Embedded Files
( - previous issue - )
Apologia Report 14:26
July 9, 2009
Subject: Dawkins' latest: The Greatest Show on Earth
In this issue:
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE - report notes growth in Africa
ISLAM - appreciating distinctions between Sunni and Shia
MORMONISM - Time magazine finds its core theology "pretty complex"
ORIGINS - "Look out, creationists" -- Dawkins is at it again
REINCARNATION - parents promote their little boy as the reincarnation
of a WW II fighter pilot
---
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
"Africa contributes biggest share of new members to Christian Science
church" by Christa Case Bryant -- "The board appointed as president of
the church Allison Phinney, a former senior editor of the church's
periodicals. ...
"During his one-year term, Mr. Phinney will preside over a
membership that is growing most rapidly in Africa. This year, new
members were admitted from 30 countries, with the highest number of
applications coming from the US, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of
Congo, and Nigeria. ...
"Three years ago, the board of directors formed an international
planning team to coordinate efforts to support church activities
worldwide, says team chairman Doug Paul. Efforts include a dedicated
position to help groups register as churches in countries with
daunting bureaucracies and $1 million annually to send Christian
Science literature to more than 250 informal groups and branch
churches from Singapore to St. Petersburg, including 100 in Africa."
Christian Science Monitor, Jun 8 '09, n.p. <www.tinyurl.com/mjc46v>
ISLAM
With Iran so much a part of current world news, the Christian Research
Journal's recent cover story, "The Other Islam: Who Are the Shia?" by
Patrick Cate and C. Wayne Mayhall (32:2 - 2009, pp8-19), enjoys great
timing. Elliot Miller's introduction (page 3) explains why this
treatment is so important: "The past focus on Sunni Muslims is
explainable both by their greater numbers (Sunnis comprise ninety
percent of all Muslims; Shia ten percent [most of them living in
Iran]) and by the fact that since 9/11 virtually everyone in America
has been concerned about two Sunni Muslim movements: al-Qaeda and the
Taliban. However virtually everyone has also been concerned about Shia
movements, except they often do not realize that such movements *are*
Shia Muslim; if they do, it is doubtful that they could explain many
of the differences between Sunnis and Shiites." [4]
Also consider the recent National Public Radio segment "Are Senior
Clerics as Divided as Iran?" The intro reads: "Qom is Iran's holiest
city and a central point of the electoral crisis in the country.
Islamic scholar Reza Aslan, author of How to Win a Cosmic War [1],
discusses what's happening in Qom and with the Ayatollahs, and how the
country might move forward." <www.tinyurl.com/l3rs52>
MORMONISM
"The Church and Gay Marriage: Are Mormons Misunderstood? by David Van
Biema -- the subtitle could just as easily be, "Are Mormons
Understood?" - with about the same result. While digging for an
answer, Van Biema unearths significant detail on all fronts. Yet, as
for apologetics, in a section under "What Mormons Believe" LDS apostle
M. Russell Ballard Jr. (at a level of leadership just below that of
the church's prophet and president, Thomas Monson), is cited as saying
that LDS belief is "really pretty simple."
However, Van Biema objects: "Actually, it's pretty complex. Beyond
some (extremely) colorful details, there are two radical Mormon
theological deviations from conventional Christianity, both of which
have at least some bearing on the gay-marriage battle. The first is an
expansion of the drama of salvation. In creedal Christianity, Jesus'
divinity, incarnation, teachings, death and resurrection are the
entire point. Mormons, too, believe in Christ as Savior and model and
are as committed as any other Christians to his emulation. But they
also believe we existed prenatally as God's 'spirit children,' that
our earthly life is an interlude for learning and testing and that we
continue developing after death. The best Mormons may become in the
afterlife parents to their own batch of spirit children. 'As Man is,
God once was; as God is, Man may become,' goes the couplet by the
fifth Mormon President, Lorenzo Snow. This unusual scheme underlies
Mormon sunniness, industriousness and charity. Says Jana Riess, a
comparative-religions expert who converted to Mormonism....
"The second politically controversial Mormon teaching is the belief
in a living, breathing Prophet - in Salt Lake City. Prophets have even
more authority than Popes do in Catholicism; among other things, they
are able to add to Scripture." Time, Jun 22 '09, n.p.
ORIGINS
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, by Richard
Dawkins [2] -- "Look out, creationists. There's a new sheriff in town,
and he talks like an Oxford don.
"In fact, Dawkins gave up the Oxford chair in the Public
Understanding of Science in order to write full-time, and to spend
more time agitating against antiscience and pseudoscience. The author
opens with guns a-blazing, demanding what we might think of a Latin
teacher's being forced to prove that the Romans ever existed and, more
provocatively, a history teacher's having to give equal time to
Holocaust deniers: 'Fashionably relativist intellectuals chime in to
insist that there is no absolute truth: whether the Holocaust happened
is a matter of personal belief; all points of view are equally valid
and should be equally "respected." 'Nonsense and balderdash, cries
Dawkins, adding, against those who deny the factuality of evolution,
'Evolution is a fact in the same sense as it is a fact that Paris is
in the Northern Hemisphere.' As such, it would seem that the battle
for evolution should have long been over, but there are still deniers
aplenty. For them, Dawkins provides careful explication of selection -
natural, adaptive, human-induced et al. - and of evolutionary notions
such as the (much misquoted) survival of the fittest. The author
writes with terrific wit ('Cabbages are a vegetable affront to
essentialism and the immutability of species') and considerable
learning, but what is interesting here is his fire. Without the
strictures of academia, it seems, he relishes the opportunity to light
into his opponents. Whether anyone will stand up to refute his notions
remains to be seen, but for now Dawkins wins on points.
"A pleasure in the face of so much scientific ignorance - biology
rendered accessible and relevant to the utmost degree." Kirkus
Reviews, Jul 1 '09, n.p. [5]
REINCARNATION
Soul Survivor, by Bruce Leininger [3] -- as if kids nowadays didn't
have enough trouble developing a sense of identity, the promotional
copy for this book reads: "When details of planes and war tragedies no
two-year-old boy could know continued - even in stark daylight - Bruce
and Andrea Leininger began to realize that this was an incredible
situation. Soul Survivor is the story of how the Leiningers pieced
together what their son was communicating and eventually discovered
that he was reliving the past life of World War II fighter pilot James
Huston. As Bruce Leininger struggled to understand what was happening
to his son, he also uncovered details of James Huston's life - and
death - as a pilot that will fascinate military buffs everywhere.
"In Soul Survivor, we are taken for a gripping ride as the
Leiningers' belief system is shaken to the core, and both of these
families come to know a little boy who, against all odds and even in
the face of true skeptics, harbors the soul of this man who died long
ago." The publisher also notes that "Bruce and Andrea Leininger,
James' parents, live in Louisiana with their son James, who is now
nine years old." <www.tinyurl.com/mhqrxq>
-------
Sources, Monographs:
1 - How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the
War on Terror, by Reza Aslan (Random House, 2009, hardcover, 256
pages) <www.tinyurl.com/n3puxg>
2 - The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, by Richard
Dawkins (Free Press, September 2009, hardcover, 352 pages)
3 - Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot,
by Bruce Leininger, Andrea Leininger, and Ken Gross (Hay House,
September 2009, paperback, 288 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/mvch6u>
( - next issue - )
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse