Science is (Not) Science.

A rather lengthy but worthwhile excerpt from Jackson Lear's new article at The Nation on Sam Harris' latest book:

Though they often softened their claims with Christian rhetoric, positivists assumed that science was also the only sure guide to morality, and the only firm basis for civilization. As their critics began to realize, positivists had abandoned the provisionality of science’s experimental outlook by transforming science from a method into a metaphysic, a source of absolute certainty. Positivist assumptions provided the epistemological foundations for Social Darwinism and pop-evolutionary notions of progress, as well as for scientific racism and imperialism. These tendencies coalesced in eugenics, the doctrine that human well-being could be improved and eventually perfected through the selective breeding of the “fit” and the sterilization or elimination of the “unfit.”

Every schoolkid knows about what happened next: the catastrophic twentieth century. Two world wars, the systematic slaughter of innocents on an unprecedented scale, the proliferation of unimaginably destructive weapons, brushfire wars on the periphery of empire—all these events involved, in various degrees, the application of scientific research to advanced technology. All showed that science could not be elevated above the agendas of the nation-state: the best scientists were as corruptible by money, power or ideology as anyone else, and their research could as easily be bent toward mass murder as toward the progress of humankind. Science was not merely science. The crowning irony was that eugenics, far from “perfecting the race,” as some American progressives had hoped early in the twentieth century, was used by the Nazis to eliminate those they deemed undesirable. Eugenics had become another tool in the hands of unrestrained state power. As Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued near the end of World War II in Dialectic of Enlightenment, the rise of scientific racism betrayed the demonic undercurrents of the positivist faith in progress. Zygmunt Bauman refined the argument forty-two years later in Modernity and the Holocaust: the detached positivist worldview could be pressed into the service of mass extermination. The dream of reason bred real monsters.

The midcentury demise of positivism was a consequence of intellectual advances as well as geopolitical disasters. The work of Franz Boas, Claude Lévi-Strauss and other anthropologists promoted a relativistic understanding of culture, which undercut scientific racism and challenged imperial arrogance toward peoples who lagged behind in the Western march of progress. Meanwhile, scientists in disciplines ranging from depth psychology to quantum physics were discovering a physical reality that defied precise definition as well as efforts to reduce it to predictable laws. Sociologists of knowledge, along with historians and philosophers of science (including Karl Mannheim, Peter Berger and Thomas Kuhn), all emphasized the provisionality of scientific truth, its dependence on a shifting expert consensus that could change or even dissolve outright in light of new evidence. Reality—or at least our apprehension of it—could be said to be socially constructed. This meant that our understanding of the physical world is contingent on the very things—the methods of measurement, the interests of the observer—required to apprehend it.

Getting Back To The Doctrine.

Collin Hansen writes at Christianity Today that "We are all Theologians" and examines the need for teaching doctrine to evangelical youths. Here's a clip from the article:

It might appear, then, that doctrine has no pull in this age that shuns indoctrination. Indeed, Smith and Snell find that young adults hold their religious beliefs in abstract, "mentally checked off and filed away." Doctrine does not determine their lives. Religion is about being good and living a good life, not believing the right things. But this approach draws a false dichotomy between belief and behavior. In fact, the idea that religion boils down to good works is itself doctrinal, if erroneous from an orthodox Christian perspective. It makes a doctrinal distinction by privileging Jesus' ethical teachings over his work on the Cross and in the Resurrection. It rejects Jesus' interpretation of his sacrifice as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). Young adults who buy into this view follow a well-worn path trod by liberal theologians in the last two centuries.

"The likes of Adolf von Harnack, Albrect Ritschl, Wilhelm Hermann, and Harry Emerson Fosdick would be proud," Smith and Snell write. "People, it is clear, need not study liberal Protestant theology to be well inducted into its worldview, since it has simply become part of the cultural air that many Americans now breathe."

No matter how hard we may try, no one can avoid doctrine. So no matter how bad its reputation, doctrine is a necessary component of Christian discipleship. The March Christianity Today cover story by Darren Meeks notes that Christians today prefer spiritual disciplines and works of mercy to discussing doctrine. Yet however valuable those acts may be, they cannot replace doctrine for spiritual formation.

Publishers have planned to release several resources that call Christians back to their doctrinal foundations. Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears wrote Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe, scheduled for an April release. J. I. Packer, a self-described catechist, has teamed with Gary Parrett to write Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way. Christians who ignore catechesis, or religious instruction, simply cede the task to teachers, professors, peers, and media. Kevin DeYoung tries to rehabilitate the Heidelberg Catechism as a teaching tool inThe Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th Century Catechism.

Prosperity Gospel and the Great Crash.

1. Read Hanna Rosin's article from last month's Atlantic, "Did Christianity Cause the Chrash?"

2. Catch commentary from the likes of Anthea Butler and Sarah Posner at SSRCs The Immanent Frame. Sarah's is here:

The prosperity gospel is a lot older than derivatives, credit default swaps, and other byzantine Wall Street “products” that leveled the financial markets. Moreover, the fact that humans—not God—dreamed up these contrivances doesn’t poke holes in the prosperity gospel at all, at least from its adherents’ vantage point. If you believe and sow your seed, God will reward you, even as the secular Masters of the Universe greedily orchestrate a global economic collapse.

Surely the prosperity gospel plays a role in persuading its followers to buy into risky financial schemes, including sub-prime mortgages. (You might not be able to afford this thing, but if you have faith and tithe, your mortgage payments will miraculously appear in your checking account.) But to argue that the prosperity gospel, no matter how prevalent it is in America’s mega-churches, brought enough sub-prime borrowers to the table that it “caused the crash” overlooks how our secular institutions can be just as faith-based as prosperity churches.

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In other words: Wall Street titans were banking on little more than a wing and a prayer, too. It’s the American way.

That’s not to say that prosperity hucksters aren’t just as driven by avarice as the bankstas; just because they puff up their claims with Scripture instead of spreadsheets doesn’t make them any less complicit in leading the gullible on a path to financial ruin.

And that’s also not to say that prosperity hucksters would not have found another way to squeeze blood out of the turnip that is many of their followers’ nest eggs, had they not convinced them that God would make sure they could make the balloon payments. The annals of investigative journalism are filled with the sad tales of personal financial crashes because—prosperity hucksters would claim—victims didn’t have enough faith.

The hucksters may not be the sole cause of this crash, but they’re surely responsible for plenty of personal crashes long before sub-prime mortgage brokers began preaching their own kind of prosperity gospel.

Know Your Christian History.

Chris Armstrong at Grateful to the Dead has a list of top ten Christian History books.

Jim Wallace Says He Speaks For All Christians.

From ChristianityToday, a report on the debate over aid in dying in Australia:

The vast majority of Christians are opposed to euthanasia and would be deeply concerned about last night’s passing of the second reading stage in the South Australian Upper House of a bill to legalise voluntary euthanasia, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) said today.

ACL Managing Director Jim Wallace said reported claims by the group ‘Christians Supporting Choice for Voluntary Euthanasia’ that many Christians support euthanasia give a false impression regarding the true views of the overwhelming majority of Christians.

“ACL has battled strongly against euthanasia being legalised for years at both State and Federal levels and before numerous parliamentary inquiries. In consulting with churches and Christian leaders we have been left in no doubt that the vast majority of Christians are opposed to euthanasia,” Mr Wallace said.

“It has become a tactic by some groups to assume a representation that they don’t have. We saw this in the charter of rights debate and we are again seeing this in the current debate over euthanasia in South Australia. These tactics are clearly designed to confuse people about the true stance of the overwhelming majority of Christians on these matters.”

Richard Hughes and the Kingdom of God.

Richard Hughes, author of Christian America and the Kingdom of God, talks about the Anabaptists, nationalism, Jim Wallis, health care reform, and the Texas Board of Education in a new interview at TheChurchofJesusChrist:

No nation, including the United States, can ever become the kingdom of God, simply because, as Reinhold Niebuhr taught us many years ago (MORAL MAN AND IMMORAL SOCIETY), all institutions, including all nations, are inevitably driven by self-interest. At the same time, I would hope that our people and our leaders could allow the biblical vision of the kingdom of God to inform both domestic and foreign policy. In other words, my dream for the United States is for a country that nurtures peace and pursues justice, especially for the least of these. But in order to achieve that dream, we have a very on long way to go.

The Center for Inquiry Says Blaspheming is Good!

The Center for Inquiry will draw attention in several major cities across the continent this Wednesday with its robust participation in International Blasphemy Day. Events are scheduled for Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Indianapolis, Washington, D.C., Austin, Tucson, Tampa Bay, and Amherst, N.Y.

Sept. 30 is the anniversary of the original 2005 publication of the Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. The fury which arose within the Islamic community following this publication led to massive riots, attacks on foreign embassies and deaths. Four of the cartoons were reprinted in Free Inquiry magazine in support of the public's right to free expression and criticism.
Participation in Blasphemy Day is part of the Center for Inquiry's larger Campaign for Free Expression, an effort to focus attention on one of the most crucial components of freethought: the right of individuals to express their viewpoints, opinions, and beliefs about all subjects--especially religion. "Placing religion off limits in social discourse is just another, gentler way of prohibiting examination and criticism of religion," CFI President and CEO Ronald A. Lindsay said. "In my view, all subjects of human interest should be open to examination and criticism by humans."