Human Evolution. How Does it Fit with the Recent Discovery of the genus, "Homo Naledi?"

Growing up as a conservative evangelical Christian I had been taught to consider the story of human evolution as spurious to the Word of God. Over the decades I have reconsidered all the arguments for special creation and against evolutionary creation and now deem my earlier education misdirected. That I may now rightly hold to progressive creationism (as opposed to immediate creationism) and consider it "divinely supernatural and special."

That the Creator God of the universe had supernaturally decreed creation's possibility using the operands of randomness and chaos and be ruled by the teleological principle of life as "always tilting towards biologic struggle and survival" regardless of the (toxic) eco-environments this struggle might occur within. As example, oxygen was a deadly toxin to evolutionary life at one time. As such, at all times the equation of "life" will be tilted towards the principles of creative "freedom" within a weak entropic system (which posits ultimate chaos) against a strong entropic system (which posits ultimate determinism) thus allowing for an evolutionary progression whereby the Sovereign Creator may have fellowship of a kind with His creation.

This then is the scientific teleology of evolution by the decree of its Creator God as proceeding from His very being and essence of love. A chaotic system always tilted towards life of some form. To the Christian, this teleology might take its ultimate form in a chaotic cosmic/natural system driving towards biotic enrichment, thriving biotas, and creative imagining. This may also be known as the Christian hope, which is a kind of theological eschatalogy coupled with Jesus' rule (I prefer the idea of divine participation) of love and goodwill with mankind and creation itself. Thus, evoloution's teleology can unfold toward the Christian hope of loving fellowship between, within, without, and everywhere about, all things (what the process theologian might know as panentheism's complex of driving relationships).

Once realizing this, I have lately, in recent years, worked towards describing how this progressive evolutionary creation may exist both on a doctrinal level as well as on a scientific one without going beyond the bounds of modern science (excepting, of course, that I write of it from a theologic and not an agnostic, or a/theistic, viewpoint).

And so, in today's posting, I wish to further explore the idea of human evolution through its taxonomical graphs and charts of recent discoveries of the 2.8 million year old homo naledi (star) species. A remarkable discovery found in an ancient graveyard deep underground by a nimble anthropological team of spelunking women who made this phenomenal discovery happen.

Question 1. Why is the chimpanzee closer to the homo genus than the gorilla? And where do orangutans fit in to this zoological chart?

The homo genus has been characterised exclusively as a genus of "bipedal apes" commonly known as "homo erectus" from which the word "humans" derive but differing from the chimpanzee (pan group) which half walks using both legs and all four limbs to travel. The larger family of apes from which humans have descended, such as the gorilla, or orangutan, primarily use all four limbs to travel while occassionally utilizing bi-pedal motion much less of the time than the chimpanzee genus.

Though all come from the superfamily of hominoidea - as can be seen from the taxonomical charts pictured above - as the species continued to evolve it became separated by zoological classifications from tree dwelling apes (gibbons), to partially tree-dwelling apes (orangutans), to ground/tree dwelling apes (gorillas), to ground/tree dwelling semi-bipedal apes (bonobos, chimpanzees), to exclusively ground dwelling bipedal apes (man).

The chart consequently shows how the chimpanzee genus is further removed from the gorilla genus and is more closely linked to the human genus. This is also supported by evolutionary genetic studies. As a result, the common chimpanzee and the bonobo (pygmy or dwarf chimp) of the genus Pan are the closest living evolutionary relatives to humans, sharing a common ancestry with humans from about four to seven million years ago."

At the perspective of a time-scale, this elapsed period of time also evidences the divergence of humans from chimpanzees. More specifically, the final separation of the Homo genus from the Pan genus is approxiamately 2.8 million years old thus showing us of the importance of the recent "Homo Naledi" cave discovery in August of 2015 in South Africa's Star Cave system.

What does this mean theologically?

In evolutionary terms it is pretty plain how human creation evolved from anthropological studies of the ape. And in theological terms, the passages in Genesis provide an ancient (Hebrew) tribal explanation to creation in non-evolutionary terms as this anthropology was unknown then. However, many well-meaning, Christians have attempted to show a 1:1 correlation between Genesis 1 with either progressive or immediate "theistic evolution" which would be an interpretive error both from a cultural standpoint as well as from a scientific one. At this time ancient man, such as the Semetic and Hebraic tribes, had no knowledge of either science or evolution. Moreover, the implication by theologians of insinuating human guidance by divine authorship supra-intending over a culture's era-specific ignorance is also a conjectural error to the surmise of textual formation.

The take away? Rather than getting hung up on a literal reading or correlation of the Genesis creation stories we may be confident that creation derives from a Creator who crafted an unusually complex method of creation by using all the ingredients of evolution to obtain the current results we are biologically familiar with. And that its testimony in Genesis is simply a literary account by the ancients using mythological description to describe this very same event in their own lay terms and knowledge of their day.

What does this mean? That God is neither denied nor mocked. That He is still Creator-Redeemer and shown to be intimately involved with His creation from whatever direction it came. Similarly, the bible is brought back down to reality, it is no longer made a mystical nor irrelevant collection of ancient manuscripts, and that we might rightly "divide / interpret" it more attuned or appropriately to its times and cultures. Which also means that this same Creator-Redeemer God then is active in our societies and cosmos today as much as He was beforetimes. We have lost nothing except our mistaken impulses to defend or mock our Creator. He needs no defense because He is. And any mockery but shows our deep shallowness to the everyday realities about us.

Too, we must now come to understand that evolution is always occurring - both in our present day as well as in the future beyond us. That it is a process which never stops. That underneath life itself is the continuing titanic struggle of biologic life to always exist despite the (toxic) eco-environments now present or occurring in the future.

This is the marvel of God's creation and the cosmic/biologic equation He has set in place so that at any present moment we, as homo sapiens (human beings), might have fellowship with our Creator-Redeemer, or any derivations of ourselves in ages future. But as humans, we cannot assume we are in exclusive communication with our Creator alone. Even the Psalmists and Prophets have written of the mountains and valleys, seas and skies, trees and fields, and all the living things on earth, as having a "form of communication" with its Creator. That it "delights" in His fellowship, "dances," "sings for joy," and "claps its hands" in response to His Almighty voice. Nay, we are not alone in our praise and dependence upon our Creator God who loves His creation and draws us toward Him into divine fellowship with one-and-all.

And though I do not encourage any form of "supernatural mystical communication" with the trees and mountains, birds and bees, still we find in the poetry and essays of human journals the deep realization that all things are connected and in communication with itself and its Creator God. What I might describe as a form of (process) panpsychism; but again, without getting all crazy and mystical about this observation. As we walk creation's fields and meadows, swim its streams and dive below its waters, we sense God's almighty hand of authorship in its templed majesties and shrouded veils of glory. The godfathers of ecology, John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and Aldo Leopold, each in their own way reveled in this divine communion connecting humanity's existence even to the original American Indians who sensed the same in their animistic Spirit stories of creational connectedness and sacred fellowship.

Conclusion

To read Genesis then is to read it NOT in an evolutionary context but as (i) an ancient composition set within a paleo-creational understanding of a Creator-God named for His creational activity and perceived by the ancient's supernaturally curious wonder of life's many complex spheres of divine / human / creational interactions; (ii) that into creation's holy charters came creational indeterminacy and sentient freewill struggling between goodness and evil, order and disorder, each redefining the other in terms of fellowship and holiness; (iii) an immediate communion and fellowship with the Creator God and what it may mean for creation and mankind; (iv) that within this communion of struggle, of obedience, and willfulness, both creation and humanity came to be pitted against its God, each other, and themselves; (v) which is then described in terms of "life and death, light and darkness" within the hallowed altars of holy communion; (vi) that with death came the promise of God to be not only "Creator" but "Redeemer" - not only to mankind but to His holy creation as well; and finally, (vii) this holy redemption would come by grace and mercy, forgiveness and resurrection. This then is the fuller story of Genesis when read apart from its more popular classical or literal understanding rejecting evolution. It was what the ancients saw then of God's promise and what we need to see now in our dilemma between science, anthropology, and faith.

To this marvel of God's complex creation we may only bow our heads and utter, "Thank you O blessed Redeemer for your promise of life in the midst of death. Praise you for your wisdom and goodness and grace. For the majesty of your name and the councils of your justice when all things will be made new, and good, and holy, once more. Amen."

R.E. Slater

September 13, 2015
edited September 26, 2015; March 17, 2020

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Hominini

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominini

Not to be confused with Hominoidea, Hominidae, Homininae, or Hominina.

The Hominini is a tribe of the subfamily Homininae; it comprises three subtribes: Hominina, with its one genus Homo; Australopithecina, comprising several extinct genera (see taxobox); and Panina, with its one genus Pan, the chimpanzees (see the evolutionary tree below).[3][4] Members of the human clade, that is, the Hominini, including Homo and those species of theaustralopithecines that arose after the split from the chimpanzees, are called hominins; cf. Hominidae; terms "hominids" and hominins).

The subtribe Hominina is the "human" branch; that is, it contains the genus Homo exclusively. Researchers proposed the taxon Hominini on the basis that the least similar species of atrichotomy should be separated from the other two. The common chimpanzee and the bonobo of the genus Pan are the closest living evolutionary relatives to humans, sharing a common ancestor with humans about four to seven million years ago.[5] Research by Mary-Claire King in 1973 found 99% identical DNA between human beings and chimpanzees;[6] later research modified that finding to about 94% commonality, with some of the difference occurring in noncoding DNA.[7]

Sahelanthropus tchadensis is an extinct hominid species that lived 7 million years ago, very close to the time of the chimpanzee–human divergence. It is unclear whether or not it may be classed as hominin—that is, whether it rose after the split from the chimpanzees, or not.

A source of confusion in determining the exact age of the Pan–Homo split is evidence of a complex speciation process rather than a clean split between the two lineages. Different chromosomes appear to have split at different times, possibly over as much as a 4-million-year period, indicating a long and drawn out speciation process with large-scale hybridization events between the two emerging lineages as late as 6.3 to 5.4 million years ago according to Patterson et al. (2006).[8] The assumption of late hybridization was in particular based on the similarity of the X chromosome in humans and chimpanzees, suggesting a divergence as late as some 4 million years ago. This conclusion was rejected as unwarranted by Wakeley (2008), who suggested alternative explanations, including selection pressure on the X chromosome in the populations ancestral to the chimpanzee–human last common ancestor (CHLCA).[9]

All the extinct genera listed in the taxobox are ancestral to, or offshoots of, Homo. Few fossil specimens on the Pan side of the split have been found—the first discovery of a fossil chimpanzee was published in 2005;[10] it was from Kenya's East African Rift Valley and dated to between 545 thousand years, radiometric, (kyr) and 284 kyr (via argon–argon dating). However, both Orrorin and Sahelanthropus existed around the time of the split, and so may be ancestral to both Pan and Homo.

In the proposal of Mann and Weiss (1996),[11] the tribe Hominini includes Pan as well as Homo, but within separate subtribes. Homo and (by inference) all bipedal apes are referred to the subtribe Hominina, while Pan is assigned to the subtribe Panina. Wood (2010) discusses the different views of this taxonomy.[12]

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Lee R. Berger, a professor of human evolution studies at the University of

the Witwatersrand  in Johannesburg, unveiled a previously unidentified species

of the early human lineage — Homo naledi. By REUTERS on Publish Date

Homo Naledi, New Species in Human Lineage, Is Found in South African Cave

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/science/south-africa-fossils-new-species-human-ancestor-homo-naledi.html?_r=0

by John Noble Wildord

September 10, 2015

Acting on a tip from spelunkers two years ago, scientists in South Africadiscovered what the cavers had only dimly glimpsed through a crack in a limestone wall deep in the Rising Star Cave: lots and lots of old bones.

The remains covered the earthen floor beyond the narrow opening. This was, the scientists concluded, a large, dark chamber for the dead of a previously unidentified species of the early human lineage — Homo naledi.

The new hominin species was announced on Thursday by an international team of more than 60 scientists led by Lee R. Berger, an American paleoanthropologist who is a professor of human evolution studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The species name, H. naledi, refers to the cave where the bones lay undisturbed for so long; “naledi” means “star” in the local Sesotho language.

In two papers published this week in the open-access journal eLife, the researchers said that the more than 1,550 fossil elements documenting the discovery constituted the largest sample for any hominin species in a single African site, and one of the largest anywhere in the world. Further, the scientists said, that sample is probably a small fraction of the fossils yet to be recovered from the chamber. So far the team has recovered parts of at least 15 individuals.

“With almost every bone in the body represented multiple times, Homo naledi is already practically the best-known fossil member of our lineage,” Dr. Berger said.

The finding, like so many others in science, was the result of pure luck followed by considerable effort.

Two local cavers, Rick Hunter and Steven Tucker, found the narrow entrance to the chamber, measuring no more than seven and a half inches wide. They were skinny enough to squeeze through, and in the light of their headlamps they saw the bones all around them. When they showed the fossil pictures to Pedro Boshoff, a caver who is also a geologist, he alerted Dr. Berger, who organized an investigation.

"Just getting into the chamber and bringing out samples proved to be a huge challenge.

The narrow opening was the only way in." - Lee Burger

Paul Dirks, a geologist at James Cook University in Australia, who was lead author of the journal paper describing the chamber, said the investigators first had a steep climb up a stone block called the Dragon’s Back and then a drop down to the entrance passage — all of this in the total absence of natural light.

For the two extended investigations of the chamber in 2013 and 2014, Dr. Berger rounded up the international team of scientists and then recruited six excavating scientists through notices on social media. One special requirement: They had to be slender enough to crawl through that crack in the wall.

One of the six, who were all women and were called “underground astronauts,” was Marina Elliott of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. She said the collection and removal of the fossils involved “some of the most difficult and dangerous conditions ever encountered in the search for human origins.”

Photo by the New York Times

Besides introducing a new member of the prehuman family, the discovery suggests that some early hominins intentionally deposited bodies of their dead in a remote and largely inaccessible cave chamber, a behavior previously considered limited to modern humans. Some of the scientists referred to the practice as a ritualized treatment of their dead, but by “ritual” they said they meant a deliberate and repeated practice, not necessarily a kind of religious rite.

Pieces of a skeleton of Homo naledi, a newly discovered human species.

CreditJohn Hawks/University of Wisconsin-Madison, via European Pressphoto Agency

“It’s very, very fascinating,” said Ian Tattersall, an authority on human evolution at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was not involved in the research.

“No question there’s at least one new species here,” he added, “but there may be debate over the Homo designation, though the species is quite different from anything else we have seen.”

A colleague of Dr. Tattersall’s at the museum, Eric Delson, who is a professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, was also impressed, saying, “Berger does it again!”

Dr. Delson was referring to Dr. Berger’s previous headline discovery, published in 2010, also involving cave deposits near Johannesburg. He found many fewer fossils that time, but enough to conclude that he was looking at a new species, which he named Australopithecus sediba. Geologists said the individuals lived 1.78 million to 1.95 million years ago, when australopithecines and early species of Homo were contemporaries.

Lee R. Berger, leader of a research team, in the Rising Star Cave near Johannesburg,

where over 1,550 fossil elements were found. CreditNaashon Zalk for The New York Times

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An expert all-women team of anthropologists dared the suffocating passages
of the South African Star Cave system. Kudos!

A Mighty Girl

https://www.facebook.com/amightygirl/photos/a.360833590619627.72897.316489315054055/901760099860304/?type=1&fref=nf&pnref=story

September 11, 2015

The discovery of a new hominin species is making headlines around the world this week but what many people don't realize is that the excavation team that uncovered this historic find was made up of six daring women scientists! The fossils were found at the bottom of a cave system in South Africa; one of the scientists, Marina Elliott, said that their collection and removal involved "some of the most difficult and dangerous conditions ever encountered in the search for human origins.” Thanks to the dedication of these six women, people everywhere will have the opportunity to gain new insight into the development of our species.

Palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger learned about the fossils in Rising Star Cave in October 2013 -- as well as their location, at the bottom of a 36 foot long shaft that gets as narrow as 7 inches across. He put up an ad on Facebook seeking scientists with a background in archaeology or paleontology, but with a catch: “the person must be skinny and preferably small. They must not be claustrophobic, they must be fit, they should have some caving experience, climbing experience would be a bonus.” He remembers thinking that “maybe there were three or four people in the world who would fit that criteria”, but within days he had 60 qualified applicants from around the world. He narrowed those down to six: Marina Elliott from Canada, Elen Feuerriegel from Australia, and K. Lindsay Eaves, Alia Gurtov, Hannah Morris, and Becca Peixotto from the United States.

Elliott, who was finishing a Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University when she saw the ad, was first on the scene. “I was predisposed to extreme environments,” she says. “Telling me that I’d have to do climbing, that it would be underground, and that it would be strange and potentially dangerous… it appealed.” Even still, she vividly recalls her first sight of the chute: “It’s a long crack, punctuated by shark-teeth protrusions. I remember looking down and thinking: I’m not sure I made the right decision." Given the difficulty and potential danger of the climb, Berger nicknamed the team “underground astronauts.”

During the 21-day excavation of the Rising Star cave, the team had to work carefully: “There was so much material and it was friable and delicate,” Elliott says. “And every day, we realized that we were pulling out another 40 or 60 fragments of this thing that was going to be incredible.” She and her five caving teammates excavated a nearly unheard of collection of hominin fossils: 1,550 fragments from at least 15 skeletons, representing a mix of male and female individuals. In the words of Ed Yong of The Atlantic, “To find one complete skeleton of a new hominin would be hitting the paleoanthropological jackpot. To find 15, and perhaps more, is like nuking the jackpot from orbit.”

Debate about Homo naledi’s age and importance in human prehistory, as well as the intriguing possibility that the bones are in the cave as a form of burial ritual, will be ongoing for years, but no one doubts that it represents an extraordinary find. Elliott has remained on the ground in South Africa where she is now directing the field operation and leading expeditions into other caves, eager to discover what else is out there. As she says, “We’re just scratching the surface."

You can read more about the all-female team of “underground astronauts” and this historic find on The Atlantic at http://theatln.tc/1Fzdsxh

To learn about more trailblazing women of science from around the world, we highly recommend the new book "Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science -- And The World," for teen and adult readers, ages 13 and up, at http://www.amightygirl.com/headstrong-52-women

To introduce children to one of the world’s first paleontologists, Mary Anning, we recommend "Mary Anning and The Sea Dragon" for ages 5 to 8 (http://www.amightygirl.com/mary-anning-and-the-sea-dragon), “Stone Girl, Bone Girl” for ages 4 to 8 (http://www.amightygirl.com/stone-girl) and “The Fossil Girl” for ages 5 to 9 (http://www.amightygirl.com/the-fossil-girl)

For a wonderful book about six remarkable women whose curiosity about nature fueled a passion to steadfastly overcome obstacles to careers in traditionally men-only occupations, we recommend "Girls Who Looked Under Rocks: The Lives of Six Pioneering Naturalists" for ages 10 and up at http://www.amightygirl.com/girls-who-looked-under-rocks

If your kids would like to try an excavation of their own, check out the Crystal Mining Kit for ages 5 to 10 (http://www.amightygirl.com/crystal-mining-kit), the Treasures of the Earth Excavation Set for ages 5 to 9 (http://www.amightygirl.com/treasures-of-the-earth), and Smithsonian’s Diggin’ Up Dinos: T-Rex Kit for ages 7 to 12 (http://www.amightygirl.com/diggin-up-dinos-t-rex).

For more of our favorite science toys for igniting your children's curiosity about the natural world, visit our "Science Toys" section at http://www.amightygirl.com/toys/toys-games/science-math

And, if you have a Mighty Girl in your life who won't let any anyone tell her she can't do something because she's a girl, check out the "Though She Be But Little She Is Fierce" t-shirt -- available in a variety of styles and colors for all ages at http://www.amightygirl.com/fierce-t-shirt.

Christian Transgender Acceptance and Equality

Lately I've been watching argument and confusion arise from Olympian Decathlete Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner's transgender change (who is famously associated with the Kardashian's). To help towards a positive construction of this discussion I'd like to make the following observations:

First, to understand "transgender identity" let's start with a medical diagnosis of what "gender dysphoria" may mean... is it governed by a miswiring of the brain or by genetic encoding? Or, does it stem from the pressure to fit inside society's boxes?

Since it may be a struggle with personal identity should we omit from our street vocabulary the discriminatory label of queer which too easily reflects popular ignorance and discriminatory labeling based on personal feelings of fear or of religious/cultural standards of what should be norming according to the "book of us?"

From dictionary.com comes the following observations:

gender dysphoria

—noun

"A psychological condition marked by significant emotional distress and impairment in life functioning, caused by a lack of congruence between gender identity and biological sex assigned at birth."

Also called gender identity disorder.

—Usage note

"Some transgender individuals and their advocates object to the use of the word "disorder" to describe this condition and therefore reject use of the variant term gender identity disorder. However, others feel that classifying it as a disorder may facilitate access to medical care related to the condition."

Secondly, very few of us understand the confusion a child or young teenager may have who struggles with this crisis. I would like to suggest we put away labels and finger-pointing and consider how to help in ways that are constructive to the well-being of these individuals.

All the worse is the child who now becomes an adult having not resolved his or her's gender identity crisis. For the church, as for society, we must always remember our shortcomings and grave ignorance of individuals who harbor deep feelings of non-acceptance along with the fears of being personally harmed or shunned should they speak of their personal crisis to others. Obviously this is not helpful and the greater harm has been committed by ourselves who are short on empathy and prone to castigate others different from ourselves rather than to redeem those who would normally become outcasts from society.

Thirdly, let's make this personal. Rather than attempting any diagnosis at all (including anything medical) let's simply try to see a transgender individual as a person. As an individual. One who has the same needs as you and I to be loved and accepted, befriended and ushered into a cocoon of people who will protect them for who they are. This goes way beyond any labels and psychologies and simply let's someone be who they wish to be. Who must be what they are regardless of whether it is norming to society or not. Jesus did the same in the New Testament to the outcasts of society and I believe the church should also be on the frontlines of love and acceptance to those who are condemned and unloved.

Finally, I have linked a related article of a young girl's experiences who has gone through her own transgender identity crisis. The link provided will take you to her story. Just like a gay or lesbian individual who must deal with societal exclusion so too does the transgender person find similar discomfort by friends and neighbors. Perhaps, by reading of their personal struggles, we might better appreciate what many of us fail to understand.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

June 18, 2015

The New Girl in School: Transgender Surgery at 18

Rebirth of a Transgender Teenager:

Katherine Boone's story

Kat Boone, "Before, I was unable to look in a mirror"

For further reference -
Wikipedia - Transgender

The Collision Between "Beliefs and Facts" and the Evangelical Narrative

evangelicalism, evolution, and the facts

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/08/evangelicalism-evolution-and-the-facts/

by Peter Enns

August 13, 2014

Comments

A recent article in the NYT talks about the collision between “beliefs and facts.” It struck a chord.

The author, Brendan Nyhan, argues that simply “knowing” scientific data, for example on evolution or climate change, isn’t as important as one’s beliefs and group identity–be it political or religious.

The force that determines where people eventually wind up is their ideology and the group to which they belong, which give them a coherent life-narrative.

Here is the key point of the article:

In a new study, a Yale Law School professor, Dan Kahan, finds that the divide over belief in evolution between more and less religious people is wider among people who otherwise show familiarity with math and science, which suggests that the problem isn’t a lack of information. When he instead tested whether respondents knew the theory of evolution, omitting mention of belief, there was virtually no difference between more and less religious people with high scientific familiarity. In other words, religious people knew the science; they just weren’t willing to say that they believed in it.

Mr. Kahan’s study suggests that more people know what scientists think about high-profile scientific controversies than polls suggest; they just aren’t willing to endorse the consensus when it contradicts their political or religious views. This finding helps us understand why my colleagues and I have found that factual and scientific evidence is often ineffective at reducing misperceptions and can even backfire on issues like weapons of mass destruction, health care reform and vaccines. With science as with politics, identity often trumps the facts.

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Applying this to the question of Christianity and evolution, it’s not enough to “show people the facts” of the fossil record or genetics, even if in doing so some change of thinking results.

If anyone wants to re-educate evangelicalism about evolution, they need to do more than “re-educate” evangelicals–it takes more than slides and YouTube videos explaining the compelling evidence.

Education doesn’t correct bad thinking if one’s narrative relies on that bad thinking. One also has to offer an alternate coherent and attractive structure whereby people can handle these new ways of thinking without feeling as if their entire faith and life hang in the balance.

I wrote Inspiration and Incarnation, The Evolution of Adam, and The Bible Tells Me So with this process in mind. The “aha” moments series I am currently running lays out examples of others (and more to come) who have come to accept, for various reasons, an alternate “structure” for their theological narratives–specifically, how they read the Bible.

If you’ll allow me to get on my soap box, this entire evangelical dilemma comes down to: “What is the Bible and what do I do with it?”

Learning to read the Bible differently–in a manner that is consistent with reason, tradition, and experience (yes, that is the Episcopalian “three-legged stool” and 3/4 of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral)–is the key issue for evangelicalism in order to relax a bit about evolution and think through it rather than reacting and vilifying others.

Unfortunately, holding fast to familiar ways of reading the Bible is the core pillar of the evangelical narrative structure. And there you have the problem facing evangelicalism in a nutshell.

It’s a hard thing to let go of. But for those who are ready to, alternate narrative structures abound and many have found a good home elsewhere and haven’t lost their faith in the process.

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Do Americans understand the scientific consensus about issues like climate change and evolution?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/upshot/when-beliefs-and-facts-collide.html?_r=1

by Brendan Nyhan

July 5, 2014 

At least for a substantial portion of the public, it seems like the answer is no. The Pew Research Center, for instance, found that 33 percent of the publicbelieves “Humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time” and 26 percent think there is not “solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades.” Unsurprisingly, beliefs on both topics are divided along religious and partisan lines. For instance, 46 percent of Republicans said there is not solid evidence of global warming, compared with 11 percent of Democrats.

As a result of surveys like these, scientists and advocates have concluded that many people are not aware of the evidence on these issues and need to be provided with correct information. That’s the impulse behind efforts like the campaign to publicize the fact that 97 percent of climate scientistsbelieve human activities are causing global warming.

In a new study, a Yale Law School professor, Dan Kahan, finds that the divide over belief in evolution between more and less religious people iswider among people who otherwise show familiarity with math and science, which suggests that the problem isn’t a lack of information. When he instead tested whether respondents knew the theory of evolution, omitting mention of belief, there was virtually no difference between more and less religious people with high scientific familiarity. In other words, religious people knew the science; they just weren’t willing to say that they believed in it.

Photo Credit: Eiko Ojala

Mr. Kahan’s study suggests that more people know what scientists think about high-profile scientific controversies than polls suggest; they just aren’t willing to endorse the consensus when it contradicts their political or religious views. This finding helps us understand why my colleagues and I have found that factual and scientific evidence is often ineffective at reducing misperceptions and can even backfire on issues like weapons of mass destruction, health care reform and vaccines. With science as with politics, identity often trumps the facts.

So what should we do? One implication of Mr. Kahan’s study and other research in this field is that we need to try to break the association between identity and factual beliefs on high-profile issues – for instance, by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican like former Representative Bob Inglis or an evangelical Christian like the climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe.Continue reading the main story

But we also need to reduce the incentives for elites to spread misinformationto their followers in the first place. Once people’s cultural and political views get tied up in their factual beliefs, it’s very difficult to undo regardless of the messaging that is used.

It may be possible for institutions to help people set aside their political identities and engage with science more dispassionately under certain circumstances, especially at the local level. Mr. Kahan points, for instance, to the relatively inclusive and constructive deliberations that were conducted among citizens in Southeast Florida about responding to climate change. However, this experience may be hard to replicate – on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, another threatened coastal area, the debate over projected sea level rises has already become highly polarized.

The deeper problem is that citizens participate in public life precisely because they believe the issues at stake relate to their values and ideals, especially when political parties and other identity-based groups get involved – an outcome that is inevitable on high-profile issues. Those groups can help to mobilize the public and represent their interests, but they also help to produce the factual divisions that are one of the most toxic byproducts of our polarized era. Unfortunately, knowing what scientists think is ultimately no substitute for actually believing it.

Interviews on Religion: Deconstructing God, Part 3 - John D. Caputo

THE STONE

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Deconstructing God

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/deconstructing-god/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

by Gary Gutting

March 9, 2014

This is the third in a series of interviews about religion that I am conducting for The Stone. The interviewee for this installment isJohn D. Caputo, a professor of religion and humanities at Syracuse University and the author of “The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion.”

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Gary Gutting: You approach religion through Jacques Derrida’s notion of deconstruction, which involves questioning and undermining the sorts of sharp distinctions traditionally so important for philosophy. What, then, do you think of the distinction between theism, atheism and agnosticism?

John Caputo: I would begin with a plea not to force deconstruction into one of these boxes. I consider these competing views as beliefs, creedal positions, that are inside our head by virtue of an accident of birth. There are the people who “believe” things from the religious traditions they’ve inherited; there are the people who deny them (the atheism you get is pegged to the god under denial); and there are the people who say, “Who could possibly know anything about all of that?” To that I oppose an underlying form of life, not the beliefs inside our head but the desires inside our heart, an underlying faith, a desire beyond desire, a hope against hope, something which these inherited beliefs contain without being able to contain.

If you cease to ‘believe’ in a particular religious creed,

you have  merely changed your mind. But if you lose

‘faith,’ a way of life, everything is lost.

If you cease to “believe” in a particular religious creed, like Calvinism or Catholicism, you have changed your mind and adopted a new position, for which you will require new propositions. Imagine a debate in which a theist and an atheist actually convince each other. Then they trade positions and their lives go on. But if you lose “faith,” in the sense this word is used in deconstruction, everything is lost. You have lost your faith in life, lost hope in the future, lost heart, and you cannot go on.

G.G.: I’m having some trouble with your use of “deconstruction.” On the one hand, it seems to be a matter of undermining sharp distinctions, like that between atheism and theism. On the other hand, your own analysis seems to introduce a sharp distinction between beliefs and ways of life — even though beliefs are surely part of religious ways of life.

J.C.: After making a distinction in deconstruction, the first thing to do is to deconstruct it, to show that it leaks, that its terms are porous and intersecting, one side bleeding into the other, these leaks being the most interesting thing of all about the distinction. I am distinguishing particular beliefs from an underlying faith and hope in life itself, which takes different forms in different places and traditions, by which the particular traditions are both inhabited and disturbed.

I agree they are both forms of life, but on different levels or strata. The particular beliefs are more local, more stabilized, more codified, while this underlying faith and hope in life is more restless, open-ended, disturbing, inchoate, unpredictable, destabilizing, less confinable.

G.G.: O.K., I guess you might say that all thinking involves making distinctions, but deconstructive thinking always turns on itself, using further distinctions to show how any given distinction is misleading. But using this sort of language leads to paradoxical claims as, for example, when you say, as you just did, that beliefs contain a faith that they can’t contain. Paradox is fine as long as we have some way of understanding that it’s not an outright contradiction. So why isn’t it a contradiction to say that there’s a faith that beliefs both contain and can’t contain?

J.C.: The traditions contain (in the sense of “possess”) these events, but they cannot contain (in the sense of “confine” or “limit”) them, hold them captive by building a wall of doctrine, administrative rule, orthodoxy, propositional rectitude around them.

G.G.: So the distinction that saves you from contradiction is this: Beliefs contain faith in the sense that, in the world, beliefs are where we find faith concretely expressed; but any given faith can be expressed by quite different beliefs in quite different historical contexts. In this sense, the faith is not contained by the beliefs. That makes sense.

Presumably, then, deconstructive theology is the effort to isolate this “common core” of faith that’s found in different historical periods — or maybe even the differing beliefs of different contemporary churches.

J.C.: No! I am not resurrecting the old comparative-religion thesis that there is an underlying transcendental form or essence or universal that we can cull from differing empirical religious beliefs, that can be approached only asymptotically by empirical cases. I am saying that the inherited religious traditions contain something deeper, which is why they are important. I don’t marginalize religious traditions; they are our indispensable inheritance. Without them, human experience would be impoverished, its horizon narrowed. We would be deprived of their resources, not know the name of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, the startling notion of the “kingdom of God,” the idea of the messianic and so on.

As a philosopher I am, of course, interested in what happens, but always in terms of what is going on in what happens. The particular religious traditions are what happen, and they are precious, but my interest lies in what is going on in these traditions, in the memory of Jesus, say. But different traditions contain different desires, promises, memories, dreams, futures, a different sense of time and space. Nothing says that underneath they are all the same.

G.G.: That doesn’t seem to me what typically goes on in deconstructive theology. The deconstructive analysis of any religious concept — the Christian Trinity, the Muslim oneness of God, Buddhist nirvana — always turns out to be the same: an endless play of mutually undermining differences.

J.C.: There is no such thing as deconstructive theology, in the singular, or “religion,” in the singular. There are only deconstructive versions of concrete religious traditions, inflections, repetitions, rereadings, reinventions, which open them up to a future for which they are not prepared, to dangerous memories of a past they try not to recall, since their tendency is to consolidate and to stabilize. Accordingly, you would always be able to detect the genealogy, reconstruct the line of descent, figure out the pedigree of a deconstructive theology. It would always bear the mark of the tradition it inflects.

A lot of the “Derrida and theology” work, for example, has been following the wrong scent, looking for links between Derrida’s ideas and Christian negative theology, while missing his irregular and heretical messianic Judaism. I like to joke that Derrida is a slightly atheistic quasi-Jewish Augustinian, but I am also serious.

Derrida said he ‘rightly passes for an atheist,’ but if we stop there we miss

everything interesting and important about his thinking about religion.

G.G.: I can see that there are influences of Judaism, Augustinian Christianity and enlightenment atheism in Derrida. But isn’t this just a matter of his detaching certain religious ideas from their theistic core? He talks of a messiah — but one that never comes; he’s interested in the idea of confessing your sins — but there’s no one to forgive them. After all the deconstructive talk, the law of noncontradiction still holds: Derrida is either an atheist or he isn’t. It seems that the only reasonable answer is that he’s an atheist.

J.C.: In the middle of his book on Augustine, Derrida said he “rightly passes for an atheist,” shying away from a more definitive “I am an atheist.” By the standards of the local rabbi, that’s correct, that’s the position to attribute to him, that’s a correct proposition. But if we stop there we miss everything interesting and important about what he is saying for religion and for understanding deconstruction.

G.G.: So if I insist on expressing religious faith in propositions (assertions that are either true or false), then, yes, Derrida’s an atheist. But according to you, the propositions that express faith aren’t what’s interesting or important about religion.

I agree that there’s much more to religion than what’s stated in creeds. There are rituals, ascetic practices, moral codes, poetry and symbols. But for most people, believing that God exists entails believing such propositions as that there’s someone who guarantees that justice will eventually prevail, that no suffering is without meaning, that there is a life after death where we can find eternal happiness.

J.C.: We have to appreciate the deep distrust that Derrida has for this word “atheism.” This kind of normalizing category has only a preliminary value — it finds a place to put him in a taxonomy of “positions” — but it obscures everything that is valuable here. This word is too powerful for him, too violent. That is why in another place he said calling him an atheist is “absolutely ridiculous.” His “atheism” is not unlike that of Paul Tillich, when Tillich said that to the assertion that God is a Supreme Being the proper theologicalresponse is atheism, but that is the beginning of theology for Tillich, not the end.

Derrida is not launching a secularist attack on religion. Deconstruction has nothing to do with the violence of the “new atheists” like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Derrida approaches the mystics, the Scriptures, Augustine with respect — they are always ahead of him, he says — and he always has something to learn from them. He is not trying to knock down one position (“theism”) with the opposing position (“atheism”). He does not participate in these wars.

G.G.: You keep saying what Derrida doesn’t do. Is there any positive content to his view of religion or is it all just “negative theology”? Is he in any sense “making a case” for religion? Can reading Derrida lead to religious belief?

J.C.: In its most condensed formulation, deconstruction is affirmation, a “yes, yes, come” to the future and also to the past, since the authentic past is also ahead of us. It leads to, it is led by, a “yes” to the transforming surprise, to the promise of what is to come in whatever we have inherited — in politics, art, science, law, reason and so on. The bottom line is “yes, come.”

Derrida is reading, rereading, reinventing inherited texts and traditions, releasing the future they “harbor,” which means both to keep safe but also conceal, all in the name of what Augustine calls “doing the truth.” He is interested in all the things found in the Scriptures and revelation, the narratives, the images, the angels — not in order to mine them for their “rational content,” to distill them into proofs and propositions, but to allow them to be heard and reopened by philosophy. Deconstruction is a way to read something meticulously, feeling about for its tensions, releasing what it itself may not want to disclose, remembering something it may not want to recall — it is not a drive-by shooting.

G.G.: But why call this “religion”?

J.C.: Derrida calls this a “religionwithout religion.” Other people speak of the “post-secular,” or of a theology “after the death of God,” which requires first passing through this death. In Derrida’s delicate logic of “without,” a trope also found in the mystics, a thing is crossed out without becoming illegible; we can still see it through the cross marks. So this religion comes without the religion you just described — it is not nearly as safe, reassuring, heartwarming, triumphant over death, sure about justice, so absolutely fabulous at soothing hearts, as Jacques Lacan says, with an explanation for everything. His religion is risky business, no guarantees.

G.G.: If Derrida doubts or denies that there’s someone who guarantees such things, isn’t it only honest to say that he is an agnostic or an atheist? For most people, God is precisely the one who guarantees that the things we most fear won’t happen. You’ve mentioned Derrida’s interest in Augustine. Wouldn’t Augustine — and virtually all the Christian tradition — denounce any suggestion that God’s promises might not be utterly reliable?

J.C.: Maybe it disturbs what “most people” think religion is — assuming they are thinking about it — but maybe a lot of these people wake up in the middle of the night feeling the same disturbance, disturbed by a more religionless religion going on in the religion meant to give them comfort. Even for people who are content with the contents of the traditions they inherit, deconstruction is a life-giving force, forcing them to reinvent what has been inherited and to give it a future. But religion for Derrida is not a way to link up with saving supernatural powers; it is a mode of being-in-the-world, of being faithful to the promise of the world.

The comparison with Augustine is telling. Unlike Augustine, he does not think a thing has to last forever to be worthy of our unconditional love. Still, he says he has been asking himself all his life Augustine’s question, “What do I love when I love my God?” But where Augustine thinks that there is a supernaturally revealed answer to this question, Derrida does not. He describes himself as a man of prayer, but where Augustine thinks he knows to whom he is praying, Derrida does not. When I asked him this question once he responded, “If I knew that, I would know everything” — he would be omniscient, God!

This not-knowing does not defeat his religion or his prayer. It is constitutive of them, constituting a faith that cannot be kept safe from doubt, a hope that cannot be kept safe from despair. We live in the distance between these pairs.

G.G.: But if deconstruction leads us to give up Augustine’s way of thinking about God and even his belief in revealed truth, shouldn’t we admit that it has seriously watered down the content of Christianity, reduced the distance between it and agnosticism or atheism? Faith that is not confident and hope that is not sure are not what the martyrs died for.

J.C.: In this view, what martyrs die for is an underlying faith, which is why, by an accident of birth or a conversion, they could have been martyrs for the other side. Mother Teresa expressed some doubts about her beliefs, but not about an underlying faith in her work. Deconstruction is a plea to rethink what we mean by religion and to locate a more unnerving religion going on in our more comforting religion.

Deconstruction is faith and hope. In what? In the promises that are harbored in inherited names like “justice” and “democracy” — or “God.” Human history is full of such names and they all have their martyrs. That is why the difference between Derrida and Augustine cannot be squashed into the distinction between “theism” and “atheism” or — deciding to call it a draw — “agnosticism.” It operates on a fundamentally different level. Deconstruction dares to think “religion” in a new way, in what Derrida calls a “new Enlightenment,” daring to rethink what the Enlightenment boxed off as “faith” and “reason.”

But deconstruction is not destruction. After all, the bottom line of deconstruction, “yes, come,” is pretty much the last line of the New Testament: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”

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This interview was conducted by email and edited. Previous interviews in this series were with Alvin Plantinga and Louise Antony.

Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. He is the author of, most recently, “Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960″ and writes regularly for The Stone.

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John Caputo: Towards a Radical Theology, Not a Radical Atheism:

A Review of Modern Atheism, Atheology and Divine Inexistence