Gospel of Karin

This is a continuation of my critique of Ian Barbour’s typologies of the relationship between science and religion. Next up, the Independence (see my earlier essay for a description of this category).

Independence
A relationship of independence can elevate science and religion to a level of mutual respect. We see this, for example, in the writing of Stephen Gould, who, although denying that the two areas could overlap, maintained respect for religion.

Another strength of this category is that religion and science maintain distinctive identities and contribute diverse ontological and epistemological perspectives. Neither threatens to subsume the other.

Despite these advantages, however, I believe that a relationship of independence is not good for humans, animals, and nature. Without dialogue or integration, scientists and religious scholars miss out on opportunities to work together to envision a richer vision of the world, and in turn, enhance their ability to do good for it. 

I also think this category represents a kind of denial about the influence of religion on science. As previously mentioned, the general disposition of modern science towards nature is partially informed by the Biblical account of creation and religious doctrines. Furthermore, individual scientists cannot help but interpret world from the standpoint of their historical, cultural, and personal contexts. 

In the west, the concepts and beliefs of Judaism and Christianity have had enormous influence on the formation of our political and social institutions and cultural norms. And while I do think that science and religion ask different kinds of questions and use different methods and languages, each attempts to say something about the ground of reality in an effort to understand our place in the universe.

There is insight in the complementary perspective: both search for meaning either explicitly or implicity. Science, of course, does provide important information that has instrumental value for our lives, but to deny its metaphysical, theological, or philosophical underpinnings is to be either dishonest or naïve. 

None of this is to say that science can replace religion. I think that the Protestant neo-orthodox theologians that Barbour discusses point to a strong poetic dimension to religion. Rituals, stories, and narratives allow us to explore dimensions of experience in ways that scientific methods cannot.

Here I agree with theologian David Tracy that religion is well-placed to answer boundary questions. Where it seems neo-orthodox theologians fall short, however, is in thinking that religion can answer those questions without the insights of science.

Again, no matter how much we profess to care about the natural world, we cannot make good on that commitment without taking seriously what science can tell us about it.

Image: Einsames Haus (A Lonely House), by Michael Otto. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

My post the other day on sheep shearing made me think about the ethics of the practice. I’ve heard mixed reports about shearing. Some say it’s cruel, others say it’s necessary for the comfort and health of the sheep (they can overheat and get insect infestations).

I wondered whether it was inherently inhumane under any circumstances.

As luck would have it, a friend of mine has three sheep who were scheduled to be sheared this week. She and her husband adopted all three from the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA). She graciously invited me to witness their annual de-wooling.

Here are a few photos I took (the last photo is of an affectionate goat who head butted me and nibbled my clothing as I watched the shearing process):

The shearer is a thirty-year veteran who trained in Ireland, and who clips the old-fashioned way using hand shears. My friend warned me that I might be a bit startled by the way he handled the sheep. He needed to muscle them around a bit to get them in position. I found that I was unbothered by it because he seemed no more assertive than necessary to maneuver a 200 pound sheep. I’ve made similar moves just trying to wash my dogs’ ears.

The sheep were a bit nervous as they watched him prepare. (They looked like me when I’m waiting to see my dentist.) During the shearing, they groaned a little when placed in less than graceful positions, but they never cried in pain, even when they were nicked, which happened only a couple of times.

It was interesting to witness how the sheep behaved out of concern for each other. For example, one of them would lightly touch his nose against the nose of the one being sheared.

Afterwards the sheep were let out of their pen into the yard. They spent a great deal of time smelling each other (the goats joined in as well). The most dominant of the three also tried to mount the others. My friend told me there’s always a bit of upheaval afterwards as the animals adjust to the new scents.

Overall, my experience was that hand shearing is completely humane if done by an adept and respectful handler (which this man was). I asked my friend what she knew about electric shearing. She told me that her sheep had only been sheared this way once, and were stressed out by the noise. She thinks this is because they’re used to being hand sheared.

At the same time, I can easily see how electric shearing in intensive agriculture could be stress filled and painful for sheep, particularly with hasty or insensitive handlers. However, I need to do some more homework here.

I also can see how sheep shearing contests judged primarily by speed could be largely inhumane because of the sensitivity of the sheep, but again, I need to research this a bit.

See also:
Talk to the Animals
Finding the Way Back with Animals
Meeting God in Relationship with Animals

I talk to my dogs frequently and unabashedly. Once, an electrician working on my house overheard me talking with my two labs in the back yard. Later he said to me “Wow, I talk to my dogs, but not like you do!”

I wondered, why not? I’m convinced that these “conversations,” have resulted in my dogs being much more perceptive of me (and I of them) than they otherwise would have been.

I was equally curious when I found out recently that some novice sheep shearers are themselves sheepish about comforting nervous animals while shearing them. With a shortage of shearers in the American west, a growing number of folks, from ex marines to psychiatrists, are taking up the profession as a way to a more natural and sustainable way of life.

Many are sensitive as well to the emotions of the sheep. Good thing. For despite their reputation as virtual automatons who would follow their flock off a cliff, ethological studies have shown that sheep are actually reasonably intelligent. They have, for example, sophisticated memories and respond emotionally to familiar faces.

And yet some shearers in training are a bit shy about talking to sheep. Here’s an excerpt from a New York Times article on the subject:

For some students, empathy was an issue, if mostly unspoken. Are the sheep stressed?…

Meagan Rathjen, 22, a ranch hand at a sheep spread near Missoula — she came west from small-town Iowa, interested in helping support sustainable agriculture — nicked her first sheep. It was nothing too serious, but enough to draw a small trickle of blood, which looked stark and red against the yearling’s white skin.

So quietly that almost no one else could hear, Ms. Rathjen bent down over the half-shorn animal, and apologized.

Why so quiet? I suspect it may have something to do with a fear that, despite the evidence of sheep intelligence and their obvious expression of certain feelings, such behavior may be criticized as inappropriately emotional. Like my electrician thinking I was a bit eccentric for speaking so enthusiastically to my dogs, it may seem slightly nutty to apologize to a frightened sheep.

A completely reasonable response suppressed. This may be partly due to a cultural suspicion of empathy for animals, handed down through scientific and religious traditions that view them as instinctual, instrumental, and soul-less.

Sources:
“Work as Every Bit Wild as It Is Wooly,” New York Times.
“The ‘intelligent’ side of sheep,” BBC News.
“Study Shows Sheep Have Keen Memory for Faces,” Scientific American.
“So who’s being wooly minded now?: Other animals could learn something from an intelligent flock,” New Scientist.

See also:
Finding the Way Back with Animals
Meeting God in Relationship with Animals

What you know first stays with you, my Papa says.
But just in case I forget
I will take a twig of the cottonwood tree
I will take a little bag of prairie dirt
I cannot take the sky.
And I’ll try hard to remember the songs,
And the sound of the rooster at dawn,
And how soft the cow’s ears are
When you touch them,
So the baby will know
What he knew first.
And so I can remember too.

—From What You Know First, by Patricia MacLachlan and Barry Mosher

Finding the Way Back with Animals
This morning, I heard the sound of barking through an open window. It was a moment of happy recognition; I knew the octave, the pattern, the cadence. Every bark is a little different, you know. This one came from my dog, Henry (Henry James to be precise). Henry is a baritone barker, except on those occasions when his bark suddenly breaks high, like the warbling voice of a teenage boy.

Diesel, my other dog, is a naggy contralto. He is strident and imperious, especially at mealtimes. By the look of him, you might expect him to bark like James Earl Jones or Barry White (if they were dogs). But this morning, it was Henry who I heard barking in the backyard, the sound thrusting forward and dissipating wide and fast across the sky. It wrapped around the house, drifted through the window, and met me where I stood. It emerged from back to fore and I received it joyfully, this comforting, familiar sound.

Years earlier, I held a four pound puppy in my hand. Henry was not yet Henry. He was “Blue,” a reference to the little blue string of yarn tied loosely around his neck to distinguish him from his siblings. A few weeks later, my ex-husband and I took him home. We became coo-ers; “Blue” was so cute. “Blue” was so happy. Also, “Blue” peed everywhere. Cute as he was, I was determined to maintain some house rules. Rule 1: he will never sleep on the bed. Rule 2: he will never get up on the furniture. I liked this little pup alright, but it was not my idea to get a dog. Everything would be ok as long as the rules were followed. But Blue grew into Henry, Henry Fenry, Hank, Cutie Wootie, Baby, Bubba, Bub, and Bubble. He learned to answer to all of these weird endearments and more. Five months later, he was sleeping on the bed. Several months after that, we adopted Diesel. Another dog. What on earth was I thinking? Read the rest of this entry »

In the last couple of posts, I began presenting interrelational views on panentheism, as presented in the book In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being. The present post focuses on the perspective of theologian Ruth Page.

Interrelational Perpectives on God, Part III
In an earlier essay, I introduced the concept of emergent monism in theology. As a reminder, emergent monism is inspired by the evolutionary concept of emergence in which natural systems and organisms spontaneously give rise to higher levels of complexity and novel properties. Theologically speaking, emergence refers to the belief that God is not a static substance but a creative, dynamic presence inextricably intertwined with nature and continually advancing it toward higher states of being.

Page argues that emergent monism as a way of understanding God-world relations is problematic for a couple of reasons. First, she suggests that the argument that evolution reveals a pattern of divine purpose is contrary to the evidence. The overwhelming number of occurrences of “natural evil,” such as mass extinctions, tell against divine providence (224, 227). Likewise, she argues that the Process philosophy notion that God lures creatures toward the good is hard to reconcile with natural relationships such as predator and prey.

Second, she objects to ontological hierarchies which grade the intrinsic value of creatures based on what biologist Charles Birch refers to as “richness of experience.” This view, she argues, is rooted in the mistaken belief that complexity and consciousness are simple goods. (Page quoting Birch, 225).1 On the contrary, says Page. Greater complexity and higher levels of consciousness are at best ambiguous with respect to the inherent value of living beings.

Instead, she emphasizes relational over essentialized ontologies in which God values creatures as they are, embedded in their particular situation without reference to humanity. In Page’s words: “the whole of creation is companioned [my italics] by God, not on the basis of hierarchy, but according to what is proper and necessary to the creature in its circumstances” (229).

Rather than panentheism (all in God) as a way of thinking about God’s relationship with living beings, Page proposes the concept of pansyntheism, or all “with” God (231). This idea, she believes, preserves the separate identities required for participants to actually be in relationship, rather than one party overwhelming the other. It also may help us to appreciate that nonhuman creatures have ways of responding to God that are distinct from humans. Their means of relating to God is appropriate for their own kind. As such, it makes no sense to measure their intrinsic value against the value of human beings.

Works cited
Page, Ruth. Panentheism and Pansyntheism: God in Relation,” in In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World (222-32).

Photo: “Predator and Prey” by Carl Purcell, copyright Carl Purcell, image courtesy of www.art.com

For those interested in animals and our relationships with them, I’d like to recommend the Encyclopedia of Human-Animal Relationships. This is a four-volume work with entries written by experts in the vast area of human-animal relations. For more information, see this write up on Practical Ethics by William Lynn.

You can also find information at Amazon.com. Note — it’s expensive. Most of us will need to go to the library for it. But it’s a great resource for animal lovers willing to make the trip!