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Signaling a significant departure from the Southern Baptist Convention’s official stance on global warming, 44 Southern Baptist leaders have decided to back a declaration calling for more action on climate change, saying its previous position on the issue was “too timid.”

The largest denomination in the United States after the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, with more than 16 million members, is politically and theologically conservative.

Yet its current president, the Rev. Frank Page, signed the initiative, “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change.” Two past presidents of the convention, the Rev. Jack Graham and the Rev. James Merritt, also signed.

“We believe our current denominational engagement with these issues has often been too timid, failing to produce a unified moral voice,” the church leaders wrote in their new declaration.

A 2007 resolution passed by the convention hewed to a more skeptical view of global warming.

In contrast, the new declaration, which will be released Monday, states, “Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed.”

The document also urges ministers to preach more about the environment and for all Baptists to keep an open mind about considering environmental policy.

Jonathan Merritt, the spokesman for the Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative and a seminarian at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., said the declaration was a call to Christians to return to a biblical mandate to guard the world God created.

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- This article is from the NY Times and they insist that folks have an ID and a PW in order to read their stuff. You can get these for free just by signing up. However, a friend of mine suggests the website bugmenot.com as an alternative to having to do these annoying sign ups. Check it out. Thx Bruce S. for the tip.

 - Most people who believe that their religion is the best religion seem to find no irony in the idea that those who don’t want to believe, of their own free will, should need to be pressured to believe - in this case under penalty of death.

- It’s always seemed to me that if something is the ‘best’, then its superior qualities should be self evident to all.  And if folks have to be compelled to believe in its superior qualities, then I can think of no better indictment of its inferior nature.

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Apostasy — or the formal renunciation of religion — is already punishable in Iran with death. But now, Iran wants to make the death penalty for apostasy part of the penal code. The European Union is concerned and has asked Iran to reconsider.

The European Union this week sent a letter to authorities in Iran expressing its concern over a proposed change to the penal code that would make apostasy punishable by death.

The EU is responding to news that the Islamic Republic is planning to subject “apostasy, heresy and witchcraft” to the Hudud — the body of fixed punishments assigned to crimes that are considered violations of the “claims of God.” Other Hadud crimes include alcohol consumption, theft, highway robbery and illegal sexual intercourse.

As the news agency Reuters reported earlier this week, the EU, which opposes the death penalty as a matter of policy, expressed “acute concern” over the proposed penal code revision.

“These articles clearly violate the Islamic Republic of Iran’s commitments under the international human rights conventions,” Slovenian leaders, who currently head the rotating EU presidency, wrote in a statement.

“The EU calls upon the Iranian authorities, both in government and parliament, to modify the draft penal code in order to respect the obligations.”

The death penalty has already been applied to apostates in Iran — but this was never, since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979, institutionalized as a matter of legal practice.

Iran typically dismisses Western criticism of its legal system, claiming that Islamic law is fundamentally different.

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- I am both of a scientific bent of mind and a spiritualist which, I know, seems a stretch to many people. I’ve written a bit about this . And, in fact, when I come across arguments between religious people and scientists, I most frequently side with the scientists because I find a lot of religious thinking soft and circular. So, I found this article in National Geographic which a friend sent to me, very interesting. Collins walks very near the line I favor.

- The article:

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The often strained relationship between science and religion has become particularly combative lately. In one corner we have scientists such as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker who view religion as a relic of our superstitious, prescientific past that humanity should abandon. In the other corner are religious believers who charge that science is morally nihilistic and inadequate for understanding the wonders of existence. Into this breach steps Francis Collins, who offers himself as proof that science and religion can be reconciled. As leader of the Human Genome Project, Collins is among the world’s most important scientists, the head of a multibillion-dollar research program aimed at understanding human nature and healing our innate disorders. And yet in his best-selling book, The Language of God, he recounts how he accepted Christ as his savior in 1978 and has been a devout Christian ever since. “The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome,” he writes. “He can be worshiped in the cathedral or in the laboratory.” Recently Collins discussed his faith with science writer John Horgan, who has explored the boundaries between science and spirituality in his own books The End of Science and Rational Mysticism. Horgan, who has described himself as “an agnostic increasingly disturbed by religion’s influence on human affairs,” directs the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Interview by John Horgan

Horgan: As a scientist who looks for natural explanations of things and demands evidence, how can you also believe in miracles, like the resurrection?

Collins: I don’t have a problem with the concept that miracles might occasionally occur at moments of great significance, where there is a message being transmitted to us by God Almighty. But as a scientist I set my standards for miracles very high.

Horgan: The problem I have with miracles is not just that they violate what science tells us about how the world works. They also make God seem too capricious. For example, many people believe that if they pray hard enough God will intercede to heal them or a loved one. But does that mean that all those who don’t get better aren’t worthy?

Collins: In my own experience as a physician, I have not seen a miraculous healing, and I don’t expect to see one. Also, prayer for me is not a way to manipulate God into doing what we want him to do. Prayer for me is much more a sense of trying to get into fellowship with God. I’m trying to figure out what I should be doing rather than telling Almighty God what he should be doing. Look at the Lord’s Prayer. It says, “Thy will be done.” It wasn’t, “Our Father who art in Heaven, please get me a parking space.”

Horgan: I must admit that I’ve become more concerned lately about the harmful effects of religion because of religious terrorism like 9/11 and the growing power of the religious right in the United States.

Collins: What faith has not been used by demagogues as a club over somebody’s head? Whether it was the Inquisition or the Crusades on the one hand or the World Trade Center on the other? But we shouldn’t judge the pure truths of faith by the way they are applied any more than we should judge the pure truth of love by an abusive marriage. We as children of God have been given by God this knowledge of right and wrong, this Moral Law, which I see as a particularly compelling signpost to his existence. But we also have this thing called free will, which we exercise all the time to break that law. We shouldn’t blame faith for the ways people distort it and misuse it.

Horgan: Many people have a hard time believing in God because of the problem of evil. If God loves us, why is life filled with so much suffering?

Collins: That is the most fundamental question that all seekers have to wrestle with. First of all, if our ultimate goal is to grow, learn, and discover things about ourselves and things about God, then unfortunately a life of ease is probably not the way to get there. I know I have learned very little about myself or God when everything is going well. Also, a lot of the pain and suffering in the world we cannot lay at God’s feet. God gave us free will, and we may choose to exercise it in ways that end up hurting other people.

Horgan: Physicist Steven Weinberg, who is an atheist, asks why six million Jews, including his relatives, had to die in the Holocaust so that the Nazis could exercise their free will.

Collins: If God had to intervene miraculously every time one of us chose to do something evil, it would be a very strange, chaotic, unpredictable world. Free will leads to people doing terrible things to each other. Innocent people die as a result. You can’t blame anyone except the evildoers for that. So that’s not God’s fault. The harder question is when suffering seems to have come about through no human ill action. A child with cancer, a natural disaster, a tornado or tsunami. Why would God not prevent those things from happening?

Horgan: Some philosophers, such as Charles Hartshorne, have suggested that maybe God isn’t fully in control of his creation. The poet Annie Dillard expresses this idea in her phrase “God the semi-competent.”

Collins: That’s delightful—and probably blasphemous! An alternative is the notion of God being outside of nature and time and having a perspective of our blink-of-an-eye existence that goes both far back and far forward. In some admittedly metaphysical way, that allows me to say that the meaning of suffering may not always be apparent to me. There can be reasons for terrible things happening that I cannot know.

Horgan: I’m an agnostic, and I was bothered when in your book you called agnosticism a “cop-out.” Agnosticism doesn’t mean you’re lazy or don’t care. It means you aren’t satisfied with any answers for what after all are ultimate mysteries.

Collins: That was a put-down that should not apply to earnest agnostics who have considered the evidence and still don’t find an answer. I was reacting to the agnosticism I see in the scientific community, which has not been arrived at by a careful examination of the evidence. I went through a phase when I was a casual agnostic, and I am perhaps too quick to assume that others have no more depth than I did.

Horgan: Free will is a very important concept to me, as it is to you. It’s the basis for our morality and search for meaning. Don’t you worry that science in general and genetics in particular—and your work as head of the Genome Project—are undermining belief in free will?

Collins: You’re talking about genetic determinism, which implies that we are helpless marionettes being controlled by strings made of double helices. That is so far away from what we know scientifically! Heredity does have an influence not only over medical risks but also over certain behaviors and personality traits. But look at identical twins, who have exactly the same DNA but often don’t behave alike or think alike. They show the importance of learning and experience—and free will. I think we all, whether we are religious or not, recognize that free will is a reality. There are some fringe elements that say, “No, it’s all an illusion, we’re just pawns in some computer model.” But I don’t think that carries you very far.

Horgan: What do you think of Darwinian explanations of altruism, or what you call agape, totally selfless love and compassion for someone not directly related to you?

Collins: It’s been a little of a just-so story so far. Many would argue that altruism has been supported by evolution because it helps the group survive. But some people sacrificially give of themselves to those who are outside their group and with whom they have absolutely nothing in common. Such as Mother Teresa, Oskar Schindler, many others. That is the nobility of humankind in its purist form. That doesn’t seem like it can be explained by a Darwinian model, but I’m not hanging my faith on this.

Horgan: What do you think about the field of neurotheology, which attempts to identify the neural basis of religious experiences?

Collins: I think it’s fascinating but not particularly surprising. We humans are flesh and blood. So it wouldn’t trouble me—if I were to have some mystical experience myself—to discover that my temporal lobe was lit up. That doesn’t mean that this doesn’t have genuine spiritual significance. Those who come at this issue with the presumption that there is nothing outside the natural world will look at this data and say, “Ya see?” Whereas those who come with the presumption that we are spiritual creatures will go, “Cool! There is a natural correlate to this mystical experience! How about that!”

Horgan: Some scientists have predicted that genetic engineering may give us superhuman intelligence and greatly extended life spans, perhaps even immortality. These are possible long-term consequences of the Human Genome Project and other lines of research. If these things happen, what do you think would be the consequences for religious traditions?

Collins: That outcome would trouble me. But we’re so far away from that reality that it’s hard to spend a lot of time worrying about it, when you consider all the truly benevolent things we could do in the near term.

Horgan: I’m really asking, does religion require suffering? Could we reduce suffering to the point where we just won’t need religion?

Collins: In spite of the fact that we have achieved all these wonderful medical advances and made it possible to live longer and eradicate diseases, we will probably still figure out ways to argue with each other and sometimes to kill each other, out of our self-righteousness and our determination that we have to be on top. So the death rate will continue to be one per person, whatever the means. We may understand a lot about biology, we may understand a lot about how to prevent illness, and we may understand the life span. But I don’t think we’ll ever figure out how to stop humans from doing bad things to each other. That will always be our greatest and most distressing experience here on this planet, and that will make us long the most for something more.

To the original article:

- research thanks to Gertraude K.

- I don’t subscribe to any particular spiritual philosophy. In fact, I’m drawn by the idea underlying a quote by Mahatma Ghandi.

My commitment is to truth as I see it each day, not to consistency.

- But, having said that, I do see things here I particularly like.  This story of a personal/spiritual philosophy appeals to me.

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First up, an explanation of sorts. There’s been a continued ‘enlightenment’ theme to recent posts. Maybe it’s because I try not to plan what I write that posts tend to take on a life of their own, I don’t really know. All I can say is that I have a load of ideas around entrepreneurship, creativity and life hacks that I’d love to share with you too. But whilst we’re on the subject, and just so you have a little perspective as to ‘where I’m coming from’, I’ll tell you about my own path so far:

I guess we all come to the recognition of Truth in our own way and in our own time, and that’s good. My way seems very strange though. I was one of the so called lucky ones - I had my very own ‘burning bush’ experience but what I did with that beggars belief. I very, very subtly (so that I wouldn’t even notice I was doing it) turned and walked away from it.

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This morning, scientific and evangelical leaders announced a collaborative effort to protect our environment from anthropogenic threats.

“We dare to imagine a world in which science and religion cooperate, minimizing our differences about how Creation got started to work together to reverse its degradation,” Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, said at the announcement in Washington, D.C.

The coalition released a statement signed by 28 prominent evangelicals and scientists—including biologist Edward O. Wilson and climatologist James Hansen—that calls for a “fundamental change in values, lifestyles, and public policies required to address these worsening problems before it is too late.” The coalition sent the statement, titled an “Urgent Call to Action,” to George W. Bush, Nancy Pelosi, congressional leaders, and national evangelical and scientific organizations.

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“Let the waters teem with countless living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of heaven.’” E.O. Wilson is quoting from the biblical account of the fifth day of creation. “Isn’t that lovely?” he asks, his voice lilting with pleasure. “Whether you believe that there is a god who touched the universe with a magic wand or not, it’s a command—[one] I think scientists could respond to as well as religious folk.”

Wilson sits in his office on the fourth floor of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, across the hall from the university’s world-famous ant collection. His hands move in animated gestures, his shoulders falling forward into a natural hunch—the “lifetime posture” he developed by his late teens from stooping low to the ground to inspect small creatures.

The reference to biodiversity in the seminal text of Judeo-Christian culture resonates deeply with Wilson. Raised a Baptist and “born again” as a teenager, he has championed biodiversity as an academic and a writer for more than 50 years. His new book, The Creation, is an appeal to the religious right to “consider forming an alliance to do something that science and religion, the most powerful social forces in the world, are uniquely prepared to do: save the creation.”

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It is unprecedented for conservative and progressive Christians alike to close ranks in condemning a Bible publisher. It is unheard of for Christians to call for a boycott of a Bible publisher for licensing a real-time strategy videogame that caricaturizes Christianity as a crusade, puts modern military weapons in the hands of children, sends them on a mission to convert or kill infidels, and even lets children role play commanding the armies of the AntiChrist, unleashing demons that feast on Christians.

“Does it sound like fun, or does it sound like the way homicidal Muslims think?” asks Marvin Olasky, editor of the conservative Christian World Magazine in a blog post dated August 21, 2006, and titled Convert Them Or Kill Them? That’s Not Christianity. His piece links to a recent Washington Post article, “Fire and Brimstone, Guns and Ammo.” But the Post and World Magazine have barely touched the hem of the garment, in terms of understanding and exposing the game for what is truly is. Yet word is getting out, and a boycott is picking up steam.

It is unprecedented, and to date unheralded by the mainstream media. But it is happening. It is sparking, sputtering, glowing and growing like a prairie fire. There is a growing movement among conservative and progressive Christians alike to boycott Tyndale House, the Christian publishing house that publishes the Living Bible and Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind novels and also licenses the controversial videogame Left Behind: Eternal Forces, along with any chain stores or megachurches that plan to distribute the game.

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WorldNetDaily - February 16th, 2006

Majority of respondents want government to take action even if economy is harmed

A poll released today shows 70 percent of American evangelical Christians see global warming as a “serious threat” to the future of the planet.

Conducted by Ellison Research, the survey indicates a majority of evangelicals agree with 85 Christian leaders who signed an Evangelical Climate Initiative unveiled Feb. 8 that calls for government action to deal with so-called global warming. The initiative includes a campaign of newspaper, TV and radio ads.

Signers of the initiative include, among others, Rick Warren, pastor and author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” Rich Stearns, president of World Vision, Commissioner Todd Bassett, national commander of The Salvation Army, and David Neff, executive editor of Christianity Today.

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By Ralph Blumenthal - NY Times - August 2nd, 2006

Kansas voters on Tuesday handed power back to moderates on the State Board of Education, setting the stage for a return of science teaching that broadly accepts the theory of evolution, according to preliminary election results.

With just 6 districts of 1,990 yet to report as of 8 a.m. Central time today, two conservatives — including incumbent Connie Morris, a former west Kansas teacher and author who had described evolution as “a nice bedtime story” — appear to have been defeated decisively by two moderates in the Republican primary elections.

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Ever since I began reading widely in college, the name, Spinoza, has been coming up among the ranks of significant thinkers in western history. So, I’ve known he was out there and that he was important but much more than that I couldn’t have told you until I read the following article by Rebecca Goldstein in the NY Times.

I probably always avoided delving into the man because such journeys into deep philosophy are generally taxing and may end up feeling unproductive after you’ve exerted the effort to see what the buzz was about and deciding it wasn’t worth the effort or it was impenetrable or whatever.

Well, in this case, I think I by passed an important figure out of laziness.

Spinoza, was excommunicated by the Jewish community of Amsterdam in 1656 at the age of 23 for making the assertion that no group or religion could rightly claim infallible knowledge of the Creator’s partiality to its beliefs and ways.

Think about that for a moment in the context of today’s world of fundamentalists - each claiming exclusive divine authorization and approval and each believing everyone else is wrong. The man was clearly ahead of his times and paid dearly for expressing his vision then.

Spinoza’s collected works belonged to both Thomas Jefferson and to John Locke and through them, his thoughts influenced the composition of one of the founding documents of the United States - The Declaration of Independence.

The following article is an easy read and it will place Spinoza’s thought in its proper context for you.

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THURSDAY marked the 350th anniversary of the excommunication of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza from the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam in which he had been raised.

Given the events of the last week, particularly those emanating from the Middle East, the Spinoza anniversary didn’t get a lot of attention. But it’s one worth remembering — in large measure because Spinoza’s life and thought have the power to illuminate the kind of events that at the moment seem so intractable and overwhelming.

The exact reasons for the excommunication of the 23-year-old Spinoza remain murky, but the reasons he came to be vilified throughout all of Europe are not. Spinoza argued that no group or religion could rightly claim infallible knowledge of the Creator’s partiality to its beliefs and ways. After the excommunication, he spent the rest of his life — he died in 1677 at the age of 44 — studying the varieties of religious intolerance. The conclusions he drew are still of dismaying relevance.

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