what was supposed to be a week away from blogging turned into a healthy month; i'll be making up lost time in the next few days.
first up, e.o. wilson's new book
The Creation: A Meeting of Science and Religion came out this past month and was just reviewed in the magazine
first things by particle physicist
stephen barr. he compliments wilson's engaging prose on the intricacies of nature and the debt we owe it, but ultimately recognizes wilson's insistence on naturalism for what it is--idolatry. wilson's commitment to the "ancient, autonomous creative force" of nature has been unabashedly prevalent in all of his books on religion and science, including one i reviewed (
consilience: the unity of knowledge) for the journal
revisions: a journal of christian perspective (see
pdf or
html).
while he emphasizes that we should take care of the environment, he accuses Christians of being anti-green because of their belief in an afterlife. this misrepresentation of the christian camp has continued for far too long, despite pleas and arguments to the contrary (briefly, one quick-and-dirty argument for pro-green christianity is that God has created this world for His glory and has created us to be stewards of it... so, we should be).
one nice point that barr brings up is wilson's poor understanding of Christianity: "he plays with the word
creation, even choosing it as the title of his book, while evincing no grasp of whati it means. in its traditional and profounder meaning, creation is that timeless act whereby God holds all things in existence. it is not an alternative to natural theories of origin or natural explanations of change [...] did this insect evolve or is it created by God? to ask tat is as silly as to ask whether polonius died because hamlet stabbed him or because shakespeare wrote the play that way."
(read on)
