The Emerging Scholars Blog

Our Week-in-Review feature has a new format. We know there’s way too much to read out there already, so we’re going to be highlighting the top five articles, books, websites, etc., that we’ve been reading or thinking about the past week. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

Academic Nobel News – The Nobel Prizes are being handed out this week, and, as usual, academic researchers did quite well. The prize for Medicine went to Elizabeth H. Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco; Carol W. Greider of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; and Jack W. Szostak of Massachusetts General Hospital for research on telomeres. Physics was awarded to Charles Kao (who did his prize-winning work at Britain’s Standard Telephones and Cables) and Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith of Bell Labs. Chemistry went to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England; Thomas A. Steitz of Yale University; and Ada E. Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, for their work on the information structure of ribosomes. The two most famous Nobels – Literature and Peace – went to German poet Herta Müller and Barack Obama respectively. Economics will be awarded on Monday.

Economic Justice and the Spirit of Innovation (Edmund Phelps, First Things, October 2009) discussed by a campus group this past week.

The issue of morality in economics is neither the fairness of income distribution nor the stability of financial systems. It is how human institutions can be shaped to correspond to human nature — to man’s nature as an innovator. … Capitalism is the only economic system thus far discovered that allows human beings to realize their nature to innovate, discover, and take risks. Because human freedom is a good thing, capitalism is in this respect a good system. It is good apart from its instrumental function of presenting opportunities for income and consumption.

America Falling: Longtime Dominance in Education Erodes (Karin Fischer, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 5, 2009)

“China, Korea, Singapore—they’re going for broke because they’re hungry. They know they have to do it,” says Mr. Vest, who served on a national panel that produced a widely cited report, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” which warned that America was slipping behind other countries in science and technology. …

Are you hungry to learn how the world works and share that knowledge with others?  What provides the basis for such a passion when competition and survival no longer inspire it?

Numbers on Nones – The excellent blog GetReligion, which covers how the mainstream covers religion, has been looking at the recent American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). ARIS has found that the number of Americans who report “no religion” has been rising steadily and now includes 34 million Americans. ARIS calls these people “Nones,” which the atheist biologist P. Z. Myers mistakenly equates with the “godless” (his term for atheists). ARIS finds that less than 10% of Nones are truly atheists; 35% are agnostics of one sort or another, while 51% believe in some sort of god.

New Book: Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults by Christian Smith and Patricia Snell – Smith’s previous book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (with Melina Lundquist Denton) has greatly influenced Tom and Mike’s thinking about religious education and the role of ministries like InterVarsity. In this sociological study of American teens, sponsored by the National Study of Youth and Religion, Smith and Denton found that almost all American teens believe in a kind of “civil religion” that Smith & Denton called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. Now, Smith and his fellow researchers have continued to follow these teens into their 20′s, the time of life that Smith identifies as “emerging adulthood,” and their findings continue to challenge long-held assumptions about religious development. For example, they found that college no longer has a corrosive effect on religious faith. In a webinar with Christianity Today (not yet available for review), Smith explicitly credited campus ministries like InterVarsity and growing numbers of evangelical professors for this striking change. Praise God! [Note: this is an important new book, so I expect we'll be reviewing it soon.]

Naomi Schaefer Riley of the WSJ has reviewed Souls in Transition, and the WSJ has also published an excerpt from Chapter One.

In this week’s Week in Review, new graduates dealing with the recession, some notable reviews of N.T. Wright’s new book, Justification, a new website for Christian lawyers, some additional coverage of A. N. Wilson’s conversion, and more! If you’d like to contribute to next week’s Review, add your link(s) in the comments, or send them to Tom or Mike directly.

Reminder: We start our ESN Book Club on Your Mind Matters next Tuesday, June 9. We’ll start with the forewords and Chapter 1. If you haven’t gotten your copy yet, you can download next week’s selection directly from IVP’s website as a PDF. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe I shouldn’t have been spending so much time thinking about Hell, see Deep Shift: Hell? (no doubt a natural extension to our discussions regarding resurrection), when Religion of hatred: Why we should no longer be cowed by the chattering classes ruling Britain who sneer at Christianity by A. N. Wilson has been such a great surprise and encouragement to many.  What are your reactions/thoughts regarding the article and A.N. Wilson’s story?

Note:  Two other recent pieces by A.N. Wilson which I found of interest:

Why I believe again

Can you love god and agree with Darwin?

Pending a press conference later today, I’ve not been given permission to use his name at this time (hint: British scientist, likes to write about bats and watchmakers). However, this shocking development will, well, shock the world.  The rumor that I have heard is that he will announce not only his conversion, but also his enrollment in a major evangelical seminary to for a degree in apologetics and possible ordination. This is truly a landmark day.

Update: The press conference is now online!  The full video can be viewed here.

Longtime friend of ESN Jay Woodham shared this link on Facebook to an “opinionated play-by-play” of the dialogue between Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga and atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett at the recent American Philosophical Association meeting. It’s a very interesting read, both the blog post and the comments, about a discussion between two of the leading philosophers in academia today. The contributor admits his bias towards Plantinga, so read it for what it’s worth, though some of his judgments are countered by commenters. The bloggers does a good job, in my opinion, of putting Plantinga and Dennett in philosophical context for those of us (like myself) who are only familiar with them through the current debates about atheism and naturalism.

Also in the comments is a side conversation about whether or not open belief in God is a hazard to one’s career in philosophy. The commenters are split: some say that it’s not a problem at all, while others strongly recommend keeping your theism under your hat. (My bet is that it strongly depends on your particular department and the attitudes of its faculty.)

BTW, if you are interested in Plantinga, his book Warranted Christian Belief is available for free from the always excellent Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

A while back, one of our blog readers sent me a link to this fascinating New Yorker article, “The Interpreter” by John Colapinto, which combines academic controversy, the interplay between theory and practice, and the (dis)integration of faith, life, and learning. It tells the story of Dan Everett, professor of linguistics at Illinois State University, a former evangelical Christian and Bible translator with SIL who, as he advanced in his academic career, lost his faith in Christ. Read the rest of this entry »

An interesting essay in the Chronicle Review, “Atheist Students on Campus: From Misconceptions to Inclusion,” (link, $ link, free) by Kathleen Goodman and John Mueller, argues that universities ought to do a better job of acknowledging and embracing atheist students. In a secular university, atheism has as much a place as any other philosophical or religious persuasion, I suppose, and I can imagine situations in which Christians on campus should defend the rights and inclusion of atheist students and faculty.

One of the authors’ suggestions struck me as unusual, however. They recommend that universities:

Ensure that atheists can, like other students, explore their inner development. By inner development, we refer to the process of examining and living one’s values, ethics, meaning, and purpose. Campuses should provide the same opportunities for atheist students that they provide for students who identify themselves as religious or spiritual.

In my observations, universities today don’t offer much in terms of “inner development” at all. Many historians have noted that a defining trend of American universities over the past 150 years has been a move away from character development and integration of life and learning as an educational mission. There is work being down on campus in these areas, but it is the work of student organizations, including InterVarsity chapters, not of the university itself.

Do you agree with my assessment? Or are universities indeed helping students explores their inner development?

Updated: The article is now available for free, via the link above.  (Thanks, Rachel!)