Impolite Company

"My Children Have Conquered Me"

Taken from Karen Armstrong's The Bible:  A Biography:

There could be no definitive interpretation of scripture.  this point was made in the very early days at Yavneh, when R. Eliezer was engaged in an intractable argument with his colleagues about a legal ruling (halakha) in the Torah.  When they refused to accept his opinion, R. Eliezer asked God to back him up with some miracles, and--mirabile dictu--a carob tree moved four hundred cubits of its own accord; water in a conduit flowed uphill; and the walls of the house of studies shook so violently that the building seemed about to collapse.  But the other rabbis were not impressed by this show of supernatural force.  In desperation, R. Eliezer asked for a bat qol ('voice from heaven') to adjudicate and the divine voice obligingly declared: 'What have you against R. Elizer?  The Halakah is always as he says.'  But Rabbi Joshua quoted a verse from Deuteronomy:  'It is not in heaven.'  The Torah was no longer confined to the celestial world; once it had been promulgated on Mount Sinai, it no longer belonged to God but was the inalienable possession of very single Jew.  So, commented a later rabbi, "We pay no attention to a heavenly voice.'  And furthermore, it had been decreed at Sinai: 'By a majority you are to decide', so R. Eliezer, a minority of one, could not override the popular vote.  When God heard that his opinion had been overruled, he laughed and said:  'My children have conquered me.'

Hasidic Judaism

I love it when I get involved in a project and it starts leading me to unexpected places.  For the last few weeks I've been traveling back to some places in my mind that I haven't visited for quite a while, the fundamentalist perspective on the Bible and some of the times I spent living that life.  To balance that out, I've been reading some other things, Armstrong's book (see below) for instance.  The Bible:  A Biography  and a conversation I'm having about it with a friend of mine has gotten me thinking about the Hasidim again and so I've been rereading Chaim Potok'sThe Chosen, set amongst the Jewish communities of New York City during World War II and following the trials of a brilliant young fish-out-of-water Hasid. 

About a third of the way through the book there's a chapter in which a teacher explains to his son the history of Hasidism and I really like this one passage that talks about the Ba'al Shem Tov (the "Besht"), the spiritual father of Hasidism.  I won't reproduce the whole of it, but here's a portion that talks about the Besht and his teachings:

Finally, he (Israel) began to travel and he became a Ba'al Shem.  he was kind and saintly and godly, and he seemed to want to help people not for the money they paid him but for the love he had for them.  And so they came to call him the Ba'al Shem Tov--the Kind or Good Master of the Name.  He mingled with the people and talked to them about God and His Torah in plain, simple language that they could easily understand.  He taught them that the purpose of man is to make his life holy--every aspect of his life:  eating, drinking, praying, sleeping.  Giod is everywhere, he told them, and if it seems at times that He is hidden from us, it is only because we have not yet learned to seek Him correctly.  Evil is like a hard shell.  Within this shell is the spark of God, is goodness.  How do we penetrate the shell?  By sincere and honest prayer, by being happy, and by loving all people.  The Ba'[al Shem Tov--his followers later shortened his name and called him the Besht--believed that no man is so sinful that he cannot be purified by love and understanding.  He also believed--and here is where he brought down upon himself the rage of the learned rabbis--that the study of Talmud was not very important, that there need not be fixed times for prayers, that God could be worshiped through a sincere heart, through joy and singing and dancing.  In other words, Reuven, he opposed any form of mechanical religion.  There was nothing new in what he taught.  you will find it all in the Bible, Talmud, and Kabbalah.  But he gave it a special emphasis and taught it at a key time to people who were hungry for this kind of teaching.  And these people listened and loved him.  Many great rabbis came to mock him and went away converted to his way of thinking .  When he died, his followers opened their own synagogues.  Before the end of that century, about half of eastern European Jewry consisted of Hasidim, as his followers were called, pious ones.  So great was the need of the masses for a new way to approach God.

Shaping the Bible

At the suggestion of a friend, I'm reading Karen Armstrong's The Bible:  A Biography, which is a very good foil for some of the other reading I'm doing these days as I'm reaching back into the fundamentalist library for a project I'm working on.  It's interesting to cross-reference Armstrong's work with Charles Ryrie's book, A Survey of Bible Doctrine and to check to see what Wilkinson's Talk Thru the Bible flatly asserts about the authorship of various books compared to Armstrong's scholarship. 

There's a paragraph in the introduction in which Armstrong talks about the guiding principles of exegesis for some of those who have shaped the selection and the composition of the canon that I liked a lot.  It was actually one of the things that caught my ear when Bill was talking about the book.  So I'm going to get off the page and let Armstrong's words speak for themselves, it's good stuff I think:

Some of the most important biblical authorities insisted that charity must be the guiding principle of exegesis:  any interpretation that spread hatred or disdain was illegitimate.  All the world faiths claim that compassion is not only the prime virtue and the test of true religiosity but that it actually introduces us to Nirvana, God or the Dao.  But sadly the biography of the Bible represents the failures as well as the triumphs of the religious quest.  The biblical authors and their interpreters have all too often succumbed to the violence, unkindness and exclusivity that is rife in their societies.

Does God Exist?

Simmer down, I'm not going to try to tackle that question, not even peripherally.  Rather, there's a video making the Facebook rounds with that title (Does God Exist?) that purports to tell a story about young Albert Einstein challenging an atheist teacher as a schoolboy.  Having read a bit about Einstein, I'd like to put the video into some historical context.  The quotes below come from the chapter on Einstein's childhood in Walter Isaacson's very enjoyable biography of Einstein, Einstein: His Life and Universe.  My conclusion is that while it's improbable that the video is factual, I won't go as far as Snopes in saying that the account is definitely false.  I think that the producers of the video could have accomplished much of what they were seeking to accomplish by not attributing the words to Einstein but there has been a longstanding battle to try to present Einstein as a believer in a Judeo-Christian God without a lot of evidence to support the assertion.  I'm assuming that's why they went with Einstein.

Einstein was raised without religious practice in his home, "Einstein's parents, on the other hand, were "entirely irreligious" and felt no compulsion to hedge their bets.  They did not keep kosher or attend synagogue, and his father referred to Jewish ritual as "ancient superstitions."  But while his home life wasn't religious, it appears that the schools he attended did include religious practice.  His first school was Catholic:

...Consequently, when Albert turned 6 and had to go to school, his parents did not care that there was no Jewish one near their home.  Instead he went to the large Catholic school in their neighborhood, the Petersschule.  As the only Jew among the seventy students in his class, Einstein took the standard course in Catholic religion and ended up enjoying it immensely.  Indeed, he did so well in his Catholic studies that he helped his classmates with theirs.  (p.15)

Time Out for History

Sometimes righteous anger can be a beautiful thing.  For instance, a FB friend of mine ranted about the kids on public transit yesterday who were bullying the transgendered person and how she told them off.  Nice!  This morning I read a post via The Edge of the American West (I believe the poster is one of The Edge's author's advisees) that laughingly and snarkingly takes down some historical fictions making the rounds these days in the guise of Truth.  He addresses the Boston Tea Party, the Right to Secede, We're not a Christian Nation, waterboarding and smiling at Chavez.  Here's the author's intro, U.S. History for Dummies:

So, as a public service of sorts, and because, after this morning's revelations, I've reached the limit of craven and/or patently stupid falsehoods that I can feasibly ingest over so short a time, some "U.S. History for Dummies." I expect most everyone who comes by this site with any frequency knows all this, but ya never know. Apologies for the didacticism in advance -- if this were this a Coors Light commercial, this would be where i vent. (And thanks to Lia for the timely visual tax lesson, above.)

What's that crytic comment about the visual tax lesson?  I must indirectly thank Lia as well because I'm going to reproduce it here.  It's an image from a Tea Party with arrows and small captions pointing out all the things that the protestor's tax money helped pay for in the small scene:

Presidential Passover

And if your son asks you in the future, saying, What are the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, that the L-RD our G-d commanded you? You will say to your son, We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt; and the L-RD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. The L-RD gave signs and wonders, great and harmful, against Egypt, against Pharaoh, and against all his household, before our eyes: And he brought us out of there to bring us in, to give us the land that he promised our fathers. -Deuteronomy 6:20-23

President Obama, family and friends celebrated the Pesach Seder in the White House Wednesday night.  Though in the picture it looks like they had nicer service and everyone was a little bit better dressed, it doesn't look all that much different from the celebration I took part in with friends.  If you want more information (including some pretty thin-sounding synthesizer versions of some of the songs), check out Pesach:  Seder over at Judaism 101.

Screening IVF Children for Serious Genetic Diseases

Genetic Future has a series of three posts spread out over the last few weeks looking at the moral questions surrounding genetic screening of IVF ("in vitro fertilization" for those of us who have to stop and think about what those initials stand for!) embryos for serious genetic diseases.  The conversation spreads to genetic screening in general and, of course, touches on the intersection between certain religious beliefs and such screening. 

I think it's pretty much a no-brainer that once such screening becomes affordable it should become mandatory in the case of IVF where they can test the embryos before implantation and much of the moral huff can be avoided.  Anyone who is willing to undergo IVF in the first place understands that there is an aspect of choice involved in which embryos get implanted and arguing that doctors should deliberately blind themselves rather than find out about risks of severe genetic diseases in specific embryos probably won't be too convincing.  The main problem that comes up is the idea of a slippery slope, that such testing would irrevocably lead to testing for less critical physical traits and then on to some sort of eugenics program.  Enter Gattaca. 

If this debate sounds interesting to you, here are links to the three posts, all of which have plenty of further links embedded and comments to stimulate your thinking:

Embryo Screening Should be Mandatory

Allowing Children to be Born with Severe Disease is Morally Equivalent to Child Abuse

Arguments Against Routine Screening for Severe Disease Genes

The Pope and Condoms: No Surprises

A friend of mine wrote on Facebook yesterday something to the effect of, "why should anyone be surprised that the Pope spoke against condoms as a method to control HIV/AIDS?"  I agree with her that there is nothing surprising about his comments but I do find his comments immoral, which is why I wrote about it.

It feels strange to label something immoral said by such a respected religious leader but that's really the only accurate description I can come up with.  It reminds me of those Jehovah's Witnesses who refuse to allow a child to have a blood transfusion (not all of them agree with this position)--children have died due to the dogmatic refusal to allow a transfusion.  They try to argue against transfusions on theological and medical grounds but the fact remains that people die as a result of this doctrine and the same is true of the Pope's statement on condom usage to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS--people will die as a result of this teaching.

HIV/AIDS spreads in Africa through the expected high risk sexual encounters but also, through transmission in families and other relationships that would be considered low risk elsewhere.  And, as is often the case, there's a tendency for men to not want to wear condoms, which can have devastating effects on women in a culture where male dominance can be pronounced.  The Pope's statement puts a holy imprimatur on the bias against condom usage and weakens the ability of women to have a meaningful say in this aspect of their sex lives.  On a continent where over six percent of adults aged 15-49 have HIV/AIDS (See the UN's 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic) and where myth and misinformation is more common than facts, the Pope's stance will result in more deaths. 

End of Life Care Choices and Religion

The New York Times is reporting that a study will be released today that shows religious terminal patients are much more likely to request aggressive efforts to stave off death compared to the non devout, Religious Belief Linked to Desire for Aggressive Treatment in Terminal Patients:

Terminally ill cancer patients who drew comfort from religion were far more likely to seek aggressive, life-prolonging care in the week before they died than were less religious patients and far more likely to want doctors to do everything possible to keep them alive, a study has found.

The patients who were devout were three times as likely as less religious ones to be put on a mechanical ventilator to maintain breathing during the last week of life, and they were less likely to do any advance care planning, like signing a do-not-resuscitate order, preparing a living will or creating a health care proxy, the analysis found.

I found this article very interesting, but I don't want to broadcast any of my personal conclusions on it because I think most any speculation as to intent would be pretty false.  Certainly Catholics are taught of the primary value of life and I can see that encouraging many people to seek to prolong their lives.  Many other Christian denominations have similar views but their could be a host of other reasons as well. 

The Pope on Condoms: Dogma Trumps African Lives

En route to Africa, the Pope stirred up global controversy by minimizing the effect condom usage may have in stemming the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.  The science news aggregation site 80Beats looks at the story in During Africa Visit, Pope Knocks Condoms for HIV Prevention:

...during his flight to Cameroon the Pope told reporters that AIDS is “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem” [BBC]. Instead, the solution lies in a “spiritual and human awakening” and “friendship for those who suffer” [AFP].

I think that the response to this that made the most sense and fully expressed the disregard for the lives of millions of Africans in the Pope's statement was from the leader of a health campaign in South Africa in the story, Pope Claims Condoms Could Make African AIDS Worse Crisis:

Rebecca Hodes, of the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, said that if the Pope was serious about preventing new HIV infections he would focus on promoting wider access to condoms and spreading information about how best to use them.

Hodes, the director of policy, communication and research for the campaign group, added: "Instead, his opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans."

The Holy Grail: Surviving Adolescence Intact

This post isn't going to be nearly as serious as that title sounds--I mean, how serious could it be with "The Holy Grail" in the title.  But then there's the Holy Grail that's the cup (or the wife of Jesus if you're into the whole Da Vinci Code thing) that folks have been trashing the house trying to find for years and then there's The Holy Grail, as in Monty Python's movie that has delighted many of us for much of our lives and annoyed the rest of you when we go off into flights of "Ni, ni, ni" or because we think that a good way to find out if a person is a witch is to try to build a bridge out of them.  So this is not a dead-serious post but a pointer to a funny post with some serious undertones.

I think that any of us who grew up in a strict atmosphere, particularly if it was strict because of a god or other deity who regularly said No! to all the things that looked like they'd be pretty cool, can remember little glimpses we got along the way of life outside of all of those rules.  For the author, she had Python on PBS, books from the public library and Mad Magazine.  For me, it was clandestinely listening to the radio at night (And the Cradle Will Rock!), hanging out at Tim's or McTaggert's house and listening to them play and the taste of the greater world I got from Governor's School one summer.  She couldn't watch the TV show SOAP because the Pope said she couldn't; I couldn't watch Mork and MIndy because they were living together.

Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

Wow, the title for this one sounds so Da Vinci Code.  But I'm not hiding any marriages with Mary Magdalene in this post, just an interesting interview I heard on Fresh Air today with a guy who wrote a book with the same title as this post's title.  For those of you in the know about things fundamentalish, Bart Ehrman went to Moody Bible Institute, then went on to study at Wheaton and picked up a PhD and M.Div. at Princeton.  Somewhere along the way, the differences in texts that became more difficult for him to reconcile began to pile up on him and went into serious study of textual criticism.  Around fifteen years after he could no longer believe in the inerrancy of scripture in a literal sense, he became an agnostic.  Which is to say, there are plenty of folks out there who won't agree with his perspective, so I'm not trying to trick you into listening to this under false pretenses. 

I didn't get to listen to the entire interview earlier but it really is good stuff, partly about his personal journey and partly about his new book, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them):

What came as a shock to me over time was just how little actual evidence there is for the traditional ascriptions of authorship that I had always taken for granted, and how much real evidence there was that many of these ascriptions are wrong. It turned out the liberals actually had something to say and had evidence to back it up; they weren't simply involved in destructive wishful thinking. There were some books, such as the Gospels, that had been written anonymously, only later to be ascribed to certain authors who probably did not write them (apostles and friends of the apostles). Other books were written by authors who fl at out claimed to be someone they weren't.

Check out the interview at The Gospel Truth:  Sometimes A Little Hazy:

Bible scholar Bart Ehrman says that the Gospels are at odds with each other on important points regarding the life, death and divinity of Jesus. In his new book, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) Ehrman examines how these contradictions affect our understanding of the historical Jesus — and of the authors of the Gospels.

Science's Blind Spot

Isn't it fun to use a term like "science" as a generalization about all of those who identify themselves as "scientists" or who tend to think of themselves as rational in the way they view the universe?  Of course it is!  I've just discovered a series of (so far) thoughtful pieces on the science v. religion debate that tries to get rid of the "v" between the terms and replace it with an "and".  And I'm all for that.  There is both common ground between the scientific and the religious and there are also exclusive areas for each realm to happily operate without interference by the other--coexistence can be good.  So, as I'm sure you're aware by now, anything constructive from the dialogue I run across I'll be posting here (yes, as well as some of the more combative things that I find interesting). 

Today's treat comes from Adam Frank via the Discover blogs, The Sullen and the Silly:  Beyond the Science v. Religion Debate, Part II:

These prejudices limit science and its response in the science v. religion debate. If we are not careful, we run the risk of being just as biased as those we condemn in their dismissal or disregard for science. Yes, the term “religion” is often colored by the taint of power and politics, but the lived experience of a spiritual dimension in human life is so common that to ignore it is just foolish. It’s an old, old feeling that speaks to an aspect of human being that is elemental. People encountering a sense of the sacred in the world represents a fundamental experience that has been constant across 50,000 years of culture. It is also an experience shared by millions of open-minded, thoughtful people today.

Jubilee and Debt

Some time in the past month or two, I was watching a PBS show about the growth of the modern economic system and the part I watched was focused on how the incredible economic expansion of the past couple of hundred years occurred because of the growth of credit.  Debt.  Loans.  Without freely accessible credit, I probably wouldn't have a computer right now because they most likely wouldn't have been developed.  I most likely wouldn't be living in this house and I wouldn't have a car (though if that person hadn't t-boned and totaled my old Civic,which was paid in full, I wouldn't have had to have bought another one.  grrrrrrr.).  And yet for so much of history, lending money for interest was regarded as sinful by the Church and was relegated to back alleys and led to the prominence of Jews in banking because their rules on lending money were a little more flexible. 

Evangelicals and Sex--the View from Outside

Which is to say that the view in the article I'm linking to is pretty critical but it provides a lot of links to various Christian resources that are talking about sexuality.  My friend Robin recently wrote a six-part series of posts on sexuality that were part dialogue with herself and part dialogue with her faith and church that I highly recommend for its candor--here's a link to the first one and if you like it, you're on your own to get to the next ones:  To Be Woman.  I'm not going exploring the links provided in the article but I can only hope that at least some of them treat sexuality as openly as she does in her posts (she also has some resource links in her final post in the series, Where We Go From Here).

Here's an excerpt from the article, "Sex-Crazed" Evangelicals Talk Spanking and Anal Sex:

Wait, come again?  Sex-positive evangelicals?  Well, sort of. While they're not bringing in enough numbers to drown out the dominant attitude of shaming, there does seem to be a trend in the evangelical community of promoting more and better sex within marriage -- for the good of the marriages.  There are now Christian sex shops, Christian sex advice columns, and Christian sex blogs.  Most of it is tame compared to secular counterparts, but the fact that it exists at all gives pause to those of us who spend quite a bit of time wrangling with evangelicals who want to ban abortion, restrict contraception, put virginity rings on girls, and teach nothing but abstinence-until-marriage.

Creation Debate? Thanks, but No Thanks

I know, I know, I feel like I've been beating a dead horse in all this evolution and what-not posting lately but there's been a lot of fascinating stuff out there due to Darwin Day and I'm not going to hold off for the sake of appearing like I'm not beating up on someone.  I don't have the chops to beat up on anyone in this particular fight and, if you check out the post that I link to, it'll be fairly clear that the evolutionists don't need my help. 

The link is to a post detailing an exchange between a representative of the Discovery Institute (Disco!) and a member of the biology department of the University of Vermont. UV is the school where Ben Stein withdrew as the commencement speaker after much protesting, mainly due to Stein's roles as writer and actor in the movie Expelled:  No Intelligence Allowed.  On the heels of that, Disco wanted to do up a creation v. evolution debate and Prof. Gotelli wasn't having any of it.  Though the Disco invite was relatively polite, it apparently came on the heels of some serious dissing of Prof. Gotelli through the Disco PR machine, so the professor was none to gentle in his response, How to Respond to Requests to Debate Creationists:

Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren't members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.

North Dakota House Passes Unconstitutional Law Banning Abortion

The law according to Roe v. Wade and as modified by the later Casey decision stipulates that the states cannot create an undue burden preventing a woman from exercising her right to choose an abortion.  The ruling language actually comes from the Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which gave the states more latitude to regulate abortion than Roe allowed them.  Here's the language from Casey (an incredibly convoluted ruling with pluralities and partial opinions, no consensus compared to the 7-2 ruling in Roe):

To protect the central right recognized by Roe while at the same time accommodating the State's profound interest in potential life, see id., at 162, the undue burden standard should be employed. An undue burden exists, and therefore a provision of law is invalid, if its purpose or effect is to place substantial obstacles in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.

 According to a story on MSNBC, Anti-abortion Measure Says Fertilized Egg is Human:

A bill approved by the North Dakota House says a fertilized human egg has all the rights of a human being.

The legislation would have the effect of banning abortion in North Dakota.

Changing the law so that a fertilized egg has all the rights of a human being, effectively making abortion murder, creates a substantial legal burden preventing a woman from seeking an abortion and is therefore unconstitutional according to the standard created by Justice O'Connor.  We'll see if the ND Senate agrees that it's worth wasting money on a pointless legal battle.

Men and Women Sin Differently

The Vatican has published a report based on confessional surveys that it claims indicates that men and women sin differently.  Without getting theological, I found the report interesting on cultural grounds that kind of go along with some of the things we've been talking about in terms of socialization and gender differences.  Here's the scoop on how we sin, Two Sexes "Sin in Different Ways":

Msgr Giertych said the most difficult sin for men to face was lust, followed by gluttony, sloth, anger, pride, envy and greed.

For women, the most dangerous sins were pride, envy, anger, lust, and sloth, he added.

I find it interesting that the number one sin for both genders goes along with what I would think of are the ways that the sexes are supposed to sin.  Men are culturally supposed to be ruled by their insatiable need for sex, a need so overwhelming that we supposedly can't stop once we get started.  Women are supposed to be only concerned with appearances and pride in self.  Since the study was based on confession, the survey is really more about how people view themselves than any actual catalog of sinfulness--you tell the priest about the sins you think the priest expects you to commit.  Which isn't saying that there isn't really a correlation between this list and the sins people actually commit, I just think that more accurately is a secondary correlation rather than the primary measurement of the survey.

Kissing Fish Logo

A friend of mine used to collect different versions of the Jesus Fish and Anti-Jesus Fish car magnets and logos and so I've gotten in the habit of noticing them.  The other day, I saw one I'd never seen before, though it apparently has been around for awhile.  It wasn't just a magnet, though, it was on the side of a white van and it looked like this:

I don't know anything about the website (click on the picture to travel there) or the quality of the science he peddles there--he does seem a little over enthusiastic.  Which is cool, I guess.  I just looked at his speaking schedule and he was in Austin over the weekend, which I guess would explain the van with the logo.  I don't endorse it, as I haven't read it, but here's a quick bit about his book, Thank God for Evolution:

A movement has been growing over the past few decades that takes our common creation story -- the epic of cosmic, biological, and human evolution revealed by science -- as the basis for an inspiring and meaningful view of our place in the universe. Rev. Michael Dowd, “America's evolutionary evangelist,” is at the forefront of this movement. This well informed, thoroughly researched, and inspired book proclaims a gospel billions of years old. It builds bridges, provides guidance, and restores realistic hope for virtually everyone, regardless of belief or worldview.

Discussion of Evolution and Religion

A few weeks back I mentioned that the Center for American Progress was going to have a round table discussion on the intersection between religion and evolution and how and whether the two can make peace.  Well, the discussion came and went with no sort of link to a podcast or anything but I kept checking.  Today, The Feed Demon came through with a link to the podcast.  It's a hefty mother scratcher, around 119 Mb, and I'm still waiting it to finish downloading but if you're interested, here's the linkage:  Evolution, Transcendence, and the Nature of Faith:

Charles Darwin, and the legacy of his work describing evolution and natural selection, is often distorted for political ends. But as Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Susan Thistlethwaite explained yesterday, the spheres of science and religion are not in conflict, and a look at Darwin’s own life can help untangle the thorny cultural history of evolution. “Few people seem to remember that Darwin graduated from seminary,” she said. Thistlethwaite spoke as a panelist at the Center yesterday, “Evolution, Transcendence, and the Nature of Faith,” which considered Darwin’s legacy for both science and religion, and the impact of evolution on public policy.

She and was joined by Arthur Caplan, the Director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, David Sloan Wilson, the co-founder of the Evolution Institute and a professor of evolutionary biology at Binghamton University, with CAP Senior Fellow Rick Weiss moderating the discussion. Sally Steenland, a senior policy adviser to CAP’s Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative, noted in her opening remarks that over half of the U.S. and British populations reject Darwin’s theory of evolution, which has serious consequences for education global competitiveness.