{"id":46,"date":"2005-07-04T13:24:01","date_gmt":"2005-07-04T20:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qpr.ca\/blog\/?p=46"},"modified":"2005-07-05T01:59:17","modified_gmt":"2005-07-05T08:59:17","slug":"review-of-polkingthorne-on-sciencereligion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/2005\/07\/04\/review-of-polkingthorne-on-sciencereligion\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of Polkinghorne on Science&#038;Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Arts&#038;Letters Daily on June 17 linked to this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.firstthings.com\/ftissues\/ft0505\/reviews\/bar.html\">review<\/a> of a book by physicist turned anglican theologian John Polkinghorne. According to the review:<br \/>\n< <\nPolkinghorne does not wish to be in \u201cunthinking thrall to the past\u201d or to authority, whether in the form of a book or a Church. And yet, he also wishes to avoid the danger of \u201cloose individualism\u201d or \u201crampant relativism\u201d that could lead to \u201cwillful or fantastic manipulation\u201d of the Word of God. He acknowledges that some \u201cdegree of control\u201d must be exercised by \u201cthe oversight of a truth-seeking community\u201d and \u201cthe sifting and receiving role played by the whole Christian community.\u201d\n>><br \/>\nBut history shows that \u201cwillful or fantastic manipulation\u201d of the &#8220;Word of God&#8221; is exactly the forte of religions of all kinds. In fact any claim to be presenting the &#8220;Word of God&#8221;  should be taken as a signal to the contrary, and we would all be better off if Moses second   commandment (or third depending on how you count them) were applied in the strictest possible sense &#8211; ie any claim to or delegation of authority re the will or word of &#8220;God&#8221; should be taken as blasphemy and dealt with accordingly.<\/p>\n<p>It would then turn out that whatever ethical behaviour we have evolved to manifest would in fact be carried out and that \u201cloose individualism\u201d or \u201crampant relativism\u201d would lead to as sane and civilized society as we are capable of &#8211; which would be far more sane and civilized than any that have arisen under the auspices of an authoritarian religion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arts&#038;Letters Daily on June 17 linked to this review of a book by physicist turned anglican theologian John Polkinghorne. According to the review: < < Polkinghorne does not wish to be in \u201cunthinking thrall to the past\u201d or to authority, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/2005\/07\/04\/review-of-polkingthorne-on-sciencereligion\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}