The Dalai Lama and Creationism

Why should a United Methodist care about such things? Contrast the following quotes:

From the Washington Post announcement of the Templeton prize:

As one example, the Dalai Lama helped initiate a “Science for Monks” program, based at Buddhist monasteries in India. The program hosts Indian and Western scientists who wish to explore possible connections and overlaps between science and Tibetan Buddhist traditions.

In turn, the program also provides education in scientific inquiry to monks interested in biology, chemistry, cosmology, mathematics, physics and quantum mechanics.

Now read this quote from Michael Zimmerman's column on the Huffington Post:

Please be advised that the next important battle in the culture wars is scheduled to take place in Tampa. ... It will take place in late April at the United Methodist Church's quadrennial General Conference.

... The issue is the relationship between religion and science with what I can only hope to be a small group of United Methodists working to redefine the denomination's position to bring it fully in line with a fundamentalist, anti-science worldview.

Specifically, Dr. Zimmerman, founder of The Clergy Letter Project that supports the teaching of evolution, refers to petitions intended withdraw The United Methodist Church's endorsement of his organization and its annual event, Evolution Weekend. He describes the petitions thus:

A resolution has been introduced to remove the word evolution from the Book of Discipline. Another has been introduced to retract the endorsement of The Clergy Letter Project and Evolution Weekend. And still a third has been introduced to delete the Church's clear opposition to creationism in the science classroom.

As I mentioned at the start, I'm a big fan of the Dalai Lama. Few religious leaders in the world today have his record of personal holiness and social justice, as shown in his receipt of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize. Now we discover, thanks to the Templeton Prize, that he has also been working to reconcile spirituality with science for the benefit of all the earth's peoples.

Contrast His Holiness' efforts with those whose reading of scripture is so shallow that they can't recognize poetry and metaphor in Genesis' descriptions of how the universe formed. For example the Jews, in their pre-classical scriptural interpretations, recognized that the creation hymns in Genesis were human ways of describing a divine creativity that humans could never hope to comprehend.