21AR26-28

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AR 26:28 - "Science" journal finds a real-world fossil "mess"

In this issue:

BUDDHISM - tracking the secular path

FASCISM - who's who against the evangelicals of yesterday

ORIGINS - "Human Origins Stories Are Not Compatible with Known Fossils"

PHILOSOPHY - living with sin, apart from theology

Apologia Report 26:28 (1,533)
July 14, 2021

BUDDHISM
If you follow the clues, you'll understand something about the universal path taken to religious secularism. In Shambhala's promo for Secularizing Buddhism: New Perspectives on a Dynamic Tradition edited by Richard K. Payne [1], we learn that this is an "essay collection on the development and influence of secular expressions of Buddhism in the West and beyond. How do secular values impact Buddhism in the modern world? What versions of Buddhism are being transmitted to the West? Is it possible to know whether an interpretation of the Buddha's words is correct?" Herein, "opposing ideas that often define Buddhist communities - secular versus religious, modern versus traditional, Western versus Eastern - are unpacked and critically examined."

On the universal road to secularism only "reflections by contemporary scholars and practitioners" are considered. Their "reinterpreting and reimagining Buddhism" takes in everything from the mindfulness movement to whether rebirth is an essential belief. These "modern understandings" weigh whether Buddhism is best understood as "a religion, philosophy, [a] lifestyle choice," or "purely a Western invention." Just don't hold too tightly to any conclusions in this "ever-evolving discussion," because almost any option is available.

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FASCISM

Some conflicts remind us of others. In Kevin J. Madigan's new book, The Popes against the Protestants: The Vatican and Evangelical Christianity in Fascist Italy [2], it seems the roles have changed in our day. Now it's the fascists against the evangelicals, and many feel the popes have already been turned.

Did you know that in the years immediately after WWII there was an "alliance between the Catholic Church and the Italian Fascist regime in their campaign against Protestants"? Yale University Press explains the "fascinating, untold, and troubling story of an anti-Protestant campaign in Italy that lasted longer, consumed more clerical energy and cultural space, and generated far more literature than the war against Italy's Jewish population. Because clerical leaders in Rome were seeking to build a new Catholic world in the aftermath of the Great War, Protestants embodied a special menace, and were seen as carriers of dangers like heresy, secularism, modernity, and Americanism - as potent threats to the Catholic precepts that were the true foundations of Italian civilization, values, and culture. The pope and cardinals framed the threat of evangelical Christianity as a peril not only to the Catholic Church but to the fascist government as well, recruiting some very powerful fascist officials to their cause."

(Madigan <www.bit.ly/3eefxJF> is Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School.)

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ORIGINS
"Evolution Evangelists Skirt Evidence, Commemorate Darwin's Descent of Man" by John Stonestreet with Roberto Rivera (BreakPoint, May 17 '21) -- "Darwin's work was, essentially, speculation based on very limited physical evidence. Darwin's successors were to find the evidence needed to support his conclusion.

"That task, as it turns out, hasn't gone all that well. At least that's the conclusion of a recent study <www.bit.ly/2UL5pBj> published in the journal Science. Researchers from The American Museum of Natural History conducted the study and summed up its findings <www.bit.ly/3dhTzVn> with this devastating headline: 'Most Human Origins Stories Are Not Compatible with Known Fossils.' (This has apparently been changed to "Review: Studying Fossil Apes Key to Human Evolution Research")

"In other words, multiple explanations for human origins are all held as true, but many are incompatible and contradictory." Verdict: "They simply can't all be true."

Another way to say this is that "the fossils are so different that they cannot be ancestors of modern primates, much less human beings. And, this isn't just the reality when it comes to human evolution. As my colleague Shane Morris noted, 'The more you look at the tidy evolutionary stories linking one group of organisms to another, the more you see this same pattern unfold.' ...

"The real-world 'mess' described in the article flatly contradicts the unshakeable confidence that often characterizes naturalistic evolutionary statements about human origins. ...

"Bluntly, the evidence simply does not warrant the level of confidence that often accompanies Darwinian explanations of human origins. ...

"To their credit, the authors of this study on the science of human origins, just in time for the 150th anniversary of Darwin's book on human origins, acknowledge the state of evidence and admit the 'mess.' Darwinian evangelists should do the same." <www.bit.ly/3zZWBYj>

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PHILOSOPHY
How is human moral failure viewed by philosophy? In his book, Sin [3], Gregory Mellema (professor emeritus of philosophy, Calvin University) "delivers a wide-ranging and detailed exploration of how philosophy understands and explains sin" according to Publishers Weekly (Jun 7 '21) [5].

"Mellema is mostly concerned with Catholic categories of sin, but he also uses Julia Driver's categorization of Islamic sins and Robert Nozick's view of sin having a symbolic value to move beyond specific traditions. A useful summary of Alvin Plantinga's complex 'free will defense' grounds his unpacking of the problem of evil, in which he uses J.L. Mackie's 'deductive problem of evil' to explain moral evils as those 'resulting from sinful action.' Examples from the minor (how littering connects to a 'vicious pattern of behavior') to the severe (how racism and the Holocaust form society-wide sins that create 'collective guilt') help illustrate his points."

University of Notre Dame Press offers us this volume because "Most of the scholarly literature on sin has focused on theological issues, making book-length philosophical treatments of the topic hard to find." Herein we have a "summary of what contemporary philosophers are saying about the relationship between the traditional theological category of sin and contemporary philosophical ethics."

Besides the familiar topics covered which "include the doctrine of original sin, accessory sins, mortal (or cardinal) sins, and venial sins," Mellema "examines Islamic codes of ethics" which presumably would include the curiously Kosher-like Halal food regulations in Sharia law. <www.bit.ly/3wcOxA6>

If this piques your interest, be sure to consider Shariah and the Halal Industry, by Mohammad Hashim Kamali [4].
Postscript Jul 31 '21: Also consider "Does China Sell ‘Halal Organs’ Harvested from Muslim Uyghurs to Saudi Arabia?" <www.bit.ly/2VkjQwg>

Mellema's final chapter "surveys the teachings of six major world religions concerning sin." A closing remark attractively describes the book as a "concise introduction to sin." (No pushing to be first in line, please.)

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Secularizing Buddhism: New Perspectives on a Dynamic Tradition, by Richard Payne (Shambhala, August 2021, paperback, 360 pages) <www.bit.ly/3ho9HWF>

2 - The Popes against the Protestants: The Vatican and Evangelical Christianity in Fascist Italy, by Kevin Madigan (Yale University Press, hardcover, August 2021, 368 pages) <www.bit.ly/3wbTysI>

3 - Sin, by Gregory Mellema (Univ of Notre Dame Prs, August 2021, hardcover, 130 pages) <www.bit.ly/2TkK3KG>

4 - Shariah and the Halal Industry, by Mohammad Hashim Kamali (Oxford Univ Prs, 2021, hardcover, 352 pages) <www.bit.ly/3hc9nLG>

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SOURCES: Periodicals

5 - Publishers Weekly, <www.ow.ly/lBcRE>

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