Even Darwin says go to church

Tyler VanderWeele's group at Harvard just published http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2521827  a comprehensive study indicating longevity is correlated with spirituality.

I know Vanderweele because he is an outspoken Christian, but he is also one of the leading epidemiologist in the world.

It's an interesting study and adds credence to the idea that religion gives a Darwinian survival advantage; more importantly than this data, it is well documented that Theists have more children than Atheists.

Loss of another great philosopher - Hilary Putnam

Not too long since one of the great contemporary Theist philosophers, Dallas Willard, passed on, I was saddened to read about the death of another: Hilary Putnam died in Boston at the age of 89. Putnam was most famous for his thought experiments like "Twin Earth" and  "brain in a vat",  but I suspect from what I could gather he was most respected among philosophers for his willingness to change his mind. Academia, strangely thought to be full of "free-thinkers", is no less guilty of being closed-minded as people in any other field.

Putnam's willingness to have an open and honest mind probably could not be divorced as a jack-of-all-trades philosopher; there was rarely an area of philosophy that he did not write or think about. 

From legal positivism where he initially studied, during a long career teaching at Harvard, Hilary Putnam eventually became convinced that Theism was not only a competing worldview, but was the correct one. In 1994, at the age of 68, Hilary Putnam had his own bar mitzvah.

Putnam found solace in another well known Jewish philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig, who, like Putnam, came to his Jewish faith late in his life. According to Benajamin Balint, Putnam understood Rosenzweig's thoughts on metaphysics as an "exaggerated form of a disease in which everyone is susceptible -- the disease is borne by those who substitute words that have no religious content because they have no internal relation to a genuine religion life."  This easily resonates. 

One other note: Putnam's obituary in the New York Times had an amazing story line in it I was unaware of. In an amazing coincidence, or not, perhaps the only more famous philosopher at Harvard, Noam Chomsky, knew Putnam for 75 years -- since they were classmates in high school in Philadelphia. 

Prince and happiness

"All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves."  Pascal, Pensees

With the passing of Prince, the world lost one of its most creative Christians.  One things about Prince that probably most will not know, is he was very conservative -- for instance, against gay marriage -- in his views. 

It is fascinating to me on what level thoughtful Christians -- brilliant Christian minds like Prince, and Robert George, Larry Wall and John Piper -- think opposing things like gay marriage fits in any way into the story of Christianity and the life of Jesus. 

In epistemology, a defeater is a belief that cannot be held with other beliefs. In Scripture, there are two clear defeaters of understanding our place in this world to be anything other than helping to alleviate suffering and promoting rights, justice and mercy, and both are from Paul (well the second may not be). 

In Galatians 2:20 Paul writes, "I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live. Not me, but Christ (inside me). And the life I live in the flesh I live by (meaning Jesus') the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me". 

In Hebrews, one of the most well known verses in the Bible, 8:6. " And without Faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek Him."  

The Galatians verse makes it clear we do nothing. But even more so, its the Hebrews verse. What are we doing when we seek God? Are we realizing we are fools or thieves or worse? Are we "repenting"? Are "we seeing the light"? Or are we doing what every man and woman since we outcompeted the Neanderthals and were provided a soul have done? 

Pascal via Hebrews is of course right. Even women and men that seek God do so out of reward -- out of lust and pursuit for happiness.  How we take that to mean we should spend any God-given energy on blocking the pursuit of happiness of others seems to me quite strange. In fact, it seems to me we know from the life of Christ exactly what we should be spending our energy on, which looks much different.