The Christian Darwin You Don’t Know

in Religion, Science | February 17th, 2008

darwin2.jpgAt least in Amer­i­ca, Charles Dar­win has become the favorite whip­ping boy for many fun­da­men­tal­ists on the right. In one neat pack­age, you get in Dar­win all things deplorable. A god­less “sec­u­lar human­ist” who denied the sanc­ti­ty of human­i­ty, God’s prov­i­dence, and the integri­ty of the Bible. What more could you love to hate?

Some­where lost in today’s cul­ture wars is the real Charles Dar­win. Aired first in Octo­ber, this pro­gram, pro­duced by Amer­i­can Pub­lic Medi­a’s Speak­ing of Faith (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site), revis­its Dar­win’s life & thought with James Moore, a Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty schol­ar who has writ­ten Dar­win: The Life of a Tor­ment­ed Evo­lu­tion­ist. And here’s the pic­ture that we get. Like many impor­tant sci­en­tists who came before him — Galileo, Coper­ni­cus and New­ton — Dar­win believed that sci­ence could help explain the laws of nature cre­at­ed by God. Fur­ther, he saw his Ori­gin of Species as describ­ing the forms of life that owed their exis­tence to God’s law — a law that expressed itself in nat­ur­al selec­tion. Read­ers will find that Dar­win’s text is lit­tered with ref­er­ences to cre­ation. And Dar­win, him­self, was not­ed for say­ing that when he wrote the book, his faith in God was as strong as that of a bish­op, although his faith did wane lat­ter in life. Sim­ply put, Dar­win was hard­ly the ene­my of reli­gion that many con­sid­er him today.

Again, you can access this pro­gram with the fol­low­ing links: (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Addi­tion­al­ly, you can access a free e‑text of On the Ori­gin of Species here, along with a free audio­book ver­sion here.

You may also want to check out a relat­ed pro­gram by Speak­ing of Faith: Ein­stein and the Mind of God

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Christopher Hitchens on the Unalterable Celestial Dictatorship of God

in Religion | January 4th, 2008

I’m no fan of Christo­pher Hitchens. Actu­al­ly, I find him an almost entire­ly dis­agree­able fig­ure. But I have to give him points for cre­ativ­i­ty. Inter­viewed last week (MP3 — iTunes — Feed), Hitchens, the author of the recent best­seller God Is Not Great, gave his spiel on athe­ism and offered a unique argu­ment against God. Not against God’s exis­tence. But against God itself.

For Hitchens, if there exist­ed a God who answered prayers and inter­vened in human affairs, “we would be liv­ing under an unal­ter­able celes­tial dic­ta­tor­ship that could read our thoughts while we were asleep and con­vict us of thought crime and pur­sue us after we after are dead, and in the name of which priest­hoods and oth­er oli­garchies and hier­ar­chies would be set up to enforce God’s law.” Essen­tial­ly, we’d be liv­ing in a super­nat­ur­al Orwellian world.

In a quick cou­ple sen­tences, the the­o­ret­i­cal virtues of an all-know­ing God get turned into a vice. It’s a cre­ative and provoca­tive remark, just the kind that sells books in Amer­i­ca. Many, many books, in fact.

This bit appears about 41 min­utes into his inter­view. Dur­ing the rest of the con­ver­sa­tion, Hitchens con­tin­ues jus­ti­fy­ing his sup­port for the Iraq war and offers his thoughts on who killed Benazir Bhut­to. If you want more Hitchens, and if you want to hear Hitchens behav­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly bad­ly, you can always lis­ten to this oth­er inter­view from last year.

And don’t for­get to check out our large col­lec­tion of Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­casts.

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JFK in 1960, Romney in 2007 — Religion in America

in Religion, Video - Politics/Society | December 6th, 2007

Mitt Rom­ney, a Mor­mon, looked yes­ter­day to set aside lin­ger­ing con­cerns about his reli­gion in a high­ly pub­li­cized speech. Imme­di­ate­ly, the speech revived mem­o­ries of John F. Kennedy’s attempt, dur­ing the 1960 cam­paign, to ease con­cerns about his Catholi­cism. We’ve post­ed both speech­es below. The sim­i­lar­i­ties are there. But the dif­fer­ences are more pro­found. I’ll resist the temp­ta­tion to point them out. You can watch the clips and draw your own con­clu­sions.

John F. Kennedy — 1960

Mitt Rom­ney — 2007

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Intelligent Design on Trial

in Religion, Video - Science | November 16th, 2007

Ear­li­er this week, PBS’s NOVA aired a two-hour pro­gram revis­it­ing the con­tro­ver­sial fed­er­al case, Kitzmiller v. Dover School Dis­trict, which asked whether “intel­li­gent design” could be taught in Amer­i­can schools along­side Dar­win’s the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion. Intel­li­gent design essen­tial­ly holds that “life is too com­plex to have evolved nat­u­ral­ly and there­fore must have been designed by an intel­li­gent agent.” And, along the way, it effec­tive­ly attempts to make God’s role in cre­at­ing the world a sci­en­tif­ic fact, not an item of faith. You can see how the back­ers of intel­li­gent design ulti­mate­ly fared. NOVA has made the pro­gram avail­able online for free. It’s divid­ed into 12 videos, and you can watch them here. For a com­plete descrip­tion of the pro­gram, click here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

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Debating Religion The Dawkins Way

in Religion, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | October 25th, 2007

When debat­ing reli­gion, you can take the low road (e.g., Ann Coul­ter’s recent flir­ta­tion with anti-semi­tism) or the high road. Here’s Richard Dawkins, an avowed athe­ist and evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist at Oxford, hav­ing a high-mind­ed con­ver­sa­tion about the exis­tence (or non-exis­tence) of God with Alis­ter McGrath, who is Pro­fes­sor of His­tor­i­cal The­ol­o­gy at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty and also has a back­ground in mol­e­c­u­lar bio­physics. We’ve post­ed the video­taped debate below. (And, by the way, you can down­load the video to an iPod by access­ing the video here, look­ing to the right where it says “Down­load to Video iPod” and fol­low­ing these instruc­tions).

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Einstein and the Mind of God

in Physics, Religion, Science | October 18th, 2007

Speak­ing at a con­fer­ence on sci­ence, reli­gion and phi­los­o­phy in 1941, Albert Ein­stein famous­ly said that “sci­ence with­out reli­gion is lame; reli­gion with­out sci­ence is blind.” Ein­stein, a Ger­man-born Jew, con­sid­ered him­self reli­gious. But what he meant by reli­gion was not straight­for­ward. The first episode of a two-part pod­cast called Ein­stein and the Mind of God (iTunes — MP3 — Web Site) tries to sort out Ein­stein’s reli­gious sen­si­bil­i­ty and how it squares with his sci­en­tif­ic think­ing. For Ein­stein, reli­gion con­sist­ed of a belief, not in a per­son­al God, but a uni­ver­sal spir­it that man­i­fests itself in nature. And it was the task of physics to make sense of nature, of God’s uni­verse. Or, so that is how it’s explained by Free­man Dyson, a famed the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist who appears on the show. In the sec­ond part, the pod­cast turns to look at Ein­stein’s ethics (iTunes — MP3 — Web Site). Although not with­out per­son­al flaws (he often fell short in his personal/domestic life), Ein­stein had a strong moral sense informed by his Jew­ish upbring­ing. He saw sci­en­tists hav­ing a deep moral oblig­a­tion to soci­ety; he took strong posi­tions against war (except when Hitler came along); he opposed racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and lament­ed the plight of African-Amer­i­cans well before the civ­il rights move­ment; and he laud­ed reli­gious lead­ers’ efforts to use non-vio­lent action to oppose immoral con­di­tions. Each of these pod­casts runs around 53 min­utes in length, and they form part of a larg­er radio/podcast series called Speak­ing of Faith (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), which is issued by Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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Religion: 5000 Years in 90 Seconds

in Religion | October 15th, 2007

How has the geog­ra­phy of reli­gion evolved over the cen­turies, and where has it sparked wars? This inter­ac­tive map sum­ma­rizes in a brief 90 sec­onds the his­to­ry of Chris­tian­i­ty, Islam, Hin­duism, Bud­dhism, and Judaism. It shows where & when each reli­gion orig­i­nat­ed, how the reli­gions some­times came into con­flict, and how they spread across the globe. This short his­to­ry les­son is pro­duced by a site called Maps of War, which fea­tures oth­er inter­ac­tive lessons, includ­ing The Impe­r­i­al His­to­ry of the Mid­dle East and Amer­i­can Lead­er­ship & War. Enjoy.

Via Boing Boing

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The Science Behind the Bible

in Religion, Science | August 17th, 2007

The lat­est pod­cast put out by The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion (iTunes — Stream — Web Site) does­n’t shy away from hot-but­ton issues. Below, we’ve past­ed the sum­ma­ry that accom­pa­nies the pod­cast on The Chron­i­cle’s web site. Read it and then give the audio some time and thought.

“Uni­ver­si­ty-trained archae­ol­o­gists and his­to­ri­ans are scared to take on the Bible, says Eric H. Cline, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of clas­sics at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. He talks about his new book, From Eden to Exile: Unrav­el­ing Mys­ter­ies of the Bible, in which he argues that Bible stud­ies have become dom­i­nat­ed by ‘junk sci­ence’ (Noah’s ark found in Turkey!) because aca­d­e­mics have yield­ed the field.”

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