In this first meditation we will examine scientism. To understand what is meant by this term we can begin with the description made of it by John Paul II: “Another danger is scientism; this philosophic conception refuses in fact to admit as valid ways of knowing different from those that are proper to the positive sciences, relegating to the confines of mere imagination either religious conscience and theology, or ethical and aesthetic learning.”[2] We can summarize the main texts of this current of thought thus:

First thesis. Science, and in particular cosmology, physics and biology, are the only objective and serious ways of knowing reality. “Modern societies are built upon science. They owe it their wealth, their power, and the certitude that tomorrow far greater wealth and power still will be ours if we so wish …. Armed with all the powers, enjoying all the riches they owe to science, our societies are still trying to live by and to teach systems of values already blasted at the roots by science itself.”[3]

Second thesis. This way of knowing is incompatible with faith that is based on assumptions which are neither demonstrable or falsifiable. In this line the militant atheist R. Dawkins goes so far as to define as “illiterate” those scientists who profess themselves believers, forgetting how many scientists, much more famous than he, have declared themselves and continue to declare themselves believers.

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Nearly 90 people appeared for the service in the temple’s social hall. Sadie sat near the front, near the Torah. She talked with Rabbi Ben, right in the middle of the service, about the best kind of instrument for announcing the new year. And it was O.K., Nancy Crown realized, sitting rows away. It was O.K. ”” Sadie was asking a question in temple, and nobody was shushing her.

Now Hanukkah has arrived, with its evocation of ancient miracles. This Sabbath morning, Sadie and her mother plan to attend the second special-needs worship service at Rodeph Sholom.

There is a phrase often used to describe autistic people ”” “on the spectrum” ”” and it can almost sound like a physical place, somewhere isolated and remote, except maybe when you can feel God, too, on the spectrum.

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As China ratcheted up the pressure on Google to censor its Internet searches last year, the American Embassy sent a secret cable to Washington detailing one reason top Chinese leaders had become so obsessed with the Internet search company: they were Googling themselves.

The May 18, 2009, cable, titled “Google China Paying Price for Resisting Censorship,” quoted a well-placed source as saying that Li Changchun, a member of China’s top ruling body, the Politburo Standing Committee, and the country’s senior propaganda official, was taken aback to discover that he could conduct Chinese-language searches on Google’s main international Web site. When Mr. Li typed his name into the search engine at google.com, he found “results critical of him.”

That cable from American diplomats was one of many made public by WikiLeaks that portray China’s leadership as nearly obsessed with the threat posed by the Internet to their grip on power ”” and, the reverse, by the opportunities it offered them, through hacking, to obtain secrets stored in computers of its rivals, especially the United States.

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Perhaps the first thing to clarify is why there should be a specifically “Christian” way of thinking about sex at all. What is it about Christianity that could make a difference? And the answer surely lies in the doctrine of the incarnation.

Christians, as distinct even from Jews (their closest theological neighbours), believe that God has been “embodied”. The word of God, himself God from the beginning, “became flesh and dwelt among us” in the person of Jesus (John 1:14).

Therefore the body, the locus of our sexuality and the vehicle of its expression, is also a vehicle and means of expression of God’s own self. And whatever Christians think about sexuality, it has to be integrated with this specifically Christian understanding.

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And so, after four days of squabbling, the sign over City Hall’s clutch of seasonal shops blinked on Thursday evening, uncensored.

“Christmas Village” it read once again, with the provocative – and briefly erased – word Christmas restored in large, golden lights.

Mayor Nutter’s decision Wednesday to reverse other city officials, who had changed the name of the shops to Holiday Village, has not entirely calmed the waters.

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Bruce Holloway was turning into his driveway in Mount Juliet, Tenn., in April 2009, when he was struck and killed by Brian Duffey.

Duffey was driving 80 mph with alcohol and painkillers in his system, according to police and court records.

“He was already home,” said Holloway’s fiancée, Mary Loving. “It’s so unfair.”

Duffey pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide and was sentenced to 22 years. He was one of a growing number of heavily medicated Americans who get behind the wheel every day.

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Today’s awful job figures crossed the wires just as I was mulling a post on how the Fed’s policy of pumping money into the bond market””a.k.a. quantitative easing””was showing signs of working. Over the past couple of weeks, a number of indicators have suggested that the economy is picking up a bit: purchases of cars and trucks have jumped significantly, retailers posted solid sales over Thanksgiving, and consumer confidence has rebounded. Even the bombed-out housing market””a direct beneficiary of Fed policy, which is largely aimed at keeping down mortgage rates””has shown signs of life: the number of home sales jumped last month. The U.S. economics team at Goldman Sachs, which has been one of the most pessimistic on Wall Street, just upgraded its forecast for G.D.P. growth in 2011 from 2.0 per cent to 2.7 per cent. That’s still not a great figure””after a recession, economies often expand at a rate of four or five per cent for a couple of years””but the upgrade was a signal that worries of a “double dip” recession were receding.

Then came this morning’s shocker: the economy created just 39,000 jobs in November, compared to 172,000 in October, and the unemployment rate jumped from 9.6 per cent to 9.8 per cent. Health care and temporary help services were the only sectors reporting significant new hiring. Most other sectors reported flat payrolls or reductions. The sectors cutting jobs included retailing and finance, which had appeared to be doing relatively well. What is going on? In ascending order of frightfulness, here are four possibilities….

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Confirm our minds, O Lord, in the mysteries of the true faith, set forth with power by thy servant John of Damascus; that we, with him, confessing Jesus to be true God and true Man, and singing the praises of the risen Lord, may, by the power of the resurrection, attain to eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for evermore.

O Eternal God, who has taught us in thy holy Word that love is the fulfilling of the law: Pour into our hearts that best of all thy gifts, that loving our neighbour as ourselves we may live as children of the day and of the light; for the glory of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Frank Colquhoun

Some boast of chariots, and some of horses; but we boast of the name of the LORD our God.

–Psalm 20:7

A bold plan to slash the U.S. budget deficit fell short Friday of winning support needed from a presidential commission to trigger congressional action, but it was expected to help shape future budget debates.

The plan found more backing than many anticipated, from Democrats and Republicans, and parts of it could be used in President Barack Obama’s next budget, due in February, as well as in congressional proposals to follow.

A formal commission vote did not occur, but 11 members said they supported the plan and seven said they did not. It needed 14 votes to be sent to Congress for legislative action.

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There will be many measures of the man remembered this weekend and beyond, but perhaps one above many, if not most, should tell you a few things about Ron Santo, who died at 70 Thursday in Arizona….

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As a trained oceanographer, pilot and high-profile prelate, Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori seems like the ideal ambassador to bridge the widening chasm between faith and science.

She will step up to that challenge Friday in Chicago when she champions collaboration between the religion and health care communities at two area hospitals.

During a public lecture at Rush University Medical Center, Jefferts Schori is expected to discuss healing ministries that Episcopal congregations have developed around the world. Later that day, she is expected to ordain Stroger Hospital’s first paid trauma chaplain.

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No looking/googling, etc. Also please note it is the Ipod, not the Iphone or the Ipad.

In 2008, the World Council of Churches convened a group of Protestant and Catholic theologians to review the underpinnings of Christian attitudes toward Israel. (No Jews were invited.) The group published the so-called Bern Perspective, which, among other things, instructed Christians to understand all biblical references to Israel only metaphorically.

This understanding denies the connection between today’s Jews and Moses, Jeremiah and Isaiah. It marks a return to “replacement theology,” the medieval view that the Church has replaced Israel in God’s plan and that all biblical references to Israel refer to the “new Israel”””that is, to Christians. For centuries, that view was the theological basis for denying rights to Jews in Church-dominated Europe.

In 2009, on the first day of Chanukah (which Jews again celebrate this week), a group of Christian Palestinians issued the Kairos Palestine Document, which was immediately published on the World Council of Churches website. The document calls for a general boycott of Israel and argues that Christians’ faith requires them to side with the “oppressed,” meaning the Palestinians. It speaks of the evils of the Israeli “occupation,” yet is silent on any evils committed by Palestinians, including the Hamas terrorists who now govern the Gaza Strip.

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Please go here and read all 3 comments/transcripts.

A reckless ”boys’ club” inside the Anglican Church has been blamed for the Sydney diocese’s catastrophic losses during the global financial crisis, amid calls for greater involvement of women on the diocese’s boards.

The rector of the church’s Hunters Hill parish, Philip Bradford, said the presence of women on all-male Anglican boards would have brought a more cautious approach to investments that cost the church $160 million during the downturn.

But the diocese buried the motion for the equal representation of women on boards at the Sydney synod, he said, and did not debate the matter.

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Employers added fewer jobs than forecast in November and the unemployment rate unexpectedly increased, vindicating the Federal Reserve’s decision to pump more money into the economy to spur growth.

Payrolls increased 39,000, less than the most pessimistic projection of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, after a revised 172,000 increase the prior month, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The jobless rate rose to 9.8 percent, the highest since April, while hours worked and earnings stagnated.

More jobs are needed to sustain the holiday-season gains in consumer spending, the biggest part of the economy, into the new year. Payrolls aren’t growing fast enough to lower the jobless rate, one reason why Fed policy makers announced a new round of monetary stimulus.

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The Church of Ireland’s Bishop of Tuam, Killala and Achonry has written to his diocese announcing that he will be stepping down from office in January after 12 years to serve as vicar of Appleby-in-Westmoreland, Cumbria, leader of the Heart of Eden Team Ministry and Honorary Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Carlisle.

In his pastoral letter of Nov 21, Dr. Richard Henderson thanked the clergy and laity of his West of Ireland diocese, writing: “It has been an immense privilege to be among you all.”

“Having been Bishop of Tuam, Killala and Achonry for over twelve years, with our children now grown up, and having reflected deeply on the gifts I can best offer, I have felt led increasingly to return to parish life and substantially to non-episcopal ministry,” the bishop said.

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For the nearly 200-year-old General Theological Seminary, which has the bulk of its campus between Ninth and Tenth Avenues and 20th and 21st Streets, the deal was a matter of survival, spokesman Bruce Parker said Thursday.

The institution carries $41 million in debts, a quantity that nearly prevented it from opening for classes this fall, according to Parker. The sale, to the Brodsky Organization, would fully cover those debts, said Parker, who could not provide the total price tag for the deal.

The properties the Seminary is selling off include a residential building known as Chelsea 2, 3, 4, a portion of the schoolyard currently used as a tennis court, and 422 W. 20th Street. The school currently fills the buildings with a mix of dormitories and offices.

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The Bishop of Croydon, the Rt Revd Nick Baines, also countered the campaign’s arguments, speaking on Channel 4’s 4thought.tv. He said that Christians who could not carry out a particular job if it was in conflict with their faith had a choice whether to do it, but this did not amount to persecution.

Andrew Copson, chief executive of the British Humanist Association, said that the campaign was in­dicative of “in­creasingly desperate attempts to work up a victim narrative of ”˜Christianophobia’”, which has “no basis in reality”.

But Andrea Minichiello Williams, director of Christian Concern, said that she daily encountered Chris­tians “who find themselves in trouble in the workplace as a result of living out their Christian faith”.

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While the statement was released on the same day as General Synod debated the Covenant, the timing of the release was not intended to sway discussion in England, a spokesman told CEN.

The “Oxford Statement” required weeks of refining and was passed from archbishop to archbishop before it was ready for release, a Gafcon secretariat spokesman said.

Sources within the Gafcon movement tell CEN the Oxford Statement should not be read as an outright rejection of the Covenant, but as a vote of no confidence in the current draft that vests authority in the Anglican Communion “Standing Committee”.

On November 1, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali encapsulated the thinking of many of the Gafcon leaders, telling CEN the new Section IV of the Covenant was “quite different” from what had been prepared by the Covenant design team, and “produces a new kind of ecclesial animal” in the Standing Committee. “We have had a spate of resignations” from the Standing Committee “that calls into question its on-going credibility,” he noted. Yet the Standing Committee will “make recommendations” about discipline.

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Scientists have long known that pollution and dust from China travels over the Pacific to the western United States. What they haven’t been able to figure out is how much. Until now.

In a paper published in the latest issue of the scholarly journal Environmental Science and Technology and picked up by Chemical & Engineering News, a team of geochemists announced that they have developed a method for tracing fine airborne particulate pollution (also known as PM2.5 because the particles are less than 2.5 microns wide) with origins in East Asia by testing for a specific lead isotope, 208Pb, found in greater concentrations in coal and metal ores from the region.

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[Philip Brenner, University of Michigan research fellow with the Institute for Social Research]…plowed through 400 surveys and time diaries across four decades with three quarters of a million respondents in 13 nations to find that Americans exaggerate their church attendance more than anyone else.

About 23% of Americans actually do attend church “regularly” (two or three times a month or more) according to time diaries (in which people account for 24 hours of recent activity). But 35% to 45% say they attend regularly when asked on surveys….

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“Someone coming of age in 1950 lives through JFK, the soaring rhetoric of Martin Luther King, the Mickey Mouse Club and Leave It to Beaver,” says Steven Gillon, resident historian of the History Channel and author of Boomer Nation. “After 1960, their memories are Watergate and oil embargo.”

Yet, they have been lumped into one demographic behemoth (77 million) that has guided marketing decisions, transformed history and politics and reshaped entertainment sensibilities for more than six decades.

As the nation marks the 65th birthday of the first Boomers beginning next month, the millions born at the tail end of the generation are feeling a disconnect.

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O Lord Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming didst warn us to prepare for the day when thou shalt come to be our judge: Mercifully grant that being awake from the sleep of sin, we may always be watching and intent upon the work thou hast given us to do; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end.

I keep the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also dwells secure. For thou dost not give me up to Sheol, or let thy godly one see the Pit. Thou dost show me the path of life; in thy presence there is fulness of joy, in thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.

–Psalm 16:8-11

Scientists said Thursday that they had trained a bacterium to eat and grow on a diet of arsenic, in place of phosphorus ”” one of six elements considered essential for life ”” opening up the possibility that organisms could exist elsewhere in the universe or even here on Earth using biochemical powers we have not yet dared to dream about.

The bacterium, scraped from the bottom of Mono Lake in California and grown for months in a lab mixture containing arsenic, gradually swapped out atoms of phosphorus in its little body for atoms of arsenic.

Scientists said the results, if confirmed, would expand the notion of what life could be and where it could be. “There is basic mystery, when you look at life,” said Dimitar Sasselov, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and director of an institute on the origins of life there, who was not involved in the work. “Nature only uses a restrictive set of molecules and chemical reactions out of many thousands available. This is our first glimmer that maybe there are other options.”

Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA astrobiology fellow at the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., who led the experiment, said, “This is a microbe that has solved the problem of how to live in a different way.”

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Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has claimed that Christians of “deep faith” are being penalised as he launched a campaign aimed at speaking up for Christian values in public life.

Lord Carey gave his backing to the Christian Concern Not Ashamed Day, urging Christians to “wear their faith with pride” in the face of alleged attempts to “airbrush” them from public life.

“Christianity is a public religion, always has been and always will be,” he said. “What we believe in is of paramount importance to our nation and were we to lose it, then I have no idea what will happen to the Christian faith in this country.”

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