Stages of Faith

I like this, from James W. Fowler's book:

I have found it useful to make a distinction between two kinds of reasoning.

The first I call the logic of rational certainty. This mode of knowing aims at objectivity understood as a knowing free from all particular or subjective investigation. Its truths need to be impersonal, propositional, demonstrable and replicable. The logic of rational certainty, however, is a misleading ideal when we speak about forms of knowing in which the constitution of the knowing self is part of what is at stake. The model of disinterestedness represented by scientific enquiry does not fit with the kind of knowing involved in moral reasoning or in faith's compositions. This is not to say that there is not a form of disinterestedness or 'objectivity' in moral and faith knowing. It is to say that this latter mode of knowing proceeds in a manner in which the knowing self is continually being confirmed or modified in the knowing. For the latter, more comprehensive form of knowing I have chosen the term logic of conviction.

In widening our understanding of knowing so as to include the logic of conviction, we must not capitulate to critics who see this as representing an anti-rational or irrational understanding of faith. Rather we need to see "reasoning in faith" as a balanced interaction between the more limited and specialized and the more comprehensive and holistic logics we have described.

Okay, I know, its wordy - but true all the same!

Brains can shrink too!

Homo floresiensis skeletons were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores. They date to within the last 100,000 years but the consensus (though contraversial) is that they are not modern humans. One of the interesting features of this example of Homo is that its brain size is smaller than its predecessors, showing how selection pressures don't always push one way - even though the general drift towards an increase in capacity remains true.

The image above compares one of the specimen skulls with a modern human example.

I thank You God

I thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(I who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
double unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

E.E. Cummings

Dawkins is right, Dawkins is wrong (part 2)

One of the issues here is quote mining - the searching out of quotes to back up an agenda even if they are taken out of context or the wider context ignored. In doing this Dawkins is applying to theology exactly the same techniques that Creationists apply to evolutionary biology.

Why wouldn't he, for example, use any of Luke 13? It's because it doesn't fit in with his agenda:

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Here Jesus is saying the exact opposite of what Dawkins is trying to suggest (and indeed the Rev). The point is that in a general sense our mortality is a result of our wrongdoings BUT that doesn't mean we have the right to label people as worse sinners because they have suffered more.

Or how about John 9? Why didn't Dawkins make reference to John 9?

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

Sorry Richard, but you're wrong again, and here is the reason why faithheads who weep Christian tears are indeed living out their calling. The Christian response is to weep and mourn over suffering, but it goes further than that - to try and bring comfort, help and support. Jesus healed the man and demonstrated to the discipes how to bring light into the world.

This is where Dawkins' comments stop being an interesting argument and actually become distasteful. It is widely acknowledged that Christian aid agencies are amongst the most efficient, caring and quick to respond NGOs you can find. It is also a fact that the Christian faith is all round the world motivating millions of people to offer aid in whatever means they can. What kind of person would sneer at that?

Finally, a quote from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks following the Asian Tsunami:

The religious question is not 'Why did this happen?' but 'What can I do to help?'