For a true writer, each book should be
a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment.
He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have
tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

I am presently writing a book that is certainly beyond my
attainment. I am writing theological fiction. The idea is to wrestle with the
theological question of what happens when we die. It will be a myth, a
metaphor, and not an attempt at systematic theology. In some ways, it will be a retelling of
C.S. Lewis’ amazing book, The Great
Divorce. When I describe it like that, it is clear why it is beyond my
abilities. Yet, with luck, and by God’s grace, it just might be something worth
reading. Watch for it – coming soon, The Great Beyond.

Dr. Louise Banks: If you immerse yourself into a foreign
language, then you can actually rewire your brain.
Ian Donnelly: Yeah, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It’s the
theory that the language you speak determines how you think and…
Dr. Louise Banks: Yeah, it affects how you see everything.
Arrival, 2017, Directed by Denis Villeneuve, written by Eric Heisserer (screenplay), and Ted
Chiang (short-story).

Sapir–Whorf
hypothesis: the structure of a language affects its speakers’ world view or
cognition. The language we speak is inimitably tied to the reality we
experience. “Linguistic
Relativity,” Wikipedia, accessed 2017-04-12.

Lately, I have been
thinking about how I think. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that the
structure of a language affects the world view of those who speak it. How much
does my language affect the way in which I think? How much does my personality
affect the structure of my mind? What about my culture and my language? What
about my micro-cultural experiences and my language? What about my family
experiences and ways of thinking? These are questions we do not normally ask
about ourselves. The answers are hard to get at. How do I know that my concept
of time and your concept of time are the same? When I say “blue” do you and I
see the same thing in mind’s eye? What comes to mind when I say “father”; for
you; for me?

The Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis suggests that the structure of a language affects the world-view of
those who speak that language. Some linguists believe that there might be a strong
version of this hypothesis that says that once one learns a language, their brain
is wired for certain conceptualizations which are intrinsic to that language. Others
would only subscribe to a weak version of the hypothesis and suggest that a
language can have some influence upon our world-view but that the concepts are
malleable.

I am not a linguist
and not qualified to explain the concepts any more than this; but a recent
experience with my daughter has helped me understand some of the differences in
the ways in which we think. I was at my daughter’s home in Langley when the spring
weather changed and went from sunshine with a few clouds, to a cloudburst that
included heavy rain and frozen water.  It
will be clear in a moment why I called this “frozen water.” My daughter looked
out the window and said, “It is hailing!” With some shock, I rose and looked
out the window to see small pellets of ice falling from the sky. Now,
technically these tiny pellets would qualify as hail, but my first reaction was
to call them sleet, or ice pellets. Why the difference? Although she is my
daughter, we each grew up in different micro-cultures. I grew up on a farm
where the word “hail” struck fear in the hearts of men, women, and children.
Hail, perhaps only second to tornadoes (which occur very infrequently where I
grew up), is one of the most feared weather phenomena. Hail, destroys crops
and takes away the livelihood of farmers. It is the difference between a year
of bins full of grain, bank accounts capable of making loan payments and buying
extra Christmas gifts; and taking the small sum of money from crop insurance so
that there is hope of buying seed for next year. Our daughter, grew up in the
city where hail might damage the garden or the shingles but did little more. “Hail”
is not a fearful word for her. When my daughter uses the word hail we each
have different reactions. “Hail” affects how each of us think and the effects
are quite different.

The movie Arrival made much of the strong version
of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and used it as a major feature of the plot. In
this movie, based upon a short-story, linguists learned the language of an
advanced alien race and, in so doing, developed the ability to see the universe
in the way in which the aliens saw the universe. The Heptapods, as the aliens
were known because of their seven-limbed morphology, had the ability to see
their lives in a continuous circle from beginning to end. The linguist Louise,
learns the language to such a degree that she can see the beginning and end of
the life of Hannah, her daughter, all at once, even before Hannah’s life begins.
Working linguists can enjoy the fact that the movie delves into contemporary
issues of scientific linguistics, but would be quick to say that the movie took
even the strongest version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to an extreme.

If we understand our
smart-phones as a form of computer-mediated language, there is one way in which
a weaker version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis may come into play. An article
in the journal, Science News,
entitled “Smartphones may be changing the way we think,”[1]
says that there are initial indications that our electronic devices may be
rewiring our brains. Although the study is preliminary, researchers suggest
that smart phones are changing our brains; we just don’t know the details of
those changes. Thus, those who grow up with the constant presence of this fifth
appendage may use different thought processes than those who adapted to the
device later in life; but all are affected by using smart phones.

Think about how we
navigate in the world. Until a few years ago, if you wanted to go to a place
across town or across the country, you pulled out a map and planned your route.
As you drove, you either had to stop and refer to the map from time to time or
have a trusted friend as your co-navigator. Remember the major arguments that
developed between friends or husbands and wives when the navigating did not go
well? Now, in the GPS era, we put the destination into our smart phone and
listen to the pleasant tones of the smart phone voice as it guides us to our
destination. We don’t even need to know where we are in the world, our device
already knows that. Just be careful when navigating to Springfield, USA –
choose the correct one or you might end up in a totally different corner of
America than you planned.

Language and thought
processes are clearly, tightly linked. The degree to which our language imposes
restrictions on our thinking is not clear. Much more research needs to be done
in this area. Perhaps someone reading this blog will recognize the need for
linguistic studies and decide to choose it as a career path; or perhaps, I have
not clearly specified the terms and concepts and readers will leave more
confused. How will my thought processes affect those of others?

Bruce Cockburn has
written many brilliant songs, but the one that is on my mind tonight is “Pacing
the Cage” (1996, The Charity of the Night).
He captures humanity’s angst well. Who can’t relate to this song in some
way? We long for something more than this cage in which we find ourselves; we’ve
lived too long and want to escape. I could extemporize for a while about this
song, but Cockburn’s poetry is best read without comment. Meditate upon these words
and see what they say to you.

This past week I spent
three days with 300 other people discussing Science and Faith, Evolutionary
Creation, Theology, and how we understand our Creator God in the light of recent
scientific discoveries. I was in Houston at the BioLogos 2017 Conference. This
conference draws speakers and attenders from a variety of fields. We had
keynote speakers from the fields of astronomy, molecular genetics, New
Testament theology, Old Testament theology, sociology, particle physics, pastoral
care, and engineering. There were participants from each of those disciplines
plus, virology, microbiology, Christian education, chemistry, psychology, journalism,
aero-space science, and many others. I met a young woman about the age of my
daughters who was there because she wanted to have honest discussions about
science and faith with her own two daughters. She found a great deal of support
from the group and went home with information to help in her faith journey and
that of her daughters. One of the foremost astronomers in America admitted that
she had never found community because other scientists were suspicious of her
faith and Christians were suspicious of her science. A pastor stood up and
apologized on behalf of Christians and the crowd gave a warm round of applause.

There were many
lighter moments as well. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institute of
Health in the USA, and NT Wright, one of the world’s foremost theologians, sang
two song parodies that reminded the audience of the transformation underway in
science and Christianity. You can find their guitar playing, singing
performance on You-tube (not great quality but it captures an historic moment).

There were many
plenary and workshop presentations worthy of discussion at this year’s event,
but allow me today, to focus on just one: NT Wright’s lecture entitled, “Christ
in the Cosmos.” He affirmed the New Testament understanding that the creation
was made through the Word. He referred to Colossians 1:11-15, part of which
says that, “all things were created through him (Jesus) and for him (Jesus).”
Wright reminded his audience that if we stay focused on Jesus, we will be
better equipped to understand the nature of creation.

NT Wright pointed out
that, in the Gospels, Jesus has much to say about the Kingdom of God, which is
the new creation. So, if we better understand the new creation, we will better
understand the nature of the first creation. Both creations, new and first,
overcome chaos and bring order. The new creation is compared to a mustard seed
that starts out small but progresses and grows and becomes a large plant. Now,
as I go beyond what NT Wright said, but perhaps capture the sentiment toward
which he alluded, no one expects the mustard seed to go from small to large in
one leap, we know that it progresses from seed, to sprout, to two-leaf stage,
to multi-leaf stage, to small bush, to become the plant into which it is
designed to grow.

Wright also spoke of
the New Kingdom of God being like a field of wheat which contains weeds or
tares which grow along with the wheat. Any farmer knows that the weeds that
grow along with the wheat are useless and are merely taking up resources in the
field. Yet, as Jesus tells his audience, the farmer in the parable allows the
weeds to grow with the wheat and removes them later. This is a picture of the
new creation; but is it not also a picture of the first creation? As we
consider evolutionary creation, the useless weeds that grow along with the good
wheat may be compared to the dead-ends of evolution. Evolution of species from
one to another dictates several paths. Some paths lead to a viable species,
well-suited to its environment; and some paths lead to extinction and a loss of
that genetic line. Could these extinctions, and lost genetic lines, correspond
to the tares or weeds? Such speculation and thinking is helpful to our understanding
of how God may have initiated the first creation. I say initiated, because the
creation, as we know it, is still happening. At the BioLogos 2017 Conference, Deborah
Haarsma showed an image of stars presently being born in the universe and
reminded us that God is still in the business of creating. There is a continual
process that has gone on since Jesus, the Word, started the Big Bang.

Contemporary science
gives us evidence that the universe is still being created. The New Kingdom of
God is a kingdom that is growing in our midst. Surely, it is not a large step
to consider an evolutionary development of our world. We would do well to meditate
upon these things and see if they bring about a better understanding of this
amazing creation in which we live.

Seamus
O’Regan is an MP for St. John’s South, Mount Pearl. On St. Patrick’s Day of
this year he made some statements about refugees in Canada. Now, whatever I may
think of Seamus O’Regan, and I would not agree with everything he says, here, I
think he makes a good point. He reminded us that in and around the year 1847,
“One-hundred thousand destitute Irish immigrants, ‘leaving a devastating famine
behind them, fleeing terror and persecution,’ arrived at a time when the
Dominion of Canada numbered just 1.5 million, O’Regan noted.”

 “Some
38,000 Irish passed through Toronto in 1847. Toronto then, was a city of only
20,000 people.

 [We
do well to remember] that in 1847, there were enough, just enough Canadians who
rose above the frank, blatant, decades-long discrimination of the day, and gave
those immigrants a chance to become Canadians themselves.”^[1] It
is hard for us to comprehend this, but in 1847, the Irish were viewed much like
Muslims in our day. People were suspicious and scared of them and did not want
them in their country.

By the world’s standards, it is foolishness to
welcome 100,000 people into a country of 1.5 million people. It is foolishness
to welcome 38,000 people into a city of 20,000 people. But, by God’s economy and God’s wisdom,
we are to welcome the stranger, the alien, the homeless. Deuteronomy 10:17-19
says,

When we read the Bible
with God’s wisdom, when we read it as story that reveals God, rather than a
rule book, we develop a relationship with the God of the Bible. It is not easy to read our Bibles like this. It is
much easier to try to turn our Bible’s into rule books; but God calls us to
something greater. We need constantly to read the Bible seeking to understand
the heart of God. We need daily to ask God to be our wisdom as we read his word.

Daily, we need
to pray,

Science News is
asking questions about animal intelligence in an article about otters and tool use in a March 21, 2017 article. The article entitled, “Tool use in sea otters doesn’t run in the family,” suggests that using
rocks to crack open snails and other shells to get at the rich food inside, may
truly be a learned behavior that each generation must discover.

Those who read this
blog regularly will know that I am fascinated with the intelligence of animals.
(You can read a quick summary here and find links to other articles on this subject in the same place.) Most of
the writing and reading I have done on this subject has emphasized the learned
aspect of such behaviour. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that crows
teach other crows the techniques related to breaking open mussel shells and
staying away from strangers. So, it is not surprising that researchers are
having a difficult time finding the gene responsible for tool use in otters.
However, I would caution us that just because a gene carrying this propensity
has not been found, does not mean that the gene does not exist. The author of
the paper even admits this when she suggests that “sea otters may all be
predisposed to using tools because their ancestors probably lived off
mollusks, which required cracking open.” Could it be that all otters carry
the gene for tool use and only use it when necessary?

I am thankful for authors who give us interesting summaries
of research papers. At the very same time, I am cautious about how that data is
characterized. I encourage us to read with great discernment, “wise as serpents
and gentle as doves.”

Theorists
and observational astronomers alike have a problem: they can’t find Dark
Matter! Einstein and others before and since have postulated that there is
something out there that we can’t see. Theoretically, Dark Matter is just that, matter in the universe which is dark because it does not interact with
electro-magnetic waves. Also, by definition, it interacts with gravity and
constitutes more than 80% of the mass of the universe.

One might
readily ask, how do we know that Dark Matter is out there? When mathematicians,
theorists, and astronomers do the math, and here I am referring to massive
calculations that start with principles and assumptions and end with a
reasonable proof of how the universe might function, they find that there is not
enough mass in the universe to account for the ways in which gravity is
affected. Therefore, they introduce a material, an “X,” that must exist but
cannot be seen to account for this. We call this “X,” Dark Matter.

True, it is
not a very satisfying way to arrive at the existence of something. Many
experiments have been done, or are in progress, to see if Dark Matter can be physically
proven to exist. So far, every one of these experiments has been negative or
inconclusive.

One answer,
that is slowly being accepted by more and more of the research community, is
that perhaps Dark Matter does not exist and we should simply stop looking for
the material. The problem with this is that one must find some other way to
account for “X.” If Dark Matter does not exist, how do we explain the
gravitational effects on the regular matter of the universe?

It is
tempting to invoke a “hand of God” explanation for this. The NIV translation of
the Bible says in Psalm 8:3,

“When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,”

It sounds like God is simply holding the moon and stars and
other heavenly bodies in their rightful place; but, this is not how we see God
at work in the rest of his creation. He does not create black-boxes into
which we cannot look or see the mechanism. Yes, God made the DNA molecule that
accounts for the information transmission of living things, but he has allowed
us to uncover the workings of DNA and even how to manipulate it for our own satisfaction
and health. God created the “X” of the universe, but he likely has not put it
out of bounds for us to research the “X.”

We await more experiments, more calculations, and more
definitive studies to elucidate the nature of “X.” Is it indeed Dark Matter? Is
it something else? Many will continue to work on the question, for certainly
there is a Nobel prize waiting at the end of the search.

The
International Space Station (ISS) flew over my home a few minutes ago. When you
know where to look it is easy to pick out of a clear sky one or two
hours before sunrise or one or two hours after sunset. The ISS circumnavigates
our planet in approximately 90 minutes and appears from earth as a fast-moving
light traveling from a westerly direction to an easterly direction. Today, at
5:39 am, it was very close to the centre of the sky, halfway between north and
south. An app such as Sky Guide helps me keep track of ISS flyovers and the location of planets in the night
sky. You can also go to the ISS Astroviewer to get an image of the present
location of the ISS.

It is
fascinating to think of the six astronauts racing overhead at 7.66 km/sec.
Presently, the crew consists of three Russians (Roscosmos), two Americans
(NASA), and one French (ESA); under the command of Robert Shane Kimbrough
(NASA). This crew represents Expedition 50 and has been assigned to study several
human biomedical research questions. NASA states that the purpose of this mission is to “investigate how lighting can change the overall health
and well-being of crew members, how microgravity can affect the genetic
properties of space-grown plants, and how microgravity impacts tissue
regeneration in humans.”.
The crew are the test-subjects in their research work. As the present mission
nears completion, the crew have been in space for 120 to 150 days and a crew
change is scheduled to occur in early May, 2017.

Yesterday, I quoted Scot McKnight saying, “sinfulness
has spread throughout the human race from its first beginnings and … each
individual has contributed their own share to it.” Adam and the Genome (Venema
and McKnight, 2017, BrazosPress). It made me think of this song by Jonathon
Foreman:

Broken from the Start

(words and music by Jon Foreman)
(Listen
while you read the lyrics)

(Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh)
Life is a gift like fresh cut roses
Cut from the branch and brought inside
It’s a slow contradiction, it’s beauty in a vase
When our cords are cut that’s when we start to die

(Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh)
Lately death and life get so confusing
I can’t tell the difference here tonight
Lately every breath feels like I’m kissing death
And when time is dead I cease to be alive

If you hide yourself deep inside
Deep inside
In time you’ve got nothing left to hide
There’s nothing left inside
Tonight, honey
I’m gonna break your heart
Mine was broken from the start
Broken from the start

Death and life, cords cut, starting to die, hiding yourself
until there is nothing left to hide. Signs of The Fall and signs of our own
sin. 

Scot
McKnight on Romans 5:12-21

“… he is
not saying that all have sinned in Adam and therefore die but instead that each person, like Adam, sins and
therefore dies because of that sinning. Humans somehow inherit something
from Adam, but they do not die because of the inheritance but because they sin.
Perhaps all Paul means when he says “so death spread to all” is that death
spread because, like Adam, everyone sins.
Yes, there is a sense of corporateness in Romans 5:18-19, which needs to be
repeated here so that we can see that corporateness:

Therefore just as one man’s
trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads
to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man’s
disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many
will be made righteous. (NRSV)

“… Paul’s meaning must in any case be both that an entail of
sinfulness has spread throughout the human race from its first beginnings and
that each individual has contributed their own share to it. Paul offers no
further clue as to how the first of these actually works or how the two
interrelate.”

Both quotes are taken from pages 185 and 187 of Adam and the
Genome (Venema and McKnight, 2017, BrazosPress).

I look forward to hearing McKnight in person at the BioLogos
2017 Conference in Houston, Texas. Perhaps I will have an opportunity to ask
some of my theological questions.