The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science
by Natalie Angier
A Mariner Book, 2007
293 pages (paperback)

Available
Amazon.com

I’m not a huge fan of books in the Idiot’s or Dummies Guide genre.  It is not that they don’t have a place; I’m just not big on books written with a Comic San Serif font and pages plastered with cartoons—you know, like I’m 10 years old and need help from Binky the Clown.

The Canon by Natalie Angier, however, is an introductory book that promises to be a “Whirligig Tour,” but without the need for clown-like delivery and balloon comments to keep the reader interested.  This book is intelligent and friendly, good for science-phobes, as well as those who, like me, just love reading on the subject whenever I can justify it. Angier avoids the pedantic and includes plenty of wit.

Admittedly, there are points where I feel she tries little too hard on the witticism, with the clear intention of connecting pop-culture and her subject.  “What distinguishes a fundamental force of nature from the more familiar, frightening forces of nature,” says Angier, “like hurricanes, earthquakes, Donald Trump’s hair piece?”  Still, her delivery works and the book pulls off what so many have not been able to—a basic knowledge of science.  As a professor in religion, I’d love to create a course on religion and science that would allow me to use a text like this.  That is probably why it caught my attention in the first place.

The book is a thoughtful narrative on the most important scientific discoveries in the last century.  It is a good reminder that science is never stale and should never be taken for granted.  “Science is not a body of facts,” says Angier.  “Science is a state of mind. It is a way of viewing the world, of facing reality square on but taking nothing on its face.”

Angier, the National Book Award finalist for Woman: An Intimate Geography and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New York Times embeds her book with memorable take-aways from her interviews with scientists.  Her journalistic instincts serve her well and allow her book to communicate with the reader.  Whether it’s biology, chemistry, or astronomy, she keeps the narrative moving.

Amid the whirligig, there is also a transcendental aspect to the discussion of science that appears periodically in The Canon.  Science is, as she says, “bottomless in its beauty.” Selah.

We are of the universe, and by studying the universe we ultimately turn the mirror on ourselves.  ‘Science is not describing a universe out there, and we’re separate entities,” said Brian Greene.  “We’re part of that universe, we’re made of the same stuff as that universe, of ingredients that behave according to the same laws as they do elsewhere in the universe’

“God formed man from the dust of the ground,” says the second creation account (Genesis 2:7).   Whether or not that ancient science is delivering an historical account of creation or not, there is something that both it and modern science have in common—we belong to the universe.  Our dust can be found everywhere out there.  When we look into the sky, we are looking for ourselves.  Science is very personal.

Angier reminds the reader that science is about discovery.  It is about asking questions.  “Science is an inherently uncertain enterprise,” writes Angier, “and that uncertainty is, paradoxically, another source of its power.” Scientists are supposed to be as happy with their questions and uncertainties as they are with their discoveries.  Strangely enough, this virtuous quality often interferes with the ability of science to communicate its successes.

‘We’re out there looking for new patterns, new laws, new fundamentals, new uncertainties,’ said Any Ingersoll, an astronomer at Caltech.  ‘And as we’re looking, and discovering new things, we’re debating about what we see.  We express our differences of opinion, sometimes strongly until the public gets confused.  Doesn’t science know the answer to anything?  Well, yes, eventually a consensus may be reached about a particular problem.  But by then, we’ve already moved on to the next uncertainty, the next unknown.  You don’t linger.’

Discovery is rapid—whirligigy—messy, and it can be overwhelming, especially for the public.  What strikes me is the question of whether science knows “anything.”  I know non-scientists who ask that question and use the discovery process of science to argue against it.

Think Climate Change.

Think radio personalities like Glenn Beck.

Scientists are not without guilt here, however. The disconnect between science and the general public that exists today is often a byproduct of bad PR on the part of science.  Scientists have rarely been known for making their discoveries accessible.  No specialist likes to “dumb down” his or her field for those who are generally uninterested in it.  Yet, there is a sense in which we cannot expect the public to have a greater respect for the process of science unless it is communicated successfully.

Each year I teach, I notice that students buck against so-called “difficult” books.  The problem is, often I choose a book because it is actually an introduction to a topic.  By this I mean, it is the easy book.  It is easy compared to another book on the same subject I read years earlier, which at that time was (as far as I can tell) the introductory and easy book of its time.  The cycle continues until the common expectation is that everything should be pureed, which brings me back to the Dummies guides.

Somewhere there needs to be a balance between meeting the public on a level that they understand and calling us (the public) to go beyond the minimum we expect for ourselves.  At 293 pages, The Canon is a good place to start.

Sharon L. Baker, Associate Professor of Theology and Religion at Messiah College, has an interesting post (”The Problem with Hell“) at HuffPost that essentially summarizes her book Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught About God’s Wrath and Judgment (Amazon).  Her story is one that went from embracing God for fear of hell to embracing God because of his divine compassion.  Her bullet points are obviously not her full argument against hell, but it makes me want to read what she has to say.  I would include her in the long list of people who were raised in fundamentalism and are rethinking everything.  When I use the phrase “discarded image“—a worldview that no longer fits an individual’s experience of the world, universe, or God—I intend the kind of story this book appears to be about.

When I was 26, I found out I was going to hell. Young, impressionable, and without a strong faith, I listened intently as the pastor of a church I was visiting described in graphic detail the tortuous, unquenchable flames that would burn human bodies forever and ever. He spoke of worms eating away at decaying flesh, total darkness without the presence of God, and worst of all, no release from those horrors for all eternity. I certainly didn’t want to be one of those unfortunate many to feel the flames licking at my feet soon after leaving life in this world. So I took out the proper fire insurance and asked Jesus to save me from my sins and, therefore, from eternal torment in hell. Whew! That was 25 years ago, and hell is still a hot topic.  (Continue reading at HuffPost)

One of my recent projects is that of “deep-reading” (i.e., reading all of) Kate DiCamillo’s work.  It has been a helpful and enjoyable practice, particularly as I think through my own writing projects.  I like the way her mind works and the themes that make it into her writing.  Authors are not always immediately aware of the themes that appear in their work, though readers are often quick to point them out.  It appears that even for DiCamillo, this is an ongoing discovery (watch a video of DiCamillo discussing themes in her work).

She is not afraid of engaging real-life issues—tragedies of loss, death, abuse, denial, or even childlessness.  For example, The Tiger Rising engages anger, depression, denial, and abandonment without softening it up.  For this reason, I’ve seen reader reactions that either applaud DiCamillo’s willingness to write about the reality of the world, or find the book inappropriate and too dark for children.  What I enjoyed in this book is not only the very real friendship that develops between Rob and Sistine, but the theme of caging in that which should never be caged—grief over loss and the denial of reality—even a tiger.  There are consequences to opening the cage, but it is necessary.

DiCamillo’s work also tends to engage the virtue of questioning the world.  I know many parent’s who love the idea of having children question the world, just so as long as they always end up eventually agreeing with the parent—a happy ending, so to speak.  Encouraging a child to think, however, is to encourage independence.

In The Tale of Despereaux, the Mouse Council is disturbed by Despereaux’s willingness—driven by his naturally inquisitive nature—to talk to humans.

‘Something,’ intoned the Most Very Honorable Head Mouse, ‘is wrong with your son.  He is not well.  This goes beyond his fevers, beyond his large ears and his lack of growth.  He is deeply disturbed.  His behavior endangers us all.  Humans cannot be trusted.  We know this to be an indisputable fact.  A mouse who consorts with humans, a mouse who would sit right at the foot of a man, a mouse who would allow a human to touch him’—and here, the entire Mouse Council indulged in a collective shiver of disgust—‘cannot be trusted.  That is the way of the world, our world.’

Despereaux is the hero because he is willing to question “the way of the world,” even when he is faced with the dungeon and when his future is unclear.

Similarly, in The Magician’s Elephant, a young boy named Peter Duchene is faced with the idea that the world as he knows it may not be true.  His life is changed when he asks a fortune teller if his sister is alive—he had been told that she was dead.  The fortune teller tells him that the answer will be found by following an elephant.  As crazy as it sounds, the fortune teller is right, setting up a series of events that lead to personal revelations for nearly all the characters.  Each lives his or her life according to the rules of the world, only to find out that “things are not what they seem, and the truth is forever changing.” That idea is a regular theme throughout the book.  Each character has something to question about him or herself and about the way the world works.  One of my favorite lines found later in the book sums it up this way:

“We must ask ourselves these questions as often as we dare. How will the world change if we do not question it?”

My reader-response to this comes from my own religious background.  The evangelical-fundamentalism of my youth provided a way of looking at the world.  It provided a certainty for my faith and gave me a system or narrative for understanding life and truth.  It was when I was faced with incremental challenges, entering into my twenties, that I discovered that what I believed was not bulletproof.  Over the last two decades, I’ve uncovered the holes and become a very different person—the kind of person with whom the “younger me” would argue.  My faith has evolved dramatically, and the Christianity I know is richer.  My younger self—if we were in conversation due to some sort of space-time hicup—would have feared for my own eternal destiny.

Coming face to face with the limitations of what we can know, we can either deny those limitations exist, or be willing to question ourselves.  Why stay fortified in a belief system that makes no sense of the world?  I’m thankful for books that can remind children that it is alright to question the world, as often as we dare, even when everyone else refuses.

[NOTE: This review was originally posted on another blog of mine.  As I find it this book to be continually informing my worldview, I decided to include it here as well, but with a little editing.]

Speaking of Faith
by Krista Tippett
Viking (2007)
238 pages (paperback/hardcover)

Available
Amazon

“All truth is God’s truth,” or so goes the saying attributed to Augustine. Former diplomat, Yale Divinity School graduate, and public radio host Krista Tippett built this principle into Speaking of Faith, the original name of her her broadcast (now called “Krista Tippett on Being”) and her book. My interest in Tippett’s broadcast began a few months ago and has become a regular podcast download. I’ve enjoyed the string of important topics and impressive personalities that have passed before her microphone. From discussions on science, Islam, and gay marriage, to guests or “conversation partners” like Jaroslav Pelikan, Freeman Dyson, Karen Armstrong, and Paul Davies, her search for truth shows no fear.

On her radio program, Tippett is concerned with letting others speak about their faith(s) from what she calls “the first person approach.” As she describes it on her website, journalists often have guests speak for a tradition, as in “Christians believe X,” which, as she explains, puts “listeners on the defensive.”

The first-person approach behind Speaking of Faith sidesteps the predictable minefields and opens the subject wide, making it inviting, both in ambiance and substance. It insists that people speak straight from the experience behind their own personal beliefs. How did they come to hold the truths they hold? How are religious insights given depth and nuance by the complexities of life?

This way of speaking also has the effect of opening the listener’s mind. I can disagree with another person’s opinion; I can’t disagree with his or her experience. Because I know where they are coming from, I am capable of some understanding — even compassion — about why they think that way. Moreover, because I have heard their story I am able to attach a person, a humanity, to their conclusions, and I will never quite be able to dismiss that position or denomination in the abstract in the same way again.

As a result of this approach, I’ve found Tippett’s broadcasts very disarming. Listeners are less inclined toward demonization when they hear a voice not entirely unlike their own. Tippett shows us the human side of religion so that we can approach the spiritual or unfamiliar without a deep-seated suspicion. Tippett says her “starting point and perspective are grounded in Christianity,” but it is clear that she is very comfortable in the land of mystery.

In her book Speaking of Faith, Tippett explains her role as a journalist as “drawing out the contours and depths of…’the vast middle’—left, right, and center between the poles of competing answers that have hardened our cultural discourse.” In my travels through the land of evangelicalism, I’ve discovered that the fortified walls of hardened discourse often are built on a heavy foundation of suspicion, that is, a suspicion of each other, of mainline denominations, of science, of those with other political views—anyone outside the borders. Tippett, however, offers a passport into these different lands.

In the vast middle, faith is as much about questioning as it is about certainties. It is possible to be a believer and a listener at the same time, to be both fervent and searching, to nurture a vital identity and to wonder at the identities of others.

Within the pages of Speaking of Faithone finds a spiritual autobiography. “Faith” is not some pie-in-the-sky idea for Tippett. She understands the damage caused by religion, but she nevertheless avoids the extraordinary reductionism of the new atheism, that “religion poisons everything.” Her conversation partners, writes Tippett, have insisted “on an honest appraisal of the destructive energies alive in their faiths.” There needs to be a “nuanced appraisal,” she continues, “one intelligent enough to take the time and care to unravel extremism from devotion, to distinguish between what is ideological and what is human.”

The questions that concern Tippett are as universal as they are personal. They are as much for her benefit as they are for her listeners and readers, and they emerge from a lifetime exposure to a world of ideas. Tippett, the granddaughter of a Southern Baptist minister and the daughter of an Oklahoma Democrat, began her thoughtful journey from her earliest years. She experienced the world of the Cold War first hand in Berlin, believing that “all of the important and interesting problems in the world were political, and all of the solutions too.” But faced with the limitations of politics, she returned to America with renewed “hunger for spiritual depth.”

I studied theology to learn whether I could reconcile religious faith with my intelligence and the breadth of my experience in the world—whether faith could illuminate life in all its complexity and passion and frailty. I decided that it can.

In the 1990s, the Christian fundamentalism of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, “largely defined what it meant to be Christian, what religious people sound like and advocate.” But, says Tippett, it was 9/11 that made it “possible to argue that religion was at the root of the world’s worst problems.”

Despite the explosive rhetoric that followed 9/11, Tippett—through her experience—is able lead the reader and listener to a calmer place, past the stereotypes that contribute to the polarlization. Take, for example, the grotesque image conjured up by the word “fundamentalism.” A number of years ago, Martin E. Marty led a now famous study on the nature(s) of fundamentalism(s), known as The Fundamentalism Project. His important five volume work, however, has yet to end this complex discussion or resolve the confusion resulting from popular uses of the term. Historians and sociologists continue to look for the best way to describe a phenomenon that, like Justice Stewart’s explanation of pornography, is not something easily defined, but something we know when we see it. George M. Marsden defined a fundamentalist as “an evangelical who is angry about something” (Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism; 19991:1). He has had the privilege of seeing his clever words quoted in nearly every book on the subject since then. Tippett offers an explanation which, though not as humorous, is nevertheless far more nuanced:

It is easy to argue that in the post-9/11 world, violent religious fundamentalism is at the root of some of the world’s worst crises. But here again, I want to challenge some common generalizations and angles of approach. I define a fundamentalist as anyone who not only has the answers for himself, but has them for all the rest of us too [emphasis mine]. Fundamentalism is a peculiarly potent form of flight from modernity…It is always a reaction, born of a perceived assault on one’s most basic identity and values…But I’ve come to understand it as an extreme manifestation of a more basic instinct alive in our culture, mundane and universal—that defensive grasp at certainties stoked by the bewildering complexity of the age in which we live. Moral libertarians and secular analysts can be as derisively dismissive as religious moral conservatives. A fundamentalist temptation, both secular and religious, accompanies twenty-first century tumult and runs across the spectrum of our beliefs.

As one can see from Tippett’s analysis, there is a reason why fundamentalism seems to have a universal application. Tippett is willing to look past the surface and apply common sense—a standard for her approach—and from this the reader benefits.

As I write this, however, I can imagine certain conservative friends scratching their heads. Really? You liked this book? Yes, I did. Of course, Tippett’s volume does not lose us in a maze of metaphysics (though some of us enjoy that sort thing) nor does it trap us in the muddy waters of a theological swamp. Most of us can do that on our own. Rather, by “faith” and questions of eternity, Tippett is not concerned with something as clinical as a systematic theology. She is not concerned with supralapsarianism versus infralapsarianism, nor does she feel compelled to ask questions like, “can you really be a baptist if you don’t hold exactly to the 1689 Confession?” (If you’re Presbyterian change it to the Westminster Confession of Faith.) Tippett’s world is very different from that, and I’m thankful for it.

Religion, for her, is a broader discussion that sounds somewhat like J.B. Phillips, who wondered if the Christian kept “his faith wrapped in a napkin as a precious thing and apart; or does he allow every discovery of the truth to enlarge his conception of the God behind this immensely complex universe? And does he then marvel and adore the infinite wisdom and power, which so humbly descends to human stature?” (Watch For the Light; 2004). All truth is God’s truth. Tippett is still exploring this truth, so the reader should not expect a final solution. Rather, what appeals to me about Tippett is the sense that she expects to spend the rest of her life exploring these issues. Life is, as the saying goes, “more about the journey than the destination.” In Praise of Folly, Erasmus puzzled over the ability of clergy to write about the details of hell as if they spent the majority of their lives there. Like Erasmus, Tippet has a good sense of how little human beings know in the grand scheme of things and that does not frighten her.

The idea that “all truth is God’s truth” is an important one for Christians and always relevant. In the long history of Christianity, this perspective has served as a basis for inquiry into the minds of Plato and Aristotle. It allowed Cyril and Methodius to dialogue with Muslims and Jews without fear. There have always been limitations to this principle in Christendom, and it has never served as an opening for the unqualified freedom of inquiry—just ask Origen or Martin Luther. I understand the comfort one can find in “knowing everything.” There is something reassuring about having your ducks in a row (and everyone else’s as well). It can give a person the confidence he or she needs to face a crazy and dangerous world. But then again, without some measure of humility, it can be easy to miss what else there is to learn about God.

Like Tippett, however, I don’t mean being willing to learn strictly from other Christians alone; I believe that religion and culture can be too intertwined, sometimes to the point where what is eternal is nearly impossible to separate from what is earthly. By listening to the voices of others, we have a better chance at discovering what is divine and what is simply conventional in the disguise of religion.

The Apostle Paul had no problem finding truth about God in poetry about Zeus: “For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring’” (Acts 17:28). (I don’t get the impression that Paul learned pagan poetry simply so he could sound smart when he closed his sermons with it.) Centuries later, Jonathan Edwards understood that while the Reformation brought with it renewed knowledge of God’s grace and even the natural world around us, it did not, however, mean the end of learning. He believed that new scientific discoveries and philosophical conclusions would improve the doctrines of the Reformation. He looked to those that belonged not only outside of his Reformed Christian tradition (John Locke, for example), but also outside of his religion altogether (such as, Philo and Maimonides). Though not all religions were equal for Edwards—he found salvation only in Christ—and though he often had an apologetical intent in mind—using prisca theologia to answer the deists, for example—Edwards nevertheless sought out books like Daniel Defoe’s Dictionarium Sacrum, or a Dictionary of All Religions Antient and Modern(1704) and John Lockman’s Travels of the Jesuits (1743). He wanted to learn about the traditions of the world, because he believed that there was something divine to be found in them. That human beings are created in God’s image and that all persons benefit from common grace, creates a world fresh with possibilities. Jesus, after all, said that those he called “evil” knew how to give good gifts to their children (Mt. 7:11).

This does not eliminate the human condition. Greed, anger, malice—all our inherent and depraved maladies—present any number of bad influences on our souls. Nevertheless, human traits, good or bad, are not limited to the Christian or Muslim. Pandita Ramabai, for example, understood the inquity and evil in the practice of sati and sought to change it, long before she discovered Christ. In her article, “Finding Grace in Fiction,” (Modern Reformation; July/August: 2007) Mindy Withrow, writes that literature “is a rewarding place to look for God’s gift of common grace. Believers and unbelievers alike demonstrate breathtaking powers of perception and communication.” Tippett does not divide the world into these categories, at least not as mainline Christians would, but she understands the universal contributions of human beings to our understanding of this world and our existence.

One might see Tippett as a practical theologian. She asks the important questions, though I suspect that not all will see it that way. When discussing theodicy, for example, she writes that “as a child of the Enlightenment, the problem of needless and wanton suffering in the world stood in the way of my giving in completely to faith. There is no proving that God exists. But the magnitude of suffering in the world is the most logical of arguments against that notion.” So where does she find insight? Tippet turns to Margaret Spufford, an English medieval historian who found “natural evil”—that is, the pain of debilitating health for she and her daughter—to be a dominant and dark force in her life. Spufford’s ability to trust in God came from the message of the incarnation of Christ. She reasoned that she could not worship a God who “had not himself cried, ‘My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?’”

Lastly, after Tippett digests her life lessons and discoveries in Speaking of Faith, she argues for the value of mystery in religion. She admits that what she calls mystery might be understood by others as a “cover for relativism.” Nevertheless, she says she finds “that mystery is a word people of every tradition love, whether they speak it often or not.” With mystery, she writes, “the conversation gentles.” Tippett is comfortable with believing while also knowing that “to believe is not to have all the answers; to discern truth is not to be able to carry it all the way to the end.” In this sense, her book does not end. She bemoans not having enough words to tell her story and the reader will not find everything wrapped up nice and sweet. But then again, that is truer to life.

There are those that would, as Tippett noted, see her work as a rejection of truth in favor of relativism.  Her broad use of the word “faith” does not entirely capture the diversity of religious conviction. As Stephen Prothero once wrote in his Newsweek article from July 2007, “At least since the first petals of the counterculture bloomed across the United States in the 1960s, it has been fashionable to affirm that all religions are beautiful—and all are true. The proof text for this happy affirmation comes, appropriately enough, from the Hindu Vedas rather than the Christian Bible: ‘Truth is one, the sages call it by many names.’” Tippett is not saying all religions are the same, mind you. She is far from that, but the less critical reader might miss that point when confronted with such an affirming voice that stands in stark contrast against a world of harsh words.

The reader, however, might keep in mind that Tippett is willing to take the unreconcilable differences that appear to have elements of truth and put them in the category of mystery. All truth is God’s truth, but, says Tippett, affirming the words of the Apostle Paul, we need to remember that in this life, we see through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12).

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You can find her weekly NPR podcast at SpeakingofFaith.org

There is a brief, but interesting article at NPR on the evolution of the human brain—especially its pros and cons.

Our brain has been put together with parts from jellyfish and lizards and mice, Linden says. These parts may have been OK for their original owners, he says, but they aren’t ideal for us…. Read the rest from the Morning Edition.

Why Evolution is True
by Jerry A. Coyne
Penguin, 2009
282 pages (paperback)

Available
Amazon.com

Science and religion have had a love-hate relationship.  Like your average sitcom, the “will they?/won’t they? get together for good” question remains unresolved, and so we keep tuning in hoping that this week it will finally happen.

In the 16th century, John Calvin wrote in his Institutes of the Christian Religion that despite all the regularity of the seasons, the unpredictability of them—a frozen spring or a warm winter—“are so great and so unequal as to make it very apparent that every single year, month, and day, is regulated by a new and special providence of God.”  In other words, unexplainable weather patterns had to be immediately attributed to a special divine act.  Today we know the scientific reasons behind such unpredictability, even when they throw my Weather Bug app a surprise or two.

Similarly, in the 18th century, the Puritan minister, Cotton Mather, speculated on the nature of gravity.  Many theologians ultimately supplanted the natural world with the divine being itself, leaving a point at which the natural world disappeared and only the divine nature was left.  “The Gravitation of Bodies is One of them; For which No Cause can be assigned,” concludes Mather, “but the Will of the Glorious GOD, who is the First Cause of all.” Two centuries later, Einstein provided the General Theory of Relativity, which changed our understanding of the nature of gravity altogether.

And in Einstein’s day, his discoveries were also controversial, receiving significant challenges from theologians, yet without Special Relativity, GPS satellites could not compensate for time dilation and their accuracy would be compromised.

So let me just say it: the limits imposed by theologians on science has historically proven to be arbitrary, problematic, and short-sighted.

When I read such an intense distrust of science on blogs whose very existence could not occur without the advances of quantum physics, the irony is not lost on me.  One can listen to a sermon against scientists on an iPod, which itself could not exist without the discoveries in magnetism that lead to a Nobel Prize in 2007.

And so what about evolution?

In Why Evolution is True, Jerry A. Coyne gives a fantastic overview of the evidence behind evolution.  I first came across the book when reading a review of it in New Scientist a year ago, but I finally took it off my TBR and read it. I was not disappointed.

There are many factors that can go into a person’s rejection of evolution, many of which are theological in nature.  The special creation of human beings based on a fairly literal reading of Genesis 1-2 often trumps (for certain Christians) anything offered by biologists in the area of human evolution.  Couple this with a sort of evolution on demand—that is, the human desire to see the human species change overnight into something different as proof of evolution’s veracity—and you have a recipe for rejection.  Evolution just doesn’t occur that way, though T.V. shows like Heroes leads us to think it does.

The fact that many human beings refuse to believe that they are indeed naked apes—often based on what appears to the lay person to be little change in the species over recorded history—is not lost on Coyne.  What he does to help the reader wrap his or her head around the problem is provide a perspective on time itself and back it up with the physical evidence.

Humans are newcomers on the scene—our lineage branches off from that of other primates only about 7 million years ago, the merest sliver of evolutionary time.  Various imaginative analogies have been used to make this point, and it is worth making again.  If the entire course of evolution were compressed into a single year, the earliest bacteria would appear at the end of March, but we wouldn’t see the first human ancestors until 6 a.m. on December 31.  The golden age of Greece about 500 BC, would occur just thirty seconds before midnight.

When the average life-span of a human being is compared to the age of the earth, we have as much of a perspective of time as the mayfly does of our 24-hour day.  Here is another irony.  Theologians often warn the Christian that God is infinitely greater and older than we small worms, so we humans should be wary of rejecting something simply because our pitiful minds cannot grasp the infinite.  Perhaps that lesson should be carried over to the discussion of evolution and our limited ability as mayflies to understand the time-frame required for new branches on the tree of life to form.

But isn’t evolution just a theory?

Coyne’s book offers several great chapters on what goes into the evolutionary process.  He looks into several factors leading to evolutionary change, including natural selection, genetic drift, sexual selection, etc.  He begins with definitions, handling misconceptions of evolution, for example, that it is simply an accident or the dismissive “it’s only a theory” mantra, meaning (as some intend) that it is simply speculation without evidence.  As to the first, natural selection, Coyne demonstrates why it is not simply an accident.

True, the raw materials for evolution—the variations between individuals—are indeed produced by chance mutations.  These mutations occur willy-nilly, regardless of whether they are good or bad for the individual.  But it is the filtering of that variation by natural selection that produces adaptations, and natural selection is manifestly not random.  It is a powerful molding force, accumulating genes that have a great chance of being passed on than others, and in so doing making individuals ever better able to cope with their environment.

Take the appendix, for example.  It is an organ which likely served to provide bacteria during days before we cooked our food.  We’ve discovered that removing the organ does more good than harm.  Appendicitis can kill, which is why we remove them so often. Coyne notes that “before doctors began to remove inflamed appendixes in the late nineteenth century, mortality may have exceeded 20 percent.”  The appendix is a strange organ, and its size and location can vary significantly—a few people are even born without one.  If the medical world had not made it a practice of taking them out, it is possible that those born with appendixes would eventually be weeded out of the gene pool through death, leaving only those born without the bothersome organ.  This is, as Coyne says, “strong natural selection.”

As to the second, that evolution is speculation, Coyne raises several examples, such as atomic theory, which since World War II is hardly speculation, even though we never actually photographed an atom until decades later.  A theory is scientific, reminds Coyne, if it is “testable” and can “make verifiable predictions.”  Atomic theory is a theory, but it has made verifiable predictions and therefore it is not speculation.

But what about the evidence?

Coyne engages a large selection of evidence, fossil and otherwise, and if your reading habits include popular science magazines, much of it will be familiar.  My favorite recent discovery, Tiktaalik, is a prime example.  In 2004, scientists found Tiktaalik—a fossil of a transitional creature between fish and amphibian. It was a creature that had (among its many transitional attributes) both gills and lungs (see video below).

Perhaps the most intriguing chapter on Why Evolution is True was “Remnants: Vestiges, Embryos, and Bad Design.”  Like “ancient texts,” writes Coyne, “organisms are palimpsests of history—evolutionary history.  With the bodies of animals and plants lie clues to their ancestry, clues that are testimony to evolution.”

Vestigial features are those that “make sense only as remnants of traits that were once useful in an ancestor.”  A vestigial organ may still have some functionality, but it is considered vestigial because “it no longer has the function for which it originally evolved.”  However, these original features are occasionally reawakened to produce what is called an “atavism.”

A striking example of such a vestigial trait is that of the human tail, the coccyx, a left-over attribute from our primate ancestors (which were also traits from earlier ancestors). The coccyx is that “the triangular end of our spine that’s made of several fused vertebrae hanging below our pelvis,” says Coyne.

Tellingly, some humans have a rudimentary tail muscle…identical to the one that moves the tails of monkeys and other mammals.  It still attaches to our coccyx, but since the bones can’t move, the muscle is useless.  You may have one and not even know it.

These vestigial features are atavistic when there is still enough genetic material for the body to attempt to grow an actual tail. These tails are sometimes developed enough to be as long as a foot.  These types of carry-overs are most evident in the embryonic stage of human development.  As Coyne writes:

early in development human embryos have a sizable fishlike tail, which begins to disappear about seven weeks into development (its bones and tissues are simply reabsorbed by the body).  Rarely, however, it doesn’t regress completely, and a baby is born with a tail projecting from the base of its spine.

Doctors generally remove them, but in some places around the world the baby’s tail is kept and, as has apparently happened in recent memory, he or she is worshiped as a reincarnated god.

Whales also have similar features.  They are among the mammals that returned to the sea in their evolutionary process.  Whales are often born with vestigial pelvises and hind leg from their days as land animals.  The hind leg is underdeveloped, detached, and embedded in the flesh.  A small number have enough genetic material that a larger hind leg is developed and “protrudes outside the body wall.”

These limbs show all degrees of refinement, with many of them clearly containing the major leg bones of terrestrial mammals—the femur, tibia, and fibula. Some even have feet and toes!

Just as an aside, there are many other examples of this sort of thing.   Birds are related to reptiles, so it should be no shock when we find chickens that occasionally grow reptile teeth (see “Surprise, Chickens Can Grow Teeth“).

Despite these obvious throwbacks to previous evolutionary stages, many Americans are still not convinced.  This is, in large part, the result of a fundamentalism that still remains in this country, particularly one that is skeptical of science and insists on a particular, literal reading of Genesis.

By insisting that Genesis’s creation accounts needs to fit a modern cosmology—an approach John Walton calls “concordism” in his book, The Lost World of Genesis One—modern science is retrofitted to support an ancient cosmology (see my review here).  What is produced is an ancient text that no longer communicates and a modern science that no longer accurately represents the natural world.  In other words, those who insist on a certain interpretation of Genesis have actually does injustice to it and science.  Walton’s book is a corrective to this thinking, calling the reader to appreciate the culture and science of the ancient near east and to let modern science be science.

There are winds of change in the air for Christians.  While no naturalist wants to see science accommodated to religion, they will have to get used to a growing number of younger Christians who are not afraid of letting science describe the world.  The idea that ancient peoples did not see the world the way we do today is acceptable and, for them, staying true to both science and the world of the Bible.

Like Walton, younger evangelicals are appearing to embrace what appears to be clear—evolution is true. Rachel Held Evans, the author of Evolving in Monkey Town, which recently made national news, is just one example of this.  “My generation of evangelicals is ready to call a truce on the culture wars,” says Evans. “It seems like our parents, our pastors, and the media won’t let us do that. We are ready to be done with the whole evolution-creation debate. We are ready to move on.”

Moving on may not be that easy.  Creationist Ken Ham immediately challenged Evans on his blog, noting that there are many who are still standing “uncompromisingly and unashamedly on God’s authoritative Word,” or to be more exact, on Ham’s approved interpretation.

So, while many Christians remain open to modern science, it may be a while before the entire discussion evolves into something that has outgrown fundamentalism.

In the meantime, I’d recommend Coyne’s Why Evolution is True as a primer on the science behind the controversy.  At 282 interesting pages (which includes a short glossary), it is a fantastic overview and basic education on what scientists mean when they say that evolution is true.  I’m sure that for many ignorance is bliss, but we should also remember that it is a recipe for bad science.

World Religions in America (4^th Edition)
by Jacob Neusner
Westminster John Knox, 2009
449 pages (paperback)

Available
Amazon

Not long ago, as I was designing a course on American cultures and religious traditions, I included the newest edition of World Religions in America as a primary text.  This text, edited by the well-known Jacob Neusner, is perfect for the classroom.  Unlike many world religions texts—in which one or two people write the entire book—each chapter comes from an author who holds some sort of commitment, academically and/or personally, to the tradition they represent.  Instead of getting a polemical perspective, this allows the reader to hear about a religion from someone with a vested interest in it.

I also used this text for my class on worldviews.  One of the class goals I have for my students is the art of listening to others, especially those adherents of other religious or worldview perspectives.  What I see too often are students who immediately jump into an apologetical mode.  They are too busy thinking of the next argument to make when in conversation with a person of another religion that they fail to listen.  If I can get them to be quiet long enough to hear the other person’s passion for their own beliefs, they generally come away from the experience with a fresh perspective and appreciation for their neighbor.

In order to make this happen, we listen to interviews with persons of differing religious and worldview perspectives (often we use podcasts like Speaking of Faith).  Assignments are intended to get the student to articulate the reasons the other person may hold to their belief system.  The end of the term includes an assignment I call the “Listening to Others Project,” and this is intended to take an entire semester of learning to listen and put it into action by interviewing someone of another religion or worldview, whether they be Muslim, Buddhist, or Atheist.

They are to ask a series of questions provided for them and record the response of the person they interview.  They then write a paper recording and explaining this person’s response, which should include their own reflection on the experience.  After this, they return the paper to the person they interviewed to get their input.  Hopefully they represented the person clearly and fairly, but if not, this is the time in which that person can help them avoid misrepresentations.  They then turn the paper in to me.  During this entire process they are not allowed to proselytize, argue, slip the interviewee literature, etc. They are simply there to listen and learn.

The “Listening to Others” assignment is my favorite.  The students have an opportunity in class to talk about how they feel about the experience.  This is where self-awareness either shows up or is entirely absent.  The majority of my students tell me that they were surprised by how difficult it was to listen patiently.  A few also seem to be surprised—and this one can be telling—by the intelligence and logic of the persons they interview.  Many come from the Christian bubble and do not have friends of another faith.  As a result, they may suspect that persons of other religions are either illogical, unaware of the what their faiths really teach, or perhaps angry with God.  It is striking to some that clear-headed and reasonable people can believe differently from the way they believe.

I tend to get another interesting response. The student may believe that they are a devout Christian, active in the church, socially responsible, etc.  However, there are a few interviews where the response is one of shame.  I have had students indicate that they felt shamed by the commitment the Muslim or Atheist had for his or her belief system.  In interviews with an Atheist, some students were surprised by the level of honesty and commitment to social justice they found.  I think they had the idea that an Atheist would believe that anything goes.  The idea of something like an Atheist charity, for example, is entirely puzzling to a few.

On occasion, however, I get the disappointing response that shows little to no self-awareness.  I might get the student that says that he or she learned that they are a really good listener after all, and that the other person is confused and just needs prayer.  Responses where the student seems to see nothing worth learning miss the point.   (I know you can’t win them all.)  We all come from our respective positions and, of course, if we remain there it is because we are largely convinced of that position, though laziness and arrogance can also be factors.  I get that and I understand why the student would remain largely in his or her religion—as I have myself.  Yet it would be nice if they had a real moment of self-discovery.  Instead, I sometimes find a student who appears to resist with the idea of holding up a mirror to the soul.

The result of the project, however, is largely positive.  As Christians we believe, as with other religions, in the Golden Rule, which includes loving our neighbors as ourselves.  We should do for our neighbor as we would want them to do for us.  If we want them to listen to us, give us the benefit of the doubt, feel our passion for our beliefs, and dialogue peacefully with us, we should do the same for them.  Unfortunately, there are still many cowboy Christians out there who shoot first and ask questions later.

There are many Christian perspectives on world religions.  Many ancient Christians concluded that perhaps God had given some light to the great philosophers. Today, much of the mainline and many evangelicals are open to religious dialogue.  Some evangelicals see religion as a response to the divine and that what happens eternally is ultimately up to God, though redemption itself is accomplished by Christ.  Others may argue for a strict exclusivity that does not allow for any of this.  In the middle one might find books like Gerald R. McDermott’s Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions: Jesus, Revelation, and Religious Traditions (IVP Academic, 2000), which encourages both listening and learning from the other person while remaining steadily committed to the Christian faith.  What the future holds for these kinds of discussions is unclear, but I know that for it to be positive and for the conversation to be possible, I must plant the seeds of it in my classroom.

What is true is that the discussion of how world religions should relate to one another, that is, a theology of world religions, is still an active discussion for Christians.  Neusner’s book is a helpful tool to get started.  The fourth edition of World Religions in America (2009) has timelines, sidebars on important information, suggestions for further reading, questions for generating discussion, and a glossary.  Expressions of diversity within a religion are sometimes given their own chapters (e.g. Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, African, and Latino Christianity).  There are also chapters on other, often under-represented religions, such as Neopaganism, Witchcraft, and Scientology.  Each chapter is introductory and written for the beginner.  At 449 pages, it is a volume well worth keeping in the library.

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines
by Janna Levin
Anchor Books, 2006
230 pages (paperback)

Available
Amazon.com
Indie Bound

Warning: Some Spoilers

Some things cannot be proven and will forever remain uncertain.  To accept that dangerous idea, one may need to be mad or be willing to risk it.  Janna Levin’s novel, A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines looks at the real lives of “two mad treasures,” the most important mathematicians of the last century, Kurt Gödel (1906-78) and Alan Turing (1912-54).

Einstein’s General and Special Theories of Relativity were not the only challenges to early twentieth-century Enlightenment certainty. Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, which demonstrated that there are some mathematical truths that can never be proven within a system, raised a firestorm.  Until then, math was the one thing considered verifiable and certain by all.  For Gödel, the numbers we study are independent of our thought, and in a throwback to Platonism, these are known only by intuition.  We cannot prove everything.

Alan Turing, another mathematician and code breaker, built on Gödel’s mathematical discoveries, creating the Turing Machine, a prototype of the computer, arguing that the cognitive process of a computer—thinking and replying—makes it no different from a human mind.  Levin’s novel weaves back and forth between the lives of these two men, mixing fact and fiction to create a story of two brilliant minds whose lives spiral out of control.

Both men demonstrate the inseparable dance of mathematics and philosophy.

Their deaths are hardly the secret of the book, rather, it is the inevitable destination.  The trip there is fascinating.  It is fraught with very human obstacles—illusion versus reality, free will versus determinism, God versus naturalism, heterosexuality versus homosexuality, love versus suspicion.

Levin’s fictional narrative incorporates facts from the lives of her characters, but the story itself is a unique interpretation with deliberate changes.  Dialogue is sometimes drawn from letters.  Kurt Gödel was in fact so paranoid of being poisoned he starved himself to death.  Turing was indeed gay, a crime in England that led to his forced chemical castration.  His anguish and loss of friends, family, and a lover led to a tragic suicide by an apple laced with cyanide.

While the story has a basis in history that is interesting in and of itself, two elements of this novel will immediately stand out to the reader.  The first is the amazing attention to detail that Levin’s work provides.  The book’s prose is a scientific analysis, full of sounds, colors, and tastes.  For example, Kurt’s wife and caretaker, Adele, is keenly aware of his phobias.

She fills the air with harmless words and themes much as radio would and thereby creates for him a background landscape of white noise.  Adele never demands of him any actual conversation.  She seems to understand that she is there to keep time and drown out the alarm of more individuated noises.  The clink of a pin drop that can fray his nerves, the grinding of gravel beneath the weight of a man on the street, the spike of a dulled conversation as a couple pass beneath his window over Langegasse, the mounting pitch of the conspiratorial exchange as they approach.

Levin’s attention to detail sets this novel apart, avoiding the formulaic or clichéd, and this makes sense given that she is a theoretical physicist.  Dialogue is sparse, but the reader is not left wanting for it.

Secondly, the narrator claims to be the writer and inserts herself into the text, or, as one might say, the story’s system.  Who the narrator is, however, is an unresolvable question.  Is the narrator real?  Is the story real?  Is the narrator Levin or is the narrator the reader?   The narrative and narrator are both incomplete.  She is a personification of the Incompleteness Theorem, with her unprovable identity.  The narrative remains incomplete, with the narrator even saying toward the end of the novel “There no ending. I’ve tried to invent one but it was a lie and I don’t want to be a liar.”

The narrator is introspective, deeply considering the implications of the lives and ideas of Gödel and Turing.  “I am on an orbit through the universe that crosses the paths of some girls, a teenager, a dog, an old woman,” says the narrator. “Maybe I should list more significant events that shaped my relationship to truth but that story would be a lie too.  I could have written this book entirely differently, but then again maybe this book is the only way it could be, and these are the only choices I could have made.  This is me, an unreal composite, maybe part liar, maybe not free.”

Both of these points, the attention to detail and the embedded narrator, help bring the reader into a relationship with the story, both real and imagined, true and false, reality and dream.

The Incompleteness Theorem continues to stay with me, particularly in terms of its religious connotations.  In the world of theological studies, many insist on the possibility of knowing everything.  Systematic theologians often provide their detailed outlines, mapping God’s entire being and defining everything precisely.  This helps the theologian decide who is in and who is out, and it can provide a sense of assurance and completeness.

Even when we do not know the answer, we offer the solution we call mystery.  Mystery can be a way for theologians to say that something must be true, but they cannot prove it. The Trinity is often the prime example of this.  God is three persons, but one God.  Both his threeness and oneness seem to be indicated in Scripture and verified by tradition, the theologian will note, but seem impossible in our world.  It is, therefore, a mystery.

The idea of mystery may also appear as a cop-out.  When something is held as a belief, but nothing in this world seems to indicate that this belief has any basis in reality, we might say, “this is part of the great divine mystery.”  There.  Now we feel better and we do not have to prove a thing.  It can be a way of feeling complete with our incompleteness.

Sometimes those things we believe are valuable because they help us cope with our narratives, sometimes they are actually mysterious. What the Incompleteness Theorem demonstrates is that even in what might be considered empirically verifiable there is incompleteness and mystery.  As Olga says to Kurt:

We wanted to construct complete worldviews, complete and consistent theories and philosophies, perfect solutions where everything could find its place.  But we cannot.  The girls I hear playing in the park when I walk to the institute, our neighbor the old woman who will die soon, our own circle, we all prize a resolution, a gratifying ending, completeness and unity, but we are surrounded by incompleteness.

Aside from this, there are other nagging questions that come from the Incompleteness Theorem.  I’ll put myself out there with the following.  My mathematically gifted friends can enlighten me.

Theologians often discuss the relationship of God to mathematics.  For example, is the mathematics of our universe eternal or did God create it?  Answers from Christian theists might include the idea that mathematics is eternal and uncreated, or that God created the mathematics of our universe.  In the latter case, the mathematics he created is considered a shadow of the higher, divine math that makes up the being of God.  God is, therefore, outside of the system, and so he can prove 1+1=2.

But what is divine math?

In Christian theism that would be related to Trinitarianism, namely, God is three persons, but one God.  So the theologian might say that there is no analogy for this kind of math, since nothing in our universe is equivalent.  (One might object, however, that on the quantum level these numerical paradoxes are possible.)  Just how different God’s math is, however, appears to be part of the problem.  If God is three, he is not just two, and this implies in some form or another the reality of 1+1=2 even for God.

This leaves me with a question: Even if God has his own math—for example, that something can be both three and one—would he be able to prove that idea of threeness and oneness since he is part of that system?  Would demonstrating his own mathematical nature be a truth for God that is unprovable even by him?

Is God his own mystery?

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, winner of the PEN/ Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers, is a great, stimulating read at only 230 pages.  If you are interesting in more, see the following resources below and the video above.

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For more, listen to Krista Tippett’s the Speaking of Faith interview with Janna Levin.

I am going to attempt to revive this blog from its 4-5 months of slumber.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to pick up any remaining readers.  I began Discarded Image with several reviews and things were moving along well, but a combination of factors—e.g. a new house and increased professorial duties—just about killed any time I had to blog.   To add to that, I teach both traditional and online courses, and the courses online are a lot like blogging, so at the end of the day, it gets hard to get back online and write even more after already having done so much online for my classes.  Writing, however, is the only way I really know for thinking through ideas.  So yes, I feel compelled to push forward, writing either here or somewhere.

I’ll be making some changes here and there to this blog, but it’s theme remains the same.  Books remain central to this blog, particularly whatever I’m reading at the moment.  This blog is about thinking aloud, speculation, and the endless pursuit of self-awareness.  To put it another way, it is about questioning my very soul, discarding old images for better ones—those that make sense of the world.  (For more on this blog’s theme, see the “about” page.)  It living ontologically, as that great Episcopalian Madeleine L’engle would say.

So I’ll leave you with a favorite quote from her Circle of Quiet (6)

From the stone wall to the brook takes two balls of twine. Unreliable eyes make my vision variable, and there are days when my string path is extremely helpful, although, as my husband remarks, “All anybody who wants to find your secret hideout needs to do is climb the stone wall and follow the string.”

That’s all right. All secret places need to be shared occasionally. So the string guides me across a high ridge where there are large outcroppings of glacial stone, including our special star-watching rock. Then the path becomes full of tussocks and hummocks; my legs are etched by the thorns of blackberry brambles and wild roses. Earlier this summer the laurel burst from snow into fire, and a few weeks later we found a field of sweet wild strawberries. And then there are blueberry bushes, not very many, but a few, taller than I am and, to me, infinitely beautiful.

The burning bush: somehow I visualize it as much like one of these blueberry bushes. The bush burned, was alive with flame and was not consumed. Why? Isn’t it because, as a bush, it was perfect? It was exactly as a bush is meant to be. A bush certainly doesn’t have the opportunity for prideful and selfish choices, for self-destruction, that we human beings do. It is. It is a pure example of ontology. Ecology–ontology–the words fascinate me. Ontology is one of my son-in-law’s favorite words, and I’m apt to get drunk on words, to go on jags; ontology is my jag for this summer….Ontology: the word about the essence of things; the word about being.

I go to the brook because I get out of being, out of the essential. So I’m not like the bush, then. I put all my prickliness, selfishness, in-turnedness, on to my isness; we all tend to, and when we burn, this part of us is consumed. When I go past the tallest blueberry bush, where my twine is tied to one of the branches, I think that the part of us that has to be burned away is something like the deadwood on the bush; it has to go, to be burned in the terrible fire of reality, until there is nothing left but our ontological selves; what we are meant to be.

The author of Religious Literacy, Stephen Prothero has a very interesting article in USA Today this morning (”A Buddhist moment in America”).  In it, he takes a look at Tiger Woods confession from the perspective of religious literacy.  It is well worth reading.

Nonetheless, we expect, sometimes unconsciously, for things to proceed largely on Christian terms. We expect our presidents to be Christians and to quote from the Bible. And when they fall short of the glory of God, we expect them to call their shortcomings sins and to confess them not only to us, but also to Jesus. Part of living in a multireligious society, though, is learning multiple religious languages. In a country where most citizens cannot name the first book of the Bible, we obviously need more Christian literacy. But to make sense of the furiously religious world in which we live, we need Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist literacy too.  Read full article at USA Today…