Rachel & Tripp Talking 1 from tripp fuller on Vimeo.

Here’s Tom’s visit to Homebrewed Christianity and his appearance at Nick & Josh that other podcast.

Keith Ward: ‘Why There Almost Certainly Is a God: Doubting Dawkins from Metanexus Institute on Vimeo.

Clayton is a well known theist and Dennett an atheist, but the two thinkers did not merely decry each other’s positions for an hour. Rather, Clayton proposed that moderate theists such as him betray popular opinions about the war between religion and science because they agree with many of Dennett’s scientific, philosophical, and religious critiques. Given these agreements, atheists and moderate theists should be able to engage in rational philosophical discussion about their positions instead of angry polemics. Dennett agreed that such a result would be interesting.

The first half of the debate dealt with what counts as an acceptable explanation for natural phenomena like human intentions. Do we make free choices as it seems or do physical processes determine all we do? Both men espoused a position Clayton referred to as “broad naturalism.” This is the belief that many natural explanations, including those from human sciences, can be given for the different areas of inquiry in the world. So the creation of human cells is explained by chemistry and biology, but human agency is best explained in terms of genuinely free choices. Mutual assent to this position created the debate’s first odd moment because Clayton continually insisted Dennett affirms the “hegemony of the physical” in his explanations. This would mean Dennett is not a realist concerning the example of mental causation. Free choices only seem free. They are actually fully determined by physical processes scientists can investigate. However, Dennett and Clayton both claimed that human agency is a real phenomenon. Had Clayton misread or even not read Dennett’s work? Not likely.

The direction of Clayton’s explanations is upward toward more complex levels of reality while Dennett’s explanations always face toward their physical base. For Dennett, complex levels of reality are always dependent on proper physical functioning. For example, Dennett pointed out that when certain areas in the front of the brain are damaged humans do not make rational choices but behave more like broken machines. He thinks explaining how someone chose to perform an action is a nice ideal, but only makes sense if physical processes are properly functioning. Clayton, on the other hand, emphasizes the independence of complex levels of reality from agency all the way to religion. Once either appears in the world there is no way to reduce it to scientific explanations in terms of physical processes alone. Clayton is well-known for his defense of “emergence” theory, of which this talk of agency is an example. Freedom did not appear from nowhere. Certain biological combinations in the brain made it possible. However, once freedom emerged from that biological basis it became irreducible to its physical basis. The whole really is greater than the parts.
It is odd that Dennett would not discuss a possible misunderstanding of his work concerning the possible reduction of all phenomena to physical processes. But the fact that theologians like Clayton engage science indicates bringing theology into agreement, or at least away from conflict, with scientific knowledge is desirable. So it is more peculiar that Clayton emphasized points of difference when Dennett was willing to publically agree over the issue of freedom even if deeper differences may have been lurking. Differences can certainly lead to an illuminating discussion, but it is shocking that a popular atheist verbally agreed with a theist and the theist was the one insisting on language of disagreement. As a result, the important aspect of this debate could come from Dennett’s perspective. He had a calm discussion with a religious person whom he did not have to denounce after every sentence uttered.

Setting aside the possible disagreement over whether all phenomena can be reduced to science, the second half of the debate focused on religion and revealed that two different directions of explanation were present in the discussion. Clayton’s upward looking view leads him to at least attempt and give reasons for religious belief while Dennett’s constant consideration of physical bases stops his inquiry earlier than that. Those different directions of explanation then result in very different worldviews.

Philip Clayton accepts three dimensions to the religious quest that exist on a continuum: searching for altruistic community, philosophically questioning truth claims, and overall worldview. So religions foster a sense of community and cooperation and those communities should do their best to deliberate over whether their beliefs are true. But religious explanations are most interesting when those communal attachments and philosophical questions can be linked to an overall worldview and thus taken as religious accounts of reality. Since these dimensions are part of one epistemic continuum from natural science to philosophical questions and eventually religion, Dennett should at least consider whether Clayton has good reasons for religious belief and debate the matter. Clayton will not even accept dogmatic religious claims to know the nature of God because they betray his dimension of philosophically questioning truth claims and prevent rational discussion with non-believers. Dennett actually accepts such open-ended inquiry. He referred to philosophy as that done until it is known what the right questions are. In other words, exploring even when answers are not known is a good thing. He just sees no relation between this quest and theology.

The lack of connection with theology seems due to Dennett stopping at the level of altruistic communities in Clayton’s continuum. Dennett only disapproves of fundamentalist dogmatism leading to violence in the name of God. This makes him different than Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens who refuse to acknowledge liberal Christians as Christians (or that other non-theistic religions even matter) amidst their attacks on fundamentalists. Dennett, on the other hand, calls liberal Christians “benign” compared to their dangerous, in his view, conservative counterparts. Like a benign tumor their existence is unnatural but not harmful. Religion is a fine phenomenon if it fosters a cooperative moral society.
Believers may not enjoy being an unnecessary social function that just happens not to interfere with society. Still, it is remarkable that Dennett was open to discussing something besides fundamentalist religious groups. He explained that his own work has not addressed liberal Christians because they do not curtail the dangerous elements within their religion. They are like a nice restaurant covering up mafia activities. If Dennett praised the benign Christians instead of debating the fundamentalists, people would get hurt. Clayton clearly state this view is empirically false. He and other moderate theists join Dennett in criticizing extremist forms of theism and are proactive in fostering more moderate claims. For example, the science of evolution is being taught in many churches together with forms of theism that are compatible with it. Dennett’s expression of pleasant surprise over these facts is quite an achievement, given that he and other popular atheists have mostly engaged extremist and politically conservative forms of Christianity, largely ignoring the beliefs and practices of more moderate religious communities. Perhaps the stage has been set for further dialogue in the future.

Still, beyond admitting that altruistic communities are a good thing, Dennett questioned whether he and Clayton have real material to discuss. If the ultimate goal of Clayton’s quest remains a mystery beyond the reach of science and reason, Dennett believes their discussion becomes “intellectual tennis without a net.” Without a standard for measuring different positions, it seems unnecessary to spend great time and energy pursuing the hard questions of religious worldviews. What difference does God make?

In the end, this passing of two intellectual ships may be its own profound conclusion. Clayton interprets grappling with questions of ultimate importance and following where they lead as the heart of religious life. Secularists, Dennett says, also inquire into an ultimate reality … the universe and laws of nature … while living full moral lives and pursuing interesting questions about the universe. So Dennett does not need God. And since Clayton will not play the “faith card” to claim absolute truth and end the debate, Dennett interprets Clayton as a secular humanist who is trying to learn the most about reality and live as morally as possible. Is the internal logic of Clayton’s religious position and Dennett’s secularism really the same in the end? The theist views the atheist as pursuing a quest that is deeply religious, while the theist comes off as secular to the atheist. How odd.  But if Dennett is not right that secular humanists capture all that is meaningful in Clayton’s position, Paul Tillich might provide a useful mediating approach.

Tillich famously stated that every human has an ultimate concern … be it money, the entire natural universe, or God. Is that the real moral of this story? The religious person might be concerned with the ultimate ground of existence and try to understand it, while the secular person is content to view the universe otherwise. Still, agreeing to disagree may not be the final word. Given different ultimate concerns, Clayton would be right to insist on rational discussion regarding his movement through levels of questioning toward a religious worldview. Dennett would still be free to reject that view, but only after considering Clayton’s steps to get there. If Dennett still sees no reason to engage in metaphysical pondering where Clayton cannot help but try, a clear difference has emerged. Indeed, such grasping at the ungraspable may be the beauty and irony of the religiously committed person.

* Thanks to my friend and brilliant friend Ben Chicka for writing this up!

This coming Thursday and Friday the Society for Philosophy and Religion at Claremont (SPARC) will be holding its second annual student conference “Live Options in the Study of Religion” in Claremont, California. If you look at the schedule below and click on the links to read the papers (not all are available because some are currently under review for publication elsewhere) you will notice that we have an odd smorgasbord of topics represented. That is the point. We want this to be a new sort of conference that brings different approaches to learning about religion together in creative tension. Getting graduate degrees too often means ignoring a breadth of interesting work being done in other areas of research. We are going to fix that problem, or at least try. Anyone interested in the dialogue between religion and science should also note that the first day of the conference is devoted to that topic.

The conference is free and open to the public, so everyone is encouraged to attend. For out-of-towners, stay tuned for information about videos of the conference that will be put online after the event.

Thursday, March 25^th – Albrecht Auditorium, Claremont Graduate University

3:00-3:10

Welcome and Introduction

Benjamin J. Chicka, President of SPARC

3:10-4:20

Putting God Under the Microscope: Can There Be a Science of Spirituality?

Eric Kyle, Claremont School of Theology

Why We Fight: Evolutionary Reconceptualizations of Pierre Bourdieu’s Political Economy of Symbolic Power

Kevin McGinnis, Claremont Graduate University

4:30-5:40

The Place of Religion in Philosophy of Science: An Exploration and Assessment

Jim Sharp, Claremont Graduate University

Indigenous Religions and Science: New Conversations, Same Miscommunication

David Walsh, Arizona State University

5:50-7:00

Cantor’s Transfinites and Divine Infinity

Fady El Chidiac, S.J.

Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University

Lesbianism and Islamic Law: Examining the Boundary Between Love and Legality

Catherine Mary Lafuente, Claremont Graduate University

Friday, March 26^th – Burkle 14, Claremont Graduate University Drucker School

3:00-3:30

Keynote

What Has the Enlightenment to Do with the Reformation? Religion as Revealed, as Rational, and as Historical

Paul Capetz, Professor of Historical Theology, United Theological Seminary

3:30-4:40

The Organic Church as Parable of Jesus

Jeffrey W. Roop, Claremont Graduate University

Catholic-Mormon Dialogue: Intersections Between ‘Scripture’ and ‘Tradition’

Donald A. Westbrook, Claremont Graduate University

4:50-6:00

The Ethereal Etched into the Existential: Auerbach and Benjamin’s Literary Philosophy as Displayed Theologically by Tori Amos and Illogic
Jon Ivan Gill, Claremont Graduate University

‘Why Such a Big Deal?’: The didactic function of humor in Tibetan Buddhism

Manny Fassihi, Stanford University

6:10-7:20

Mark C. Taylor’s Religion without God: Coming After (the Death of) God

Tino Garcia, University of California at Santa Barbara

Kierkegaard’s Militant Christianity and Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil

John Altick, University of California at Irvine

Nancey Murphy argues that Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) has overtaken Freud, Feuerbach, Neitzsche, and Marx as the most articulate and viable opponent of a realist affirmation of God’s existence.  David Sloan Wilson states the evolutionary account forcefully when he said that, “evolution is fundamentally about the relationship between organisms and their environments.  In the case of religion, it is about the relationship between religious groups and their environments, conceived broadly to include physical, economic, and social factors.”

Pascal Boyer has said, ‘all versions of religion are based on very similar tacit assumption, and that all it takes to imagine supernatural agents are normal human minds processing information in the most natural ways.’  If you don’t get the feel there check out Paul Bloom’s article ‘Is God an Accident?’ where he says, ‘Religious teachings certainly shape many of the specific beliefs we hold; nobody is born with the idea that the birthplace of humanity was the Garden of Eden, or that the soul enters the body at the moment of conception, or that martyrs will be rewarded with sexual access to scores of virgins. These ideas are learned. But the universal themes of religion are not learned. They emerge as accidental by-products of our mental systems. They are part of human nature.”

I have been spending time asking these questions, reading some pages, listening to lectures, and just thinking (check the links).  I also read ‘believing primate’ and in the book you get a variety of scientific, philosophical, and theological engagements with these issues.  Below is a conversation between Paul Bloom and Michael Murray (one of the editors) where the basic distinctions of the book appear. The video is well worth watching if you are interested in CSR and religion.  If it’s interesting the book is well worth reading. The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion

Here is Nancey Murphey & Jeffrey Schloss (both in the book) in conversation.  It takes 12 minutes for them to get into it but it is enjoyable afterward. They composed an article together title, ‘Biology and Religion’ which you can find here. You can find the introduction to the book here.

Here‘s Clayton’s Pre-Debate Post \ John gives a super recap \ Philip‘s post-debate reflection \ Bob Rhodes reflects on the conversation \ newspaper writeup

One could call it providence as Daniel Dennett is coming to Claremont to give a lecture February 16, and it just so happens that Philip Clayton, philosopher and theologian, is a tenured professor there.  Why is this intersection so intriguing?  Well A few months ago at Cambridge University’s celebration of Darwin, Daniel Dennett attended a session on evolution and religion in which Philip Clayton was a presenter.  Afterward Dennett ended up blogging about Clayton’s presentation on Richard Dawkins’ blog and concluding that, ‘in short Clayton is an atheist who won’t admit it.’  While calling him an ‘anonymous atheist’ is a clever way to avoid actually having a substantive conversation, it also assumes that Dennett gets to define Christianity and determine who truly belongs in it (a popular New Atheist tactic).  This time Clayton is revealed to be an atheist because he doesn’t hold to all the traditional divine attributes such as divine omnipotence (of course there are plenty of Christians, including rather conservative ones, who recognize the origin of these omni-divine attributes being Hellenistic philosophy rather than anything specifically Christian).  After Dennett blogged on the disturbing experience of attending a session where people believe and think differently than him, Clayton posted his paper online and noted that:

I do find it a bit surprising that Dan chose not to mention any of the philosophical questions that we debated. Clearly his rhetoric style here plays to the usual readers of Richard Dawkins’ website who, as one can see, are lapping up his words. But it is a bit of a pity that Dan neglected to mention the call to dialogue, which was the central point of my paper and of our public debate. In fact, isn’t his choice of rhetoric instead of argument an instance of exactly what he is accusing theologians of doing? One can’t help but see some signs of a philosopher who has rather lost interest in philosophical debate.

Well maybe Dennett can get out from behind his pulpit and have a serious philosophical debate.  If he is right about Clayton being an atheist, then he may not only win the debate, but get Philip run out of his job, one focused on teaching theology to future ministers.  Of course Dennett can always do what he did last time…move on and rant online about it later.

Here‘s Philip’s blog invite!

Regarding the review itself, it’s a hard publication to get over in the States because it’s not published in any sort of electronic form. But if you’re ever in a library and are dying to read a book review, check it out.

Here’s a fun video of Philip Clayton talking with Spencer Burke about emergence, science, and the future of the church. If you watch it and think man that was serious camera work, then you will have to think Spencer’s editor because I am not a steady hand award nominee.

If you haven’t checked out Spencer’s show think fwd you will find a bunch of other videos for the viewing, along with questions for the asking.

You can order Philip’s new book, Transforming Christian Theology (in collaboration with me!) and then order copies for all your friends and family.

John Polkinghorne,

In a review posted at the New Humanist by AC Grayling you get a taste of the self-fulfilling hermeneutic imployed by the New Athiests when reading articulate scientists who likewise have faith.  After complaining about Plokinghorne’s use of the strong anthrophic principle (a legitimit criticism) and Christians who continue to interpet scripture in light of best scientific and historical data, Grayling shoots straight with his readers:

Thus in short, on the religious side of things you make up truth as you go along, by interpreting and reinterpreting scripture to suit your needs and to avoid refutation by confrontation with plain fact; and thus it is that Beale-Polkinghorne can claim that both science and religion seek truth.

Now if you don’t see a scientific fundamentalist heremeneutic being used let me rewrite it as if I was a Biblical Fundy.

Thus in short, these dimwit scientists keep making up truth as they go along.  They just keep interpreting and reinterpreting so-called evidence and data to suit their needs and to avoid refutation by confrontation with plain facts of scripture. Today we got a warming planet, but when I was in school they told me my areosal hair spray was going to lead to a global freeze…..

The point is not that science or religion should or shouldn’t impose on the other, that relationship can be handled elsewhere.  What bothers me is a form of science or religion that sees the truth it seeks to speak of as above or prior to interpretation.  I actually think science is privileged above other forms of knowledge because of its verifiability, but we shouldn’t forget that the interpretation of the data today can and will be different in fifty years.  It will be different because it is committed to truth. This continuing interpetive process is in fact how we make and keep our ideas clear.

Grayling cannot stand the idea of science and religion both seeking truth together and so his evangelical atheist rhetoric flares up:

I would call this dishonest if I did not think it is in fact delusion, which, since a kind of lunatic sincerity is involved, it rather palpably shows itself to be. And it happens that ‘lunatic’ is appropriate here, for the painful experience of wading through this book gave me an epiphany: that religious faith is extremely similar to the kind of conspiracy theory that sufferers from paranoid delusions can hold: the faithful see a purposive hand in everything, plotting and controlling and guiding, and interpret all their experience accordingly.

From my reading of Polkinghorne he is not attempting to reject or manipulate the eye towards scientific data, but to demonstrate the possibility of there being ‘more much more than meets the eye.’  Like many of his New Atheist counterparts, Grayling’s inability to tolerate a religous interpretation of the data leads him to avoid actually debating where the scientific data eliminates this interpretation.

Popular Science interviewed Polkinghorne and you can find that here.

I hope you enjoy listening to the audio and more than that I pray that Cobb’s voice will help inspire more of us to participate in the change we need.

Is it too late? Earth Day 2009 with John Cobb (Click to stream audio OR right-click and save-as to download the MP3)

REPOSTED FROM TRANSFORMING THEOLOGY (Comment There)

A recent study by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that, ‘Greenhouse gas levels currently expected by mid-century will produce devastating long-term droughts and a sea-level rise that will persist for 1,000 years regardless of how well the world curbs future emissions of carbon dioxide.’  The dramatic rise in CO2 is also making the ocean more acidic which has other drastic consequences. This is serious stuff and not something we can ignore any longer.

In just the last 200 years since humanity developed the technology able to contribute to this problem we have amassed consequences that will last over a thousand years.  We have already set ourselves on a tragic course that will greatly effect the world’s poor and our future generations even more.

While at first I thought comparing the ecological crisis to the Titanic was a bit much, after beginning to think about it more it might be more accurate than I thought.  Our overconfidence in human machinery, obsession with our own power, and ignorance of the world around us has brought us here.  We’ve already done so much damage, we can’t stall changing now.  This is indeed a conversation we need to have.

I agree with Barthian’s who confess that there is something particular in the revelation of God in Christ, but not in the rejection of religion as a whole, even Wilson notes some of religion’s important functions in human history.  I also agree with Wilson that religion has and will continue to change or transform through human history, it is indeed (at least in part) a construct of human existential needs and desires that is described and practiced through human communities and with human language.  That religion is really human however, shouldn’t be a threat to religion and our response as a people of faith doesn’t need to be either a rejection of the scientific endeavor nor a blanket acceptance of a scientific interpretation that we try to cram God into.  All truth is God’s truth and all our claims to it, scientific and religious, are partial and more or less functional.  A more functional religious interpretation of the world will engage and be transformed by the best science but in doing so I think we will find there is much we can say about religion than Wilson imagines.

Drew has a great blog post on the article you should all check out and so does Pastor Bob.  Of course there was this cool podcast I would recomend.