Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

Why does the Vatican have an observatory?

I suppose that folks like Jack Chick and Co. would tell you it's so that nameless, faceless Jesuit drones can spy on other people and work on nefarious, top-secret plans to dominate the world using space age technology. But journalist Michael Mason presents a much different picture in a lengthy and quite excellent piece for Discover magazine that can be accessed on MSNBC. It's apparent that Mason put some serious effort into the article, "How to teach science to the Pope," (Aug. 19, 2008), which has some fascinating and revealing quotes from a number of people, ranging from Brother Guy Consolmagno to Richard Dawkins to Monsignor Melchor Sánchez de Toca to Cardinal Christoph Schönborn.

A couple of excerpts:

“The idea that the universe is worth studying just because it’s worth studying is a religious idea,” Consolmagno says. “If you think the universe is fundamentally good and that it’s an expression of a good God, then studying how the universe works is a way of becoming intimate with the Creator. It’s a kind of worship. And that’s been a big motivation for doing any kind of science.”

As a scientist who is also a Jesuit brother, Consolmagno suggests that science poses philosophical questions that in turn spark religious inquiries.

“A hundred years ago we didn’t understand the Big Bang,” he says. “Now that we have the understanding of a universe that is big and expanding and changing, we can ask philosophical questions we would not have known to ask, like ‘What does it mean to have multiverses?’ These are wonderful questions. Science isn’t going to answer them, but science, by telling us what is there, causes us to ask these questions. It makes us go back to the seven days of creation — which is poetry, beautiful poetry, with a lesson underneath it — and say, ‘Oh, the seventh day is God resting as a way of reminding us that God doesn’t do everything.’ God built this universe but gave you and me the freedom to make choices within the universe.”

And then there is this priceless quote from Dawkins:

“We call [Dawkins’s stance] sci­entism, and there is reference to it in the encyclical,” says Father Rafael Pascual, dean of philosophy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome.

“Scientism,” Dawkins tells me later, “is the pejorative word sometimes used for the view that science can explain everything and kind of arrogates to itself the privilege of explaining everything. Science cannot tell you what is right and wrong. When it comes to really interesting questions, like ‘Where did the laws of physics come from?’ or ‘How did the universe arrive in the first place?’ I genuinely don’t know whether science will answer those deep and at present mysterious questions; I am confident that if science can’t answer them, nothing else can. But it may be that nothing will ever answer them.”

Scientism, then, is a "pejorative word" used for the belief that only science can ultimately explain everything. But Dawkins, in contrast, believes that only science can answer the deepest and most mysterious questions, if they can answered at all. Do you see the difference? What, there is no difference? Well, how would you know since you aren't a biologist? Well? Hilarious.

Finally, as if Dawkins' lack of intellectual integrity isn't bad enough, there is simply his lack of integrity, period:

Dawkins expresses skepticism at the Church’s mission to build a bridge between science and theology with the use of philosophy. “There is nothing to build a bridge to,” he says. “Theology is a complete and utter non­subject.” At one point in my talk with Dawkins, Father George Coyne, the well-respected retired head of the Vatican Observatory (and, as such, a former member of the Academy of Sciences), becomes the subject of conversation.

“I met him a few weeks ago and liked him very much,” Dawkins says. “And he said to me that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe in God, and so I said, ‘Why do you believe in God?’ and he said: ‘It’s quite simple. I was brought up Catholic.’ When I think about good scientists — and some are devoutly religious and many of them are Catholic, Jesuit brothers and priests, for instance — I can never make out whether they are compartmentalizing their minds. Sometimes if you press them, it turns out that what they believe is something very different from what it says in the Creed. It turns out that all they really believe is that there is some deeply mysterious unknown at the root of the universe.”

Dawkins’s comments stuck with me. In the many interviews I had with priests, each expressed a sophisticated theology that seemed far more abstract than what you might find occupying the mind of an average believer. Is belief in a deeply mysterious unknown root of the universe such a bad thing for science, even if it is perceived through the framework of Christian concepts and imagery?

“I did not tell Richard Dawkins that there was no reason to believe in God,” says Coyne, who counts Dawkins a friend. “I said reasons are not adequate. Faith is not irrational, it is arational; it goes beyond reason. It doesn’t contradict reason. So my take is precisely that faith, to me, is a gift from God. I didn’t reason to it, I didn’t merit it — it was given to me as a gift through my family and my teachers.... My science helps to enrich that gift from God, because I see in his creation what a marvelous and loving god he is. For instance, by making the universe an evolutionary universe — he didn’t make it a ready-made, like a washing machine or a car — he made it a universe that has in it a participation of creativity. Dawkins’s real question to me should be, ‘How come you have the gift of faith and I don’t?’ And that’s an embarrassment for me. The only thing I can say is that either you have it and don’t know it, or God works with each of us differently, and God does not deny that gift to anybody. I firmly believe that.”

Read the entire article.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles and Excerpts:

• Professor Dawkins and the Origins of Religion | Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P. | From God Is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins
• Dawkins' Delusions | An interview with Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P., author of God Is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins
• Excerpts from Chance or Purpose? | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn | From Chance or Purpose?
• Website for Cardinal Schönborn's Chance or Purpose?
• Atheism and the Purely "Human" Ethic | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Is Religion Evil? Secularism's Pride and Irrational Prejudice | Carl E. Olson
• Designed Beauty and Evolutionary Theory | Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.
• The Universe is Meaning-full | An interview with Dr. Benjamin Wiker
• The Mythological Conflict Between Christianity and Science | An interview with Dr. Stephen Barr
• The Source of Certitude | Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.
• The Mystery of Human Origins | Mark Brumley
• Intelligent Project website

Just in: The Pill can be bad for relationships. Who knew?

From MSNBC.com:

Birth control pills could screw up a woman's ability to sniff out a compatible mate, a new study finds.

While several factors can send a woman swooning, including big brains and brawn, body odor can be critical in the final decision, the researchers say. That's because beneath a woman's flowery fragrance or a guy's musk the body sends out aromatic molecules that indicate genetic compatibility.

Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes are involved in immune response and other functions, and the best mates are those that have different MHC smells than you. The new study reveals, however, that when women are on the pill they prefer guys with matching MHC odors.

Oh yeah, the Pill also causes  bleeding between periods, weight gain, nausea, breast tenderness, headaches, mood changes, and blood clots.

Hmmm...what disease does the Pill cure? I forget...

Can you correctly identify the following?

First up:

Which of the following correctly identifies this object?

1. The Nobel Peace Prize design for 2009, created by a crippled, homeless child from Uganda.
2. Part of a collection of artwork by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter that is being displayed throughout the Middle East.
3. A special commemorative medal designed by Rowan Williams and handed out after the Lambeth Conference.
4. The cross design that is in several hundred rooms in the newest Catholic hospital in the state of Oregon.

And this?

1. Sen. Obama's proposed design for the renovated Oval Office if he is elected President of the United States.
2. A set design from a proposed new Star Trek movie, with a view from the newly designed captain's deck.
3. A meeting room in the Center for Ecological Responsibility and Sustainable Global Resources in Switzerland, where Hans Küng is working to save the world and write the seventh volume of his memoirs.
4. The view from the altar in the chapel of the newest Catholic hospital in the state of Oregon.

And, finally:

1. A meditation chamber in the home of Deepak Chopra, author and spiritual guru, with artwork created by a 103-year-old Buddhist monk.
2. The foyer of the recently renovated DMV in my hometown, Plains, Montana, featuring melted glass from impounded pick-up trucks.
3. A family room for athletes in the Olympic Village in Beijing. Dont' see you see Michael Phelp's reflection?
4. The backdrop/artwork behind the altar in the chapel of the newest Catholic hospital in the state of Oregon.

I realize this is very difficult, challenging, and otherwise intimidating. Don't get frustrated if you can't figure out where these images are from. Just keep on carefully mulling over the possible answers. I'm sure you can figure it on your own, without any help from me or anyone else.

Addendum (Thursday, August 14, 2008): Some background to what you see above:

The hospital, Sacred Heart Medical Center at Riverbend, in Springfield, is about ten minutes from my house; it opened on August 10th. It is an impressive building. And is appears to a very well-designed one, with a number of features indicating an admirable desire for the hospital to have beautiful artwork and be surrounded by natural beauty. So far, so good.

But Sacred Heart Medical Center has for many years either distanced itself from its Catholic origins (it was created in 1936 by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace), or has simply ignored those roots altogether. To the point that the word "Catholic" is incredibly scarce on its website—a search turns up one use of "Catholic" and that is in relation to a "Meditation for Cancer Patients" program held at St. Jude Catholic Church, easily the most , uh, squishy of the parishes in this area. Even the history page never mentions Catholicism and the word certainly has never been used, as far as I can tell, in any of the hospital's recent and current literature.

There were rumblings and rumors about the new chapel, and the fears that it would completely eschew anything remotely Catholic (not to mention generically Christian), turned out to be well-founded. The hospital does have a simple cross on the bell tower in front; that and the name "Sacred Heart" are really about the only clear connections to the hospital's Catholic origins. And, really, how many people, especially non-Catholics, have any clue what "Sacred Heart" refers to? (Perhaps it now refers to hearts that have been operated on at the sacred facility built upon sacred ground once inhabited by sacred native peoples?) The hospital, of course, does provide a wealth of information about how "green" the facility is. In fact, one gets the impression that, based on some of the literature, that the most important thing about the hospital is that it is "green", itself a popular form of non-religious religion here in the Northwest:

When PeaceHealth’s volunteer Governing Board chose to locate its new hospital at RiverBend, one of the first steps it took was to adopt environmental stewardship principles to guide the design and development of the site. PeaceHealth conducted detailed site studies, resulting in a depth and quantity of research that far exceeds the most stringent requirements.  To safeguard the area's natural environment and assure that its beauty is preserved for both enjoyment and healing, PeaceHealth has made a number of important commitments.

It hardly needs to be said (okay, maybe it does) that while stewardship of the environment and concern for natural habitat are commendable, it would be nice if a Catholic hospital would act as though being Catholic was at the heart of the hospital is all about. Perhaps something about the rich heritage of Catholic hospitals, hospices, shelters, orphanages, and such, all founded because of the belief that every man, woman, and child is precious in the eyes of God and is created with an innate dignity given by God. And something about how the Church seeks to carry on the healing work of Jesus, which included physical healing, but always with the understanding that such healing is temporal and should orient us to our eternal destination, which involves spiritual transformation and healing, possible only through the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. 

Instead, Catholicism is apparently a source of either embarrassment or perhaps even scorn for many of the people associated with Sacred Heart Medical Center. They don't want to offend; they want to be inclusive. When the hospital had its grand-opening and ribbon cutting ceremony, it was billed as  "religious celebration" and featured a number of religious groups (many of them non-Christian), as reported by the Daily Emerald:

The grand opening of a state-of-the-art hospital came complete Friday with a ribbon cutting ceremony, a religious celebration and tours of the facility.

Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend, set on 181 acres along the McKenzie River, will begin accepting patients August 10.

PeaceHealth spokeswoman Roz Ramberg said 1,200 chairs were filled with visitors for the celebration, and several hundred others came later to tour the hospital.

PeaceHealth Oregon CEO Mel Pyne told the celebration audience they were "standing on sacred ground, on a site that reminds us that God has been good to Oregon."

Later Elder Nick Sixkiller, representing the Native American community in a multi-denominational religious ceremony, said the hospital was on the ancestral land of the Callapuya tribe. "Generations of people have been healed here," he said.

Huh? Why was the ground considered "sacred"? Because it had been lived on by Native Americans? It wasn't clear. Nor, I suspect, was it meant to be. It was the sort of trendy Northwestern, New Age-y blather that passes for being "spiritually deep." The Sacred Heart Medical Foundation newsletter had this to say about the event:

Appropriately, Sacred Heart music thanatologists (harpists who have brought comfort to many patients) provided welcoming music. Representatives of many faith traditions joined in blessing the project and the site’s four corners. The moving ceremony symbolically united the community in honoring the site’s sacred healing purpose. Joyful sounds from the University of Oregon gospel choir perfectly captured the enthusiasm of the gathering for the new hospital. Before leaving, attendees were invited to write a hope, prayer or blessing for RiverBend to be incorporated in the hospital’s foundation.

My guess is that if a Muslim or atheist or Scientologist hospital had such an event, it wouldn't have bothered with this vaguely pantheistic nonsense. But, then, there aren't too many Muslim, atheist, or Scientologist hospitals being built, at least not around here. And it's increasingly unclear if there are any Catholic hospitals in the area.

Archbishop Chaput's new book available through Ignatius Press

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput's book Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life (Doubleday), due out August 12th, can be ordered from Ignatius Press. Here is a description of the book:

Few topics in recent years have ignited as much public debate as the balance between religion and politics. Does religious thought have any place in political discourse? Do religious believers have the right to turn their values into political action? What does it truly mean to have a separation of church and state? The very heart of these important questions is here addressed by one of the leading voices on the topic, Charles J. Chaput, Archbishop of Denver.

Chaput argues that our public life must be considered within the context of its Christian roots. American democracy does not ask its citizens to put aside their deeply held moral and religious beliefs for the sake of public policy. In fact, it requires exactly the opposite.

As the nation’s founders knew very well, people are fallible. The majority of voters, as history has shown again and again, can be uninformed, misinformed, biased, or simply wrong. Thus, to survive, American democracy depends on an engaged citizenry—people of character, including religious believers, fighting for their beliefs in the public square—respectfully but vigorously, and without apology. Anything less is bad citizenship and a form of theft from the nation’s health. Or as the author suggests: Good manners are not an excuse for political cowardice.

Scruton on the violent diatribes of the evangelical atheists

Philosopher Roger Scruton, who is always worth reading, in my estimation, reflects on Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Co.:

Scores of enlightened thinkers followed him, declaring organised religion to be the enemy of mankind, the force that divides the believer from the infidel and which thereby both excites and authorises murder. Richard Dawkins is the most influential living example of this tradition, and his message, echoed by Dan Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, sounds as loud and strident in the media today as the message of Luther in the reformed churches of Germany. The violence of the diatribes uttered by these evangelical atheists is indeed remarkable. After all, the Enlightenment happened three centuries ago; the arguments of Hume, Kant and Voltaire have been absorbed by every educated person. What more is to be said? And if you must say it, why say it so stridently? Surely, those who oppose religion in the name of gentleness have a duty to be gentle, even with -- especially with -- their foes?

There are two reasons why people start shouting at their opponents: one is that they think the opponent is so strong that every weapon must be used against him; the other is that they think their own case so weak that it has to be fortified by noise. Both these motives can be observed in the evangelical atheists. They seriously believe that religion is a danger, leading people into excesses of enthusiasm which, precisely because they are inspired by irrational beliefs, cannot be countered by rational argument. We have had plenty of proof of this from the Islamists; but that proof, the atheists tell us, is only the latest in a long history of massacres and torments, which -- in the scientific perspective -- might reasonably be called the pre-history of mankind. The Enlightenment promised to inaugurate another era, in which reason would be sovereign, providing an instrument of peace that all could employ. In the eyes of the evangelical atheists, however, this promise was not fulfilled. In their view of things, neither Judaism nor Christianity absorbed the Enlightenment even if, in a certain measure, they inspired it. All faiths, to the atheists, have remained in the condition of Islam today: rooted in dogmas that cannot be safely questioned. Believing this, they work themselves into a lather of vituperation against ordinary believers, including those believers who have come to religion in search of an instrument of peace, and who regard their faith as an exhortation to love their neighbour, even their belligerent atheist neighbour, as themselves.

At the same time, the atheists are reacting to the weakness of their case. Dawkins and Hitchens are adamant that the scientific worldview has entirely undermined the premises of religion and that only ignorance can explain the persistence of faith. But what exactly does modern science tell us, and just where does it conflict with the premises of religious belief? According to Dawkins (and Hitchens follows him in this), human beings are ‘survival machines’ in the service of their genes. We are, so to speak, by-products of a process that is entirely indifferent to our well-being, machines developed by our genetic material in order to further its reproductive goal. Genes themselves are complex molecules, put together in accordance with the laws of chemistry, from material made available in the primordial soup that once boiled on the surface of our planet. How it happened is not yet known: perhaps electrical discharges caused nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms to link together in appropriate chains, until finally one of them achieved that remarkable feature, of encoding the instructions for its own reproduction. Science may one day be able to answer the question how this occurred. But it is science, not religion, that will answer it.

Read the entire essay on the Catholic Education Resource Center site.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles and Excerpts:

• Professor Dawkins and the Origins of Religion | Thomas Crean, O.P. | From God Is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins
• Are Truth, Faith, and Tolerance Compatible? | Joseph Ratzinger
• Atheism and the Purely "Human" Ethic | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Is Religion Evil? Secularism's Pride and Irrational Prejudice | Carl E. Olson
• A Short Introduction to Atheism | Carl E. Olson
• C.S. Lewis’s Case for Christianity | An Interview with Richard Purtill
• Paganism and the Conversion of C.S. Lewis | Clotilde Morhan
• Designed Beauty and Evolutionary Theory | Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.
• The Universe is Meaning-full | An interview with Dr. Benjamin Wiker
• The Mythological Conflict Between Christianity and Science | An interview with Dr. Stephen Barr
• The Source of Certitude | Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.
• Deadly Architects | An Interview with Donald De Marco & Benjamin Wiker
• The Mystery of Human Origins | Mark Brumley
• Relativism 101: A Brief, Objective Guide | Carl E. Olson

Journalist said, Philosopher said

Kate Muir of the (London) Times bows low at the altar of Richard Dawkins and offers up words of praise, thanksgiving, and adoration toward the biologist turned atheist polemicist:

Richard Dawkins is that rare specimen, a public intellectual, a knight of the mind who goes into battle against the ignorance and foolhardiness of the populace. Unlike the French, who worship their public intellectuals, giving them pet names such as les intellos, and airing them regularly on serious television and in print, the British like to shove academics into a musty corner, or laugh at them. This was not always the case: the Victorians, with their public lectures and royal societies, gloried in debate and celebrated the thrills of fresh knowledge. The nearest we get to this now is celebrating the thrill of Germaine Greer walking out of Celebrity Big Brother.

The marginalisation of academia is partly self-created by its pomp and obfuscatory language. Dawkins broke out of the ghetto long ago thanks not just to an extraordinary mind, but to a gift for elegant communication and controversy: the English-language version of his recent paean to atheism, The God Delusion, has sold 1.5million copies (it has been translated into 31 other languages). He is big in airport bookshops. In 1976, when his first book, The Selfish Gene, was published, The New York Times explained the mind-expanding pleasure of his science-lit as “the sort of popular science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius”.

In these barren, thoughtless times, Dawkins gives people something substantial to chew on. His audience is surprisingly grateful, and also relieved to see someone slapping creationists about and tossing them into the primordial soup, as well as explaining atheism positively. Before I went to interview him about his new three-part television series, Dawkins on Darwin, various over-excited friends offered to accompany me and texted questions for me to ask him; signed copies were requested of The God Delusion, which one Iranian exile said he had recently found himself reading as his plane landed – everyone else was clutching the Koran. ...

For final proof that Dawkins, rather than God, is everywhere, you need only to have seen the most recent series of Doctor Who, in which Dawkins played a cameo as himself. Russell T. Davies, the executive producer of the series, is a fan. “He has brought atheism proudly out of the closet,” Davies says.

Yes, that is indeed a devastating piece of evidence for the omnipresence of Dawkins, although my initial reaction, as an unsophisticated American who rarely watches British television is, "Doctor Who?"

A number of books have been written in response to The God Delusion, including Fr. Thomas Crean's pithy book God Is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins, which focuses on both the philosophical and theological arguments (or is it "arguments"?) employed by Dawkins. Here is a bit from my February 2008 interview with Fr. Crean:

Ignatius Insight: Dawkins' field of expertise is biology. How would you rate him as, first, a philosopher, and, secondly, as an apologist for atheism?
 
Fr. Crean: I do not think he is very interested in philosophy. He refers occasionally to Daniel Dennett, but that is about all. He seems to take materialism as self-evident, but he doesn't make any serious effort to explain thought or free will. He refers at one point to St. Thomas's "five ways", but his discussion of them is extremely cursory, with major misunderstandings. There is no mention of Plato or Aristotle in his book. His impatience with "religion"is such that he is not really disposed to weigh carefully any arguments in its favor, which is obviously the very reverse of a philosophical frame of mind.
 
As an apologist for atheism he has some useful qualities, such as passion, a tone of conviction, a desire to make converts, ready invective and an apparent concern for the psychological (I almost said "spiritual") welfare of those whom he is trying to convert. On the other hand his stridency must surely reduce his influence with some people, and his lapses of logic with others.
 
Ignatius Insight: Throughout God Is No Delusion you point out numerous errors of logic and fact in Dawkins' work. In your opinion, what are some of the most egregious of those errors? Based on his book, what sort of research did Dawkins put into studying Christian history, theology, and philosophy?
 
Fr. Crean: I think one of his worst faults is the tendency to reason in a circle. For example, to explain why religion is so widespread even though in his opinion it is irrational, he says that it is evolutionarily useful. Why? Because it helps survival if, in general, one tends to adhere to the philosophy if life that one has once adopted. But the question at issue is precisely why so many people adopt theism as their philosophy of life, rather than atheism. So his explanation amounts to saying that theism is so widespread because so many people adopt it.
 
I suspect that he did very little research into Christian sources before writing his book. He quotes occasionally from the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia, which is of course available on the Internet. Sometimes his misunderstandings of it are quite funny, as when he quotes a passage in the entry on "Purgatory" called "proofs of Purgatory", where the author has referred to the immemorial Christian custom of praying for the dead. Professor Dawkins seriously supposes that the author intended this as a 'proof' that would convince an atheist such as himself!
 
What is perhaps more surprising is that he has not done more research using anti-Christian sources. I should have expected that there would have been more about the Crusades, for example, or the Inquisition. But in fact he doesn't seem to be very interested in history, any more than in philosophy.        

Read the entire interview. Also read "Professor Dawkins and the Origins of Religion", an excerpt from God Is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins. Fr. Crean, who is a Dominican friar, has never, as far as I know, been on Doctor Who. However, I can confidently say that he is well-versed in the thought of the great Doctor of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, which is—and I'm going out on a limb here—of much greater value when it comes to the great questions of human existence.

"Scientific American": Since penguins are "bi," it must be "natural"

First, the same-sex silliness from Scientific American:

Like most animal species, penguins tend to pair with the opposite sex, for the obvious reason. But researchers are finding that same-sex couplings are surprisingly widespread in the animal kingdom. Roy and Silo belong to one of as many as 1,500 species of wild and captive animals that have been observed engaging in homosexual activity. Researchers have seen such same-sex goings-on in both male and female, old and young, and social and solitary creatures and on branches of the evolutionary tree ranging from insects to mammals.

Unlike most humans, however, individual animals generally cannot be classified as gay or straight: an animal that engages in a same-sex flirtation or partnership does not necessarily shun heterosexual encounters. Rather many species seem to have ingrained homosexual tendencies that are a regular part of their society. That is, there are probably no strictly gay critters, just bisexual ones. “Animals don’t do sexual identity. They just do sex,” says sociologist Eric Anderson of the University of Bath in England.

Nevertheless, the study of homosexual activity in diverse species may elucidate the evolutionary origins of such behavior. Researchers are now revealing, for example, that animals may engage in same-sex couplings to diffuse social tensions, to better protect their young or to maintain fecundity when opposite-sex partners are unavailable—or simply because it is fun. These observations suggest to some that bisexuality is a natural state among animals, perhaps Homo sapiens included, despite the sexual-orientation boundaries most people take for granted. “[In humans] the categories of gay and straight are socially constructed,” Anderson says.

Yes, "socially constructed," just like scientific research, scientific experts, and science magazines. Maybe it's because I was raised in Montana where people are people and animals are either food or pets, but this sort of pseudo-sophisticated approach is decidedly subhuman.

Secondly, thankfully, Martin Cothran of the Vere Loqui blog and Memoria Press has written a very funny and devastating response to the Sophist American:

Obviously, there are some forms of animal behavior that are already common among humans. I am thinking specifically of the female histiostoma murchiei, a mite, which tries to create a husband upon her own specifications. But using the behavior of animals as a model is a dangerous business. The Ichneumon wasp tortures other insects; the female rheobatrachus, an East Australian frog, takes her young into her mouth and swallows them; and then there is the hippopotamus (a species in dire need of an Emily Post), which attracts its mate by urinating and defecating.

Where are the articles in science magazines touting these behaviors as models for human beings?

Finally, I'm trying to recall if there has ever been a case in which a woman has, immediately after a particularly romantic encounter with her mate, turned on him and eaten him. But if it ever were to happen, can we expect the Darwinists to come to her defense by pointing to the female redback spider? This spider (and here is where Darwinian ethics meets its Waterloo), along with a number of other spider species, eats the male immediately after mating.

It is, admittedly, a dastardly reversal of the more normal human sequence, in which the human female first has the male for dinner, and only then submits to the conjugal act, but it is normal for many kinds of spiders. Is there any reason then, from a Darwinian perspective, to consider it abnormal if it were engaged in by humans?

Read the entire response. And laugh. And then ask yourself: "Did I laugh because it is a social construct that I think I must take part in? Or do I laugh because hyenas have laughed long before I ever did?" Hmmm....

Before y'all abandon Christianity because of "Gabriel's Revelation"...

... take a deep breath and repeat after me, "Where's the beef?" Or, "Where's the angel food?"

Catholic News Agency provides the basic story of a  recent archeological find, which you've probably heard about by now:

The three-foot tall tablet bears 87 lines of Hebrew which speak of a messiah who will suffer and rise from the dead after three days. The tablet was probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan and has been characterized as a “Dead Sea Scroll in Stone,” the International Herald-Tribune reports.

David Jeselsohn, an Israeli-Swiss collector, discovered and purchased the tablet about a decade ago from a Jordanian antiquities dealer.

"I couldn't make much out of it when I got it," said Jeselsohn, who reportedly is himself an expert in antiquities. "I didn't realize how significant it was until I showed it to Ada Yardeni, who specializes in Hebrew writing, a few years ago. She was overwhelmed. 'You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,' she told me."

That's an interesting comparison, although I bet it is seriously overblown. I wasn't around in the late 1940s, but I know that many people thought that the Dead Sea Scrolls—which were a very significant discovery—were going to either undermine Christianity or seriously revise what people thought about it. In fact, the Scrolls have helped shed much light on various aspects of Judaism as it existed prior to the time of Christ; the Dead Sea Scrolls contain hundreds of copies of texts (mostly Old Testament books) written prior to the first century.

Most news reports are, of course, playing up the "could this mean the Christians made up the Resurrection based on this older story" angle. And, to be fair, it's a legitimate angle. In fact, it's good that it came up because it opens the door to some (hopefully) sane and serious discussion about the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus, for the Resurrection, and such. One voice of sanity is Dr. Tim Gray, professor of Biblical Studies at the Augustine Institute in Denver, who was interviewed by CNA:

The interpretations of scholars reported in the International Herald Tribune, Gray said, was “very striking” for its insistence that any evidence must undermine Christianity.

“On the one hand, scholars argue no Jewish tradition about a messiah suffering shows that the Church added this idea. And once you show a document, an ancient document to point to, showing that they did interpret a prophet like Daniel to expect a suffering messiah, well then people say ‘Well this proves Christianity can’t be true.’”

“You can’t have it both ways,” Gray said.

“The point is that our people in modern media and modern scholars will use any evidence as disproof of Christianity, even if it illustrates the evidence of Christian belief. And this evidence clearly points to the historical probability of Christianity, to the historical Jesus.

“‘No evidence of a suffering messiah in the Jewish tradition, therefore the Church invented these things,’” Gray summarized. “Now we find out there is evidence, and instead we find the historical portrait of the Gospels is more probable than we thought, the response is ‘well, see, this disproves Christianity.’”

The inconsistent media and scholarly reaction to the discovery of “Gabriel’s Revelation,” Gray thought, was comparable to Jesus’ description in Luke 7 of the “people of this generation,” who were like the children in the marketplace saying “We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge, but you did not weep.”

Dr. Gray is also Professor of Sacred Scripture at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary and Director of the Denver Catholic Biblical School. He is one of the biblical scholars who appears on the Lost Gospels or False Gospels and Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead? DVDs.

Evangelical scholar Dr. Ben Witherington III (mentioned recently on this blog) said this to TIME magazine:

"It is certainly not perfectly clear that the tablet is talking about a crucified and risen savior figure called Simon," says Ben Witherington, an early-Christianity expert at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky. The verb that Knohl translates as "rise!," Witherington says, could also mean "there arose," and so one can ask "does it mean 'he comes to life,' i.e., a resurrection, or that he just 'shows up?' " Witherington also points out that gospel texts are far less reliant on the observed fact of the Resurrection (there is no angelic command in them like the line in the Gabriel stone) than on the testimony of eyewitnesses to Jesus' post-Resurrection self. Finally, Witherington notes that if he is wrong and Knohl's reading is right, it at least sets to rest the notion that the various gospel quotes attributed to Christ foreshadowing his death and Resurrection were textual retrojections put in his mouth by later believers — Jesus the Messianic Jew, as Knohl sees him, would have been familiar with the vocabulary for his own fate.

Michael Barber, Professor of Theology, Scripture and Catholic Thought at John Paul the Great Catholic University in San Diego, makes this observation on the Singing In the Reign blog:

I've known about this for sometime, but it looks like it now is finally hitting the mainstream media.

For the record, it should be pointed out that the idea of a resurrection on the third day flows from Hosea 6:2:

"After two days he will revive us;on the third day he will raise us up,that we may live before him."

Indeed, Jesus explains to the disciples that his resurrection on the third day would take place in order to fulfill Scripture.

"Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead" (Luke 24:46). In fact, the New Testament is clear that Jesus came to fulfill the hopes of ancient Israel.

Exactly right. Which means that this latest discovery, if authentic (as it appears to be), simply reinforces what many biblical scholars have been emphasizing for several decades now: that in order to better understand and appreciate Jesus' teachings and actions, we need to have a better understanding of ancient Judaism and its beliefs, literature, and theologies.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles and Book Excerpts:              
      
• The Truth of the Resurrection | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger | From Introduction to Christianity
• Seeing Jesus in the Gospel of John | Excerpts from On The Way to Jesus Christ | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• A Jesus Worth Dying For | A Review of On The Way to Jesus Christ | Justin Nickelsen
• Encountering Christ in the Gospel | Excerpt from My Jesus | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn
• The Divinity of Christ | Peter Kreeft
• Easter: The Defiant Feast | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Jesus Is Catholic | Hans Urs von Balthasar
• The Religion of Jesus | Blessed Columba Marmion | From Christ, The Ideal of the Priest

Out of this world funny!

From The Daily Telegraph, this bit of Unidentified Flying News:

A GROUP of glamour lesbians who believe the world was created by an alien civilisation 25,000 years ago have criticised the Catholic Church for being out of touch.

I suspect that many people are "out of touch" with glamour lesbians who believe in Rael, a Frenchman (Claude Maurice Marcel Vorilhon) who claims that he was contacted in 1973 by the extraterrestrials who created humans and who soon set about telling the world about the truth of mankind's "designers." Considering the movement claims to have between 60,000-80,000 adherents, I like my odds.

The representatives of the Gay Raelian society yesterday staged a demonstration outside Parliament House to protest the Pope's arrival for World Youth Day next week.

Raelian spokeswoman Eden Bates said it was an insult that the Pope would be welcomed into Australia when "our gorgeous, fantastic spiritual leader Rael wasn't even given the respect of a visa".

"I'm not Catholic, I'm Raelian and I'd like to see police escorts for our beautiful profit when he comes to Australia," she said.

Profit? Must be the reporter's error. Anyhow, you might recall that a few years ago Rael said he and his company, CLONAID, had figured out how to clone humans. A 2001 article about that story described a movement that makes "weird" look ordinary:

Rael himself is a former journalist who once edited a sports car journal     called Auto Pop. Claiming to have founded "the world’s only     atheistic religion," he pokes fun at the Pope, and deplores sexism and     racism. His followers—50,000 strong and growing, in 84 countries around     the world—share many of the assumptions and opinions of secular humanists,     feminists, gay activists, and swinging singles. They virtually bristle with     tolerance when they approach the media. "Respectez les     differences!" is a major Raelian tenet.

"The Raelians are great material," a journalist once told me at     the end of an interview. "They worship space aliens, they're sexy,     good-looking nudists—and now they might even clone a human!"

An article in the June 24, 2008, edition of the Sydney Morning Herald reported:

Other groups in the NoToPope Coalition are the Socialist Alliance, Resistance, Atheists Sydney and the Raelians, a religious sect that has claimed to have cloned the world's first human being.

Raelian members Eden Bates and Gerry Texeira said it was unfair that their leader, Claude Vorilhon, known as Rael, was denied a visa upon application while the Pope was being feted by Australian governments.

"In the Raelian movement we are very, very clear that all humanity has been designed and part of that design is to have diversity," Ms Bates said.

One wonders (among other things) how it is that a superior race of extraterrestrials would create a race of beings who have historically, across nearly every culture and religion, believed that homosexual acts and sexual promiscuity are either to be avoided or simply sinful? Those silly aliens! Hopefully we'll learn the answer to that question and many others when this movie comes out in a couple of weeks.

What does Benedict XVI believe about evolution and ID?

David Delaney of the Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex blog has written a lengthy and thoughtful review of Creation and Evolution: A Conference with Pope Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo (Ignatius, 2008). He writes:

I recently read the English translation of the book covering B16’s 2006 Schülerkreis (a yearly meeting he has with his former students) published by Ignatius Press under the title, Creation and Evolution.  That is probably why Carl Olson’s post on the book interested me. What caught my eye in particular was Carl’s reference to a Reuter’s article/post on the topic. The Reuter’s author, Tom Heneghan, recently did a Reuter’s blog post on the English translation in which he makes reference to an earlier article of his based upon the release of the German edition of the book.

Heneghan says that anyone who wants to know where the Catholic Church stands on the issue of creation and evolution, should read this book. His claim is that B16 proclaims in the book, the classic Catholic teaching on the topic called, Theistic evolution. He doesn’t explain this term but does link to a wikipedia entry on the topic which I guess we must assume is his definition. Wikipedia indicates that this term refers to those who believe there is no necessary conflict between Christian faith in creation and the theory of evolution. However, the term itself, and Heneghan’s use of it, seem to imply that the biological theory of evolution is accepted by B16 on some level.

Read the entire post.