Category: Faith & Ideology

Schools and Evolution

Indiana Representative Dennis Kruse, a Republican from Auburn (the northernmost region of the state, be it noted) apparently intends in 2013 to take another legislative crack at, as he apparently sees it, leveling the playing field for teaching about the origin of life from perspectives other than that of evolution.

It’s news, or some journalists are trying to make it news, because our Governor-elect has been a notable culture warrior, if only in rhetoric, on radio and then in Congress. But that’s not how he ran for Governor. It’s thus thought that the Kruse bill landing on his desk will be some kind of defining moment. I think that’s a stretch.

There’s a lot to be said that I won’t try to say about whether “creation science” or “intelligent design” are science in any sense, let alone good science. All I’ll say is that there is no single scientific method, as I understand it – which does not, however, mean that just any ole’ notion can claim the mantle of “science.”

My thoughts are rather from the perspective of an attorney who is a traditional Christian (i.e., a Christian whose tradition reaches back to New Testament times) and who is zealous for religious freedom and for good education.

Religiously, I believe about creation what the Nicene Creed affirms about it. The early chapters of Genesis have been variously interpreted throughout history, long before Charles Darwin was a gleam in his father’s eye. My impression is that none of the Apostolic or AnteNicene Fathers were much concerned with wresting anything like modern science from the texts.

Scientifically, I think I’m a lawyer who should hold his scientific ignorance or truth pretty close to the vest. I used to say I went days at a time not thinking about evolution or its adversaries. It’s up to “weeks at a time” now.

As a citizen in the modern world, I think evolution has proven a very fruitful scientific theory, of which fruits I and every other reader am a beneficiary. (I’m told that alchemy also was a very fruitful scientific theory inasmuch as it got everyone on the same page for a while, and lots of things were discovered about how not to turn lead into gold – and other stuff, too.) If evolution is suddenly overthrown or gradually undermined by better scientific theories, it nevertheless will have had an illustrious run, and not just for its having been misappropriated for social and cosmological purposes.

Educationally, I think public schools should teach mainstream science. Evolution is mainstream science. I don’t think public school teachers should try to characterize or rebut “creation science” or “intelligent design.” I’ve seen what can happen when really good science teachers – teachers who adhere to some kind of Christian tradition that accepts evolution – try to do that. What I saw were crude caricatures (placing “creation science” down by geocentrism and flat earth on a spectrum, for instance) or religiously manipulative (essentially, “you can be a Christian and a scientist, too; all you have to do is give up fundamentalism and adopt more reasonable religious views”).

I don’t want public schools doing that sort of thing. Let them brush off questions, which are certain to come, with the truthful characterization that “X is not mainstream science. Our job here is to teach mainstream science so that you know about it and can consider careers in science. It probably isn’t possible for us to give fair treatment to theories that are not, or perhaps merely are not yet, mainstream science, and we risk offending people’s religious sensibilities especially if we try to critically engage theories that may be cherished by people partly for religious reasons. Let’s move on now.”

If parents of private school pupils want their children to have the option of careers in science, they should teach mainstream science as rigorously as do the public schools. If they want to teach non-mainstream science, they can do so unhindered by me, but I’d advise them to distinguish it from mainstream and tell the kids, in essence, “we believe because of A, B & C that X is true and evolution is bunk, but evolution is mainstream, and if you want to do fruitful science, you’ll adopt it for your working theory even if you disbelieve it ultimately. When evolution stops being fruitful, people will finally give X the respect it deserves. Meanwhile, we’re studying evolution assiduously. Can we move on now?” If they don’t take some such approach, they shouldn’t expect to boast any Nobel Laureates in the sciences among their graduates.

Legally, I believe I’ll wait to see what Kruse has up his sleeve and then, time permitting, I may have something to say.

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Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Richard Mourdock’s teachable moment

For all those who feel or feign outrage at Richard Mourdock’s abortion/rape theodicy, a few sage words from a guy who’d have been called “Joe” were he not second in command to a guy called “Pharoah.”

Talking to his brothers, who had sold him into slavery and told their dad he’d been eaten by a lion, in circumstance where the brothers were thinking “We are soooooo screwed,” he said:

But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.

(Genesis 50:20, King James version)

Change, certainty and salvation

Orthodoxy often gets the back-handed compliment of complaints that it hasn’t changed. For every such compliment, I’m grateful.

But Chris Castaldo pays us the same compliment intentionally:

The notion that Rome doesn’t modify authoritative teaching such as the articles and canons of Trent is, with all due respect, out of step with reality. If you were looking for an example of a church that hasn’t changed for over a millennium, you’ll want to consider Eastern Orthodox Churches, not Rome.

It’s kind of odd after that affirmation to see Castaldo tear into Rome, instead of lovingly caressing Orthodoxy. But I guess Rome’s the 800 pound gorilla against which all western Evangelicals must contend – especially if one was raised Catholic, rather as I tend to obsess a bit about the subspecie of Evangelicalism in which I was instructed beginning in boarding school.

But it’s still puzzling. Castaldo works in a pretty smart setting: Wheaton College and formerly College Church of Wheaton, with both of which I’m pretty familiar. Why doesn’t it occur to him to question the magisterial Reformation not having turned Eastward? Why does he accept (as I assume he does) Evangelicalism’s break with the Magisterial Reformation during and after the First and Second Great Awakenings? (Maybe if I had followed his blog over time, I’d find that he has questioned all this and still come out where he is.)

But he does a good job of arguing that Rome changes. Really. It sounds to me as if Rome is nowhere to go if you want stable, clear doctrine, P.R. to the contrary notwithstanding.

On the one hand, for instance, you’ve got extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, but then it’s a matter of disputed and changing interpretation just who is extra Ecclesiam.

You have a purportedly infallible Magisterium, but nobody to interpret what the Magisterium truly teaches, or even whether Pope so-and-so was speaking ex cathedra when he uttered this or that. And in this election season, I’d be remiss not to note that liberal Catholics cite Catholic social teaching on the preferential option for the poor to justify voting for a feticidal maniac while conservative Catholics insist that voting for feticidal maniacs is intrinsically evil, whereas the best approach to helping the poor is a matter of prudential judgments. (It’s not my fight, but I give the edge to the conservatives there, in case my scrupulously neutral contrast left you wondering.)

That doesn’t sound to me like much of an improvement over an infallible Bible with no infallible interpreter. Infallibility – of Bible or of Magisterium – is a nice dogmatic theory, but not much practical use, it seems. (Calvinists have the same tap-dancing problem. When one of The Elect apostasizes, it just goes to prove he wasn’t really Elect. Some “eternal security,” huh?)

Good form seems to dictate that I now pronounce that you should come to Orthodoxy for stable, clear doctrine. But I won’t. “Stable” we’ve got down pat. “Clear,” not so much. Or so it seems to me.

But I don’t think the faith is about certainty about everything. What’s certainty got to do with union with God? Devils know the right factoids about God, for goodness sake.

Lack of certainty about some things doesn’t mean I’m confused about what matters. I know what I should do this morning first thing when I get up: thank God for another day to repent as my feet hit the floor, say my morning prayers and read today’s epistle reading. The morning prayers are pretty much universal; the Bible reading’s there because I’ve decided that’s when I’ll do it daily (if no other time). I know what I should do at mealtimes: more prayers. I know what I should do at bedtime. Still more prayers. Seven times a day would be good, actually. “Without ceasing” better still. And repentance, not pride, through it all. (I’m lousy at living this out. I’ll never be saved by my own effort.)

Saturday night? Vespers. Sunday morning? Matins and Liturgy. The texts are set. The music is sober, in whatever musical tradition it’s done. It’s a privilege to be obligated as a Reader (the lowest level of Clergy) to do these services.  They form me; they shape my soul.

The Creed? Definitely. It keeps me away from cliffs over which souls have been plunging for 2000 years. But it doesn’t tell me exactly where inside the protective fence I should be. It doesn’t tell me a lot of things about which I might feel idle curiosity. It wasn’t meant to be a Procrustean bed. And that’s okay.

So, what’s the conclusion? I’m not sure. I’ve only been Orthodox 15 years this month, and I had 49 years of bad habits to break. They’re not all broken yet. I’ve noticed for about 14.9 years that the Church isn’t pumping me full of right answers to rattle off to any question or objection, just like all the other ideologues on the block. I sometimes long for greater certainty, but then I’m ashamed of the pride that feels entitled to know instead of trusting.

I may be selling certainty and clarity short. But it seems to me that much as Abraham was told “get thee up into a land I shall show thee,” we walk by faith, not by the sight of a detailed roadmap with reservations staked out each night along the way. It that scandalizes you, and if I’m wrong, then I pray you’ll stumble onto someone who’ll set the record straight.

That someone would be in an Orthodox Church, by the way.

Reformation Day thoughts

Today is Reformation Day. In 5 years, there presumably will be a huge shindig for the 500th anniversary of Luther’s 95 Theses.

Some people take this very seriously, as do I (it’s hard to understand America without it), but some are invested in it so much as to take it very, very seriously.

In the “very seriously” camp is Russell Saltzman, “dean of the Great Plains Mission District of the North American Lutheran Church, an online homilist for the Christian Leadership Center at the University of Mary, and author of The Pastor’s Page and Other Small Essays.” How he took it seriously is the subject of a recent essay:

The post in question was called “Why Can’t Lutherans Take Catholic Communion?” which would seem to be self-explanatory. Nevertheless, Reverend Saltzman explains how he, a Lutheran, came to receive Holy Communion in a Catholic church. (Hint: It required an archbishop.) He goes on to lament that, while Catholics are free in most cases to receive the sacrament in Lutheran churches, Lutherans are still barred from receiving in Catholic churches.

I read the same Saltzman essay Strange Herring (who’s in the “very, very seriously” camp) read, and had some of the same reactions. But since I am not now, nor have I ever been, a card-carrying member of the Lutheran party, I did not take time to do the take-down Strange Herring presented, from which the preceding block quote is taken.

I particularly like his quote of “Mary,” who commented on Saltzman’s essay:

Lutherans are welcome to take Communion on the same terms as everyone else. Make your profession of faith at the Easter Vigil and be received.

If you think your differences from us are too big for that, they are too big for you to receive.

The eventuality of Saltzman’s way of thinking – that no serious differences remain between Lutheran belief and Roman Catholic belief – if one takes schism as seriously as the Church always did until the centrifugal force of sola scriptura required turning it into a virtue, is what the late Richard John Neuhaus did 22 years ago: return to Rome.

My take on the Reformation is “Why, oh why, didn’t Luther & Co. return to the Church from which Rome is in schism?”