Hey All,

I started reading this article yesterday and thought it had some really interesting thoughts on God and Evolution. Especially interesting is this quote:

it is vital to avoid, in the case of precultural evolution, the presumption that “God” competes with the evolutionary process as a (very big) bit player in the temporal unfolding of “natural selection.” Once we are released from that false presumption, “God” is no longer—and idolatrously—construed as problematically interventionist (or feebly failing in such) along the same temporal plane as the process itself. Rather, God is that-without-which-there-would-be-no-evolution-at-all; God is the atemporal undergirder and sustainer of the whole process of apparent contingency or “randomness,” yet—we can say in the spirit of Augustine—simultaneously closer to its inner workings than it is to itself.

As such, God is both “within” the process and “without” it. To put this in richly trinitarian terms: God, the Holy Spirit, is the perpetual invitation and lure of the creation to return to its source in the Father, yet never without the full—and suffering—implications of incarnate Sonship. Once we see the possibility of understanding the contingency of precultural evolution in this way, we need not—as so much science and religion “dialogue” has done in recent years—declare the evolutionary process as necessarily “deistically” distanced in some sense from God. Rather, I propose in contrast that God is “kenotically” infused (not by divine loss or withdrawal, but by effusive pouring out) into every causal joint of the creative process, yet precisely without overt derangement of apparent “randomness.”

Hey all,

Thought this could start some discussion…so discuss!

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/10/20/catholic-anglican-church-recruit.html

Z

This picture (larger version here) is quite evocative and I think, for those of us who know a little H.P. Lovecraft, and have seen this picture, it could start a very interesting discussion about America and Christianity.

I always knew there was a reason Wally and I bought those pipes years ago….

http://flyingfarther.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/toward-a-theology-of-pipesmoking/

Hey All,

Recently in one of my courses, my professor gave us this short peice to read. I found it very powerful and extremely helpful in understanding what is at stake in asking The Question about the meaning of life. Read it. Envision the setting. Enjoy it. Comment on it, Dammit! Oh, and if you get lost in all the different animals mentioned, know that most of the animals mentioned are pretty much all different kinds of ducks.

http://www.riverwalking.com/essay2.html

In light of our recent discussion on the origins of humanity, I thought I’d throw this interesting Darwinian nugget out there. When Darwin is discussing how we should evaluate the possibility that ‘man’ descended from other animal forms, he asks if there are similarities found between humans and animals in such areas as bodily structure, capacity to contract or pass on disease, etc. Then he also notes this humorous similarity:

 ”Many kinds of monkeys have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors: they will also, as I have myself seen, smoke tobacco with pleasure. Brehm asserts that the natives of north-eastern Africa catch the wild baboons by exposing vessels with strong beer, by which they are made drunk. He has seen some of these animals, which he kept in confinement, in this state; and he gives a laughable account of their behaviour and strange grimaces. On the following morning they were very cross and dismal; they held their aching heads with both hands, and wore a most pitiable expression: when beer or wine was offered them, they turned away with disgust, but relished the juice of lemons. An American monkey, an Ateles, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus was wiser than many men.” Charles Darwin, On The Descent of Man, Penguin Classics, pp. 23-24

Oh to be a monkey…or, wait….