22AR27-07

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AR 27:7 - Our post-Christian reality, a "never before" crisis

In this issue:

AMERICAN RELIGION - conservatives found to be more independent than liberals

EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE - NASA is interested in your reaction to this potential discovery

Apologia Report 27:7 (1,560)
February 16, 2022

AMERICAN RELIGION
"Christianity Declines - But Not 'Spirituality'" by Rod Dreher <www.bit.ly/33ma5SC> -- his take on the Dec 14 '21 <www.pewrsr.ch/3GrOMg2> Pew Research report. "The secularizing shifts evident in American society so far in the 21st century show no signs of slowing. The latest Pew Research Center survey of the religious composition of the United States finds the religiously unaffiliated share of the public is 6 percentage points higher than it was five years ago and 10 points higher than a decade ago.

"Christians continue to make up a majority of the U.S. populace, but their share of the adult population is 12 points lower in 2021 than it was in 2011. In addition, the share of U.S. adults who say they pray on a daily basis has been trending downward, as has the share who say religion is 'very important' in their lives. ...

"The recent declines within Christianity are concentrated among Protestants" concludes Dreher.

Terry Mattingly (GetReligion, Jan 8 '22) observes: "A trend this massive will affect almost every area of American life, including politics." Dreher concludes: "America continues to transition to its post-Christian reality. ... We have never before faced a crisis like this. ...

"People want a silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. That doesn't mean that there isn't hope, and that we are powerless. ...

"One of the most interesting, and unexpected, developments is that in the US, relatively few of these people who are falling away from Christianity are becoming atheists. Rather, they are cobbling together a bespoke bricolage religion, one designed just for them. QAnon is a politicized pseudo-religion. There's all kinds of lunatic syncretism going on."

Mattingly connects all this with the report "3 Surprises from New Research on 'Progressive' and 'Conservative' Christians" <www.bit.ly/35H4xmp> from The Gospel Coalition's Trevin Wax (Nov 9 '21). "This focuses on research reported in a new book from New York University Press....

"The title of the book is One Faith No Longer: The Transformation of Christianity in Red and Blue America <www.bit.ly/3upj8gE> and the authors are sociologist George Yancey of Baylor University and Ashlee Quosigk, a visiting scholar in the Department of Religion at the University of Georgia.

"The thesis: Divisions between conservative and liberal Protestants have become so wide that churches on both side of this split radically different goals and approaches to core theological issues. The reality is two warring belief systems." Mattingly points out that "the primary lens in this book is doctrinal, not political."

Wax writes that "we hear that conservative evangelicalism has become overly politicized and partisan, unable to speak to power.... [W]e're wrong to assume that the answer to this politicization will be found by turning to the Christian left. On the contrary, progressive Christians who fit this description are more, not less, politically minded than the conservative Christians. ...

"Conservative Christians are more likely to 'defy political orthodoxy' within their camp, broadly defined, than are their liberal counterparts. ...

"[T]heologically conservative evangelicals [have] major disagreements on political policy.

"Such is not the case for progressive Christian leaders. 'The only political issue where multiple bloggers differed from the general political progressive orthodoxy was abortion,' the authors found.... Their conclusion: 'There are more paths by which conservative Christians defy conservative political ideology than paths by which progressive Christians defy progressive political ideology.'"

Mattingly concludes: "Now, think back to the Dreher piece and the Pew numbers. Evangelicals are losing some members into the new world of 'nones,' 'nothing in particulars,' atheist-agnostics and the religiously-affiliated - but the liberal and/or Mainline Protestants are losing way more." <www.bit.ly/3AXBR4d>

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EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE

"The link between religion and belief in extraterrestrial life has grown in recent years. A research study from Scientific American found that faith in either a religion or extraterrestrial life may come from the same human impulse to find a deeper meaning in life." So reads Emily Brown's "NASA Has Enlisted Theologians to Prepare for Alien Interactions" <www.bit.ly/32VdqId> for Relevant magazine (Dec 29 '21).

"More and more Americans believe in the potential of intelligent life existing on other planets. A Pew Research study released earlier this year <www.pewrsr.ch/3sdjO68> shows that two-thirds of Americans believe that intelligent life exists on other planets. Younger Americans are more likely to believe in the existence of aliens."

Recently, "NASA has asked theologians at the Center for Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey, to determine how major world religions would potentially respond if humans were to make contact with aliens."

This wasn't the first time. "In 2014, NASA awarded CTI a $1.1 million grant to study worshippers' interest in and openness to scientific inquiry called <www.go.nasa.gov/3oQ00EY> the Societal Implications of Astrobiology study."

Digging deeper, "Rev. Dr. Andrew Davison, a University of Cambridge religious scholar and one of the 24 theologians enlisted to help with the project, believes that if or when alien contact happens, "it will be useful to have thought through the implications in advance." (As if there is any reason to expect it will lead to anything other than an increase of conflicting opinion.)

"The group will examine how various religious groups would react to news of alien interactions in order to be prepared for potential contact, although there is no indication that that interaction would be happening soon."

That's for sure. According to Michael Guillen (a triple-PhD in mathematics, physics, and astronomy) in his recent book Believing Is Seeing (featured <www.bit.ly/3uEe74f> in AR 26.41), astronomers "estimate there are *roughly* 100-200 billion galaxies in the universe" (emPHAsis ours). So, most people wonder - as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked in 1950 - "Where are they?" in reference to other life forms. "This head-scratcher is called the Fermi Paradox" (148).

Guillen explains that astronomers have come up with the term "exoplanets" as shorthand for extraterrestrial planets, and they have "found evidence for more than 4,300 other worlds."

However, according to NASA, "So far, our home is unique in the universe" <www.go.nasa.gov/3AVEVhb> for its ability to support life. (And they have continued to reduce the number of other potential worlds, with it diminishing to 2,974 as of this writing according to their site.)

Guillen says he first became seriously interested in exobiology as a result of having Carl Sagan as a professor and Frank Drake as a member of his dissertation committee. "One of the chief lessons I learned from them is that there are at least two reasons why it's nearly impossible to answer the question...." Discussion follows which explains the first reason, an origin from outer space; and the second, Darwin's 1871 speculation of molecules cooked in a pond long ago. The second of the two eventually leads to a discussion of the odds behind exobiological life existing at all.

To do this, Guillen introduces the Drake Equation (yes, the above Drake) for "a rough estimate of how many intelligent civilizations are likely to exist in the Milky Way galaxy alone." The answer is a range of about 1,000 to 100,000,000 intelligent civilizations.

However, "we find no hard evidence." The reason for this is "According to a team of researchers at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute <fhi.ox.ac.uk>, it's because we've been assigning overly optimistic numbers to the Drake Equation" (155). Their answer is a very slim median chance number: a decimal point followed by 34 zeros and an eight at the end. Incomprehensibly small.

Guillen's response is classic. He knows of "A book that squarely takes on the question: 'Are we alone?' and gives us the definitive answer: No, we are not." That book is the Bible.

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