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Apologia Report 14:8
February 25, 2009
Subject: "God’s Problem" weighed and found wanting
In this issue:
MIND SCIENCE MOVEMENT - a "magisterial" history from Catherine Albanese
ORIGINS - new guide to the controversy a "somewhat problematic" presentation of options from a Christian perspective
THEODICY - dismissing Bart Ehrman's "problems" in dealing with universal pain and suffering
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MIND SCIENCE MOVEMENT
A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion, by Catherine L. Albanese [1] -- W. Clark Gilpin begins his review of this "magisterial" book by noting: "'Combinativeness,' writes Catherine Albanese, not only characterizes the spiritual energies of metaphysical religion but also identifies the importance of metaphysical religion for the larger shaping of religion in the United States. ... The combinative synergies began in the colonial period, as European astrology, Hermetic speculation, and Masonic ideology encountered and interacted with African practices of conjure and Native American spirituality. From these multiple points of origin, Albanese pursues American metaphysical discourse into nineteenth-century Transcendentalism, spiritualism, Theosophy, New Thought, and Christian Science, completing her narrative with an analysis of the New Age movements of the twentieth century."
At the core of the Mind Science movement, "Mind ... designated not simply personal mental capacities but a pervasive, dynamic quality of the universe as a whole. Metaphysical religions characteristically assumed that individual minds participated in immanent energies of mind that permeated the universe, making the self more integrated and whole and linking the material world to invisible realities."
Albanese concludes that "For American religious historians, 'the metaphysical habit of combination provides a large historiographical clue about how to make sense of the spiritual life of the nation.'" Journal of Religion, 89:1 - 2009, pp106-108.
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ORIGINS
The Evolution Controversy: A Survey of Competing Theories, by Thomas B. Fowler and Daniel Kuebler [2] -- in his opening paragraph reviewer Michael A. Buratovich remarks that "While some of the claims of [the documentary film Expelled [3], hosted by Ben Stein] are almost certainly overblown (see www.tinyurl.com/dkqk3a>), it probably cannot be written off completely. The origins debate still strikes at the heart of who we are, and disagreement over this issue gets people hopping mad. Many onlookers simply shake their heads and say that it is all too complicated for them. Where can readers go to learn more?
"Into this gap, two scientists, Thomas Fowler, an engineer, and Daniel Kuebler, a biologist, have written a guide to the Creation/evolution options from a Christian perspective. Their goal is to inform without necessarily making proselytes. The book is well organized, and for the most part, rather easy to follow." The authors separate the combatants into four categories: Neo-Darwinian, Creationist, Intelligent Design, and Meta-Darwinian. With significant understatement, Buratovich notes that "These classifications serve the authors' purposes, but they are somewhat problematic." Readers are more likely to understand the first three than they are the last. Buratovich explains that "The Meta-Darwinian school is a category created by Fowler and Kuebler and represents all neutralists, advocates of punctuated equilibrium, evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), endosymbiosis, and complexity theory. ...
"Meta-Darwinists affirm natural selection and its ability to change gene frequencies in populations, but do not view it necessarily as the major force in shaping organisms. Thus the differences between Neo-Darwinists and Meta-Darwinists are more over the rate of evolution and the magnitude of the role played by natural selection, which renders this division somewhat artificial. It also detracts from the crux of this controversy, which is between a naturalistic approach to origins and one that requires some type of divine intervention. ...
"The book has a textbook-like feel, and the writing is, in places, somewhat dry. This will make the book a tough slog for the general reading public. ... Several chapters consist of large summaries of scientific literature that draw some conclusions that are over-generalized, not nuanced sufficiently or fail to note present controversies." Another criticism is that "not all hypotheses are worth of equal weight. At times the authors wish to give credit to hypotheses that simply deserve no credit. ...
"[T]he book misses a primary problem with alternatives to evolutionary theory - scientific assertions must pass through the flames of peer-review and colleague confirmation before they are admitted into a classroom. Theories have to earn the right to be heard. Just because someone has asserted a theory and given it the patina of scientific rigor does not secure it the right to be taught. ...
"In the end, Fowler and Kuebler have written an interesting book that succeeds in telling the evolution controversy story. The tone is measured and objective, and devoid of the vitriolic polemics that surround the origins debate. Even though their treatment of the Creationist and ID schools is less skeptical than it should be, Fowler and Kuebler try hard to be fair, even with those with whom they might disagree." Christian Scholar's Review, 38:2 - 2009, pp301-303.
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THEODICY
God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer, by Bart D. Ehrman [4] -- reviewer William H. Willimon, United Methodist bishop of the North Alabama Conference, finds this book "an awful lot of fuss to reach so banal a destination." It is "a lively, though thoroughly conventional and utterly predictable, dismissal of Jewish and Christian views of God [and yet] a real page-turner." In it, Ehrman "assumes a position of moral and intellectual superiority to just about everyone who is unlucky enough not to be a tenured professor in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. ...
"We learn that suffering has 'haunted' Ehrman ... and that it is the reason he lost his faith [which Willimon describes as] Christian evangelical fundamentalism." Referring to Ehrman, Willimon notes that "the professor ventured forth on [a spiritual] journey that he apparently considers heroic. ...
"While reading God's Problem, I kept asking myself, why bother? There are no new insights or discoveries here. All of this is common knowledge to anyone who has taken a few Bible classes in any first-rate, state-funded, secular department of religion. And if one no longer believes in God, why attempt theodicy in the first place - who cares whether the God who isn't is just or unjust, caring or uncaring? ...
"Ehrman proves the dictum that old fundamentalists never die; they just exchange fundamentals and continue in their unimaginative, closed-minded rigidity and simplicity. ...
"Ehrman appears to have a low tolerance for intellectual ambiguity of any sort. He demands logic as he defines it, and finding the God of Jews and Christians to be caught in a web of contradictions and irrationality, he therefore dismisses God. Ehrman showed this inability to tolerate ambiguity or interpretive dissonance in his book Misquoting Jesus [5] as well. Trouble is, ambiguity, dissonance and conflict are the ususal way that scripture presents its peculiar truth." Further, Ehrman "has a tin ear for the literary nuance and subtlety" of the biblical texts to which he refers.
"Even though God's Problem is addressed to an audience that is uninitiated into the issues raised by theodicy and is written in a disarmingly simple, engaging style, Ehrman's relentless modernistic reductionism and oversimplification quickly become annoying. ... Without much argument, he assumes that suffering is the whole point of the Bible." Yet, Ehrman seems ironically oblivious to how people who revere the Bible are "unconvinced that the question of suffering is the only question worth asking. ...
"Ehrman's answer is the one that we modern, educated, affluent North Americans love, now that there's no God but us: 'to work to alleviate suffering wherever possible and to live life as well as we can.'" Willimon finds this faith in "humanity" amazing in the face of recent world history. Christian Century, Dec 30 '08, pp34-36.
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Sources, Monographs:
1 - A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion, by Catherine L. Albanese (Yale Univ Prs, 2008, paperback, 640 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/da9jw9>
2 - The Evolution Controversy: A Survey of Competing Theories, by Thomas B. Fowler and Daniel Kuebler (Baker, 2007, paperback, 384 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/dkh8mc>
3 - Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (DVD, Starring: Ben Stein, Director: Nathan Frankowski, Studio: Premise, Release Date: Oct 21 '08, Run Time: 95 minutes) <www.tinyurl.com/bs8wb2>
4 - God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer, by Bart D. Ehrman (HarperOne, March 2008, hardcover, 256 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/ar4ecp>
5 - Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the New Testament and Why, by Bart D. Ehrman (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005, paperback, 256 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/aj5fn4>
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