An invitation for you
Jesus and Zaccheus, from the icon collection of St. Mary Coptic Orthodox Church, East Brunswick, NJ. Jesus saw Zaccheus and wanted to know his story. I’m not Jesus and you — I assume — are not perched in a sycamore tree, but I want to know your story anyway
Dear Alert Readers,
I’d like to share some happy news with you: Over the last six months psnt.net‘s readership has increased slowly but steadily. Currently it is read by about 180 (unique) people per week. And as far as I can tell, you are a diverse group in almost every meaning of the word: religiously, geographically, professionally, politically, age-wise, etc. I am grateful for each and every one of you, and I’d like to extend to you an invitation:
Please be a part of psnt.net by sharing your stories.
Jesus knew well that everyone loves a story. Zaccheus surely did; the small man climbed that tree and risked public ridicule so he could hear a master storyteller at work. But what Jesus knew is that Zaccheus himself had a story, a story that Jesus wanted to hear. And he heard it over a meal at Zaccheus’s table, a place of personal sharing, mutual trust, and friendship.
I’d like psnt.net to be a place where you can tell your story. In particular, I — and your fellow readers, I suspect — would love to know why you believe what you believe about science and religion, even if you don’t yet know exactly what you believe. This emphasis on stories is a part of what makes psnt.net different from other science & religion websites. It has been a place where, because of your interest, I have been able to tell my own story with great freedom. Now it’s your turn.
Here are some prompts that may help get the juices flowing.
1. Do you have a thought or a story to share about about human evolution and the Bible? How do you interpret the creation accounts of Gen. 1 and 2? Did your church upbringing (if any) have a bearing on this?
2. Do you think that science and religion are compatible? Why or why not? Is there a story behind your answer?
3. Have you ever struggled in your faith — or lost it altogether — because of the claims of science?
4. Has there been anyone in your life — a parent, a teacher, a friend — who has influenced you to think about science-religion issues? Was this person helpful or a real pest?
5. When you hear the phrase, Human beings have developed from earlier species of animals, what is your first honest internal response? Who and/or what experiences do you think are behind this reaction?
6. Do you have a thought or a story to share about the spiritual consequences or issues surrounding antidepressants?
7. What do you think about Christians who use science to argue against atheism? Have you personally known any Christians who have done this? Other faiths may be substituted.
8. What do you think about atheists who use science to argue against Christianity? Have you personally known any atheists who have done this? Again, other faiths may be substituted.
9. Is there a God? Is God personal? If so, does God communicate to you through nature? Have any of you come to faith through this kind of interaction?
10. Is advanced medical technology actually helping us live better lives, or is it mostly creating ethical problems that have passed (or are passing) beyond our ability to solve?
11. If you are from a faith tradition other than Christianity, how do you and/or others of your tradition deal with scientific questions or challenges?
There are certainly many more questions out there. Whatever’s on your mind is welcome: questions, concerns, a single sentence, a paragraph, a 5000-word essay. Whatever!
A few things you should know before going further:
1. The more personal, the better. Not only does honesty beget honesty, but honesty is always interesting. Moreover, I work hard to ensure that psnt.net is a place where opinions and stories may be shared without fear of recrimination or insults of any kind. All comments are moderated and will only be made public if I approve them.
2. I will know who you are, but you have the choice of being anonymous beyond that. If you choose anonymity, please indicate this in your note. You have my word that your name will not be made public; no one but you and I will know your identity. If, on the other hand, you allow your name to be published along with your comment, I will include a tiny bio with your permission. I’d like for you to know a little about each other!
3. There are three ways you can make contact with me: (a) use psnt.net‘s comment system (just beneath this post), (b) send me an email, or (c) send me a message through my personal Facebook page or the psnt.net Facebook page.
4. I will be starting a new section of psnt.net where these stories and comments will be posted. Additionally, they may be used or referred to in my regular posts (but never in a critical way).
5. Logical arguments in support of some position, even really good arguments, are not called for. This section of psnt.net is not marked out for the debate team! You are always free, however, to challenge anything I might say in my regular posts.
Thank you again for your continued support of this work.
Your friend,
There are 7 Comments to "An invitation for you"
Paul, I was very interested to read your story, “Leap of Faith,” in the Fall 2010 “Furman” magazine. I also graduated from Furman (1978), and likewise went to Duke for an advanced degree (in my case, J.D., 1981). Even more interesting, I also “abandoned Christianity while at Furman” (“Furman” at 17) as a freshman, due to something I read in my Intro to Religion textbook! I “regained” my faith on Christmas Day, 1984. Also, I have a “link to Asia” as well, since I lived in South Korea, a heavily Buddhist country at that time, for about 6 years while my parents were Baptist missionaries there.
Differently from you, however, as I see from the “Furman” article, my renewed faith and subsequent study has led me to believe in creationism a la Genesis 1:1-2:3. I know you designated this section for “stories” rather than debate, but I do note that I don’t believe the “Big Bang” theory to be compatible with various scientific laws, including in your specialty, the theory of relativity (with the speed of light in a vacuum as the “speed limit” of any movement within the universe), as well as other laws such as gravitation and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. If you do have a forum for “debate,” let me know at my email address and I may “give it a whirl.”
Given our common “heritage,” I look forward to hearing from you, if you like, and perhaps to more postings on your blog. I think it is great that you are doing this.
Tom Harkins, December 2, 2010.
(Feel free to share my comments, but not my email address. Thanks.)
Hello Tom. Thank you so much for reading and for taking the time to respond. It always means a lot to me when people do so. I think your request to make a space for debate is a good one, and I plan on adding a set of pages I will call “Room for Debate,” but I am in the final push of the semester and I don’t have time this week to do it. But it is an excellent idea.
The Big Bang theory does not violate any established physical laws, except perhaps at the singularity at t=0. But the physical laws you mention — relativity, gravitation, the second law of thermodynamics — are not violated in the least by the standard Big Bang model. I think I can guess what you mean when you talk about the “speed limit” being violated and when you talk about the second law. Let me take a stab at these two.
In the first case, one must be careful to not think of the big bang as occurring in previously-existing space. Often people carry the mistaken idea that a lot of space existed for some time and then the big bang occurred *pow* within that space and all the matter/energy rushed out and filled that space. Space itself is believed to have been formed at the time of the big bang.
The speed limit is a result of special relativity, in which space is static. To put it another way, material objects cannot pass through space at speeds exceeding the speed of light.
There is a useful analogy here: Think of actors on a stage. The actors are galaxies or planets or other cosmic doodads and the stage is space itself. Imagine that the stage is a plain old garden-variety stage that is unable to expand or contract or bend or anything like that. The “speed limit” of special relativity says that people cannot run relative to the stage at speeds greater than that of light.
In general relativity, however, the stage itself is dynamic. Imagine that it is expanding uniformly everywhere, and that it is enormous. Suppose all the actors are standing still on their places on the stage. Now, even though no one is walking or running, every actor will witness every other actor moving away from him, right?
Say you are one of the actors. If I am standing near you you will see me moving away from you slowly. Another actor 10 times further away will move away from you 10 times faster than me. For example, if I am moving (with the expanding stage) away at 1 mile per hour, the other actor will be moving away from you at 10 miles per hour. Does this make sense?
Now suppose there was someone who was 700 million times further away from you than I. That person would then be moving away from you at 700 million miles per hour, which is faster than light speed. Yet neither of you are moving along the stage; both of you are just standing there. There is no limit on this “kind” of speed, which is the kind of speed that dominates in discussions of the big bang. This may or may not apply to your issue with relativity, but I thought I’d put it out there anyway.
About the second law of thermodynamics, I am guessing (again) that this has to do with the development of life on earth via evolution. The second law says two things. First, that entropy (disorder) always increases. If this is all it said, then evolution would definitely violate the law, because the rise of life is a clear example of decreasing disorder or complexity. But the second part of the law qualifies the first, by saying that entropy always increases in a closed system. A closed system is one that has no interaction whatsoever with its surroundings. The Earth’s surface is clearly is not such a system.
Another way of putting this is, so long as there is a NET increase in entropy, the second law is not violated. If entropy decreases by some amount on Earth and increases by a GREATER amount somewhere else, then there is a net increase in entropy and there is no violation of thermodynamics.
This may not have been what you were looking for, but it’s what I have at the moment. About your mention of gravitation, please clarify. I’d like to know what you’re thinking.
I very much appreciate your kind words about the work I am doing. I believe I am called to do this and have loved every minute of it. The best part is getting to know people like you through this most unusual medium.
For now, please feel free to reply on this page. If you are still interested, I will alert you when I set up a debate space.
An don’t worry; I share no personal information of my readers.
Thanks again, Tom. Best to you.
Paul
Paul, I appreciate your insightful reply to my remarks, and think you state the “evolutionary” position about as well as I have heard or read, and particularly so as to the “expanding stage,” an illustration I had not heard before.
Let me ask a couple of quick questions which may indicate some of my views (which are basically of the type you have indicated them to be). First, is there any “speed limit” to the “expanding universe”? Does it “slow down” after awhile? Can we know anything about those issues? Also, even though you suggest the actors are not “moving” on the stage, it may be true that they are not changing “their position on the stage,” but clearly they are “moving” farther away from each other at some speed as the stage “expands,” correct? At what point in any of this process of “expansion” does the speed of light “kick in”? Isn’t it true that the far-away galaxies are “moving” relative to me regardless of whether it is due to “stage expansion” or some other “force” which creates motion? The universe is “pulling them along” (a force) at some speed, which to my mind should not be able to exceed the speed of light under special relativity. Does general relativity impose any speed limits?
With respect to the Second Law, I agree that a “closed system” is part of the definition. However, “closed” can be a relative concept; i.e, “99% closed within a certain confine.” Isn’t what happens on the earth relatively “closed” to that extent? Isn’t there a VAST increase in “order” as to each biological system which is “evolving” from, say, a collection of hydrogen/helium “cast out” from the sun to start the earth (as I believe some say)? Also, I think the Second Law applies to stellar formation itself. Where is the decreasing order which “offsets” the increasing order “from ground zero”?
Finally as to gravity, as I weakly understand the concept of black holes, a particular increasing concentration of mass exerts greater and greater gravitational pull so that everything around it gets “sucked” into it. If all the mass of the universe were concentrated in a single “point” (even given no “surrounding space,” just the “point of origin” of the universe colloquially speaking), why would it ever “expand” in the first place, as opposed to becoming even a “tighter” point?
Those are the comments that come to mind at the moment. Thanks again for responding to me, and for your site.
Tom
Hi Paul,
I read your article Way Beyond Atheism on RD. First of all, excellent piece of writing. My question for you and it is one I wrestle with is this: how do you bridge apophatic theology with the nitty gritty of religion? My struggle, btw I am a rabbi, derives from my belief that religious language is necessarily only metaphor pointing to that which is beyond language. This in turn has made it increasingly difficult to see any real differences between one religions and the next. Why should I as a rabbi promote Judaism and my Christian colleagues promote their brand of Christianity if the particularistic aspects of religious language lacks meaning? I think I know what love means when I use it to describe my relationship with my children but that meaning of love only approximates what is implied when I use it when speaking of God. In other words, I don’t use or understand the word love univocally.
The only answer that seems to make sense to me is more of sociological one. What happens to the particulars (sacnta, if you will) of our religious systems when they are not the bedrock of our faith? In no small part Judaism is withering away outside of the orthodox world because the idea/belief in a Commander whose “orders” as revealed by rabbinic authorities no longer has any meaning to so many Jews. Arguably the decline in church attendance is attributable to a similar devaluing of the meaning of fundamental belief statements.
I’m not sure my question is clear. Maybe another way of putting is like this: if our religious language is not talking about what its talking about (and it can’t because we can’t really talk sense about that which we can’t know) what’s the point? There is a compelling sociological critique of Judaism that boils down to just about everything of Jewish religious practice is designed to keep Jews separated from non-Jews. In other words, it serves a tribal or more discretely put, a sociological purpose. But isn’t this so of all religions?
I look forward to reading your response.
Howard
p.s. If you have not yet read Beldan Lane’s book Solace of Fierce Landscapes I highly recommend it. Its a powerful and insightful study of the apophatic tradition.
Howard,
I am interested in your point that “the particularistic aspect of religious language lacks meaning.” Is it your position that any language which makes reference to God is “meaningless”? I don’t follow that. To say that we can know God is of such a nature that we can know nothing about him would show that we at least know one thing about him, thereby defeating the premise. I don’t think we can just “assume” that we can know nothing about God. Unless we actually deprive the word “God” of all substance (which is little more than atheism in disguise), we at least would agree he is “behind” all the universe that we see in one fashion or another. And this universe is full of things that we can talk about and know things about. Even the very fact that we can communicate with each other itself suggests an “intelligent” and “communicative” nature of the universe, and why would we think that the God behind that is himself “incapable” of either intelligence or communicative abilities, if we have them? I don’t think it is a “greater” thing to say about God that we can say nothing of him than to say that he is of such intelligence that mine is dwarfed by comparison, and that while my communicative abilities are limited, his are not.
Consequently, I see no reason to believe that any particular religious views of the various “faiths” are “meaningless,” whether they be Jewish, Christian, or otherwise. Instead, I think they are susceptible to being “true” or “false” as most of our other communications are. Certainly there are and have to be SOME aspects of God that are beyond our grasp. However, that hardly means he is unable to reveal certain aspects of himself to us should he so choose. It is a commonality between the Jewish and Christian faiths that God did elect to do so, whether through Moses on Mount Sinai or through Jesus the Messiah, the “Prophet like me” that Moses prophesied would come. Deuteronomy 18:15, 18-19. Wouldn’t you agree that God spoke to Moses? If not, I would have to agree that there would be little left of either Judaism or Christianity, and little point in any “religious talk,” seeing it is “meaningless.” But I don’t believe that.
Dear Howard,
Thank you for reading and for your comment. For the last 24 hours I have thought a lot about your question — which I have faced as well — and I have put up a post that answers (to the best of my ability) your questions.
I have taken a look at your website. You seem to have a wonderful vocation happening up there in Vermont! What a wonderful life, being outdoors so much.
I noticed you were in a maximum-security facility in Pennsylvania. Was it Graterford in Philadelphia? My wife has been there, working with inmates and other ministers and academic types in a program called Inside-Out. This was a few years back, but it was a life-changing experience for her.
Thanks also for the book suggestion. I’ll look it up.
Again, thanks for reading my scribblings
HI Paul,
I haven’t had a chance to read your response yet. However, I didn’t want to wait to say that yes, it was Graterford! I was a chaplain there for five years, from 1989-1994. It was an extraordinary experience. I remain in pretty regular contact with several of the inmates to this day.
Howard