GOD, CHRIST: QUESTIONS & FAITH

Apple’s jPad (Jesus Pad)

I was reading about the Apple iPad in Newsweek online when I noticed all the ads for books about Jesus. It looked like automatically generated target advertising by Amazon. Why Jesus? Then I saw this paragraph that David Lyons wrote for the upcoming print edition of Newsweek for February 8, 2010:

What's wrong, or at least interesting, is why some of us expected so much more from a new gadget. I suspect this is because for some people, myself included, technology has become a kind of religion. We may not believe in God anymore, but we still need mystery and wonder. We need the magic act. Five centuries ago Spanish missionaries put shiny mirrors in churches to dazzle the Incas and draw them to Christianity. We, too, want to be dazzled by shiny new objects. Our iPhones not only play music and make phone calls, but they also have become totemic objects, imbued with techno-voodoo. Maybe that sounds nuts, but before the iPad was announced, people were calling it the "Jesus tablet."

The reference to Jesus is from David Carr of the New York Times who described the iPad as "the second coming of the iPhone, a so-called Jesus tablet that can do anything, including saving some embattled print providers from doom."

Has religious metaphor been adopted by techno-journalists?  Why the iPad is a Letdown - Newsweek.com

Reply to The Other Skeptic

Dear Other Skeptic:

I enjoyed your post and agree with much of what you said. Your primary point seems to be that there is no proof of God. I quite agree.

You wrote, “It defeats the purpose of faith when there’s ‘proof’.” Theologians have been saying that for many centuries. The great St. Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354-430) said essentially the same thing.

It could be pointed out that there is also no proof that God does not exist. But doing so raises the problem of who owns the burden of proof, the believer or the skeptic. I’m inclined to agree with the great Atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell that the proof lies with the believer. I’m okay with that because I don’t need proof.

I agree largely with your comments about Creationism and Intelligent Design (ID) and to some extent your comments about the probability of life evolving elsewhere in the universe and in a so-far-still-highly-speculative multi-verse. Yes, and of course, your comments on a fine tuned universe reflect the opinion of many scholars. But your facts need some work. The question is far from resolved, with some of the world’s greatest cosmologists, astronomers and theoretical physicists coming down on both sides of the issue.

You wrote:

For example, there is a laughable theory that states if you take a ruler that measures inches and stretch it across the universe. The ruler is supposed to represent the possible range of gravity. If the formula for gravity was just one inch off, then there would be no life anywhere. This is preposterously false. It was created not by a physicist, astronomer, or any other professional who could make those types of calculations. It was fabricated by a lawyer, a creationist lawyer. Everyone knows that astronauts do just fine where there is no gravity.

You are, of course, referring to Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. There are two problems. First of all you try to poison the well by implying that the gravity question in fine tuning was the invention of a lawyer, a creationist lawyer, no less. You are factually correct that the ruler analogy was proposed by Johnson, but wrong in thinking that because he is a lawyer he is unqualified to speak to the issue. He is only responsible for the analogy (you sound like those you most criticize). The underlying issue has been raised by many great physicists and cosmologists.

Martin Rees is considered by many to be England’s greatest living scientist and perhaps the world’s greatest cosmologist for his work on microwave background radiation in the universe, theories about the clustering of galaxies, quasars and black holes. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and its current president. He has identified six constants in nature such as the ratio of the strength of electromagnetism to that of gravity that if even slightly different would make the universe, as we know it, impossible. There would be no stars, no galaxies, no planets, and no carbon-based life. (Others have identified other constants in nature to the same effect but Rees’ selection dominates for now.)  Rees doesn’t necessarily think this implies design or the existence of God. But others do.

Stephen Hawking is a contender for the title of greatest of the living cosmologists. His blazing intellect is beyond question. And he describes just one of these relationship brilliantly:

We know that there has to have been a very close balance between the competing effect of explosive expansion and gravitational contraction which, at the very earliest epoch about which we can even pretend to speak (called the Planck time, 10^-43 sec. after the big bang), would have corresponded to the incredible degree of accuracy represented by a deviation in their ratio from unity by only one part in 10 to the sixtieth power.

The ruler analogy is actually a good one for what both Rees and Hawking say, even if it was created by a creationist with whom you and I otherwise disagree.

Your criticism of the Genesis accounts is fairly good, though you ramble too much. You might be interested to know that St. Augustine writing in the fifth century would have agreed with you in large measure. Many Christian believers today also agree. I’m okay with it, too.

The Shroud of Turin:

For some strange reason you decided to introduce the Shroud of Turin into this discussion. Here you tripped up rather badly on matters of fact. If we remove questions about God’s existence from the questions about the Shroud, the evidence becomes overwhelming. There is no need to appeal to miracles to explain the images. And claims that the Shroud is somehow evidence of a miracle, even specifically the Resurrection, is problematic. Believe what you want, but get the facts right.

Let’s look at what you wrote:

You wrote, “It is supposedly the shroud in which Jesus Christ was buried.” That is what is at issue. Okay. I agree.

You wrote, “He left a mark on the shroud as he floated through it on his way to heaven.”

The vast majority of scientists who think it is real or might be real do not think any such thing. This notion has been voiced in the public (oh, just incidentally by a lawyer). Most scientists and Shroud scholars say only that we have no idea how the image was formed. No idea! And we don’t mean by that that the absence of evidence is evidence of anything.

Oh, it should be pointed out that scripture refers to two different events: the Resurrection and the Ascension (into heaven). You meant the Resurrection. At least that is what some contend. Most believers in the Shroud are more open-minded on this point, however.

In 1988, the Shroud was carbon dated. It was determined, then, that the cloth was medieval. Hence it was declared a forgery. But, twenty years later, in 2008, Philip Ball, the former physical science editor for Nature, the acclaimed, peer-reviewed, international scientific journal that published the carbon dating results, wrote an interesting piece in Nature Online. He is writing as a scientist only:

It's fair to say that, despite the seemingly definitive tests in 1988, the status of the Shroud of Turin is murkier than ever. Not least, the nature of the image and how it was fixed on the cloth remain deeply puzzling.

Ball explains why it is murky. He gives two example. One is scientific; the other historical. His reasons are solid.

You did write:

Probably the most controversial evidence is radiocarbon 14 dating. Researchers have found that the shroud was made between 1260 and 1390 AD. This seems very reasonable because the “discovery” of the shroud was recorded around 1355.

Yes, and no, no, no, no. The earliest record of the shroud in extant historical records in Western Europe is in 1355. As Ball and countless others very well know there are many records of a shroud in Edessa, Constantinople, Athens and Besancon before 1355. The only question is this: Is it the same shroud? Today, the evidence is overwhelming that it is.

You wrote, “Some people claim that the cloth was either exposed to carbon monoxide, fire (which contains carbon dioxide in the smoke).”

Actually this has been fairly well refuted by Christopher Ramsey at the Oxford Radiocarbon Dating lab. This is not why the carbon dating was wrong. And Ramsey does agree that further studies are needed. Check your facts.

You wrote:

Even if the carbon dating was unreliable because of some event that made the shroud’s age somewhat inaccurate, there is other evidence that shows that the shroud is counterfeit. Walter McCrone, a leading expert in microscopy, was a part of the Shroud of Turin Research Project.

Actually, McCrone was not a part of STURP despite his claim that he was kicked out. He never accepted the agreement not to publish before studies were completed (fairly standard). He was therefore not accepted into the group. I have the official list and know many of the members of STURP. He was not part of STURP.

You wrote:

He found that the stains that is supposed to be blood of Christ is actually pigment (red ochre and vermilion tempera to be exact). Alan Adler and John Heller published an article opposite to what McCrone wrote concluding that the stains were blood. As it turns out, neither Heller nor Adler were eligible to make the assumption that the stains were blood.

Huh? Where do you get this? Heller and Adler (as well as many others) did numerous tests on the bloodstains. The late Adler was one of the leading experts on blood. He was eligible. They were all eligible.

All of the material cited below, and their publishing journals, are peer reviewed scientific journals. Incidentally, McCrone’s work is not peer-reviewed. Mark Anderson, doing a review, found that McCrone had misidentified both the red ochre and the vermilion. Further tests at the University of Nebraska also showed that McCrone was wrong.

It is human blood:

• S. F. Pellicori analyzed the spectral properties of the Shroud's image, the bloodstains, and non-image areas using ultraviolet-visible reflectance and fluorescence spectra.  These are highly reliable quantitative measurements based on reflectance and not visual interpretation. This is documented in Applied Optics (1980). pages 1913-1920.
• Alan Adler, an expert on porphyrins, the types of colored compounds seen in blood, chlorophyll, and many other natural products concluded that the blood is real. In collaboration with John Heller, the conclusions that the blood is real was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Applied Optics (also 1980). The heme was converted into its parent porphyrin, and this was confirmed with spectral analysis.
• Baima Bollone also found both the heme porphyrin ring of blood and the globulin in flakes of blood from Shroud samples, independently confirming the work of Adler.
• X-ray-fluorescence spectra showed excess iron in blood areas, as expected for blood.
• Qualitative microchemical tests for proteins were positive in blood areas but not in any other parts of the Shroud.

Various chemical tests by E. J. Jumper, A. D. Adler, J. P. Jackson, S. F. Pellicori, J. H. Heller, and J. R. Druzik are documented in a peer-reviewed scientific paper "A comprehensive examination of the various stains and images on the Shroud of Turin," ACS Advances in Chemistry, Archaeological Chemistry (1984)

You wrote:

Another reason to be more certain that the shroud is fake is that there are several traces of vanillin. Vanillin is the residue of decomposed lignin. This chemical is commonly found in medieval wear but not in older material. For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls were wrapped in material that did not contain vanillin. This and other evidence makes the accuracy of carbon 14 dating of the shroud more acceptable.

You got this backwards. There is no vanillin on the shroud. See the peer-reviewed scientific journal Thermochimica Acta (Vol. 425, pages 189-194). This is what Ball was referring to in Nature. The cloth cannot be medieval.

One more point about gravity. Your wrote: “Everyone knows that astronauts do just fine where there is no gravity.”

The question of gravity to which address yourself has nothing to do with whether or not astronauts or any form of life can live without gravity. If gravity was not what it is there would be no planets or stars or galaxies or most of the chemical elements that exist. This isn’t even questioned by any serious scientists at all. The only question is one of a designer and as you probably know that is why the speculation about a multi-verse has traction. Without gravity there would be no massive stars, the nuclear engines required to transform three helium nuclei into carbon by means of this triple-alpha process. Without carbon there would be no astronauts.

Quote for Today on the Atheist Bus Campaign (in Montreal and elsewhere)

In advertising the alleged non-existence of God, less than bright “Brights” are actually raising consciousness to God. Doh! . . . I have no problem at all with the Atheist Bus advertising campaign coming to Montreal. In fact, I look forward to it, as it will provoke discussion about God. Who would have thought that evangelical militant atheists would ever give God free publicity?

• Robin Edgar, The Emerson Avenger: The Atheist Bus Campaign *And* The Unitarian Church Of Montreal Get Reflected In The Montreal Mirror aka The Less Than Magic Bus That Takes Me To U*Us

A Welcome Perspective on the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS)

I congratulate Alonzo Fyfe who has written a significant article in his blog, Atheist Ethicist. I highly recommend it:

It appears that the atheist blogsphere is celebrating the results of the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey. It shows that the percentage of people who claim to have no religion has gone up from 14.2 percent to 15 percent.

Of course, for the sake of celebrating, we are going to ignore the fact that the survey that shows a 0.8 percent increase in the number of people who claim to have no religion has an error range of plus or minus 3 percent.

And we are going to ignore the fact that many atheists would disavow many others who claim "no religion" and subject them to as much if not more criticism as they do many of those who claim to belong to some religion or other.

And we are going to ignore the fact that the survey actually measures willingness to admit a lack of belief to a pollster which, in turn, presumes a willingness to admit a lack of belief to oneself.

My biggest lament is that all of this tribal "us" versus "them" energy could not be harnessed and put to work for peaceful purposes.

If all I knew about a person was that he was an atheist, then that would mean almost nothing to me. I am not one to assume that, just because a person does not believe in God, he is somebody who can be trusted. Nor am I prepared to assume that the fact that somebody believes in God means that he is a threat. So, I am not prepared to draw the conclusion that just because the number of people willing to claim that they do not follow an organized religion has gone up that the world is necessarily a better place.

We need to ask the question, "What kind of atheists are these?"

Are these the atheists who have perverted the teachings of Ayn Rand into a philosophy of life that says, "Take what you can, give nothing back."?

Or are these internalist atheists who believe that evolution has written a moral law onto their genes and all they need to do to determine if something is right or wrong is to contemplate how they feel about it. This is a frightening group of atheists because history gives us many unpleasant lessons on what a person can feel comfortable with.

My lament, as I said, is that this energy cannot be put to useful purposes. The divisions that I would most be willing to track are the numbers of people who are willing to protect children from harm versus those who seek to harm children. I am interested in the number of people willing to defend freedom of speech versus those willing to destroy it. The number of people willing to use deceit and rhetoric as a political weapon versus the number who prefer to give what, to them, seems true in an open court.

There is a message here for those of us who believe in God; for those of us who call ourselves Christians: What kind of Christians are we?

Technorati Tags: Atheism,Religion,Christianity,Ethics,Alonzo Fyfe

The Great Seattle Atheist Ad

I applaud the Atheist ad on the Seattle buses. So does Nick Spencer of Theos, the U.K. based public theology think tank. He writes in the Telegraph:

Wouldn't it be great to have adverts of this nature in the UK? Adverts that bore quotes from the great and the good that provoked thought and discussion on this most important of issues, rather than quotes or statements glibly telling us to enjoy our life or grimly telling us, in stentorian, Seventeenth century tone, that "the fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."

The quotation in the Seattle ads is part of a letter from Thomas Jefferson to his fifteen year old nephew, Peter Carr, in 1787. But there is more to the letter as Spencer points out:

If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort & pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you.

And as Spencer notes, “On the other hand:”

If you find reason to believe there is a god, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, & that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a god, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love.

And Jefferson concludes:

I repeat that you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, & neither believe nor reject anything because any other persons, or description of persons have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable not for the rightness but uprightness of the decision.

I have always believed that questioning and careful reasoning are important to a well-informed faith; just as it must be for some to a well-informed lack of faith. Read Spencer’s full article: What quotation would you choose? :: Nick Spencer

Jewish Perspectives

Keith Kahn-Harris from the Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths College has written a very interesting article in Ekklesia. It begins:

Jews rarely use the term ‘faith’ amongst themselves. Judaism is a practice-based religion in which action is foregrounded rather than belief. While of course Judaism has a core of beliefs and faith in God is part of Jewish theology, faiths and belief tend not to be emphasised when Jews talk about Judaism – even amongst orthodox Jews.

Plenty of religiously practicing Jews have no or only a hazy belief in God. Jewishness is a complex nexus of ethnicity, nationhood and religion and different types of Jews place different levels of emphasis on each of these elements.

For this reason, I, like many other Jews, feel profoundly alienated from debates about atheism and religion – Richard Dawkins and his ilk’s definition of religion fails to capture much of what Judaism is about. But I also feel quite alienated from much faith-based discourse, liberal or conservative.

In order to understand Jews’ relationship to ideas of liberty, it is important to understand that Judaism has both universalist and particularist strands. It is both concerned with humanity as a whole and with Jews in particular.

However, for most of Jewish history it is the particular that has dominated. Jews have generally lived in self-governing communities, often under constant threat of persecution, often second-class citizens. Jews had little ability to influence the wider societies in which they were living, let alone work for social justice.

This situation changed gradually following the dawn of European modernity in the eighteenth century. The gradual emancipation of Jews in European and ‘western’ countries in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, albeit that it was an uneven process with many reverses, allowed Jews to become part of the world as citizens. Jews have adapted and responded to the possibilities of modernity in both particularist and universalist ways:

Read on at Jewish perspectives on life and liberty | Ekklesia

Quote for Today on the Brain and God

The headline on the [New Scientist] article refers to the brain "creating" God, but one can argue, based on the same data, that the brain doesn't create so much as imperfectly apprehend.

• Jim Naughton of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington in The Lead

Stanley Fish on God and the Economy

In an opinion piece in the New York Times Stanley Fish, dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago and professor of law at Florida International University, writes:

Talk about the economy is everywhere, and the same things are being said. We’re in a deep hole. We may not be able to dig ourselves out. We’re underwater. Our assets are overwhelmed by our debts, which keep growing. The question is who or what can get us out of this mess? Some answer Obama. Some (a much smaller group) say Geithner. Some (in desperation) say China. But others say Jesus Christ.

Interesting perspective. He concludes:

This economy, in which funds depleted are endlessly replenished, is underwritten by a power so great and beneficent that it turns failures into treasures. Some economists identify that power as the market and ask us to have faith in it. God might be a better candidate.

At this point . . .

John Cleese on the God gene

Colbert Report: Father Jim Martin

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Fr. Martin: "When people feel more vulnerable, like in times of recession and poverty, their defenses are lowered so it is easier for God to break through."

S. Colbert: "You make God sound like an opportunistic virus."

Fr. Martin:  "It's more that we keep God at bay. We have our defenses. When they are not there any more, it's easier for God to break in...It's not that God is any more present, it's that we are more open."