Science vs. religion? Galileo and PBS

Sharon and I just watched a show on PBS dealing with Galileo, the famous scientist and philosopher. It was pretty much as I expected – Galileo was persecuted by the church for his scientific beliefs and died a broken man. The show made it appear to be a war between religion and science with Galileo as the hero. However, many crucial facts had been left out which change the picture quite a bit.

Starting end of the Middle Ages, the dominant model of the universe in Europe came from Aristotle. He had written about the earth as the center of the universe. People today think that this was an egotistical attempt to make humanity think better of itself. But Aristotle placed the earth at the center because that was the lowest place in the universe, not the most important. There were concentric circles above the earth representing the moon, the stars, the planets, and heaven. These heavenly bodies were more pure than the earth, which was seen as the focus of evil in this system.

When Copernicus came along and placed the sun in the center of the universe, it changed how people saw themselves. Instead of demoting the human race, he elevated humanity. Galileo was a firm disciple of Copernicus and, therefore, argued for a sun-centered universe.

Galileo’s view put him in conflict with Aristotle’s model. This was a problem because many church leaders had bought into Aristotle’s philosophy, and they were concerned with the metaphysical, spiritual, and social consequences that would come about if this philosophy was rejected. Actually, a majority of church intellectuals were on the side of Galileo; they had no argument with Galileo’s theories as science. He got in trouble, not because the Bible conflicted with observation but because he differed with the church over what authority should be used to interpret it.

Galileo did not help himself when he turned to writing his theories. He was provocative, using caricatures of the pope to make him look silly in various debates included in the writings.

It is true that Galileo was detained and was forced to renounce the sun-centered universe theory. But he was given his own rooms and servants. He did not die a broken, lonely man in exile. Instead, he returned to his own home with his pensions from the church preserved.

This is just one more illustration that the "war" between science and Christianity often comes from poor interpretations rather than from the Bible itself. It also demonstrates how modern communicators love to perpetuate the old idea that science and faith are incompatible.

What direction are your taxes headed?

I came across this article in the Wall Street Journal. I excerpted part of it below. It says it all--we are headed for huge tax increases.

If President Obama has his way, you will soon have to submit to government rationing of medical care and drive a tiny car. But at least your taxes won't go up if you make under $250,000 a year, right?

Oh, you poor naive soul. The Associated Press delivers the bad news in a dispatch by Stephen Ohlemacher titled "PROMISES, PROMISES: Obama's Tax Pledge Unrealistic":
Obama made a firm tax pledge during the presidential campaign, repeating it numerous times in the weeks and months leading up to Election Day: no tax increases for individuals making less than $200,000 a year or couples making less than $250,000.
"Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes," Obama told a crowd in Dover, N.H., last year.

But less than a month after taking office, Obama signed an expansion of child health care financed by 62-cent tax increase on each pack of cigarettes.

Obama also signed an anti-smoking bill in June that grants authority to the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. To pay for the new program, a fee is being imposed on the industry--and presumably passed on to consumers--estimated to generate more than $5 billion over the next decade.

While not directly increasing taxes, a House-passed version of Obama's plan to reduce greenhouse gases blamed for causing global warming would similarly increase American families' home energy bills by $175 a year on average, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Obama hasn't offered a detailed plan to fix health care, though his aides are working with lawmakers as they craft proposals. Obama included only a down payment for health care reform in the budget proposal he unveiled this spring.

He proposed limiting itemized tax deductions for individuals making more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000. The plan, which faces stiff opposition in Congress, would limit deductions for mortgage insurance, state and local taxes and charitable contributions, raising about $270 billion over the next decade.

Obama also proposed a series of business tax increases and accounting changes that would raise an additional $30 billion.

If only someone had warned us back when Obama was running for president! Well, actually, John McCain and the Republicans did issue such warnings--but the AP, in a series of "fact check" articles, declared that the warnings were false and implied that they were lies.

God is back

There is a new book out that I’m looking forward to reading – God Is Back. I found an interview in World magazine with its two authors, both connected with The Economist, a news magazine. Many of the points they discuss are extremely interesting.

For one thing, they wanted to explore the idea that the more modern the world gets, the more secular it would become. They found this was not the case. Even in a place like Europe, religion is on the front burner, thanks especially to the interaction between their Western cultures and Islam. They note that the United Nations was created by secularists who were hoping they could squeeze religion out of any prominence it had, but now this body addresses all sorts of religious issues.

They see America as having a key role in the rise of religious fervor around the world. For one thing, our nation obviously supplies missionaries, Bibles, and books. However, indirectly it contributes to a global revival of religion because it exports capitalism, which is a chaotic process that causes many people to turn to religion for help in dealing with the new economics. A third way America encourages religion is its exportation of Hollywood “morality” (or lack thereof) that many cultures find offensive, with the result that they focus more on religious values.

When they compare Islam to Christianity, the authors see distinct advantages for the latter. Islam, unlike Christianity, has not had to deal with competition within and modernity’s attacks. They see a severe period of testing ahead for Islam, and there is a question whether it can survive. Islam needs its own reformation – will it deal with it well and come out the other side in good shape? The authors seriously doubt this outcome will be positive for this religion.

When asked about recent bestsellers by atheists, they had an interesting reaction. “You do not suddenly wake up in a panic about God being bad or terrible if you think you’ve already won the argument.” They say these new atheists talk down to religious people. In addition, those who have a religious faith are not supposed to bring their beliefs to the argument even though the other side is allowed to bring their most profound moral beliefs to the same argument. Quite a double standard exists.

Finally, United States foreign policy is dramatically affected by its leaders’ lack of religious faith. This statement made me think of the comment I read elsewhere—“If Sweden is the most secular country and India is the most religious, the United States is made up of Indians who are governed by Swedes.” The authors claim that the elite who run the foreign policy in this country are clueless when it comes to religious values. They failed to understand the power of Islam in the Middle East, for example.

Thoughts such as these make me want to get started on their book. I’ll let you know what I encounter.

Our looming crisis

I made a big mistake today. I read an article in Fortune magazine about a looming crisis – America’s debt. At first I thought the worry was about the current Obama-led spending, but it is much, much worse than that. We are facing what the magazine calls a “crushing burden of debt” that gets so big that we are overwhelmed.

The problem is due to policies that are ongoing. Thanks to all the entitlements, especially Social Security and Medicare that will soar as all of the baby boomers retire,the trend of more outlays than revenues will become far worse even after the stimulus spending winds down and the economy recovers. The timewhen all of this will become obvious is not all that far off in the future—2020, according to financial experts. The Government Accountability Office estimates that interest payments will take up nearly one-third of all revenues by 2040 with entitlements eating up the rest of the income. That means there’s nothing for defense, education, veterans benefits, or any of the other federal programs.

Why is this? Money coming into the government is mostly due to the personal income tax, which does not always rise thanks to economic downturns. However, future spending comes about mostly by entitlements, which the magazine says are “programmed to rise far faster than national income.”

What’s the fix? Fortune says bumping up the income tax won’t solve the problem because it would become too burdensome. The writer suggests the use of a VAT(value-added tax) will become a political reality because it can be used as a federal sales tax, allowing the government to collect money on all sorts of purchases. There’s a huge downside to do this because such attacks lands hard on metal and low income earners, who are forced to use a big part of their income to buy things.

So go ahead and complain about Obama economic programs. I’m not a fan of such large expenditures either. But don’t think that things will be OK in a year or two whenhe tells us the economy is recovering and he is putting less money into stimulus programs. This will not fix the mess we are in.

Do some research. Join groups that you think will help work to solve these budget problems. Monitor politicians and their spending habits. If the problem seems like a long way off, think about that year of 2020 when the largest number of baby boomers retire, sending Social Security and Medicare through the roof. If we want to save America as we know it for our children, we are running out of time.

The real threat from Islam

National Review had a disturbing article in its April 20, 2009 issue – “Beyond Terrorism.” The author’s point is that we in the West still do not understand much about radical Islam and the threat it holds for us.

We focus on jihad with its horrific violence, but we fail to understand the goal of such violence. Those who blow themselves up and kill so many innocents do not practice this behavior simply for the joy of seeing the bloody results. Instead, jihad is done “to pave the way for the imposition of sharia, the Muslim legal code and necessary precondition for building an Islamic state and society.”

The author, Andrew C. McCarthy, says the U.S. is timid and too focused on multiculturalism. We don’t want to deal with the fact that such a Muslim society contradicts everything we hold dear. Sharia would establish a state religion, reject the freedoms we have come to love, negate economic freedom, take away the idea of equality under the law, subjugate non-Muslims, and come down hard on many segments of society – homosexuals, apostates, and women. But we don’t hear much about that. Heaven forbid that we say something negative about some other culture.

He says we must understand three things. First, Islam is much more than a religion; it is a complete cultural, economic, and political system which no one is allowed to question. We in the West do not want to criticize a religion, believing it to be between a person and his/her God, but we need to realize Islam is much more than that. Secondly, we should know that Islam is not a single belief system. We want to divide Islam into either true or false; however, there are numerous interpretations that can be identified as belonging to Islam. Our leaders tell us the fundamentalists within Islam, the ones doing the killing, are “anti-Islamic“ and nothing but a fringe group. But this is not true; they represent a large number of Muslims going back to the time of Mohammed. Finally, we need to understand that Islam is not about the individual; instead, it is about the Muslim nation. That is why she jihadists blow themselves up—to advance the cause of Islam.

McCarthy points out that such violence does not have to be carried out if Islam can be advanced without it. He says this stealth strategy is working in the West. Thanks to left-leaning universities, the media, and even government, Islam is making headway in America. As an example, he points out that the Bush administration “helped write new constitutions [in Iraq and Afghanistan] that not only established Islam as the state religion but installed sharia as a primary source of law.” These same diplomats were later startled when an Afghan court attempted to sentence to death a Christian who had converted from Islam. What did they expect—freedom of religion from sharia law? Not going to happen.

The author notes other incidents right here in America where sharia has been introduced. In Minnesota, for example, Muslim cab drivers refused to carry passengers believed to have alcohol with them. Instead of firing them, state authorities convinced them that sharia was not actually violated if alcohol was only transported, not consumed. In the same state, a graduate education student was taken off a project at a high school where he was doing field work. Why? He required the assistance of a specially trained dog because of medical problems, and Muslims at the school objected because sharia declared dogs to be unclean. The university gave in and pulled the student out of the school. Here’s another example from Minnesota – the state has started setting up “Muslim mortgages.” Sharia does not allow interest as part of financial transactions, so the state “now buys homes from willing sellers and then resells them to Muslim buyers in transactions that disguise interest by higher costs and fees. That is, American taxpayer dollars are employed to promote conformance with Islamic law.”

So, we’re facing more than terrorism. Radical Islam uses liberal Western laws to establish its legal code in the United States as well as in other Western nations. We can fight this. We do guarantee freedom of conscience to all, but we do not guarantee that those beliefs must be adopted or imposed on all of society.

There they go again

I just finished reading Lee Strobel’s newest book, The Case for the Real Jesus. It’s like his others—the author interviews leading experts, this time trying to better understand the truth about Jesus. Recently, many different assaults have been made on the traditional picture of Jesus, and Strobel wants to find out where the truth lies. He has five key points which he develops.

First of all, he wants to find out whether other ancient documents, rather than the four Gospels, reveal a radically different Jesus. He discovers these alternative texts were written much later than the four Gospels and, therefore, have little historical credibility. For example, liberal critics love to talk about the Gospel of Thomas, placing it on an equal footing with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. However, it was written around 200 A.D., over 100 years later than the four Gospels. Other Gnostic texts also suffer from late dating and lack any connection with the real Jesus.

Strobel then seeks to discover whether the picture of Jesus is unreliable because of changes made by scribes in the documents. He finds that the New Testament is essentially reliable, despite many claims made recently about errors. Only about one percent of manuscript variations affect the meaning; not one essential doctrine is in doubt. Because we have so many New Testament manuscripts, we can trust the way Jesus is portrayed.

A third question the author seeks to explore deals with Jesus’s resurrection. Some critics suggest alternative explanations for this crucial event. He focuses on five key facts that almost all scholars, including skeptical ones, accept as historical truths--Jesus died on a cross, his disciples believed that he rose and appeared to them, Paul (a former persecutor of Christians)converted to Christianity, James (former skeptic and half-brother of Jesus) converted, Jesus’s tomb was empty. What is the best explanation for this evidence? The resurrection appears to be far more logical than any competing hypotheses.

One question which Strobel pursued was especially intriguing to me—did Christianity steal its ideas about Jesus from earlier pagan religions? Many scholars have examined stories of Mithras, Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus. The truth is that there were no dying and rising gods that preceded Christianity. In fact, they appear after the time of Jesus. These myths contained no parallels to the life of Jesus. The stories occurred in the unspecified and distant past and were usually related to the seasonal life-and-death cycle of vegetation. What is frustrating is that many scholars looked at these myths decades ago and discredited them, but now, thanks to the Internet, the same challenges are back.

One other challenge comes from those who believe Jesus was an impostor who failed to fulfill messianic prophecies. Strobel interviews a Jewish scholar who does a magnificent job in going through Old Testament prophecies, showing that only Jesus managed to fulfill the prophecies that needed to come to pass before 70 A.D., when the Jewish Temple was seized and destroyed by the Romans.

Lee Strobel has produced several thought-provoking books such as The Case for Christ, The Case for Faith, and The Case for a Creator. His latest, The Case for the Real Jesus, does an excellent job taking on the newest critics of Christianity.

Reading some letters

Our home-town newspaper, North County Times, has a section for religious issues. As part of this, the paper allows both religious and nonreligious people to write letters. As an aside, I find it interesting that the editors think they must separate such letters from the regular opinion page, suggesting there’s something different about religious issues that don’t qualify them for general consumption. Religious issues need to be part of a ghetto in the back of the paper.

I usually read these letters, especially the ones from nonbelievers to see what their complaints are about people of faith. One recent letter took exception with Tim LaHaye’s view of end-times prophecies. Here are the letter’s comments: “Nonreligious people do not fear any end times; they fear those people who, in the 21st century, still believe in myths generated thousands of years ago. Islamic fanatics blowup themselves, and innocent bystanders, believing that they will be instantly transported to Paradise forever. A born-again Christian world leader rushes into war, believing that if it goes really badly and ends in Armageddon, the rapture will waft him and the other faithful up to heaven (to live side-by-sided with martyred jihadists for eternity?).”

Notice several things going on here. First, the author fears religious people more than the nonreligious. I wonder how he explains the horrors of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Mao—all nonreligious individuals. Far more death and destruction has come from the secular world than from the religious. Secondly, he equates Islamic fanatics with Christian believers. Hey, after all, they are all the same, aren’t they? How’s that for a failure to note distinctions?

Another writer refers to the return of Christ, who comes with “a promise of a non-fleshly paradise (what, no 72 virgins?) as long as they keep filling their pews, feeding the tithe coffers, and nodding their pointed little heads in abject agreement… does that mean that those who mentally cannot understand the concept of their godly fantasies will be “left behind” to suffer with the rest of us filthy, rotten atheists who like to help people in this real life?” What would you say to this writer? One thing that struck me was his comments about atheists helping people in this world. Isn’t he aware of how much good religious people have done – education, health care, orphanages, poverty relief, AIDS clinics, literacy groups, etc.? What atheist group has reached out to the weaker members of our world? It’s thanks to Christianity in particular that the writer enjoys the fruits of science, has civil liberties, and partakes in capitalism. We shouldn’t be taken in by those who demean the role religion has played in making our lives safer, more valuable, and more noble.