[Editor's Note: The following is a guest post by Joshua Sowin, founder of Rainsong Media and blogger at Fire and Knowledge.]
I became a young-earth creationist in my sophomore year of high school. It was not a scientific decision. I had just become a Christian, and it was clearly taught on the first page of the Bible. I was young and impressionable. I took up the cause with zeal.
A teenager who thinks they have the absolute truth from God can be dangerous, as we’ve seen with Islam. Thankfully, I was merely embarrassing.
I argued against evolutionist teachers and students, but I never really cared about science except to defend my faith. It usually ended with everyone frustrated.
The truth was simple: In the Bible, God told us he created the universe (along with all of earth’s plant and animal species) in six 24-hour days. Adam and Eve were created and we descended from them. Later, God sent a flood to destroy mankind and only Noah and his family survived. There was no doubt in my mind these events happened, which meant two foundational teachings of modern science, old earth and evolution, must be wrong.
(An aside on terminology: When I use the term creationism I mean young-earth creationism. Theistic evolutionists are creationists in the sense that they still believe God created everything through evolution, but are rarely labeled creationists.)
After graduating from high school, I went to a Baptist college where my beliefs in young-earth creationism intensified. My science class spent most of the time mocking evolution and old earth theory.
The professor would say things like, “If there was evolution, don’t you think there would be transitional fossils lying everywhere? But show me one. Just one! Yet those God-haters can’t even do that. And if everything evolves, why don’t we see it all around us? Have you ever seen a monkey turn into a human? And anyway, why do monkeys still exist if humans came from them? And not to mention all their dating methods are completely inaccurate. How could anyone believe something so absurd? They just believe it because they hate God and reject His Word.”
These were arguments veiled in science – they appeared scientific, but were actually based on an interpretation of the Bible. If the Bible is the word of God and teaches young-earth creationism, and the earth is old or evolution is true, then the Bible must be wrong. If the Bible is wrong, Christianity is wrong. Thus, we thought, the earth must be young and evolution must be false, and any evidence that appears to the contrary cannot really be contrary, but misinterpreted.
I knew Christianity was true – it changed my life. Who were a bunch of stupid, godless scientists to tell me my religion was wrong?
After college I became friends with a theistic evolutionist, who made it easier for me to believe Christians could be evolutionists. (I remember his confession well. He came up to my cubicle, rested his arm on the partition wall and said, “Josh, I’m an evolutionist.” It was like confessing a murder.)
While my friend was the only Christian evolutionist I knew personally, I knew many who believed in an old earth. I disagreed fiercely at first, but eventually decided it was unimportant to the claims of Christianity – just like a spherical earth or a heliocentric solar system is, even though neither were believed by the biblical writers.
Around the same time I began enjoying the intellectual freedom of reading. It started with a few classic novels and swelled into a multi-disciplinary interest. I started thinking more clearly and became more analytical of my surroundings and beliefs.
One might say that reading brought me out of creationism. No wonder I was taught a fear of books outside the Bible and orthodox theology.
The Earth Gets Older
There are times in our lives when the scales fall from our eyes and we see something clearly for the first time. For me, it usually happens through reading books.
Looking back, the experience often seems instantaneous, but it always takes cultivation. Because of my experiences and reading I was at a place where it was possible for me to believe the earth was old. So when I picked up A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, I was in danger of reading it with an open mind.
As I read, my belief in a young earth crashed down. None of the arguments made sense anymore. There was too much evidence for an old earth. When did all those gigantic asteroids hit the earth (or the moon)? When did the mega-volcanoes (like Yellowstone) erupt? How could the fossil record be so consistently layered and dated? These sorts of questions finally led me to accept that the earth is around four and a half billion years old.
It was a relief to me. I was able to enjoy the world around me without being so defensive. There would be no more rolling eyes every time someone said “million” next to “years.” It also solved my biggest young earth quandary: If a star were so many million light-years away, wouldn’t it take that many years for us to see it? If so, how could the universe be young? The only answer that made any sense was that God created the universe to look old.
Even if God made earth appear old, then the only way to understand it is through pretending it is old. And what’s really the difference between pretending it’s old or really believing it’s old?
Species Get Older
So I accepted an old earth. Though I said it was a relief to me, it was also unsettling. One of my foundational beliefs was shown to be faulty, and buildings I had thought sturdy crumbled at unexpected and inconvenient times. Everything needed re-examining – especially evolution.
After I accepted an old earth, I began having doubts about Genesis as literal history. This was heresy as far as I was concerned, and it plagued me. All the elements of a standard creation myth were there – was it possible Genesis was a God-inspired creation myth? Perhaps it was a literary way for God to reveal his creation to his people, and wasn’t intended as scientific treatise.
As I re-read the story it seemed obvious it couldn’t really be history – or if it was, it was completely unverifiable: Eve is created from Adam’s rib; a snake converses with and tempts Eve; God puts a very desirable fruit tree in the garden then commands man not to eat it; eating this fruit causes all the world’s pain and suffering; God curses Adam, Eve, their descendents, and the earth; “every living thing” is destroyed by a worldwide flood; all our modern animals descend from the originals on Noah’s Ark; and so on. After years of struggling through the issues, I decided it was a profound story that helps us understand the human condition, but was unlikely to be literal history.
But evolution still didn’t make sense to me. How could species gradually change into other species? This is one of the biggest hurdles to evolutionary belief – like heliocentrism, it defies common sense. Our lives are so short that we find it difficult to imagine what a few million years can do to a species. So we, perhaps understandably, reject it.
I didn’t understand evolution. I didn’t understand biology, either. I was afraid that might have something to do with it, so I started studying. I had to find out for myself.
I began by reading scientists like Stephen Jay Gould, E. O. Wilson, and Lewis Thomas. I brushed up on biology with a textbook, watched documentaries, and argued about it with a few select friends (as a fundamentalist you have to be careful, you know), all the while hashing things out in my head and my journal.
Gradually, evolution began making sense. Once an appalling thought, it now seemed to fit with the character of God, who always uses means. The impossible seemed possible – indeed, seemed historical. I had been grossly misinformed about evolution and evolutionists by creationist literature. So when I began to grasp the real arguments and evidence, the objections of my spiritual childhood vanished.
I’ll give one example: I had always heard there were no transitional fossils and it was common knowledge for creationists and evolutionists. Not true. There are many transitional fossils: reptiles to birds (like Sinosauropteryx, Caudipteryx, Protarchaeopteryx), mammal to whale fossils (whale fossils have been found with legs, like Rodhocetus and Basilosaurus), and yes, even ape-to-human fossils (like Australopithecus afarensis, Homo habilis, and Homo erectus). Many vestigial structures also exist, showing links back to evolutionary history, like hind limbs on snake fossils, pelvises on modern whales, wings on flightless birds, and tails and extra ribs on humans.
It’s remarkable that we have any transitional fossils at all, since over 99.9% of all living organisms do not fossilize. “Only about one bone in a billion, it is thought, ever becomes fossilized,” explains Bill Bryson in A Short History of Nearly Everything. He continues,
If that is so, it means that the complete fossil legacy of all the Americans alive today – that’s 270 million people with 206 bones each – will only be about fifty bones, one-quarter of a complete skeleton. That’s not to say, of course, that any of these bones will ever actually be found….
Most of what has lived on Earth has left behind no record at all. It has been estimated that less than one species in ten thousand has made it into the fossil record…. Moreover, the record we do have is hopelessly skewed. Most land animals, of course, don’t die in sediments. They drop in the open and are eaten or left to rot or weather down to nothing. The fossil record, consequently, is almost absurdly biased in favor of marine creatures. About 95 percent of all the fossils we posses are of animals that once lived under water, mostly in shallow seas.
The transitional fossils we do have, however, don’t seem to bother creationists. They are either ignored or dismissed. Vestigial structures are explained away with a wave of a hand, because they believe accepting evolution means rejecting God. It is unlikely anything could be found to prove evolution to a creationist. Unlikely, but possible—after all, I’m living evidence.
Convincing Creationists
Evidence will not change most creationist minds, because evidence is interpreted from presuppositions. A person who presupposes the Bible is wrong if evolution is true is not likely to see any evidence as supporting evolution. It’s just not going to happen unless they are willing to deny their faith.
But Christians do not have to deny their faith to believe in an old earth or evolution. There are, in fact, many ways to understand Genesis. The Bible was written by many authors and contains many literary forms. This means the Pauline epistles are interpreted differently than the poetry of Psalms. Young-earth creationists seem to ignore this with Genesis, asserting that any other interpretation than their own is heresy and unbiblical.
If they are right, we must reject Genesis as nonsense, for we are faced with irreconcilable contradictions with the text itself (like the differences between the two creation accounts), with logic (like how the millions of earth’s species could fit and be fed in a boat for a year), and with natural history (like how the fossil record contradicts the timeframe and sequence of both creation accounts).
But Christian scholars disagree as to how Genesis should be interpreted. There are many interpretations that allow for an old earth and evolution. For example, local creation theory says that the focus is on the local area, not the world; gap theory says that there was a catastrophe and a re-creation in-between verses 1 and 2; day-age theory says the days are ages; revelatory day theory says God revealed to the author of Genesis how he created the world in six days, but did not create the world in that timeframe; framework view says the six days provide a literary framework for displaying the acts of creation.
With a more generous understanding of Genesis, evolution is not quite so abhorrent, because it does not insist upon rejecting the Bible or God or Christianity. Jesus and Paul do not need to be rejected because Genesis is interpreted differently, anymore than Christians reject them now because they interpret “the four corners of the earth” as metaphorical. Thankfully, more and more Christian leaders and laymen are realizing this.
My journey isn’t over. I know I still have a lot to learn. I recognize this and try to be open to new ideas and to being wrong. I don’t want to defend my faith instead of seeking truth — for truth is, and has always been, my goal.
February 18th, 2010 | 3:49 pm | #1
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February 18th, 2010 | 4:22 pm | #2
Joshua,
I appreciate the presentation of honesty and arguments. Good stuff. I do have a few honest question though.
If God primarily uses means even in the act of evolving creation, does that mean he never intervenes? And if so, how do theistic evolutionists propose he does intervene? Surely our view of his total sovereignty means he doesn’t leave it all to means, right?
And then this:isn’t the evidence that humanity is so far different than the rest of the animal kingdom that we are more than different in degree but in kind? As in, though there might be transitional fossils, that tells me nothing of whether this was a different looking human with rational capacities or a different looking ape without rational capacities. These fossils really don’t prove much, do they (I read in Time magazine that an even more recent fossil was discovered, by the way)?
Chesterton was famous for noting this distinction by saying even “primitive cave man” drew pictures of monkeys but monkeys have and never will draw pictures of humans on cave walls.
I hope you see that I’m not being intentionally antagonistic. I really do have these questions because though there is archeological research, the philosophical view of anthropology still leaves me in the old earth camp.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks.
February 18th, 2010 | 4:47 pm | #3
Just like creation vs. evolution isn’t necessary, neither is evolution vs. Genesis. Evolution could be true. That doesn’t mean Genesis is a myth (unless, of course, you mean “myth” in a very broad sense). After all, there had to be at least two original human beings. There had to be some means of testing them; a tree is as good as anything else.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I don’t know if evolution or special creation of all species is correct. I don’t have a dog in this fight. The literature of the Bible, however, is very important to me. So is theology.
Evolution vs. theism is not the only possible false dichotomy.
February 18th, 2010 | 4:58 pm | #4
The part where my eyes always glaze over is when we start talking about the unlikelihood of fossils.
To wit:
I just want to point out something here (as a person completely oblivious to the entire ebb and flow of the discussion of the “fact” of the age of the Earth): Somehow sponteneous information can appear in the world (i.e. — the data in DNA which is, at its root, the place where evolution has to happen), but spontaneous concrete (i.e. — the stuff in which fossils will form when something drops dead; a significantly less-complex mixture as compared to genetic compounds) is an almost impossible event to replicate once every 50 generations.
Simple composits cannot spontaneously occur in nature, but the information necessary to create complex life happens all the time?
It’s an interesting conundrum, but it’s not even remotely credible. If my choice is between believing that God made the whole Cosmos at once (OK: in 6 days) in such a way that trees which ought to take decades to grow start fully-grown (and, likewise, that he made the moon and earth with crater holes), or to believe that the natural world cannot produce rocks all the time but can produce helpful genetic mutations all the time, I think the latter makes me think about what I believe about necessary complexity and epistemology a lot harder then the former.
February 18th, 2010 | 5:03 pm | #5
“(An aside on terminology: When I use the term creationism I mean young-earth creationism. Theistic evolutionists are creationists in the sense that they still believe God created everything through evolution, but are rarely labeled creationists.)”
Thanks for the thoughtful article, but on this point I am sorry to have to disagree. The fact that you believe in God and in creation is enough for many atheists in academia to label you as a creationist. Fine distinctions, or any distinctions at all, are often usefully blurred for rhetorical purposes.
February 18th, 2010 | 5:06 pm | #6
Here’s an article on the subject I wrote a while back. For those interested in this topic.
Science as Worship
Christianity has had children which have sprung from her home and blessed the larger world. One, is modern democracy, with its affirmation of God given rights. Another, is a culture of charity, which has in turn birthed hospitals and homeless shelters from Albuquerque to Zambia. Of course, these aren’t the result of Christian teaching alone, but they wouldn’t be anything like they are if it had not been for the Church.
Unfortunately, one of Christianity’s children, like the Janisarries of old, was kidnapped in infancy, raised to hate his parents, then, after he had grown, was sent out against his natural family to attack those who gave him birth. This child is modern science and this article is an effort to reconcile parent and child. As in all reconciliations, both parties will have to come to believe that they are not enemies, but family.
There are numerous factors that began and perpetuate this division, but one is especially influential because it is old and subliminal. Because it is old and subliminal we haven’t given it the criticism which it requires. The Latin phrase is “Omne ignotum pro magnifico”, “Everything unknown is taken for magnificent.” When dealing with human beings, this idea is often true. At first the magician seems like a miracle worker, but upon closer examination, we find that under his hat is a trap door, and under the trap door the rabbit was there all along.
Even when there is no element of deception this is the case. When we first encounter the work of a craftsman, we are in awe of his abilities. However, if we take it upon ourselves to learn the same trade, learn “the tricks of the trade” we later look back and think that the original masterpiece wasn’t so awe inspiring after all. All this is because human beings are finite and fallen. None of our creations, industrial, artistic, or moral can withstand close and continuous observation. As the Bible says, “All flesh is grass.”
Having experienced this, we have become justifiably suspicious of things wonderful, believing that were we to look too closely, then, the wonder would evaporate. In the pursuit of knowledge, wonder becomes an enemy, it becomes a pretender to be exposed and dethroned.
However, when we turn from the works of man to the works of God, we find that this suspicion is misplaced. Unlike the works of man, the works of an infinite God never have their wonder exhausted by close scrutiny. In nature, the closer we look the more there is, always. Because of this, the affirmation of the creator should never be seen as a reason to end inquiry. Instead it is a guarantee that there will always be another discovery calling us onward.
Take this example. Not very long ago the Sun was a mystery. What form of fuel could give out so much energy over such a long time? If the Sun were made out of some combustible fuel, say coal, oil or methane, it would have burned out long ago. Nothing in human experience could account for its power. It was a mysterious work of God and as such an object of wonder.
Then we deciphered the secrets of the atom. We discovered fusion power, first theoretically then experimentally. We also discovered that the chemical composition of a distant untouchable object could be ascertained by passing its light through a prism and studying the bands of light on its spectrum. The Sun, we discovered, was a giant gravity powered nuclear reactor giving off energy as hydrogen atoms at its core fused to make helium atoms.
Now, here’s the question. Does this discovery enhance the wonder of God’s creation or diminish it? In our Christian heads we respond, “Enhances it of course!” And we are right to think so. And yet in our actions and opinions there still lurks Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
In the conflict between modern science and its parent Christianity, there lies the subliminal belief that when one mystery is exposed, God flees into another mystery as if God had been frightened away by the superior powers of observation and experimentation. We unintentionally affirm this misconception when we point to God’s power by pointing to the unknown instead of the known. We act as if, when a natural process has been explained, it then ceases to portray the power of God. We prefer to look at the inexplicable where God is hiding, instead of the explained where the hand of God is laid bare.
When we portray God as one who hides in the shadows, we portray Him as in retreat. This witness is unpersuasive. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium, laments that, while he feels a sense of awe at the natural world, “I do so accepting that if I propose a God who graces our valley of unknowns, the day may come, empowered by the advance of science, when no more valleys remain.” (From Death by Black Hole, Norton page 352)
People who are concerned for the advancement of scientific knowledge have a justifiable concern that an affirmation of God’s work will prevent future discovery. They fear that if we say. “God did it” then our enquiries will stop. Any scientist, biologist, chemist or astrophysicist would be out of business if the answer to “why?” is “that’s how God made it.” Rather than, “Let’s find out what God is up to.”
This concern accounts for much of the hostility that scientifically minded people have toward the doctrine of Creation. They fear that the affirmation of creation is a call to stop discovering, even a call to stop thinking. Unfortunately many Christians have affirmed these fears instead of allaying them. It is important to defend the Faith against poor science, incomplete science, and false science, but often Christianity is portrayed as being antithetical to science itself. When we do this, we are offering people a false choice between faith and the evidence that lies immediately before them. As though Jesus were saying, “Do you believe me or your lying eyes?”
Sometimes this is done to a degree that embarrasses the church. I have before me a book written by a man learned in theology but with no expressed credentials in astrophysics. In his well intended (though I believe misguided) defense of the Bible, he makes the case that the most distant stars are only 6,000 light years away. Remember the magnitude of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Now imagine all of those millions of galaxies, with all of their stars, quasars, pulsars, and black holes, crowded into a little circle 12,000 light years across. The night sky would blaze like a furnace.
The enemies of the Gospel delight in such absurdities and use them against us. They say in effect, “To become a Christian you must abandon your senses.” This is so frustrating, because the very evidence that science brings to us, speaks for God not against Him.
This false choice has caused some to dismiss Christianity out of hand. For others, it has caused them to adopt a faith system so watered down by metaphor that their beliefs reflect the wisdom of this world more than God’s Word.
One approach in seeking peace between science and the Church is to counsel that the two should amicably part ways entirely. In a March,1997 article in Natural History, Stephan J. Gould said that religion and science should be regarded as having “Nonoverlapping Magisteria” meaning that they are two different areas of study with different concerns. Science is about the nature of the physical world, and religion is about spirituality and morals.
Keeping science out of the Christian family would get both sides off the hook. The Christian could ignore any apparent discrepancy between new discoveries and old truths. He would be unburdened of the hard work of incorporating new information into the Christian world view, making his Bible study less of a wrestling match. The scientist could go on sifting data and constructing new theories without listening to the suspicion that that there is someone holding it all together. He could ignore the nagging evidence in nature (some of which is astronomically high in its probability) which allow for a universe that can support life capable of worshipping God.
However, this friendly parting would be finding peace at the sacrifice of truth. The Bible is God’s creation, but so is the natural world. He didn’t make either to be ignored. And more to the point, Bible study is supposed to be a wrestling match. Whether we are incorporating God’s Word with scientific discoveries, our private experiences, or our life changing choices, God is always wrestling with us as He wrestled with Jacob and renamed him Israel, “Because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.” All profitable thinking has a passageway of disorientation, adjustment, and renewed equilibrium. If you ever feel that you must choose between peace of mind and truth, choose truth, because the Truth Himself will come to you and give you peace.
Certainly faith informs us of truth that we do not see and “blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe.” But believing without evidence is not the same as believing against evidence. On the contrary, God often condescends to the weak of faith by giving them empirical evidence, “Touch me, and see.” Christ said to Thomas. Gideon was twice given a fleece, wet or dry, to set aside his doubts. In the polemics of Paul and in the Psalms, the evidence of the natural world is marshaled to point us to the Creator. “The heavens declare the glory of God” and the bigger the telescope, the more He is glorified. The Bible portrays all accurate empirical evidence as God’s evidence. After all, this is God’s world, fallen though it and we may be. Every dinosaur bone is God’s dinosaur bone. Every star is God’s star.
Our faith gives us confidence that scientific enquiry will ultimately affirm God’s work and word. When our enquiries confound us, God is calling us to press forward and discover more, not to shrink back as if we were fearful (or worse, that God were fearful) of what lay ahead.
We also come to understand God’s Word more fully as the natural world, and its order, is revealed to us. For instance, skeptics will often point to the miracles recorded in Scripture as proving that the Bible is an unreliable account. “Science reveals the laws of nature and miracles violate the laws of nature.”
But this argument assumes the separation between the Biblical world view and her child science. A hermeneutic that is both mature and respectful of the text, recognizes that they are mutually affirming. The communicative power of a miracle depends upon an understanding of the laws of nature. In a pre-scientific world where people commonly believe in magic, a miracle is just another trick. However, with a scientific understanding of the regularity of natural events, we recognize that a miracle is an act of the Creator Himself intentionally inserting Himself into nature as only He can. As Moses said when he was defied by Korah’s men in Numbers 16, “If these men die a natural death and experience only what usually happens to men, then the Lord has not sent me, but if the Lord brings about something totally new….. then you will know that these men have treated the Lord with contempt.” This empirical epistemology in a text of such antiquity is part of the seminal relationship which the Bible has to our current understanding of nature.
It is lamentably true that some people have modified their understanding of Scripture to fit whatever seemingly scientific view holds sway at the time. Thomas Jefferson infamously cut out every miracle in his Bible until all he had left was a booklet of moral platitudes. However, such disbelievers notwithstanding, it is not an act of faithlessness to enhance one’s understanding of God’s Word with one’s understanding of God’s World.
God’s Word was revealed for all mankind, but it was also revealed to God’s people in a particular place and time. For instance, when Joshua prayed to God for more time, the Bible says that God made the sun stand still. To those who experienced this event and to many generations who read these words, this was an appropriate description. Since then, we have learned a lot about the movement of the planets and of our own planet. We now understand God’s words to mean that the earth paused in its rotation. Does this understanding diminish the truth or accuracy of the book of Joshua? Not at all, it increases our wonder of God’s miracle. The Earth’s mass (its resistance to a change of movement) is 5.98 ×1021 metric tons; arresting its momentum is a great miracle indeed. Our increased knowledge, far from chasing God into some mysterious gap, increases our appreciation of His power. This affirmation should not be a source of embarrassment, but an expression of a modest assertion. To paraphrase the apostle Paul, “why do any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead, or arrests a massive sphere?”
Now, one may ask, “Why didn’t God describe the event originally as stopping the movement of the earth?” There would be some wisdom in doing so. By revealing what later would be discovered by other means, God would have given us an opportunity to say to doubters, “Look, God told you this so long ago. That proves the truth of Holy Writ.”
However, imagine how this would play out in practice.
Joshua: “God, please let the Sun stop in the sky so that I may pursue the enemy.”
God: “Yes Joshua, but first I must explain to you that the Earth is a spherical object. It moves around the Sun in an ellipse. It is tilted 23.5 degrees relative to the Sun’s equator. As it rotates at a speed of 1,037.48 miles an hour…”
When would it end? We would be asking God to give us a comprehensive account of the universe to communicate with the people living over three thousand years ago. Wonderful as this may seem, it is not what God is telling us, because it is not what we need to know. What we need to know is Jesus, the fellowship of His Cross, and the reality of His resurrection that provides a life that outlives the stars. God did tell us about Him, and ahead of time at that. So, we may still say to the doubters, “Look, God told you this so long ago. That proves the truth of Holy Writ.” Indeed, God has told us everything that we need to know “to be fully equipped for every good work”. One such work is the task of the scientist in his ever growing discovery of God’s world.
The reunification of the Church and science requires more than for Christians to welcome science back into the family. The scientist must realize that all along, he has been engaged in a religious activity.
There is a litany of procedures that the scientist carefully follows and defends: the gathering of data in measurable form, the formation of an experiment that reveals the general phenomena and eliminates extraneous information, the reproducibility of his observation by others, and most importantly, the formation of conclusions on the basis of the evidence and never forming the evidence to fit a conclusion. These procedures, and others like them, are an effort to know and play by God’s rules, to meet God on His terms.
These are not methods of a scientist’s own choosing, like the rules of some new parlor game he has invented. They are used under the belief that there is something out there, something that is consistent, knowable, and upon which future events can be predicted. In short, science presumes a metaphysic.
This can easily be seen when we identify science’s antithesis, an antithesis that it shares with Christianity. Judging from the popular press, one would conclude that the great nemesis of science is Christianity with its dogma and traditions. But this conflict, as I have mentioned, is a family quarrel. In this family there are certain shared beliefs such as:
There is an objective world albeit subjectively apprehended through human senses,
That in this world the future will be like the past in a significant way that enables us to detect
patterns in nature,
That these patterns, once properly discerned, are universal i.e. E=mc2 in Oklahoma as well as in
the Andromeda galaxy.
These ideas are predicated on a monotheistic reality. An atheist can certainly perform good science, as many do, yet, by doing so his actions reveal at least a functional theism. (Granted, this functional equivalent of God needed for scientific enquiry is a very impersonal image of God, but the point I am making is that science is a subsystem of Christianity, not that it provides a comprehensive proof for Christian doctrine.)
And more than mere monotheism is evident in the act of science. Science acts on the understanding that whatever it is that is out there, holding these patterns together (that which connects the math to the matter) that this Thing is not only there, but also, in at least a limited sense, comprehensible to the human mind. Since the Word not only exists but dwelt among us, we can look up at from whence He came and systematically piece together an ever expanding understanding of the universal. I suspect that this image of God as One Who has come down to His creation explains why systematic science as we know it in the West has not started in other civilizations, even those with monotheistic foundations.
So, despite the disagreement about particulars, the truth is that Christianity provides science with its epistemological roots. The antithesis of this shared belief system is the one that opposes this understanding of objective reality altogether. I refer to the resurging respect for sophistry, the sophistry once opposed in both Athens and Jerusalem.
This sophistry, now days called postmodernism, denies the assumptions upon which science has relied so successfully. The objective world is regarded as nonexistent or at least untouchable by our subjective minds. The past is held captive by this subjectivity; its existence is regarded as flexible and unreliable as the human memory. The patterns discerned by the scientist are regarded as arbitrary narratives born of cultural provincialisms. The current efforts to rehabilitate sophistry are an inevitable result of an abandonment of the scientific world view. To embrace nonsense, one must first lose one’s taste for sense.
It is tempting to dismiss modern sophistry as a harmless indulgence of the English department, but it has not stayed there. Its influence saturates our culture, especially the young. Scientifically minded atheists may be confident in the rationality of their thought, but they are suicidal if they think that science can be a lasting fortress in a post rational, post monotheistic culture. Incarnation monotheism not only brought about the prerequisite conditions for the rise of western science, but it is necessary for its continued existence. All around us, objectivity retreats, leaving us with Nietzschean power struggles for funding and influence. Is global warming real? It depends on who’s paying for the research. Is biology destiny? It depends on whether one is talking about Feminism (where it certainly must not be) or whether one is talking about Gay rights (where it certainly must be).
I lay particular blame for this on the division between the Church and science. A major cause for the current rebellion against scientific thinking is the absence of humanity in the scientific world view. Though science has made human life physically comfortable it has regarded man himself impersonally. The divorce of science from the Church has dehumanized science and irrationalized Christianity in the popular mind. Some people have turned from both in their hunger for something both meaningful and transcendent. Although much eating has been done, this hunger has gone unfulfilled because sophistry is intellectual junk food, imaginative and sometimes beautiful but lacking in substance, unreliable, having a wonder that vanishes under close examination. Like all man made things, Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
It is my prayer that my son does not need to grow up thinking that he has to have faith in God’s Word despite the discoveries of science, when those same discoveries, ultimately affirm the God of revelation. When Christendom welcomes science back into the family, and when science confesses the God Who’s world it studies and Who’s consistencies have made empirical research possible, then the world will have a more compelling witness of the Logos. The Logos Who comes to us with His truth in His Word and in His world.
February 18th, 2010 | 5:14 pm | #7
@Craig: That’s why I said “rarely.” In my experience atheists label people like Francis Collins and Kenneth Miller “theistic evolutionists” not “creationists.”
However, I made the aside on terminology because I realize that technically a theistic evolutionist could be called a creationist depending on how the user defines it.
@David: You asked, “If God primarily uses means even in the act of evolving creation, does that mean he never intervenes?”
I don’t know if we have a way of knowing that. Personally I don’t think God needed to intervene in any way (or if he did, then we have to answer why he didn’t intervene in all the poor design decisions along the way).
However, I’ll leave that to the philosophers to debate. It seems all theoretical — I don’t think there’s a way to prove that one way or another, since I don’t know how the evidence would be quantified.
February 18th, 2010 | 5:28 pm | #8
Without a literal Adam, how can there be a literal fall? Without a literal fall, why exactly did Jesus come into the world? In seeking to correct Genesis 1-3, the logic of Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 falls apart as well.
How do theistic evolutionists deal with the consequences of sin?
February 18th, 2010 | 5:31 pm | #9
Frank, my eyes glaze over when you cast that quote as “spontaneous concrete … is an almost impossible event to replicate” and “Simple composits cannot spontaneously occur in nature” and “the natural world cannot produce rocks all the time”.
Does it really sound like an odd idea, to say that animals corpses don’t very often meet the right conditions to be fossilized?
That sounds more like a tricksy rhetorical ploy on your part than well-grounded incredulity. Are you saying he’s wrong about where “95% of all the fossils we posses[sic]” are from? Do you have some particular reason to think that fossilization would be more common than he said?
February 18th, 2010 | 6:09 pm | #10
Juggy –
yes, I think it does. I’m not saying that fossilization ought to be as common as every animal that ever lived: I’m saying that it seems to me that the accidental mixing of a composite material (which requires no chemical reations or complexity at the molecular level) ought to be at least as likely as a reaction which is infinitely more complex as a chemical compound.
I’m saying that if evolution actually happens, say, once every 10,000 generations, it seems that it ought to be at least as likely that once in 10,000 generations there’s one critter in that species that falls in a mud puddle or a river or a lake when he dies — if that’s the precondition the advocate for this scheme wants to put down as a qualifier.
It is simply implausible to consider that the universe mixes concrete (in one form or another) so much less often than it creates new species of life that the concrete it does form is simply not swarming with evidence of the more-frequent process.
The total number of opportunities for both processes is exactly the same: the total number of things which have lived and died. And while you may say, “well, must never lived -in- the water,” my counter is, “most have also not been the generation exhibiting evolution.”
Every living thing must live near a constant supply of water. The fact that this supply of water does not produce concrete should speak to us about how difficult it is to achieve even rudimentary complexity, and not be an excuse for the fossil record. At least, not in the way the evolutionist intends it to be.
February 18th, 2010 | 6:20 pm | #11
Definitely, a difficult topic from opposing perspectives, being the fact, that much of it remains a mystery. I probably have been watching the science channel to much of late, but I can not help to ponder some of the same questions you ask and suggest. I believe in asking these sort of questions one should not be subjected to being a heretic of sorts, but rather an inquisitive mind asking honest questions which the Bible does not give us. The one variable that has often peaked my curiosity is that of the cosmological universe of which we are but a mere speck on an atom in the vast expanse of space. If you ever question such the glorious nature of a creator God, go over to NASA’s astronomy pick of the day
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html
look at the deep field view with all the other galaxies like are own, impressive,
and get a sense of the shock and awe of mere man in the grandest of schemes. We tend to think in earthly terms as such. But when you open it up you discover God is, well, is God. How it all goes, the why and the how, is honestly to borrow a pun light years ahead of our understanding.
February 18th, 2010 | 6:42 pm | #12
It seems that it has been in the interest of science to change the story of our past, present, and projected future about every five minutes for the past 150 years or so. Because they know how to read the entrails, see? And because of that, we know that we should make enormous policy shifts to keep the gods, uh, climate from getting angry. And ignore the carbon footprints of the man behind the curtain.
There is a God who made all this, the micro and the macro. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
February 18th, 2010 | 7:40 pm | #13
I’m a theistic evolutionist, and have been one for quite some time. That being said, this is an informative personal account that will do little to further the discussions due to it’s tone and mocking character.
I was taught theistic evolution at my Baptist college, but have discussed this topic with enough YEC profs and students to know that the heightened rhetoric of the classroom scene above is more parody than a common situation. There are plenty of YEC scientists with all of the credential who truly believe they are doing actual science and are not afraid of the evidence.
So whereas I agree with your position, I do not agree with your parody of the opposing views, nor your style of engagement.
February 18th, 2010 | 7:52 pm | #14
@Ranger: Perhaps you’re being too sensitive? I didn’t think I was parodying the opposing view in any way that was offensive — if you point out where, though, I’ll be happy to consider your viewpoint. Maybe you’re misunderstanding my meaning?
My point wasn’t to present all the evidence in favor of my position; it was just to explain my journey which I thought might be of interest to others.
February 18th, 2010 | 8:34 pm | #15
@Josh: Maybe I am being too sensitive. I’m a fallen human and oversensitivity is definitely possible. Here’s my point: I know some YEC professors, and I can assure you that they never teach their views in the way that you did above. Did your professor honestly say the things that you claim he said? Did he honestly refer to evolutionists as “God-haters?” and mischaracterize evolution in that way? Did you honestly come away feeling that all scientists outside of the YECers were “stupid” and “godless?” Most YEC profs that I know understand evolution well, but simply reject it. They would definitely not portray their opponents as “stupid.” They aren’t afraid of the data, and don’t try to hide it. They talk about “apparent” whale evolution as openly as I do (after all, that is the clearest evolutionary path in the fossil record and they have to deal with it), they just interpret it in completely different ways that are shaped by their presuppositions.
So maybe I’m being too sensitive, I just found that section of the article to seem to exaggerated that when creationists read it they would get angered and lose all opportunity for discussion. I’m not trying to be too critical, just suggesting that what appears as mocking and parodying (whether it is or not) doesn’t work well with creationists either.
As a side note, I would say that even if the YEC interpretation of Genesis 1-9 is correct, then we do have to reject the literal history of the text. I do not hold that we must do this, but even if we did, I would not say that we need reject the passages as nonsense, since the reason we come to the text as the Word of God is because God reveals Himself to us in the text. It’s self-authenticating regardless of the genre being used. If the passage is totally mythic, it could still be self-authenticating and communicate non-literally historical truths.
February 18th, 2010 | 8:41 pm | #16
@Ranger: I was putting many of my professor’s points into a paraphrase (and perhaps even exaggerating his language because it was many years ago and the memory has a way of doing that) — however he *did* really make those points. Our textbook (I’m not making this up) consisted of Answers in Genesis articles (and similar publications) in a binder that he had photocopied. It was hilariously sad.
I’ve since talked to some old schoolmates who remember him similarly and we had a good laugh about it.
So I think it’s an accurate portrayal, even if it’s not word for word.
February 18th, 2010 | 8:50 pm | #17
@Josh: Wow! Then the situation really is tragic. The better YEC professors I know use standard biology textbooks, have the students read them, but teach from their perspective and try to show why they disagree.
I’m thankful that despite being at a Baptist college, both my biology and geology professors were theistic evolutionists (long before it was okay to be one…if we’re even to that point yet). I’m also thankful for godly, conservative, evangelical scholars like Bruce Waltke who show that there are no contradictions between a TE interpretation of Genesis 1-4 and a robust Christian faith.
February 18th, 2010 | 11:32 pm | #18
Hypothetically, God had the power to create diverse species through either a single family tree or by the spontaneous formation of various species. He could have done either, and I don’t think anyone can dispute this.
Unfortunately, ours is not a hypothetical religion, but a faith grounded in history. Thus we must weigh what our culture says against what God’s word says.
Additionally, neo-Darwinism is not a hypothetical philosophy. It is grounded in a very specific view of truth that makes the spiritual either inaccessible or non-existent and requires that all observable things have a naturalistic cause.
Therefore, this debate is indeed extremely important.
February 19th, 2010 | 12:56 am | #19
Anthony,
In a universe that we take to be created and sustained by God, what is a “naturalistic cause?” Christians hold that all of nature comes forth by divine decree (Genesis 1:1, Colossians 1:15), and everything is sustained by Christ (Colossians 1:17).
The false dichotomy between naturalistic and supernaturalistic comes not from Christian theology, but from 18th century deism, which believed that if something was explainable that it was not divine. To the post-enlightenment deist, only those things which went beyond “natural” explanation were necessarily of God.
Of course, Christianity differs greatly in this regard. To the Christian, science is discovering the order of Creation. As we “discover” and understand new things we are “thinking Gods thoughts after him” as the saying goes. To do science is to discern the very mind of God through his book of Nature. To the Christian, something being “natural” in no way means “apart from God.”
February 19th, 2010 | 1:45 am | #20
Do theistic evolutionists generally hold to a historic, literal Adam and Eve?
February 19th, 2010 | 4:06 am | #21
Truth Unites…and Divides,
It depends on who you are talking about. I personally do. Bruce Waltke certainly does. John Stott does. Some others see the text as non-historical.
Some take there to have been proto-homo sapiens from whom God chose a pair and through his relational interaction made them “human” in the sense that we typically mean. Others take Adam to simply be typical of “humanity” (which adam literally translates to from Hebrew).
I think James Anderson recently made some great arguments for a historical Adam (http://proginosko.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/was-adam-a-real-historical-individual/).
February 19th, 2010 | 8:50 am | #22
My question regard theistic evolution, is that evolution requires death, and wasn’t death (at least for humans, let’s say) introduced after the fall? Essentially, this universe was heaven-like prior to that.
But theistic evolution, if it accepts that the fall caused death, requires that all humans / proto-humans died, right up to the very parents of Adam and Eve.
So just set me straight on this.
(Also, Revelation promises a new heaven and a new Earth. I really hope I don’t have to wait billions of years for that new Earth to be ready. :) )
February 19th, 2010 | 9:09 am | #23
Actually, an original Adam and Eve makes sense – even for evolutionists – unless you believe that an entire species spontaneously created, it likely started with one of each.
As a side note, Genesis 1 is written like a classic temple story – the temple is built, and then at the end the God inhabits it – it is just in our case, it is God that has created the temple. It is indeed the story of God creating the world – just told in a manner that makes sense to the original audience.
Not in some modern science text book case, which is where the YEC get nuts.
February 19th, 2010 | 9:32 am | #24
I’m saying that if evolution actually happens, say, once every 10,000 generations,
This is incoherent. What do you mean by “evolution actually happens.” Speciation? Mutation? Evolution of a new protein coding gene? Something else?
What is your basis for tossing around numbers like “10,000 generations” (or, in your first post, 50 generations). You equivocate unlikely and impossible. Why?
It is simply implausible to consider that the universe mixes concrete (in one form or another) so much less often than it creates new species of life
I think you don’t even know enough about the basic science to formulate coherent questions, let alone come up with convincing arguments or understand any answers you might be given. I recommend Joshua’s approach: a long process of reading, questioning, and thinking.
February 19th, 2010 | 10:10 am | #25
Ranger,
Thanks for the link to James Anderson’s post. I hadn’t seen it before.
Nickp,
Thanks for the irenic humor. It’s both polite and pointed.
February 19th, 2010 | 10:24 am | #26
@Josh
What would you say about the flood: Local or global?
What would you say about Babel: Local or global?
February 19th, 2010 | 10:25 am | #27
Ranger:
The dichotomy is not false. Natural and supernatural causes absolutely do co-exist in God’s world, but the philosophy that all things must have a naturalistic cause cannot co-exist with the philosophy that there is a greater reality beyond the natural world.
Having read and listened to numerous debates among naturalists and those who are either creationists or simply non-naturalist, it is impossible for me to come to any conclusion other than that these two perspectives are incompatible. It is also beyond a doubt that, regardless of whether the theory is right or wrong, the neo-Darwinist’s primary reason for belief in the common ancestry of living things is their commitment to naturalism. Because from their perspective, there is no alternative explanation that science is allowed to consider. By contrast, the intelligent design-proponent permits more perspectives to be considered. He has, you might say, a more “open mind.” And then there is the creationist, who permits non-materialistic answers, but uses Scripture as a boundary to possible explanations.
February 19th, 2010 | 8:09 pm | #28
Was Jesus the Son of God, or was He a product of evolution? If He was a product of evolution, and we live a couple of thousand years after Him, does that mean we are more evolved than Him?
February 19th, 2010 | 9:12 pm | #29
“I was a Teenage Creationist”? SO tired. Why don’t you text Brian McLaren? TEENAGERS are dangerous, Christian or otherwise. As are people who think they have come of age, or that science can explain how or when life began or how old the earth is. Really, you think we can piece together how when the earth or life began many zillion years ago? Get a freaking clue.
February 19th, 2010 | 9:37 pm | #30
Van,
As Christians, we of course proclaim Jesus as the Son of God. As those who stand under the authority of God’s Word, we proclaim that he was born of a virgin. He was the logos ensarkos, meaning “word in flesh.”
If Jesus was born of a woman, and thus enfleshed as Christians unanimously agree, then he carried in Himself certain traits of his mothers heritage. He came from the line of David, and certainly had genetic similarities to those before Him. Why wouldn’t he? He was fully human. But if he had genetic similarities, then on an evolutionary account, those traits evolved. Why is this a problem?
Christian theology teaches that the Word became flesh “in the fullness of time.” Jesus was born into a specific time and place, used a specific language (or languages) and was shaped by a particular culture. To deny this would be to deny the fullness of his incarnation.
Thus, there are certain things that Jesus did and said that reflect his cultural setting. In some of these areas we have culturally progressed. Does this mean Jesus was ignorant culturally? No, of course not. It simply means that Jesus came in the fullness of time. As the Incarnate Son of God, he “grew in wisdom and stature” as a human in history. Fully God, but fully man.
Thus, it should not be surprising that Jesus’ ancestral (even evolutionary) lineage also came “in the fullness of time.” The Word became flesh at the time and place in history when the Word needed to become flesh.
February 19th, 2010 | 9:44 pm | #31
Josh made a very good point worth repeating. Creation (the Universe) is equal to the Bible as the authentic Word of God.
If you believe that to be so, then it’s quite likely you are a Theistic Evolutionist (what an awkward term!). If not, then it’s quite likely you are a Creationist.
February 19th, 2010 | 9:47 pm | #32
Joe,
You say, “Really, you think we can piece together how when the earth or life began many zillion years ago?”
I’m not sure that we can ever achieve comprehensive knowledge, because as Christians we realize that we have never “come of age,” as you say. We are constantly being sanctified and redeemed from our fallenness. But, as Christians we are required to attempt to discover what God has revealed in nature. Thus, it would be ignorant to stop searching for the answers to both how and why God has created our world in the manner He has created it.
If you are interested in knowing how and why science can be a very Christian pursuit of knowledge, then you might be interested in the following link to “What has theology ever done for science?” from Cambridge fellow of biology Dr. Denis Alexander, who also happens to be a passionate Christian:
http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/Issues_Alexander2.php
February 19th, 2010 | 11:27 pm | #33
The problem, of course, is me. Nickp said:
Any or all of the above. You see, Nick: I’m responding to the questions asked and the quotes already in-play — not the whole field of biology.
The original comment quoted by the guest blogger here said, Most of what has lived on Earth has left behind no record at all. It has been estimated that less than one species in ten thousand has made it into the fossil record…. Moreover, the record we do have is hopelessly skewed. Most land animals, of course, don’t die in sediments. Re-read that with the same exacting eye you cast on my criticism and see if you have any concerns about it.
It seems to me that to say that “most of what has lived on the earth has left behind no record at all” simply throws aside the assumption of geological time scales. How long, for example, did the species which preceded homo sapiens exist on the planet in your view? 1 generation? 10? 1000? I’d be willing for you to round to the nearest 10000 generations for the sake of argument.
The reason I can afford to be so general in that challenge is that it is supremely implausible that in even 1000 generations of a species even nearly as long-lived as mankind that zero individuals would drown to death, and zero would not find their way into the sediment someplace to get fossilized.
And to be clear: it could statistically happen. Experientially and cognitively, I find it completely unbelievable.
To the latter question, because they are epistemically equivalent. That is to say, somebody with a computer might figure out that the odds of “X” happening is 1 in 10^365, but since the number of seconds since the Big Bang is allegedly 4.73×10^20 (that’s 15 billion years for the math-challenged), I’d say the odds of “X” are at least 20:1 against if the passage of time makes the event more likely. If the passage of time is merely a count of the number of times the event didn’t happen and the odds do not improve as time passes, then while it is not mathematically impossible for the thing to happen, I have no business pinning my hopes on the long odds of numbers with more than 100 decimal places in them.
Epistemologically, “implausible”, “unlikely (at this scale)” and “impossible” are interchangeable. And that’s what we’re dealing with here: how we know, and whether we should trust what we hear about.
To your former question, you pick the number — but you have to pick one from your magisterium. For me, any number greater than 5 generations will bankrupt the claims being made here about somehow most species having no chance to leave a substantial mark in the fossil record.
Here’s what I will grant you, though: maybe all the dead ends in evolution are lost which were extinguished by climate change that dried up all the water for that population. The rest probably had one or two (at least) individuals die by drowning every hundred years. I’d love to see their fossils.
I love that: dismiss the idea that composites are pretty easy to form by accident but information almost never forms by accident (I would posit it never forms by accident, but of course I’m ignorant and unread, it seems), and then tell me to read some more books.
Thanks for your concern for my education.
February 19th, 2010 | 11:29 pm | #34
This is perhaps the most revealing comment in this thread:
Wow. Does anyone really believe that?
February 20th, 2010 | 8:05 am | #35
That is straightforward, from the microscopic to the macroscopic; there is order in all things. The universe is not in chaos, i.e. gravity, centrifugal force, weak, strong magnetic forces, dark energy, matter. It has a symbiotic structure given by the very hand of God
February 20th, 2010 | 11:22 am | #36
“This is perhaps the most revealing comment in this thread:
Creation (the Universe) is equal to the Bible as the authentic Word of God.
Wow. Does anyone really believe that?”
I am not sure what was meant by the sentence. If “equal” means “equal in revelatory content,” of course it cannot be true. If “equal” means “equally authentic in being from God,” I am more open to it.
Like, if I sat down with you and told you my life story, that’s one thing. If we passed each other and I said, “Hi,” that’s something else. But both are equally authentic in being from me, even though they are otherwise not equivalent utterances.
February 20th, 2010 | 2:11 pm | #37
Ranger,
Good link. Thanks.
JM
February 20th, 2010 | 6:05 pm | #38
This is perhaps the most revealing comment in this thread:
Creation (the Universe) is equal to the Bible as the authentic Word of God.
Wow. Does anyone really believe that?
Do not the heavens proclaim his glory? Is not the whole world and everything in it his creation? If we fail to praise him, will not the rocks cry out?
February 20th, 2010 | 6:19 pm | #39
You can stare at creation all day long and never know the One who reveals the Father.
February 20th, 2010 | 7:07 pm | #40
you can read the bible every day of your life and never know the one who reveals the Father
February 21st, 2010 | 7:58 am | #41
@Dac: You miss the point. Creation does not reveal Christ, only His Word does. This is what Christ Himself teaches, see all his discourses in St. John’s Gospel. Natural revelation shows there is a God, but such knowledge does not save us. It is only God’s special revelation of Himself through His Son that is the Gospel, not His beautiful handiwork in Creation. To believe otherwise is not the Christian faith, but Panentheism.
February 21st, 2010 | 9:08 am | #42
Does Esther reveal Christ? No. How about Job? No. 3 John? Nope.
Do they all reveal part of God’s total message to us? Yes?
I am not arguing that the Bible is not revelation. I am only arguing that creation is God’s first revelation to us. To believe otherwise is to deny the Bible.
February 21st, 2010 | 9:14 am | #43
@Dac: Creation is not a revelation equal to the Scriptures. Creation does not reveal Christ. That is what Mr. Turk was objecting to. Surely you did not intend to say John does not reveal Christ.
February 21st, 2010 | 9:29 am | #44
If anyone wants some exceptionally written historical context, this discussion always reminds me of the 1934 dispute between Barth and Brunner. Their exchanges have been published as a short book, “Natural Theology,” reprinted in 2002. Neither one is Catholic, of course, but Brunner still does well in defending the relationship of natural and special revelation.
February 21st, 2010 | 10:13 am | #45
@Rev
Frank said this
This is perhaps the most revealing comment in this thread:
Creation (the Universe) is equal to the Bible as the authentic Word of God.
Wow. Does anyone really believe that?
If the Word is God’s revelation to us of himself, then yes, Creation is also God’s revelation to us of himself. The Bible says so, I believe it.
If Frank means something else by his question, he can clarify.
Also, I was specific to 3rd John, not of all the writings combined that are attributed to John.
February 21st, 2010 | 1:06 pm | #46
The issue is what God reveals about Himself in Creation.
Creation reveals nothing about the Gospel of Christ.
This is something only revealed via special revelation by means of Christ himself through the Word of God.
February 21st, 2010 | 3:16 pm | #47
My view is all of God’s revelation, one way or another, in small or in part or in great detail, points us towards, in the end, Jesus Christ. Including those parts of scripture, such as 3rd John, or Esther, or many other books in the bible, which do not directly reveal Jesus Christ. Does all scripture directly address Christ? Of course not. But the purpose, the driving goal, is to arrive at that point, the culmination of God’s plan.
If your point is correct, then we should ignore more than 2/3 of the bible, as it does not contain any direct revelation about Jesus. I disagree with that view. If all of the Bible is to point us, at the end, to Jesus, then creation is also part of that.
February 21st, 2010 | 4:29 pm | #48
@Dac: And, by the way would you do us all the courtesy of identifying yourself by name? Thanks.
If you believe 2/3 of the Bible is not about Christ, then you are ignoring our Lord’s interpretation of the Old Testament, at considerable spiritual detriment, but I fear your attitude is quite typical of a lot of American Evangelicalism, for which the Bible is not a book about Christ, but a book about spiritual laws, principles, guidelines and so forth. I wish it were not so, but your comment reflects the impoverishment of much of American Evangelicalism when it comes to understanding Christ as the heart and content of all Scripture.
Please note carefully our Lord’s words:
John 5:39-40 You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
Luke 24:25-27 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
February 22nd, 2010 | 3:15 pm | #49
One Can Know God By the Natural Light of Human Reason
Pope John Paul II, March 20, 1985
…A classic text on the subject of the possibility of knowing God – his existence, first of all – from created things is found in St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “Whatever can be known about God is clear to them: he himself made it so. Since the creation of the world, invisible realities, God’s eternal power and divinity, have become visible, recognized through the things he has made. Therefore they are inexcusable” (Rom 1:19-21). The Apostle has in mind here people who “in this perversity of theirs hinder the truth” (Rom 1:18). Sin draws them away from giving glory due to God, whom every person is able to know. He is able to know God’s existence and even, to a certain extent, his essence, his perfections and his attributes. The invisible God becomes in a certain way “recognized through the things he has made.”
…Following Tradition, which has its roots in Sacred Scripture of the Old and New Testaments, the Church, in the nineteenth century during the First Vatican Council, recalled and confirmed the doctrine on the possibility with which the human intellect is endowed to know God through creation. In our century, the Second Vatican Council recalled this doctrine anew in the context of the Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum). This takes on great importance.
Divine revelation is indeed at the basis of faith, of man’s “I believe.” At the same time, the passages of Sacred Scripture in which this revelation is found, teach us that man is capable of knowing God by reason alone. He is capable of a certain “knowledge” about God, even though it is indirect and not immediate. Therefore, alongside the “I believe” we find a certain “I know.” This “I know” concerns the existence of God and even, to a certain extent, his essence. This intellectual knowledge of God is systematically treated by a science called “natural theology,” which is of a philosophical nature and springs from metaphysics, that is, the philosophy of being. It focuses on the knowledge of God as the First Cause, and also as the Last End of the universe.
These questions, as well as the vast philosophical discussion connected with them, cannot be examined within the limits of a brief instruction on the truths of faith. Neither do we intend to take up here in a detailed way those “ways” that guide the human mind in the search for God (the “Quinque viae” [five ways] of St. Thomas Aquinas). For this catechesis of ours, it is sufficient to keep in mind that the sources of Christianity speak of the possibility of a rational knowledge of God. Therefore, according to the Church, all our thinking about God, based on faith, also has a “rational” and “intellective” character. Even atheism lies within the sphere of a certain reference to the concept of God. If it denies the existence of God, it must also know whose existence it is denying.
It is clear that knowledge through faith differs from purely rational knowledge. Nevertheless God would not have been able to reveal himself to the human race if it were not already naturally capable of knowing something true about God. Therefore, alongside and in addition to an “I know,” which is proper to man’s intellect, there is an “I believe,” proper to the Christian. With faith the believer has access, even if obscurely, to the mystery of the intimate life of God who reveals himself.
February 22nd, 2010 | 10:50 pm | #50
So, let me get this straight… you were so ‘open minded’ that you read a book from one side (the side you initially disagreed with), yet didn’t give the same courtesy to the side you originally started on? Did you read any books outside of the bible that might have been in support of a young earth, or might have raised decent arguments about why the bible can’t be reconciled with evolution? (And I’m not talking about the sort of stupid pseudo-science your bible college professors were spouting).
It’s also remarkable that your conviction that evolution is true has also lead to your calling into debate other stories in the bible – the talking serpent, Noah’s flood, even all the animals descending from Noah’s ark. You find it plausible that humans descended from ape-like creatures, and that birds descended from reptiles, but can’t believe that today’s tigers descended from the pair of tiger’s on Noah’s ark? How is that any more unlikely than your own belief? Also, why is it not possible that Satan masqueraded as a talking snake? It’s also remarkable that there is geographical evidence all over the world in support of a massive, possibly global flood, yet you – a supposed bible-believing Christian – don’t believe even that? So you’ll believe geographical ‘evidence’ if it’s pointing to an old earth but not if it’s pointing to a biblical event?
“Evidence will not change most creationist minds, because evidence is interpreted from presuppositions.” Could we not just as easily say ‘Evidence will not change most evolutionist minds, because evidence is interpreted from presuppositions.’?
The most important reason why evolution cannot be reconciled with the bible is this: evolution requires death. If evolution – and therefore, death – lead to the development of man (and all the other animals we know), how is death the consequence of man’s sin? And if man’s sin is not the cause of death, why do we need Jesus’ death to atone for our sin?
February 22nd, 2010 | 11:43 pm | #51
Joshua Sowin,
Here’s a critique of your post Fred Butler.
February 23rd, 2010 | 12:21 am | #52
It’s not a critique, it’s a tirade. Likening Mr. Sowin’s doxastic examination to Bart Ehrman’s renunciation of the faith is nothing but a smear. But I suppose when your mission is to “smite theological philistines with a great slaughter,” any old weapon will do. It’s clear from Mr. Sowin’s post that he has not altered some of his beliefs about creation lightly, but has used the good sense that God gives to all to revisit and revise it. He has exercised a reasoned faith such as that championed by Augustine against those who would unjustifiably argue natural philosophy from the Scriptures.
February 23rd, 2010 | 1:34 am | #53
“It’s not a critique, it’s a tirade.”
Overall, I think it’s more critique than tirade.
February 23rd, 2010 | 4:55 am | #54
[...] issue of science can be polarising. I shared this article in Google Reader the other day (also – please note – I don’t always endorse the content of articles I share, I [...]
February 23rd, 2010 | 8:37 am | #55
Joel,
I meant it as something of a tirade. I get righteously upset when people create a straw dummy idea of some position they are reacting to and renounce it as if it is lunacy.
Joshua is like Bart Ehrman, because like Bart, he he is under the misunderstanding that his rejection of his evangelical, “fundamentalist” up bringing demonstrates some perceived enlightenment with the evidence at hand that was initially withheld from him because these bumpkin fundys can’t handle the truth.
Nothing in his confession even remotely indicated to me he was taught the Bible correctly as to the book of Genesis and the apologetics of biblical creationism. If I had been taught what he says he believed, I would had rejected it as well. He rejects error, but in his rejection of what he thinks is error, he misses the truth.
But that in turn makes his confession dishonest, because if he is the “truth” seeker he claims he is, he would actually had availed himself of the research material by Ph.D. level creationists that is readily accessible for anyone who wishes to do so.
He may want to continue to pretend all creationists are like Dr. Dino or any number of screw balls mucking around in the jungles of Africa looking for prehistoric animals, but to do so is self-imposed myopia.
February 23rd, 2010 | 8:52 am | #56
“Self-imposed myopia.” Hmm.
February 23rd, 2010 | 8:54 am | #57
You know, if someone would only start a thread involving evolution, Catholicism, and the Rapture, we could tick off EVERYONE AT ONCE.
February 23rd, 2010 | 10:43 am | #58
Fred Butler’s response may be a tirade, but it is a sound and responsible reaction to an irresponsible piece of propoganda.
February 23rd, 2010 | 11:43 am | #59
Mr. Butler, so you agree that if you had been taught the creationism to which Mr. Sowin was exposed, you also would have rejected it. You seem to agree that this was a reasonable conclusion on his part. But this is not what you said in your first sentence:
Yet you admit later in the same comment that what Mr. Sowin ultimately rejected was not a “straw dummy idea” but an idea he had actually been taught. You go so far as to say that you would renounce it, too, because it is lunacy.
This is why tirades, whilst maybe cathartic, are impotent. You’re yelling at Mr. Sowin, but your real target of righteous anger should be his incompetent teachers. But no, instead you go on to accuse Mr. Sowin of lying. You claim his confession is dishonest. Why? Because he didn’t come to the conclusion you hold:
And this is why you took Mr. Sowin’s post as an occasion to castigate him rather than his incompetent YEC teachers, isn’t it? What really provoked your response is that you are quite sure that he misses the truth. Now the light breaks upon why you would not take his teachers to the woodshed: they made unfounded, dogmatic assertions, too.
Meanwhile, there are a handful of YEC scientists like Kurt Wise and Todd Wood (a protege of Wise’s) who, while disagreeing with Mr. Sowin’s interpretation of Genesis, would agree that the evidence supports the evolutionary theory of the origin of species. For example, Dr. Wood recently made a splash with a post entitled “The truth of evolution” in which he claims:
Do you think Wood is being dishonest, too? You complain that Mr. Sowin has given no indication that he sought out credentialed YECers like Dr. Wood. Perhaps you presume too much. An honest creationist reading Dr. Wood’s post might well revisit her conclusions about the scientific plausibility and likelihood of evolution. I wonder what you make of them, Mr. Butler?
In any event, Dr. Wood makes the same move you do:
There’s your bottom line. The truth that you think Mr. Sowin misses or has failed to consider in his due diligence comes down to a bare personal commitment to–the preponderance of the evidence notwithstanding–use Genesis as the source for one’s natural history. But let’s be clear: Dr. Wood admits that his position was not arrived at by a process of ratiocination, but is a matter of blind conviction. This is fideistic faith, not reasoned faith; it provides subjective certitude. The dogmatic YECer will of course assert that his certitude is also objective, and of course this will collide with the certitudes of other religious believers and the metaphysical naturalist. He can call the others wrong and pen tirades against them, but he won’t be justified in doing so. To Dr. Woods’ credit, he seems well aware of the implications of his conviction, and for this honesty, he is to be commended. For others who agree with Dr. Wood that evolution is the inference to the best explanation, they will not make the same dogmatic commitment to derive physics, biological science and all of natural history from Genesis, and will seek alternative ways of understanding the congruity of their faith and science. I encourage Mr. Sowin to continue his studies prayerfully and ignore these frantic attempts to shame him with disgraceful accusations of dishonesty.
February 23rd, 2010 | 11:56 am | #60
Joel Hunter, nice to see you again. Philosophers of the world unite!
February 23rd, 2010 | 12:45 pm | #61
Joel,
Did you even bother to read Todd’s entire post? He explains himself rather well, including linking to some other articles. Like I noted in my “tirade,” the basics of evolution are not under dispute, ie, natural selection helping species to survive by adaptation to the environmental pressures. That is not incompatible with biblical creationism. A creationist who pre-dated Darwin’s Origins of the Species wrote on such things.
The issue at dispute is a philosophy of evolutionary naturalism that attempts to explain all of reality according to such constructs. I would add to that, individuals like Joshua, who attempt to synchronize the Genesis record with that naturalistic philosophy thinking they are “helping” out God with the intellectual academics by rescuing Him from the ignorant hands of Fundamentalists.
Certainly there could be blame laid at the feet of Josh’s teachers, but if Joshua is the truth seeker he claims to be, certainly he is aware of biblical creationists who write outside the realms of muddled fundamentalists. It would be like me only learning about Catholicism from rabid, Jack Chick fundamentalists, and then later write my confession as to why I became a Catholic when I actually read their stuff and saw no credible defense of the Chick tract apologetic.
February 23rd, 2010 | 2:53 pm | #62
Why yes, Mr. Butler, I did read Dr. Wood’s entire post and several more that he cross-linked.
“The basics of evolution are not under dispute.” Really? Do you agree with Dr. Wood that that there is plenty of evidence to support the idea of the common ancestry of species? In any event, you can take up “the basics of evolution” with him. Of more relevance to Mr. Sowin’s post is this question: do you agree with the sufficiency of Dr. Wood’s reason for rejecting evolution, namely, on the basis of a personal “faith choice?”
No, the issue at dispute is whether Mr. Sowin is an honest seeker, and whether he is in his epistemic rights to disagree with your YEC. You are now changing the subject. Your complaint was that Mr. Sowin is a dishonest man. By some means of divination, you managed to see through his reconsideration and revision of his beliefs on natural history as disingenuous. You hold him responsible for a failure to seek out and agree with non-Jack Chick YECers. If all you have to go on is Mr. Sowin’s post, how can you possibly know who he has or hasn’t read? Unless Mr. Sowin has notified us of his bibliography, you are presuming that he hasn’t read your sources because he has arrived at a conclusion with which you fundamentally disagree. Do you really mean to suggest that any reasonable examination of your sources would compel Mr. Sowin to agree with you? You are using loaded theological rhetoric to attempt to bully him into accepting your position as the only legitimate one. Whither thou goest with this spectacle?
Adam Omelianchuk: hail fellow well met!
February 23rd, 2010 | 4:08 pm | #63
Is this the same Josh Sowin that worked for John Piper @ Desiring God. I dont think John Piper would like this confession too much. In fact, i dont either. Its toeing the party line. I think people blindly except evolution’s “evidence” because they think they will be better accepted by their peers and such. They dont want to compromise their beleifs that supposedly contradicts with science. Therefore they can look intelligent & feel more at peace about their belief. Its a disasterous compromise that Christianity has somehow excepted this “Theistic Evolution” – a DIRECT CONTRADICTION of Genesis.
February 23rd, 2010 | 5:02 pm | #64
Reformed Guy: “Its a disasterous compromise that Christianity has somehow accepted this “Theistic Evolution” – a DIRECT CONTRADICTION of Genesis.”
I rather agree.
In some respects I actually have more respect for the commitment to secular materialism, to philosophical naturalism, and methodological naturalism by an atheist evolutionist than I do for the compromising, man-pleasing, aiding-and-abetting-the-enemy theistic evolutionist.
February 23rd, 2010 | 5:28 pm | #65
“Joel Hunter, nice to see you again. Philosophers of the world unite!”
AdamO, you wanna unite with Peter Singer and other atheist philosophers?
Yeeeesh.
BTW, have you recanted of your embrace of egalitarianism yet?
February 23rd, 2010 | 5:55 pm | #66
Anonymous “Reformed Guy”–
Projection, much? Why, yes! To wit…
Lol! You mean like this?–
Because shouting always makes it so.
As it happens, Mr. Butler and I were just discussing who is “blindly” accepting what. And if you’ve convinced yourself that it is impossible to reasonably conclude that the scientific consensus on evolution is correct, then why resort to ad hominems? Why grope blindly into Mr. Sowin’s psyche to question his motives when you believe that physical and textual evidence is on your side? See C. S. Lewis’ essay Bulverism. How refreshing it would be to read a response to Mr. Sowin that doesn’t resort to thinly veiled bullying.
February 23rd, 2010 | 9:13 pm | #67
“In some respects I actually have more respect for the commitment to secular materialism, to philosophical naturalism, and methodological naturalism by an atheist evolutionist than I do for the compromising, man-pleasing, aiding-and-abetting-the-enemy theistic evolutionist.”
Trust me on this: In evangelical circles, pointing out the obvious as Joshua Sowin has done takes courage. It’s much easier to be “compromising” and “man-pleasing”–say, by attacking evolutionary science and its evidence. (Scientific evidence is not “the enemy,” by the way, and atheism is not the equivalent of “philosophy.”) Just think: Mr. Sowin, simply because of his views on human origins, now will not be invited to minister the Gospel of Jesus Christ at the majority of evangelical churches. They think that the accounts of prehistoric events and the prophecies of possible future events are the true “litmus tests” of the Gospel, and are so clear that anyone who disagrees with the current pet interpretations must be in not-so-secret collusion with Evil.
Let you in on another little secret: Many evangelical pastors think like Mr. Sowin, but will never say so. Their congregations don’t know, nor will the pastors tell them. “Compromising” and “man-pleasing,” anyone?
Creation is a theological category. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. But when we begin discussing the material mechanisms of life on earth, we have to say other things than “God did it”–even though ultimately, as theistic evolutionists argue, God did it.
When your children ask questions about how they arrived here, do you tell them God created them to be here? Although that answer is theologically true, is it satisfactory? Is it complete? Is it even what they are asking?
February 24th, 2010 | 12:28 am | #68
[...] Why I’m Not a Creationist (Anymore), by Josh Sowin [...]
February 24th, 2010 | 8:53 am | #69
Hey Joel, my Piper view was not projection:
Do you accept “old earth” and evolution?
——————————————————————————–
By John Piper February 23, 2010
——————————————————————————–
The following is an edited transcript of the audio.
Do you accept “old earth” and evolution?
If by “accept” you mean, “Are there people on our counsel of elders who hold to the old earth theory?” then, Yes.
If by “accept” you mean, “Is that my view?” here is what I said the other day when the church staff was talking about this. We spent about an hour, talking about how we as a church should orient ourselves in the conversation about old earth and young earth, and I said that there seem to be two viable, biblical views for me. (This is going to offend a lot of people.)
One is young earth, because it seems to me that the natural reading of Genesis 1 is 24-hour days, not Day-Age.
And two, the view that John Sailhamer wrote in Genesis Unbound or in his other books, which says that all of creation happened in verses 1 and 2. It may be as old as 4 trillion years, as far as he is concerned, and what was happening in Genesis 1 each day was not the bringing into being of the earth and its various forms, but rather the ordering, managing and structuring of things. This allows for 24 hour days but also allows for an old earth.
I lean that way. I don’t believe in evolution as the way that Adam came to be a human. I think God created Adam from the dust of the ground. I think he was unique and that he is the father of all humanity—Adam and Eve—and that he is not the product of a long evolutionary process. I can’t make that jive with the way the text reads.
And I think that it’s very important that Adam be a historical figure, because that’s the way he is treated by the other biblical writers. The heart passage in Romans 5 collapses, and the whole nature of God’s making with Adam a covenant and then him failing and then Christ being a second Adam comes to naught, if he’s not a historical person
February 24th, 2010 | 8:53 am | #70
Rev M – Your selective quoting is tiresome, and is in fact, a manner of lying.
If your going to claim someone said something, you have the duty to actually repeat what they said, not some version of it.
I said
My view is all of God’s revelation, one way or another, in small or in part or in great detail, points us towards, in the end, Jesus Christ. Including those parts of scripture, such as 3rd John, or Esther, or many other books in the bible, which do not directly reveal Jesus Christ. Does all scripture directly address Christ? Of course not. But the purpose, the driving goal, is to arrive at that point, the culmination of God’s plan.
From this, you get If you believe 2/3 of the Bible is not about Christ,
What? That is a fundamental distortion of what I said.
February 24th, 2010 | 10:24 am | #71
Anonymous “Reformed Guy,” you misunderstand me. You’re projecting onto Mr. Sowin.
No, I do not accept “old earth.” (What do the scare quotes even mean there?) I think the universe is about 13.7 billion years old. I think the earth is about 4.55 billion years old. (Does this make them old? Relative to what?) And yes, I think evolution (add clarifying definitions as needed here) is the best explanation for the origin of species, including humans. As with all well-confirmed scientific conclusions, I hold them tentatively. But in proportion to the evidence I won’t abandon them lightly either. And since science does not generate knock-down drag-out proofs, I intend to revisit and revise my beliefs about these matters as the evidence warrants.
I don’t deny that the fact of evolution impinges upon our theology, and in some difficult ways. No one promised us that theology was easy or ever finished. But I can conceive no scientific theory which, necessarily, would ever impinge upon any of the cardinal doctrines of the faith (as enunciated, e.g., in the Nicene Creed). Christians have debated chemistry from the Bible (4-element theory), geography (antipodes), physical cosmology (shape of the heavens, geocentrism), geology (the Flood), biology (evolution), and physics (the nature of light). We never seem to learn how to stop doing folk science.
February 24th, 2010 | 10:46 am | #72
Joel Hunter: “I don’t deny that the fact of evolution impinges upon our theology, and in some difficult ways.”
Are you claiming that macro-evolution is a “fact”?
FWIW, creationists stipulate to adaptation of species, micro-evolution.
February 24th, 2010 | 1:43 pm | #73
Craig Payne: “Trust me on this: In evangelical circles, pointing out the obvious as Joshua Sowin has done takes courage.”
It takes honesty.
“It’s much easier to be “compromising” and “man-pleasing”–say, by attacking evolutionary science and its evidence.”
No, it doesn’t.
“(Scientific evidence is not “the enemy,” by the way, and atheism is not the equivalent of “philosophy.”)”
Creationists don’t say that science is the enemy.
“Just think: Mr. Sowin, simply because of his views on human origins, now will not be invited to minister the Gospel of Jesus Christ at the majority of evangelical churches.”
I don’t know about that. But if so, so what?
“Let you in on another little secret: Many evangelical pastors think like Mr. Sowin, but will never say so.”
If so, they should.
“Their congregations don’t know, nor will the pastors tell them.”
Are you assigning blame to the congregation?
“Compromising” and “man-pleasing,” anyone?”
Yes, that describes theistic evolutionists, alright.
“When your children ask questions about how they arrived here, do you tell them God created them to be here?”
Yes.
“Although that answer is theologically true, is it satisfactory?”
Yes.
“Is it complete?”
How do you define “complete”?
“Is it even what they are asking?”
What are you asking?
February 24th, 2010 | 2:22 pm | #74
“It’s much easier to be “compromising” and “man-pleasing”–say, by attacking evolutionary science and its evidence.”
oh, ok. So be “of the world”. Hmmmmm?
February 24th, 2010 | 2:27 pm | #75
“Just think: Mr. Sowin, simply because of his views on human origins, now will not be invited to minister the Gospel of Jesus Christ at the majority of evangelical churches.”
Gonna have to 100% disagree on this. Christianity has accepted this Thesitic Evolution. Christians would never prevent a faithful brother from preaching just b/c of his views on evolution. That thought is just plain wrong.
February 24th, 2010 | 2:52 pm | #76
Reformed Guy: “Christianity has accepted this Thesitic Evolution.”
Unfortunately.
Christianity has accepted an errant Bible.
Christianity has accepted the ordination of women to the clergy.
Christianity has accepted GLBT ordinations.
Christianity has accepted a whole lot of things.
“Christians would never prevent a faithful brother from preaching just b/c of his views on evolution.”
Some might. Especially if he’s preaching on the Doctrine of Origins and preaching theistic evolution.
February 24th, 2010 | 3:49 pm | #77
Dear Reformed Guy: The choices are not either “attack science” or “be of the world.”
Dear TUAD: The choices are not either “be a young-earth creationist” or “don’t believe the Bible.”
Dear Reformed Guy: Maybe we know a different set of evangelicals, or maybe Reformed churches are different. In the circles I know, to admit you think evolution occurred and is occurring is basically the same as saying, “I am no longer a Christian.”
As several posts have already indicated, right?
February 24th, 2010 | 3:52 pm | #78
“Dear TUAD: The choices are not either “be a young-earth creationist” or “don’t believe the Bible.””
Never said it was.
Don’t wrongfully impute what was never said.
February 24th, 2010 | 3:55 pm | #79
“Some might. Especially if he’s preaching on the Doctrine of Origins and preaching theistic evolution.”
true
February 24th, 2010 | 4:27 pm | #80
Dear Reformed Guy: The choices are not either “attack science” or “be of the world.”
swing & a miss. who said it was? point is that the evolution view is a view of popular culture.
February 24th, 2010 | 5:20 pm | #81
“Never said it was.
Don’t wrongfully impute what was never said.”
“swing & a miss. who said it was?”
There’s a useful phrase that’s been floating around the Evangel blog for a while: “passive-aggressive codswallop.”
At any rate, you guys win. Sometimes sheer fatigue sets in.
J. Sowin, thanks for the original post. You described a journey many of us have been through.
February 24th, 2010 | 5:45 pm | #82
I recently decided to start actually reading the Bible, beginning with Genesis. I had read somewhere that the Bible was the inerrant word of God, but now I get the impression that a significant number of Christians consider some parts to be more metaphorical, allegorical, or figurative than others. (I suppose the rest should be considered literal or historical.) I’m not saying something inerrant can’t be figurative, it’s just not what I initially assumed.
Is there a book or online resource I can refer to as a guide to what parts are considered figurative by most Christians today? I’d rather not try to wrap my head around literal interpretations of everything if there’s no need to.
February 24th, 2010 | 7:19 pm | #83
And now the thread has officially become absurd.
Anonymous “Reformed Guy,” you are either profoundly misinformed, delusional, or contumacious if you actually believe what you wrote:
I don’t know about the abstraction ‘Christianity’, but if groups like the SBC, the LCMS and other confessional Lutherans, the EVFree, pentecostals, the PCA and the other confessional Reformed, are all actual denominations of the genus Christianity, then a significant population of Christianity has not accepted evolution. Quite the contrary. The LCMS, for example, has YEC as a point of dogma. You must believe YEC is true to be ordained by them, and no other view of origins is taught. Rev. McCain can correct me if I’m wrong.
“Christians would never prevent a faithful brother from preaching just b/c of his views on evolution.” As one of the more recent blog posts declares: reality is what faces you when you’re wrong.
What is bizarre is why you would even believe this. Please alert the vast majority (75%) of evangelical protestants that they are no longer Christians because they prevent people who think evolution is true from teaching and preaching. They didn’t get that memo.
For anyone not amused by comments that merely throw mud in the air, have a look at the Pew Forum study that compared religions to belief about evolution. Only 24% of evangelical protestants agreed that evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth. Only LDS and JW had more evolution skeptics.
February 24th, 2010 | 7:27 pm | #84
Joel Hunter: “Only 24% of evangelical protestants agreed that evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth. Only LDS and JW had more evolution skeptics.”
Wow! 24% is too high! That’s just too much harmful leaven.
February 26th, 2010 | 3:23 pm | #85
For anyone quietly following this discussion who is interested in reading further, there is a group called the American Scientific Affiliation. They have a wonderful, content-rich website on the debate. The ASA has young-earth and old-earth creationists, theistic evolutionists, and intelligent design proponents who disagree graciously and provide a lot of food for thought from all sides.
http://www.asa3.org/
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