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.

For the last few weeks, I’ve posted brief descriptions of Ian Barbour’s typologies of the relationship between science and religion. Today, I begin posting my critique of each category, beginning with Conflict. 

In reflecting on the Barbour’s typologies, I concluded that reconciling science and religion, whether it involves a respectful distance or a total synthesis, must have greater implications beyond the interests of either party. The question I became interested in is this: 

“What are the benefits of a harmonious relationship between science and religion?”

Or more specifically:

“What sort of relationship is good not only for science and religion, but also for humans, animals, and nature?”

The second question is central to my examination of the strengths and weaknesses of each of Barbour’s categories. 

Conflict

I have a difficult time identifying any benefits that views in this category might bring to science, religion, humans, animals, or nature. The best I can say is that some of the scholars that Barbour puts in this category seem well intended.

E.O. Wilson, for example, appears to genuinely believe that scientific explanations have the intrinsic power to lead humans to a more respectful relationship with nature. On the other hand, religious advocates who reject natural selection, for example, form a kind of resistance to an obsession with materialism that characterizes modern secularism.

Still, good intentions barely mitigate the fact that these are totalizing views that attempt to dictate the nature of reality and how we ought to live. Both are so committed to their own reductionist ideologies that they can’t even entertain the suggestion that the other might deepen their understanding about the complexity of life and living.

Regarding religion, I find the traditional image of God as an omnipotent and wholly transcendent being to be self-defeating. This view renders God irrelevant to the daily lives of people, and has proved for many to be disappointing in a world filled with suffering. It also sets up God to fail under scientific scrutiny, falsely divides humans from the rest of nature, and blocks us from understanding our place in the world in nuanced ways.

Image: “Creation of the Sun and Moon” by Michelangelo, face detail of God. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Last fall, I graduated from Boston University School of Theology with a master’s of theological studies. I was recently honored to have been chosen as the salutatorian of the class of 2008.

Below, I share with you an annotated version of the speech I gave at the school’s commencement ceremony at Marsh Chapel on Sunday, May 18.

***********

Thank you, and good afternoon everyone.

This speech represents the very last assignment I’ll receive as a student of the school of theology, and I’m excited to have been chosen to speak to you today.

Last month marked the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King.[1] As such, I feel it is both good and right to honor him by drawing from his work for the theme of my address today.[2]

Reverend King had a vision of beloved community. By this vision, people would one day recognize themselves as existing in an integrated society of brothers and sisters committed to peace and justice, and redeemed through the transformative power of love.[3]

Today, King’s vision continues to inspire others both here and abroad toward non-violent means of achieving social justice.

Great visions, however, don’t occur in a vacuum. They arise in community with others whose visions can ignite in us our own courage and passion.

King himself was inspired by another great visionary, a man named Howard Thurman. Thurman served as the Dean of this Chapel while King was a student at the School of Theology here at BU.[4]

Thurman had his own vision of community, one in which people of all faiths would connect with each other in a common ground of religious experiences.

These two visions became intertwined here at BU. They’re part of a tradition of hopefulness and imagination.

Many of us came to the School of Theology with our own visions about how we might better ourselves and, in turn, make life better for others. We’ve come from many different places in life and traveled down many different paths.

Some of us came directly from undergraduate programs. Others left jobs in search of a more meaningful way of life. Many arrived with the intention of becoming ordained, while others came to explore how they might minister to the world in a different sort of way.

When I entered the School of Theology in 2004, I was heartened by the diversity of people I met here. There are, of course, students of different races, ethnic backgrounds, faith traditions, and ages.

But I also found that our experiences of BU have been varied as well. They’ve occurred in different contexts and on different schedules.

Many of us were full-time students who continued to stay involved in a range of social justice activities. Others worked part-time jobs while tackling demanding academic work loads, and maintaining close ties with our churches.

Some went straight through their programs without a break. Others took time off to tend to ailing family members, to earn money to pay the bills, or just to breath. Each of us has our own story.

King knew that achieving the beloved community involves a diversity of people, with a variety of life experiences and sometimes conflicting ideas. We here at BU haven’t always seen eye-to-eye. We’ve had our struggles and heated disagreements.

But on balance, we’ve been blessed in many ways—with new friendships, with a caring administrative staff, and with an amazing faculty of professors.

We’ve been enriched by new members, and diminished by the loss of others, such as our dear professor Simon Parker, who we sadly miss.[5]

Along the way, we’ve inspired and challenged each other to think more critically about what we presume to be absolute and true. We’ve perceived the plank in our own eye, and in doing so have learned to see ourselves and others more clearly.[6]

There are those who say that love is an unlimited resource. That there is enough love in the world to help everyone. A cynic might respond to this by saying, “Yes, but time is limited. Therefore, some must take priority, even if others are left behind.” [7]

I hope you don’t know anyone like that. But if you do, you might ask them, “how much time does it take to put your hand on someone’s shoulder and say ‘Great job. You’re making a difference.’”

Showing support often requires only a generous spirit towards those who’ve heard the divine call to minister to the world in their own distinct ways. Community must be built in different places, by different people, with different visions.[8].

The beloved community then, is about unity in difference. It’s about individual, embodied spirits who share a common commitment to achieving the peace of God which transcends all understanding.[9]

St Francis reminds us too that the beloved community need not be restricted to humans, but is a mixture of people, animals, and the natural world.[10] God’s blessings are more beautiful and diverse than we can ever know.

We need each other just for a glimpse.

When you leave here today, take a moment to step out into the plaza, and stop at the monument to Martin Luther King.[11] Think about the way you’re called to build the beloved community, and about all those who have inspired and supported you. May you, in turn, inspire and support others in pursuing their visions.

Say thanks to our merciful God that you are privileged to stand in a long tradition of unity, common ground, shared dreams, and hope.

God bless you all. I’m honored to be part of this community.

Thank you.
______________________________________________

1. King was assassinated April 4^th, 1968 in Memphis Tennessee. He was there to support striking sanitation workers.
2. A special thanks to Steve Chase, Director of Antioch University New England’s Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program. It was his enthusiasm for King’s legacy, and especially for King’s vision of the beloved community, that inspired the theme of my speech. Steve recently wrote a great essay for the Practical Ethics blog, Ethos, about Martin Luther King. You can read it here: “The Dream Reborn.”
3. The King Center website provides a nice introduction to the concept of the Beloved Community.
4. King received his Ph.D. from Boston University on June 5, 1955. Thurman was the first African American Dean of Marsh Chapel and a mentor to King. See Religion and Ethics News weekly for a great feature about the life and thought of Howard Thurman.
5. Simon Parker was a professor of Hebrew Bible studies who began teaching at BU in 1981. He passed away on April 29, 2006.
6. See Matthew 7:3–5.
7. Here I’m alluding to Mary Midgley’s argument that compassion is not a “rare and irreplaceable fluid” that must be reserved for humans to the exclusion of animals (I substituted the word ‘compassion’ with ‘love’). Instead, it is a “habit or power of the mind, which grows or develops with use” (see Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter, p. 31). I’ve read and heard more times than I care to remember variations on the uncharitable and morally hollow response referenced above.
8. This is a quote from professor Norm Faramelli, a highly respected lecturer of ethics at the BU School of Theology and other Boston-area seminaries. Norm generously offered his time to help me brainstorm ideas for this speech.
9. See Philippians 4:7.
10. For more on the concept of the mixed community of people, animals, and nature, see Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter, chapter 10.
11. A beautiful sculpture, Free at Last, erected in honor of Martin Luther King, stands in the plaza in front of Marsh Chapel. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/491106232/ for more information.

Photo: Martin Luther King, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

This essay is a continuation of a series on Ian Barbour’s book When Science Meets Religion. Prior essay:

When Science Meets Religion (Independence). Discusses the second of Barbour’s four categories for examining the differing views on the relationship between science and religion.

Category 3–Dialogue
The Dialogue category focuses on the similarities between the concepts and methods of science and religion. One way in which the two relate is through their presuppositions about nature. Barbour explains that Biblical creation stories provided a conceptual foundation for the rise of Western science.

The concept of a God who created the world by God’s own free will means that the universe is intelligible and contingent—God might have chosen not to create it at all. Since the world is not necessary, its workings cannot be deduced through logic (as the Greeks thought). Instead, we can learn about it only through observation. Judeo-Christian understandings of creation legitimized science for early practitioners, who thought they were inquiring into the mind of God. In addition, because Judeo-Christian tradition holds that nature itself is not divine, experimentation is permissible.

Science and religion are also said to relate by way of questions and answers (as opposed to asking noncontiguous questions as in the Independence category). Science raises questions about order, contingency, and human limits for which religion can provide answers. For example, if the world was created ex nihilo, who created it and why?

Theologian David Tracy calls these “boundary-limit” questions (24). These occur when we push beyond the boundaries of our understanding or when we experience existential crises. In such cases, we probe the mysteries of the universe, our purpose and place within it, and the ethical limits of our actions. Religious texts offer insight into the rational ground of reality and, therefore can help to answer questions that reach past the margins of human experience (24).

Scientist and theologian John Polkinghorne believes that the religious concept of “logos” helps us understand the way in which God communicates God’s rational order to human beings. Polkinghorne argues that we achieve knowledge of God’s rationality through the rational capacities of the human mind, especially through mathematics.

Science and religion share methodological similarities as well. Both employ theories that arise not exclusively from observation, but also through imaginative models. Religion, for example, uses models of God. Quantum physics uses models that represent the subatomic world.

In addition neither religion nor science can claim to be value-free, ahistorical, or objective. Both are informed by cultures, communities, and individual beliefs. Thomas Kuhn for example theorized that scientists form communities that share a set of common metaphysical, conceptual, and methodological assumptions (paradigms). Their commitment to a paradigm is based not on empirical evidence or logical proofs, but on shared values. Scholars such as Holmes Rolston propose that theological beliefs, like scientific theories, are bound to standards of consistency and congruency with experience.

Scientific findings can support theologians in refuting ontological reductionism as well as arguments that chance rules out the existence of God. It also helps them reveal false dualisms rooted in Enlightenment thought.

Neuroscience, for example, provides evidence that body and mind, emotions and reason are inseparable, giving scientific credence to the Biblical view that the ‘heart is the seat of reason’ (135). It also gives material substance to feminist theologians in their affirmation of embodied experience. Quantum indeterminacy challenges the notion that all phenomena are merely the sum of their parts and the materialist claim that science can fully explain reality.

In biology, some scientists suggest holistic understandings of evolutionary development. An example of this is the theory that natural selection involves top-down causation in which an organism’s entire system is involved in DNA selection, but does not interfere with lower level DNA production.

In this context, God may be viewed as setting the boundary conditions for multiple ontological levels that are free to follow their own rules without divine intervention. Related to this, some theologians see God as self-limiting. God gives creatures creative freedom but is involved in the world by suffering along with them. These theologians tend to see God in more personal terms.

Painting: “Women at the Well, Opus 238”, 1892, Paul Signac. Courtesy Mark Harden’s Artchive.

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

On a recent trip to my hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, my family and I paid a visit to the Tom Ridge Environmental Center at the entrance of Presque Isle State Park on Lake Erie. The photo to the right is of a placard at the top of the Center’s observation tower, which overlooks the lake.

I found this quote from Antoine de Saint Expury’s The Little Prince inspirational, as well as reminiscent of the concept of emergence in biology, which I’ve written about in previous essays. Essentially, the tree is greater than the sum of its parts; it is an “enduring force straining to win the sky.”

Ethically speaking, the quote suggests that the tree has intrinsic value, and that we, in turn, have moral responsibililties to it. Environmental philosopher Holmes Rolston would say the tree possesses intrinsic value by virtue of innate properties that it defends in the interest of its own survival. (For more, see my essay “Did You Remember to Turn Off the Plants?“)

Whatever you may take from it, it’s a beautiful quote I thought I’d share with you.

So many people encounter the sacred in the world. I’ve read statements by the staunchest of rationalists about how the universe fills them with a sense of awe and wonder.

Often, however, it’s these same people who either deny the “reality” of these experiences or simply brush them aside as unimportant in light of the “brute” facts of life (what “brute fact” means is a topic for future discussion).

I thought of this one night after, of all things, a trip to the grocery store. As I walked to my car, wind gusts blew bits of litter across the pavement and shook the branches of trees. A storm was brewing.

While driving home, the heaviness of the rain clouds was both beautiful and a bit frightening. They seemed especially ominous because they were juxtaposed with clear sky in the distance.

It occurred to me that, even though I knew there was a scientific explanation for this phenomenon, that there was no exasperated storm god planning to bring a flood down on humanity, the spiritual experience of it was irreducible. The presence of divinity transcended and made sacred the simple observation.

This dimension of life is as much part of reality as seeing the storm in a very basic sense. It informs the way I see. I can see “just” a storm, or I can see the beauty, grace, and divinity that conveys itself during the encounter.1

Notes
1. I consider this an I-Thou experience wherein God’s eternity is glimpsed in the between of the encounter. See my earlier essay on I-Thou relating for more.

Painting: “Rainstorm off the Coast at Brighton,” John Constable. Courtesy Mark Harden’s Artchive, www.artchive.com.

This essay is a continuation of three prior posts on the subject of panentheism as discussed by several essayists in the book In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being.

The Revival
God in the World
World as God’s Body-Part I

As mentioned in the prior essay, “World as God’s Body-Part I,” both Arthur Peacock and Philip Clayton believe that human personhood represents a special place in the “ontological relation of, and the interactions between, God and the world” (although God is also present to other levels of reality [Peacocke, 148, 150]).

This view of humans as being closest to God in the natural hierarchy is also held by two other essayists, Paul Davies and Harold J. Morowitz. Davies views God as having set natural laws in place, and bestowed on nature the role of co-creator effected through the capacity of self-organization. Nature appears to have a predetermined direction (“teleology without teleology”), but is free to spontaneously self organize. In other words, God makes the laws that “guarantee a trend toward greater richness, diversity, and complexity,” but the “final outcome…is open and left to chance” (106).

The “crowning achievement,” according to Davies, are intellectual endeavors (math and science) that “capture the very laws upon which this magnificent edifice is constructed,” thereby linking “mind back to the lowest level of complexity,” namely, “particles and fields of matter” (106). Morowitz views emergence in nature as beginning with the “Ground of order” (God), and terminating with the human mind. As he see it, “Transcendence is the divine in us” (136). This special role comes with very high ethical responsibilities to be good, merciful, and humble, but the story of God’s transcendence ends with humans.

Works Cited
In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World. Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke, eds. William B. Eerdsman Publishing Company (Grand Rapids: 2004).

Painting: “Hands that Hold Us,” Pamela Yates, copyright Pamela Yates (www.pamelayates.com)

This essay is a continuation of two prior posts on the subject of panentheism:
The Revival
God in the World 

World as God’s Body
All of the essayists in In Whom We Live Move and Have Our Being espouse some sort of personal metaphor for envisioning the God-world relationship. The most common analogy is the world as God’s body.

Philip Clayton emphasizes that God’s immanence must be thought of strictly in metaphorical terms and not literally or locatively. This is particularly true because panentheists use “in” to refer to a reciprocal relationship between God and world (Clayton, 83). In trying to describe this dialectic of “unity-in-difference,” Clayton argues that “univocal language breaks down,” and concrete metaphors (such as Arthur Peacocke’s image of the world existing in the “womb of God”) are too specific to describe the God-world dialectic (Clayton 83, Peacocke 147). 

Both Clayton and Peacocke subscribe to a form of panentheism known as emergent monism. Emergent monism refers to the biological concept of emergence in which natural systems and organisms spontaneously give rise to higher levels of complexity that transcend subsequent levels (140).

Emergent monists holds that the notion of God as a static substance does not correspond with the way nature really works. God must be reconceived as, according to T.W. Deacon, ‘the creative dynamic,’ immanent in natural processes. God unfolds the possibilities that systems and creatures may actualize within God’s circumambient reality, the highest level of emergence (143). This, in Peacocke’s words, is a “naturalistic theism,” in which no new entity is inserted at any level through which God might intervene in the natural order. The world is strictly composed of “basic physical entities,” and is “causally closed” (147).1 Peacocke compares God’s creative presence to that of a composer present in his or her music (144).

Clayton argues that the most scientifically rigorous metaphor for the God-world relationship is the human mind/body combination. The natural sciences have taught us about the psychosomatic unity of the human person. For this reason, he believes that this metaphor, which he calls the “panentheistic analogy,” (PA) best expresses (albeit, in a very loose way) the interdependent relationship between God and world (83).

Clayton justifies the metaphor in this way: “Apparently, no natural law is broken when you form the (mental) intention to raise your hand and then you cause that particular object in the world, your hand, to rise” (84). He is careful to point out that this analogy is a useful way of thinking about divinity in relation to evolution, but recognizes that it can lead to the view that God is no more than the universe deified. Clayton cautions that it is better thought of as a point of departure for postulating a larger, metaphysical framework (91).

Peacocke defends his “womb of God” metaphor by arguing that it is a naturalist, mammalian, non-masculinist model in which God nurtures life from within (147). But, both he and Clayton agree that human personhood represents a special place in the “ontological relation of, and the interactions between, God and the world” (although God is also present to other levels of reality [Peacocke, 148, 150]).

Notes
1. Not all emergent theorists believe that the basic components of reality are physical. For example, Christian Process theologian, Joseph Bracken, believes that the smallest units of reality are spiritual.

Works Cited
In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World. Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke, eds. William B. Eerdsman Publishing Company (Grand Rapids: 2004). 

Painting: “Hands that Hold Us,” Pamela Yates, copyright Pamela Yates (www.pamelayates.com)

This is the second in a series of essays on panentheism (”all in God”) as discussed in a collection of essays entitled In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being .

Prior essay
Panentheism: The Revival

God in the World
According to Arthur Peacocke and Philip Clayton, modern science has been the primary impetus behind the revival of panentheism. The absentee God of classical theism who created a static world at some distant point in the past and who occasionally intervenes by way of miracles is no longer tenable in light of modern understandings about physics, biology, and evolution (Peacocke xxi).

As Peacocke tells us, modern scientists do not need to invoke the supernatural to explain how the universe and life on earth came to be (xx). The consequence for classical theism is that science has raised the bar on how it is that God can have any influence on the world (xx). Further, if one believes it was God who gave order to the universe, it has become increasingly difficult to defend the position that God intervenes to abrogate God’s own laws (xx).

Peacocke uses the following definition of panentheism from the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church:

The belief that the Being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe, so that every part of it exists in Him, but…that His being is more than, and is not exhausted by, the universe (xviii).

A major issue for panentheists in light of modern science revolves closely around the issue of divine intervention. The question of how God can be actively involved with the world without reference to a supernatural middle ground forms the crux of the panentheist’s challenge. For while panentheists believe it is imperative that theologians take account of scientific findings, they are committed to simultaneously maintaining God’s unique and separate identity.

Hence, a theological tension is inherent in panentheism; if theologians lean too far toward either immanence or transcendence, they may fall into pantheism or deism respectively. How can theologians conceive of the relationship between God immanent and transcendent while providing a defensible understanding of divine action in the face of contemporary science (Peacocke xviii, xxii)?

Painting: “Mother of Birds,” Pamela Yates, copyright Pamela Yates, www.pamelayates.com