Making the Dean's List

Those who want scientific theories and discoveries to conform broadly to Scripture will affirm Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box and its case for evolution as the product of intelligent design. Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh and senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, argues that ultimately, natural selection cannot explain the “irreducible complexity” of living organisms. Those who believe that science has permanently undermined religious claims will resonate with the arguments developed by Dawkins in The God Delusion. Richard Dawkins, an Oxford biologist, claims that the evidence against both a supernatural creator and a personal god is overwhelming and that religion is not only unnecessary, but counterproductive for morality. Reading both books yields more than the sum of their parts.

I can’t promise the reader a synthesis of these opposing perspectives, but I can promise a better understanding of one of the continuing conflicts in education and modern society.

And, on a related note of which I am very proud: The Graduate School and Truett Seminary now offer a new course for ministerial students and science doctoral students who consider the kinds of issues raised in these two books. It helps ministers learn about science and helps scientists learn about the ministry. It’s also one of the many things unique and worthwhile about a Christian research university.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
by Matthew Desmond

Desmond, a MacArthur Genius award winner, formerly at Harvard and this year moving to Princeton, has authored the most highly praised (e.g., New York Review of Books) and highly awarded (e.g., Pulitzer) book in recent sociological history. Evicted is an example of a special type of qualitative/quantitative sociology known as holistic, community or field research. While the amount of time and rigor associated with field research are beyond my resource level, in-the-field sociology always represented, for me, the highest and best use of my discipline. This example of field research ranks among the best.

There are lots of never-before gathered or analyzed statistics on evictions in this book (after all, he is a sociologist) but it’s the ethnography that gives the book its power. His rich descriptions allow us to know and care for these eight families who lost their homes. Before Desmond’s research, eviction was seen as a consequence of poverty; we now understand it as a cause, and we now know what to do about it.

Nothing short of reading this book can do justice to the emotional responses it triggers, so I will conclude just as this son of a preacher concludes Evicted: “No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become.” Preach on, Matthew!