Theological Notebook: The Movie "Contact" and the Myth of a Conflict Between Science and Religion

[novak]

Here's a question: Why? In fact, that's my favourite question! But it's not too clear by itself, so let me give a little background so you can understand my specific use of the question.

Comments

[novak]

Yes, as per the response I just gave to midnightmelody, I think that in our generation(s), what's happened is that teaching religion moved radically away from the hard-core content it used to focus on to a 1960s/70s emphasis on "feeling," which is fine in itself, to bring the faith to a more mystical, experiential side that was under-emphasized in a more purely dogmatic approach. But in the same way the physical sciences will die if you solely teach technology/application to the exclusion of theory, in the same way spirituality dies without theology/philosophy. Or its loses its depth and fecundity. And so you end up with nothing more than a sprinkling of progressive human rights politics, and an intimation of world-religions dialogue.

Good in itself, but pretty weak tea overall. The Buddhists and the Muslims aren't terribly engaged in dialogue with people so supposedly "open-minded" that they don't believe anything in particular. Instead, they see that as simple malaise, and in Europe, as you've probably read, many Muslims just see a continent ripe for the plucking, which is problematic if that means not just people engaging their freedom to believe what they want, but the end of the Western tradition toward freedom (which I would argue springs from its Christian heritage although I'll easily point to episodes of Christians not realizing that) and the rise of a legally Islamic reality. I don't mean to sound all conspiracy-theory in talking about that, it's just really quite alarming to hear European Islam actually articulating that as a strategy over this century, and seeing the demographic possibilities.