Fired for acknowledging evolutionary science: Bruce Waltke

Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) Professor Bruce Waltke was forced to resign because he observed that faith and evolutionary science are compatible in a video in which he said, according to a reconstruction of his remarks by USA Today:

If the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult ... some odd group that is not really interacting with the world. And rightly so, because we are not using our gifts and trusting God's Providence that brought us to this point of our awareness.

His remarks had to be reconstructed because Waltke was apparently driven by the "culture of fear" which pervades the evangelical community to ask the BioLogos Foundation, which had posted the video as part of their advocacy of science's compatibility with faith, to take it down. And they did, yet Waltke was still compelled to resign.

Neither the video nor its contents should have come as a surprise. It wasn't Waltke's first run at the subject [1, 2]

The reaction is a surprise in part because Waltke isn't otherwise a liberal, as Tony Cartledge explains:

Waltke is by most measures a very conservative scholar. Though he accepts a theistic version of evolution (acknowledging the reality of evolution while trusting that God guided the process), he also believes in an inerrant Bible and a literal Adam and Eve. But even that is too big a stretch for the most ardent inerrantists, leading to RTS's over-the-top response.

Perhaps Waltke's use of the word "cult" was the step too far.

If so, the reaction to his comments gives it legs.

[H/T: Tony Cartledge]

The Lancet seeks ‘Redemption for the Pope’

The Lancet, one of the world's most prestigious medical journals, calls for Pope Benedict XVI to retract his science-distorting statement that condoms may "increase" the HIV/AIDS problem.

Concluding, it said [registration required]:

Whether the Pope's error was due to ignorance or a deliberate attempt to manipulate science to support Catholic ideology is unclear. But the comment still stands and the Vatican's attempts to tweak the Pope's words, further tampering with the truth, is not the way forward. When any influential person, be it a religious or political leader, makes a false scientific statement that could be devastating to the health of millions of people, they should retract or correct the public record. Anything less from Pope Benedict would be an immense disservice to the public and health advocates, including many thousands of Catholics, who work tirelessly to try and prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS worldwide.

The unusually strong position indicates how badly the post-facto attempt to rewrite the Pope's statement backfired, and how attempts to generate a scientific argument in his favor have failed.

Addendum

Dr. Kalpana Sabapathy, HIV advisor for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) explains the medical value of condoms.

Pharyngula applauds, of course.

Martin E. Marty on 'Creation Care'

American Lutheran religious scholar Martin E. Marty writes about Evangelicals and the Environment:

This week I stumbled upon a little book which prompts a Sighting of one way some evangelicals are dealing with the environmental crisis and the future. It's Lindy Scott, ed., Christians, the Care of Creation, and Global Climate Change (Pickwick), based on a conference at Illinois' Wheaton College, often called the flagship evangelical liberal arts college-one of several flagships. The only "known" contributors are Wheaton President A. Duane Litfin and super-scientist and up-front evangelical, ex-Oxonian Sir John Houghton, who spoke and wrote on "Big Science, Big God." The rest of the essays, reports, and proposals are from students and graduates of Wheaton and its kin and kind.

One of the essayists therein is student Ben Lowe, who copes with the issue of evangelicals shying away from environmental concerns. Marty relates some evangelical environmental hangups and hints at the answers:

1. The environment isn't really in crisis." Lowe lists seven patent "degradations" of the climate, and agrees with Calvin De Witt that "the common agent...is human action."
2. "Everything's going to burn up anyway." This is the word of the "Eschatology determines ethics" apocalypticists, whom he counters effectively.
3. "Fear of paganism, nature worship and panentheism." This case is a bit blurry, and demands more careful examination than he gives it, but his report is accurate.
4. "Higher priorities: save souls, not whales." This is the oldest standard evangelical put-down; Lowe and others in the book really take that one on, and down.

Creation Care has a growing following amone Southern Baptists too.

Science, Creation Care, re-enchantment and re-connection with our natural world

Cheryl Bridges Johns of the Church of God Theological Seminary on creation care and reconnecting to the natural world:

“I believe that we can re-enchant the world,” she said. “As a person of faith, I believe I can live an enchanted life of faith, a spirited life, where I see, sometimes as the ancient Celts, that the veil between this world and the world that is to come getting very, very thin in certain places. And sometimes I see that in nature and it’s a glorious expression of that which is to come.

So creation care and caring for creation, to me, means that we become enchanted, we become re-enchanted,” Johns continued. “We can be great scientists and wonder. We can be astute physicians and wonder. We can be wonderful people, who are teachers and lawyers and pastors, and wonder, can’t we?”

There's more.

Cometary beauty sings across tonight's sky

Comet Lulin "should be a sweet binocular sight" during this once-in-a-million-years visit.

Detailed viewing information is available from Sky and Telescope.

Out of (not just) our heads

Alva Noe in his book "Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness" argues:

Our culture is obsessed with the brain—how it perceives; how it remembers; how it determines our intelligence, our morality, our likes and our dislikes. It’s widely believed that consciousness itself, that Holy Grail of science and philosophy, will soon be given a neural explanation. And yet, after decades of research, only one proposition about how the brain makes us conscious—how it gives rise to sensation, feeling, and subjectivity—has emerged unchallenged: We don’t have a clue.

His complex, unparadoxical argument is [oversimplification warning] that consciousness is our acts as we perform, perceive and indeed merge into them with every sensible aspect of ourselves, unfolding through time.

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