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Weekly Meanderings, 25 April 2015

Weekly Meanderings, 25 April 2015

Last updated on: April 25, 2015 at 12:02 am by Scot McKnight

Weekly Meanderings, 25 April 2015 2015-04-24T18:42:33-05:00 Scot McKnight

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Men vs. women on friends or one friend, by A. Pawlowski:

When things get tough, do you turn to your BFF or a coalition of buddies for emotional support?

Making friends is a crucial part of the human experience, but just like many aspects of life, it turns out men and women have distinct preferences when it comes to friendship.

A recent study found “striking gender differences” in the way we choose non-romantic companions: Women seek a few one-on-one, very close female friends, while men prefer large all-male cliques or clubs….

Right away, there were some big differences between the sexes.

Whenever profile photos showed a large group of people, the group members tended to be predominantly male. In general, men liked to be surrounded by lots of peers. Within those groups of friends, competition is suppressed, while bonding is reinforced — often through rituals such as eating and drinking together or competing with another male group, David-Barrett said….

When women chose a profile photo showing more than one person, they were surrounded by far fewer people — in fact, pictures of large female-only groups were almost non-existent. Women appeared to “focus their social capital on only one person at a time,” according to the study.

David Gergen on religion and the White House and politics, by Paul Massari:

Gergen said that Christian Evangelicals, disenchanted by prohibitions on prayer in schools and the success of the abortion rights movement, came off of the political sidelines in 1976 to vote for Jimmy Carter, who spoke openly about his faith. When Carter disappointed them with his stance on social issues, however, conservative Christians flocked to Reagan. Gergen pointed to current events to demonstrate their continuing place in the base of the Republican Party.

“I wasn’t surprised when Ted Cruz went to Liberty University,” Gergen said of the recent launch of the Texas U.S. senator’s presidential bid. “Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson’s influence on the party is still very strong.”

At the same time, Gergen said that social issues are less dominant in U.S. politics than they were even 10 years ago. He noted that Americans have made tremendous shifts in their acceptance of gay and lesbian rights.

“I think it’s terrific,” he said. “But it’s shrunk the influence of the social conservatives and Evangelicals. Republican candidates for president need to get to the middle now. The politics of religion are changing rapidly.”

HT: LEMB

An excellent interview with Stephen Barr about science and faith has this clip:

IgnatiusInsight.com: Stephen Hawking, in A Brief History of Time, talks about God and the mind of God. Yet he also seems to question whether there really is the need for a Creator in order to explain the existence of the cosmos. How do you see the matter? Is God a “necessary hypothesis”? Does science have anything to say about the question?

Dr. Barr: Hawking asked the right question when he wondered why there is a universe at all, but somehow he cannot accept the answer. The old question is, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Science cannot answer that question, as Hawking (at least sometimes) realizes. I think his problem is that he doesn’t see how the existence of God answers that question either. Part of the reason that many scientists are atheists is that they don’t really understand what is meant by “God”.

Anything whose existence is contingent (i.e. which could exist or not exist) cannot be the explanation of its own existence. It cannot, as it were, pull itself into being by its own bootstraps. As St. Augustine says in his Confessions, all created things cry out to us, “We did not make ourselves.” Only God is uncreated, because God is a necessary being: He cannot not exist. It is of His very nature to exist. He said to Moses, “I AM WHO AM. … Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: ‘I AM hath sent me unto you.'”

I think scientists like Hawking would be helped if they could imagine God as an infinite Mind that understands and knows all things and Who, indeed, “thought the world up”. If all of reality is “intelligible” (an idea that would appeal to scientists), then it follows really that there is some Intellect capable of understanding it fully. If no such Intellect exists or could exist, in what sense is reality fully intelligible? We need to recover the idea of God as the Logos, i.e. God as Reason itself. I note that Pope Benedict has stressed this in his recent addresses about science and in his speech at Regensburg. It is an idea of God that people who devote their lives to rational inquiry can appreciate.

Very good set of observations by Ted: bake the cake.

But hopefully needless to say we need to be marked by love as well. We should be known as those who roundly love each other in sacrificial ways. And we should be known as those who love sinners. We are sinners too, forgiven and being made holy, but nevertheless broken in ourselves. So that we all stand on the same level at the foot of the cross. We need to find creative ways of expressing that love across the board. And maybe all the more so to those who believe they are being relegated to a special status of sinners, treated worse than all the rest. Maybe it’s especially those people who we need to search out and befriend. To show them the love of Jesus, and simply to befriend them and enjoy them as human beings, made in God’s image as we are, all of us broken.

So yes, bake the cake. Attend the wedding. Take the pictures. At least think of creative ways you can share the love of Christ, even if you find that you have to draw lines. We may not be able to see it as a normal wedding. But they do. And we have to accept that. It is the gospel which is the power of God for salvation. We all need Jesus.

GAFCON leaders sustain connection to Church of England, by Paul Redfern:

In Summary

In a statement released at the end of the meeting on Friday, April 17, the group known as Gafcon (Global Anglican Future Conference) said the group would not be “leaving the Anglican Communion.

A parallel structure, the Anglican Church in North America, already exists in the US, but opponents of Gafcon say the organisation lacks the funds to establish an “alternative” Anglican faith in the UK and moreover lacks the support to do so.

Critics point out that while there are divisions within the Church of England over the issue of gay priests and gay marriage, the Anglican faith in the UK is overwhelmingly supportive of both women priests and female bishops.

But Nick Baines says GAFCON trades on misrepresentation:

You would never believe any of this from the communique issued following the meeting in England this week of the primates of what is known as Gafcon. According to this group – which, despite statements to the contrary and consistent with behaviour that is inexplicable – the Church of England has abandoned the gospel of Jesus Christ and is “unfaithful”. It is probably worth noting that the key words in the rhetoric of this conservative evangelical constituency are “gospel” and “faithful”. What is actually meant is that if you do not fit their narrow description of what the “gospel” is and who might be described as “faithful”, then you are fair game for being dismissed. (Assumptions about the meaning of key words matters here.)

For a long time I have wondered if the Church of England ought not to be a little more robust in countering the misrepresentation and manipulation (of reality) that emanates from Gafcon. I am not alone. But, I have bowed to the wisdom of those who (rightly) assert that we shouldn’t counter bad behaviour with bad behaviour, and that we should trust that one day the truth will out. I am no longer so sure about the efficacy of such an eirenic response. I think we owe it to Anglicans in England and around the Communion to fight the corner and challenge the misrepresentation that is fed to other parts of the Anglican Communion. (I was once asked in Central Africa why one has to be gay to be ordained in the Church of England. I was asked in another country why the Church of England no longer reads the Bible and denies Jesus Christ. I could go on. When asked where this stuff has come from, the answer is that this is what a bishop has told them.)…

I was once at a meeting of evangelical bishops in England when three English Gafcon men came to meet us. They had stated that this was the case and that bishops were giving their clergy a hard time. We asked for evidence so we could consider it before we met. Bishop Tom Wright and I were just two who were outraged at the misinformation, misrepresentation and selective re-writing of history presented to us. When we began to challenge this, we were told that we shouldn’t get bogged down in the detail and could we move on. And they got away with it. I am not making this up.

The truth is that while all this nonsense goes on, the rest of the Church of England will continue to focus on being faithful to its gospel vocation and mission. We are doing it every day. We will not be distracted by people who selectively report, regularly misrepresent, manipulate truth and plough their own furrow. God bless them in their commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ; and God bless the rest of us in our commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Makeover at Journey with Jesus.

Teen brains — boys and girls and tailoring education, by Lyndsey Layton:

Among the more thought-provoking discoveries in the emerging science regarding the teen brain is the fact that the pace of brain development differs in males and females.

In her best-selling book, “The Teenage Brain,” Frances Jensen discusses how the part of the brain that processes information grows during childhood and then starts to pare down, reaching a peak level of cognitive development when girls are between 12 and 13 years old and when boys are 15 to 16 years old, generally speaking.

Three good reasons to eat pistachios, which we are now mixing in our garden salads:

Need more persuasion about pistachios? Here are three reasons why pistachios can boost your health:

They have nutrients such as vitamin B6, which promotes blood flow by helping to carry oxygen through the bloodstream to cells. Vitamin B6 also promotes immune and nervous system health.
They have plant-based compounds that act as antioxidants, including vitamin E, polyphenols and the carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin. Two of these antioxidants, not found in other nuts, have been linked to a decrease in the risk of developing macular degeneration.
They support healthy cholesterol levels. Pistachios have 13 grams of fat per serving, the majority of which (11.5 grams) comes from heart-healthy monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Studies have shown that adding pistachios to a healthy diet may help to lower levels of oxidized-LDL (bad) cholesterol This is because of the nut’s high level of monounsaturated fat, which has been shown to reduce the levels of LDL cholesterol.

Peter Harrison, Gifford Lectures reduced, on science and faith.

Bilked by the milked?

JB: How did milk win its staple status in our food universe?

AH: We’ve had school milk programs and milk in schools since the beginning of the century. During World War II, we needed to boost milk production in order to make processed dairy products to send to soldiers overseas. But farmers weren’t producing enough to meet this demand because they weren’t getting paid enough. So the government decided, “Great, we’ll create demand for milk by giving milk to our kids, and that way we’ll have a demand for the fluid milk and we can make the processed products we need for soldiers.”

So war was part of it. Convenience is also part of it. As people moved to the city and women started working away from home, cow’s milk became seen as a convenient way to give babies nutrition if women weren’t able to be home breastfeeding all the time. And as the dairy industry grows, farmers have an incentive to try to boost demand with government subsidies of dairy.

I can’t say which one of these many different forces did it, but it’s just a combination that has led to this health halo around milk. I think what’s more troubling is how deeply ingrained the idea has become and how inaccurate many of our assumptions about milk are.

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