On Beauty, The Senses, and Science

On Saturday, I organized some stacks of papers started before I got my PhD. The deadline has passed for blaming it on the busyness of school (I graduated in 2013!). In the stack I found some quotes I had saved that are worth sharing. . . .C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the hope of “Heaven” ridiculous by saying they do not want “to spend eternity playing harps.” All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible. People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, he meant that we were to lay eggs.C. S. Lewis in Transposition and Other Addresses:How far the life of the risen [human] will be sensory, we do not now. But I surmise that it will differ from the sensory life we know here . . . as a flower differs from the bulb or a cathedral from an architect’s drawing.We do not want merely to see beauty. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become a part of it. If we take the imagery of Scripture seriously . . . we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun. We cannot mingle [now] with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so.C. S. Lewis in God in the Dock:The angels…have no senses; their experience is purely intellectual and spiritual. That is why we know something about God which they don’t. There are particular aspects of His love and joy which can be communicated to a created being only by sensuous experience. Something of God which the Seraphim can never quite understand flows into us from the blue of the sky, the taste of honey, the delicious embrace of water whether cold or hot, and even from sleep itself.David Sayre in Something There Is:Many who have devoted their lives to science testify to their sense of awe at the great beauty that lies at the heart of nature. . . . The experiences of order, of symmetry, of finding deep and hidden relationships, of consistent metaphors and analogies—all are deeply scientific, as well as beautiful.

Science and Religion: A New Study

HOUSTON – (Feb. 16, 2014) – The public's view that science and religion can't work in collaboration is a misconception that stunts progress, according to a new survey of more than 10,000 Americans, scientists and evangelical Protestants. The study by Rice University also found that scientists and the general public are surprisingly similar in their religious practices.   

The study, “Religious Understandings of Science (RUS),” was conducted by sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund and presented today in Chicago during the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference. Ecklund is the Autrey Professor of Sociology and director of Rice's Religion and Public Life Program.  

"We found that nearly 50 percent of evangelicals believe that science and religion can work together and support one another," Ecklund said. "That's in contrast to the fact that only 38 percent of Americans feel that science and religion can work in collaboration."

The study also found that 18 percent of scientists attended weekly religious services, compared with 20 percent of the general U.S. population; 15 percent consider themselves very religious (versus 19 percent of the general U.S. population); 13.5 percent read religious texts weekly (compared with 17 percent of the U.S. population); and 19 percent pray several times a day (versus 26 percent of the U.S. population).

"This is a hopeful message for science policymakers and educators, because the two groups don't have to approach religion with an attitude of combat," Ecklund said. "Rather, they should approach it with collaboration in mind."

Ecklund said that the way the science-religion relationship is portrayed in the news media influences the misperception.

"Most of what you see in the news are stories about these two groups at odds over the controversial issues, like teaching creationism in the schools. And the pundits and news panelists are likely the most strident representatives for each group," she said. "It might not be as riveting for television, but consider how often you see a news story about these groups doing things for their common good. There is enormous stereotyping about this issue and not very good information." 

Ecklund noted that portions of the two groups are likely to stay put in their oppositional camps. As an example, she found that evangelical Protestants are twice as likely as the general population (11 percent) to consult a religious text or religious leader for questions about science.

Other key findings:

Nearly 60 percent of evangelical Protestants and 38 percent of all surveyed believe "scientists should be open to considering miracles in their theories or explanations." 27 percent of Americans feel that science and religion are in conflict.Of those who feel science and religion are in conflict, 52 percent sided with religion.48 percent of evangelicals believe that science and religion can work in collaboration.22 percent of scientists think most religious people are hostile to science.Nearly 20 percent of the general population think religious people are hostile to science.Nearly 22 percent of the general population think scientists are hostile to religion.Nearly 36 percent of scientists have no doubt about God's existence.

Ecklund found another counterintuitive result in the survey. The conventional wisdom is that religious people who work in science will have more doubts about their faith, but the survey revealed the opposite: Evangelical scientists practice religion more than evangelical Protestants in the general population.

"Those scientists who identify as evangelical are more religious than regular American evangelicals who are not in science,” Ecklund said.

"Evangelical scientists feel that they've been put under pressure or they find themselves in what they view to be more hostile environments," she said. "They potentially see themselves as more religious, because they're seeing the contrast between the two groups all the time."

RUS is the largest study of American views on religion and science. It includes the nationally representative survey of more than 10,000 Americans, more than 300 in-depth interviews with Christians, Jews and Muslims -- more than 140 of whom are evangelicals -- and extensive observations of religious centers in Houston and Chicago.

The study is being provided to the AAAS Dialogue on Science Ethics and Religion program to help foster dialogue between religious groups and scientists.

ETS: Adventures in Baltimore

I just returned from a four-day trip to Baltimore, where Imostly attended the annual Evangelical Theological Society's (ETS) national meeting. Iused to go annually, but I have skipped the past few years to focus onwriting/editing/finishing my dissertation.

This year I had the joy of staying with my niece and herfamily in their new-to-them home in accommodations that overlooked a treeablaze with red leaves. She and her husband, a faculty member at Loyola, havethree small boys who loved scaring and tackling “Aunt Sandi.” The family iscommitted to going car-free as much as possible, so I used publictransportation every morning to get to the convention center, and I took cabshome at night. All in all, I spent about 1/3 of what I would have done on arental car, and I avoided the hassles of traffic and convention-center parking.My relatives also had a delightful houseguest who’s a don at Cambridge, so our little Anglican-Episcopalian-evangelical group spent the last night at their dining table spread with Girl Scout cookies andhome-brewed ale discussing everything from the new pope to the filioque clause to salted caramel icecream to sweater-knitting. What a lovely family we have, and I mean that inboth senses.

ETS itself, which requires a minimum ThM to join, iscomprised of 7% women. I’m told that only 1% of the presenters this year were female. One man asked me where my husband was. Another,upon seeing a few of us females returning from dinner one night, joked, “I’m going to tellyour husbands you were out picking up men.” Never mind that one, in hersixties, has never been married.  

I came away wondering this: If we believe in the complementary relationship of men andwomen, why don’t we see more men and women partnering to do theology? I pickedup a brochure from an organization that claims to emphasize this very thing.Yet the photos of their board indicated it was comprised of all “pale males.”An organization that has in its very name the word “womanhood” has no women onthe board?

If women were in the minority, it seemed that ethnicminorities were even more scarce. Considering that the future of Christianityis in the southern hemisphere, this struck me as a serious divide.#roomforimprovement   

Despite these deficiencies, I heard some greatpresentations, including one that traced how Luke in his Gospel contrasted menand women to make a point. One speaker looked at whether the quote about Jesusas a worker of miracles was original to Josephus. Another considered how wechange our hermeneutic to accommodate science, sometimes forgetting thatscience can be subjective, too (Freud’s theories on women came to mind). Onelooked at how Christians can grow in our interaction with art beyond critiquingthe worldview behind each piece. And one looked at the strengths and weaknessesof online education and how to compensate for the lack of embodiment (amongother things, require a local in-the-flesh mentor).

A former student, Caroline, looked at radical feminism andProcess Theology. She started late in the academic world because she raised herkids first. This came up during her Q/A time afterward, when a woman in theaudience went off about how we should be emphasizing to women to raise theirkids and focus on the home. Caroline graciously pointed out that she, too,valued children, which is why she waited to complete her education—but thatchildrearing is only a season of life, and that for a limited number of women. The anti-woman-in-education bias comes from both sexes. 

I attended a number of other presentations on gender. Onewas from a psychologist who studied 50,000 (!) marriages. His team concludedthat partnerships in which both spouses feel they both “speak up,” (husband feels thatboth he and wife do so and wife feels that both he and she do so) were most“satisfying” by quite a high margin as compared to more traditionalmarriages. (If a husband is dominant, both she and he were less satisfied.)

In a talk on gender differences, it was noted that as Barbie’swaist measurement has shrunk, Ken’s biceps have increased. This is the sort of importantinfo we get at theology conferences. Ha! (The workshop was actually quitegood.)

DTS had a big alumni breakfast one morning, and I had funreconnecting with old college connections. I tried to attend as many DTS faculty and student presentations as possible, but I was also staying up past midnight talking with my niece.

Lunches and dinners with colleagues, male and female, were ahighlight. Over Maryland crab soup and Puerto Rican rice, we enjoyed about ayear’s worth of relationship-building in three days. In a workshop onmentoring, I learned that in Southern California (where people are crazy busy),the best times for mentoring are said to be in the car, over coffee, and overdinner. That is true of fellowship, too, don’t you think?

Yesterday morning, I blew off academics (I attended ETS at my own expense), saw the harbor, and toured the BaltimoreAquarium with my niece and the boys. We ended our time with a Pot Belly’s lunchand a romp in the park before I went off to hear about whether an embryo has personhood and "The Future of Women inETS," while they caught their bus. 

When I arrived back in Dallas, I told my husband to expect word that I was outpicking up men. He said he looked forward to the call.