Gary Kowalski writes: "Which is More Dangerous; science or religion?" I did a double take when a friend handed me a newspaper clipping with that headline. It was an ad from an organization called the The Great American Think off, which posed the question as the subject for its annual Philosophy Competition. Reading more, I learned the contestants were invited to submit opinions in the form of an essay of 750 words or less, with a monetary award and book contract promised to those with best answers.
Maybe my friend thought I might want to enter the contest. But while the idea of a philosophy competition has a quaint appeal, this one seemed deliberately misleading. Isn't it possible that science and religion are allies rather than antagonists? Doesn't the real peril arise when the two are seen as stark alternatives rather tan as natural partners? The timing of the contest, on the edge of the twenty-first century, was an alarming indication that the warfare between science and religion - a running skirmish for the past four hundred years - is still unresolved and spilling over now into a whole new millennium.
Gary Kowalski serves our congregation in Burlington, Vermont as its minister and his most recent book Science and The Search For God argues that the antagonism between science and religion stems from an argument between bad science and bad religion, and he writes convincingly the most recent scientific research and theory compels us "to move beyond materialism toward an understanding of the world that includes the realities of consciousness and spirit. In the twenty-first century, human beings have less reason than before to feel they hold a privileged or special position in the cosmos, but more cause than ever to feel connected and akin to all that is."
Gary Kowalski provides his readers a wise and thoughtful guide to wrestling with one of religion's perennial problems, what do (we think) we know and how do we know what (we think) we know. Don't do a book reports sermon on this book, but ponder it and it may give birth to a dozen reflections over the years.
Earth is our home: October 2005 Archives
I am sitting in the computer room at Eliot Picket House (tying on an Windows machine.) The wireless system is down, so I can't post with my Powerbook, and I find this software challenging.
But if I were home, I would have no power. Wilma has taken ripped through the community were my church is located, and roofs have been ripped up, wires are down, and aluminum car ports, drain pipes and screening is shrewn all over the place.
There are bigger disasters. But three strikes in 58 weeks, and patience is out. Enough!
Florida is tense. The media packages the news, and it is tempting to package a category five hurricane as a looming disaster. The mathematical models that the meteorologists use to predict the path of tropical storms has had Wilma trapped in the Caribbean by a ridge of a high pressure system in the Gulf, when that high pressure system weakened according to the experts, Wilma would turn North and move into the prevailing Westerlies and smash into Florida. That was Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Friday morning and the turn to the east is still to come
I write on Friday morning, and Wilma is just striking Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, with expectations of catastrophe, and the winds that will carry it toward Florida are now predicted to come later. Wilma was to come to us on Saturday, now it may hit Florida on Monday maybe, and then there is always Tuesday. Of course, it might hit Cuba. The whole Caribbean and the much of the Gulf region becomes involved in watching when a hurricanes direction depends on winds and jet streams that are somewhere in Minnesota but expected to come and push the storm and bring us havoc and destruction.
I suppose it is important for the weather people to warn us of impending catastrophe, but I wish they could do that and be a little more tentative. Can't we be properly scared with "Wilma may turn" and "it could slow down" and all the qualifications one reads in the actual reports being prepared in technical prose at the National Hurricane Center.
Church services are being cancelled in some of Florida's UU congregations for a hurricane that may still come but later than expected. I will make the call for my congregation in a few hours. I am involved in the uncertainty, because I am scheduled to fly to Boston for the Unitarian Universalist Minister's Association Executive meetings, and as a parish minister I am worried about my church and my people. I can stay and worry, or go and worry. The long range models see Wilma headed for Massachusetts, which I hear needs the rain.
For my soul, I pray for Mexico's people. And I will refrain from listening to the weather reports on television. (Checking out the Hurricane Center's web site is more like research, and less sensational sound bites.)
George Lakoff writes: "Today's right-wing conservative values are just plain un-American in this context. This is a country where people pull together in the face of disaster. They don't just tell one another to sink or swim. Sink-or-swim conservatism is not in the American tradition, or the American heart. Empathy, mutual responsibility, fairness, and community -- all progressive values -- are part of this heritage. As Katrina showed, Americans hold a deep sense of shared fate and want an effective government that represents these values, does its job, and serves the people valiantly. Americans want to act responsibly and contribute. Katrina proved it. Those are the central progressive values. Americans have them."
Lakoff argues that the Democrats are once again taking potshots at the Bush administration rather than engaging in "framing the values" around the Hurricane Katrina disaster. He outlines an approach to understanding the catastrophe and making sense of the wrong headed policies that he argues are based in conservative moral values.
Religious liberals need to wrestle with Lakoff's analyis of metaphor and values, it might help us move away from the destructive controversy within Unitarian Universalism that pits a narcissistic search for self which we call "spirituality" against a blatantly partisan politics which we call social action. We are a religious community and we are about values, and meaning, and there is an organized movement in our country that opposes our values. Our response must be about articulating the values that flow our religious perspective, rather than looking for a messiah among the current crop of Democrats who would be king.
After my post on "Cheap Meat" yesterday, Shawn Anthony inquired of vegetarian resources, says he gets tired of eating the same old thing. HAFIDHA SOFÍA recommended beans, there is an amazing variety of beans all of which are rich in protein and can be combined to create nutritional and delicious meals. Beans and corn were the staple of the Cherokee and most North American Native Peoples east of the Mississippi and the Europeans conquers remarked on how tall and healthy they were. Lentils and bulgar kept the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia feed, chick peas are a staple in Syria and North Africa. We can go on and on. With peppers, onions, and seasonings, a person could live well on beans.
I have recommended these two resources to transitional vegetarians.
I recommend "New Becoming" because it talks about the life style issues involved, and developing one's own style. It has good thinking about families with children.
I recommend "Student's Vegetarian" because it is simple, so many recipes take forever and require exotic ingredients. My own cooking time is thirty minutes, and I save food ideas that look like they take a lot of time.
I have been struggling with vegetarianism for thirty years. Neither of my parents looked favorably on vegetarianism. Meat meant protein, and protein meant health. And that was that.
I never experienced the revulsion to killing an animal that many vegetarians report as preceding their conversion experience, my attraction to forgoing meat was motivated by other concerns. First, the fact that most of the world's people subsist on vegetable proteins mostly drawn from the legumes, seeds, and nuts. The information that we could solve world hunger if we feed the soy beans that the U.S feeds to cattle to people was shocking information. I tried vegetarianism for several years in keeping with diet for a starving planet. When I remarried ten years ago, my spouse had also tried vegetarianism, and had been advised by dietitian to eat some fish occasionally - so we became almost vegetarians with a little seafood.
When I began to explore Native American spirituality I began to develop an ethic relative to animal food that made sense to me. I will eat fish if it has been caught by fishing the high seas, but I would strive to avoid factory farmed fished. I have gone fishing and eat what I caught as well. I have never had an opportunity or desire to engage in the hunt, but I have less moral objections to hunting than I do the meat and poultry industry. I do experience the whole idea of factory farming as morally reprehensible. But I have also thought that such meat and poultry was unhealthy. Now I read an article that reports that factory farm raised meat and poultry creates a serious health risk.
Abid Aslam writes "Crowded, inhumane, and unhygienic conditions on factory farms can sicken animals . . . Additionally, factory farmed meat and fish contain ''an arsenal of unnatural ingredients'' including chemical and other pollutants, arsenic, and hormones.
World beef prices have fallen roughly 25 percent over the past 30 years, Nierenberg says, and meat consumption is rising fastest not in the West but in the developing world.
From the early 1970s to the mid-90s, meat consumption in developing countries grew by 70 million tons, nearly triple the rise in industrial nations.
Some might see that as good news, an indication that people in poor countries are eating more protein. Nierenberg, however, says that ''as developing countries continue their climb up the protein ladder, the genetic stock of their livestock is eroding as higher-producing industrial breeds crowd out indigenous varieties.''
The less diverse the herds, the more susceptible they are to the diseases that stalk the feed lots, scientists have said."
Within a generation we might see a revolution in how we eat and we will look on our present meat based diet in the same way we now look on smoking tobacco.
