Phil Clapp 1953-2008

A beloved friend and colleague, Phil Clapp, died this week at the age of 54, from pneumonia while travelling abroad. I am grateful that just last month we shared breakfast together and talked for a couple of hours near his home in Washington, D.C..

Since 1994, Phil served as president and chief executive of the National Environmental Trust, a non-profit, non-partisan organization working on behalf of environmental legistlation and informing citizens about environmental problems and how they affect our health and quality of life. Last year his organization merged with The Pew Charitable Trusts and Phil became deputy managing director of the Pew Environment Group. The New York Times and The Washington Post both ran obituaries.

Jonathan Lash, president of World Resources Institute, said it well: "For his entire career, Phil was a tireless campaigner for the biggest environmental and human health issues of our time. 

The Unnaturalist Fallacy

As with ‘The Way It Is' Fallacy, few things perpetuate the current science and religion war in America more than what I've begun calling "The Unnaturalist Fallacy"—the position taken by many atheists and fundamentalists alike that all or most of the unnatural-sounding (supernatural) language in religious scriptures, doctrines, and creeds cannot be known to be real in a physical, measurable way, but can only be believed to be real in an otherworldly, unnatural way. To say it another way, the unnaturalist fallacy is the mistaken belief that religious "truths" are not scientifically real at all, but only religiously so. This fallacy is so pernicious that I predict within the next fifty years it will come to be known as ‘The Unnaturalist Heresy'. A few examples:

'The Way It Is' Fallacy

The science vs. religion wound in American society, and in public education, will, in my view, continue to fester so long as scientists and evolutionists keep writing and speaking in ways that perpetuate what I have come to call, "The Way It Is Fallacy." This is the wrongheaded yet nonetheless widely held notion that science necessarily yields a meaningless or depressing worldview—and "that's just the way it is."  In the words of one recent blogger: "One can only hold on to some higher ideals until you see what the world is actually made of." Or as another offered: "The news of science and evolution may be fascinating and mind-expanding, but it isn't precisely 'good news' or 'gospel'. Evolution is good in many ways, but it is also red in tooth and claw. If science provides us with anything it is not optimism but realism."

Evolution Now

"Until the majority of churches in America preach evolution from the pulpit and teach evolution in inspiring ways to their children and youth, we will never see an end to the science versus religion war in America and the evolution controversy in public schools." My wife and mission partner, Connie Barlow, spoke these words in her guest sermon at the Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda, Maryland, this past Sunday (August 31).  I applaud her courage in speaking those words in a sermon available in pdf online, which she titled Evolution Now: A Manifesto for Our Unitarian Universalist Congregations.