Who Said?

"It turns out the oil rigs today generally don't cause oil spills. They are technologically very advanced." Answer.

Science, Faith and Reduction

A number of articles seemed to echo one another recently. I'll blog them in reverse order to my reading them, so first or last is Breaking Things Down to Particles Blinds Scientists to Big Picture

Karl Popper, the great philosopher of science, once divided the world into two categories: clocks and clouds. Clocks are neat, orderly systems that can be solved through reduction; clouds are an epistemic mess, “highly irregular, disorderly, and more or less unpredictable.” The mistake of modern science is to pretend that everything is a clock, which is why we get seduced again and again by the false promises of brain scanners and gene sequencers. We want to believe we will understand nature if we find the exact right tool to cut its joints. But that approach is doomed to failure. We live in a universe not of clocks but of clouds.

This resonated with me as I had just read John Stackhouse saying much the same thing about faith. From “All Religions Are the Same…” (except Where They’re Not)

What needs to be argued and not just asserted is that each of the major religions really does reduce down to moralism or mysticism without a loss to its essential character. And, in my view, most religions do not so reduce. Devotional (bhakti) Hinduism (the most popular form of Hinduism) doesn’t; Mahayana Buddhism (the most popular form of Buddhism) doesn’t; Judaism doesn’t; and Christianity and Islam, the most popular religions in the world, certainly don’t. (I recognize that there are moralistic and mystical varieties of each of the Abrahamic religions, but the majority of believers and of those religions’ formal traditions do not, I maintain, reduce their religions to mere moralism or mysticism.)

To get the full character of what he's saying you need to read the full post, it doesn't reduce to a quote particularly well.

Reduction of faith is often called Pluralism, though how you have many when everything is the same is lost on me. Brian J. Walsh touched on the idea of Principled Pluralism in Inclusive, Particular and Being Down and Out in Austin.

We need to acknowledge and affirm the plurality of worldviews in our society and find meaningful and respectful ways for various faith communities to make their contribution to the common good. Now I also happen to think, on anthropological grounds, that we are all members of faith communities, but that requires an expanded notion of faith that breaks through the religion/secular dualism that has been championed by Enlightenment modernity. I think that all people live their lives out of some foundational worldview or narrative that is, at heart, religious in character, even if that religion is self-consciously “secularist” or atheist.

...

So maybe what we need to talk about is just what do we mean by inclusiveness. If what we mean by inclusiveness is that we need to find ways to bridge the gap between various groups, whether Christian of various stripes, Muslim, Aboriginal, feminist, gay/lesbian, liberal or even neo-conservatives (a stretch likely for both of us!) to fight against poverty and to seek the common good, then of course, count me in.

But count me in as a Christian.

Let the various groups make their contribution – often on their own, but sometimes in coalition where that will be most effective – but let them make their contribution with their worldview clearly in the forefront, not hidden behind some veil of religious neutrality. That imposition of religious neutrality is, in fact, one of the oppressive legacies of the liberalism that I am opposing.

- Peace

Who Said?

Speak up for the people who have no voice,
for the rights of all the down-and-outers.
Speak out for justice!
Stand up for the poor and destitute!

Beth has the answer. Honestly I don't know if I would have gotten it right.

- Peace

Strange Quotes

I think there's these notions out there that people think of infidelity as quote-unquote ‘wrong,' as quote-unquote ‘immoral,' “ he said. “In this day and age, and in this era, creating those morality judgments is not equivalent to a tolerant society.

CEO Noel Biderman, who's company helps people have "afairs", in the Globe and Mail today. The Toronto Transit Commission turned down advertising from his company t with the slogan "Life is short. Have an affair."

I wonder what Tiger Woods would say to that?

Many of the skills needed to use computers aren't highly useful in slaying mammoths.

Jakob Nielsen, usability guru from his article: Short-Term Memory and Web Usability. His point is we should keep web sites simple because

After all, your paying customers are only one step out of the cave.

OK I'm all for keeping things simple but I'm not a fan of theory that it's because our brains can't keep up. My grandfather could do math in his head way faster than any of the grand kids because he had to do the fly calculations while working the lumber docs in his youth. Ancient cultures memorized huge sections of text as scrolls where rare and could keep complex stories and characters strait. I think it's modern hubris that thinks our issues with needing simplicity are because we haven't evolved enough.

- Peace

The Quotable Chris L. Rice

Chris over at has a great post sins to keep us out of heaven, and just had to quote a couple of bits:

Jesus said, not that it is hard to be gay and enter the Kingdom, but rich.

and

If you haven’t struggled with hate in the church I submit that you haven’t been close enough to anyone else in the church for enough time to really be a member. Church demands the kind of proximity and rigorous honesty that causes friction and yes, untoward anger. That we can be the Church and not kill each other is wonderful testimony of the grace of God and the active presence of the Holy Spirit.

- Peace

The Heart of Ministry

We need connections with people that are forged with a deep level of trust and commitment. Relationships that can endure flaws and mistakes and even hurt feelings. Relationships with people that can extend grace and unconditional love when we reveal the dark corners of our soul.

One of the reasons why so many people find their way out of conventional churches is that they are lonely and disconnected in a sea of activity.

...

The heart of ministry is to be Jesus to one another. Too often we overload ourselves with activities that have value but have so captured our attention that they insulate us from each other. We avoid the heart of ministry because it is too hard. We can’t flee from commitment to each other, we must give grace when we are harmed, and we must love when it is inconvenient. Becoming like Jesus is a sacrifice that most of us are unwilling to make and that is why we lack so much.

From the The Heart of Ministry by LT.

- Peace

Cherryvile BC is closer than Hudson Bay SK

From Calgary Hudson Bay SK is about 966 KM of driving, where Cherryvile is brief 625 km drive. A couple of people were surprised that I made the drive to Cherryvile for Melissa and Phil's reception. I pointed out that is was closer than Hudson's Bay where I would have been for Steve & Julie's ordination if I hadn't been in Cherryvile.

Steve emailed:

The ordination was an excellent evening, and we felt very affirmed and supported. A brief write-up (and the text of the sermon) is on the diocesan website if you want to get a feel for it.

I quite liked the sermon as it has a sense of humor deals honestly with the demands of clergy life:

Saint Matthias was chosen to replace Judas, and into almost any Parish or ministry Julie and Steve enter, they will be replacing someone. Thank God then that no matter how little you or those with whom you serve think of your predecessor, it was not and will not be Judas.
...
The spirit of our age adores busyness and we get drawn into this all the time. So often we clergy seem to preach salvation by works in the way that we manage our time and our lives. If you listened to me most of the time you would think that Jesus’ yoke was made of lead.

Dean Michael Hawkins of the Anglican Diocese of Saskatchewan

- Peace

Solitude Together

Solitude Together a great term coined by Lisa

After walking for 3 hours with someone I have met twice before, I can feel more kinship than with many people that I have worked beside or gone to church with for years.
...
However we do it, I think it's essential to build more solitude together into our lives.

- Peace

Recovery Group vs Self Help

Chris Rice has a great post on the difference between self help and recovery groups.

I tried to fix myself using a lot of books. I can remember as a teenager finding a twelve step Bible and even trying to do the fourth step (the “searching and fearless moral inventory”) at that time on my own. I thought that steps one, two, and three were obvious. I had a problem. I believed in Jesus Christ. I believed he could fix it. What’s next? (Wasn’t that easy?) Well, it didn’t work, for the simple reason that I was alone.

Twelve step recovery is hard work. It does not involve only stopping those destructive habits that we did not like. We had stopped hundreds of times. We couldn’t stay stopped. Recovery is a new spiritual way of life that involves a new connection to God through the group–those people who identify on the basis of their addiction.

Working the steps means working with a sponsor and taking in as many meetings as possible. This is very different than a self-help program. This kind of radical commitment, turning our will and lives over to the care of God—through the group—involves an ego deflation not in keeping with the idea of self-help.

- Peace

In Distrust of Movements

People in movements too readily learn to deny to others the rights and privileges they demand for themselves. They too easily become unable to mean their own language, as when a "peace movement" becomes violent. They often become too specialized, as if finally they cannot help taking refuge in the pinhole vision of the institutional intellectuals. They almost always fail to be radical enough, dealing finally in effects rather than causes. Or they deal with single issues or single solutions, as if to assure themselves that they will not be radical enough.

Wendel Berry

Melissa said very much the same thing last night. Thing is she's never read Wendel Berry. Was sure that I had blogged the article, but I guess not. Fixed.

- Peace

The Jesus Way

The plain intent of the Prophet's gospel as he forms it in the conjunction of "your God" and "my servant," and then preaches it with such exuberance by the Messenger on the mountains as beautiful, is that there can be no violence or propaganda on the way of the Lord. Life on the way is never violent. Sin is not rejected it is borne, carried in an act of intercession. We enter the world of Isaiah 53 and take our stand with Jesus alongside the sinner, the other, the outsider. We in some impossible-to-define way become surety for others. But no coercion of ant kind in practicing the commands or following in the steps of the Master. No invective, no denunciation, no threats. Every raised voice, every curl of a sneering lip, every impatient dismissal is banished from the way.

Eugene H. Peterson, The Jesus Way