C. S. Lewis said that if monotheism wasn’t true, he thinks the best explanation of the world is some sort of paganism. The universe so filled with wonder, the ancients peopled the sky and the rivers and the elements with gods.

Check out Krista Tippett’s NPR show, “Speaking of Faith,” on this topic. Paganism is growing in the world (which is not new news) but our understanding it, how to get into the shoes of those who believe it, and how to gently navigate those ideas with others may be new to some of us. Here’s the link:

Pagans Ancient and Modern

In other news, CT published a beautiful interview with Andrew Stanton, director of the new Pixar release, Wall•E. Stanton also produced the animated cinematic wonder, Finding Nemo. I appreciate Stanton’s perspective. And I think his interview is one many evagelicals need to read to understand how art & imagination is approached by artists. Being an stage artist, people have often viewed me as ‘drama guy’ and want me to be involved in their church drama programs, which usually means a 5-minute spiritualesqe SNL-style sketch that leads to a sermon.

Well, when I use drama these days it is storytelling or monologue. And contrary to many evangelical church’s use of drama, I think the story IS the sermon… not just a fun entertaining bit to help illustrate the sermon. Stanton’s interview shows that, hitting theatres soon, is a sermon, Jesus-style, designed to draw us in and look at ourselves without being “preachy.” It’s worth your reflection.

The Little Robot that Could

And, finally, many of you may have already read that a Pew survey shows 92% of Americans believe in God while many of them think any sincerely chosen spiritual path is equally valid. This shouldn’t be new news either, at least not among those paying attention to people on the street. With so much spirituality talk today, we should expect this.

What I do think is noteworthy is that the New Atheism isn’t making much, if any, ground. Of all of philosophical naturalisms claims that God cannot be part of the human equation, they aren’t convincing many people. Or, if they are, people hold that belief alongside their private spirituality. When reason dies, so do all our human treasures.

The survey also noted that many are cutting ties with organized religion. I’m still trying to figure out what this means… “organized” as in “going to the building on Sunday” or “not following a coherent set of beliefs of any spiritual leader” or are “both” included?

Here’s the LA Times take on it.

Update: Okay, so one more thing you need to see since I posted the above. CT published a couple of articles on the gender debate between complementarians and egalitarians. Each is written by someone within each camp, criticizing their own camp.

Wounds of a Friend: Complementarian by John Koessler
Wounds of a Friend: Egalitarian by Sarah Sumner

Feel free to comment on any of the above topics… I would love some discussion.

He decrys so much of scientific inquiry has turned to the practical when he writes:

There is the growing belief in some countries, including Britain, that the purpose of science should be primarily utilitarian. This is a dangerous argument because it is so superficially seductive. Forget all that ivory-tower, blue-sky nonsense: go away to your labs and make us a new iPod or better toaster or more drugs. Poll after poll shows that the public demands that science be more “relevant”.

Consumerism affects more than an assault on the soul with noise and gimmickry. Money is often a deterrant to truth, both in religion as well as in science.

Hanlon’s article is worth reading, though he is anti-religious. He thinks the purpose of humans “is probably closer to ‘eat, reproduce and die’ than anything glorious concerning God’s purpose or some grand design.”

And he assumes religion gets in the way:

Science says, “we don’t know, but maybe we can find out”. It is the ultimate deterrent against ignorance, and the antidote to intellectual fatalism: “it’s a mystery”, “it’s God’s will”, “it’s magic”.

Yet I have found we sensible Westerners who have learned the integration of the disciplines finds no problem with scientific inquiry as long as it isn’t fueled by dogma, including naturalistic philosophy. Religion and science have never been at odds in my mind. They serve as a check and balance of motivation and conclusion. That the world isn’t an illusion, Christianity and science are bedfellows, much more than say Buddhism, which says it is. Even astute readers of the Bible will not be dogmatic about a certain interpretation unless it also lines up with reason and experience. I’ve seen plenty of people abusing the Bible by takign out of context, Christians and atheists alike. And this has less to do with the Bible and more to do with the people reading it.

The same can be true of science. Reading it with certain interpretations not checked by reason and experience and other sources of knowledge can lead to a vacuum. This is a common complaint about the university these days: each department becomes so specialized they no longer talk to people in other fields of study. Thus psychologists and neuroscientists do not talk about the soul. Neuroscience pulls the ‘science’ card and claims it has figured out the human mind based on electric corrolations in the brain (usually exploited as fact in popular magazines and newspapers). Meanwhile psychologists discovered complications with the human psyche that is not explained by neuroscience. If the two would talk, check and balance one another, then the world would be better off. And while they are at it, invite different views of philosophy of mind to the table who add even more issues about the mystery of consciousness. The historian would help as would the priest.

All that to say, science is a wonderful tool to be celebrated as an achievement. Science should not be held in suspicion by religion and vice versa. However, science is never done with pure objectivity. Once people enter the fray, just like in every discipline, it is prone to error, poor motivation, and philosophical agenda. Thus, Hanlon is overstating the case when he says Science “is the only belief system we have found that says it is happy to be proved wrong: science’s greatest strength.” I would give that designation to any field of inquiry, religion included, explored with humility. We want truth, not our pre-consceived ideas of truth.

Science may like to be proved wrong, but not as much an be said for scientists.
Bloomberg published an article yesterday showing that very problem. Science can easily be abused and much “research” is actually fabricated for money and recognition.

Elizabeth Lopatto, “Scientific Fraud May Be More Widespread Than Thought, Poll Says“.

These issues are good to be aware of, they serve as an apologetic when someone gets on a high-horse tirade about the evils of religion and the purity of science. It helps level the discussion when we can all acknowledge that humans are prone to corruption and error, if not held in check, and that even our most promising intellectual adventures may be lured, not by knowledge, but by a pot of gold.

We may work in science for a better world. Let us also pray for it too. And above all, let us examine like Socrates our own lives and careers to see if, indeed, we seek to be appropriately human.

The John Templeton Foundation will be spending $4 million to answer this question:

Is there “evidence about whether belief in God confers an evolutionary advantage to humankind”?

You’ll find this in a recent British article published by Ekklesia, “Oxford centre to conduct scientific study of religious belief.”

While it will be interesting to see what $4m will produce to answer these questions, the very question is a speed bump.

The study will not determine if God exists, what God would be like, nor even if there are soulish capacities in humans that hungers for God. Rather the study will focus on the biological makeup of the human species to see if there is a biological survival-advantage for believing in God.

Can you see how motivated this is on the side of the atheistic scientist? If they can show that believing in God is biologically disadvantageous, the general public would be gullible enough to believe them despite so many other evidences about the truthfulness of God and religious experience.

This, on my view, is good waste of money because they are asking an uninteresting question. The study assumes, if I’m reading the article correctly, that “philosophical naturalism” is the starting point (This view says that all that exists is the physical universe and all our experience is a result of what can be explained through physics, chemistry, and biology. In other words, there is nothing spiritual in existence.) What exactly do they expect to find?

Science cannot thoroughly explain beliefs, thoughts, ideas, beauty, love, emotions (they can find correlations in the brain, but not the emotion itself), meaning or anything that pertains to the soul. This study is putting science to the task of evaluating unscientific things. What if belief in God does not produce scientific ‘survival’ or ‘advantage’ in this study? Does that render God untrue? Or what if God gives us ‘survival’ or ‘advantage’ that is outside physical processes? Can science measure that?

Suppose we asked this question, “Does beauty (e.g. flowers, sunsets, rainbows, art, people, etc) give us evolutionary advantage?” Science would find little evidence for it. Beauty in this world appears superfluous. That we have a wide variety of sensual pleasures from taste to sight to hearing to touch cannot be explained as ‘evolutionary advantagous’ to our ‘survival.’ Yet, we’d lose a lot of meaning in this world if it wasn’t for the aroma of sizzling bacon or the sound of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth.

Or make a comparison with marriage. It is biologically advantageous for men to be with woman to procreate through marriage. This allows the species to survive. Yet, someone may argue we don’t need marriage for that as we can all just sleep around and impregnate each other. Ah, but the social scientist says that broken homes or reckless parenting does not allow the children to have advantage. So we need intimate bonds to produce that. And then, of course, children are our future and they get to repeat the process.

So marriage on this view has nothing to do with real promises, covenants, love, or even a content quality of life (unless those qualities keep you from depression or disease which would extend your life). It only has to do with ‘evolutionary advantage’ or the outcome for physical survival. The real meaning of marriage disappears.

Expect with the Templeton study that the real meaning of religion disappears too.

Such is the plight of a civilization that only allows knowledge through natural science, and natural science only done a certain way. It leaves a lot of important elements out.

Regardless of what information this scientific study reveals about the physical aspects of religion in a persons ‘evolutionary advantage,’ I will predict that it will be far less meaningful than the evidence we already having showing there is a God who benevolently created all humans, showed up among us, and then rose from the dead. In fact, the ‘resurrection of the dead’ gives us advantage beyond anything science can conjure up, yet it cannot be explained scientifically so it doesn’t count. See how quickly faith alone in science alone becomes narrow-minded?

When Solomon said that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, he was onto something. He knew real human meaning in this world comes through physical AND spiritual processes, experience, and relationships.

I’d be glad to accept $4m from the Templeton Foundation to tell them that…. of course, I’d share it with my faithful readers! ;o)