Quotation Of The Day: Easter Sunday And Religion In Politics Edition

From this Ross Douthat editorial on the New York Times,

In this atmosphere, religious differences are more likely to inspire baroque conspiracy theories, whether it’s the far-right panic over an Islamified United States or the left-wing paranoia about a looming evangelical-led theocracy. And faith itself is more likely to serve partisan purposes — whether it’s putting the messianic sheen on Obama’s “hope and change” campaign or supplying the storm clouds in Glenn Beck’s apocalyptic monologues.

Americans have never separated religion from politics, but it makes a difference how the two are intertwined. When religious commitments are more comprehensive and religious institutions more resilient, faith is more likely to call people out of private loyalties to public purposes, more likely to inspire voters to put ideals above self-interest, more likely to inspire politicians to defy partisan categories altogether. But as orthodoxies weaken, churches split and their former adherents mix and match elements of various traditions to fit their preferences, religion is more likely to become indistinguishable from personal and ideological self-interest.

Creationists Don't Like Bill Mandating The Teaching Of Creation

I guess South Dakota will get to this legislation next year.  From the Discovery Institute,

Indianapolis – A bill approved today by the Indiana Senate to allow the teaching of creationism in public schools is being criticized as bad science education by Discovery Institute, the nation’s leading intelligent design think tank.

If made law, Indiana Senate Bill 89 (SB89) would allow creationism, a religious view on the origin of species, into the Hoosier state’s biology classrooms. In 1987, the Supreme Court struck down similar legislation as an unconstitutional establishment of religion. Instead of scrapping SB89 in deference to legal precedent, the Indiana Senate has amended the bill to allow more religious views on origins, as if more religion could cure the original problem.

“Instead of injecting religion into biology classes, legislators should be working to promote the inclusion of more science,” said Joshua Youngkin, a law and policy analyst at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture. “There are plenty of scientific criticisms of Darwin’s theory today, and science students should be able to hear about them, not about religion.”

The original bill was amended to mandate that science classes teach the creation stories of many cultures in biology classes.

Never The Twain Shall Meet . . .

These recent threads at the Madville Times illustrate that the the atheist vs believer conflict shows little sign of abating.  The local comments echo the comments of noted atheist Richard Dawkins and religious philosopher Alvin Plantaga

Mr. Plantinga and Mr. Dennett do agree about one thing: Religion and science can’t just call a truce and retreat back into what the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould called “non-overlapping magisteria,” with science laying claim to the empirical world, while leaving questions of ultimate meaning to religion. Religion, like science, makes claims about the truth, Mr. Plantinga insists, and theists need to stick up for the reasonableness of those claims, especially if they are philosophers.

Plantinga, at least as he is portrayed in the NYT profile, takes positions that both sides in the local dust up might find a bit off-putting.

Plantinga will anger the local atheists when he asserts,

The so-called New Atheists may claim the mantle of reason, not to mention a much wider audience, thanks to best sellers like Mr. Dawkins’s fire-breathing polemic, “The God Delusion.” But while Mr. Plantinga may favor the highly abstruse style of analytic philosophy, to him the truth of the matter is crystal clear.

Theism, with its vision of an orderly universe superintended by a God who created rational-minded creatures in his own image, “is vastly more hospitable to science than naturalism,” with its random process of natural selection, he writes. “Indeed, it is theism, not naturalism, that deserves to be called ‘the scientific worldview.’” 

On the other hand, some of the more vociferous believers might take umbrage at the following: 

Mr. Plantinga says he accepts the scientific theory of evolution, as all Christians should. Mr. Dennett and his fellow atheists, he argues, are the ones who are misreading Darwin. Their belief that evolution rules out the existence of God — including a God who purposely created human beings through a process of guided evolution — is not a scientific claim, he writes, but “a metaphysical or theological addition.”

I suppose that one can hypothesize the fact that Plantinga will probably anger both sides of the contentious  debate means that he's stumbling close to a truth.

Why Do Christians Vote For Randians?

I posted about Ayn Rand's contempt for religion here.

This ad does a far better job of allowing her condemn herself with her own words. (HT Michael Tomasky)

Conservatives like William F. Buckley did a great service by reminding Americans that ideas have consequences.  Rand's ideas taken to their logical conclusion will produce consequences as pernicious as the totalitarian state she criticizes.

Update: I missed this post by big boy blogger Andrew Sullivan yesterday.  He gives full treatment to this issue.  HT @coralhei

Once Again, I'm Confused.

I really don't want to get into a major argument with some of the regular commentators of the Madville Times, especially those who comment on posts like this Independence Day observation.  I seldom wade into religion and America discussions because most of those arguments (I'm using the term to denote screaming and shouting and throwing hissy fits as opposed to issuing a series of propositions to establish a supportable logical position) will have the same outcome as a pissing contest with a skunk:  there may be some relief, but the odor will be terrible.

I realize that in Matthew 5:10-12 Christ says, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you."  That being said, however, I don't see anything in this injunction that implies that Christ's followers should make it easy on those who would mock them by saying incredibly stupid things that make it easy for sites like Tea Party Jesus to make little satirical comments like this one.

I'm sure many will be offended that artistic renderings of Jesus are being used in this way.  They should be offended that many of the artistic renderings are really horrendous and inaccurate.  I don't think First Century Palestine featured any blond, blue-eyed Jews.

One would hope that seeing rather idiotic or vile or unchristian comments coming out Jesus' mouth would make people stop and think before they speak, but that would require me to be more optimistic than I have ever been in my life. 

My natural pessimism leaves me with two options:  remembering to  "...work out [my]  salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for  His  good pleasure" Philippians 2:12b-13.  I also need to remember "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts" Isaiah 55:8-9.  The first injunction will take up most of my time.  The second is just a reminder that we mere mortals are never going to be as smart as we think we are.

More BP Oil Deluge Stuff

I don't know anything about Russel D. Moore, but on the BP atrocity, he seems to get it.  Some of his points about conservatism, Christianity, and larger social issues echo what I've been thinking for a long time.  All quotes that follow are from Moore's 6/1/2010 blog post Ecological Catastrophe and the Uneasy Evangelical Conscience; the bold face is my addition.  A tip of the hat to Rod Dreher and his Beliefnet Blog for pointing out this post

The Scripture gives us a vision of human sin that means there ought to be limits to every claim to sovereignty, whether from church, state, business or labor. A commitment to the free market doesn’t mean unfettered license any more than a commitment to free speech means hardcore pornography ought to be broadcast in prime-time by your local network television affiliate.

Caesar’s sword is there, by God’s authority, to restrain those who would harm others (Rom. 13). When government fails or refuses to protect its own people, whether from nuclear attack or from toxic waste spewing into our life-giving waters, the government has failed.

In our era, the abortion issue is the transcendent moral issue of the day (as segregation was in the last generation, and lynching and slavery before that). Too often, however, we’ve been willing not simply to vote for candidates who will protect unborn human life (as we ought to), but to also in the process adopt their worldviews on every other issue.

What is being threatened in the Gulf states isn’t just seafood or tourism or beach views. What’s being threatened is a culture. As social conservatives, we understand…or we ought to understand…that human communities are formed by traditions and by mores, by the bond between the generations. Culture is, as Russell Kirk said, a compact reaching back to the dead and forward to the unborn. Liberalism wants to dissolve those traditions, and make every generation create itself anew; not conservatism.


When the natural environment is used up, unsustainable for future generations, cultures die. When Gulfs are dead, when mountaintops are removed, when forests are razed with nothing left in their place, when deer populations disappear, cultures die too.

And what’s left in the place of these cultures and traditions is an individualism that is defined simply by the appetites for sex, violence, and piling up stuff. That’s not conservative, and it certainly isn’t Christian.

I'm not sure that I agree that [l]iberalism wants to dissolve all traditions, but with that small caveat, I have to say preach it brother.

Evangelicals Debate Basic Principles

Brian McLaren causes consternation.  I don't know if I agree with his theology, but anyone who can mix postmodernism and Christianity is someone I'd like to have dinner with.  McLaren's website is here.