The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

I have never met Mark A. Noll; but, if we ever do have a conversation together, I expect I would find myself very much agreeing with him. He is the sort of intellectual writer who is unafraid to turn over all of the stones and search for every seed of truth. He desires to take each gem of enlightenment captive to Christ. His most widely read book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, contains many great insights on the way in which mainstream Evangelicalism strayed so far from truth. He says,

. . . in their defense of the supernatural, fundamentalists and their evangelical heirs resemble some cancer patients. In facing a drastic disease, they are willing to undertake a drastic remedy. The treatment of fundamentalism may be said to have succeeded; the patient survived. But at least for the life of the mind, what survived was a patient horribly disfigured by the cure itself.[1]

The disfiguring to which Noll refers is the loss of a critical mind that exhibits a measure of skepticism regarding the miraculous and a healthy measure of skepticism appropriate to the scientific method. He is desirous that all Christians might live within the tension of belief and uncertainty. He further explains. “I was brought up in a Christian environment where, because God had to be given pre-eminence, nothing else was allowed to be important. I have broken through to the position that because God exists, everything has significance.”[2]

Still more clearly he says,

Who formed the world of nature (which provides the raw material for physical sciences)? Who formed the universe of human interactions (which is the raw material of politics, economics, sociology, and history)? Who is the source of all harmony, form, and narrative pattern (which is the raw material for art)? Who is the source of the human mind (which is the raw material for philosophy and psychology)? And who, moment by moment, maintains the connection between our minds and the world beyond our minds? God did, and God does.[3]

These words are extremely helpful as we each consider the relationship between faith and science, belief and agnosticism, and spirituality and materialism. May those who have comprehending minds meditate upon these thoughts.

Works Cited

Noll, Mark A. The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995.

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[1] (Noll 1995)

[2] (Noll 1995)
[3] (Noll 1995)

Deep Thoughts by Kilobot 142

The CBC news site had an article about a Harvard research group that built 1,024 tiny robots. The "Kilobots" have three tiny legs and are powered by a rechargeable battery. They express a "hive mentality" in which the researchers can send a signal to the group of robots and they will assemble into groupings of various shapes. For example, the robot creators can "tell" them to make the shape of a starfish and the Kilobots will collectively assemble into a star shape. The system works on a few simple principles related to proximity to other bots, coordinates, and move or be still logic. If a Kilobot is on the edge of a grouping it must "decide" whether to move or not move. If an individual Kilobot is surrounded by other bots it can then "relax" knowing that it will sit still until other bots move away from it, leaving it on an edge. Now of course, as we speak of this, we tend to assign thoughts when there are no thoughts going on. As the writers of the article said, "the Kilobots are not exactly thinking deep thoughts."

This got me thinking, what would Kilobot thoughts sound like? So, with a nod to "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey" I present to you, "Deep Thoughts by Kilobot #142." (Note, this thought experiment requires cheesy keyboard music - not supplied.)

Wait, where am I? Oh good, middle of the pack.

Livin' large, on the edge!

Why am I here? Har! just kidding.

Who is my creator? Har! just kidding.

Where am I going? Oh, who cares, I'll just follow the others.

Look at the legs on 1017!

Bump! HeaHeaHea!

Battery low - send electrons!

Reality

According to one of the greatest mathematicians of our time, “there is no picture- or theory-independent concept of reality.”* What Stephen Hawking means by this is that we are all limited in our perception of reality. He compares all of us to a goldfish living in a bowl with curved sides. Gazing out, the fish has a distorted view of reality. He points out that if the goldfish had sufficient time and brain-power, it might be able to work out a series of laws that describe the way things appear from inside of a fish bowl. We, on the outside of the bowl would find these goldfish descriptions of the world overly complicated and would simply point out that the fish lives in a bowl and cannot see reality in its true form. Hawking says, “might not we ourselves also be inside some big goldfish bowl and have our vision distorted by an enormous lens. The goldfish’s picture of reality is different from ours, but can we be sure it is less real?” Hawking then suggests that we might be living unknowingly inside a virtual reality created by intelligent computers as described in the science fiction film, The Matrix. He adopts a view which he calls “model-dependent realism: the idea that a physical theory or world picture is a model (generally of a mathematical nature) and a set of rules that connect the elements of the model to observations.”

Now I suppose it is not surprising that a mathematician would come up with a mathematical way of describing the universe. But that is just it, it is a mathematical description of the universe. The greatest strength of his argument ultimately makes it weak in explaining the hows and whys of the universe. For, his is just one way of seeing the universe as is the goldfish way of seeing the universe. He certainly can develop such a model and use it to describe the universe as he sees it. Where he strays too far is in saying that his is the only way to view the universe and that philosophers and theologians have nothing to add to the story. His mathematical models have great predictive value for describing how electrons, protons, neutrons, and quarks function in the universe. He would like this same model to predict how the universe came into existence and why the universe came into existence. Here his model is less helpful. Just as the goldfish in the fish bowl cannot be sure of the reality of her world-view (even if she could create models that described her observations), neither can Hawking be sure of the reality of his world-view. It is equally as possible that his model works inside of the universe (or even inside the multi-verse that Hawking goes on to describe) and also inside a greater, over-arching, plan of a creator God. Here is precisely where philosophy, theology, and epistemology come into the discussion. Despite what physicists and mathematicians might think, mathematics is not the only valid tool of inquiry or description that we can use to understand our universe.

*This and other quotes in this article are from Hawking, Stephen, and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. New York: Bantam Books, 2010, p. 39-43.

Puppet Strings

PUPPET STRINGS:

I can't keep from mourning for this topsy-
turvy world / With all its strife and pain /
Mourning for the lost and the desperate
children / Who can't remember their
names

And I can feel it in my soul / Now the end
is getting near / I can hear the devil
laughing / And its ringing in my ears

Long ago He chose us to inherit all His
kingdom / And we were blessed with light
/ But wandering away we disobeyed Him
in the garden / And stumbled into night

And I can feel it in my soul / Now the end
is getting near / I can hear the angels
weeping / And it's ringing in my ears

We are all like foolish puppets who
desiring to be kings / Now lie pitifully
crippled after cutting our own strings

But God said I'll forgive you I will face you
Man to man / And win your love again /
Oh how could there be possibly a greater
gift of love / Than dying for a friend

And I can feel it in my soul / Now the end
is getting near / I can hear the devil
laughing / And it's ringing in my ears

We are all like foolish puppets who
desiring to be kings / Now lie pitifully
crippled after cutting our own strings

Cutting our own strings / Cutting our own
strings / Cutting our own strings*

REDEMPTION:

Then his father, Zechariah, was filled with the Holy Spirit and gave this prophecy:
“Praise the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has visited and redeemed his people.
He has sent us a mighty Savior
from the royal line of his servant David,
just as he promised
through his holy prophets long ago.
Now we will be saved from our enemies
and from all who hate us.
He has been merciful to our ancestors
by remembering his sacred covenant—
the covenant he swore with an oath
to our ancestor Abraham.
We have been rescued from our enemies
so we can serve God without fear,
in holiness and righteousness
for as long as we live.

And you, my little son,
will be called the prophet of the Most High,
because you will prepare the way for the Lord.
You will tell his people how to find salvation
through forgiveness of their sins.
Because of God’s tender mercy,
the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
and to guide us to the path of peace.” - Luke 1:67-79 (New Living Translation)

*Randy Stonehill © 1976 KING OF HEARTS PUBLISHING
Nifty-Music.com

Spiritual Experiences and Reason

As I work on a graduate course at Regent College I have been reading the works of Teresa of Avila. She was a remarkable person and one who always analyzed her experiences to see if they could be from God or from her own mind. This quote is from her and speaks to using all of our faculties for God.

God gave us faculties for our use; each of them will receive its proper reward. Then do not let us try to charm them to sleep, but permit them to do their work until divinely called to something higher.* - Teresa of Avila

*Fourth Mansions, Ch. 3: Prayer of Quiet, as translated by the Benedictines of Stanbrook (1911), revised and edited by Fr. Benedict Zimmerman