Introduction to Nanotheology, Part 4: Going Medieval

Before I embark on really walking through my ideas, I've been debating what nanotheology really means. (Also, I have three conferences this month and two big deadlines next month, so I've been posting a little infrequently.) What concerns me most about nanotheology is, how is it really theology? Isn't it a bottom-up enterprise while theology should be top-down? Since I admire Karl Barth, shouldn't I follow his model of understanding the importance of God's own specific revelation through Jesus rather than what we can glean by looking at creation?

A book that I recently read during my "blogging break" helped crystallize these questions for me. It was Stanley Hauerwas' Gifford Lectures, titled With the Grain of the Universe. The Gifford Lectures are a prominent series established long ago at St. Andrews University to discuss natural theology. Many prominent theologians and scientists have taken up the challenge in different ways: recent Gifford lecturers have ranged from Carl Sagan to Alasdair MacIntyre to, well, Stanley Hauerwas. What's especially nice about Hauerwas's lectures is that they engage three previous prominent lecturers: William James, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Karl Barth. They tell a story and set the stage for Hauerwas' own natural theology, which is centered on the revelation of Jesus. If that seems paradoxical to you, it probably would have seemed so to Lord Gifford as well.

I admire Hauerwas and Barth, and I think the fact that Barth's theology allowed him to stand up to Nazi Germany when much of the rest of the church was being co-opted and strong-armed is a powerful "experiment" proving the strength of Barth's stance. And (to hear some discuss it) Barth hated natural theology. He saw it as an excuse for a man-centered, rather than a God-centered theology. As Hauerwas explains, it's not exactly natural theology vs. Barth, but it's more complex than that. There's clearly a tension. With this tension in mind, how does one undergo a God-centered natural theology project without lapsing into fussy sentimentalism or rigid materialism?

Most of this I will work out by trying, and by demonstrating. I don't intend to discard revelation and prove God from first principles here. Rather, I want to find metaphors at newly discovered levels that are coherent with the revelation established and given. I think it's most important to point out that my intention is not to find some microscopic proof that would force people to believe in God. There is nothing out there like that, quite the opposite. God doesn't force us to love him (and couldn't!). Therefore, Carl Sagan's Gifford Lectures were all about how God doesn't exist. That is where natural theology leads if you intend to start from nature and end up in theology.

My intention is different, more like that of Thomas Aquinas (I hope!). People look at Aquinas' proofs for God and think they look kind of silly these days. And they do look silly if by proof you mean evidence that forces a skeptic to a conclusion. That wasn't Aquinas' intention. Let me quote Hauerwas:

"For example, although Aquinas's Prima Pars of the Summa is often identified as natural theology, Aquinas never so described his work. George Hendry observes that it is seldom noticed that the so-called proofs for the existence of God were perfected at a time when the existence of God was barely questioned. Calling attention to what he calls Aquinas's 'little coda' that ends each of the five ways -- 'and this everyone understands to be God' -- Hendry notes that the problem in the time of Aquinas 'was not really to persuade people to believe in God, but to help them to relate their belief in God to the nature and conditions of the world and to see that their belief in God and their understanding of the world mutually illumine each other.'"

When reading this, I realized that I was assuming an almost-medieval mindset, saying, we know this about God from scripture, we know this about nature from science, what do the two say when we put them next to each other? So that's what I see in nature: not a proof of God, but a world illuminated by revelation. I'm talking about what I see, not trying to make you see it this way, if that's the way to put it. It's a combination of two things, not trying to employ one of them in the service of the other. Two books, two eyes, separate but focused on the same thing, and overlapping.

Which makes me wonder if "nanotheology" isn't a misnomer. This is really more about the nano than the theology. But if it's understood at the start that the theology comes from revelation and the nano comes from science, then we're talking about the point where two rivers meet.

So that's my idea. Any questions? Examples? Thoughts?

Mr. Spock's Favorite Baseball Website

Fans of the original Star Trek will recall how Mr. Spock has the helpful habit of being able to calculate his odds of survival at odd moments during the episode. Now we have a baseball site that can do the same thing for your team, live. Here it is:

http://www.fangraphs.com/livescoreboard.aspx

These are graphs of "Win Probability Added," updated live for every game in the league. What these do is they take the point where you are in every game (bottom of the fifth, one man on second, two outs, score 7-1 against the home team) and based on the history of recorded baseball it can tell you how many teams in that precise position won their game.

For instance, the Mariners are in that position right now, and they have a 4% chance of winning the game. It's like having Mr. Spock next to you telling you the chances of winning this game are 1 out of 25.

Oops, out of the fifth inning now with no change in score. Odds are now 1 out of 33 and dropping fast.

Therefore, I am currently blogging to the tune of American Idol.

In Praise of Bacon Sandwiches

One of the best food experiences I've ever had was on an early morning, leaving Edinburgh, just off High Street among the gray granite walls and old churches turned into office space. I saw a sign for "Bacon Rolls," and I have never been quite the same since. I'm a sucker for food that is widely available, cheap, and good (well, good-tasting, not necessarily good in any other sense). Bacon rolls/sandwiches in Britain are all three. British bacon is different from American bacon, and when put on bread that's like a fluffy dinner roll, with butter, it becomes sublime.

Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so. A group of scientists in Britain have conducted a rigorous study of 700 variants to determine the equation for the perfect bacon sandwiches. Since this is an intense area of personal (although non-funded) study for me, I was interested to get into the literature. Here it is:

N = C + {fb(cm) · fb(tc)} + fb(Ts) + fc · ta

And an excerpt from the New York Times to explain:

"In the experiment, some of the tasters sampled between four and six bacon sandwiches a day for three or four days."

"And so the formula evolved to establish the amount of force in the bite, expressed in newtons, and the level of noise, expressed in decibels, to make the perfect crunch."

"Ideally, Danish Bacon said, 0.4 newtons should be applied to crunch the sandwich, creating 0.5 decibels of noise. The formula uses these values: N = force in newtons; fb is the function of the bacon type; fc is the function of the condiment or filling effect; Ts is the serving temperature; tc is cooking time; ta is the time taken to insert the condiment or filling; cm is the cooking method and C represents the breaking strain in newtons of uncooked bacon."

I just want to know, why didn't I hear about the fact that they offer grant money for this kind of thing? A bacon-research sabbattical in Britain is looking pretty good right now.

To quote Everybody Loves Raymond:
Ray: (Reading from the Christmas letter about Frank.) "His love affair with bacon continues."

Inbetween the Now and the Not-Yet

I always look forward to Easter more than any other holiday. For the past decade or so, it has seemed to take me by surprise, to the point where I think I started to define myself by "Easter is my favorite holiday." One of my favorite topics is the resurrection passages of the gospels, and one of my favorite books the NT Wright 800-page volume on the same subject (don't knock it till you try it!). One of the reasons I was excited about co-teaching a 1 Corinthians Sunday School class was the chance to teach 1 Corinthians 15, the chapter about the resurrection (past and future). And so this year, for the first time in years, Easter surprised me the other way, as being a let-down. Nothing big or huge, or dark-night-of-the-soulish, just "here it comes, there it goes."

It reminds me of the year when I was about, I don't know, 14 or 15, and Christmas presents just weren't the thrill that they used to be. I remember looking around and thinking that Christmas is over and it just wasn't the big deal it used to be. I know that years later, as I explored more theology and music, Christmas came back, and now that it's more about being Santa Claus than waiting for Santa Claus, there are dimensions that are open now that just weren't there before.

So it's not like I'm losing faith or anything, it's just, I wish every Easter could be a 10/10, but this one, probably has to be a 7/10 or something like that. I've just thought about the resurrection and 1 Corithians so much that when the Big Day came, I enjoyed the worship and the message, but didn't feel the earth move under my feet or anything.

I suppose it was less Matthew 28, more Mark 16.

I don't necessarily take this as a sign that something's "wrong." I think some holidays, like some days, are more like you expect than others, and sometimes your expectations just don't happen. Sometimes God's right there, and sometimes He's more subtle. People like Richard Dawkins complain because they can't objectively detect God with their instruments, that there's no 10 commandments carved on the moon for all to see, or anything undeniable like that. All I know is it seems to be in God's personality, or some theological necessity, for God to be distant or difficult at times, for the future promises to be more "wait a while for that" rather than fully realized right here, right now. I think He teaches us to be OK with that. Anything, even Christmas, even Easter, can become a substitute for Him, can be idolized.

So Happy Easter Monday. In Italy they're rolling the cheeses, in England they have a Bank Holiday, and here I've got a new week of teaching and writing to do, so best to get on with it. I know I'll see God's hand in many ways this week, but I can't say for sure exactly how it will come, maybe not with trumpets or rushing wind but maybe with a still small voice. No way to find out but to do the experiment.

The sower comes by morning to scatter light like seed
But clouds are round about you, shadows veil your eyes
And when we come as children, you give us all we need
Clouds are round about you, shadows veil your eyes
Shadows veil your eyes

Tomb of Star Trek

One last Talpiot-Tomb related link before this whole thing rightfully subsides into academic oblivion:

http://targuman.org/blog/?p=589

Introduction to Nanotheology, Part 3: Lenten Fasting

In the spirit of the season, I'd like to give a sketch of what exactly I mean by nanotheology. Most people, however Protestant they may be, give up something for Lent as a form of fasting. One year we gave up TV on half the days of the week. I know someone who gave up chocolate, or caffeine. Until the hairshirt comes back in style, these kind of things are the normal, evangelical-style Lent I've observed, and it's good. What I want to point out is that unless you're addicted to caffeine (and that's another subject entirely) none of these are physical deprivations, they're more habitual, emotional, spiritual, etc. But if you give up food itself for a considerable period, you end up with a change in your life that's so drastic that your body itself changes how it works, or more specifically, the fuel that it runs on.

Here's how the biochemistry works: when you eat something, that's literally wood for the fire. You "burn it" by combining carbon with oxygen, and you get carbon dioxide, water, and energy out the other end. The chemistry of the process is just like when you place a match to a piece of newspaper, but in a much more controlled fashion. First you've got to chop up the "logs" to make them small enough to burn (more on that later), but then you've got to get the chopped-up food to the brain and muscles, which are burning molecules like there's no tomorrow in their duty to keep your body running. To transport from the stomach or liver to the brain or muscle, you've got a nice network of roads that you know better as the circulatory system: the blood. The thing is, your blood is mostly water, a river that connects all your organs. So you need to make sure the "wood" you're sending to the brain will "float" in the water, or in chemistry terms, will mix with your watery blood so it stays in the river and off of the banks. The best molecule for this is a sugar molecule, glucose.

Glucose is a circle of 6 carbon atoms bristling with 6 oxygen atoms on the outside. Because water itself is made of oxygen (plus 2 little hydrogens, hence H2O), the oxygen atoms mix well with the water and keep the glucose "afloat." Then the brain can just pull in glucose from the blood and burn, baby, burn. So after you eat a big meal with lots of sugar, your blood glucose goes up and your brain has a field day (much like when I gave Red Bug and his brother, who I think I'll call "Green Dog," hot chocolate at 8pm the other night; not a good idea, by the way).

The thing is, what happens once the food is digested and there's no more sugar in the stomach? The liver can bring sugar out of storage, it can make a little more sugar on its own, and it can burn fat for its own energy, but for very interesting reasons I can't go into right now, it cannot make sugar from fat. Plants can do that, but we can't. So if the liver runs out of stored glucose, your blood glucose drops, and if it drops too far, you're in danger of the brain shutting down from lack of food, otherwise known as a diebetic coma.

Good thing there's a backup system. You see, one of the reasons we use glucose to feed the brain through the blood is that fat, although it's great at providing energy, doesn't "float" or mix well with water. It's like, well, oil and water. So when the glucose drops we can't send fat through the blood to feed the brain, but the body has a second-best option: tiny chopped-up fat molecules. If the fat is made smaller, and a few oxygens are stuck on it for good measure, it just barely floats and is able to mix with the blood long enough to make it to the brain. The energy-starved brain says "Not my favorite, but it will do" and feeds the chopped-up fat to its mitochondria, which burn it and turn it into energy (again, mitochondria are another topic for another day!).

This back-up system, these chopped-up mini-Me fat molecules, are somewhat quaintly called "ketone bodies," and if you remember any organic chemistry, you'll recall that ketones are a bit nasty. One of the "ketone bodies" is actually acetone, which you may know better as nail polish remover. So it's obviously not physically ideal to be running your brain off nail polish remover, but it's good enough for government work. Also, the ketone bodies aren't able to carry as much energy as glucose, so the pieces of wood are smaller and the resulting "fire" is not as big. If you've ever gone hungry, you find yourself not thinking quite as clearly -- I think some of that is because "This is your brain on ketone bodies." Oh, and lest I forget, these ketones are acidic. So not only are they not as good at their job, they also lower the pH of your blood, not quite to the level where you have a sudden urge to hiss and fight Sigorney Weaver, but it's still not a good thing. People with lots of ketones in their blood will be in a state of both "ketosis" and "acidosis." I like how "ketosis" is one letter removed from "kenosis," the Greek word for "emptying" that describes what Jesus did in his first Advent (see Philippians 2:5-8). Physical emptying and spritual emptying are two sides of the same coin, or two angles of viewing the same object.

All this is to say, when your stomach and liver run out of glucose, and your brain is being fueled by fat, it is feeding off a sub-standard low-octane fuel ... and that is a physical difference that may cause the brain itself to run differently, physically. You experience this as a different feeling when you're fasting, and maybe even you think different thoughts. I suspect these differences are actually conducive to "spiritual things" ("pneumatikon" in Greek, see 1 Cor 12:1) in a direct cause-and-effect manner. The fact that they have a physical cause does not exclude a spiritual effect -- the two are linked, just as our brains are intimately linked to our spirits, even in the same cause-and-effect kind of relationship.

So, when thinking about fasting, consider the ketones, how cutting out one thing from your diet is one kind of good, but cutting out everything from your diet for some hours, or for a day, may add a new dimension of mental space for God to work in. Since that's the point of fasting, consider making it more "real" by physically going without the food you need (diabetics need not apply!).

Giving up food as a fasting discipline. I wonder why I haven't heard of this before? Oh, right, that's because Jesus said not to talk about it too much. Therefore ...

The Past and Future of Red Hair

A recent issue of Science magazine included the article "Why I Have Red Hair, Need to Avoid the Sun, and Shouldn't Commit a Crime" by Ingrid Wickelgren. We have now pinpointed the gene that causes red hair. It's called MC1R, which is for a receptor on the surface of skin cells. If a mutation messes up the receptor enough that it doesn't work anymore, you have a defective MC1R gene. If you get defective MC1Rs from both your father and your mother, there's a ~90% chance that you will have red hair, pale skin, and the propensity to broil rather than bake in the sun.

So, I have a child who would have no problem being admitted to Arthur Conan Doyle's red-headed league (let's call him Red Bug). He's even got an Irish name, in the spirit of this mid-March season. His skin is pale white, so different from his older brother's that in the bath they look like two different races. So Red Bug's hair and Red Bug's skin both tell me he's probably got two bad MC1Rs, one from me and one from my wife. Sorry, kid. Still, I wouldn't trade that red mop for anything.

Furthermore, a bad MC1R also means you're at more than a three-fold higher risk for melanoma, even if you carry only one defective gene and have dark hair. Like, say, probably, me! Also, my wife (who has blond hair). What's a little uncanny about all this is that ever since I spent too long in the sun swimming in a Florida lagoon in 10th grade, I've had "redhead freckles" on my shoulders, and I also found a strange spot/mole on my arm a few years later that I never really think about except at times like this.

(The Florida lagoon story involves my adolescent brain not processing the importance of sunscreen, and the fact that That Girl Lindey was floating on a raft in the lagoon and it seemed like a good idea to make conversation for an hour or so out there. Never mind that our summer program was over a week later and I never heard from her again! I have a distinct memory of wearing a very baggy white shirt every day for the remainder of the program.)

Good thing I moved to Seattle, right? Except that the lack of sunlight in these northern latitudes could be a contributing factor to multiple sclerosis. I have a nutrition colleague who disdains all supplements except vitamin D. The reason is, we may not get enough sunlight in Seattle to convert starting materials into vitamin D, and vitamin D deficiency may be implicated in MS, and there's a surprising prevalence of MS cases around Seattle. There's enough vitamin D in milk and butter to prevent rickets, but it may not be enough to completely prevent MS.

As far as I'm concerned, this is reason enough the next time the sun comes out to take a long walking break down by the canal.

So whatever happens, we can't worry too much about increased risk, but we can all be a little more liberal with the sunscreen, especially with our little Red Bug.

My favorite part of the article is the last little throw-away bit: "Spelling out a person's MC1R genes could also help crime-scene investigators, Rees suggests. If the analysis of biological tissue left at the scene reveals two aberrant versions of MC1R alleles, there is a 90% chance that its owner has red hair."

So, little Red Bug, word to the wise: if you ever get in trouble and are tempted to deny it, just know that Daddy has access to a DNA sequencer at work and can tell if that's your tissue or not. I'm not sure if the evidence would be legally admissible, but it certainly would be sufficient for being-sent-to-your-room-until-you're-18 in the most local of courts (the one in my house).

But my little angel would never do anything like that! I do have to be careful. He does have a devious streak, especially when it comes to anything electronic with buttons. Or with wheels. Or animals.*

Uh-oh.

So, in that DNA sequencer, I have access to a powerful instrument that can scry into the past and the future, almost like something out of Harry Potter. I can see the past in the sense of where did this gene come from?, and the future in the sense of am I at a higher risk of cancer because of it?

There are certain teaching lab experiments I've had to disregard, not because of danger or cost, but because in a classroom setting there are some things you just don't want your students to find out. I mean, what would it mean to test for a genetic disorder in class? For Alzheimer's? Or paternity? Theoretically, I could do it, although with a healthy uncertainty. Ethically, I could not. Legally ... ?

The line between the "cool experiment" and the "wrong experiment" is getting very thin.




* Anyone who knows me personally and would like access to the Other Blog where I take time to chronicle everything mildly amusing these kids say, email me for an invite. But be warned -- it's like the Family Circus, only not as edgy.