August 2019 Newsletter
In this Clergy Letter Project update, you’ll find the following six items:
- Evolution Weekend 2020: Vote for a Theme;
- Astrobiology News for August 2019: The Big Questions of Astrobiology;
- Genie Scott on Combating Creationism;
- Gallup Creationism Poll;
- Science in Congregations; and
- Rabbi Geoff Mitelman on Constructive Conversations.
1. Evolution Weekend 2020: Vote for a Theme
Last month I asked for suggestions for a theme for Evolution Weekend 2020. The response has been wonderful! Now it is time to winnow down the great suggestions and come up with a single theme.
Please take a look at the suggestions below and indicate your first and second choice for a theme. I’ll tabulate the results and report back to everyone in a couple of weeks. Simply put a 1 for your first choice and a 2 for your second choice and return this note to me.
_____ Evolution and Your Health
_____ Sacred Earth: Common Home
_____ Where Do We Go From Here?
_____ One Race: The Evolution of the Human Race or How We All Go Back to Africa
_____ Why Truth Matters: Religion and Science Searching for Answers
_____ What Does it Mean to be Human? The Perspective of Faith & Science
_____ Curiosity: The Common Bond Between Faith & Science
_____ What does science do that religion cannot? What can religion do that science cannot?
_____ How science and religion could work together to deal with the problems of climate change
_____ Faith and Science: A Cosmic Dance
_____ Better Together!
_____ Something addressing Gus Speth’s slide
_____ How to Convey Urgency and Challenge Despair
_____ Endangered Species/The Sixth Extinction/The Anthropocene — what both science and faith have to say about the importance of preserving endangered species, our responsibility as humans, etc.
_____ Write-in Suggestion:
Please vote and, if you can, please refine the topic of your choice.
Finally, this would be a great time to sign up to participate in Evolution Weekend 2020. At this point, we already have approximately 100 participating congregations representing 32 states, the District of Columbia, and six countries on board. If you’re not yet on the list, please sign up now.
_____ Yes, I want to help keep the movement of bringing religion and science together alive. Please sign me up to participate in Evolution Weekend 2020.
Name of Congregation:
Location:
Your Name:
2. Astrobiology News for August 2019: The Big Questions of Astrobiology
In this month’s Astrobiology News, Clergy Letter Project consultant and Adler Planetarium astronomer Grace Wolf-Chase discusses one of science’s “big” questions: how do we search for life that might be different from life we know?
Late last month, it was my pleasure to participate in the Science for Seminaries(1) retreat in Midway, Utah, which was organized by the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER)(2). This retreat featured talks, panels, and one-on-one consultations that encouraged many fruitful discussions between scientists and religious scholars looking to integrate science into seminary programs. The DoSER organizers compiled an extensive list of resources from participants’ suggestions, including one with which you’re all familiar - the Clergy Letter Project. Another resource I encourage CLP members to explore is Science & the Big Questions, a web repository for reporting cutting-edge research and issues at the intersection of science, philosophy, and theology.(3)
The central goal of astrobiology, to find evidence of past or present life beyond Earth, certainly raises some of the biggest existential questions we might imagine! Although searches for life elsewhere often focus on life as we know it, some researchers are taking an alternate approach, considering how we might identify “life as we don’t know it,” which might be based on biochemistry different from life on Earth.(4)
So how do we go about finding “life as we don’t know it?” The newly-formed Laboratory for Agnostic Biosignatures (LAB)(5) is focusing on several phenomena that don’t pre-suppose characteristics particular to life on Earth. Specifically, they are investigating how the complexity of various chemicals, accumulation of particular elements or compounds, and evidence of the transfer of energy might point to the presence of life on worlds such as Saturn’s moon, Titan, with its lakes of ethane and methane rather than water. LAB has begun conversations with the team working on the Dragonfly mission(6) to facilitate developing tools for detecting such “agnostic biosignatures” and strategies for interpreting them.
As you might imagine, developing tools and strategies to detect and interpret different types of biosignatures is an extremely multidisciplinary endeavor, requiring the expertise of biologists, chemists, computer scientists, mathematicians, and instrument engineers. All this gets to the heart of a very big question for which there is no consensus answer - what is life? Scientific classifications are always open to change in light of new information. Given life’s diversity on Earth, I suspect we’re in for more than a few surprises as we search for it elsewhere!
Until next month,
Grace Wolf-Chase, Ph.D. (gwolfchase@adlerplanetarium.org)
1. https://www.scienceforseminaries.org/retreat/
2. https://www.aaas.org/programs/dialogue-science-ethics-and-religion
3. https://scienceandthebigquestions.com/
4. https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/agnostic-biosignatures-and-the-path-to-life-as-we-dont-know-it/
5. https://www.agnosticbiosignatures.org/
6. I wrote about Dragonfly in last month’s Astrobiology News – see the CLP Astrobiology News Archive.
3. Genie Scott on Combating Creationism
Genie Scott, long-time friend of The Clergy Letter Project and founder and past executive director of the National Center for Science Education, was honored with the 2028 John and Mary Lou Pojeta Service Award from the Paleontological Society. Her comments on being presented the award were recently published in the Journal of Paleontology and are well worth reading. She discusses the origin of the National Center for Science Education and the importance of educating people about “what is good science and what is not.”
4. Gallup Creationism Poll
Gallup has just released its latest poll on creationism in the United States and the results are interesting. Rather than attempting to summarize what was found, let me simply share the lede to the article: “Forty percent of U.S. adults ascribe to a strictly creationist view of human origins, believing that God created them in their present form within roughly the past 10,000 years. However, more Americans continue to think that humans evolved over millions of years -- either with God's guidance (33%) or, increasingly, without God's involvement at all (22%).”
It’s worth taking a look at the full piece. Obviously, we still have a great deal of work to do!
5. Science in Congregations
I’m delighted to say that as interest in bringing religion and science together grows, the resources available to help in this important endeavor are constantly improving. Drew Rick-Miller, a member of The Clergy Letter Project, has created one such resource that you’ll likely want to see.
He is producing “a weekly email equipping the local church to engage with science.” You can read more about his effort and sign up for his weekly notifications here.
Science in Congregations might be just the thing to make participation in Evolution Weekend even easier and more productive.
_____ You’re correct! Science in Congregations is the perfect tool to help with Evolution Weekend planning, Please sign me up to participate in Evolution Weekend 2020.
Name of Congregation:
Location:
Your Name:
6. Rabbi Geoff Mitelman on Constructive Conversations
As many of you know, Clergy Letter Project member Rabbi Geoff Mitelman is the founder and executive director of Sinai and Synapses, a sister organization of The Clergy Letter Project. With the help of funding from the Templeton Foundation, Sinai and Synapses has run two iterations of its Scientists in Synagogues program. The Templeton Foundation has just posted a short interview with Geoff explaining why the work to bring religion and science together is so important – important for society in ways that go well beyond both religion and science.
Take a look at the four minute video – I guarantee you won’t be disappointed!
Concluding Thoughts
As you well know, The Clergy Letter Project is about promoting the teaching of evolution and demonstrating that evolution need not pose challenges to religious belief and understanding. That core sense of mission has led us to a number of equally important points. We recognize that religion and science reach similar conclusions about many issues. We celebrate the fact that discussing the seemingly fraught relationship between religion and science can teach us how to have other difficult conversations, something that is so very important in today’s divided world. And we enjoy the search for truth encouraged by both religion and science. Spread the word; help us grow!
Finally, as always, I want to thank you for your continued support and as I do every month, I urge you to take one simple action. Please share this month’s Newsletter with a colleague or two (or post a link via any social media platform you use) and ask them to add their voices to those promoting a deep and meaningful understanding between religion and science. They can add their signatures to one of our Clergy Letters simply by dropping me a note at mz@theclergyletterproject.org. Together we are making a difference.
Michael
Michael Zimmerman
Founder and Executive Director
The Clergy Letter Project
www.theclergyletterproject.org
mz@theclergyletterproject.org