Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Thursday, October 13, 2011

A Leap of Truth, Part 5: Framing the Debate


July 27, 2011

This week we feature the next clip from the upcoming documentary “A Leap of Truth”, directed by filmmaker Ryan Pettey. As Ryan wrote in his accompanying post for the film’s first clip, our goal for the film is to put something proactive on the table to help motivate an elevated conversation above the unnecessary “war” between science and faith. It is our sincere hope that, above all else, the film can become a focal point for some of the big questions that inevitably arise at the intersection of science and faith. We believe Ryan's work will inform faith and enrich discussion.

To help foster such dialogue, we are once again including several discussion questions with this week’s clip. In the transcript below, you’ll find several prompts that are meant to help viewers dig deeper into the material being presented. Mouse over each highlighted region and a question will appear on the side. We encourage you to "pull up" this page and watch this video with your friends, your churches, your small groups and Sunday School classes, your pastors -- or anyone else for that matter – and take some time to discuss what is being said (and maybe even what isn’t). It is best to think about this in groups. You may not all agree, but you will find yourselves engaged in fruitful and spirited conversation. And it is this kind of conversation that will help move the science and faith discussion forward. 


A Leap of Truth - Framing the Debate


Click link above to view video


Jeff Schloss: “So why are Christians nervous about evolution and why do we even use a phrase like the ‘e’ word. The word itself has a negative connotation in many groups.”

Alister McGrath: “I think in the States you have a culture war between forces of religion and secularism, and what has happened is that some people in that debate have seen science as a weapon to be used against religion. So, the first casualty in this culture war, I am afraid, has been a proper understanding of what science is and then how it relates to religion.”

Nancey Murphy: “One of the concerns that evolutionary biology raises for some Christians is the view that because evolution is a long drawn out process and because the evolutionary biologists themselves say that evolution is not toward anything—it is just from origins and it is not directed—that that somehow removes God’s purposes from the universe.”

Alister McGrath: “I think we find atheists arguing that evolution is fundamentally a random, directionless, purposeless development, and therefore, that means that there is no intrinsic meaning to human existence. We are simply the random outcome of an essentially random process.”

Jeff Schloss: “Are those, in fact, genuine entailments of evolutionary theory or does that involve philosophical moves that are arguable on the grounds of philosophy, and not on the grounds of the evidence for evolutionary theory? That is a conversation, I regret, that Christians haven’t had very deeply.”

Ard Louis: “Christians are hearing what non-Christians are telling them about what evolution means, and they are believing it. Underlying it are, in fact, often a worldview or philosophical assumptions that say it is all purposeless.”

Alister McGrath: “The point I would like to make in response to that is that that is a very superficial reading of things—that is simply saying, ‘Look, we can’t scientifically discern purpose or meaning, so we draw the conclusion that there is none.’ It is extremely important to make the point that the idea of meaning or purpose is not an empirical notion. It is not something that you observe; it is something you infer.”

Nancey Murphy: “The science is, by design, unable to talk about purposes. Evolutionary Biology is a science that only looks at the question of how one life form develops from another life form. It doesn’t have the sort of perspective you would need in order to see whether there is or is not purpose there. Science by its very definition cannot make pronouncements either for or against religious truths.”

Alister McGrath: “And that is why it is extremely important to emphasize that the scientific method, when properly applied, is neither theistic nor anti-theistic. It is simply about trying to offer explanations for what we find in the world—proximate explanations, not ultimate explanations. Ultimate explanations begin to ask deeper questions like, ‘Why is the universe as it is?’ That is where we can start to talk about God.”

Michael Ramsden: “I think what has happened in the last couple decades is that we have lost sight of the overall history the context of this debate, and then that has then fueled a continued misunderstanding about the contemporary debate, and it instilled this sense of war between Christianity and science—that these two things are battling each other, they are fighting each other, and they are at odds with each other. So, the options are look—be pre-modern, go live in a cave, and believe in God or embrace reality, welcome the new world, and be an atheist. Whereas actually what the facts, what the figures, what everything else shows is that that is not actually correct.”

John Polkinghorne: “There is a sort of myth in modern society that when Charles Darwin published his great book The Origin of Species in 1859 that all the scientific people shouted ‘yes’ and all the religious people shouted ‘no.’ That is not true on either side, and in particular, there were religious people who from the start welcomed Darwin’s ideas. Charles Kingsley, who was a clergyman friend of Darwin’s, said, ‘Darwin has shown us that God had done something clever. Rather than producing a ready-made world with the snap of divine fingers, God had brought into being a world so full of fruitfulness and potentiality that creatures could be allowed to be themselves and to make themselves. We have to recognize that God acts as much through natural processes as in any other way. The idea that somehow the creator of the world, who ordains the character of nature, does not work through natural processes is really a silly idea.

Alister McGrath: “In light of the deeper Christian narrative, everything makes sense if we assume there is a purposeful God, who in some way is directing his creation towards the outcomes that we now see.”

Ard Louis: “One of the really big difficulties in looking at all this stuff about creation and science is that we take a lot of our own feelings about ourselves and put them in. We think that where we come from determines who we are and how we should live. I think that is the reason why a lot of Christians intuitively would prefer man to be made in an instant because somehow they feel that where we come from determines who we are. Therefore, if we were made in an instant that would be more glorious than if God made us over time. But I think that is wrong, the Bible tells us that are value comes from what God thinks about us, not by the details of how we are made.”

Chris Tilling: “Humans are explicitly stated to have come from the dust of the earth. So, in terms of our constitution, we are no different from the animal kingdom. What is different according to the Genesis account is that God enters into relationship with humans. It shifts the focus away from who we are, to who God is, and it seems to me that that is more faithful to the Christian gospel.”

John Polkinghorne: “I think that Christian people are genuinely seeking to serve the God of truth. That means that they have a very important investment in truth, and they need to welcome truth and not be afraid of truth in whatever sort it comes. Now, not all truth comes through science, but some of it does, and it is very sad to see people serving the God of truth who are turning their backs on certain types of truth.”






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