Sacred Science

On the eve of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori offers a scientist's take on the issues dividing the Episcopal Church:

Jefferts Schori said science informs everything from how she interprets the Bible to her views on homosexuality—two subjects that now embroil her church and the larger Anglican Communion.

“I think it’s pretty clear from scientific studies that homosexuality, particularly male homosexuality, has got a significant component that is determined before birth,” she said. “It is, at least from a theological perspective, part of the created order. ... It’s the church’s job to help people live holy lives however they’ve been created, and sexuality is part of our creation.”

But conservatives argue that her progressive views stray far from traditional Christianity. Since her election, four Episcopal dioceses and dozens of parishes—still angry over the 2003 election of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire—have seceded.

“She’s continued the trajectory that was already established,” said Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, who led his diocese to leave the Episcopal Church last October. “The Episcopal Church has moved progressively away from classical Christianity and mainstream Anglicanism.”

The Faith Of Evolution?

Writing in "Discover" to mark the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, Karen Wright says belief in God gives a body a distinct advantage in the natural selection derby. Besides:

Harnessed to a supernatural dimension, the belief in evolution could itself evolve into a kind of religion. Witness the case of one Michael Dowd, an itinerant minister who calls himself an "evolutionary evangelist" and preaches the "holy trajectory" of evolution. "I thank God for the entire 14-billion-year epic of cosmic, biological, and human emergence," he notes on his web site. "Ironically, evolution gives us a more intimate and personal relationship with God because God is no longer far off, unnatural, and impotent..."

Of Lincoln And Darwin, One Was Indispensable

In an essay about Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln -- we'll mark the 200th anniversaries of their births on Monday -- George Will manages a slap at the Endangered Species Act. He also writes:

[R]emember that Lincoln mattered more. Without Darwin, other scientists would have discerned natural selection. Indeed, Darwin's friend Alfred Wallace already had. Without Lincoln, the United States probably would have been sundered into at least two nations. Probably into more: Southerners, a fractious tribe, would not have played nicely together in the Confederacy for very long.

Bearly Having A Clue

On Feb. 12, the world will mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. The annual remembrance occurring two days later, Valentine's Day, is the focal point for a particular type of seasonal TV advertising which tends to undermine Darwin's notions about evolutionary progress, at least in humans.

Every year at this time in the Pajamagram ad, rapt young man leer as their female partners parade in the nighties that have come in the mail. As for the Vermont Teddy Bear ad, it reminds me of those who said about the first 1960 Presidential debate that if you watched it on TV, Kennedy won, while RN won among radio listeners. If you see the young woman in the office getting her Valentine's Day bear in the mail and opening it, the ad's rated G. But if you close your eyes and listen (as her male office mates do) to her high-pitched "oh...oh!" and her exclamation, "It's a lot bigger than I thought...I just want to kiss it," you'd be excused for applying an R.

The ads are aimed at men of a certain age who are evidently unable to plot a correlation between things the women in their life enjoy and some appropriate gift. The teddy bear folks also encourage men to believe that women will think they've been planning the gift for months, as if their wives and girlfriends hadn't seen the ads ten times, too. Such limited discernment skills bode poorly for humans' ability to persist and thrive in challenging environments. Better move: Get 'em a Beagle.