Sunday, February 25, 2007
Saturday, February 24, 2007
I.1 Returns
The science is a little less mungy. A little poetic in places. But I did correct the gross inaccuracies about early photosynthesis. Next Time: 2. The First Global Biogeochemical Crisis: The Rise of Oxygen and the Snowball Earths
Part I: The Mysteries of Ancient Times
1. How Did We Get Here?: The Origin(s) of Life on Earth
It is tremendously hard to date when life first arose on Earth. The usual approach is to bracket the origin of life within an age range. The first date is the time before which life was unlikely to exist and the second date is the time at which fossils become unambiguously identifiable as fossils. Both dates have been tricky to pin down. Traditionally, the first date corresponds to the end of the Late Heavy Bombardment, a hypothesized period of extremely intense meteoritic impact primarily inferred from dating of some of the rocks found by the Apollo astronauts, which contain an material that is indicative of asteroid impact. This glass probably forms when an asteroid hits the Moon, vaporizes lunar material, and the material flash-freezes. Some of this material happens to be orange, though not necessarily the impact glass in the older rocks. (I’ve actually seen some of it under the microscope. It may be the most colorful substance on the Moon.)
The story the rocks tell is that ~3.8-3.9 billion years ago, there was some disturbance in the Solar System that sent many comets and/or asteroids spiraling toward the Sun. Although the Sun is big and the Earth and Moon are small, there was apparently enough material spiraling Sunward that the Earth would have experienced the cosmic equivalent of anthropogenic Mutually Assured Destruction every 10-100 years or so. The Moon did not fare much better and some of the largest craters on the Moon probably date from this period. In addition to producing a crater (~ 30 km. or so on the average), such a large impact would have stripped off a bit of the atmosphere, flash-boiled the surface of the ocean within ~100 km., and sent a potentially cell damaging sonic wave over the immediate area. Condensing vaporized rock and other impact fragments also might put particles into the air that would scatter sunlight. Until interest in possible extraterrestrial microbial life grew in recent years, it was generally thought impossible that life could survive in such circumstances, let alone develop. Now, there is less pessimism about the development of life during this entirely too exciting time. Michael Russell, a professor at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, argues that the most likely origin mechanism would have to have a high probability of repeatability, since life would have been wiped out constantly. However, the nature of the first date does not change too much, since it now marks its “emergence” rather than its origin.
The second date very quickly becomes a matter of opinion? What is a fossil? How can you tell that some structure in a rock is evidence that something was once alive? Well, the oldest strategy is what is called aktualism. You assume that lifeforms in the past might have looked like present organisms or made similar kinds of holes in rocks and draw parallels. Although this particular example of aktualism sounds fairly reasonable, it was quite controversial in the 17th century when Nicholas Steno, a Danish scientist employed by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, argued that the things that looked like seashells in the mountains north of Florence actually were seashells and not random inorganic structures. Of course, aktualism only works if the potential fossil organisms have modern analogs.
One less obvious example of aktualism more relevant to early life is the controversy about the stromatolite. A stromatowhat? Well, stromatolites are structures in layers of sedimentary rock that look like little sets of half-circular layers disturbing the exceptionally regular layers of early sedimentary rock. (I’ll probably mention later why sedimentary rocks tend to have more mottled structures). The original hypothesis was that stromatolites still existed as algae still living in one of the harshest environments on Earth, the intertidal flat, the large piece of shoreline that is alternately covered and uncovered by the tide in areas with a large range between high tide and low tide like the coast of Newfoundland. This particular habitat is a tricky one to occupy, since the chemistry of the water changes radically between high tide and low tide etc. The algae, however, are chemically flexible, just very vulnerable to being eaten, so they do well in intertidal flats but rarely remain as coherent structures on any other surface in modern marine environments. The algae also secrete mucus, like any other typical cluster of cells. This mucus tends to trap clay particles, eventually killing the algae, but forming a new place for their descendants to live on: the graves of their ancestors. Eventually, these algal colonies form mounds that are similar in size and shape to semicircular structures first seen in the rock record about 3.5 billion years ago. Much later, stromatolites actually show evidence of being eaten. Are modern stromatolites the same as ancient stromatolites? Well, the present consensus is that ancient stromatolites differed biologically from modern stromatolites, being cyanobacteria (photosynthesizing bacteria) as opposed to more closely related to the plants like algae. Smaller examples of cyanobacteria fossils are preserved in rocks as old as 3.8 billion years old, suggesting that photosynthesis, a chemical process so complex that humans cannot reproduce it, i.e., use sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen at high efficiency, is at least as ancient as the oldest rocks that possibly could preserve evidence of it.
Rounding out our story of controversial fossils might be the hypothesized biological structures within ALH84001. And by ALH84001, I mean the first meteorite found in the 1984 field season in the Allan Hills area of Antarctica. Or indeed, by ALH84001, I mean a 4.2 billion year old or so chunk of Mars that was knocked off the surface by meteor impact and eventually landed on the Earth. Because no one knows if there is life on Mars or what it might look like, the features of ALH84001 that are proposed to be biological supposedly look like the most primitive microbes on Earth. The more scientifically trained reader might enjoy Allan Treiman’s courageous attempt to keep an open mind about ALH84001 , but the present consensus is that all properties of the meteorite, including its texture, could be produced without biological interference.
Why have we spent so much time talking about dating and early fossils? Wouldn’t the mechanisms of the origin of life be of more interest? Well, they are. In fact, there was heated discussion in the Letters of Science last week of the two major competing hypotheses about what kind of environment produced the first microbes. But it is the dating issue that has stimulated more theological reflection lately.
I really do not know the full story I am about to tell in any detail. I have picked up bits and pieces over the years in my reading and conversing with evolutionary biologists and people who think they have found a proof for the existence of God, but I’ll try to give you a basic idea. In the 1950s, Harold Urey and Stanley Miller at the University of Chicago created organic molecules by shocking a miniature model of the primitive Earth’s atmosphere. This was supposed to simulate lightning on the early Earth. Later research has suggested that the early atmosphere may have been compositionally different (and more or less favorable to organic production) than what was believed in the 1950s. But the chief problem with the Miller-Urey experiment was not its experimental setup but how it has been interpreted in the textbook literature and popular thought. Miller and Urey did not create life. They created organic molecules, the building blocks of life, which at the time seemed fairly close to life. However, organic molecules, we have learned since, are fairly ubiquitous in the Solar System. Meteorites, for instance, contain some fairly sophisticated organic molecules, though of a particular and limited kind. Titan, the chief moon of Saturn, has a much broader organic repertoire in its atmosphere, which has parallels with the atmosphere of the early Earth.
By the early 1980s, researchers realized that the major property that distinguished life from organic molecules was the ability to remember how to manufacture certain kinds of organic molecules that would be useful for the organism. Presently, our own bodies have DNA and RNA to perform that function, but DNA and RNA are far too sophisticated to have been produced by abiotic organic synthesis at random . What was needed was some sort of inorganic substance that could store “information” and eventually make the sophisticated molecules that would replace its function. By the early 1980s, information also was a technical mathematical term, connected with probability, permutation, entropy, and digital computing. Moreover, the analytical techniques of mineralogy had advanced greatly, allowing the structural diversity of naturally occurring inorganic substances to be understood. Soon there developed the Clay Mineral Hypothesis, which proposed that the first life began very much like your grandmother’s wedding china, as polymerized layers of closely bonded silicon and oxygen, filled with magnesium, potassium, iron, aluminum, and water, like a sandwich. Accounting for structural defects and the particular arrangement of metal ions and layers, clays have high potential information content for an inorganic substance. Moreover, clays are ubiquitous, as any mother knows when her small child comes in from playing in the rain. Mud is mostly clay. Clays also typically are a byproduct of volcanically heated water solutions altering volcanic rock, one of the proposed settings for the origin of life.
At this point, I think it would be fair to mention that both the Urey-Miller Experiment and the Clay Mineral Hypothesis had a peculiar attraction to the more religious biologists. The latter especially reminded them of mankind being formed out of the dust of the earth as the second creation account of Genesis implies (and these sentiments have made it into the scientific literature). I think at the back of the mind of many serious Christian scientists is that Moses may have been shown the creation and subsequent events by God and had some trouble comprehending what he was shown, thus any hypothesis that sounds anything like Genesis strengthens one’s faith. Other proponents of the Clay Mineral Hypothesis may like that it is a rehabilitation of the spontaneous generation hypothesis common among the Greeks.
Interest in the Clay Mineral Hypothesis comes and goes. The mineralogists, of course, are fans. Michael Russell (mentioned earlier) seems sold on it. But it serves an illustration of why life is more than organic chemicals. It is the ability to reproduce. It is the ability to resist entropy, i.e., absorption of its own information to the decaying information of the universe. It is the ability to perform the same reaction over and over again, even though the rest of the environment naturally might do something else. In other words, life is coordinated imbalance of the abiotic world. Any hypothesis for the origin of life has to explain why the biotic appears to have a will of its own.
And when photosynthesis developed, life’s role in creating a coordinated chemical imbalance became quite important (wait for the next chapter) The first evidence of this chemical imbalance, the apparently biologically mediated oxidation of iron, is found in rocks in Greenland slightly older (give or take 100 million years) than the first cyanobacteria fossils. In other words, life could not have developed or developed very much before 3.8 billion years, the end of the Late Heavy Bombardment. And yet, life was so chemically sophisticated by the end of the cosmic blitz that it had developed a primitive form of photosynthesis. Is that fast or slow? Well, the first life survived by various simple chemical reactions called oxidation-reduction reactions, typically called chemotrophy. One simple example might be reduction of iron by oxidation of acetate. If you don’t remember your chemistry, it doesn’t matter. The basic reaction is somewhat like spraying rusty metal with WD40, and it produces energy. Chemotrophy, however, doesn’t produce much energy, so the reaction must be repeated at fairly high frequency to keep the organism alive, not unlike a human being trying to survive by eating celery constantly. Worst of all, much chemotrophy results in some sort of solid substance forming in the cell such as iron, which eventually poisons the cell. So chemotrophs must export solids to the environment, which is very energy-intensive.
Despite its disadvantages, chemotrophy is a popular manner of life in hydrothermal vents and other extreme environments. Moreover, the simple chemistry of the chemotrophs appears to be the foundation of the much more sophisticated activity of our own cells and the equally interesting plants. Photosynthesis itself probably began as a modified form of chemotrophy, perhaps as some reactive intermediate absorbed sunlight and split. The hypothesized earliest form of photosynthesis involves the absorption of infrared radiation, just a little redder than the human eye can see. The energy of this absorption was used to oxidize the iron ion Fe2+ to Fe3+, almost always producing iron hydroxide in the presence of water.
In the 1980s, mathematicians became interested in quantitative evolutionary biology. And the evolution of the microbes seemed to be the simplest problem. So these mathematicians tried to produce a mathematical model of how various chemical reactions and structures could evolve, accounting for radiation damage mutations and sex (bacterial sex is a fun subject apparently) etc. The eventual results were that the evolution of the photosynthetic cyanobacteria should have taken billions of years. But I told you earlier that it barely took any time at all. Photosynthesis apparently developed much faster than it should have.
I was in high school when I read the first stories about the emerging intelligent design movement. On one hand, the intelligent design movement stems from the attempts of old earth creationists to rehabilitate their parlor tricks or culture warriors to justify their vision of Biblical morality by giving the intellectual classes a reason to believe in God or something. I once was in charge of catechizing the parents of infants about to be baptized in my parish and the issue of the swift evolution of the bacteria was brought up by one of the parents. So on the other hand, there is an important scientific problem at the heart of intelligent design. The biologists do think carefully about it. Indeed, Joseph Kirschvink, perhaps one of the most gifted thinkers about the origins and ends of life, has speculated that life probably developed in the potentially more favorable environment of Mars.
The theological content of this problem is not quite what William Dembski et al. would like us to believe. The Creeds proclaim a God intimately connected with life, especially through the Person of the Holy Spirit. But while photosynthesis developed relatively quickly, more than a billion years passed before these organisms were dominant. And indeed, at least another billion years passed before the full oxygenic photosynthetic reactions we know today were developed. Before inferring God’s special providence from a potentially fallible mathematical model, let us consider how the Scriptures speak of life and death, particularly Psalm 104, “You send forth your Spirit and they are created…you turn your face away and they fall to dust.” Aristotle, one of the greatest biologists of the ancient world, classified souls in terms of the ends they pursued in unity with their bodies. In more modern terms then, the soul is very much the information content of our body, directing our life processes relative to the abiotic world and hopefully being led to its end in God. Perhaps, the origin of life came when sufficient information content was available to some organic chemicals that the Spirit provided them a nutritive will to sustain them, the basis of the natural law of self-preservation. Perhaps, this consequence was enough to reduce the randomness of evolution, quickly evolving the diverse lifestyles of microbes but was not the specific direction by God to the end of dominant oxygen photosynthesists, for why did it slow? I think I know what answer Dembski would give me, but that will be tackled in my next chapter.
But I don’t think natural law arguments for evolution are theological content either. The question that the origin of life on Earth presents to us is one of our uniqueness. If life is very common, our responsibilities in the wake of Christ become quite complex. The possibility that there are other rational beings out there might direct us to use the resources of the planet as a vehicle for witness, a means of evangelism. But if life is very uncommon and endures with difficulty, we are quite alone and the words of Psalm 95 ring out, “The Earth is the Lord’s, for he made it.” Life on Earth is of such amazing variety and sophistication even in comparison with the inorganic world that there is no possible higher purpose to govern our responsibility to the rest of the world than to preserve this splendid work of God whole and undefiled. It is this principle of uniqueness and the value of the rest of biological life as the masterwork of God’s hands that divides those who believe that they will be held accountable for not exploiting from those who believe they will be held responsible for exploitation of the Earth’s resources.
Part I: The Mysteries of Ancient Times
Hear my teaching, O my people;(Psalm 78:1-4)
incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will declare the mysteries of ancient times.
That which we have heard and known,
And what our forefathers have told us,
We will not hide from our children.
We will recount to generations to come
The praiseworthy deeds and the power of the LORD,
And the wonderful works he has done.
1. How Did We Get Here?: The Origin(s) of Life on Earth
It is tremendously hard to date when life first arose on Earth. The usual approach is to bracket the origin of life within an age range. The first date is the time before which life was unlikely to exist and the second date is the time at which fossils become unambiguously identifiable as fossils. Both dates have been tricky to pin down. Traditionally, the first date corresponds to the end of the Late Heavy Bombardment, a hypothesized period of extremely intense meteoritic impact primarily inferred from dating of some of the rocks found by the Apollo astronauts, which contain an material that is indicative of asteroid impact. This glass probably forms when an asteroid hits the Moon, vaporizes lunar material, and the material flash-freezes. Some of this material happens to be orange, though not necessarily the impact glass in the older rocks. (I’ve actually seen some of it under the microscope. It may be the most colorful substance on the Moon.)
The story the rocks tell is that ~3.8-3.9 billion years ago, there was some disturbance in the Solar System that sent many comets and/or asteroids spiraling toward the Sun. Although the Sun is big and the Earth and Moon are small, there was apparently enough material spiraling Sunward that the Earth would have experienced the cosmic equivalent of anthropogenic Mutually Assured Destruction every 10-100 years or so. The Moon did not fare much better and some of the largest craters on the Moon probably date from this period. In addition to producing a crater (~ 30 km. or so on the average), such a large impact would have stripped off a bit of the atmosphere, flash-boiled the surface of the ocean within ~100 km., and sent a potentially cell damaging sonic wave over the immediate area. Condensing vaporized rock and other impact fragments also might put particles into the air that would scatter sunlight. Until interest in possible extraterrestrial microbial life grew in recent years, it was generally thought impossible that life could survive in such circumstances, let alone develop. Now, there is less pessimism about the development of life during this entirely too exciting time. Michael Russell, a professor at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, argues that the most likely origin mechanism would have to have a high probability of repeatability, since life would have been wiped out constantly. However, the nature of the first date does not change too much, since it now marks its “emergence” rather than its origin.
The second date very quickly becomes a matter of opinion? What is a fossil? How can you tell that some structure in a rock is evidence that something was once alive? Well, the oldest strategy is what is called aktualism. You assume that lifeforms in the past might have looked like present organisms or made similar kinds of holes in rocks and draw parallels. Although this particular example of aktualism sounds fairly reasonable, it was quite controversial in the 17th century when Nicholas Steno, a Danish scientist employed by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, argued that the things that looked like seashells in the mountains north of Florence actually were seashells and not random inorganic structures. Of course, aktualism only works if the potential fossil organisms have modern analogs.
One less obvious example of aktualism more relevant to early life is the controversy about the stromatolite. A stromatowhat? Well, stromatolites are structures in layers of sedimentary rock that look like little sets of half-circular layers disturbing the exceptionally regular layers of early sedimentary rock. (I’ll probably mention later why sedimentary rocks tend to have more mottled structures). The original hypothesis was that stromatolites still existed as algae still living in one of the harshest environments on Earth, the intertidal flat, the large piece of shoreline that is alternately covered and uncovered by the tide in areas with a large range between high tide and low tide like the coast of Newfoundland. This particular habitat is a tricky one to occupy, since the chemistry of the water changes radically between high tide and low tide etc. The algae, however, are chemically flexible, just very vulnerable to being eaten, so they do well in intertidal flats but rarely remain as coherent structures on any other surface in modern marine environments. The algae also secrete mucus, like any other typical cluster of cells. This mucus tends to trap clay particles, eventually killing the algae, but forming a new place for their descendants to live on: the graves of their ancestors. Eventually, these algal colonies form mounds that are similar in size and shape to semicircular structures first seen in the rock record about 3.5 billion years ago. Much later, stromatolites actually show evidence of being eaten. Are modern stromatolites the same as ancient stromatolites? Well, the present consensus is that ancient stromatolites differed biologically from modern stromatolites, being cyanobacteria (photosynthesizing bacteria) as opposed to more closely related to the plants like algae. Smaller examples of cyanobacteria fossils are preserved in rocks as old as 3.8 billion years old, suggesting that photosynthesis, a chemical process so complex that humans cannot reproduce it, i.e., use sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen at high efficiency, is at least as ancient as the oldest rocks that possibly could preserve evidence of it.
Rounding out our story of controversial fossils might be the hypothesized biological structures within ALH84001. And by ALH84001, I mean the first meteorite found in the 1984 field season in the Allan Hills area of Antarctica. Or indeed, by ALH84001, I mean a 4.2 billion year old or so chunk of Mars that was knocked off the surface by meteor impact and eventually landed on the Earth. Because no one knows if there is life on Mars or what it might look like, the features of ALH84001 that are proposed to be biological supposedly look like the most primitive microbes on Earth. The more scientifically trained reader might enjoy Allan Treiman’s courageous attempt to keep an open mind about ALH84001 , but the present consensus is that all properties of the meteorite, including its texture, could be produced without biological interference.
Why have we spent so much time talking about dating and early fossils? Wouldn’t the mechanisms of the origin of life be of more interest? Well, they are. In fact, there was heated discussion in the Letters of Science last week of the two major competing hypotheses about what kind of environment produced the first microbes. But it is the dating issue that has stimulated more theological reflection lately.
I really do not know the full story I am about to tell in any detail. I have picked up bits and pieces over the years in my reading and conversing with evolutionary biologists and people who think they have found a proof for the existence of God, but I’ll try to give you a basic idea. In the 1950s, Harold Urey and Stanley Miller at the University of Chicago created organic molecules by shocking a miniature model of the primitive Earth’s atmosphere. This was supposed to simulate lightning on the early Earth. Later research has suggested that the early atmosphere may have been compositionally different (and more or less favorable to organic production) than what was believed in the 1950s. But the chief problem with the Miller-Urey experiment was not its experimental setup but how it has been interpreted in the textbook literature and popular thought. Miller and Urey did not create life. They created organic molecules, the building blocks of life, which at the time seemed fairly close to life. However, organic molecules, we have learned since, are fairly ubiquitous in the Solar System. Meteorites, for instance, contain some fairly sophisticated organic molecules, though of a particular and limited kind. Titan, the chief moon of Saturn, has a much broader organic repertoire in its atmosphere, which has parallels with the atmosphere of the early Earth.
By the early 1980s, researchers realized that the major property that distinguished life from organic molecules was the ability to remember how to manufacture certain kinds of organic molecules that would be useful for the organism. Presently, our own bodies have DNA and RNA to perform that function, but DNA and RNA are far too sophisticated to have been produced by abiotic organic synthesis at random . What was needed was some sort of inorganic substance that could store “information” and eventually make the sophisticated molecules that would replace its function. By the early 1980s, information also was a technical mathematical term, connected with probability, permutation, entropy, and digital computing. Moreover, the analytical techniques of mineralogy had advanced greatly, allowing the structural diversity of naturally occurring inorganic substances to be understood. Soon there developed the Clay Mineral Hypothesis, which proposed that the first life began very much like your grandmother’s wedding china, as polymerized layers of closely bonded silicon and oxygen, filled with magnesium, potassium, iron, aluminum, and water, like a sandwich. Accounting for structural defects and the particular arrangement of metal ions and layers, clays have high potential information content for an inorganic substance. Moreover, clays are ubiquitous, as any mother knows when her small child comes in from playing in the rain. Mud is mostly clay. Clays also typically are a byproduct of volcanically heated water solutions altering volcanic rock, one of the proposed settings for the origin of life.
At this point, I think it would be fair to mention that both the Urey-Miller Experiment and the Clay Mineral Hypothesis had a peculiar attraction to the more religious biologists. The latter especially reminded them of mankind being formed out of the dust of the earth as the second creation account of Genesis implies (and these sentiments have made it into the scientific literature). I think at the back of the mind of many serious Christian scientists is that Moses may have been shown the creation and subsequent events by God and had some trouble comprehending what he was shown, thus any hypothesis that sounds anything like Genesis strengthens one’s faith. Other proponents of the Clay Mineral Hypothesis may like that it is a rehabilitation of the spontaneous generation hypothesis common among the Greeks.
Interest in the Clay Mineral Hypothesis comes and goes. The mineralogists, of course, are fans. Michael Russell (mentioned earlier) seems sold on it. But it serves an illustration of why life is more than organic chemicals. It is the ability to reproduce. It is the ability to resist entropy, i.e., absorption of its own information to the decaying information of the universe. It is the ability to perform the same reaction over and over again, even though the rest of the environment naturally might do something else. In other words, life is coordinated imbalance of the abiotic world. Any hypothesis for the origin of life has to explain why the biotic appears to have a will of its own.
And when photosynthesis developed, life’s role in creating a coordinated chemical imbalance became quite important (wait for the next chapter) The first evidence of this chemical imbalance, the apparently biologically mediated oxidation of iron, is found in rocks in Greenland slightly older (give or take 100 million years) than the first cyanobacteria fossils. In other words, life could not have developed or developed very much before 3.8 billion years, the end of the Late Heavy Bombardment. And yet, life was so chemically sophisticated by the end of the cosmic blitz that it had developed a primitive form of photosynthesis. Is that fast or slow? Well, the first life survived by various simple chemical reactions called oxidation-reduction reactions, typically called chemotrophy. One simple example might be reduction of iron by oxidation of acetate. If you don’t remember your chemistry, it doesn’t matter. The basic reaction is somewhat like spraying rusty metal with WD40, and it produces energy. Chemotrophy, however, doesn’t produce much energy, so the reaction must be repeated at fairly high frequency to keep the organism alive, not unlike a human being trying to survive by eating celery constantly. Worst of all, much chemotrophy results in some sort of solid substance forming in the cell such as iron, which eventually poisons the cell. So chemotrophs must export solids to the environment, which is very energy-intensive.
Despite its disadvantages, chemotrophy is a popular manner of life in hydrothermal vents and other extreme environments. Moreover, the simple chemistry of the chemotrophs appears to be the foundation of the much more sophisticated activity of our own cells and the equally interesting plants. Photosynthesis itself probably began as a modified form of chemotrophy, perhaps as some reactive intermediate absorbed sunlight and split. The hypothesized earliest form of photosynthesis involves the absorption of infrared radiation, just a little redder than the human eye can see. The energy of this absorption was used to oxidize the iron ion Fe2+ to Fe3+, almost always producing iron hydroxide in the presence of water.
In the 1980s, mathematicians became interested in quantitative evolutionary biology. And the evolution of the microbes seemed to be the simplest problem. So these mathematicians tried to produce a mathematical model of how various chemical reactions and structures could evolve, accounting for radiation damage mutations and sex (bacterial sex is a fun subject apparently) etc. The eventual results were that the evolution of the photosynthetic cyanobacteria should have taken billions of years. But I told you earlier that it barely took any time at all. Photosynthesis apparently developed much faster than it should have.
I was in high school when I read the first stories about the emerging intelligent design movement. On one hand, the intelligent design movement stems from the attempts of old earth creationists to rehabilitate their parlor tricks or culture warriors to justify their vision of Biblical morality by giving the intellectual classes a reason to believe in God or something. I once was in charge of catechizing the parents of infants about to be baptized in my parish and the issue of the swift evolution of the bacteria was brought up by one of the parents. So on the other hand, there is an important scientific problem at the heart of intelligent design. The biologists do think carefully about it. Indeed, Joseph Kirschvink, perhaps one of the most gifted thinkers about the origins and ends of life, has speculated that life probably developed in the potentially more favorable environment of Mars.
The theological content of this problem is not quite what William Dembski et al. would like us to believe. The Creeds proclaim a God intimately connected with life, especially through the Person of the Holy Spirit. But while photosynthesis developed relatively quickly, more than a billion years passed before these organisms were dominant. And indeed, at least another billion years passed before the full oxygenic photosynthetic reactions we know today were developed. Before inferring God’s special providence from a potentially fallible mathematical model, let us consider how the Scriptures speak of life and death, particularly Psalm 104, “You send forth your Spirit and they are created…you turn your face away and they fall to dust.” Aristotle, one of the greatest biologists of the ancient world, classified souls in terms of the ends they pursued in unity with their bodies. In more modern terms then, the soul is very much the information content of our body, directing our life processes relative to the abiotic world and hopefully being led to its end in God. Perhaps, the origin of life came when sufficient information content was available to some organic chemicals that the Spirit provided them a nutritive will to sustain them, the basis of the natural law of self-preservation. Perhaps, this consequence was enough to reduce the randomness of evolution, quickly evolving the diverse lifestyles of microbes but was not the specific direction by God to the end of dominant oxygen photosynthesists, for why did it slow? I think I know what answer Dembski would give me, but that will be tackled in my next chapter.
But I don’t think natural law arguments for evolution are theological content either. The question that the origin of life on Earth presents to us is one of our uniqueness. If life is very common, our responsibilities in the wake of Christ become quite complex. The possibility that there are other rational beings out there might direct us to use the resources of the planet as a vehicle for witness, a means of evangelism. But if life is very uncommon and endures with difficulty, we are quite alone and the words of Psalm 95 ring out, “The Earth is the Lord’s, for he made it.” Life on Earth is of such amazing variety and sophistication even in comparison with the inorganic world that there is no possible higher purpose to govern our responsibility to the rest of the world than to preserve this splendid work of God whole and undefiled. It is this principle of uniqueness and the value of the rest of biological life as the masterwork of God’s hands that divides those who believe that they will be held accountable for not exploiting from those who believe they will be held responsible for exploitation of the Earth’s resources.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Part I Begins
Upon further reflection and a seminar by one of the experts on the Clay Mineral Hypothesis, I've realized that a little bit of the science here is mungy (i.e., how did photosynthesis work 3.8 billion years ago?) or I've given a little more impression of certainty than is justified by the evidence (i.e., Late Heavy Bombardment). So I'll try to get back to revising things after I take a little time to let Lent begin. If you've been linked here by Fr Kniseley etc., please enjoy the Context and Preface below.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Notes on the Coming Biogeochemical Crisis: Preface
Preface
I walk into my office and say to my officemate: “you have to see this figure.” My officemate presumably just has returned from brunch after Mass and I’m fresh from a meeting after Eucharist. But soon we’re staring at several maps of the Northern Hemisphere in polar projection: output from NCAR’s CCM3 sea ice model.
Some people, including former professors of mine, tend to become quite romantic about “climate models,” about the perfection of the physics on which their based and on the splendor of their verification against past data of one sort or another. But every month or so, I notice some almost “fundamental” flaw in the climate model on which I work or hear how a climate model represents the world correctly by doing two things wrong in the right way. These are the times I catch my breath and remember that the telos or more truly the idea of the climate model is founded on the very Word and Wisdom of God, in God doing what the Psalmist asks in 104, “Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the Earth.” These partially coordinated sets of clever approximations are not being itself. They are an ikon of the Living God at work in His Creation, even if we imagine that work is very standard and unexceptional.
Yet with all their flaws, the climate models have become an uncertain harmony on an increasingly certain melody, like the music of the Ainur as Arda first came into misty form. If some stranger were to come and notice that there were many different depictions of Christ in your churches but wondered why so many of them depicted him in association with two crossed bars, you would be sure to tell him of the wondrous Cross. Well, climate modelers feel much the same way. They see a variety of visions of the future and wonder which disaster will come. And unlike SimCity, Godzilla isn’t one of the options.
The disaster that confronts me and my officemate on that Sunday afternoon is disappearing sea ice. The shores of Antarctica and the North Pole of the world are covered with a thin layer of ice, built up over countless millennia as powerful storms, drew cold winds from the land over the warmer waters, transferring heat to the air and freezing the water to compensate. I am sure that anyone with the experience of a snowy winter remembers there often being an especial chill in the wake of the cold front after a snowstorm in comparison with that after a rainstorm. That impression is not just a matter of how cold the air behind the front is. In addition, the snow reflects additional sunlight from the surface, resulting in less radiation from the ground that can be absorbed by greenhouse gases. This cool blanket of snow, however, does happen to be a poor conductor of heat and thus insulates plants and animals below its cover. Sea ice plays a similar but far less inconstant role, especially reducing the potential of absorption of sunlight during the long polar summer.
Sitting in those colors and geographic outlines and a lone black curve of the climate model output was a frightening result: most sea ice would be gone by 2050. And worst of all, most of that loss would happen in the space of five years, 2025-2030. The Northwest Passage. The Northeast Passage. Both would be a reality by 2030. And during that long polar summer, almost all solar radiation at the North Pole would be absorbed by the ocean. If this occurred, I now recalled, the change locally would be radical. North of Scandinavia lies the Norwegian territory of Svalbard. Last winter , most sea ice was present unusually far north of Svalbard, inconveniencing hunters and outdoors enthusiasts used to spending time on the sea ice. January temperatures were twenty four degrees above normal Fahrenheit. For reference, observations at Svalbard have been taking place as long as many sites in the United States, i.e. since about 1900. Salt Lake City in 2003 had its all time warmest January, recording a mean temperature 9 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. By July, Svalbard had broken its all time record temperature by 1.5 degrees, reaching 19.6 degrees Celsius. See RealClimate for more details . Svalbard’s ice-free year might be a portent of Svalbard’s ice-free future. Would future Polish legislators be praying for rain (as they were this summer)? Nothing is certain in the geosciences, but the impact on the Arctic alone of sea ice loss in the span of a decade would be disastrous. The IPCC speaks very much about what will happen in 2100, and this kind of thinking had lulled even me into a false sense of security.
The next day my officemate and I talked about the implications of this fresh forecast of doom and its immediacy. 2025 is not long from now in the scheme of human affairs. I am not likely to have a child through college by then. Indeed, 2025 likely figured in my thoughts as the stage in my life when I finally might ease myself into respectability in the various endeavors of my life, find myself trying to keep a marriage warm, and begin to think whether I could have a legacy among “famous men, our ancestors in their generations.” Very few of us hold onto the world of their youth, but I at least kept hope that the atmospheric circulation of my youth might not beat me to my grave.
As we reviewed the potential consequences, bringing ourselves to one that might cause the extinction of the species, my officemate commented, “You seem unusually calm about our impending extinction.” I replied that I was calm, not because I was numb or because I did not intend to do something to stop it but because I had hope that there was something beyond the extinction of the species, that the Christian faith encourages both an affection for and a detachment from the sensible objects, thinking mainly of how the Articles describe the Sacraments, the most worthy of the sensible objects, “not ordained…to be gazed upon or carried about, but that we should duly use them”, i.e. use them according to their righteous purpose, the quickening of Grace.
So it occurred to me a few Sundays after that while reading Rev. Sam and listening to John Houghton that if the temporal things are passing away, I might say something about them and the future to which we are rushing as those “who neither know, nor understand but walk about in darkness.” For I think we are coming very close to a major biogeochemical crisis, if we are not already in the midst of one. And while I intend what I write here to be very much a theological view of science, there will be some passing relation of this work to one put out by the Discovery Institute about intelligent design, in which the challenges which life has faced in the past have been overcome through the algorithms of a beneficent God. Indeed, a global biogeochemical crisis is not without precedent and in the pages to follow, I will speak in some detail of the little we know about two or three of them.
And because I confess there to be one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, who became incarnate as Homo sapiens sapiens in Bethlehem Ephrata, I also will warn you that I will take no such optimistic view. I know not when the Kingdom shall come. But I do suspect that it might be of some theological significance that this coming global biogeochemical crisis can be traced to the door of the human race, creatures capable of living in the image of God and charged with the stewardship of this world; creatures are capable of living into the fullness of the natural law through their gift of reason but often heedless of that prescript of Christ to live God and their neighbor, heedless of that parallel dictate of the natural law to paraphrase the Summa : to get along (and love) those with whom we have to live. Creation is groaning in anything but patient expectation. It’s time to hear what the Book of Nature might have to say.
I walk into my office and say to my officemate: “you have to see this figure.” My officemate presumably just has returned from brunch after Mass and I’m fresh from a meeting after Eucharist. But soon we’re staring at several maps of the Northern Hemisphere in polar projection: output from NCAR’s CCM3 sea ice model.
Some people, including former professors of mine, tend to become quite romantic about “climate models,” about the perfection of the physics on which their based and on the splendor of their verification against past data of one sort or another. But every month or so, I notice some almost “fundamental” flaw in the climate model on which I work or hear how a climate model represents the world correctly by doing two things wrong in the right way. These are the times I catch my breath and remember that the telos or more truly the idea of the climate model is founded on the very Word and Wisdom of God, in God doing what the Psalmist asks in 104, “Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the Earth.” These partially coordinated sets of clever approximations are not being itself. They are an ikon of the Living God at work in His Creation, even if we imagine that work is very standard and unexceptional.
Yet with all their flaws, the climate models have become an uncertain harmony on an increasingly certain melody, like the music of the Ainur as Arda first came into misty form. If some stranger were to come and notice that there were many different depictions of Christ in your churches but wondered why so many of them depicted him in association with two crossed bars, you would be sure to tell him of the wondrous Cross. Well, climate modelers feel much the same way. They see a variety of visions of the future and wonder which disaster will come. And unlike SimCity, Godzilla isn’t one of the options.
The disaster that confronts me and my officemate on that Sunday afternoon is disappearing sea ice. The shores of Antarctica and the North Pole of the world are covered with a thin layer of ice, built up over countless millennia as powerful storms, drew cold winds from the land over the warmer waters, transferring heat to the air and freezing the water to compensate. I am sure that anyone with the experience of a snowy winter remembers there often being an especial chill in the wake of the cold front after a snowstorm in comparison with that after a rainstorm. That impression is not just a matter of how cold the air behind the front is. In addition, the snow reflects additional sunlight from the surface, resulting in less radiation from the ground that can be absorbed by greenhouse gases. This cool blanket of snow, however, does happen to be a poor conductor of heat and thus insulates plants and animals below its cover. Sea ice plays a similar but far less inconstant role, especially reducing the potential of absorption of sunlight during the long polar summer.
Sitting in those colors and geographic outlines and a lone black curve of the climate model output was a frightening result: most sea ice would be gone by 2050. And worst of all, most of that loss would happen in the space of five years, 2025-2030. The Northwest Passage. The Northeast Passage. Both would be a reality by 2030. And during that long polar summer, almost all solar radiation at the North Pole would be absorbed by the ocean. If this occurred, I now recalled, the change locally would be radical. North of Scandinavia lies the Norwegian territory of Svalbard. Last winter , most sea ice was present unusually far north of Svalbard, inconveniencing hunters and outdoors enthusiasts used to spending time on the sea ice. January temperatures were twenty four degrees above normal Fahrenheit. For reference, observations at Svalbard have been taking place as long as many sites in the United States, i.e. since about 1900. Salt Lake City in 2003 had its all time warmest January, recording a mean temperature 9 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. By July, Svalbard had broken its all time record temperature by 1.5 degrees, reaching 19.6 degrees Celsius. See RealClimate for more details . Svalbard’s ice-free year might be a portent of Svalbard’s ice-free future. Would future Polish legislators be praying for rain (as they were this summer)? Nothing is certain in the geosciences, but the impact on the Arctic alone of sea ice loss in the span of a decade would be disastrous. The IPCC speaks very much about what will happen in 2100, and this kind of thinking had lulled even me into a false sense of security.
The next day my officemate and I talked about the implications of this fresh forecast of doom and its immediacy. 2025 is not long from now in the scheme of human affairs. I am not likely to have a child through college by then. Indeed, 2025 likely figured in my thoughts as the stage in my life when I finally might ease myself into respectability in the various endeavors of my life, find myself trying to keep a marriage warm, and begin to think whether I could have a legacy among “famous men, our ancestors in their generations.” Very few of us hold onto the world of their youth, but I at least kept hope that the atmospheric circulation of my youth might not beat me to my grave.
As we reviewed the potential consequences, bringing ourselves to one that might cause the extinction of the species, my officemate commented, “You seem unusually calm about our impending extinction.” I replied that I was calm, not because I was numb or because I did not intend to do something to stop it but because I had hope that there was something beyond the extinction of the species, that the Christian faith encourages both an affection for and a detachment from the sensible objects, thinking mainly of how the Articles describe the Sacraments, the most worthy of the sensible objects, “not ordained…to be gazed upon or carried about, but that we should duly use them”, i.e. use them according to their righteous purpose, the quickening of Grace.
So it occurred to me a few Sundays after that while reading Rev. Sam and listening to John Houghton that if the temporal things are passing away, I might say something about them and the future to which we are rushing as those “who neither know, nor understand but walk about in darkness.” For I think we are coming very close to a major biogeochemical crisis, if we are not already in the midst of one. And while I intend what I write here to be very much a theological view of science, there will be some passing relation of this work to one put out by the Discovery Institute about intelligent design, in which the challenges which life has faced in the past have been overcome through the algorithms of a beneficent God. Indeed, a global biogeochemical crisis is not without precedent and in the pages to follow, I will speak in some detail of the little we know about two or three of them.
And because I confess there to be one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, who became incarnate as Homo sapiens sapiens in Bethlehem Ephrata, I also will warn you that I will take no such optimistic view. I know not when the Kingdom shall come. But I do suspect that it might be of some theological significance that this coming global biogeochemical crisis can be traced to the door of the human race, creatures capable of living in the image of God and charged with the stewardship of this world; creatures are capable of living into the fullness of the natural law through their gift of reason but often heedless of that prescript of Christ to live God and their neighbor, heedless of that parallel dictate of the natural law to paraphrase the Summa : to get along (and love) those with whom we have to live. Creation is groaning in anything but patient expectation. It’s time to hear what the Book of Nature might have to say.
Notes on the Coming Biogeochemical Crisis: Context
Notes on The Coming Global Biogeochemical Crisis
Context
For the last week, I have felt as if I do not have my priorities straight. Bls is right to say that there is no crazy like church crazy and nothing crazier than some piddling young layman in a liberal diocese in a liberal Province blogging about matters that hypothetically more expert people are doing to death. And when I started reading Rev. Sam the Elizaphanian’s series of parish fora and when I heard Sunday Worship last week, I realized that there are some matters on which I do have a unique perspective.
The preacher at Sunday Worship was Sir John Houghton, head of the UK Met Office, a notable Evangelical, and a lead author on the last set of reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Houghton has played a still to be assessed role in the American religiopolitical landscape by using his friendship with John Stott, sometimes called “the evangelical Pope” and an Anglican priest, in order to speak with Evangelical leaders in this country about global climate change. Have you heard about the National Association of Evangelicals and their new work to promote “creation care.” Well, there in the background is Sir John Houghton.
I am a very junior climate scientist. I work on other planetary bodies as well as the Earth. My area of expertise, if it could be called that, is restricted to some aspects of the circulation of the Pacific and vortices so undistinguished that the Australians call them “willy-willies.” But I hear things. I go to seminars. I become distracted from my research reading reports in Science and Nature or other papers and reports that often do not come to public notice. I also have been a professional historian, which has given me a deep interest in historiography and its relevance to the earth sciences and an unusual perspective on the collapse of classical civilization in the Mediterranean world and other collapses in other parts of the Earth.
And I also read roughly five readings from the Bible every day, am never sure whether I ever get through the Psalter, and I sin constantly. Basically, I am just like most of you. What follows may be utter rot. And if it is, I would very much appreciate you telling me that. I will warn you that I may be free with citation, but I will respect copyright, cite all quoted sources, and try to remember from whom I have paraphrased.
Context
For the last week, I have felt as if I do not have my priorities straight. Bls is right to say that there is no crazy like church crazy and nothing crazier than some piddling young layman in a liberal diocese in a liberal Province blogging about matters that hypothetically more expert people are doing to death. And when I started reading Rev. Sam the Elizaphanian’s series of parish fora and when I heard Sunday Worship last week, I realized that there are some matters on which I do have a unique perspective.
The preacher at Sunday Worship was Sir John Houghton, head of the UK Met Office, a notable Evangelical, and a lead author on the last set of reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Houghton has played a still to be assessed role in the American religiopolitical landscape by using his friendship with John Stott, sometimes called “the evangelical Pope” and an Anglican priest, in order to speak with Evangelical leaders in this country about global climate change. Have you heard about the National Association of Evangelicals and their new work to promote “creation care.” Well, there in the background is Sir John Houghton.
I am a very junior climate scientist. I work on other planetary bodies as well as the Earth. My area of expertise, if it could be called that, is restricted to some aspects of the circulation of the Pacific and vortices so undistinguished that the Australians call them “willy-willies.” But I hear things. I go to seminars. I become distracted from my research reading reports in Science and Nature or other papers and reports that often do not come to public notice. I also have been a professional historian, which has given me a deep interest in historiography and its relevance to the earth sciences and an unusual perspective on the collapse of classical civilization in the Mediterranean world and other collapses in other parts of the Earth.
And I also read roughly five readings from the Bible every day, am never sure whether I ever get through the Psalter, and I sin constantly. Basically, I am just like most of you. What follows may be utter rot. And if it is, I would very much appreciate you telling me that. I will warn you that I may be free with citation, but I will respect copyright, cite all quoted sources, and try to remember from whom I have paraphrased.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Circa Visionem Beatificam
I upgraded to Google, which likely will provide all sorts of new features and wasn't particularly annoying. I've taken this opportunity to change my handle to use a more suitable cognomen.
Today is the feast of Thomas Bray, which I was quite happy to celebrate. Today, I also saw a trailer for a movie coming out next weekend, which you might want to see provided you're not giving up the cinema during Lent, which I've contemplated. It's a movie about William Wilberforce and the abolition of the slave trade called Amazing Grace . Both of these men and the organizations they helped to found, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Church Missionary Society, were powerhouses for the Gospel, but the organizations are not without ironies in their history. For instance, Bray was disgusted with the condition of the slaves of Maryland and yet the SPC ran a slave plantation in the West Indies as cruel and deadly as any other in the brutal islands. Modern history blames each organization for a variety of colonials evils, but the last few years have seen the strongest blame as the events of Lambeth 1998 and beyond are described as "the revenge of the CMS" ( see Pr. Aelred's second comment ).
Beyond the clobber passages about slavery, beyond the clobber passages about gender, beyond the clobber passages about homosexual intercourse, still stand the Scriptures, the icon of the Eternal Word of the Almighty Father delivered to us men by the Holy Ghost. Are they a pharmakon ? Will we poor patients die of our disease if we inwardly digest too little? Will we be poisoned by being too invested in them and confute the creature with the Creator? Will we poison others? Wilberforce had to answer in the affirmative to both these questions. Will his successors do likewise?
Somewhere there is a throne where Christ offers His Body, His Blood, and his prayers for us, bathing us in and feeding us with the fullness of humanity in Him. And around that throne, I pray that Thomas Bray and William Wilberforce add their prayers to mine that the Church of England scattered throughout the Earth might remain an intact chunk of Christ's Body broken and redeemed by His Blood and that all might name those eunuchs who keeps His sabbaths and statutes with the name He calls them, a name more everlasting than that carried by sons and daughters. Amen.
Today is the feast of Thomas Bray, which I was quite happy to celebrate. Today, I also saw a trailer for a movie coming out next weekend, which you might want to see provided you're not giving up the cinema during Lent, which I've contemplated. It's a movie about William Wilberforce and the abolition of the slave trade called Amazing Grace . Both of these men and the organizations they helped to found, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Church Missionary Society, were powerhouses for the Gospel, but the organizations are not without ironies in their history. For instance, Bray was disgusted with the condition of the slaves of Maryland and yet the SPC ran a slave plantation in the West Indies as cruel and deadly as any other in the brutal islands. Modern history blames each organization for a variety of colonials evils, but the last few years have seen the strongest blame as the events of Lambeth 1998 and beyond are described as "the revenge of the CMS" ( see Pr. Aelred's second comment ).
Beyond the clobber passages about slavery, beyond the clobber passages about gender, beyond the clobber passages about homosexual intercourse, still stand the Scriptures, the icon of the Eternal Word of the Almighty Father delivered to us men by the Holy Ghost. Are they a pharmakon ? Will we poor patients die of our disease if we inwardly digest too little? Will we be poisoned by being too invested in them and confute the creature with the Creator? Will we poison others? Wilberforce had to answer in the affirmative to both these questions. Will his successors do likewise?
Somewhere there is a throne where Christ offers His Body, His Blood, and his prayers for us, bathing us in and feeding us with the fullness of humanity in Him. And around that throne, I pray that Thomas Bray and William Wilberforce add their prayers to mine that the Church of England scattered throughout the Earth might remain an intact chunk of Christ's Body broken and redeemed by His Blood and that all might name those eunuchs who keeps His sabbaths and statutes with the name He calls them, a name more everlasting than that carried by sons and daughters. Amen.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Because I Can't Focus At the Moment
Bls wanted to hear about the Gregorian chant revival at my alma mater. Well, I can't say that I know the salient details, but it became clear that my class (and the following classes) were especially suffused with young Roman Catholics of a more traditionalist bent than my Roman Catholic relations (with the exception of my grandfather, who was not a big fan of liturgical reform but still managed to enjoy an Episcopal wedding by a woman priest in his own backyard).
The especial casus belli of these RCs were:
Abortion (anti)
Oregon Catholic Press (anti)
Gregorian Institute of America (anti) [I tried to tell them that Richard Proulx wasn't their enemy at least...]
Lifeteen masses (anti)
There were many results of their participation in the local Catholic campus ministry, but the most interesting of them was the Gregorian chant choir, described here in great and educated detail. Apparently, they greatly enlivened worship.
The story you don't hear here is that the Episcopal campus ministry was blessed with the doyenne of Gregorian chant on campus, who we shall call Julian, since that is what she tends to call herself online (you might enjoy her bachelor's thesis . On one hand, Julian had dealings with the Roman Catholics, but she also learned from the professionals at the principal Anglo-Catholic parish of the city. Julian kindly provided her offerings to the campus ministry, but we frankly didn't appreciate her as much as we should have. That said, this was very cool (but the images really are necessary)
The especial casus belli of these RCs were:
Abortion (anti)
Oregon Catholic Press (anti)
Gregorian Institute of America (anti) [I tried to tell them that Richard Proulx wasn't their enemy at least...]
Lifeteen masses (anti)
There were many results of their participation in the local Catholic campus ministry, but the most interesting of them was the Gregorian chant choir, described here in great and educated detail. Apparently, they greatly enlivened worship.
The story you don't hear here is that the Episcopal campus ministry was blessed with the doyenne of Gregorian chant on campus, who we shall call Julian, since that is what she tends to call herself online (you might enjoy her bachelor's thesis . On one hand, Julian had dealings with the Roman Catholics, but she also learned from the professionals at the principal Anglo-Catholic parish of the city. Julian kindly provided her offerings to the campus ministry, but we frankly didn't appreciate her as much as we should have. That said, this was very cool (but the images really are necessary)
This Is Only A Test...
The Episcopal Emergency Broadcasting Network (EEBN) is either a useful resource or a mildly humorous schtick. Either way, stay tuned. (FYI: The blogger is Fr. Harding's son, not Fr. Harding. You probably knew that, but it comes up a lot among those who have discovered the junior ACN crowd.)
It Would Have Been A Good Idea at the Time
Bls and I have been discussing the perils of liturgical local option. It occurs to me that I am torn between two very different views of ecclesiology, one very Rahnerist, emphasizing the importance of local ecclesial cultures contributing to a diverse but universal whole. This view is quite popular today and probably will be expressed most deeply at Taize in the future. On the other hand, I worry about how absorption in our local ecclesial cultures conditions us to be very inflexible if our own personal circumstances change. The compromise is to promote a national ecclesial culture, since personal mobility is typically limited most to the national level and is very Anglican. However, national ecclesial culture tends to become authoritarian per English tradition and even from experience in the United States. Perhaps, the alternative would be to found ecclesial culture on the urban level (Diocesan) as it was in the Church before Nicaea. The churches pretty much did what they wanted liturgically but sought some unity theologically. The purpose of Councils was to ensure that the Bishops (who were in charge of the liturgy ultimately) had sufficient theological unity. So perhaps the Roman idea of universal liturgy as a mark of catholic unity is an abuse of the pre-Nicene tradition? Well, there's one problem with this idea. Indeed, it's an epistemological problem I constantly encounter. Let there be some particular practice Y, which appears to follow from some principle X. Well, if you see Y, isn't an X a principle? The problem is that the inversion is non-unique. The practice could follow from some other principle, be due to technological or epistemological limits, or be completely unconscious. Inferring principle from praxis is an ill-posed problem, and the only way to constrain it is to understand exceptions carefully and look for someone justifying Y by X. Well, you're in a lurch if the practice is unconscious. For instance, bls claims that common prayer was called so because it belonged to the people. Well, Edward VI's regents did make some effort to put the BCP in the hands of the people, but did they do so because they believed the liturgy derived from their preferences, needs, or authority or because they were propagandizing the Reformed religion? Well, I would guess the latter, but I really can't say.
The central question I'm posing here is whether our present epistemological frameworks can be considered superior to those in the past that we can assume that our X would be the explanation chosen to justify Y if it had been an option for our ancestors. Or indeed are our epistemological frameworks so superior that we believe our X's are objectively superior justifications for Y? The latter sounds ridiculous, but a tremendous amount of scholarship is founded on the latter principle. Indeed, the natural sciences make the latter a key foundation of their methods. I keep running and running around this question, because the insistence that epistemology is progressive seems to be the key principle of modernism. Oh, and post-modernism is completely useless here, since it insists that the problem is always ill-posed.
It Would Have Been A Good Idea at the Time
Bls and I have been discussing the perils of liturgical local option. It occurs to me that I am torn between two very different views of ecclesiology, one very Rahnerist, emphasizing the importance of local ecclesial cultures contributing to a diverse but universal whole. This view is quite popular today and probably will be expressed most deeply at Taize in the future. On the other hand, I worry about how absorption in our local ecclesial cultures conditions us to be very inflexible if our own personal circumstances change. The compromise is to promote a national ecclesial culture, since personal mobility is typically limited most to the national level and is very Anglican. However, national ecclesial culture tends to become authoritarian per English tradition and even from experience in the United States. Perhaps, the alternative would be to found ecclesial culture on the urban level (Diocesan) as it was in the Church before Nicaea. The churches pretty much did what they wanted liturgically but sought some unity theologically. The purpose of Councils was to ensure that the Bishops (who were in charge of the liturgy ultimately) had sufficient theological unity. So perhaps the Roman idea of universal liturgy as a mark of catholic unity is an abuse of the pre-Nicene tradition? Well, there's one problem with this idea. Indeed, it's an epistemological problem I constantly encounter. Let there be some particular practice Y, which appears to follow from some principle X. Well, if you see Y, isn't an X a principle? The problem is that the inversion is non-unique. The practice could follow from some other principle, be due to technological or epistemological limits, or be completely unconscious. Inferring principle from praxis is an ill-posed problem, and the only way to constrain it is to understand exceptions carefully and look for someone justifying Y by X. Well, you're in a lurch if the practice is unconscious. For instance, bls claims that common prayer was called so because it belonged to the people. Well, Edward VI's regents did make some effort to put the BCP in the hands of the people, but did they do so because they believed the liturgy derived from their preferences, needs, or authority or because they were propagandizing the Reformed religion? Well, I would guess the latter, but I really can't say.
The central question I'm posing here is whether our present epistemological frameworks can be considered superior to those in the past that we can assume that our X would be the explanation chosen to justify Y if it had been an option for our ancestors. Or indeed are our epistemological frameworks so superior that we believe our X's are objectively superior justifications for Y? The latter sounds ridiculous, but a tremendous amount of scholarship is founded on the latter principle. Indeed, the natural sciences make the latter a key foundation of their methods. I keep running and running around this question, because the insistence that epistemology is progressive seems to be the key principle of modernism. Oh, and post-modernism is completely useless here, since it insists that the problem is always ill-posed.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
That Was The Retreat That Was
Bls asked me how this retreat was. Well, it was wonderful. We stayed in a lovely retreat center just south of Nicomedia, which appears to be affiliated with some sort of liberal Roman Catholic splinter group. The food was simple but well-prepared from local organic produce. Fortunately for the other retreating groups, our boisterous group (average age=~27) had an individual house all to ourselves well away from the main part of the retreat center.
My intention this retreat was to stay quiet and listen carefully to the stories of those there, who are a representative sample of the young blood the Episcopal Church can draw upon, and also listen carefully to their responses to certain issues of Anglican identity. Well, that was an exercise in futility. Innate personality traits, early environment, and my education generally have conditioned me to talk even when I'm trying to listen. Oh, well.
For future reference:
I'm not sure that I grew up in the Episcopal mainstream. I grew up in parishes where no one was too High or too Low that co-existence in churchmanship ever was problematic. I grew up in parishes where faithful gays and lesbians (in both senses) were far less of an issue than unfaithful straight ones. I do not have too much experience with conservatives, because while I did listen carefully when I had an opportunity to hear conservatives talk, those times were few and far between and the conservatives in question generally were restraining themselves for the sake of peace. As a result, I still do not understand why FiFNA objects to the ordination of women.
I always use the term Anglo-Papist affectionately.
There is such a thing as happy-clappy, Anglo-Catholic worship. It happens in South Africa.
I was principally catechized by three individuals:
(1) A Tennessean who represented some sort of intermediate between Keble and Affirming Catholicism. He taught me the importance of prayer and regular corporate worship and the wonders of Holy Scripture. He also taught me that Holy Scripture should be read with an eye to its historical context.
(2) An Affirming Catholic scholar, who taught me that ancient theology and practice could be relevant to modern problems.
(3) An ethnic Syriac, who taught me that the mystical tradition of the Faith and its social implications never could be divorced.
In other words, I was born and bred a Radical Traditionalist. I honestly don't think that I represent the Episcopal mainstream.
I have read many things. I have not read everything. If I have a choice to read primary sources or secondary sources, I read primary sources. If I have a choice between relatively old and new works, I read relatively old ones. I am not quarter as clever as you think. I am not half as clever as I think.
[end useless information]
Now that we have those matters out of the way, I will talk a little about the actual retreat. The goal of these particular retreats is to focus more on the inward than the outward life, which is the usual focus of the small group during the first half of the year. The theme was Anglicanism, considering such topics as the history of Anglicanism with particular view to social justice issues, Anglican decisionmaking, and the Book of Common Prayer. Perhaps the highlight of the program was an instructed Eucharist, which took nearly three hours but provided me with some new perspectives on liturgical practice in a variety of settings. At some point, I'll have to talk in more detail about evangelism and what I heard this weekend.
We had a bit of a break on Saturday afternoon, so I ended up lying on the beach reading Anglicanism: The Answer to Modernity , a fine little volume of essays by Cambridge chaplains, which has much to say to us all about the future of the church and the weaknesses of its present polity.
On Sunday, we went for Eucharist to a monastery high above Nicomedia. If I ever need a brief vacation, I know where I'm going. The liturgy was a blend of traditional and contemporary features, including curtseying and incense. The sermon was lovely. More interesting was the brief talk we heard from the preacher after the service. In it, he described the revival of Anglican monasticism, including the recent reform of this particular order, which had started out very much in imitation of the post-Tridentine Roman Catholic orders, depending on hierarchy to maintain the harmony of a common life. However, this resulted in great dysfunction, since whenever two Brothers were having personal conflicts, the authorities just moved one of the Brothers to another monastery until after a cycle of a few more houses, the troublesome Brother would return again. The solution to this problem was for the order to adopt the Rule of St. Benedict, a surprising choice for a group mostly made up of parish priests who had forsaken the world. As you can imagine, it turned out to be a good choice. They now see themselves very much more like a family and make decisions more democratically. Viewing themselves as a family forced them to confront their interpersonal problems and made them seek counseling. Apparently, the monks were seeing a family counselor once a week but are now down to a few times a year. They also made a connection with more experienced Roman Catholic Benedictines to the north, who now visit them every once in a while (just in case they want to see interesting exhibits in Laodicea). All in all, their reform seeks like a model for the kind of reform the Communion needs, even if the scaling may be a little trickier.
The Brother who was talking to us also mentioned that groups from evangelical colleges were visiting the monastery, implying that monastics are facilitating in interest in liturgy and devotional practice from the Emergents and the Emerging.
The bookstore at the monastery is excellent. Their selection ranges from books on the theology of human sexuality to astrophotography to a very fine collection of Patristic and later monastic writings. I was tempted to buy a copy of the Conferences , but I settled on a volume of Bede's sermons, thinking of Derek's endorsement.
One thought I had at the monastery did not come to fruition until I came home and read one of Derek's recent posts on the Stoic underpinning of Benedictine thought. The Brother who talked with us discussed his parents' marriage as one that did not start with a burning romance but because they both needed someone to marry. He described how the business of living together over the years had produced between them a great deal of mutual respect. Hearing his account, I thought nothing so much as Titus Lucretius Carus's De Rerum Natura in which he describes the highest form of the love as that produced by consuetudo , i.e., the business of living together and the habit of relating, the gradual conversion of one to another. Although Lucretius was quite the antithesis of the Stoics, his approach to agape seems good even if his approach to eros is utterly irresponsible.
The Bishop of Durham Speaks (Again!)
By his own lights, the Bishop of Durham should take a backseat to the councils of the Communion for a little while, since it's clear he's straining the bonds of affection by not engaging properly in the listening process. Or else he and the Presiding Bishop need new media consultants, because one can't read his latest interview by Ruth Gledhill without cringing at his lack of sensitivity and poor information about the Episcopal Church. Let us be clear. Tom Wright is a fine scholar. I agree with much of his work as an apologist and appreciate how much admiration he gains for Anglicanism from those outside it, especially in the vein of "well, those Anglicans aren't so bad after all." My disagreements with him will come in his application of his scholarship where he thinks he should promote his fairly accurate view of what Paul thought without considering whether he might be better off considering how Paul thought. I woudn't want to be gay in Durham. I can imagine he's pretty much a brick wall.
But as I had to say at the time of last General Convention,
The Primates' Meeting isn't a settled tribunal either. However, I am not so burned by Wright's ignorance of the cast of characters or his rather bizarre view of what party in North America is schismatical. No, I am far more critical of his accusation that we are doctrinally indifferent and novelly so. Now, I know that Bishop Wright claims succession from Bishop Butler, a man who of all the bishops of the Church of England was not doctrinally indifferent, but his colleagues generally were. Doctrinal indifference is anything but novel in Anglicanism. More importantly, while I see pockets of it in ECUSA, it cannot be said to be as general as he imagines it. Fr. Clavier had a most revealing comment on this issue when he discussed how ECUSA appears to the rest of the Communion. Every time the Presiding Bishop goes anywhere, he or she is a spokesman for General Convention, a forum in which the Church expresses herself in terms of laws and ends and not in terms of theology, so that the Presiding Bishop must justify ECUSA in terms of the political agenda of the winners of the particular vote. Such a representation only caricatures us. And so Wright commits the chief crime of the lazy academic. He represents his opponent's view in the most inaccurate way possible to justify his own. But let us not forget that much of his rhetoric is very present in our own church. One almost can hear Father Harding and LEAC appealing to a blissfully ignorant center ready to be saved from the infernal plans of the "church rats." Let us pray to God to free from our slanderers.
One key essay in Anglicanism: The Answer to Modernity concerns the Primates' Meeting in Portugal in 2003 before VGR's election. The issue there was the consecration of missionary bishops for North America in the Province of Southeast Asia. The author of the essay argued that the deal brokered in Portugal was that the esse of church polity lay in the ability of the decisionmaker to be present for the ecclesial community. Thus, the Primates were to make decisions in their particular churches adapted to the situation but careful of the needs of the rest of the Communion with whom the Primates also were present.
The question we have to ask is who breached this agreement more: +Griswold, when he acceded to the local development of VGR's election and consecration, knowing how unacceptable this was to the rest of the Communion or +Akinola and company when they chose from their hierarchical post to cause contention and confusion in the North American churches? All have sinned...
My intention this retreat was to stay quiet and listen carefully to the stories of those there, who are a representative sample of the young blood the Episcopal Church can draw upon, and also listen carefully to their responses to certain issues of Anglican identity. Well, that was an exercise in futility. Innate personality traits, early environment, and my education generally have conditioned me to talk even when I'm trying to listen. Oh, well.
For future reference:
I'm not sure that I grew up in the Episcopal mainstream. I grew up in parishes where no one was too High or too Low that co-existence in churchmanship ever was problematic. I grew up in parishes where faithful gays and lesbians (in both senses) were far less of an issue than unfaithful straight ones. I do not have too much experience with conservatives, because while I did listen carefully when I had an opportunity to hear conservatives talk, those times were few and far between and the conservatives in question generally were restraining themselves for the sake of peace. As a result, I still do not understand why FiFNA objects to the ordination of women.
I always use the term Anglo-Papist affectionately.
There is such a thing as happy-clappy, Anglo-Catholic worship. It happens in South Africa.
I was principally catechized by three individuals:
(1) A Tennessean who represented some sort of intermediate between Keble and Affirming Catholicism. He taught me the importance of prayer and regular corporate worship and the wonders of Holy Scripture. He also taught me that Holy Scripture should be read with an eye to its historical context.
(2) An Affirming Catholic scholar, who taught me that ancient theology and practice could be relevant to modern problems.
(3) An ethnic Syriac, who taught me that the mystical tradition of the Faith and its social implications never could be divorced.
In other words, I was born and bred a Radical Traditionalist. I honestly don't think that I represent the Episcopal mainstream.
I have read many things. I have not read everything. If I have a choice to read primary sources or secondary sources, I read primary sources. If I have a choice between relatively old and new works, I read relatively old ones. I am not quarter as clever as you think. I am not half as clever as I think.
[end useless information]
Now that we have those matters out of the way, I will talk a little about the actual retreat. The goal of these particular retreats is to focus more on the inward than the outward life, which is the usual focus of the small group during the first half of the year. The theme was Anglicanism, considering such topics as the history of Anglicanism with particular view to social justice issues, Anglican decisionmaking, and the Book of Common Prayer. Perhaps the highlight of the program was an instructed Eucharist, which took nearly three hours but provided me with some new perspectives on liturgical practice in a variety of settings. At some point, I'll have to talk in more detail about evangelism and what I heard this weekend.
We had a bit of a break on Saturday afternoon, so I ended up lying on the beach reading Anglicanism: The Answer to Modernity , a fine little volume of essays by Cambridge chaplains, which has much to say to us all about the future of the church and the weaknesses of its present polity.
On Sunday, we went for Eucharist to a monastery high above Nicomedia. If I ever need a brief vacation, I know where I'm going. The liturgy was a blend of traditional and contemporary features, including curtseying and incense. The sermon was lovely. More interesting was the brief talk we heard from the preacher after the service. In it, he described the revival of Anglican monasticism, including the recent reform of this particular order, which had started out very much in imitation of the post-Tridentine Roman Catholic orders, depending on hierarchy to maintain the harmony of a common life. However, this resulted in great dysfunction, since whenever two Brothers were having personal conflicts, the authorities just moved one of the Brothers to another monastery until after a cycle of a few more houses, the troublesome Brother would return again. The solution to this problem was for the order to adopt the Rule of St. Benedict, a surprising choice for a group mostly made up of parish priests who had forsaken the world. As you can imagine, it turned out to be a good choice. They now see themselves very much more like a family and make decisions more democratically. Viewing themselves as a family forced them to confront their interpersonal problems and made them seek counseling. Apparently, the monks were seeing a family counselor once a week but are now down to a few times a year. They also made a connection with more experienced Roman Catholic Benedictines to the north, who now visit them every once in a while (just in case they want to see interesting exhibits in Laodicea). All in all, their reform seeks like a model for the kind of reform the Communion needs, even if the scaling may be a little trickier.
The Brother who was talking to us also mentioned that groups from evangelical colleges were visiting the monastery, implying that monastics are facilitating in interest in liturgy and devotional practice from the Emergents and the Emerging.
The bookstore at the monastery is excellent. Their selection ranges from books on the theology of human sexuality to astrophotography to a very fine collection of Patristic and later monastic writings. I was tempted to buy a copy of the Conferences , but I settled on a volume of Bede's sermons, thinking of Derek's endorsement.
One thought I had at the monastery did not come to fruition until I came home and read one of Derek's recent posts on the Stoic underpinning of Benedictine thought. The Brother who talked with us discussed his parents' marriage as one that did not start with a burning romance but because they both needed someone to marry. He described how the business of living together over the years had produced between them a great deal of mutual respect. Hearing his account, I thought nothing so much as Titus Lucretius Carus's De Rerum Natura in which he describes the highest form of the love as that produced by consuetudo , i.e., the business of living together and the habit of relating, the gradual conversion of one to another. Although Lucretius was quite the antithesis of the Stoics, his approach to agape seems good even if his approach to eros is utterly irresponsible.
The Bishop of Durham Speaks (Again!)
By his own lights, the Bishop of Durham should take a backseat to the councils of the Communion for a little while, since it's clear he's straining the bonds of affection by not engaging properly in the listening process. Or else he and the Presiding Bishop need new media consultants, because one can't read his latest interview by Ruth Gledhill without cringing at his lack of sensitivity and poor information about the Episcopal Church. Let us be clear. Tom Wright is a fine scholar. I agree with much of his work as an apologist and appreciate how much admiration he gains for Anglicanism from those outside it, especially in the vein of "well, those Anglicans aren't so bad after all." My disagreements with him will come in his application of his scholarship where he thinks he should promote his fairly accurate view of what Paul thought without considering whether he might be better off considering how Paul thought. I woudn't want to be gay in Durham. I can imagine he's pretty much a brick wall.
But as I had to say at the time of last General Convention,
Well, Bishop Wright, I'll give it to you straight. I would prefer there be strong compliance with Windsor or no compliance. But at this point, we reassessors have no assurances that border-crossing will be punished, nor that the parts of Lambeth I.10 we like will be enforced. Thus, if you're going to quote committee documents or Lambeth resolutions (you only do so implicitly) as law to us, you must simultaneously give assurances that the whole of the law is enforceable in some settled tribunal. And the thing is, my Lord, it's not.
The Primates' Meeting isn't a settled tribunal either. However, I am not so burned by Wright's ignorance of the cast of characters or his rather bizarre view of what party in North America is schismatical. No, I am far more critical of his accusation that we are doctrinally indifferent and novelly so. Now, I know that Bishop Wright claims succession from Bishop Butler, a man who of all the bishops of the Church of England was not doctrinally indifferent, but his colleagues generally were. Doctrinal indifference is anything but novel in Anglicanism. More importantly, while I see pockets of it in ECUSA, it cannot be said to be as general as he imagines it. Fr. Clavier had a most revealing comment on this issue when he discussed how ECUSA appears to the rest of the Communion. Every time the Presiding Bishop goes anywhere, he or she is a spokesman for General Convention, a forum in which the Church expresses herself in terms of laws and ends and not in terms of theology, so that the Presiding Bishop must justify ECUSA in terms of the political agenda of the winners of the particular vote. Such a representation only caricatures us. And so Wright commits the chief crime of the lazy academic. He represents his opponent's view in the most inaccurate way possible to justify his own. But let us not forget that much of his rhetoric is very present in our own church. One almost can hear Father Harding and LEAC appealing to a blissfully ignorant center ready to be saved from the infernal plans of the "church rats." Let us pray to God to free from our slanderers.
One key essay in Anglicanism: The Answer to Modernity concerns the Primates' Meeting in Portugal in 2003 before VGR's election. The issue there was the consecration of missionary bishops for North America in the Province of Southeast Asia. The author of the essay argued that the deal brokered in Portugal was that the esse of church polity lay in the ability of the decisionmaker to be present for the ecclesial community. Thus, the Primates were to make decisions in their particular churches adapted to the situation but careful of the needs of the rest of the Communion with whom the Primates also were present.
The question we have to ask is who breached this agreement more: +Griswold, when he acceded to the local development of VGR's election and consecration, knowing how unacceptable this was to the rest of the Communion or +Akinola and company when they chose from their hierarchical post to cause contention and confusion in the North American churches? All have sinned...
O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior,
the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the
great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away
all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us
from godly union and concord; that, as there is but one Body
and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith,
one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may be all
of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth
and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and
one mouth glorify thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Poetry
Bls is having a Poetry Carnival of some sort, so I'll bite. I'm afraid my taste runs very much to epic poetry. My tastes in the lyric generally lie in the direction of romantic and mournful Old Irish stuff.
Unfortunately, my Irish is horrible, so there's no way I can translate any of it to post, but I managed to find my favorite one . I love Thomas Kinsella's translation, but this one isn't bad if rather clinical.
It also has my favorite description of late adolescence:
Unfortunately, my Irish is horrible, so there's no way I can translate any of it to post, but I managed to find my favorite one . I love Thomas Kinsella's translation, but this one isn't bad if rather clinical.
It also has my favorite description of late adolescence:
When I was a child I was modest:.
I used not to be engaged on the evil business of lust;
since I reached the uncertainty of age
my wantonness has begun to beguile me.
Cranmer's Kids
A post by bls on the Feast of the Purification started me thinking about The Churching of Women, something which would make most modern Episcopal women I know boil. The thought I had was that Cranmer's choice to include the rite in the Prayer Book as quite interesting, because it's a genuine case of a non-celibate male theologizing about reproduction and female sexuality in the catholic tradition, something which many feminists think doesn't happen. But this is a rather moot point if Cranmer was childless. His wife never had to go through the "humiliating ritual" as some call it. But I had no idea whether Cranmer ever had children. Having no full biography of Cranmer to hand, I went googling to find this item from the Journal of the Commons . A similar item is in the Journal of the Lords, which signifies that Parliament restored the inheritance rights of Cranmer's children, lost when their father was convicted of high treason and heresy. The item also suggests that Cranmer and his wife were rather lucky, having christened two surviving children with their parents' names.
On Retreat
Well, not quite yet, but I'm excited. I'm packing my duffle bag and heading to the local holy mountain, which is in the vicinity of Nicomedia ;). I'm looking forward to seeing my first large Episcopal monastic foundation. That is all.
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