrote back saying that he finds himself “toxic,” being “thrown under the bus.” He further stated: “No one in the Obama administration will respond to me, listen to me, talk to me or read anything that I write to them.”

Following 9/11 2001, Wright told his congregation:

We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

And then his incendiary words:

“The government gives (our children) the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ God bless America? No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people.”

This comment, repeated and repeated on TV in his passionate way, led Obama cut Jeremiah loose and ‘toss him under the bus.’

What was unfortunate, and probably intentional, given its use for political purposes, was that only half of Wright’s sentence was used. The full spoken sentence: “No, no, no, God damn America—that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people.”

As a Christian preacher, Jeremiah Wright was ‘preaching the Bible.’ Of course, America is not specifically mentioned in the Bible, but ancient Israel is, and it takes little imagination to substitute the God-blessed-and-righteous-America for the God-blessed-and-righteous-Israel. Preachers do that all the time with the Bible, or other readings from the past. Listen to the words of the ancient Hebrew prophet, Amos, preaching at a national and religious holiday—a day having the import similar to merging July Fourth and Easter—in the capital city, Bethel. [The following Bible passages are taken from Contemporary English Version, published by the American Bible Society]

The Lord said: “I will punish Israel for countless crimes, and I won’t change my mind. They sell honest people for money, and the needy are sold for the price of sandals. They smear the poor in the dirt and push aside those who are helpless. (2:6-7a).

Like us, the ancient Israelites also believed themselves special, perhaps their politicians were saying to them ‘we’re the greatest nation on the earth.’

People of Israel, … of all the nations on earth, you are the only one I have chosen. That’s why I will punish you because of your sins. (3:1-2)

To those self-satisfied religious folk who deliriously desire the Second Coming and the Rapture in which, of course, they will participate, while the rest of us wallow in agonizing deaths, have a different fate under Amos’s God.

You look foreword to the day when the Lord comes to judge. But you are in for trouble! It won’t be a time of sunshine, all will be darkness. You will run from a lion only to be met by a bear. You will escape to your house, rest your hand on the wall, and be bitten by a snake. The day when the Lord judges will be dark, very dark without a ray of light. (5:18-20)

Here comes the ‘hate’ word.

I, the Lord, hate and despise your religious celebrations and your times of worship. I won’t accept your offerings or animal sacrifices—not even your very best. No more of your noisy songs! But let justice roll down like a river and righteousness like an every flowing stream [KJV]. (5:21-24)

Can’t you hear a modern-day Amos (named Jeremiah) saying, “I hate and despise your pressing the poor into the dirt and killing the innocent with your drones. All this self-congratulatory chest-pounding and preening you do as a church and as a nation is worthless. Let justice and righteousness be your every-present companions.

What do you suppose was the official reaction to Amos’s preaching? Actually, it was not much different from what Jeremiah Wright received.

Amaziah, the priest of Bethel sent this message to King Jeroboam of Israel, Amos is plotting against you in the very heart of Israel; ou, nation cannot put up with his message for very long. Here is what he is saying,

(King) Jeroboam will be put to death, and the people will be taken to a foreign country.

Then Amaziah told me, ‘Amos, take your visions and get [the hell out of town]! Go back to Judah and earn your living there as a prophet. Don’t do any more preaching at Bethel. The king worships here at our national temple. (7:10-13)

Governmental and public  reaction, then as now, to such words in rooted in religion being a cheerleader for the nation.

Reading  Jeremiah Wright, side-by-side with the Prophet Amos, it is easy to see that, from a biblical point of view, ‘Wright was right.’

What was important, though, to Amos and to Wright, was not condemnation but the message: let justice roll down like a river and righteousness like an every flowing stream.

One movement that seems to have gotten little attention is the growing ‘renunciation of baptism.’ In Britain one can download de-baptism forms, and apparently 100,000 or so have done so. A similar movement is active in Italy, and in Argentina the secularist movement is called ‘Not in my name.’ One report states that the British group has sold 1500 parchment certificates for $4.35 each, netting $6525. That is not a bad profit for a piece of printed paper and some postage.  http://www.secularism.org.uk/debaptise-yourself.html

Glenn Beck and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) expressed harmonized outrage on Beck’s radio program Thursday about news that the House might vote on the health care reform package this Sunday. Voting on a Sunday, they said, was offensive and heretical.
“They intend to vote on the Sabbath, during Lent, to take away the liberty that we have right from God,” King said.
“Faith has been perverted,” Beck responded, then repeated. “They are going to vote for this damn thing on a Sunday, which is the Sabbath, during Lent.”
Beck continued: “Here is a group of people that have so perverted our faith and our hope and our charity, that is a — this is an affront to God.”
Though Beck conceded that he didn’t believe that the Sunday vote was consciously chosen as a plot against God, he did find the timing apt.
“I think it’s absolutely appropriate that these people are trying to put the nail in the coffin on our country on a Sunday — something our founders would have never, ever, ever done. Out of respect for God.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/18/iowa-congressman-and-glenn_n_504633.html

Perhaps we have a conflict in the family: God shaking a finger in disapproval while Jesus is giving his approval (Mark 3:1-6).
And Jesus entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand. And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him. And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth. And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? To save life, or to kill? But they held their peace. And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other. And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.

This is an article by Martin E Marty, Professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. He is one of the leading religious scholars and commentators in America today.

Lauren Ashley, self-proclaimed Miss Beverly Hills, now rejected by Hills officials, is drawing more media attention as an oracle than anyone else since another would-be Beauty Queen, Carrie Prejean, spoke.  Both commented on homosexuality.  We news-scanners find issues connected with it to be the most church-dividing since the Council of Nicea or the Protestant Reformation.  “Gay” could provide copy for every issue of Sightings, but we rarely notice it.  Hardly harpers on the subject, we obviously have to find some distinctive feature to justify commenting this time.  There is one.

While beauty queens usually merit being overlooked as oracles, Miss Ashley, now heaped on by “the liberal elites,” deserves credit for her integrity and consistency.  The trump card played by opponents of gay rights, gay ordination, and all the other gay things in church and often state is marked “Biblical Literalism.”  There are about six inches of print in their big fat Bibles that serve them as negative “proof texts.”  Even secular vote-seekers, when they do not make their cases on other grounds, trumpet “The Bible says…,” but rarely do any do as well as Miss Ashley at making her judgment on the basis of what the Bible actually does say.  Most of them quote parts of verses.  Not Miss Ashley:  “The Bible says that marriage is between a man and a woman,” she comments. “In Leviticus it says, ‘if man lies with mankind as he would lie with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.”  Most quoters stop there, but Ashley goes on: “They shall surely be put to death…The Bible is pretty black and white.”  So, she emphasizes, if a loving God says “that having sex with someone of your own gender is going to bring death upon you, that’s a pretty stern warning…”

Seriously: if the first half of that verse is divinely-inspired and authoritative, who are we moderns to decide that the second half is not, and that it can be shrugged off?  The same goes for other scriptural death penalty cases.  As every smart skeptic or New Atheist never tires of reminding us, Leviticus and Deuteronomy command capital punishment in numerous clear and specified instances:  when children curse their parents, when anyone blasphemes, and even when a son is persistently disobedient.  He should be put to death by divine, elder-ly, and parental authority backed by God’s law.

Contra the skeptics, New Atheists, and consistent humanists, let it be said that most Bible-believers, even the simplest and thus noblest people of faith, are sophisticated enough at exegesis and hermeneutics not to use the scriptures the way literalist Ashley does.  But does she not do us a favor by pressing the issue?  No Jews are Jews because God told their ancestors to commit omnicide against the Amalekites.  No Christians, whose book also includes Leviticus and Deuteronomy, use it to punish men who have intercourse with a menstruating wife.  No Christians in our cultures use the Bible, which never de-legitimizes slavery, to legitimize slavery.  Bible-folk pick and choose, seeing the Bible as a “book of salvation,” what Christians call “the gospel=the good news.”  It is harder to say why many pick just one command out of many hundreds and raise it above “salvation” and “gospel” or to justify “propositions” and “constitutional amendments” on grounds of biblical literalism.  Is the literal Bible really at issue?

Some anti-gay rights, anti-gay marriage, anti-et cetera folk try to make their case on the basis of psychology or sociology.  Thanks, Lauren Ashley, for relying on the Bible.  Literally.

Reference:

Sightings <ktobey@uchicago.edu>http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/02/24/Miss_Beverly_Hills_Cites_Antigay_Bible_Verse/

Imagine driving on a city’s busy thoroughfare in the busy Christmas season, glancing up at a new colorful billboard, and then quickly gripping the steering wheel as your eyes check that you’re still in your lane. Finding you are, you take another quick glance to see if what you thought you saw you really did see.

This billboard appeared in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, and was placed there by an Anglican church, St. Matthew-in-the-City. It was clearly meant to provoke, as well as amuse. Provoke it did. The church’s website was flooded with 30,000 hits, a mixture of intrigued and critical. Twice in the first few days, there were attempts to deface and destroy the billboard, and by the end of the second week, the billboard was taken down. However, given the discussions generated about the birth of Jesus, church leaders felt satisfied.  By the time of its coming down, everyone in the nation had heard of the billboard, and the internet quickly made the picture a world-wide phenomenon. Opinions were instantly formed, from belly laughs to accusations of sacrilege.

My mind went immediately to the 1987 photograph by photographer Andres Serrano of a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the Artist’s urine. What added insult-to-injury, for some, was the fact that the picture won a contest partly sponsored by the National Endowment of the Arts. In other words, taxpayers paid for it. Others said that awarding money for this art-picture violated the separation of church and state. One person wrote that the work was “not blasphemous but a statement ‘on what we have done to Christ’—that is, the way contemporary society has come to regard Christ and the values he represents.”

I also thought of the twelve 2005 cartoons of Muhammad printed in a Danish newspaper. Danish Embassies were set on fire in three countries and an estimated 100 people died in riots. The publisher has been attacked.

Returning to the Auckland billboard, two additional factors were at work in the negative response of some people—the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary and our society’s general dis-ease with matters of human sexuality.

Roman Catholicism, Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy, and a number of Protestant scholars believe that Mary was a virgin before, during and after giving birth—perpetual virginity. The doctrine of the Virgin Birth is only a part of this broader belief. (The dogma of the Immaculate Conception is a different doctrine, relating to the conception of the Virgin Mary without any stain of original sin.) Thus, it is easy to understand the trouble some traditional Christians would have with this billboard.

However, even some non-literal biblicists had difficulty. Although believing that Mary got pregnant the usual human way, they were a bit squeamish in thinking about the actual details, even in this day and age of more open sexuality. The program notes of the recent performance of Puccini’s opera, Tosca, while recording that the opera has two suicides, two murders, a torture scene, and an attempted rape, adds “opera companies never receive complaint letters about violence.” Although not stated, this lack of comment  is in decided contrast to mail received, and patrons departing, when opera scenes are sensual and risqué. Sex still is a bothersome topic for many.

Art calls forth a response, even billboard-art. What stirs inside you?

Name Calling

Labeling people is a normal human activity. Labeling gives us the ability to cluster our experiences and talk in generalities. As much as we might like to treat each person in her or his uniqueness or marvel at the beauty of each leaf, uncovering each uniqueness would exhaust our available time and fill our mind with excess detail. Both would cause reflection, reason and intelligent conversation to come to a grinding halt. So, placing people in categories is essential, even if such categorization squeezes individuals into narrower groupings than reality warrants.

However, there is a difference between labeling for description and for denigration. To denigrate, we label by identifying the characteristics people have in common—skin color, sexual orientation, religious identification, ethnicity, body shape—and then we assign other, more derogatory, characteristics. This we call prejudice—literally, the ‘pre-judging’ of others—so that we attribute identical characteristics to all individuals who belong to a particular group. Growing up in any society inculcates persons into thinking of categories such as us-them, men-women, Jew-Christian-Muslim, conservative-liberal, to mention some of the more familiar labels.

Working in the area of religion, I am aware of our own need to cluster and categorize. For example, the words fundamentalist/conservative and liberal are used to designate the two common sides of belief and practice. They also are used for self-identification and as a way of speaking pejoratively about others. It needs to be noted that a significant problem with the use of these designations is that they cast too wide a net, collecting a disparate variety of people and beliefs.

To acknowledge this and to be more descriptive, I have developed two acronyms for my own use—F-E-COTs and LAHRS. F-E-COTs (the dashes are for pronunciation) are a way of speaking about the diversity of believers on the religious right: fundamentalists-conservatives-orthodox-evangelicals-traditionalists. For those on the religious left, I use the acronym LAHRS: liberal-atheist-humanist-rationalist-secularist.

These acronyms are awkward, and they pull together individuals who might glare at being lumped with others in their category, but the classification does help me keep in mind the diversity that now goes under the overly-broad labels of fundamentalist/conservative and liberal. Of course, one drawback to these designations is that each time I mention F-E-COTs and LAHRS, I have to explain what I am talking about, and that diverts the conversation from the subject to the meaning and appropriateness of the labels. Nevertheless, even if not used by others, I find the acronyms helpful for my own thinking.

Already, though, I am finding the acronyms F-E-COTs and LAHRS inadequate in discovering a new phenomenon—individuals who encompass elements from both sides: the theology of F-E-COTS and the social concern of the LAHRS. These are individuals who believe in a literal Bible and adhere to a pre-Copernican theology while, at the same time, firmly working toward GLBT (gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender), abortion and environmental rights.  Now, by what name should I call them? A single word is needed to avoid speaking two-or-three descriptive sentences.

It may be a bit confusing to have individuals who do not fit into our easy categorization or ‘name calling.’ However, that is a reminder of the frailty of any generalization—no category can fully encompass the totality of even one human being, much less the bubbling, fermenting diversity of life itself.

Bob Tucker
February 2010