Handling controversy in our fields as Christian scholars

With the close of the recent faster-than-light neutrino debacle, I find myself contemplating how Christian scholars can responsibly respond to other Christians' questions about controversial events/findings in our fields. In particular...

1. When other Christians ask us questions about these controversies, how can we tell if they are genuinely interested, or simply tapping us for information?
2. How do we caringly but fairly defend our field if other Christians seek to use these controversies in attacks against the mainstream incarnations of our fields?
3. How do we explain our qualifications to judge these controversies?

For example, in response to the claims of faster-than-light neutrinos, I as a physicist faced the following issues:

1. Should I attempt to re-explain the findings in response to questions, or simply point the askers to the already-existing (and very well-written) popular documentation of the claims?
2. If a young-earth creationist sees this as a "failure" of physics that would justify his challenge to the estimated 13.7-billion-year age of the universe, how do I lovingly put the claims---and the likelihood of their accuracy---into perspective?
3. In such conversations, how do I humbly but accurately describe my experience with related matters, and mark out the boundaries my understanding of a sub-field of physics that I'm not terribly familiar with?

The kind of books we need right now

I receive a number of wall posts on facebook with recommendations or queries about whether I’ve read a certain book relating Christianity to science. Some are theologically conservative, some liberal; some are Scripture-based, some science-based, and some philosophy-based; some address the higher education setting, and some grade school; some take the tactic of setting up a conversation between “science” and “religion,” while others take a very hostile stand behind their well-drawn lines.



I’ll admit: I haven’t read most of these books. But I do think they all have something important in common: They’re not what we need right now.


Take, for example, a recent recommendation: Tipler’s The Physics of Christianity. The book description on amazon reads:

A highly respected physicist demonstrates that the essential beliefs of Christianity are wholly consistent with the laws of physics.


Frank Tipler takes an exciting new approach to the age-old dispute about the relationship between science and religion in The Physics of Christianity. In reviewing centuries of writings and discussions, Tipler realized that in all the debate about science versus religion, there was no serious scientific research into central Christian claims and beliefs. So Tipler embarked on just such a scientific inquiry. The Physics of Christianity presents the fascinating results of his pioneering study.

Tipler begins by outlining the basic concepts of physics for the lay reader and brings to light the underlying connections between physics and theology. In a compelling example, he illustrates how the God depicted by Jews and Christians, the Uncaused First Cause, is completely consistent with the Cosmological Singularity, an entity whose existence is required by physical law. His discussion of the scientific possibility of miracles provides an impressive, credible scientific foundation for many of Christianity’s most astonishing claims, including the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, and the Incarnation. He even includes specific outlines for practical experiments that can help prove the validity of the “miracles” at the heart of Christianity.


Tipler’s thoroughly rational approach and fully accessible style sets The Physics of Christianity apart from other books dealing with conflicts between science and religion. It will appeal not only to Christian readers, but also to anyone interested in an issue that triggers heated and divisive intellectual and cultural debates.

Aside from the Babel fish argument, here's my issue with works like this: "he illustrates how the God depicted by Jews and Christians, the Uncaused First Cause, is completely consistent with the Cosmological Singularity, an entity whose existence is required by physical law." Physical law "requires" the existence of just about (and probably absolutely) nothing. I'm no cosmologist, but a quick literature search for "cosmological singularity" (whatever it is; again, I'm no cosmologist) shows that its necessity is far from certain in the physics community, but this author thinks it sounds like Christianity, so he latches onto it with unwarranted certainty. (Granted, Tipler has published about the cosmological singularity, so his subscription to it as a true idea is understandable to some degree.)

(By the way, Reasons to Believe does the exact same thing with Scripture: Whatever verses sound like physical law, they say, must have definitive physical significance, while neighboring verses that almost seem to contradict physical law must be metaphorical.)


What I think we really need at this point is an agreed-upon framework of Christian scholarship that can direct our investigations and undergird our discussions. Is it Christ-like, for example, to co-opt an uncertain and unproven physical theory (in this case, the cosmological singularity) to give the Christian masses an artificial sense of certainty? What happens, then, when that physical theory is definitively disproven? Didn't the church do the same thing when it latched onto Aristotelian astronomy that placed the earth at the center of the universe and the planets and sun in perfectly circular orbits? That certainly didn't end well.


I'm not saying a study like Tipler's isn't worthwhile, and I'm not saying you shouldn't buy his book. I applaud what I think are his genuine intentions to encourage Christians and heal some of the damage between Christianity and science. But I think that a healthy framework of Christian scholarship is a prerequisite to studies such as this one. The damage is not just a conceptual discord between a few tenants of Christianity and a few scientific principles; there is also a vast intellectual, emotional, and cultural rift between the university and the church (which are both rifted from the main culture) that requires some serious structural undergirding if it's ever going to be bridged. I think that framework can be developed (if Christian scholars will put their minds and hearts and publications to it) and I think that rift can be bridged with that framework as a foundation.
 
What needs to go in that framework? What kinds of foundational questions about Christian scholarship do we need to address to make works like Tipler's timely? Well... what do you think?

Ideas That Have Ruined Me

Below is a list of ideas that have "ruined" me--i.e., ideas that have forever altered my way of perceiving and thinking about the world around me and how I interact with others' perceptions and thoughts. I hope to write more about each in the coming weeks.

1. At the end of the Bible's story, believers spend eternity on the renewed earth, not "in heaven." This has forever changed my reaction to much Christian music and thinking.
2. The importance of criticality and doubt in thinking, thanks to Pascal's reason-based doubt-proof-submission paradigm.
3. "All truth is God's truth," thanks to Calvin.
4. "Calling is the truth that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we do, everything we are, and everything we have is invested with a special dynamism and devotion lived out as a response to His summons," thanks to Os Guinness. (My apologies if the wording is out of order, as I'm writing from memory.)
5. "An intellectual is someone who loves ideas... A Christian intellectual is [one who does so] to the glory of God," thanks to James Sire.
6. "Learning results from what the student does and thinks and only from what the student does and thinks," thanks to Herbert Simon. In my mind, this idea has spent the last six months in an intergalactic collision with the idea that the way we "do church" is not specifically prescribed in either the Old or New Testament.

What ideas have "ruined" you?

The Moral Dimension of the Mind, a la Sire

I've been rereading Sire's Habits of the Mind, and just finished his challenging Chapter 5: The Moral Dimension of the Mind. In it, he lays down the truth that should haunt all Christians:


We only know/believe what we obey. Or, we are responsible for living based on what we know.


Thus, Christian intellectuals bear a great deal of responsibility.

Here is the great dichotomy that I found on this reread:


We fail in our responsibility as Christian intellectuals, and so Christian intellectualism needs the gospel. But living out the gospel (the actions he describes as aspiration--setting our minds on what is good--and mortification--denying our flesh) requires Christian thinking (and therefore Christian intellectualism). Each necessitates the other.


In general, in fact, the only way to respond to the gospel is in obedience, and the only way to obey is to believe the gospel.


But what does all of this have to do with being a Christian physicist? I came up with a few answers...

• I need to connect physics to worship.
• I am a teacher, and not just a physicist. (This thought also led me to consider the differences between the terms "physics teacher," "physicist teacher," and "teacher physicist." I'll tease out those differences in another post some day...) I need to value my students, their learning, and their future.
• Physics is applied to help creation. (I normally say, "help humanity," but with all the thoughts of the oil spill floating around in my head, and my multi-year-long fascination with the Cultural Mandate in Genesis 1, it occurred to me that I needed to expand my understanding of my own sphere of responsibility. Again, probably more about this in a future post...)

What is Christian Scholarship?

In the preface of The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, Marsden states that his purpose is to "take a step toward clarifying what the ancient enterprise of relating faith and learning might mean in the academy today." In so doing, he hopes to carve out a place of respect and welcome for Christian scholarship in the academy today.


But what is "Christian scholarship?"


It's a difficult question to answer. But it's an important one, as your answer to that question will color your responses to Marsden's ideas.


Here are a few possibilities:

1. Christian scholarship is scholarship about Christianity.
2. Christian scholarship is scholarship about topics that are of concern to Christians.
3. Christian scholarship is scholarship that seeks the goal of confirming Christian beliefs.
4. Christian scholarship is scholarship that is born out of uniquely Christian beliefs.
5. Christian scholarship is scholarship that seeks to understand the relationships between Christianity and other fields.
6. Christian scholarship is scholarship that seeks to clarify Christian beliefs.
7. Christian scholarship is scholarship that is conducted by Christians.

Do you see how each of these applies a different flavor to the term?


There's a similar problem, for example, in trying to define what physics is. There are many physicists whose work looks a lot like pure mathematics, or chemistry, or biology, or philosophy, or meteorology, or astronomy, and there are the folks who apply the principles of physics to social networks & economic systems. Ultimately, then, we define physics as what physicists do.


Based on that comparison, I'm inclined to support definition #7 above, with the understanding that implies, includes, and encompasses #1-6.