April 2021 Newsletter
In this Clergy Letter Project update you’ll find the following ten items:
- Free Book Offer;
- Astrobiology News for April 2021: Yellowballs Revisited: New Insights into the Birth of Stars;
- Foundational Things: Values and the Substrate of Politics;
- An Evolutionary Perspective on Diversity, Both Ecological and Societal;
- Creationism in Arkansas;
- Religious and Scientific Miracles;
- Support for Evolution Shrinking – In Canada!;
- The Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne (1930-2021);
- Virtual Science and Religion Summer Programs; and
- Pseudoscience: Past and Present.
1. Free Book Offer
Dr. Lorence Collins, a retired professor of geology and a member of The Clergy Letter Project’s list of scientific consultants, has just published an exciting book entitled A Christian Geologist Explains Why the Earth Cannot be 6,000 Years Old: Let’s Heal the Divide in the Church. As the book explains, its goals are “to expose the false beliefs of young-Earth creationists regarding the age of the Earth being 6,000 years old and that Noah’s Flood must have been worldwide (global) in extent; and to suggest that the Bible is not a science text. The contents of this book can be understood by both people trained in science and those who have no background in science. It is intended to give a valuable source of insights about how science works; to provide a way to support and guide a Christian witness to the world, and to be a ‘bridge’ to make this possible.”
The book has been widely praised by scientists, educators and clergy members alike. All have found it to be a useful tool to explain modern geological principles and to use those principles to refute many of the tenets of young-Earth creationism.
Larry has generously donated copies of his book for distribution to Clergy Letter Project members who think it might be useful to prepare for Evolution Weekend 2022. (Yes, it’s not too early to begin thinking about next year’s Evolution Weekend!) I’ll award a free copy of the book (you pay for postage and handling) to every fourth person who requests one until all copies are claimed. If you’re not lucky enough to win a free copy, you can order one for yourself, your congregation or your classroom by going to www.dorrancebookstore.com.
______ Yes, I’d love a free copy of this book and I agree to pay $4 for postage and handling if selected to receive one.
_______ And, yes, I plan to participate in Evolution Weekend 2022
Name:
Congregation or similar group:
Location:
______ I don’t need a copy of the book but I do plan to participate in Evolution Weekend 2022. Please add me to the list of participants.
Name:
Congregation or similar group:
Location:
2. Astrobiology News for April 2021: Yellowballs Revisited: New Insights into the Birth of Stars
In this month’s Astrobiology News Grace Wolf-Chase, Senior Scientist and Senior Education & Communication Specialist at the Planetary Science Institute as well as a Clergy Letter Project consultant, follows up on a prior item she wrote for Astrobiology News by detailing some fascinating results she and her colleagues just published. Her work, with the help of thousands of citizen scientists, is informing all of us about the factors that go into the formation of new stars.
Six years ago during April 2015, I wrote an Astrobiology column for the Clergy Letter Project entitled, Yellow “Space Balls” and the Origin of our Solar System.(1) That column was about some very early research that my colleagues and I did on curious objects that were discovered and tagged as “yellowballs” by citizen scientists working on the Milky Way Project,(2) one of hundreds of research projects that have been launched on the online platform Zooniverse.(3) In 2016, we updated the Milky Way Project interface to make identifying and measuring the size of yellowballs a top priority. By 2017, thousands of citizen scientists had “sized up” 6,176 yellowballs across the Milky Way.
Just this month, my colleagues and I published new results on these intriguing objects.(4) While the paper in the Astrophysical Journal is a bit technical, several news outlets picked up on the press release that was issued by the Planetary Science Institute,(5) and I’ve also written a blog(6) about the research results for Zooniverse. In my April 2015 column, I noted that our early work suggested yellowballs are dusty “cocoons” enshrouding massive young stars before these stars visibly light up their birth clouds - like “prenatal” versions of the Orion Nebula star cluster. At a distance of some 1,300 light years from Earth, the Orion Nebula contains thousands of young stars, including stars that are more than 10 times as massive as our Sun and about ten thousand times brighter. These massive stars are really important because they explode after millions of years, enriching their surroundings with heavy elements that are important to life. We have several good reasons to think our Solar System formed near massive stars similar to those in the Orion Nebula.
It turns out that yellowballs are far more diverse than we originally thought. While we expect about 20% of them to evolve into clusters containing massive stars (the kind that explode after a few million years), about 80% of them won’t. Yellowballs give us “snapshots”of prenatal star clusters across an extremely broad range of masses. This is significant because we now have a large database that we can use to compare conditions that give rise to massive stars to those that don’t. Two of the most important things astronomers have learned about how stars form is that they typically form with planets and they form in close proximity to other stars. Planetary systems that have been discovered around other stars are very diverse. Most of them are very different from each other and from our Solar System. What accounts for this diversity? Learning more about the growth of star clusters will help answer this question, and we are deeply indebted to the thousands of citizen scientists who contributed their time and effort to make this research possible!
Finally, for those of you who were unable to join us on April 6, I’m happy to say that Faith in Place(7) has made our special environmental Zooniverse webinar with the Chicago Muslims Green Team(8) available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PH-e13GVJQ
If you live in Illinois, check out all the great environmental resources at Faith in Place, or find your own state affiliate of Interfaith Power & Light,(9) and take a look at their Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Statement.(10) As Michael is fond of saying, together we are making a difference!
Until next month,
Grace
Grace Wolf-Chase (gwolfchase@gmail.com)
Senior Scientist & Senior Education & Communication Specialist, Planetary Science Institute (www.psi.edu/about/staffpage/gwchase)
Vice President, Center for Advanced Study in Religion and Science (CASIRAS: www.casiras.org)
1. http://www.theclergyletterproject.org/pdf/abnews42015.pdf
2. https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/povich/milky-way-project
3. https://www.zooniverse.org/
4. Wolf-Chase, G. et al. 2021, The Astrophysical Journal, 911, 28 (17pp) (doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/abe87a)
5. https://psi.edu/news/yellowballswolfchase
6. https://blog.zooniverse.org/2021/02/
7. https://www.faithinplace.org/
8. https://chicagomuslimsgreenteam.org/
9. https://www.interfaithpowerandlight.org/about/state/
10. https://www.interfaithpowerandlight.org/about/ipls-jedi-statement/
3. Foundational Things: Values and the Substrate of Politics
In last month’s newsletter, I shared a thoughtful, moving and provocative essay written by The Reverend Ken Olson, a member of The Clergy Letter Project. I’m delighted to say that he has taken the time to offer us another wonderful essay this month entitled “Foundational Things: Values and the Substrate of Politics.”
Ken opens his piece by noting, “A quick glance might suggest this essay is about politics.” But he goes on to explain that while “these days, it’s almost impossible to escape both the term and the subject,” the core of his examination deals with how we understand the world around us and how we function in it. He offers much that is well worth our attention but let me quote a couple of sentences from early on in the essay to give you a taste of his thinking and hopefully encourage you to read the full article:
[A]t issue is not only what we can do, but what we ought to do. It is evident that this focus on what is Right is all too often overlooked or deliberately ignored. Thus, here we are in the realm of values: what we see as “the good, the true, and the beautiful,” and those are, ultimately, questions of a philosophical nature. What should we regard as having the most importance, the most substance? What is most worthy of our devotion and able to serve as our moral guidance and support? In the process, we will consider what things are truly lasting--as opposed to the insubstantial, which are such things as are destined to either slowly dissolve away or even to collapse in single disastrous instant.
4. An Evolutionary Perspective on Diversity, Both Ecological and Societal
Dr. Larry Spencer is a retired evolutionary biologist, a member of The Clergy Letter Project’s list of scientific consultants and an active member of the United Church of Christ in Plymouth, NH. In a short essay he wrote for the 2021 season of Lent, he reflects on what evolutionary biology might be able to teach us about diversity and the continued existence of the human experiment.
5. Creationism in Arkansas
Creationism may be coming to public schools in Arkansas fairly soon! A bill permitting the teaching of creationism passed the Arkansas House earlier this month. The title of the bill says it all: “An act to allow creationism as a theory of how the Earth came to exist to be taught in kindergarten through grade twelve classes in public schools and open-enrollment public charter schools; and for other purposes.”
When it was pointed out that federal courts, including the US Supreme Court, have consistently ruled that the teaching of creationism in public schools is unconstitutional, the bill’s sponsor responded by saying she hoped the new composition of the Supreme Court would permit her bill to be legally acceptable.
6. Religious and Scientific Miracles
Rabbi Geoff Mitelman is a member of The Clergy Letter Project and founding director of Sinai and Synapses. He is also a wonderful writer and careful thinker. He recently wrote a piece entitled “Religious and Scientific Miracles” that you won’t want to miss.
7. Support for Evolution Shrinking – In Canada!
Our good friends at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) just reported on a recent poll conducted in Canada about the acceptance of creationism. The research yielded some unsettling results as can be seen by the opening paragraph in the NCSE article:
Three in five Canadians think that human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, according to a new poll — but less than half think that creationism should not be part of the public school curriculum.
The article went on to note that “support for evolution was slightly lower and support for creationism was slightly higher than they were in similar surveys conducted in Canada in 2018 and 2019.”
8. The Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne (1930-2021)
The Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, often described as one of the most influential figures in the field of science and religion, passed away last month. The Rev. William J. Graham Jr. offered the following brief reflection in his passing:
The Rev. John C. Polkinghorne, a world leader in promoting a positive relationship between science and religion, died on March 9, 2021 at the age of 90.
Polkinghorne was an outstanding physicist in the area of quantum mechanics and played a pivotal role in the discovery of the quark, a sub-atomic particle of matter. He served various posts in North America and England in the 1950's and 1960's. He became a fellow in the Royal Society in 1974.
He was an important role model for me in the 1960's when I began my adult life with a career in Chemical Engineering and seven year later entered seminary to study theology.
His work in promoting a positive relationship between science and religion involved his work with the Research Scientists' Christian Fellowship (later renamed Christians in Science).
In 1979, he announced his decision to resign his professorship at Cambridge and become a priest in the Church of England. He served the church in numerous roles which led to his being knighted in 1997. He delivered the 1993-4 Gifford Lectures with his "Science & Christian Belief: Theological Reflections of a Bottom-up Thinker." One of his many positions was to chair the Church of England's Science, Medicine, and Technology Committee.
He once wrote, "Theology and science differ greatly in the nature of the subject of their concern. Yet each is attempting to understand aspects of the way the world is."
To add to these wonderful words by Rev. Graham, here are links to the obituaries of Rev. Polkinghorne that appeared in Church Times and on the John Templeton Foundation web site.
9. Virtual Science and Religion Summer Programs
With summer quickly approaching, some of you may be thinking of summer projects for your kids or for their youth groups. Grace Wolf-Chase is on top of this for you and invites those of you who may be interested in including a science component to your summer youth programs to check out https://sciencereligiondialogue.org/projects/zooniverse/ and to contact her (gwolfchase@gmail.com) if you'd like to talk about ways to include online citizen science as a part of your program.
10. Pseudoscience: Past and Present
The latest issue of Covalence, a publication of the Lutheran Alliance for Faith, Science and Technology, is devoted to pseudoscience. It is filled with a series of fascinating articles that you won’t want to miss. You can access Covalence here.
Concluding Thoughts
As you can see from a number of items in this month’s newsletter, our work explaining how religion and science can positively influence one another is far from over. Similarly, our work making it clear that those who try to make their extreme religious perspective the norm for all religions do not speak for thousands of clergy members from across the political and religious spectrum is also far from over. And, unfortunately, the pandemic is also not yet over – with some loud voices claiming vaccines are either unsafe or unnecessary while far too many continue to die every day. To date, worldwide, more than three million people have perished from Covid-19 and the numbers continue to rise even as vaccines have begun to make a significant positive impact. Please do what you can to remain safe and to protect your family, friends and communities. And please encourage others to make use of a vaccine when the opportunity arises. Together we can make a better, safer world.
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. Spread the word; change the world. Together we are making a difference.
Stay safe and healthy.
Michael
Michael Zimmerman
Founder and Executive Director
The Clergy Letter Project
www.theclergyletterproject.org
mz@theclergyletterproject.org