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?

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 ...

Introduction to Nanotheology, Part 2

"He who made kittens put snakes in the grass" -- Jethro Tull.

One of the responses to my original "Introduction to Nanotheology" post consisted of just that quote. It made me think, and not just, "Hey, Jethro was in the Bible, wasn't he?" Actually, it made me think about why I love to teach biochemistry. It's not just the intricacies of the energetics of digestion or whatever, or the questions about matter and mind, or the artistic profusion of protein structures colored any way the author of the paper likes. I like to teach biochemistry because it's real stuff, "stuff" in the sense of matter but also in the sense of the euphemism for something cruder. When we talk about amino metabolism, we talk about the mountains of bird guano near the Falklands, how that's basically a mound of nitrogen, and why. Why buying a sack of cow manure could get you on a Fed watch list. We're made of the stuff of earth, and I can't talk about life-science without talking about death-science.

I will assign a book to my biochemists next quarter called The Ghost Map that's about a cholera epidemic in London, but also about cities, people, science, God, and death. I suppose just because I spent time on the fact that life is intricate and wonderful, I may have neglected to mention that it's also absurdly weird, and wrenchingly sad. How a tiny rearrangement of atoms can punch a hole in the life of an entire family. How there's a young woman at my college whose joints are slowly fusing into bone because of a single amino acid change in her DNA. How she's the daughter of a theology professor. They know about snakes in the grass. In this case, all I know is atoms, and that's cold comfort in the face of evil.

If you're going to talk about the wonders of cell growth you're going to talk about cell growth gone wrong, which is cancer. (By the way, this should also be part of the debate about stem cells, but it's curiously absent because of our own ignorance. Think about it -- stem cells grow, and so does cancer. Could some cancer be caused by errant stem cells?)

If you're going to talk about getting energy from rearranging molecules, you're going to talk about the way a two-atom poison (cyanide) can screw everything up. Even oxygen, the very lynchpin of respiration, is destructive if it gets out of place, hence anti-"oxidants". If you don't get enough oxygen, you die, but that very oxygen will mutilate your DNA if it can.

If you're going to provide someone the tools to take apart a virus and disable it, you'll also implicitly provide the tools to make your own virus. Teach a man to fish and he'll never go hungry, right? Well, teach a man to immunize and he'll also know how to terrorize.

Some theology dwells on the question of human or institutional, powers-and-principalities-type of evil. Rather, these posts of mine, as I project them, will deal with natural evil, the evil of the tsunami or the hurricane, not the evil of those who exploit or ineptly respond. This is not to diminish the latter evil but just to acknowledge my own limitations in responding. Both natural and institutional evil are evil nonetheless, companions of death.

Yet (and here's 1 Corinthians again), contrary to our instincts and our origins, death does not have the last say. It will be swept away and the world made right. For today I'll work at restoring life and staving off death with the tools given for the day, praying for the snake-bitten and pointing at the strange, absurd bronze serpent hoisted above, and resting when I've done my piece.

Or, speaking of rest, I should say, for tomorrow, or whenever I get past this introduction stage. Soon ...

Introduction to Nanotheology

There is a stained-glass window in the National Cathedral called Angel in the Garden of Eden that has an angel in the center of three windows, flanked by two side windows. It's the side windows I like the best: the one on the left has a sponge and a fish at the bottom, with several other animals above, including a brontosaurus, pteranodon, and archaeopterix; the one on the right has the pyramids at the bottom, then above it the Parthenon, what looks an awful lot like Mont-St. Michael above that, all the way up to an airplane at the top. What do you know, everything cool in one stained-glass window! And that's not even counting the famous Space window in the same cathedral that actually contains a moon rock embedded in the glass.

As Gerard Manley Hopkins put it in "God's Grandeur":

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. ...

Or his predecessor ~3000 years earlier:

When I consider Your heavens,
the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars,
which You have ordained,
What is man
that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him? (Psalm 8:3-4)

Both of these poems make you feel alternately small and big, small from the size and quantity of the surrounding created universe, and big, because you are part of that overflowing quantity.

My question is, if we get this sense from looking around with our eyes, and from looking around with our telescopes, what sense do we get from looking around with our microscopes?

So that's what I want to introduce as "nanotheology." I'm a bit surprised that this term hasn't come up too much in my Google searches, and the contexts in which it comes up are negative: no, we shouldn't make stem cells from embryos, no, we shouldn't pollute the environment, no, we shouldn't play with self-replicating nanobots that might start replicating and building little nanobot shrines to us. Well, sure, let's talk about those "no"s, but what about the "yes"es? In what way does the improved view given by chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, how does that strengthen our faith beyond giving us forbidden fruit dangling, tantalizingly, just out of reach? How does it give us a new way to "taste and see"? I want to think about positive nanotheology, not just what we shouldn't do. New creation as well as the ten commandments.

So my initial ideas are to think about the sacraments. Baptism and Eucharist are visceral, physical experiences involving earthy elements arranged just so. If we can think about digestion, and eating as a community together, perhaps we can find some meaning in the enzymes that cause that digestion. If we can think about the act of covering someone in water, perhaps we can think about what's special about the molecules of water we're covering her with. In piecemeal fashion, from time to time, I'll set out admittedly nascent ideas about these things, and let's see what emerges.

Ground rules to hedge against misunderstandings:
1.) Nanotheology is natural theology, and natural theology is always problematically more about nature than it is about theology. No amount of looking at Nature alone can discern the movement of the spirit. We've got to leave room for the Spirit, and for revelation of an emergent, relational sort. Nanotheology, as natural theology, is always looking at the house rather than listening to the architect -- but, if he's a master architect, the architect does indeed try to communicate through the house, doesn't he?

(From the house's mouth -- you heard it here first!)

2.) This is not about how God made the world, it's more about just the fact that God made the world. A strong faith in a Creator is more important than the amount of time and methodology that creator used to create. Let's face it, unless you're a specialist you will generally skip the Methodology section of a research article. Let's get to Results and Discussion, and Methodology if need be. But the sacraments, as present events that reach into the past and the future, are focused on the present -- so shall we be. I don't hold to Intelligent Design and neither does my nanotheology. Rather, I think it's about worshipful contemplation of what, for complex reasons involving the nature of faith, may be meaningful, but may be a universal happenstance. If so, what wonderous happenstance!

3.) As for me and my blog, we'll be biochemical about these things. I'm well aware that physicists gets to write and think about these things a lot. In fact, I'm mildly jealous of the "Brian Greene set" for their special privilege. But if biochemistry means something, if it means anything, we can talk about what it is that it means. Even the Christian biologist Kenneth Miller, when he gets around to positive natural theology in his book Finding Darwin's God, only talks about quantum uncertainty and the room for revelation in that. He's a biologist when talking about origins but he becomes a physicist when he talks about God! What could a biochemist have to say about God or the church that is distinctly biochemical? I don't quite know yet, but here's to trying to find out.

If people can find the face of St. Paul in their pot roast or the Virgin Mary in the iridescence of a highway sign, or if you can go cloudbusting in Central Park and see interesting shapes in the clouds, I think we can look at proteins and processes and come up with some possible insights about how we should live and consider nature, as well as God. Some of it will be silly missteps, some of it will be overreaching forced analogies, sure, but for those with hears to hear, I propose we should listen to creation with one ear, to Scripture and church history with another, and see what we hear in stereo. Who's with me?

Let's give Gerard the last word to finish his poem as we consider "deep down things":

...
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.