Entangled States

God and gorillas | Salon Books

Well - here's an interesting bit of research into human beings and religion that I'd not heard of until today:

Link: God and gorillas | Salon Books.

Every human culture has believed in spirits, gods or some other divine being. That's why human beings have often been called Homo religioso. Some people take this long history of belief in the otherworldly as evidence for God; doesn't it explain why religion continues to be so pervasive? But many scientists are coming up with their own, decidedly secular, theories about the origins of faith. In fact, over the last few years, a small cottage industry made up of scientists and philosophers has devoted itself to demystifying the divine.

...

Of course, these thinkers are either religious skeptics or outright atheists who mean to imply that we've been duped by evolution to believe in supernatural beings when none, in fact, exist. That's what makes Barbara J. King, an anthropologist at the College of William and Mary, so unique. She has no desire to undermine religion. In fact, she's been deeply influenced by the religious writers Karen Armstrong and Martin Buber. But her main insights about the origins of religion come not from researching humans' deep history, but from observing very much alive non-human primates.

For the last two decades, King has studied ape and monkey behavior in Gabon and Kenya, and at the Smithsonian's National Zoo. In her new book, "Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion," King argues that religion is rooted in our social and emotional connections with each other. What's more, we can trace back the origins of our religious impulse not just to early cave paintings and burial sites 20,000 to 40,000 years ago, but much earlier -- back to our ancient ancestors millions of years ago. And today, King says, we can see the foundations of religious behavior in chimpanzees and gorillas; watching our distant cousins can do much to explain the foundations of our own beliefs.

So that's another book to add to my "to be read" pile. I'd just gotten it down to two books...

Make sure to read the article all the way through the interview till the last page. It's at that point that interview starts to discuss the question of whether or not a scientist can practice religion in an authentic way. (This isn't a big deal for most folks in the "hard" sciences, but it's still a real issue in the social sciences - or so I'm told.)

Thanks +Kirk for the pointer to the article!

On Retreat...

I'm off this afternoon to take part in my first presbyter retreat here in the Diocese of Arizona. We're staying at the Diocesan Camp and Retreat Center (Chapel Rock). It's my first visit there and I'm looking forward to exploring. (I began ministry as a YMCA camp counselor years and years ago and I've tried to stay involved in these sorts of ministries ever since.)

Howard Anderson, from the College of Preachers is coming out to lead our retreat. I had a chance to get to know Howard at the 2003 General Convention where we were at the same worship table for the two weeks. I'm looking forward to have a chance to see and hear him in this different context.

I'm told that there's internet access at the retreat site, so I should have a chance to keep posting. If not, then hopefully you'll understand the silence that exists over the next couple of days or so. (I should be able to use my cellphone to get online in a pinch, but that's not always reliable either.)

New Climate Report Too Rosy, Experts Say

I don't know if this will get a lot of coverage today or not now that it seems that most of the mass media news is focussing on the US Presidential election that is 23 months away...

"(AP) -- Later this week in Paris, climate scientists will issue a dire forecast for the planet that warns of slowly rising sea levels and higher temperatures. But that may be the sugarcoated version."

What I find interesting is that there is no question in the scientific community that climate change is happening, the disputes are about the rate of change. If you read the report you find that the "rosy" scenario is pretty sobering. Which points out how much more frightening the alternates scenarios are becoming.

Read the rest here: New Climate Report Too Rosy, Experts Say

Adobe Releases PDF to the World

Interesting news this morning:

"In 1993 Adobe published the full specifications for its Portable Document Format, or PDF, granting royalty free license to those who chose to build PDF tools into their applications, and helping PDF to become a de-facto standard for document creation.

Tomorrow they will announce that they are relinquishing control over the PDF format to AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, for the purpose of publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

One of the primary reasons for this appears to be hesitation by many governments to embrace proprietary formats, including PDF. With this change, Adobe hopes to sell many more copies of Acrobat, the primary software used to create and edit PDFs."

One of the resolutions passed at the Episcopal Church's General Convention this past summer required the Church to move to using open, fully specified formats for its data and sharing. The point, on a simplistic level was to try to avoid our getting locked into a single vendor for our documents.

But a more important point of our resolution was to help the Church mimic the ability of the Internet to share information. The Internet works as well as it does because, at its core, it's pretty dumb. The data it passes back and forth is simple and structured in a way that can be easily manipulated. The fancy stuff (turning it into a displayed web-page or an email or a video file) is done on the users machine and not by the network. This makes it very easy for people to share ideas, and more importantly to be clever and think up ways to extend the capabilities that we exploit to communicate effectively. Hopefully as we in the Church learn to do this as well, we'll be able to collaborate our work between all sorts of people around the world.

At any rate - this morning's announcement is evidence that lots of folks are thinking the same way.

(Via TechCrunch.)

Who relates to who in the New Testament?

Check this out - it's a web applet that takes a text and constructs the social relationships between the names mentioned in the text. Originally it was meant for mapping out novels, but someone has run the program on the text of the New Testament:

Link: Many Eyes : Co-Occurrences of Names in the New Testament (more complete data): Everyone's name is visible....

You can use the mouse well to zoom in and out. You can use the mouse or arrow keys to scan around and see the connections.

Of course Jesus is at the center - but it's interesting to see how the other folks in the NT relate.

Thanks to ESV Bible Blog for the pointer.

How come the Lutheran's don't get to play along?

Link: Wot, no schism? Who let Lutherans off?.

There is almost no reason at all for the ECLA to have avoided the 'righteous' hammering that has been dished out to the Episcopal Church in the USA. It has always surprised me. ... The Lutherans in Canada and the U.S. have high and low. They have evangelicals, charismatics and woolly liberals within the same denomination - often within the same Synods and I assume that this is the case as well in the U.S.A. So why no public schisms? ...

I do note, however, that the big money which is available to finance schism, opprobrium and liberal/moderate bashing has not been delegated to the Lutherans. If you go to the Institute for Religion and Democracy you'll see little action tabs marked 'Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopalian'. Either the Lutherans were neglected because the 'L' box was inadvertently left in the car by somebody who'd rushed home to see if the oven was still on or because those wishing to foment True Religion in the Lutheran church forgot to apply for funding.

For all those people who've been dimissive of Jim Naughton's series "Following the Money" and its assertion that the IRD is deeply involved in formenting schism in the Anglican Communion really have a tough row to hoe explaining the difference between the internal dynamics in the ELCA and TEC.

I've said this before - tis a fine thing to work to change the direction of the Church if you believe it has gone into error. It's another thing entirely to do it by proxy and refusing to be clear about what you are really up to.

(And now having strayed from my careful position laid out in my previous post here, I shall go and read Morning Prayer.)

Rumors of News

The blogsphere has been lit up overnight with the news that was posted on The Living Church's website. Bishop Bob Duncan has been invited to be present at the Primates meeting in Tanzania next month. (Or, to be more accurate, he's been invited to be present for the "pre-meeting" that Archbishop Williams has called for in immediately before the formal meeting.)

Friends of mine in Pittsburgh have hinted rather broadly that the plan is (at least at the moment) to have the Global South Bishops insist that Bishop Duncan stay on at the formal portion of the meeting - or the Global South will walk out. From what I can intuit of the situation, that sequence of events seems likely.

So what will it mean? I have no clear idea. What I do know is that we in the Episcopal Church are being asked to live into a time of uncertainty over the next few weeks and months. And I know from my own experience that living with that sort of uncertainty can be a very uncomfortable thing for folks.

When I've needed to enter into such periods of life (usually due to an illness of a loved one and even as I journeyed through the ordination process) I learned a couple of coping techniques. The most effective for me was to find a routine and focus on getting through each day. (Like being extra-intentional about reading the Daily Office, taking time for prayer during the day and doing the daily tasks of being a parish priest.) The other was to discipline myself not to fall into endless rounds of speculation or "what if?"

Perhaps the same strategy will work for the people of the Episcopal Church. Lent is coming soon. It's probably more profitable for our souls if we focus for the moment on preparing ourselves and our parishes to keep a Holy Lent than we spend our days in bull sessions about Anglican politics. Our Cathedral here is seeing a huge increase in visitors and new members at the moment. I think it's better for us to focus on caring for and welcoming them than it is to to worry about what comes next for our denomination.

There'll be plenty of time to worry profitably about what to do once we have a sense of what has happened. There are good and wise people who are dealing with this at the moment on our behalf who know far better than we do what is going on behind the scenes. I say let them have at it. And God is still sovereign and Christ is still Lord. Be of good cheer!

Or at least try not to get too caught up in all the hand wringing. Grin.

My 2007 Lenten Discipline

It’s getting to be time to start planning how I shall observe Lent. Usually I try to pick up an extra spiritual habit rather than put something aside - though I’ve made exceptions over the years.

This year I’ve pretty much decided that I’m going to focus on two books for the six weeks of Lent and make my way through them in a very careful and thoughtful way.

The first is St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. We’ve been reading from this epistle the past couple of weeks in Morning Prayer and I’m finding myself more and more intrigued by Paul’s critique of Peter’s actions regarding accommodation of the circumcision party’s observance of the Law in the early Church. I’m just finishing up Gary Wills book “What Paul Meant” and I’ve rekindled my fascination with St. Paul. It was my reading Paul’s writing in a good translation (the Revised English Bible) years ago that formed my understanding of what it means to be a “centrist” or moderate in the Church. But the Letter to the Galatians gives evidence that there are things upon which the Apostle would not compromise. I think...

Anyway, I’m off to find a really good commentary on Galatians. Any suggestions?

Secondly I’m going to read through William Webb’s book “Slaves, Women and Homosexuals”. (I’ve already blogged about this book before.) The point being that anyone who wants to make a case for the acceptance of women into the clergy, gay and lesbian people into the full life of the Church and the absolute prohibition of slavery can’t easily make a proof-text based scriptural argument. Rather the argument has to be focused on the full teaching of the Bible, the characteristics of the Kingdom of God and the development of God’s self-revelation to humanity. This book is supposed to be one of the best places to encounter such a line of reasoning.

A friend of mine told me a year ago that the Archbishop of Canterbury had remarked to him that the Episcopal Church has yet to make a fully convincing argument that there is scriptural warrant for our actions to fully embrace the ministries of women and gay and lesbian Christians. According to his report, the Archbishop says that such an argument can be made, but we’ve not yet done it. I’m not sure that what the Archbishop is true about us not making the argument but if there’s a way to make our presentation to the rest of the Communion stronger, then I’m very interested in learning how to make that happen. Hence the choice of this book for Lent.

What about you all? Have you planned your Lenten disciplines yet? What are you going to be doing?

Daily Episcopalian: The gay adoption issue in the UK

Jim Naughton has posted an article about an emerging British controversy over whether or not adoption agencies can legitimately discriminate against same-gender couples. Newly adopted British law says "no". The Roman Catholic Church in Britain has said that if this law is enforced, they will close down their orphanages rather than let the children in their care be adopted by same-gender couples.

The Anglican Archbishops of Britain have issued a letter asking Her Majesty's government to not pursue this course of action. In a nutshell the letter argues that morality should not legislated.

The key line in the letter from the Archbishop's causes Jim to ask this question:

"What do you make of the statement: 'The rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well meaning.'"

There are any number of rather simple rejoinders to the statement but most of them have to do with people who do not have a strong informed conscience. (A category in moral theology - distinct say from a lax conscience or an ignorant conscience...)

But I think what's more interesting is that this line of argument opens the door for the Episcopal Church to make a similar claim to the rest of the Communion. The Episcopal Church has taken a carefully thought out position on the full inclusion of Gay and Lesbian Christians. If our position arises from a strong and fully informed moral conscience, then how can it be gainsaid by the rest of the Communion? Rather, if we follow the same line of argument that the Archbishops have suggested, there should be made room in the Communion for people who believe as we do.

The immediate response from the re-asserter side would be that they too have a strong and informed conscience informing their position. To which I respond "Yes - and there should be space made inside the Episcopal Church for that." But the Presiding Bishop has already offered Alternative Primatial Oversight to those bishops who desire it, and diocesan bishops have offered Delegated Episcopal Oversight as well.

So if this argument of respecting conscience works for protecting the rights of the minority in Britain, why can't it work in the Communion?

Read the rest here: The gay adoption issue in the UK

(Via Daily Episcocpalian.)

Sermon for Epiphany 3c 2007

This sermon was preached at Trinity Cathedral's 2007 Annual Meeting. It speaks about God's action of inclusion for all people into the Kingdom of God, our Cathedral's calling to bring the gospel to the people of our community and a call for the Cathedral community to focus on doing the work of the Gospel in the months ahead.


MP3 File

Physicists Develop Test for 'String Theory'

Interesting bit of news came out today about a paper that is about to be published in Phys Rev Lett.:

"For decades, scientists have taken issue with ‘string theory’—a theory of the universe which contends that the fundamental forces and matter of nature can be reduced to tiny one-dimensional filaments called strings—because it does not make predictions that can be tested.

But researchers at the University of California, San Diego, Carnegie Mellon University, and The University of Texas at Austin have now developed an important test for this controversial ‘theory of everything.’

Described in a paper that will appear in the January 26 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters, their test involves measurements of how elusive high-energy particles scatter during particle collisions. Most physicists believe those collisions will be observable at the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, a subatomic particle collider scheduled to be operating later this year at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, or CERN.

‘Our work shows that, in principle, string theory can be tested in a non-trivial way,’ explained Ira Rothstein, co-author of the paper and professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon."

The point of this is that we'll finally be able to tell if String Theory is worth pursuing or if it's just an example of Fourier's Thm writ large. I'm rooting for String Theory to verify. It would make the Universe a much larger and much more interesting place to knock about in. Grin.

Read the rest here: Physicists Develop Test for 'String Theory'

21 RC Parishes Face Shutdown in New York

Link: 21 Parishes Face Shutdown in New York - New York Times.

The reshuffling was driven by new demographic realities and immigration patterns that have left some once-booming churches in mostly urban settings nearly empty; others, many in the suburbs, have overflowed. Roman Catholic officials said they were trying to reposition themselves to better serve their people for the 21st century.

I saw this article on the Times website this morning and was struck by this paragraph in particular...

I've often wondered how much of the "decline" of the Episcopal Church is due to the fact that a large number of our parishes are in places where the demographic reality has changed - and the Episcopal Church has not? The parishes in the suburbs have grown dramatically (no matter what denomination) and the inner-city parishes have not. More critically, as the inner city parish demographics have changed to lower income and urban poor - the city parishes no longer have the financial strength to maintain old and now decaying buildings.

Given that observation though, I think the tide is starting to turn back to the urban parishes. All the real estate developers I talk with lately mention the accelerating re-urbanization trend across the country. We're certainly seeing it here in Phoenix. We have approximately 5,000 housing units within a 2 block walking distance of the Cathedral here and expect another 5-7,000 to be built in the next five years. Quite a change from what it used to look like around here 10 years ago. (And those new folks are coming to church here too!)

I keep telling all the bishops I meet not to give up too quickly on their inner-city parishes - in fact rather than giving up they ought to be renovating them and helping them to prepare for an influx of new parishioners... But sadly very few seem to be hearing me.

Email is getting blocked up with Spam

Link: Spam is back, and worse than ever - The Red Tape Chronicles - MSNBC.com.

Image spam is a big part of the resurgence of unwanted e-mail. By using pictures instead of words in their messages, spammers are able to evade filters designed to detect traditional text-based ads. New computer viruses have contributed to the uptick, also, particularly a surprisingly prolific Trojan horse program called "SpamThru" that turns home computers into spam-churning "bots."

Some small organizations are having real trouble with the spam surge, IronPort officials say. One county government office called the firm after its mail server shut down. "(It) could not even slowly process mail," said IronPort spokeswoman Suzanne Matick. "They ended up with no mail going to their 7,500 users for seven days." She declined to identify the agency, citing confidentiality agreements.

This is becoming an issue in churches as we try to move over to using email and other online technology more effectively. I've been told any of number of times that messages that I sent didn't through to people - and more often than not - it's because their email host is using over-enthusiastic blocking technology to try to stem the flood of spam. (AOL is worst example of this. AOL has been rejecting email parish newsletters for years. Mostly because parishes don't know how to set up a proper SPF record.)

For what it's worth, if you're running a church site and plan on sending email out to folks in the congregation, and you'd like to reliably get mail from other people, get yourself a reliable email hosting company. Don't rely on the free email accounts that come with your DSL, Cable or dial-up internet account.

I use FastMail for my personal mail and Tuffmail for the Cathedral mail. (I like FastMail a lot, but it's not setup at the moment to handle multiple users on one bill.) There are lots of others out there as well. One of the better free ones is GMail - especially their Google Apps for Your Domain program that provides hosting, email and document sharing for free. (As long as you trust Google to not lose your account (which happens) and to protect your and your parishioner's privacy.)

MLK Day observance at Trinity Cathedral

Here in Phoenix we had a reassuringly large gathering of people from the city, diocese and community at an afternoon prayer vigil for the Victims of Racism. There were hundreds of people (who came at one time or another during the vigil) who participated.

We offered prayers for Judy and Walter Conley (members of the Cathedral community), whose home was vandalized late last year in a Hate Crime attack. They were supported by members of the Union of Black Episcopalians who participated in the service along with other members of the Diocese and community by reading prayers, scriptures and excerpts from the speeches of Dr. King. Musicians from the Cathedral provided music at quarter hour intervals during the vigil and we ended by singing "We Shall Overcome" in a call and response format.

We had Bishop Kirk Smith remind us of the Episcopal Church's and the Diocese of Arizona's commitment to working to end the sin behavior of racism. The Rev. Canon Angela Ifill, Head of the Dept. of Black Ministry for the Episcopal Church made a special trip to join with us and to serve as our featured speaker. She read a letter from the Presiding Bishop addressed to those gathered and which showed special pastoral concern for Judy and Walter and what they had to recently endure.

There were a number of reporters and we had good television coverage as well. Hopefully this has been a chance for the Episcopal Church to publicly proclaim in Phoenix its efforts to both repent of its own racism and to work to aid all those in the world who suffer from racist attacks and actions.

I'll try to get some pictures of the event posted online somewhere later this week. Thanks to all of you who wrote earlier with suggestions of resources. The service that we constructed out them was very well received.

The Proposed Anglican Covenant

A British commentator made this observation in an online discussion about the proposed Anglican Covenant:

...it would first have to be passed by General Synod and I am not prepared to assume that it would get over that hurdle.  Unless the Covenant is fairly anodyne I would expect it to have a difficult passage in Synod.

The author then went on to point out that should the Covenant pass the Church of England Synod, it would then have to be adopted by the British Parliament as well. (The same Parliament which has required the Church of England to recognize and support same-gender unions in Great Britain.)

I think this note focuses on a key aspect that's going to have to be true of any convenant designed by the appointed committee... the covenant is only useful if it is able to be adopted.

The comment is correct - unless the covenant is fairly mild in its language and intentionally irenic in intent - there's little chance that a broad majority of the Provinces of the Communion will adopt it. I'm sure that the design team for the potential Covenant has already figured this out as well and is fully aware of how difficult this whole process is going to be if it's to be successful.

According to what I've seen posted on blogs from both sides of the debate within the Episcopal Church, there's roughly equal frustration on both sides with the people included on the design team. Reasserter blogs that have done a quick nose count see roughly equal numbers of reasserter, reappraiser and un-predictable votes among those named. This has apparently caused a number of the more phlegmatic voices on the reasserter side to reject the Covenant from the get-go.

For what it's worth, I'm comfortable with letting the process play itself out.

I want to serve and worship in a Church that is truly catholic in its breadth. The design team seems as good a place as any to expect a formulary which expresses that desire to emerge. And given the political reality, any overly restrictive or burdensome language won't be received. I'm very interested to see if God can lead us as body to a place where we can make a realistic and fair covenant with each other.

As a matter of fact I'm praying for it.

Sermon for the First Sunday in Epiphany

Following on the heels of our celebration of the Feast of Epiphany, we come in our lectionary readings to Jesus' Baptism in the river Jordan, the first of the stories in this season of Light where we encounter ways Jesus' reveals himself to us. It's fitting, then, that in today's Gospel lesson, each Person of the Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - is revealed. When examining the Baptism of Christ in the context of other stories and themes in this Epiphany season, we realize that our experience of the numinous in our human existence comes to us in sacramental times and devices, where things we see everyday are infused with layers of new meaning. How can our recollection of these "thin places", where we are near the holy, strengthen us to live more fully into our Christian calling?


MP3 File

Why is the Episcopal Church being unjustly portrayed?

Fr. David Simmons has posted an essay in response to an op-ed piece in the Washington Post yesterday. David's essay tries to point to the reasons that folks can so profoundly mis-characterize the Episcopal Church.

Link: Ayia Iluvatar.

The situation at Falls Church seem similar. I think the problem is that many of those on the right have isolated themselves from the church for too long - long enough for them to think their decades-old experience is still the norm. They don't really know what the average seminarian today is being taught or what the average priest is preaching and they don't care. Their remembrances are much more comfortable.

--snip--

I suspect that our real sin as the Episcopal Church has nothing to do with sexuality. It has to do with allowing ourselves to "ghettoize" into special-interest groups, pretending that OUR Episcopal Church was the true one, when the truth is, we ALL are the Episcopal Church. All the more shame if we allow our preconceptions, based on old data, to separate us.

I posted a response in the same vein to the HoB/D list and even sent a letter to the editors of the Washington Post:

First is a question: At what point in the history of the Anglican Church did it ever broadly hold to the principle of "Sola Scriptura"? I am certain that there have been groups within the umbrella of a broad Anglicanism who have held to this, but has there ever been a time when the principle was explicitly identified as Anglican and not as a principle held by the continental reformers? I am not aware of such a time.

Second, as The Rev. Tom Woodward of The Episcopal Majority keeps reminding us, this charge that the Episcopal Church as a whole is blithely picking and choosing its doctrines from among the latest intellectual fasions is just not true. The vast majority of all Episcopalians across the spectrum of the present Church are responding to careful readings of the Holy Scriptures. We disagree with each other on how the Scriptures are to be read and which commandments take priority in our day. We are not tossing scripture aside as if it was inconvenient to our social reform program.

The Rev. Dr. Kendall Harmon, of the Diocese of South Carolina has been very helpful in consistently insisting that when we debate in the Episcopal Church, we start by listening to what each other is saying and then respond to what is being said, rather than create straw-men for sake of scoring rhetorical points. The authors of the piece in the Post does not seem to have done this.

The Religious Far Right

Salon has an article posted on how the leaders of the far-right in the religious movement are responding to economic pressures by creating a social movement gospel that is radically different than our traditional understandings of the social gospel:

Link: The holy blitz rolls on | Salon Books.

[I]n the rise of America's religious right, Hedges senses something akin to the brutal movements he's spent his life chronicling. The title of his new book speaks for itself: "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America." Scores of volumes about the religious right have recently been published (one of them, "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism," by me), but Hedges' book is perhaps the most furious and foreboding, all the more so because he knows what fascism looks like.

Part of his outrage is theological. The son of a Presbyterian minister and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Hedges once planned to join the clergy himself. He speaks of the preachers he encountered while researching "American Fascists" as heretics, and he's appalled at their desecration of a faith he still cherishes, even if he no longer totally embraces it. Writing of Ohio megachurch pastor Rod Parsley and his close associate, GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell, he says, "[T]he heart of the Christian religion, all that is good and compassionate within it, has been tossed aside, ruthlessly gouged out and thrown into a heap with all the other inner organs. Only the shell, the form, remains. Christianity is of no use to Parsley, Blackwell and the others. In its name they kill it."

I've been reading An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion & American Empire by Michael Northcott. It's an attempt to examine how profoundly Dispensationalist theology has influenced the foreign policy decisions of the American government in the past 3 decades or so. It's a very insightful and depressing read so far. Especially since many classically trained theologians dismiss Dispensationalism as a theological error at best.

Do take a moment to read the whole article. It's worth watching the advertisement if you don't have a subscription to Salon.

Evolution vs Creationism

There's an article up tonight on Salon.com that looks like it's a pretty balanced view of the conflict between Science and Religion - at least in terms of Evolution/Creationsim

Link: Seeing the light -- of science | Salon Books.

University of Wisconsin historian Ronald Numbers is in a unique position to offer some answers. His 1992 book "The Creationists," which Harvard University Press has just reissued in an expanded edition, is probably the most definitive history of anti-evolutionism. Numbers is an eminent figure in the history of science and religion -- a past president of both the History of Science Society and the American Society of Church History. But what's most refreshing about Numbers is the remarkable personal history he brings to this subject. He grew up in a family of Seventh-day Adventists and, until graduate school, was a dyed-in-the-wool creationist. When he lost his religious faith, he wrote a book questioning the foundations of Adventism, which created a huge rift in his family.

--snip--

Numbers says much of what we think about anti-evolutionism is wrong. For one thing, it's hardly a monolithic movement. There are, in fact, fierce battles between creationists of different stripes. And the "creation scientists" who believe in a literal reading of the Bible have, in turn, little in common with the leaders of intelligent design. Numbers also dismisses the whole idea of warfare between science and religion going back to the scientific revolution. He argues this is a modern myth that serves both Christian fundamentalists and secular scientists.

Most of the article is a series of interview questions posed to Prof. Numbers and his answers. In the responses he discusses the motivations of the Creationist scientists and the difficulty both sides have in coming to terms with each others world-views.

More interestingly to me at least, he details how he was forced to confront the evidence in favor of evolution (or specifically an "Old Earth" rather than a "Young Earth" and changed his mind as a result. It is the willingness to be convinced by evidence that makes a good scientist a good scientist. And should make a good theologian a good theologian as well, though the rules of evidence are a bit different in the two realms of endeavor.

Read all the way to the end of the article - there's an interesting critique of Richard Dawkins latest arguments on the final page.