Assorted opinions

The Conversation: Celebrating 150 years of captivity. I am increasingly uneasy about the ambiguities involved in most zoos. This piece articulates a number of them succinctly.

NY Mag: Sugar Daddies. Sugar Daddies are "private donors or their privately held companies writing checks totaling $1 million or more (sometimes much more) in this [US] election cycle." Some profiles on those spending most to influence the 2012 US presidential election.

Biologos: Thinking aloud together (part 2, part 3). Scot McKnight ponders how to get scientists and pastors talking about the implications of evolutionary biology and human origins.

Rachel Held Evans: 15 reasons I left church. Though many are quite US-centric, these are worth pondering. I'm sure I could add a few more.

Stephen King: Tax me, for F@%&’s Sake!. Multi-millionaire horror writer joins Warren Buffet and numerous other super-rich figures in calling for much higher taxes on themselves. King brings his own (very profitable but not always highbrow) blend of narrative shock and awe to the argument.

ABC: Why we hate Gillard so much. "[T]here are three pertinent distinctions between this government and the Howard Government: it is a Labor Government, it is a minority government, and the current prime minister is a woman."

Brad reflects on economies of deception - "When the pursuit of profit becomes a self-justifying end, truth becomes a readily dispensable commodity, because truth will not maximize profit" - and reviews the important book Merchants of Doubt.

The bugs are winning

Antibiotics are one of the truly remarkable discoveries of the modern era.* By suppressing or eliminating infections, the widespread availability of relative cheap antibacterial drugs has contributed to significant reductions in the mortality rate and consequent increases in life spans. Antibiotics have thus serves as an enabling cause for the unprecedented global population boom of the last century or so.

However, microbes may now have us at checkmate, developing resistances and immunities to our antibiotics faster than we are producing new ones. Despite five decades of warnings from public health authorities, global response has been slow and poorly communicated. Resistant strands are spreading and some are immune to all contemporary drugs.

And it is largely our fault. The overuse and misuse of antibacterial drugs have enabled and encouraged these strains to gain a foothold and spread. Whenever their use is either unnecessary or discontinued prior to a complete course, the surviving bugs (who will be the ones least susceptible to the drug) are left to breed. Just as we have "helped" evolution in our animal husbandry for centuries, selecting the most productive livestock to preserve their genes, so we are helping the evolution of superbugs, selecting those who don't fall down at the first sight of an antimicrobial drug. We are killing off the weaklings and leaving the heroes to breed. And they are fearsome warriors, being perhaps the most effective and feared killers throughout the history of civilisation.

Being the son of a physician, important health lessons like avoiding the abuse of antibiotics were inculcated early. We used them only for bacterial problems that lacked other solutions and always finished our course of drugs. Yet personal responsibility is only effective when widespread. My vigilance seems wasted when others take a few pills as a precaution every time they feel under the weather.

This issue seems to suffer from some remarkable similarities with climate change: a dangerous by-product of a highly desirable human activity with an insidious effect over long periods of time requiring global regulative co-ordination and a personal culture of restraint. It is hard to see in either case how a response adequate to the scale of the problem can be mobilised in the timeframe required amidst the various competing interests and under the ponderous influence of cultural inertia.

Like many of our battles, we go into this one ill-prepared, with failing equipment and not always even sure who the real enemy is. What does it look like to lose well?
*More specifically, I am referring to antibacterial drugs, since there are other microbes than bacteria and other agents that suppress them than antibacterial drugs. However, in common usage, most people mean the latter when using the term antibiotics.

Down with Gravity

Yes, the theory of gravity is atheist bunk. Cue intelligent falling.

The most urgent theological task for this generation

"Notably, the question on which the debate between creationists and evolutionists largely centres - 'By what mechanism and in what timeframe did the world come into being?' - is exactly the kind of abstract question in which the Bible displays no interest. This question is abstract because its answer - whatever answer we may accept - imposes no obligation for us to act upon the world in just and honourable ways. As the foregoing discussion implies, it is better to ask, while reading the early chapters of Genesis, 'What does it mean for humans to be creatures among other creatures, all of us radically dependent upon God? What actions are incumbent upon us as a consequence of our status as creatures?' Rowan Williams offers an answer fully congruent with the whole biblical account: 'Being creatures is learning humility, not as submission to an alien will, but as the acceptance of limit and death' (Williams, 2000: 78). Consciously being creatures means discovering the trustworthiness of God, and allowing 'a generosity creation of community to be "enacted" in us' (76). However, his further observation appears somewhat too sanguine now, an ecologically disastrous decade after it was written: 'The discovery of solidarity in creatureliness has obvious consequences, which hardly need spelling out, for our sense of responsibility in the material world; it puts at once into question the model of unilateral mastery over the world' (76; emphasis added).

"In fact, the most urgent theological task for this generation may well be spelling out the material consequences of a sense of self that proceeds from contemplating '"the wise, ordered, gracious and loving mutual correspondence" among creatures' (Williams, 2000: 76, citing St John of the Cross). Surely theologians, professional and lay, will need to do that in conversation with scientists, naturalists, and natural philosophers, including but not exclusively people of biblical faith."

- Ellen F. Davis, "Reading the Bible after Darwin: Creation and a Culture of Restraint" in Theology after Darwin (eds. Michael Northcott and R. J. Berry; London: Paternoster, 2009), 68.

So, here is the original answer to my riddle a couple of days ago. This book is worth reading (almost) in full, containing a collection of very thoughtful pieces on what it means for theology once we take Darwin seriously and stop trying to beat our heads against a wall of denial about our origins. I helped (in very minor ways) to put this volume together (being research assistant to the editors) and was reminded of it after preaching on "Evolution or Genesis?" this Sunday (I didn't pick the title and questioned the "or" in it).

Now that I've distracted you with that context, on to the substance of the quote.

I am sympathetic to both Williams and Davis on this point, though think they both need further nuancing. I have addressed the Williams piece that Davis is discussing at some length in my chapter on his account of creatureliness.

I have said before, I think that the most greatest moral issue of our day is whether we turn to Christ or anti-Christ in faith, to self or neighbour in love, to false hopes or hope that first goes through the cross.

And corresponding to this, I believe that the most important theological task of this (and every generation) is to hear and believe the good news of Christ for us today. This is both paying close attention to the grand announcement passed down in the holy scriptures and proclaimed by the church, and it is listening to this message today. The gospel does not change, but the hearers do, and with them and their contexts, the emphases and insights of the gospel. The gospel proclamation - the reign of God has come near in the crucified and risen Christ - will have different implications for people in different circumstances. And this means that making a generalisation about the particular shape of this task for an entire generation will also nearly always be difficult. Not only will different members of a generation face differing situations, but each will have multiple ways in which the gospel transforms her or his existence. So the theological task is always both singular in focus ("For I resolved to know nothing while I was among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" - 1 Corinthians 2.2) while complex in applications.

Nonetheless, I don't believe it illegitimate to attempt (fallible and partial) interpretations of the aspect or aspects of the gospel that will have particular resonance within a particular historical context. And this is how I read the above claim: that (one of) the highest priorities for Christian theology in a society slowly waking up to the scale of ecological and resource crises resulting from the success of industrialism at reshaping the globe, is an articulation of the human self as creature amidst a community of life.

I think more needs to be said about being a creature in community with Christ, and all kinds of other nuances, but the basic idea is worthy of consideration.

Teaching both sides of Armageddon

Christian Groups: Biblical Armageddon Must Be Taught Alongside Global Warming

Giving children "both" sides of the debate has long been a slogan of young earth creationists in the US. However, this parody cuts even closer on another recent issue.