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Where do we come from? Why are there multiple creation myths/stories, and how are they similar/differ?
Does belief in evolution mean you can’t believe in creation?
Is the Earth a test tube created by aliens? If so, what was/is their purpose?
Are we just a simulated world in a videogame?
Why are creation stories so Terra centric?
Why is there such a perceived divide between science and religion?
Is there scientific evidence for both creation and evolution? If so, then who’s right?

We are joined by a special guest, Mike, who added a lot to the conversation especially in the area of Science.

Show Notes:

Babylonian Creation Myth & Genesis Myth — Differences/Similarities — See Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction – pg. 116-118
Interview with Mary Midgley: http://www.sheilaheti.net/midgley.html
Creationist site: http://www.allaboutcreation.org/creation-vs-evolution-n.htm
Darwin on the right: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=darwin-on-the-right
Evolution fact/theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact
Clarifying Christianity: http://www.clarifyingchristianity.com/creation.shtml

Give it a listen:

[podcast]http://unbelievablefaith.com/wp-content/audio/UFaithEp025.mp3[/podcast]

In light of our recent discussion surrounding souls, I would be interested in hearing feedback regarding PETA’s new campaign to “save the sea kittens”. What do you think about PETA’s attempt at creating more sympathy towards fish species by way of renaming them? Is it silly? Helpful?

Hello!

This episode takes a look at the conept of having a soul.

Does it exist? if so how, why?  Is it measurable?  Do aliens have them?  If so how intelligent/self aware do you have to be to get one.  Can an animal have one?

Show Notes:
Dawkins on soul: http://richarddawkins.net/article,1342,Science-of-the-Soul-I-Think-Therefore-I-Am-Is-Losing-Force,Cornelia-Dean
Soul info on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul
Rainbow Bridge: http://www.novareinna.com/bridge/index.html
Zombie Ants http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/photogalleries/zombie-ants/

We had fun making this episode and we hope you enjoy listening to it![podcast]http://unbelievablefaith.com/wp-content/audio/UFaithEp024.mp3[/podcast]

Thanks to “jpeg” for sending us a link to this aarticle:

thebackroom: theocrats, neocons and fatherland/homeland security.

…and as always, the comments below the article are just as interesting.

Dawkins, who we have talked about in the past, seems to have had his website (forum) hacked.

God is obviously punishing him for being an evolutionist. (I’m totally joking)

Dawkins’ website forum hacked to send spam • The Register.

Hello,

We are back this week with a somewhat continuation of our last episode.
Key Questions/Points:
Impetus for thinking about this topic: Dan brown follow-up article (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/opinion/19douthat.html?_r=1). What has happened to religion in a global consumer culture? Has its prominence wained? Has its prominence grown?

We live in a culture that wishes to consume everything from food, to clothes, to transportation, to sex…and of course, it also consumes religion. Not religion as a political force…not religion as that which can actually create things like political forms of life, or contribute to discussions of ethics, but religion as that which can be simply a product for the masses to integrate into their consumer consciousness.
Ridiculous Claim of the Episode:
The funamendalists, whether Muslim or Christian, have got one thing right: Religion, at the end of the day, if not enacted politically is, quite simply, a trend…a product…or in other words, a dis-empowered form of an otherwise powerful, political force. Par example: Muslim’s in Canada (mostly the male population) wish to have the right to have Sharia law in Canada as a formal, accepted law. Of course, many Canadians, and many Muslim women are against such a scenario as it is claimed that Sharia law contains within it statutes that suppress women. Now, this is significant, no doubt. What is more, however, notice how the problem isn’t just that the law is oppressive to women, but that it is another law in general. This is a case in which religion wishes to have political force, and where the state wishes that it wouldn’t. If the muslim’s want their own litte mosques and community centres where they can do their private thing, then that’s fine, but don’t get political — don’t assert yourself in issues of law, etc. Does this meant that the state should always deal with matters of law, which are really matters of community life, family, and ethics? Can religion not also have a say? And when it does have a say, does it have to always bow to the religion of the state?
Show Notes:

Rowan Williams – Sharia Law: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1575
Grab the episode here:
[podcast]http://unbelievablefaith.com/wp-content/audio/UFaithEp023.mp3[/podcast]

Thin Blue Flame

I have recently been listening to Josh Ritter’s Thin Blue Flame (you can listen to it above, I linked it from his site) and can’t help but be struck by its beautiful and haunting exploration of God, the afterlife, and how our perceptions of the afterlife shape our ethics and our politics. Thin Blue Flame is a vision, ala John’s Revelation, that draws the reader/listener in with its compelling and disturbing imagery meant to shake us into a realization of our negative human tendency towards escapist conceptions of the afterlife that in turn negatively affect our ethics. If we, of course as the chosen ones, are escaping to a heavenly dwelling where we, along with God, will simply exist as energy ”mixing with nitrogen in lonely holes where neither Seraphim or raindrops go” then who cares if we spend our earthly time ”bringing justice to the enemies and not the other way around”….enemies defined of course by their lack of adherence to our particular God ordained “laws”, those things that we “loose on earth”. But as the song says, “If what’s loosed on earth will be loosed up on high
It’s a Hell of a Heaven we must go to when we die”. Who can dispute this when God’s laws explained on earth are often used to justify war against the “enemies” of God.

Throughout the song, there is a counter-appeal (over against the dualism of body-soul) to a heaven that is far more earthly; a heaven that is shaped “like the hips of a girl”; a heaven that is like a city where “the weddings in pollen and the wine bottomless And all wrongs forgotten and all vengeance made right The suffering verbs put to sleep in the night The future descending like a bright chandelier” (See Rev. 21:2)

What is left of our goodness as created beings if all we can do is wish to escape the home which God has given us? What if redemption is the culmination of creation and not escape. What if heaven is “the world just beginning and the guests in good cheer”?

But, the alternative is to believe that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and thus Thin Blue Flame mourns: “Oh it’s hell to believe there ain’t a hell of a chance”

Throughout the song, there is also the constant refrain: “Only a full house is gonna make it through”. In other words, only a world that is full of created matter — body, earth, wilderness, diversity, — only a world where “heaven is so big there aint no need to look up”, only THAT world is anything worth hoping for in the afterlife. A different, redeemed world to be sure, but a world that can be called a “full house”, not just the emptiness of “a cold dark room”.

What do you think?