The headlines say that the Episcopal Church has overturned its “moratorium” on gay bishops. N.T. Wright, predictably, scolds the Americans for fomenting “schism.” But more nuanced interpretations of what’s going on are available. See Christopher here and Father Jones at the Anglican Centrist here.
Month: July 2009
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“Humane”
Nearly all vocal critics of animal rights/liberation insist that they are absolutely in favor of the “humane” treatment of animals. It’s simply the radical claims or agenda of animal liberation that they oppose. Assuming they’re arguing in good faith, then, it should to be possible to construct an agenda for improving the treatment of animals that those favoring humane treatment (as opposed to full-blown animal rights/liberation) can agree to.
On any reasonable definition of “humane,” then, I propose that those who are for the humane treatment of animals ought to favor, at a minimum, ending the following practices:
–intensive, factory-style farming of animals for meat, milk, and eggs
–fur trade
–experiments on animals for trivial purposes (e.g., cosmetics)
–painful experiments on animals for “pure” research not directly related to life-saving medical treatments for human beings
–rodeos and circuses
–“canned” trophy hunting
–hunting of endangered species
–destruction of animal habitat for trivial purposes (e.g., building a new shopping mall)
On the face of it, this looks like a PETA wish list! But all of the above sacrifice vital animal interests (e.g., interests in not suffering horribly) for the sake of comparatively trivial human interests (pleasure, convenience, curiosity, vanity, entertainment) that either don’t have a strong claim to being met or can easily be met by readily available substitutes. Any definition of “humane”–which Webster defines as “marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration”–that allows the routine sacrifice of vital animal interests for the sake of trivial human ones would seem to be a pretty empty one.
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Christians need not apply?
Following up on the news that Francis Collins has been nominated to head the NIH, Slate has a curious article asking whether Collins is too religious for such a position. The article makes it clear that Collins has impeccable credentials (MD, PhD in physical chemistry, coordinator of the national genome project); not only believes in evolution and its compatibility with Christian faith, but is an outspoken critic of creationism and Intelligent Design; and rejects the idea that human personhood begins at conception and supports stem-cell research. From a liberal point of view, there wouldn’t seem any grounds for worry that Collins would replicate the Bush-era politicization of scientific decisions.
And yet, the article still manages to spend the majority of its space wringing its hands about Collins’ possible “religious agenda”:
His passionate defense of religion has earned some harsh criticism. When rumors of the appointment began to circulate in May, University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne blogged, “I’d be much more comfortable with someone whose only agenda was science,” saying he was worried “about how this will affect things like stem-cell research and its funding.” (In fact, Collins is clear on his support of stem-cell research.) Sam Harris was predictably unimpressed with Collins’ ideas. “Most reviewers of The Language of God seem quite overawed by its author’s scientific credentials,” Harris wrote shortly after it was published. “His book, however, reveals that a stellar career in science offers no guarantee of a scientific frame of mind.”
Harris does not make a genuine attempt to consider the book’s ideas, but he is correct that the philosophy espoused by Collins, which he calls “theistic evolution,” has so far managed to evade sustained and careful scrutiny. Now that he has been chosen as the most important scientific administrator in the country, overseeing $40 billion of grants and programs, the scientific community can be forgiven for a few jitters over exactly where Collins comes down on the inevitable, often glaring contradictions between science and Scripture.
First off, I find the idea that theistic evolution (TE) has evaded scrutiny pretty bizarre. Theologians and philosophers have been wrestling with the relationship between science and scripture for over a hundred years; just because the American political debate has been myopically focused on evolution vs. creationism doesn’t mean that TE hasn’t received careful scrutiny (which isn’t to suggest it’s free from problems). But more to the point, the central claim of theistic evolution, at least in most forms, is that evolution can be understood on its own terms with reference to natural causes and without explicit reference to God. So, pretty much by definition, it’s hard to see what insidious influence Collins’ faith is supposed to have here.
The article goes on to say that Collins distinguishes between “unsolved” and “unsolvable” problems: the former are those problems likely to be explicated by future scientific advances, the latter those that remain permanent mysteries of the human condition. (The philosopher Gabriel Marcel made a similar distinction between problems and mysteries.) The piece says that Collins sees the human moral sense as well as the apparent “fine-tuning” of the universe for the emergence of life as mysteries that point to the existence of God, and warns that
[t]his is the area where Collins’ religion is most in danger of intruding on his science. He believes that it’s possible to see evidence of the divine in things like physics equations or patterns of human behavior. While Collins would never suggest that science could furnish any final proof for the existence of God, he’s fond of mentioning that the Bible occasionally uses the word evidence. That is to say, he thinks the presence of the divine can be directly observed, even if it cannot be measured and tested.
I think the standard that’s being set here is startling. Nearly all religious people see “evidence” of the divine in humanity and in the order of the universe. And nearly all religious people believe that something like direct experience of God is possible. The implication is that virtually any religious person is potentially disqualified from important scientific positions, or at least highly suspect. To be acceptable, is Collins required to be agnostic on all philosophical and religious questions of any significance? (Not to mention, in practical terms, it’s very difficult to see how accepting a modified version of the design argument [i.e., the fine-tuning argument] or suggesting that the human moral sense gives us clues to God’s will would affect the work of a NIH administrator.)
The problem is the same as the problem with the “new atheists”: a kind of scientific imperialism (or scientism) that thinks all interesting philosophical or religious questions can be settled by empirical demonstration in the narrowest sense (or else are meaningless). It’s the return of the old, discredited logical postivist method where “evidence” is construed in a way that rules out, by definition, reasonable grounds for religious belief.
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Stumbling blocks
There’s a good interview with Francis Collins, author of The Language of God, at Books & Culture. This passage in particular struck a chord with me:
You take both the Bible and evolution seriously. Did the harmony you find between evolution and your faith just come naturally?
You know, it really did. When I became a believer at 27, the first church I went to was a pretty conservative Methodist church in a little town outside Chapel Hill. I’m sure there were a lot of people in that church who were taking Genesis literally and rejecting evolution.
But I couldn’t take Genesis literally because I had come to the scientific worldview before I came to the spiritual worldview. I felt that, once I arrived at the sense that God was real and that God was the source of all truth, then, just by definition, there could not be a conflict.
I returned to church as an adult after abandoning it for most of my teenage years and early-to-mid 20s. And even prior to that my religious education had been fairly minimal. If someone would’ve expected me, at the time I returned to church, to adopt a young earth creationist worldview I would’ve been completely baffled. It would’ve been a literal impossibility. (Fortunately, no one did; that’s liberal Protestantism for you.) Being educated outside of the creationist milieu had effectively inoculated me against any such proposal. It had long ceased to be a live option for me, and I had already learned that alternate readings of the Bible were entirely possible–and held by plenty of great theologians.
Christians often forget that much of what we talk about, and the language in which we talk about it, is completely and utterly foreign and even unintelligible to people outside the church. To some extent that’s inevitable, and any serious religious conversion will require learning a “second language.” But Christians also need to be careful that we aren’t elevating cultural accretions to the status of essential tenets of the faith (I’d most emphatically include YEC here, but more “sophisticated” mainline versions of Christianity have this problem too). Insisting that converts (or re-verts) adopt such cultural baggage is placing stumbling blocks where they don’t need to be. Sometimes Christians take refuge in the idea that they’re a virtuous remnant holding out for truth against a pagan world; that kind of self-righteousness needs a heavy dose of humble self-examination.
Incidentally, I see via Brandon that Collins has been nominated by the President to serve as the new director of the National Institutes of Health.
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Like a pope needs an encyclical
I don’t know if I’ll get around to reading Caritas in Veritate in its entirety (so far I’ve only made it through the introduction), but John Schwenkler is going to be posting thoughts on each chapter once a week (see here for details), which will undoubtedly provide food for thought.
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Book recommendation: James Garvey’s Ethics of Climate Change
During my mini-vacation I read philosopher James Garvey’s book, The Ethics of Climate Change, which I highly recommend. It very lucidly lays out the moral issues and the kinds of responses they call for. I thought his discussion of what we know about the impact of climate change and how we should act in the face of different types and degrees of uncertainty to be particularly persuasive. Prof. Garvey, along with others, blogs here.
A Thinking Reed 