Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor has an opinion piece in the Times that affirms the Roman Catholic position: faith and science have no problems, and evolution and Christianity are compatible.
This week we will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, one of Britain’s most extraordinary scientists. His theory of evolution, one of the greatest discoveries of all time, gives us a way of understanding the connectedness of all life and the uniqueness of human life within it. Together with other branches of scientific exploration, evolution begins to unfold and illuminate the interplay of forces that make our universe such an extraordinary dynamic reality. In this sense, science is itself a journey of learning and exploration. This I find exciting and humbling.
Towards the end of his life Darwin wrote: “It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist.†The science opens me not only to puzzles and to questions about the world I live in; it leads me to marvel at its complexity. Here, I find science is a good friend to my faith. It also calls me to a journey of learning and understanding. One of the things that mars our culture is the fracture between faith and science. It impoverishes our inquiry into the realities that make up our life and world. This is a false opposition.
Apart from whatever I may think, it will do all evangelicals good to read what a Cardinal of the Roman Church has to say on an issue that, frankly, drives evangelicals nuts.
I’ve never quite figured out how the Catholic position on science is so progressive, but when it comes to Marian dogmas and how Mary’s house wound up in Italy, Catholics sound like Baptist fundamentalists protesting that the Creation Museum is too liberal, but I don’t have to understand hard things. I just like everyone to see that you don’t have to keep hitting yourself in the head over these issues of faith and science.
I’d also like to know if there are any creationist evangelicals who have converted to the RCC and embraced this view of science, evolution and origins.
The Internet Monk Archives 
Origins and pre-recorded history are all subject to premises based upon faith. Those who really believe in the veracity of their historical and religious documents normally can not be swayed other wise.
The only way to sway someone away from their religious views on origins is to claim a better methodology in how one states they have arrived at the proof that their premises are true.
Get enough people to talk long enough and with enough circular reasoning in their logic and the outcome can very well convince some people of something that was once though incredulous.
Sometimes science does get it right. These are called laws and patterns.
However, sometimes scientists take their premises and run to find proof and then create such a nested looped of interconnected circular reasoned logic that if you try to break any part of the nested loops open for examination, one of the other interconnected nested loops can usually be used to prevent any serious consideration of the original premises.
Either one comes to God believing that he exists, or one uses the flawed reasoning of his own darkened mind to convince himself that he can never know for sure if God exists and thus starts himself on a road that will build interconnected nested loops of so called knowledge and facts that will enable him from having to reconsider if God really might exist.
In the last 200 hundred years a profuse set of religious documents have been attempted to be turned into historical rhetoric. Millions and billions of years are bantered around as if by some mechanism man will be able to somehow fill in all of the gaps so that the proof for naturalistic evolution will somehow turn into a wonderful moasic.
Fossil records do not verify anything other than what one expects them to mean.
Scientific methodology can not be used to study any pre-recorded historical events unless one first assumes the possibility of some series of events that fits with one’s view or origins.
I am a young-earth creationist, not simply because the Bible says so, but because my heart and mind tell me that this is even more possible and believable than what a dedicated naturalist will turn himself inside out trying to convince me about – otherwise.
It only matter to a naturalist that he can convince you that God didn’t have to be directly involved in creation. All he really needs from you is the declaration that you don’t find his ideas offensive to your own. This enables him to build layer after layer of interconnected nested circular logical ideas into a nearly overwhelming worldview that will make you ineffective at even communicating what you believe to your friends, family and children.
I can rebutt any naturalists logic using these simple ideas.
Any view of origins starts with premises.
Supposed evidence can be used in any number of ways to either credit your own beliefs and/or discredit others.
No matter the amount of evidence presented to me, I have never allowed myself to be pushed to the point that I have had to view origins in anyother way that a series of faith based propositions.
Some agnostic naturalists are can admit that their worldview is a religion, but the hard core atheistic one will never do so in a court of law. It is in the courts of law (and academia) that they beleive the preponderance of their nested loops of circular logical reasoning and peer reviewed journalism has proven their position correct and valid.
I trust this has helped someone today.
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Headless Unicorn Guy
“Oh, yeah, the “Pi = 3″ one. As if nobody heard of rounding off.”
I was directing the post to:
Internet Elias
“And if part, even a minute part, of scripture is in error, I would have to suspect any part of it to possibly be in error. And..to day…I have found no error or contradiction in scripture.”
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What about the math error in 1 Kings 7:23 ? — Ky boy but not now
Oh, yeah, the “Pi = 3” one. As if nobody heard of rounding off.
Has anybody heard of anybody trying some sort of “Christian Math” (as opposed to “Secular Humanist Math”) where Pi = 3? (There’s been enough crazies claiming a direct line to God, somebody has to have tried it by now.)
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“And..to day…I have found no error or contradiction in scripture.”
What about the math error in 1 Kings 7:23 ?
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The RC position on interaction of faith/science, for me, is not acceptable since it can’t explain the presence of the spirit man within the physical shell. Man’s knowledge at present is limited concerning all the mysteries of God. There still is just so much we don’t know. And if part, even a minute part, of scripture is in error, I would have to suspect any part of it to possibly be in error. And..to day…I have found no error or contradiction in scripture. So I have faith that all of scripture is accurate and that its intent to show man as heirs of the Kingdom of God helps me easily separate man’s origins from that of apes. While apes are inately intelligent animals, I do not believe that have a soul. If they did…there would be ape preachers.
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stephen,
I wish I had more time to put into this. I have actually copied some earlier stuff I have written before on the internet and pasted it here. Accordingly, I have tried to find something I have written before to respond to you but could not find it.
However, let me try to respond a bit to your comment. If you look over in the “shipwreck” story of Paul in the book of Acts, you will find that Paul makes two statements to the rest of the people on the water vehicle that might be taken to be a contradiction if folks did not take it right.
One statement is from a divine perspective.
The other statement is from a human perspective.
The divine perspective expresses the absolute certainty that the men will not perish.
The human perspective expresses the idea that “if” the men do not do _________________, they will perish.
These statements do not contradict since God would most certainly spare their lives [since He does not lie], but He would do it THROUGH their action.
If we assume, for argument’s sake, that global warming is true, then the Lord might choose to keep the seasons regular THROUGH the actions of humans who seek to change their habits towards the environment.
Anyway, I hope you see where I am going.
I wish I had more time to put into Joel Hunter’s comments. He has been respectful and I appreciate that.
God Bless,
Benji
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Benji
You said “Let’s take another idea. How do you know that the seasons will come in the future the way they have come in the past?
Well, you might say that you know that the seasons will come in the future the way they have come in the past because that is the way you have always seen them to come.
But how do you know that the way you have always seen the seasons come in the PAST will be the way the seasons will come in the FUTURE?
Remember, there might be something on the other side of the moon…
However, if you depend upon what God says in Genesis about the seasons, then you can know for certain that the seasons will come in the future the way they have come in the past since God does know what is on the other side of the moon.
Here’s the thing. I don’t know if the seasons will come in the future the way they came in the past. We may have another ice age. Or maybe global warming is real. We know that some parts of the planet that are very cold were once tropical.
Trouble is, if the way seasons come does change, as they have in the past, and I have literally interpreted the Bible to say “God always makes the seasons come the same way”, I have set myself up to say the Bible is wrong, and reject God.
It seems too literal reading can sometimes lead us into a trap. Help me out here.
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Daniel and Patrick,
Well guys, of course Bahnsen’s argument is not dependent upon your approval or disapproval, but I am glad you checked it out.
I wish both of you lived close enough so that I could invite you over for some good “Cracker Barrel” coffee I have now. 🙂
God Bless,
Benji
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That was my take on it, too. The Christian guy didn’t seem to have a thorough understanding of the real objections the and suppositions that the atheist’s position entailed.
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I skimmed it. Seems to me the atheist makes way more sense, and was more polite on top of it. The Christian sounds like he’s playing word games. Sorry. To each his own, I guess.
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I should probably post that here for anybody else who wants it:
Click to access Apol_Bahnsen_Stein_Debate_Transcript.pdf
For anybody interested in Benji’s argument about the Bible being necessary to underwrite reason, that’s evidently the source?
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Glad you read it. I wish the audio was free [Bahnsen was a good speaker for one thing], but I guess we can’t have everything we want in life. 🙂
I think the debate is a good intro into presuppositionalism, but Bahnsen’s book “Alway’s Read” would probably go into more detail.
Anyway, glad you read a transcript.
Benji
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I just read a transcript of the debate – I don’t see what you find so compelling about it…
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Sorry, the link above is too old to be free now.
However, it looks like you can listen to the whole debate for under 5 bucks here.
http://www.cmfnow.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=234
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It’s Free
http://christianmind.blogspot.com/2007/09/free-bahnsen-stein-debate.html
Pretty cool
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“But what does Paul subsequently say? If I am patient or kind, is that an experience, an act, an attribute? Something else?”
Note the grammar – I think Paul isn’t saying that love is being patient, or being kind, as if these were co-adjectives for something. He’s saying that when you experience love, you are patient, you are kind, you celebrate truth, etc.
Whereas patience, kindness, etc. pay back the virtuous who practice them, the experience of love is its own reward and patience, kind acts, etc. are some natural fruit of feeling love for something.
The primacy of love and the worthlessness of temporary goods seems to me to be the theme of the letter, as next Paul says “Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever!”
It seems to me that the feeling of love is the branch that nourishes the fruit of love, not the obligations we enjoin ourselves to “because” of love.
“Does this reflect God’s experiences? His acts? His attributes? Something else?”
Something else – our experience with God through Jesus. We would certainly think differently of God if Jesus came with violence and revolution, like some thought He would. But no, we learned through Jesus what God was like, because He loved the world and died from it, for love. He kept his covenant of love with us (Deut 7:8, etc.), God is love, love is an experience of God, I suppose.
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“Needless to say, actions don’t have to be loving. An action done that we consider Good, however, without the experience of love behind it, is actually something Paul warns us to be on guard against.
3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.”
But what does Paul subsequently say? If I am patient or kind, is that an experience, an act, an attribute? Something else?
And what of the description of God’s love: “For God loved the world like this: he gave his only begotten Son…”? But then: “God is love.” Does this reflect God’s experiences? His acts? His attributes? Something else?
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“Do you see the power claim you make here?”
I don’t mean to imply that I don’t share the dialectic or prioritize accordingly (I’m Catholic, we’re all in the same boat here) – but in sketching it out this way, I’m going out of my way to deliberately acknowledge the way dialectics interconnect with learning, action, cognition and socialization, and thereby try to plot the various ideas flying back and forth in this conversation accordingly, and help us see ourselves in terms of our meta-cognitive and social priorities.
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Patrick,
I graduated, but if you are ever in the Kinston, NC area please look me up. Maybe we could do lunch or something. Let me know if you are a coffee guy 🙂
Daniel Smith,
You said “I’m just picturing the looks I would get from the people I know if I tried that line of reasoning on them…”
Admittedly this is similar to the “I’m sure that will fly with him” comment I said. However, I think maybe what I was getting at was if one is wishing to “fit in” with the intelligentsia of today, then I think a Dalmatian approach would not get one very far.
Anyway, if folks roll their eyes, engage in name calling, or go majoritarian/elitist on you [or me], that does not mean they have proven anything.
I would encourage you [and others] to listen to the debate between Bahnsen and Stein-even if you have to pay for it.
God Bless you all in this comment stream,
Benji
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“Uh, Pat, I’ve heard horror stories about Spiritual Warfare types who are like that FOR REAL. Satan is hiding under every bed with a Whoopee Cushion specifically for them. Instead of replacing a burned-out lightbulb, they’ll pull out their KJV and loudly Rebuke the Demon of Burned-Out-Lightbulbs.”
That’s THE BEST EVER. I want to move to that town immediately.
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“Talked about, a dialectic. But done? And done absent the motivating sensation? What if that is possible?”
Done, it’s an action so described. Actions can be “loving”, as in, related causationally to the dialectic, but love of itself is not an action, not a thing done – you can say it is, but you’re waxing poetic. Nothing wrong with that (dialectics are neat), but we’re easily lead to putting the cart before the house and find ourselves trying to “live” the dialectic rather than to own our actions.
Needless to say, actions don’t have to be loving. An action done that we consider Good, however, without the experience of love behind it, is actually something Paul warns us to be on guard against.
3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:3 (NLT)
For instance, “I did it because I love her” is a proposition that can adumbrate the most beautiful of abhorrent act. Same for “The Bible is the truest thing”. Same with “Allahu Ackbar”. So goes it.
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Brian (“If God equivalent to your own assumptions about God?” – I assume “If God” should be “Is God”)
Not at all. But you must be open to the idea that truth is a quantity defined apart from oneself. That is, that you must find revelation.
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As a side note, I now see a family resemblance between presuppositionalism and objectivism (the philosophical system propounded by Ayn Rand). Both trade heavily in axioms that are not self-evident. Both contend with substantive philosophical questions by employing conceptual arcana and by terminological fiat. EB rigs its system by legislating presuppositions as properly basic and exhaustive for rational thought and reasonable discourse. Both EB and objectivism engage in a kind of analysis that secludes them from meaningful interaction with other views.
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The confusion multiplies, Benji!
This is incoherent. The proposition “only ‘matter’ exists” is not in accordance with “seeing is believing” type thinking. “Seeing is believing” type thinking takes concrete things as its data. The concept ‘matter’ is not a concrete thing, so a “seeing is believing” type thinking would disallow the abstraction “matter.”
Given your litany of things this person is not permitted to justifiably believe, you cannot be describing a physicalist. A physicalist would reject the “pure materialism” you seem to be describing with the proposition “only matter exists” because that position is too restrictive. The physicalist admits the existence of the strong nuclear force, gravity, and other forces which aren’t obviously material (in the ordinary “seeing-is-believing” sense of the word).
But perhaps you are describing an eliminative materialist (EM), which seems the better target given your attention to issues related to the philosophy of mind. This is the thesis that commonly acknowledged mental states do not exist. Now there are plenty of good arguments against the crude(r) schemas of EM. Yours is not a good one. K Bryan has already pointed out a relevant example: the first person experience of feeling pain. The EM proponent treats these mental data like the perceptions of outer objects such as trees and people. The sensory datum, however, is primordial and therefore certain. My immediate experience of pain is not the product of a conceptual framework, or “worldview.” The indubitability of the felt pain is not due to the fact that I’ve properly objectified it by an act of reflection. The felt pain is indubitable because it is lived through, not because it is observed.
But K Bryan’s example shows that the presuppositionalist (insofar as you are exemplifying one) is hoist with his own petard.
You are exchanging one form of eliminativism (EM) for another: we can call it eliminative biblicism (EB). You approach a definition of EB here:
You then say:
This will do quite well to show the failure of presuppositionalism (hereafter EB) as a serious philosophical doctrine.
First, it succumbs to the same objection raised against EM, namely, the indubitability of one’s inner perceptions. I suddenly burst out laughing. My experiencing of mirth needs no further proof that I am in fact living through it. The assertion that the Bible is true has no bearing whatsoever on the matter. Now it is true that I can also objectify it, and by such an act of reflection change my regard toward the experiential datum from an inner perception to an inner observation. This results in a qualitatively different mental state, and subject to categorial interpretation, which categories perhaps the Bible might provide the complete and consistent set. But, irony of ironies, this move exposes the presupposition at the heart of presuppositionalism, which we now turn to, and which I think is the cause of its self-referentiality and abstruse claims.
EB presupposes the Kantian (and later positivist philosophies of mind) doctrine (in kind, not in name) that the data of inner perception are to be categorially interpreted (like the data of outer sense perception). Unlike Kant and others, however, you and Van Til assert that the sensory datum is subsumed under a conceptualization derivable from the Bible. Nevertheless, EB and EM agree in their presupposed doctrine that mental states are only as good as the conceptual frameworks in which they are expressed, as Churchland puts it. But as K Bryan and I have already pointed out, one’s first person experiencing of pain or mirth in their immediate qualitative character is not subject to refutation by challenging their worldview because it is not an observational judgment. EM and EB conflate or eliminate the phenomenological difference between these mental states and those that are products of conceptualization. The flood geologist who sees the rock strata as a global flood deposition and the Grand Canyon as laid down by Noahic Flood run-off is interpreting the visual data according to a false theory, he is applying a flawed conceptual framework. But my feeling of mirth involves no comparable application of a conceptual framework.
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“I prefer to say it as, “your assumptions will determine the outcomeâ€. That is, if you assume you can know truth without God, you will find that you have no need for God.”
If God equivalent to your own assumptions about God?
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“As I described it, I consider the Christian standpoint (all that Greek agape, eros, philia, etc., and really, all our reflections on love, and everything else) as social innovations that allows us to turn our physical experience of love into something social…”
Do you see the power claim you make here?
“I think love, including specifically Christian love, talked about, is a piece of social theory we go back and forth within – a dialectic. But the experience of love is not a dialectic – it’s the sensation that the dialectic is meant to evaluate.”
Talked about, a dialectic. But done? And done absent the motivating sensation? What if that is possible?
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I find the idea that one can only know the truth if one starts with some particular assumptions quite depressing. Especially when coupled with the idea that if one starts with the wrong assumptions, one might never be the wiser.
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As a fellow presuppositionalist, all I can say is, Benji rocks!
Headless Unicorn Guy (from here on know as HUG!): “Are these “presuppositionalists†like that?”
I prefer to say it as, “your assumptions will determine the outcome”. That is, if you assume you can know truth without God, you will find that you have no need for God.
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Hey Benji, you don’t live too far from me. Southeastern Seminary is like 15 or 20 minutes away from my house, dude!
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Benji, this is a false paradox.
“If we assume, for argument’s sake, that the only things we can know for sure exist is what can be seen, then:
1. We can’t be sure the mind exists.
2. We can’t be sure logic exists.
3. We can’t be sure love exists.
4. We can’t be sure law exists.”
Read more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-valued_logic
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>Are there not athiests/agnostics who argue that
>because they cannot “see†God, then they reject the
>certainty of His existence?
>If so, then they are going to have to go ALL the
>way if they are going to be consistent [even if
>they might not want to admit where their worldview
>leads them].
No, there really aren’t many that would state their argument in those terms. Rejections of God are, in my experience, universally more complex than “I don’t see him, therefore he doesn’t exist.” That sort of logic is trivially shown to be lacking (you can’t see wind, either, but everyone believes it exists); people just don’t think that simplistically.
And those that do would not find your “if so…” to be at all compelling. I’m just picturing the looks I would get from the people I know if I tried that line of reasoning on them…
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@Benji – “That’s why PRESUPPOSING the total truthfulness of the Bible (which is from the God who knows all things) is the only way you or anybody else can prove anything at all.”
As I noted in an earlier post, this is trivally false. Two examples off the top of my head:
1) Analytic propositions.
2) The fact that first person reports of conscious mental states are incorrigible.
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Are there not athiests/agnostics who argue that because they cannot “see” God, then they reject the certainty of His existence?
If so, then they are going to have to go ALL the way if they are going to be consistent [even if they might not want to admit where their worldview leads them].
1. No certainty of the existence of the mind
2. No certainty of the existence of logic
3. No certainty of the existence of love
4. No certainty of the existence of law
1-4 is where their thinking leads.
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>I’m not arguing that people don’t have a mind.
>However, if we assume, for argument’s sake, that
>only “matter†exists in accordance with “seeing is
>believing†type thinking, then:
>1. The mind does not exist.
>2. Logic does not exist.
>3. Love does not exist.
>4. Law does not exist.
You’re describing a worldview that doesn’t actually exist. If you can find an atheist/agnostic that agrees with that line of reasoning, I’ll buy a hat just so I can eat it. 🙂
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Sam,
I’m not arguing that people don’t have a mind. However, if we assume, for argument’s sake, that only “matter” exists in accordance with “seeing is believing” type thinking, then:
1. The mind does not exist.
2. Logic does not exist.
3. Love does not exist.
4. Law does not exist.
If we assume, for argument’s sake, that the only things we can know for sure exist is what can be seen, then:
1. We can’t be sure the mind exists.
2. We can’t be sure logic exists.
3. We can’t be sure love exists.
4. We can’t be sure law exists.
I am a Sunday School “Christian” [I’m sure the hardcore evolutionists will love that description].
THEREFORE
I believe that not only matter exists but that which is unseen as well:
1. I believe the mind exists and so therefore I may use it.
2. I believe logic exists and so therefore I may use it.
3. I believe love exists and so therefore I may give and receive it.
4. I believe law exists and so therefore I may appeal to it.
The hardcore evolutionist–the one who believes that the only things that exist is that which is material or who believes the only things we can be “sure” exist is that which is material–may not do what I may do because of his worldview.
It’s intellectual suicide.
Pull out! Pull out! You’ve got work to do! Benji [yes, I’m talking to myself] 🙂
Benji
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@Headless Unicorn Guy – ““Presuppositionalist†is quite a mouthful of a word, but from this it sounds analogous to Conspiracy Theory Kool-Aid. There is literally no counter to a Conspiracy argument that a Conspiracy Theory Fanboy will accept, either:”
Basically yes, but the presuppositionalists would of course argue. 🙂 The wikipedia page on presuppositional apologetics gives a good overview:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presuppositional_apologetics
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>The hardcore–nothing can be proven to exist but
>matter–evolutionist has forfeited his right to:
>A. use immaterial logic.
>B. use his immaterial mind.
>C. say it was wrong when he got beat up a school since law is immaterial.
>D. receive or give immaterial love.
Do you actually know any atheists/agnostics? This sort of thinking treats them as less than human.
These points are so weird I just don’t know what to say.
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There is no counter to a presuppositionalist argument that they will accept because they’ve already declared victory. It would be more productive to argue theology and logic with my three year old nephew. — K Bryan
“Presuppositionalist” is quite a mouthful of a word, but from this it sounds analogous to Conspiracy Theory Kool-Aid. There is literally no counter to a Conspiracy argument that a Conspiracy Theory Fanboy will accept, either:
1) Any evidence against The Conspiracy IS OBVIOUSLY Disinformation planted by The Conspiracy.
2) Any lack of evidence for The Conspiracy is PROOF The Conspiracy is so Vast and Powerful THEY Can Suppress Anything and Everything.
3) If the Conspiracy Theory doesn’t fit the facts, Invent a Bigger Conspiracy. Reality must always bend the knee to Ideology.
Are these “presuppositionalists” like that?
How do you know evil spirits aren’t hiding your keys when you lose them? They could have all kinds of nefarious plans that involve keeping you home. — Patrick Lynch
Uh, Pat, I’ve heard horror stories about Spiritual Warfare types who are like that FOR REAL. Satan is hiding under every bed with a Whoopee Cushion specifically for them. Instead of replacing a burned-out lightbulb, they’ll pull out their KJV and loudly Rebuke the Demon of Burned-Out-Lightbulbs.
My writing partner knows one of these poster children for Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World, and I ran into a few myself when D&D met The Satanic Panic back in the Eighties. Like the abovementioned Conspiracy fanboys, they’re in it for the warmfeelies and ego-boo of being So Important Satan And All His Demons Have It In For Them Personally.
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“You can’t depend upon the past to prove the uniformity of nature because that would be assuming that the future will be like the past.”
Here’s a thought-experiment for you:
I tell you I will have ten dollars every time you ask me, no matter when, no matter what. You, being not so good with the finances, need $10. I give you ten dollars today. You spend it and ask again the next day, but I give you nothing. You ask again the day after, and I give you seven. I don’t see you for a week, but then you hit me up for $15 and I give you a $20 and tell you to keep the change. Next time, though, I suggest that you should get a job, and give you some change. You never see me again.
Did I run out of money to give you?
Answer: doesn’t matter.
When you, homeless grifter, figure out that correlation doesn’t equal causation, you’ll realize that I said I always make sure I have ten dollars on me no matter what because that’s my prerogative, and surmise that this is possible because of some outside efficient cause, i.e. I have a job. So no, your experience with me does not give you any real insight into the contents of my wallet or even the scope of my generosity, but that doesn’t stop you from complaining if you’re hungry.
Having all the answers in the Bible or none of the answers doesn’t change anything about how we do things. We keep asking (from the land, from the sky, from each other) and we take what we get, and we learn the routines, and we’re grateful when we get something good and we complain (to whoever will listen) when what we get sucks.
The end.
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“Which kind of love are we talking about here? There is a love which is a feeling, and there is a love — the important one from a Christian standpoint — which is a commitment irrespective of feeling. Our language unfortunately conflates the two”
As I described it, I consider the Christian standpoint (all that Greek agape, eros, philia, etc., and really, all our reflections on love, and everything else) as social innovations that allows us to turn our physical experience of love into something social: in this case a subtle normative game of describing and categorizing typologies of that feeling based on the object its centered on (dad, boyfriend, grandma, hometown, Jesus, etc.). I think love, including specifically Christian love, talked about, is a piece of social theory we go back and forth within – a dialectic. But the experience of love is not a dialectic – it’s the sensation that the dialectic is meant to evaluate.
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“But how do you know that the way you have always seen the seasons come in the PAST will be the way the seasons will come in the FUTURE?”
You don’t know. But you don’t need to know the future for the future to become the present. If something about this summer made it not summer, we wouldn’t throw out our experiences with past summers and consider that Providence has made fools of us, we’d do what we always do when something changes – look for the cause, and keep on living.
How do you know evil spirits aren’t hiding your keys when you lose them? They could have all kinds of nefarious plans that involve keeping you home. OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON? No, you assume spirits didn’t take them because that’s not a parsimonious explanation that takes into account your first-order knowledge of a) how forgetful you are, b) what you were doing that day, c) other hands in the house who might want to borrow your car.
The problem of bootstrapping the Bible as “authority” is unhistorical – the Jews didn’t (and today don’t) treat the Bible that way, and they wrote it. They reverence it and study it and devote themselves to it without forcing it to fit hamstrung philosophical propositions like your “moon” thing.
Actually, that moon thing is quite an impossible thought experiment, when you think about it. Have you ever tried to catalog all the things you DO actually know? Forget drawing a circle around them – you couldn’t even begin to get a handle on the dimensions of your own knowledge. You know more than you can recall, and you can brainstorm new knowledge faster than you can catalogue it. Aren’t you glad you’re not much smarter than you are? It’d be even harder! So the analogy is just not apt.
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“How do you know you are not just having biochemical events going on in your brain that causes you to think the way you do?”
Ever change your mind?
Did you have to ask yourself which changed first, your brain chemistry or your opinion?
No, because it doesn’t matter.
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“Why might it not be that it’s just a waste of time to talk to me since I might be biologically determined to think the way I do in the first place.”
Hmmmmmm…you make a compelling case…
Seriously though, I grew up with YEC theories clouding my mind, but this line of thinking is exceptionally bizarre and, frankly, unscriptural.
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Guys,
I’ve got sermon prep and two folks that are members of the church I pastor who might die soon.
I am one of those guys who can have a hard time pulling out of a conversation like this and thus it can take away from other responsibilities I have.
In other words, I can get obsessive:)
If you want to know more of my perspective, then I would encourage you to read “Always Ready” by Dr. Greg Bahnsen.
I think Van Til can be hard to understand but I think Bahnsen is clearer.
God Bless,
Benji
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Fellows,
How do you know you are not just having biochemical events going on in your brain that causes you to think the way you do?
Why might it not be that (to borrow some imagery from Douglas Wilson) your brain fizzes evolutionary thinking and my brain fizzes creation thinking?
Why might it not be that it’s just a waste of time to talk to me since I might be biologically determined to think the way I do in the first place.
I wish your mind well (assuming you have one and not just a brain)
Benji
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Let me encourage you guys to do a little experiment.
Why don’t you sit down with a piece of paper and draw yourself a circle on one side of the paper and on the other side draw a cresent moon* (boy fishing on it being optional).
Now, I want to imagine that the whole of your knowledge is contained in that circle. And so you look at that circle and notice that your knowledge has limits. You do not have “unlimited knowledge” in other words.
Now, I want you to look at the other side of that moon. Now, you don’t know what is on the other side of that moon. After all, your knowledge is limited within that circle. Therefore, if left to yourself you cannot PROVE anything within that circle to be absolutely right because there might be something on the other side of that crescent moon that contradicts what you think is true.
That’s why PRESUPPOSING the total truthfulness of the Bible (which is from the God who knows all things) is the only way you or anybody else can prove anything at all.
So, let’s take logic for example. If left to yourself you might confidently assert that logic is valid. However, there might be something on the other side of the moon that contradicts what you think.
However, the Bible both assumes the validity of logic and communicates things logically (Is. 5:20 for example). Therefore, I am able to be certain that logic is valid because I am depending upon the word of God who DOES KNOW WHAT IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON.
In other words, I believe Cornelius Van Til was right when he said that the proof that the Bible is true is that if the Bible were not true, you could not prove anything at all.
Let’s take another idea. How do you know that the seasons will come in the future the way they have come in the past?
Well, you might say that you know that the seasons will come in the future the way they have come in the past because that is the way you have always seen them to come.
But how do you know that the way you have always seen the seasons come in the PAST will be the way the seasons will come in the FUTURE?
Remember, there might be something on the other side of the moon…
However, if you depend upon what God says in Genesis about the seasons, then you can know for certain that the seasons will come in the future the way they have come in the past since God does know what is on the other side of the moon.
You can’t depend upon the past to prove the uniformity of nature because that would be assuming that the future will be like the past.
Remember, everything you know is in that little circle.
God Bless
Benji Ramsaur
* Something not known on the other side of the moon idea is taken by me from Richard Pratt’s book “Every Thought Captive”
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“Love is something that you feel, and an idea you have about that feeling.”
Which kind of love are we talking about here? There is a love which is a feeling, and there is a love — the important one from a Christian standpoint — which is a commitment irrespective of feeling. Our language unfortunately conflates the two.
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BENJI RAMSAUR…..very well said. I understand perfectly….what you are saying.
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Curtis…..The ancients were as clueless about the true nature of the physical world as we are about the spiritual world. Nobody thinks the Bible accurately describes spiritual beings as they really are… we don’t expect angels as they truly are to be the same as the one described in Isaiah.
The ancients who were not given understanding from the contractor and builder…
god, were cluless about the true nature of the physical world. And not all, today, are clueless about the spiritual world. Protestants are like other religious groups, some see scripture as the revealed truths from God….others do not. I completely know that Isaiah’s vision was given to him for spiritual discernment about the power and spirit of God. I’ve seen my guardian angel twice. He is as Daniel was described, ‘without spot or blemish.’ He’s about twenty-five and he is so MEEK. He was present in the delivery room when my third child was born and dying. With him was another young man…equally as lovely and kind. They mourned with me. Then they left with my little one to the place of God.
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Thing is, Benji, that’s not a “standard”. Thats just a rough description of the process of thinking about stuff. And thinking about stuff is what everybody does. It’s not “pure reason”, it’s just the process. I interpret your talk of judging stuff “by the Bible” or whatever as leaning more heavily than I do on a particular dialectic you’re socialized to while you’re thinking – though when it’s causing you to discard your observations or clouds your logic so that you can’t explain your beliefs coherently to others, I suspect that it’s not helping you to make sense of the world, and tend to assume that you cling to a dialectic that doesn’t help you for some other reason.
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I get the feeling this thread is already degenerating into an undergrad philosophy department…
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“The hardcore–nothing can be proven to exist but matter–evolutionist has forfeited his right to:
A. use immaterial logic.
B. use his immaterial mind.
C. say it was wrong when he got beat up a school since law is immaterial.
D. receive or give immaterial love.
There are “consequences†to rejecting Scripture.”
This doesn’t make sense, dude.
Absconding the relevance of magic or theology has absolutely no effect on how people live, love, or socialize.
You don’t need God to underwrite the reality of love, for instance. Love is something that you feel, and an idea you have about that feeling. “Love” is a word that describes a compound of effects noted by a consciousness: a feeling in the body and your identifying it in relationship to an object. The flush of emotion that comes with love, when you divide it from its object, is actually a generic effect the body produces – there is no specific experience of emotion unique to love, on other words. So, you know “what love is” primarily through connecting that effect with the object that produces it in you.
Love being a powerful and sometimes destabilizing chemical experience in the brain and the body, we have devised for ourselves a vast rituary of social customs, norms, and reflections on the experience. Experiencing love and attendant sensations is sort of the primal recreational pastime of humanity, where norms have made a sport out of the reproductive impulse.
And that’s love, without the metaphysics. You can describe a lot of things without ever having to leave your body.
As for “right and wrong”, well? Lots of different theories on that, none of which succeed or fail to gain adherents based on what they invoke God to explain. Confucius, Demosthenes, Plato, Rousseau, Hobbes, Jefferson, Nussbaum, Rorty, etc. all largely do fine without Him, philosophically.
“What standard do you use to determine if something is true or not true?”
Same as everybody else: a little discursive logic and collective rationalization hitched to observation gives us the certainty we need to persist in our opinions, which survive until we break with the group who socialized us to their dialectic, until the logic breaks down by making predictions inconsistent with reality and we’re forced to abandon it, or our ability to observe “something” ceases for whatever reason.
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Ah, K Bryan is a more careful reader than me of your first paragraph, Benji. I stand corrected: the first sentence isn’t plain.
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Benji, I’m having difficulty following your point as it pertains to the earlier comments. I had this same difficulty with our earlier exchange in this thread–you responded but I must lack the specialized vocabulary to interpret what you meant. I just looked back at my earlier comment to willoh and the comments of others, and I’m just stumped what this latest comment of yours has to do with them. If you care to, you’ll need to fill in some of the ellipses between the various assertions you’re making above.
Your first paragraph is plain enough, nothing out of the ordinary for a theist with empiricist/positivist intuitions or commitments. But then,
Is there a passage or passages from the Bible that you could direct me to that “affirm the reality of math?” And logic? I wasn’t aware that the Bible affirms, for example, the principle of non-contradiction. Is there a proposition in the biblical text, or even a reasonable inference, for this claim of yours?
What is a “hardcore evolutionist?” I’m not sure how construe “hardcore.” Has a “softcore” evolutionist forfeited all or some of the same “rights” you’ve enumerated?
Here’s a specific question that might help clarify my confusion. When you say the “hardcore” evolutionist has forfeited his right to use immaterial logic [not sure what ‘immaterial’ adds to the term ‘logic’–is there a “material logic”?] are you claiming that such an individual is unable to formulate a valid syllogism? I’m somewhat reminded of Bacon’s description of the four eidola that distort our thinking. I guess my confusion is your use of the language of ethics–rights–in your judgment. In any event, your claims here aren’t obvious. Since I don’t “reject” Scripture, it seems that I should be worried about not getting what you are presenting as practically axiomatic.
Lastly, your last assertion,
Who would disagree with the claim, even someone who does in fact reject Scripture? In any event, why the scare quotes around “consequences?”
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@Benji – “Since a human is not omniscient there is always the possibility that there is some “fact†or “truth†out there that he does not know about that could contradict whatever he might claim to know for certain.â€
And you seem not to understand the concept of the incorrigibility of first person authority. e.g. I cannot be mistaken that I am feeling a pain in my right knee. There is no “fact or truth” out there that can contradict my certain knowledge that I am experiencing a pain in my right knee.
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@Benji – “Since a human is not omniscient there is always the possibility that there is some “fact†or “truth†out there that he does not know about that could contradict whatever he might claim to know for certain.”
I may be missing something here, but you seem to not understand the difference between analytic and synthetic propositions.
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@Joel Hunter – “Were this the 17th century, your glib bons mots about logic and evidence would be especially fitting, as these assertions do nothing but declare your immunity from having to peer through the telescope, for you know in advance the correct answers.”
I’ve never understood presuppositionalism. No offense to Benji, but Van Tilian presuppositionalism is petitio principii writ large. Clarkian presuppositionalism avoids that charge, but not by much. Of course, a presuppositionalist would say that by using terms of logic like petitio principii I am accepting their presuppositions. Thus the circular argument grows tighter and tighter, threatening to collapse into a singularity. 🙂
There is no counter to a presuppositionalist argument that they will accept because they’ve already declared victory. It would be more productive to argue theology and logic with my three year old nephew. I hold no animosity toward presuppositionalists. I just treat them like thinks aliens are communicating with them through the fillings in their teeth: a bit odd, but probably harmless. 🙂
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Patrick,
What standard do you use to determine if something is true or not true?
Grace to you,
Benji
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Since a human is not omniscient there is always the possibility that there is some “fact” or “truth” out there that he does not know about that could contradict whatever he might claim to know for certain. The God who has provided Scripture, on the other hand, does not have this problem. Plus, God controls all past, present, and future facts as well. Man doesn’t.
The Bible affirms the reality of the seen and unseen, math, logic, etc.
The hardcore–nothing can be proven to exist but matter–evolutionist has forfeited his right to:
A. use immaterial logic.
B. use his immaterial mind.
C. say it was wrong when he got beat up a school since law is immaterial.
D. receive or give immaterial love.
There are “consequences” to rejecting Scripture.
God Bless,
Benji
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I do plan on coming back fellows if you are interested.
Duke/Carolina basketball game awaits me.
Probably tomorrow.
Take care
Benji
P.S. I’d encourage you to try and watch or listen to Dr. Greg Bahnsen and Dr. Stein debate if you tube has it [and if it’s legal]. I come from Bahnsen’s perspective. I don’t believe you can justify “any” knowledge–including math–apart from biblical revelation.
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Given Toba’s genetic bottleneck and the sea change in complexity before-and-after, Toba sounds like the ideal time to place humanity’s “ensoulmentâ€, the time of Adam & Eve. If YEC’s weren’t so committed to Bishop Ussher’s chronology…
yeah! somebody gets it! Why a bunch of people who can stand nothing Catholic, cling to the teachings of a bishop.. unreal. — Willoh
Well, Ussher was an ANGLICAN Bishop, not Roman…
But Toba’s chronology and implications DO fly in the face of today’s YEC Orthodoxy/Dogma. Here’s a little “what-if” thought-experiment I used for an alien faith’s Creation story in a novella:
Imagine Genesis 1 implying Uplift from a non-sentient (“soulless”) predecessor species, and the only living Primates on Earth were humans and lemurs. Imagine the rational/skeptical arguments debunking that Creation account…
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“Oh really?
By what standard?”
Thoughts don’t come in ‘standards’.
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Benji, in his Phaedo Plato has Socrates in prison, just before his execution, admonish his students that no matter the difficulty of philosophy, never to become misologues, which people can become in the same way as those who become misanthropes (frequent or acute disappointment of trust, the one in discourse, the other in men). “There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse.”
Were this the 17th century, your glib bons mots about logic and evidence would be especially fitting, as these assertions do nothing but declare your immunity from having to peer through the telescope, for you know in advance the correct answers. Bellarmine also was quite sure that Galileo was wrong because the esteemed Cardinal knew that he had the right presuppositions and no experiential evidence for the Copernican thesis presented by Galileo could invalidate them. But he was wrong. (Actually, I’m being a bit unfair to the good Cardinal, who was willing to state his evidential standards and was open to the possibility, at least for the sake of argument, that the Church’s geocentric inference from Scripture was mistaken.)
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Benji: ““logic†is not even material–a problem for the hardcore evolutionist in the first place.”
Neither is the number “5”, but that doesn’t seem to pose a problem to mathematicians…
““evidence†is interpreted according to presuppositions. Therefore, which set of presuppositions allows one to make sense out of life in the first place?”
Unfortunately it’s not a good test because there are many sets of presuppositions which accomplish this.
And I don’t believe anyone responded to nedbrek’s assertion (“Evolutionary theory (specifically, common descent, and development across kinds) has provided no useful inventions…”).
This isn’t the case at all; all sorts of modern medicines depended on genetics (much of which is based on evolutionary ideas) for their development. We understand many human genes by studying what their equivalents do in yeast and mice. I could go on, but this is sufficient.
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“All I can say for the Genesis version [of Creation] is that it strikes me as more plausible than Professor Hoyle’s” — Malcolm Muggeridge
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Joel hunter,
You said “It would be helpful to state up front what are the conditions for a reasonable person to, by force of logic and evidence, reconsider their interpretation of Genesis 1-3 and the meaning of divine creation.”
“logic” is not even material–a problem for the hardcore evolutionist in the first place.
“evidence” is interpreted according to presuppositions. Therefore, which set of presuppositions allows one to make sense out of life in the first place?
You probably already know what my answer would be. 🙂
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willoh, i’m sorry if my frustration with your earlier comment is coming out as intemperate remarks. i’ve been in other threads recently and this medium seems to provoke some participants taking the claim that “you are wrong about that” as a personal insult. I do not mean it to be, and I wanted you to know that I appreciate your contributions to iMonk’s posts. I simply found this particular comment of yours important to respond to and register my disagreement. peace…
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Tim W, you wrote
There is an illustration of this in physics. Dark matter cannot, in principle, be observed. Yet it is inferred to exist because of certain effects that we can observe in the universe. “Belief in” dark matter is reasonable because it contributes coherence–sense–to our systematic web of beliefs with respect to the physical. “Belief in” a religious article of faith (Jesus is God incarnate), though unproveable by the standards of empirical investigation, should nevertheless correlate with explanations for certain of our experiences (e.g., our sense that the world is out of joint, our sense that the brokenness of our relationships is not the way our relationships are supposed to be, etc.) that resist humanly determined solutions. So I guess I’m trying to draw a comparison here between two different kinds of conjectures about something unseen (and in principle unseeable!), but both reasonable given their different subject matter: one which concerns the order and structure of the visible universe, the other which concerns the ultimate meaning and significance of human life.
willoh, Johan provided concrete details in response to an earlier claim that there is no evidence for transitional fossils/species. You counter this with an ad hoc standard of “ramp” vs. “stair steps.” What does that even mean? What evolutionary claims require a “ramp” progression, whatever that is? You see, this is the frustrating thing about this discussion. The requested evidence is demanded. It is then provided. But after the fact we find that some other standard must also be met. And so on, ad infinitum. So the earlier creationist argument that “there are no transitional fossils” has been answered, but instead of acknowledging that it has been answered, it continues to be disputed under another set of conditions which were neither implied nor stated in the original dispute. Ad hoc arguments and criteria are frustrating because of their arbitrariness. It would be helpful to state up front what are the conditions for a reasonable person to, by force of logic and evidence, reconsider their interpretation of Genesis 1-3 and the meaning of divine creation. I appreciate that this is asking a lot, and historically, we don’t have much hope of getting those criteria explicitly stated, if we take the example of the paradigm shift from geocentrism to heliocentrism as a recent example.
This question was not asked. This is a red herring.
Granted. Who has said that YEC and “Darwinism” are the only options, that the refutation of YEC entails evolution? I mean, besides YECers, who DO make just that argument. Johan’s comment concerns what to make of the evidence. As evidence has been collected (and YEC must account for evidence from geology and physics, in addition to biology), the plausibility of evolutionary theory has strengthened, not weakened. No one has said that this increase in evolution’s plausibility somehow entails the theory’s metaphysical necessity (which is impossible for any scientific theory anyway). At worst (for the creationist) it means that as evolutionary theory increases in likelihood, it becomes more unreasonable to deny it. Again, compare to heliocentrism or the theories of relativity or the big bang.
Indeed. The story of Prometheus and Epimetheus is another belief and explanation. There’s the Tao, the mother of the ten thousand things. There’s the Ainulindalë, Tolkien’s story of the music of the Ainur and Iluvatar. But if we’re talking about explanations and beliefs about causal mechanisms for species change, then none of these says anything relevant to what evolution describes. In other words, they’re not actually genuine alternatives. I do not know why the divine creation described by Genesis must be seen as an alternative to evolution in this exclusive way, because it seems apparent that the two accounts are answering entirely different questions.
The mere possibility of conceiving different explanations, nor the fact that there are (or have been) hundreds of different explanations, does not refute anything actually claimed or implied by evolutionary theory.
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There are no [uninterpreted] facts…
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Willoh:
It is always rude to lecture someone that you don’t know about their choice of words and the meaning of those words. I yielded to the temptation to do that to you, and I apologize. I hope you will note that I did not say that you were either unintelligent or uneducated. I can see how you might think that was implied by my choice of words, but that was not my intent.
I have had these discussions for quite a few years myself, and I am well aware that any number of smart, educated people do indeed disagree with Darwin. Obviously I don’t think that they’re correct, but I also don’t think that they’re unintelligent. I was intrigued by your comment that from where you sit it seems that those who accept evolution ultimately believe in it because it is the “right thing†to believe. To me it has always seemed just the opposite –that those who do not accept evolution want so much not to believe it that their view of the facts is distorted through that lens. You have clearly thought about this for a long time, as have I, so neither you nor I are likely to convince the other that our view is correct. This thread wasn’t supposed to be about debates on the merits of evolution anyway.
I’m Catholic so I never encounter this as an issue in church – hence my focus on the science. There are Catholics who believe in YEC (heck, there’s at least one who still believes in a geocentric universe) and others like me who accept evolution as proven. It’s not an issue that ever seems to come up as a litmus test on anyone’s faith and our faith is, in the end, what’s important.
I gather from your other posts that we at least both believe the earth is old, right?
Peace be with you.
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Willoh,
The parables of Jesus do not have further revelation revealing that the parables were something other than parables.
The New Testament is further revelation that takes Genesis 1-3 as actual history [at least to a great extent] with an actual Adam.
However, let me emphasize that I do not believe the actual history cancels the rich typology I think is in the text.
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Patrick,
“You THINK about it.”
Oh really?
By what standard?
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Given Toba’s genetic bottleneck and the sea change in complexity before-and-after, Toba sounds like the ideal time to place humanity’s “ensoulmentâ€, the time of Adam & Eve. If YEC’s weren’t so committed to Bishop Ussher’s chronology…
yeah! somebody gets it! Why a bunch of people who can stand nothing Catholic, cling to the teachings of a bishop.. unreal.
Benji, Jesus spoke in parables. Jesus is the exact representation of God. Could God not teach in parables? So many people seem to miss the whole point, many points, in Gen. 1-3, as they major in minors.
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By analyzing the Y-chromosome DNA from males in all regions of the world, geneticist Spencer Wells has concluded that all humans alive today are descended from a single man who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago.†and that the human population may have been reduced to between 10,000 or even as few as 2,000 due to the Toba catastrophe theory, which speculates that “70,000 to 75,000 years ago a supervolcanic event at Lake Toba, on Sumatra, reduced the world’s human population to 10,000 or even a mere 1,000 breeding pairs, creating a bottleneck in human evolution.†— Martha
There is also some evidence that post-Toba saw an abrupt increase in the complexity of human culture (artifacts, art, and the like) leading some to theorize that recovering from Toba saw the emergence of complex language. (Indirect evidence, of course; post-Toba humans didn’t create and bury detailed time capsules for today’s archeologists/anthropologists.)
Given Toba’s genetic bottleneck and the sea change in complexity before-and-after, Toba sounds like the ideal time to place humanity’s “ensoulment”, the time of Adam & Eve. If YEC’s weren’t so committed to Bishop Ussher’s chronology…
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“What will you do then if you take a Dalmatian view of the Bible [i.e., there’s a lot of white, but this spot and that spot is in error…]?
Do you look at what the majority of experts say and go with that?
Do you close your eyes and say “Eenie meenie miny moe…â€
Rub a rabbit’s foot?
What if the future experts end up debunking what today’s experts say as, ehem, “progression†marches on?”
You THINK about it. And keep thinking about it. And since you have to live, too, you take responsibility for the conclusions you come to and trust that God isn’t going to punish you for being a person and living your life.
You know, just like everybody else, Christian or not.
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Sometimes what “they say” [i.e., the supposed experts] might contradict each other–word to the wise.
What will you do then if you take a Dalmatian view of the Bible [i.e., there’s a lot of white, but this spot and that spot is in error…]?
Do you look at what the majority of experts say and go with that?
Do you close your eyes and say “Eenie meenie miny moe…”
Rub a rabbit’s foot?
What if the future experts end up debunking what today’s experts say as, ehem, “progression” marches on?
What are you going to do when the hardcore evolutionist presses you on faith?
yell “exxpperrrriiieeeeeeeence!!!!”
or “I believe [most of] the Bible!!!!”
I’m sure that will fly with him.
🙂
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Is it OK to be an ancient Earth, Ancient Creator who actually ‘creates’, believer? And Johan, The “evolution of the species” looks a lot more like stair steps than it does like a ramp. Some of the steps are really high. Nobody ever explained step 1. Just because you don’t think Adam rode a dinosaur , doesn’t mean you must be a Darwinist. trust me, there are other explanations and beliefs.
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G.K. Chesterton, “The Everlasting Man”; chapter 1–The Man in the Cave; esp. pg. 27, 32.
Not necessarily saying I agree with everything, but I nevertheless encourage you to take a look.
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This debate has been going on for centuries. Let’s consider what Augustine has to say. First, here is his most famous statement on this issue:
Next, he shows the proper humility about this interpretive process that we all can learn from, and he acknowledges that the writing of Genesis was NOT done with a meaning that was “obvious†or “plainâ€. but instead was “obscure†:
This seems dramatically contrary to the current polemics and dogmatism we see today. […] Overall, I think the “take away†message from Augustine is that we should avoid dogmatism in these non-essentials, since there is great danger in doing so. Taking a dogmatic “either/or†stance can be a stumbling-block to non-believers and even other Christians, and it can even damage our own faith. I am all for battling for truth, but let’s choose our battles wisely.
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I could never understand how people could be agnostic or athiest, i just figured they were being rebellious and that they knew full well there was a God and they just didn’t want to submit to him. It is only recently that I have come to see their point of view and I realize that they aren’t all God haters but that many just cannot honestly believe in God. Also, I’m having to accept that being religious involves believing in things that can’t be seen, and I’m wondering if I can continue to do that. If I become agnostic I would hope that I’d be the honest kind and not the kind that just chooses to hate God, but maybe I’d be a bit of both.
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Not to be pedantic, but there are lots of fossils of intermediate species.
(In a way of course every species is intermediate)
But there is a lot of fossil evidence for the following transitions
Fish – amphibian (tiktaalik)
Reptile – mammal like reptile – mammal (lots of intermediates for the ear-bones, which were once thought impossible in the creationist pamphlets)
Theropod dinosaur – birds (the fact that a large group of dinosaurs actually had feathers is now commonly accepted. As is the fact that their lungs had the same structure as birds’. I actually read some bloggers refer to ‘non-avian dinosaurs’ and ‘avian dinosaurs’. I like the fact that dinosaurs are not extinct. I see them every day)
Land mammal – whale. (Again one of the examples from the creationist books, that is now disproved by several intermediates).
And let me put this one out there:
primate – man. (If only that the ape-like australopithecus had an upright walk).
I’m not even talking about the similarities between the ‘tree of life’ as it can be constructed from fossils and their estimated ages, and the one that can be constructed based on the genome, and similarities in the genetic material.
I think it’s pretty convincing from a scientific point of view.
Here in the Netherlands the discussion on this subject rages as well. Some prominent believers have changed their opinions and publicly anounced they are no longer young earth creationists (not even ID) but accept evolution as a process. At the same time some christian organizations plan to spread a creationist booklet to more than 600.000 households, ‘explaining’ why evolution is wrong and christians are right. Deep sigh.
I attend an evangelical church that accepts ‘theistic evolutionists’. One of our worship leaders is a professor in biological physics, who had published in Science and Nature, and published three books on the creation-evolution debate in het Netherlands.
On the other hand I have lost friends when they discovered I was not a young earth creationist any more.
For some it doesn’t matter, as they just don’t think it’s important to have an opinion on this.
With others I’m starting to think our difference in opinion is symptomatic to a larger divide, a different approach to faith and rtuth, to the purpose of the human mind, culture and the physical world.
Johan
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Evan F.
I have read every National Geographic from 1921 on. I have read Natural History since the 80’s. Keep that in mind a minute. A theory is an explanation to a set of observations. It has nothing to do with how good the Science is. I am a graduate of a secular University . All that said, I have never seen a fossil of an intermediate specie.
It is possible for educated intelligent people to disagree with Darwin. I guess I am intelligent, They sent me to school for free for some reason. As an engineer you have seen systems evolve. There was a designer behind each new model, building on the old, but at times, with great jumps in functionality.
Give God’s creation the same respect.
I live in coal country. We have many fossils. How can Darwin explain the Cambrian explosion? Oh that is right, he didn’t know about it.
Please do not join the crowd that condemns me to believe in this poor explanation to a set of observations. I have had this debate for 30 years with people from all walks of life, doctors, plumbers, and when you peal away why people believe Darwin it is because they think it is the “right thing” to believe. It is a faith system. Not a Science.
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Fr. Ernesto-
Thank you for your clarification.
Does the Orthodox Church have a position on the question of a literal Adam?
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The theories of human evolution are fascinating; there are still disagreements over which species are species, sub-species, ancestors, cousins, or just confused 🙂
There are also interesting little data blips thrown up, such as “Y-chromosomal Adam, the patrilineal human most recent common ancestor (MRCA) from whom all Y chromosomes in living men are descended. By analyzing the Y-chromosome DNA from males in all regions of the world, geneticist Spencer Wells has concluded that all humans alive today are descended from a single man who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago.” and that the human population may have been reduced to between 10,000 or even as few as 2,000 due to the Toba catastrophe theory, which speculates that “70,000 to 75,000 years ago a supervolcanic event at Lake Toba, on Sumatra, reduced the world’s human population to 10,000 or even a mere 1,000 breeding pairs, creating a bottleneck in human evolution.”
So the Biblical notions of a common human ancestor from whom we are all descended, or a global catastrophe reducing the population drastically, are not in themselves implausible. Using the Bible as a check-list of history, though, and calculating dates and ages is a poor idea; for instance, I have seen it proposed that the extended lifespans of the patriarchs is not because they lived for 900 years, but because of an error in translation – the calculations were done in Babylonian mathematics, which was done on base 60 rather than our base 10 (I leave this to the mathematicians amongst you to work that one out). Did Seth live to be 912 years old? I don’t know, and I don’t feel that this is a point to live or die on.
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iMonk
Willoh: In my corner of the Bible belt, YECs are relentless. It has affected relationships for years. Very painful and stressful situation.
Knowing ‘How’ God made all things is outside the capacity of man. I have a simple faith which allows me to, unequivocally, believe every Word of scripture. Pain and stress in and on relationships only come when one attempts to ‘prove’ what cannot be proved.
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Dave, you are right that the Orthodox position on the Fall is that there is no inherited guilt, rather there is an inherited weakness, twistedness, damage, that inevitably leads us into sin. And, yes, the Orthodox position on the Fall and the Incarnation do make it easier if one wishes to believe in theistic evolution, as long as one remembers that the Orthodox Church has not pronounced itself on one or another view of Genesis.
To the rest, let me point out that one of my seminary professors a long time ago, a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church pointed out that Genesis could be regarded as a poem in which day one parallels day four, day two parallels day five, and day three parallels day six. Day seven is then a capstone to the poetic parallel.
If Genesis one is viewed that way, then there are three creative periods. On the first creative period God ordered light to appear and then caused discrete points of light as well as “lesser” lights (the moon, etc.) to orbit around the “greater” lights. In the second creative period, God caused dry land and seas to appear and then sea creatures appeared (or developed). In the third creative period, God caused the land to be fruitful and land creatures appeared, and finally man. Then God rested.
If that professor is anywhere near right, then the poetic parallelism that he saw is astonishingly close to the actual developmental scheme of evolution. Just a thought for you all.
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Willoh –
I’m afraid I have to disagree with your statement as to why evolution is “still called a theory.” Evolution is called a theory because it is a coherent explanation of the physical processes behind an observable fact – that species have changed over long periods of time – and because it is supported by such a tremendous body of physical evidence that there is no scientifically coherent alternative explanation. That’s what the word “theory” actually means – an explanation of how something works that is accepted as a proven fact. Something doesn’t get to be called a theory unless it is good science.
Creationists have gotten a lot of milage out of a deliberate misrepresentation of the word “theory” -implying that it means something that is not yet proven. The word for that is “hypothesis”. I know this will offend some people here, but evolution is one of the most well-proven things around (“creation science” notwithstanding.) It is central to and borne out in everything we know about the biological sciences and there is really no way around it that fits into our larger understanding of the sciences. In short, if it isn’t true, we still don’t really understand where babies come from or why the lights come on when we flip the switch.
Gee, I guess everyone now knows where I stand on this. I’m in the “theistic evolution” camp. My apologies for the lecture and the diversion from the real topic. This is a fantastic thread and I don’t mean to throw down a gauntlet. It’s just that my educational backgound is in the sciences and engineering so that misinterpretation of the word “theory” has always been a red flag for me.
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Joel Hunter,
“In what way(s) is the distinction simplistic?”
It’s simplistic in the sense that it seems to assume that the Bible only reveals the “why” and not any of the “how”.
“However, isn’t it also true that God has revealed himself to us through His creation (Rom 1:20, various Psalms)?”
Romans 1:20 is referring to the “immediate” knowledge of God that one receives through the creation, not merely knowledge that one receives in the process of time–since Romans chapter 1 reveals that all men are accountable.
“Shouldn’t we expect to find traces in the physical and living world of His character?”
I would think so–but “always keep your Bible lens glasses on” is my encouragement.
“Isn’t it possible that genetics and the mechanism of natural selection also reveal something of their Creator?”
Genetics–again, keep the glasses on.
Natural Selection–if it contradicts Scripture, then “no”.
“But perhaps you could explain what having ‘Bible lens glasses on’ allows, and how it automatically takes evolution off the table?”
I don’t want to type more material than IMonk’s post:)
If we are talking “Big Bang” and “evolving from monkeys”, then the Bible reveals “In the Beginning God created…” and Adam and Eve being a separate creation from the animal sphere.
No one comes to bones or the Bible with a blank slate. People come to the “data” with presuppositions–entrenched commitments–and it is those commitments that determine how one “interprets” the evidence [if I may use that word].
If we are arguing over whether the cheesburger at Hardees is a $1.50 or $2.25, then we could both go over to Hardees and one of us would admit that the other is right?
Why?
Because there isn’t that much to loose over being wrong.
But when it comes to bold evolution and the Christian faith, the stakes are a tad higher.
Yes, a major understatement.
Grace to you,
Benji
P.S. By the way, my personal opinion is that there is rich typology that is missed in Gen 1-3 because of this controversy.
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Willoh: In my corner of the Bible belt, YECs are relentless. It has affected relationships for years. Very painful and stressful situation.
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J. Vernon McGee is called an evangelical, yet in his introductions to Mark and John he refers to the earth as “scwillions or billions” of years old. Spurgeon remarked that science had shown the Earth Millions of years old,” Oh that god has loved us so long” was his reply. I have heard people claim him as an evangelical. That someone would turn to the RCC over old earth would surprise both those great men. It baffles me.
This young earth stuff is just one more sin a segment of the Church committed. We are not to add to god’s teaching.[see monk’s list of things he was taught as a youth] Just sinful.
Darwin was a great naturalist, on the level with Audubon, but the reason evolution is still called a theory is that it is poor science. The guiding hand of a master Creator can be seen on many levels. Evolution has far to many flaws and logical stumbles. I just do not have faith enough to believe in that theory, and can not tie half my brain in a knot to swallow it.
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Martha – To all that I will say —
I would rather be descended from an ape than directly from a heap of dirt.
But I tend to think it is, alas, both.
Back to Galileo —
Now that we “know” that the Universe has neither center nor edge, can we now agree that by saying that the earth was not the center of the Universe, Galileo was, in fact, saying nothing …? 🙂
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I can appreciate Cardinal O’Conner’s open-mindedness concerning the marriage of science and faith….but I don’t agree with his thoughts. If I can believe that creator God made all things living/non-living, believing in the literal creation account in Genesis is easy. I can accept that God, possibly, made ready the earth over billions of years….as a habitation for the last of His creation….man. For me to accept the evolution of man from a particle of dust or from apes, I still would have to assign Intelligent Design as the catalyst. I don’t think Darwin himself intended his work to cast shadows over scripture.
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And after that long chunk of excerpt, I’m going to inflict another on you; good advice for apologetics, something useful to think about when marshalling arguments in disputation with a scientist (or rather, someone who says they would rather believe science since it can prove by fact):
“Of old the man who — in the Protestant culture —got rid of a creative God by making development mechanical, expected to find against him at the worst some negative argument which further research would disprove. He was rightly contemptuous of such futile defense. If he were told that his evidence was fragmentary, and therefore inconclusive, he could confidently await a mass of new knowledge, the extension of which proceeded prodigiously year by year. Commonly, he was met either by obscurantism — that is, a refusal to look at the evidence — or by appeals to mere emotion (such as “Can we believe that the marvelous structure of the human eye, etc., etc.”); or by thoroughly bad logic, such as the confusion between the facts of Evolution in general and a particular false theory upon its cause (as when a man said: “I do not believe in Natural Selection, because it would have me descended from an ape”) or by begging the question, as by an appeal to the authority of Scripture which the Scientist did not admit.”
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Surfnetter, we are not getting into The Galileo Affair. Don’t make me reach through the screen and smack your wrist 🙂
To get back to the problem of reconciling Scripture and the Theory of Evolution – it’s only a problem if you’re looking at it from a certain angle, and that holds whether you’re a Young Earth Creationist or a Rationalist Materialist. As Belloc says (again, in “Survivals and New Arrivals”):
“It had already sunk into Literalism: the idea that the English text of the Hebrew scriptures, as published under James I 300 years ago, gave an exact historical and scientific description of all therein contained.
The Literalist believed that Jonah was swallowed by a right Greenland whale, and that our first parents lived a precisely calculable number of years ago, and in Mesopotamia. He believed that Noah collected in the ark all the very numerous divisions of the beetle tribe. He believed, because the Hebrew word JOM was printed in his Koran, “day,” that therefore the phases of creation were exactly six in number and each of exactly twenty-four hours. He believed that man began as a bit of mud, handled, fashioned with fingers and then blown upon.
These beliefs were not adventitious to his religion, they were his religion; and when they became untenable (principally through the advance of geology) his religion disappeared.
…So violent was the quarrel that the main point was missed. Evolution in general — mere growth —became the Accursed Thing. The only essential point, its causes, the underlying truth of Lamarck’s theory, and the falsity of Darwin’s and Wallace’s, were not considered. What had to be defended blindly was the bald truth of certain printed English sentences dating from 1610.”
Though I feel constrained to point out that Lamarck is considered to be discredited and it is indeed Darwin and Wallace who have taken the field, so sorry for you there, Hilaire, but you’re backing the wrong horse. And now to swipe at our materialist friends – or rather, as he terms it, the Scientific Negation school:
“The Scientific Method proceeds from Postulate to Hypothesis, thence to the confirmation of Hypothesis by further experiment and the search for converging evidence supporting it. This being discovered, the Hypothesis ceases to be called an Hypothesis and is called a scientifically proved Fact: a Scientific Truth. For instance, the Postulate is made that water, in all ages, has had the same effect on sand as it has today. I make the Hypothesis that a desert ravine was once a river bed. My Hypothesis is confirmed by the presence of sand stratified as it would be if laid down today by water and further research discovers fossils of fresh-water fish. My Hypothesis is now called a Scientific Truth, not established directly by the certain evidence of the senses (no one has seen the gully full of water) but by inference.
Now this process, which is of the essence of the Scientific Method, is valuable and has led to innumerable useful discoveries. It has not, for the establishment of truth, the same degree of value that direct evidence has. Yet it is given that false value.
It may go wrong on either limb. The Postulate may be incorrect or the confirmation of the Hypothesis insufficient, and both are always at the mercy of a new observation.
…Still more important in the production of Scientific Negation was the formation of mental habits. A study which dealt only with innumerable examples of apparently invariable sequence in material cause and effect, and which neglected all considerations exterior to that sequence, produced, in minds not strong enough to distinguish between habitual ideas and logic (few minds today are so strong), an irrational conception that such sequence was universal, necessary and unfailing: that exceptions to it could not exist. The miraculous, the exceptional, was impossible.
…I quote from a book typical of those days. It is that of Baird’s lectures published in ’83.
“Every day adds to the overwhelming accumulation of evidence that He (God) though He might, never does interfere with the operation of natural sequence — called ‘laws.'”
Note the word evidence! Was ever such nonsense? There is evidence of natural sequence? Of course —identical pieces of evidence by millions and trillions have guided mankind from the beginning and still do. We base all our lives on such evidence. But what rational connection is there between that general sequence and the impossibility of exception? Yet the writer of 1883 honestly believed he was thinking when he was only feeling: reasoning, when he was but suffering an emotion.
…It is no good protesting that the True Scientist is nothing of all this: that he does no more than patiently observe, never affirms a thing to be proved until it is, humbly rejects any claim to talk on things that are beyond him. Obviously the ideal scientist would behave so. But the human scientist, belonging as he does to a fallen race, didn’t behave so. He denied wholesale; his “Scientific Negation” was, until lately, the mark of all our time.”
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Somehow I missed out on the rejoicing in the Christian internet when he died. I was saddened by his death. — Kevin N
So was I. He was probably my favorite science writer, a master at what the French call “vulgarization”, the ability to explain/describe complex concepts in a form understandable to most everybody. My fantasy was to sit down with him for an afternoon and go through his essays, asking questions and giving my layman’s insights.
When I heard he died that May seven years ago, I searched the Web for news/eulogies/commentaries on him, his death, and his life’s works. The first five Christian sites that showed up on the search treated his death with triumphalist celebration — “The Apostle of Evolution Is In Hell! variety. Remember IMonk’s posting on George Carlin’s death last year and some of the responses he got? Same thing.
graceshaker — “why people treat scripture like a science book is beyond meâ€
Galileo said the same thing and was jailed for it. — Surfnetter
Actually, Galileo was an arrogant jerk who made a lot of enemies with his abrasiveness, ending up calling Pope Urban an idiot in print. After that, it got personal.
There’s an SF novel, 1634: The Galileo Affair by Eric Flint, that uses the contrast between “what everybody knows” about the Galileo Affair and what really happened as an important plot point. In the novel, involuntary time-travellers from contemporary America end up drifting into a “rescue mission” plot to free Galileo from the clutches of the Inquisition. (Which in itself is a cover for a terrorist plot to assassinate the Pope.) They know “what everybody knows” about the situation, which is enough off-kilter to royally mess things up.
I’ve read some writings about how the flood didn’t specifically use the word Earth (the Hebrew word that is) but a word that tended to be a bit ambiguous but meant in general “all the surrounding land†or something like that. — Ky Boy but not now
Also don’t forget that in classical Hebrew imagery, “the waters” were a symbol of chaos; a flood covering the entire land could also be read as a metaphor for chaos overwhelming the Earth.
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“All that shows is that Paul accepted the Genesis Creation Story as literal, as did those he was teaching. Of course he did. He was an ancient Jewish Bible Scholar.”
Believe it or not, they did actually know what allegory was back in the day. Torah and Talmudic studies were in many ways very much the theology of ancient Jewish people, and occupied a lot of time and thought for a substantial and prominent class. The differences of opinion possible then, as now, generated plenty of partisanship and scandal.
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graceshaker — “why people treat scripture like a science book is beyond me”
Galileo said the same thing and was jailed for it.
Pope John Paul II pardoned him — a little late, albeit ….
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why people treat scripture like a science book is beyond me.
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This controversy is over the conflict between all the empirical evidence of the age of the earth and the Universe and the biological development of all lifeforms, and an ancient story that appears to be pure spiritual aesthetics in form and purpose.
The story of the creation of “Man” parallels in every detail the maturing process told from the point of view of everyman (emphasis on “man”). Adam became lonely so God put him to sleep and when he woke up there was this beautiful creature who was “at last bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” Every boy going through puberty remembers that day. And then the coming of knowledge, responsibility, guilt and shame. And finally the endless punishment of being a responsible adult — hard work through the “weeds” the world throws at you, the constant stalking of the evil one and the woman’s “troubles” that also come with puberty.
We were all once “walking with God in the Garden” enjoying the dance of nature, happy joyous and free. That is why the story is so compelling and exquisitely poignant, to my thinking.
The Journey into Christ IS the Way back into the innocence of childhood when every day was a gift (except school days). “For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
That is, for me, all I need from that story. 🙂
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@ Brian – “I wonder how many young people who get tired simply decide that if YEC is necessary to be a Christian, then Christianity is therefore falsified, and leave the faith?”
Too many, in my experience. A number of people I attended Pensacola Christian (K through 8th Grade) took that route. I met a number of people in college that, having learned that YEC is scientifically bankrupt, wondered what else the church lied about and ditched the whole thing.
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@ Kevin N – “Or you might be headed to the ELCA. Too liberal for me, though I’m sure there are local exceptions.”
The church I’m looking at is ELCA. The pastor is fairly conservative, theologically speaking, though he’s considered “liberal” in our rural North Carolian mountain context. 🙂
I realize that I’m not going to find a Church that I agree with 100%. But having erred to the side of “too conservative” for too many years, “too liberal” would be a welcome change. If nothing else, the more “liberal” congregations tend to be more tolerant of differing opinions.
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Benji, you wrote
Could you elaborate? I agree that the distinction he makes is simple. But you say ‘simplistic’. In what way(s) is the distinction simplistic?
I would agree with your suspicions about the ways we (all) try to avoid the moral and metaphysical demands of the Bible. Humans are adept at finding just about any opinion sufficient to evade the Word’s call upon us. In fact, there are plenty of believers whose theology gives them an “out.” However, isn’t it also true that God has revealed himself to us through His creation (Rom 1:20, various Psalms)? Shouldn’t we expect to find traces in the physical and living world of His character? Certainly plenty of physicists have thought so (and continue to). Isn’t it possible that genetics and the mechanism of natural selection also reveal something of their Creator?
I thought the Cardinal’s remarks make your point. But perhaps you could explain what having “Bible lens glasses on” allows, and how it automatically takes evolution off the table?
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My initial impressions.
He seems to really, really, really like free agency [will?].
He seems to speak beautiful words in the abstract, but I think if pressed–from either side–his argument for evolution and faith being compatible would begin to break down.
I reject framing a discussion between evolution and faith as being something between science and faith. I would say it is a discussion between the perspective of evolution and the perspective of Christian faith.
He seems to suggest the Bible is about why and evolution is about how. If so, pretty simplistic to me.
He seems to think that evolution allows folks to explore the complexities of nature. I think evolution gives folks the “out” to not be bound by Scripture. I also think one can explore the complexities of nature with Bible lens glasses on.
While I personally do not come down hard one way or the other on the question of young earth/old earth and I do not pretend to be a scientist, you probably can tell I am not chummy with the idea of “mixing” Scripture with evolution.
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treebeard — “I’ve wrestled with evolution for a long time, and suppose I am a “theistic evolutionist.†But I can’t get away from the apostle Paul saying “Adam was formed first, then Eve.†So I don’t know how the existence of Adam and Eve fits into an evolutionary paradigm, especially if death is the result of sin. “In Adam all die, in Christ all are made alive.†I can’t make sense of it, so I practice doublethink and accept both as true (evolutionary science and the account of Adam and Eve in Genesis).”
All that shows is that Paul accepted the Genesis Creation Story as literal, as did those he was teaching. Of course he did. He was an ancient Jewish Bible Scholar. The only alternative was for him to say that the earth was the shell of a turtle and the first human came from a lotus flower, or some such thing.
Are we now dealing with some dogma that I don’t know of that the Apostle Paul was the infallible one? The RCC would say it was Peter, but as I opined in a post on an earlier thread, if the Early Church had held to that belief, modern Christian seminaries would have certain medical training in male gender specific surgery.
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Brian
“I wonder how many young people who get tired simply decide that if YEC is necessary to be a Christian, then Christianity is therefore falsified, and leave the faith?”
And when they ask them to leave the SS class for being “disruptive” (asking too many questions) you have to wonder what they can be thinking. And they use the word “apologetics” in the name of the class. I.E. listen to these arguments but don’t question them and you’ll be able to defend the faith. ????
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K Bryan:
I have very high regard for Lutheran theology, but am staying in my evangelical church. I don’t know where I would go. In regards to evolution, you will find most LCMS churches to be just as (or even more) rigid than SBC churches. Young-Earth creationism is in the doctrinal statement of the LCMS, but it isn’t in the SBC statement.
Or you might be headed to the ELCA. Too liberal for me, though I’m sure there are local exceptions.
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“I’m getting tired of it.”
I wonder how many young people who get tired simply decide that if YEC is necessary to be a Christian, then Christianity is therefore falsified, and leave the faith?
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K Bryan
“I’m a lifelong Southern Baptist who, at 40, is very seriously considering a move to the Lutheran church. (Just can’t bring myself to go completely RCC) 🙂 The Southern Baptist attitude toward evolution, and science in general, is one of the major reasons I’m considering leaving.”
This issue pushed a group of us to the door. Not out it but to the edge. Others issues pushed us out this last year. I’m about 99% at a local AMiA. Some of the more dedicated SBC’s in the group are still looking.
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Re iMonk’s original question: “I’d also like to know if there are any creationist evangelicals who have converted to the RCC and embraced this view of science, evolution and origins.”
I’m a lifelong Southern Baptist who, at 40, is very seriously considering a move to the Lutheran church. (Just can’t bring myself to go completely RCC) 🙂 The Southern Baptist attitude toward evolution, and science in general, is one of the major reasons I’m considering leaving.
Though I have been involved in many discussions over controversial issues — amillennialism, homosexuality, alcohol consumption, political parties — with people in my church, evolution is the only topic that has caused people to repeatedly question my salvation, caused people to stop speaking to me, and netted me at least two calls to the pastor’s office for a discussion.
After an early bad experience, I don’t bring the topic up. When someone else brings it up, I say something to the effect of: “The evidence for evolution is very solid. Christians hold many different views on the topic of origins. It’s not a fundamental issue of the faith and has no bearing on a persons salvation.” That’s enough to have _my_ salvation questioned.
I taught a Sunday evening class on the book of Revelation a couple of years ago. In one class someone stated that they didn’t see how anyone could believe in evolution. I noted that I did, repeated the statement and I gave above, and then said “Let’s get back to Revelation.” The next day I had a call from the associate pastor, informing me that a few of the class members had called him about the incident. (Of course no one came to me directly _first_, as Jesus commanded). The next week, half the class had disappeared, never to return. (I found it interesting that it was the _younger_ members of the class, 30 and under, that bolted. The older members, 50+, stayed. Their attitude was, “I might disagree with you, I don’t know enough to argue about it, and it’s not an important issue anyway.”)
One sunday a number of years ago I attended a Sunday evening class on creationism taught by college students at our Church. At the end of the presentation I asked some very hard questions that they couldn’t answer. The next week they brought in their “expert,” a teacher of an adult sunday school class. I sat with him for 45 minutes after the class, while he questioned my salvation and explained that I _had_ to accept a literal reading of Genesis to be a true Christian.
I’m getting tired of it. I’ve already had one meeting with a local Lutheran pastor, whom I hit it off very well with. When I saw a copy of Raymond Brown’s Anchor Bible volumes of the Gospel of John on the pastor’s bookshelf in his office, I knew I had met a kindred soul. 🙂 I haven’t made a decision yet, as I’m still studying Lutheran theology to see if I think they get it right (I’m 90% convinced that Baptists have baptism wrong). It would just be nice to know when I went to church that I was surrounded by like-minded people who won’t judge me based on my position on evolution, alcohol, or who I vote for in the presidential election.
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nedbrek: a great writer, Marilyn Robinson, became so suspicious of things she learned in college that she now makes it a practice to read only primary texts as much as possible. On this and other threads, you have displayed an obvious lack of familiarity with basic facts, resting your argument on secondary sources of doubtful authority. Read some originals and draw your own conclusions. Have you read Lydell? Do you know anything about his biography other than what someone with an axe to grind has told you? You might be surprised by what you discover if you decide to investigate it for yourself.
Living to regurgitate someone else’s views will wither your intellect. God gave it to you to use so use it. You’ll be a better person for it.
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nedbrek
“And how does a local flood work anyway (theologically)?”
I’ve read some writings about how the flood didn’t specifically use the word Earth (the Hebrew word that is) but a word that tended to be a bit ambiguous but meant in general “all the surrounding land” or something like that.
A friend of a friend is a Hebrew scholar. I need to poke him to find out what he thinks about this.
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Nedbrek:
How does a local flood work?
–It was global from Noah’s perspective of being on a boat and seeing nothing but water.
–It was universal in that all of the descendants of Adam, except for the eight people on the Ark, were killed.
–The Ark landed on the mountains of Ararat, as it says in Genesis. This would work whether the flood was in Mesopotamia or in the Black Sea basin.
So, as an old-Earth creationist, I believe in the Bible, a real creation, a real Adam, a real fall into sin, Christ as the solution for our sin, and a real flood.
I don’t think 2 Peter 3 says anything one way or the other about how to understand Earth history. It is primarily addressed at scoffers who deny the second coming of Christ, because no such thing has happened before. The text uses creation and the flood to illustrate God’s power, but as an old-Earth Christian geologist, I do not deny either creation, the flood, or the coming judgment.
Back to the topic at hand: I prefer the Catholic approach, but it is by no means limited to Catholics.
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I admit I am wrong about Lyell’s profession of faith.
Still, his work did much to spread an unbiblical idea (can no old earther address 2 Peter?). See http://www.victorianweb.org/science/lyell.html
“A concerted refutation of Lamarck’s theories of progress and evolution became a central part of the Principles. However, by devoting such extensive treatment to Lamarck, Lyell paradoxically made Lamarck’s views better known in the English-speaking world than they ever had been”
His influence on Darwin is also not denied.
And how does a local flood work anyway (theologically)? (this is off topic!)
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The contradiction is historical:
The people who came up with the dogmas that really make us scratch our heads were of a very fundamentalist sort of mindset. Because of the human phenomenon of cultural loyalty and identity, the liberal-minded architects of Vatican II introduced liberality of thought while simultaneously not abandoning the old dogmas (such as indulgences) or throwing out the old legends (such as the House).
This isn’t anything unique to Catholics. It’s simply human nature. History has a peculiar inertia to it such that you often find ideas born of mutually contradictory schemes of thought existing side by side, often in the same mind.
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Oops, I really messed up on the link. Here we go again:
Headless Unicorn:
I love the writings of Gould. His essay on Non-Overlapping Magisteria fits in nicely to this discussion of evolution and Catholicism. I don’t completely agree with all of his conclusions in this essay, but at least he was interacting in a positive way.
Somehow I missed out on the rejoicing in the Christian internet when he died. I was saddened by his death.
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Headless Unicorn:
I love the writings of Gould. His essay on >Non-Overlapping Magisteria fits in nicely to this discussion of evolution and Catholicism. I don’t completely agree with all of his conclusions in this essay, but at least he was interacting in a positive way.
Somehow I missed out on the rejoicing in the Christian internet when he died. I was saddened by his death.
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I wonder whether the Catholic Church’s exposure to non-Western thought, both historically and today, has something to do with its ability to read Genesis without denying reality. — Brian
In one of his essays on Catholicism (either The Catholic Church and Conversion or Orthodoxy), Chesterton writes that “The Catholic Church is an institution that for 2000 years has been thinking about thinking.” Plus 20 centuries to learn by trying/doing what works, what holds water, and what doesn’t.
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Nedbrek, Kevin N, everybody:
For the best easily-understandable accounts of Darwin, Lyell, Gosse, even Ussher (et al), I recommend the collections of Stephen Jay Gould’s essays that appeared over the years in Natural History Magazine. Some of the titles (in no particular order):
Ever Since Darwin
Hen’s Teeth and Horses’ Toes
Eight Little Piggies
The Panda’s Thumb
Bully for Brontosaurus
The Flamingo’s Smile
Primarily known among Christians as “The Apostle of Evolution” (there was much rejoicing on Christian blogs when he died on May 5, 2002), Professor Gould had this ability to explain complex science in an easily-understandable way and keep the reader’s interest regardless of the esoterica. Gives you a good understanding of actual (not mythological) evolutionary theory.
About a third of the essays in these collections deal with Gould’s second subject (after biology/paleontology): The History of Science. Historical tales about Darwin per se, Lyell’s catastrophism, Gosse’s “Last Tuesday-ism”, and the Victorian milieu they came from which have the ring of truth — they DON’T match the version “everybody knows”. (It’s a lot more complex than you think, whether Creationist or Evolutionist.) Even Bishop Ussher himself (and his dating Creation) is the subject of one essay detailing his methodology and putting the project in perspective.
And I noticed something about Gould’s essays: The guy might not have been a believer (I think he was a non-practicing Jew), but he seemed to have this respect and longing for truth. In some of his historical essays (like the one on William Jennings Bryan and the several on Scientific Racism), he includes information that reflects badly on scientists and science in general. Because that was what actually happened.
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I should have said, in reference to 18th and 19th century catastrophists, that “they still believed in the flood (albeit local or of limited surficial influence)”.
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Additionally, the catastrophists who opposed Lyell’s uniformitarianism had long since abandoned trying to interpret the geologic column (which was not invented by Lyell) in terms of Noah’s flood. To these 18th and 19th century catastrophists, the Earth was old. Lyell did not undermine belief in a global flood; the catastrophists had already come to that point.
But they still believed the Bible, they still believed in the flood (albeit local), they still believed in sin, and they still believed in Christ.
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The observations of RH Benson seem appropriate here:
Right or wrong, we’re a strange-looking duck. 🙂
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Nedbrek:
The Berkeley article says nothing about Lyell being an atheist or seeking to overturn Biblical authority. He was an advocate of a tranquil local flood somewhere in Mesopotamia.
This is from Lyell’s obituary in the NY Times: “But, though an evolutionist, Lyell was not a skeptic. He lived and died a Christian believer.”
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Let me recommend the Berkeley library on evolution, it is very candid in connecting evolution and atheism:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0/history_12
“Lyell wanted to find a way to make geology a true science of its own, built on observation and not susceptible to wild speculations or dependent on the supernatural.”
Also, from Wikipedia:
“He was … the major advocate of James Hutton’s idea of uniformitarianism, … in contrast to catastrophism, a geologic idea of abrupt changes due to unknown forces, which had been adapted in England to support belief in Noah’s flood”
Before Lyell, everyone believed in the Flood – after, the “scientific orthodoxy” became a rejection of the Flood, based on the notion that “all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation” (2 Peter 3:4).
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“(W)hen it comes to Marian dogmas and how Mary’s house wound up in Italy, Catholics sound like Baptist fundamentalists protesting that the Creation Museum is too liberal”
Call me perverse, Headless Unicorn Guy, but I like that Michael has that opinion of us 🙂
Same way, now that Hans Kung has told us that Obama would make a better Pope because, amongst other things, “Benedict is unteachable in matters of birth control and abortion” – I get this big, broad, and probably objectionable grin across my face.
I dunno – maybe it’s settling into middle-age crotchiness and the same spirit as “When I Am Old I Will Wear Purple”, but I’m beginning to get the “Yeah, that’s the kind of stuff we believe, and we believe it, and I know this is the Twenty-First century – wanna make something of it?” attitude about Catholicism – well, in some things, anyways 😉
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nedbrek, you committed the Bulverism fallacy. Turn it around on yourself and you can see why you should avoid it:
1. You believe that Christianity is true.
2. Because of [psychological reason N] you personally desire that Christianity is true.
3. Therefore, Christianity is false.
Although you didn’t explicitly draw the conclusion implied in your comment above, the problem still remains: explaining why someone believes some proposition p has no relevance on whether p is in fact true.
Secondly, as Kevin N has pointed out, the historical record doesn’t support your assertions about Lyell or Darwin. Specifically, in Voyage Round the World of H.M.S. Beagle, Darwin writes of his strong opposition to slavery (see Ch 21). Mark Isaak has a more detailed response. He most certainly did not justify slavery with his theory of evolution or anything else.
If (and that’s a big ‘if’) it could be shown that the theory of evolution “has done great social harm,” then the causal connection you assert still isn’t obvious. Since it is a scientific theory concerned with matters of empirical fact, it is insufficient on its own as a basis from which to infer moral or ethical principles. An analogy: is matter equivalent to energy? A popularly accepted physcial theory says Yes. It also led to “great social harm” if you regard the invention, construction and use of atomic weapons as “great social harm.” In this case, there is a link between the physical theory and the social effects, but the twisted moral imagination that applied scientific findings to evil uses has nothing whatsoever to do with the truth of the theory of Special Relativity. That’s a human problem, a sin problem, in what we actually (and potentially) do with new knowledge.
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Fr. Ernesto,
do you think the Orthodox position on the Fall works better with theistic evolution, since I think the Orthodox believe that the Fall involved more a brokenness or sickness (including mortality) inherited from Adam rather than legal guilt?
One comment in this thread mentioned that theistic evolution would reduce or muddle the role of the cross. But I think this only really creates a problem for the Penal Substitution theory of the Atonement. If one sees the Atonement as more incarnational, like Irenaeus, that Christ saves us by united the divine and the material and thereby redeeming the material, I don’t think there’s such a conflict. But, this is just IMHO.
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Concerning the allegorical aspect of Adam and Eve, I once read a beautiful explication of it:
The “sleep” of Adam is a picture of the death of Christ.
Eve was taken out of Adam’s side. Out of Christ’s side on the cross flowed blood and water, which produced the church (blood to cleanse us from sin, living water to give us new life).
Eve was presented to Adam and was accepted, and the church is presented to the resurrected Christ.
I’ve wrestled with evolution for a long time, and suppose I am a “theistic evolutionist.” But I can’t get away from the apostle Paul saying “Adam was formed first, then Eve.” So I don’t know how the existence of Adam and Eve fits into an evolutionary paradigm, especially if death is the result of sin. “In Adam all die, in Christ all are made alive.” I can’t make sense of it, so I practice doublethink and accept both as true (evolutionary science and the account of Adam and Eve in Genesis).
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Dalrymple’s book on the age of the Earth recommended by Ky is good.
I would also recommend The Bible, Rocks, and Time by Young and Stearley. It is written by two geologists who are committed to the truthfulness of Scriptures. It takes a look at the historical development of geology and its interaction with the Bible, and lays a compelling case for rejecting young-Earth creationism and flood geology. It is somewhat technical, but someone who has a strong interest in science should be able to follow most of the reasoning.
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EvanF:
Very well-said. When we project a modern worldview onto a pre-modern text, we are already abandoning a truly literal interpretation, since a literal interpretation attempts receive the text as it was intended by the author for the audience who received it originally.
The ancients were as clueless about the true nature of the physical world as we are about the spiritual world. Nobody thinks the Bible accurately describes spiritual beings as they really are… we don’t expect angels as they truly are to be the same as the one described in Isaiah. If tomorrow we developed some way to observe angels, would we expect to count 6 wings and dozens of eyes? If we didn’t, would that make God a liar? For an ancient person, the idea of measuring the age of a rock or the contents of DNA would seem just as fantastic as observing angels. The Bible is written for that person, firstly – for us, secondly.
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“I still feel that geologic dating systems are not reliable but I feel less certain that I can dispute ages derived from astronomical observations”
There is an interesting book called “The Age of the Earth”, by G.Brent Dalrymple
http://books.google.com/books?id=a7S3zaLBrkgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Age+of+the+Earth&client=mozilla#PPA8,M1
Most anyone with some high school physics or who can read Discovery and/or SciAm and not be totally lost can follow it. Uses radioactive decay to draw lines back into time. 6000 years ago is not where they intersect.
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Obed wrote: “Just a thought, but I wonder if the ability to look at Genesis in not-literal ways has roots in some of the Church’s earliest theologians’ tendancy to do allegorical interpretation. I.e. there’s precident for non-literal readings by serious teachers and theologians. “
Brian wrote: “I wonder whether the Catholic Church’s exposure to non-Western thought, both historically and today, has something to do with its ability to read Genesis without denying reality.â€
I think the entire queation of a “literal†vs. “allegorical†or “symbolic†reading of Genesis (or other biblical texts) reflects a modern mindset that is very different from how the earliest theologians approached scripture. A first century man would not be likely to draw this sharp distinction between allegory and fact when thinking about a description of creation. A fifth century man would be even less likely to do so. The very idea that we could comprehend the physical facts about creation had not yet been born. An educated man in the first half of the first milennium could be sure that humans DIDN’T know the facts about the age of the earth, why the sun shone, what the stars were, what matter was composed of, how life reproduces, etc. These things were mysteries or at least unanswered questions. Early theologians would not have expected either science or religion (actually, that’s another modern dichotomy that would not have been part of their thinking) to have provided answers about the mechanics of the process of creation. They were comfortable with such things being mysteries and looked to scripture to tell the story of how God’s deals with his creation.
The very idea of a “literal†biblical account of creation, as we speak of it today, is predicated on the modern idea that we can and do understand the physical nature of the material world and the processes by which it operates. We have this mindset, ironically, because Western science has been so successful at doing exactly that. This type of thinking is a product of the Enlightenment and the success of the scientific method and permeates all of Western culture. This is probably why creationism, a young earth, and worrying about the implications of Genesis not being a “literal†account are really only burning issues within Protestant Christianity (especially American Protestant Christianity) – the most modern, Western branch of the Christian faith.
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Nedbrek’s statement that Charles Lyell (author of Principles of Geology, 1830, and advocate of uniformitarianism) was an atheist who was determined to overthrow Biblical authority is completely without historical foundation. Lyell had a strong influence on Darwin, but atheism was not one of those influences.
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I wonder whether the Catholic Church’s exposure to non-Western thought, both historically and today, has something to do with its ability to read Genesis without denying reality.
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I’ve never quite figured out how the Catholic position on science is so progressive, but when it comes to Marian dogmas and how Mary’s house wound up in Italy, Catholics sound like Baptist fundamentalists protesting that the Creation Museum is too liberal, but I don’t have to understand hard things.
Everybody’s a little inconsistent, IMonk; you just notice it when it’s the OTHER guy’s inconsistencies.
It’s nice to be able to understand that evolutionary scientists are not maliciously rubbing their hands together as they plan the demise of religion. It’s nice to see them as people. — Scott Lyons
Sounds like Aslan led you out of the filthy stable of Christian Conspiracy Theory beliefs. Present-day Christians seem especially susceptible to Conspiracy Theory worldviews, and Grand Unified Conspiracy Theories all too easily grow into “The Dwarfs are for The Dwarfs! We Won’t Be Taken In!”
If to know Jesus Christ means they must first accept science they know to be false, they finally have to say, “No thanks.†— MDS
If you are always on the verge of denying sense and evidence so as not to call Jesus a liar and walk away from his teachings, your faith, as serious as it is, is peremptory. — Patrick Lynch
Any faith that requires denial of observable reality is getting onto dangerous ground. Very dangerous ground.
Once Faith is divorced from observable reality, it loses its reality check and can go off on destructive tangents. Al-Ghazali set Islam firmly down that road some 800 years ago; ask anyone in the WTC or Afghanistan under the Taliban of the fruits of such blind Faith Faith Faith.
And like it or not, Young Earth Creationism has become a litmus test of Whether You’re REALLY Christian, putting a LOT of us into that position.
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I meant to put a quote mark before “evening” not just after “morning”. Sorry about that.
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I’m a creationist who’s agnostic about age, but I tend to follow the old-earth arguments. I researched a lot of creationism when I was in high school in the 70s, and the best thing I’ve carried with me since then is a skepticism about scientific “pronouncements” in any field. I still feel that geologic dating systems are not reliable but I feel less certain that I can dispute ages derived from astronomical observations (this is probably from reading Hugh Ross).
The one idea that crystallized my problem with the 6/24 idea was an article I read, showing that all the details in Genesis 2 (Adam reviewing all the animals, realizing his need for a mate, God providing one for him, etc) all had to occur on the 6th day. If that all happened in 24 hours, then the hours were a lot longer back then.
When I read Genesis 1 now, I think of the evening and morning”as like the change in a PowerPoint presentation, or in video clips, where one day fades to black then the next one fades in.
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I think all sides could do with a little more humility. Our understandings will never be complete. This is true as regards the purely natural world, how much more so as regards the mysteries of God.
If the Bible and the Creation story therein partake of this mystery, then surely our understanding of it can never be of a definitive nature.
For instance, there are still disagreements about correct translation. I have heard a Rabbi say that the word translated into English as “rib” in Genesis 2, should have been rightfully translated as “side,” as that is how it is translated in other instances of its use in the five books of Moses. His interpretation is that the original Adam was “split down the middle” to create the first couple, one keeping the name Adam and one adopting the name Eve. Think of all the subjugation of women that has been justified (at least in part) by that rib, and what value a little more openness to differing translations could have had (and still could have) in Christianity.
Or take Harold Bloom’s translation of the Genesis narrative in his “The Book of J.” There, God tells Adam that if he eats the fruit of the tree, on that day “death touches you.” The difference between this phrasing and “you shall die,” is immense. I can understand, from Bloom’s translation that the breaking of God’s commandment led not to death per se, but rather to the knowledge of impending death and the anxiety that goes along with that. Before the fall, Adam was like the animals, that died, but didn’t make a big deal out of the fact while still alive. After the fall, Adam knew a little about death, and so it “touched” him, even while he still lived, which is the situation as it still stands today.
My point, at any rate, is just that a little more acceptance of the necessary ambiguity that arises when we are discussing Divine mysteries and ancient texts, translated and re-translated many times, might make us all a little more humble in putting forth our own interpretations, which would be an undoubtedly good and Christian thing.
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Just a thought, but I wonder if the ability to look at Genesis in not-literal ways has roots in some of the Church’s earliest theologians’ tendancy to do allegorical interpretation. I.e. there’s precident for non-literal readings by serious teachers and theologians. And for us evangelicals, with our tendancy (in some circles) to ignore (if not deplore) Church history, we often have an assumption that a word-for-word literal interpretation of the text was the only way it was ever interpreted. Which is really funny when you consider that the NT doesn’t even interpret the OT literally at times.
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I remember discussing this issue some time ago on Michael Patton’s site “Parchment and Pen.” Someone gave a link to some current Catholic teaching about Genesis/Adam & Eve. It basically said you can believe Adam & Eve were actual people or you can believe that this story was allegorical. Then we got the usual comments on the blog that if Adam and Eve didn’t actually exist and do exactly what the Bible describes, then why did we need Jesus (the second Adam) to come and set everything right that went wrong. Some of us believe that the Adam and Eve story is the story of all of us, that we know what is right to do and we choose to do the wrong, thereby putting separation between us and God. Jesus came to heal that rift by being God taking on human form and living a perfect life and dying a perfect death, resurrecting with a glorified body and by asking us all to accept the grace he has for us that will save us from that separation from God and bring us into the Kingdom of God.
I was brought up Catholic and “luckily” the church I grew up in focused on the love of God for us, the love of Jesus for us. There wasn’t a lot of time spent on Marian matters, but even then, it did concern me that people talked about asking Mary to ask her son Jesus to do something for them. I wondered why didn’t they just go straight to Jesus. But as I get older, I understand that they see Mary as a fellow human being who didn’t understand all that was happening to her but who wanted to do whatever God’s will was. They “identify” with that and they may also identify with her femaleness. So they are “comfortable” with Mary. I wish that the Catholic Church didn’t add all that Immaculate Conception bit to Mary. I believe that she, too, needed the grace that only Jesus would bring. She was not sinless. (See, I am not a good Catholic, so I probably am not a Catholic at all. I don’t even attend church, but I would if my husband was not anti-Christian.) I guess the Church Fathers didn’t feel it was “right” for Jesus to be born from a sinful person. Personally, I think it is beautiful that God chose to be born from a sinful person. I do believe that God chose a woman, though, who would be the BEST woman to raise Jesus. She was likely very willing and able to teach the child Jesus things he needed to know before he became fully the man that he became. Wouldn’t you just love to be able to have a peek into the past to see what it was like for Jesus growing up? I know we read about him teaching in the temple at age 12, but that’s it. I would like to know what it was like to be his sisters. We hear about his brothers a little, but nothing about his sisters. Were they supportive? When his brothers thought he must be crazy, did his sisters defend him? Will I ever know? I know it doesn’t really matter, but things like that intrique me.
OK, I have gone WAY off subject now. Sorry!
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“It is equally impermissible to dismiss the story of Adam and Eve and the fall (Gen. 2–3) as a fiction.”
Why is it impermissible? because it would undo the rest of the bible? If there isn’t any extrabiblical proof of Addam and Eve then why can’t we consider it fiction?
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“That’s not to deride my family or brothers and sisters who are still YEC. They love truly and are good and sincere people.”
I agree. Up to a point. When they start quoting science they don’t understand I have a big issue. I can’t do a lot (well really not hardly any at all) of the math involved in cosmology but I do understand the concepts. Many of the folks who’ve tried to argue me into submission don’t know the formula for a 3x4x5 triangle to get to a right angle and are trying to tell me about white hole cosmology. And then they move into people who don’t believe in their version of Gen 1 can’t really be saved.
Now my sister in law is an AIG fan. But she doesn’t try and argue the science. She just doesn’t want to believe they are wrong. We get along nicely. Just as I get along with friend who believe in dowsing rods.
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“This inconsistency between “reality†and revelation bothers me.”
I think this is what happens when preachers throw the word “revelation” around too cavalierly.
In the effort to create devotion, people tend to stridently insist on all-or-nothing concepts that, by obscuring context, dramatize the proposition of Biblical faith so that it seems either extraordinary or ridiculous.
“Revelation” is sort of a poison idea in this sense. Believing that “the Bible is the inspired Word of God” gets railroaded when we start using that idea to bootstrap our little pious interpretations and ramifications, taking the Jewish religious and cultural heritage and elevating it to our first principle.
Ancient Hebrews had no use for the Creation stories as science – their Creation stories were, however, part of their tribal history, as the stories recorded their evolution into a tribe and a nation from the beginning. Just like we have our hazy legends about the origins of this country being Christian and just like we use them to guide our interpretation of events today, nascent Israel used its stories to give itself identity and purpose. The stories in the Old and New Testaments weren’t called Scripture because they were historic, but because they were accurate about who God was, what Israel was, and who Jesus was.
Making historical validity the cinch-point of faith goes against the grain of Genesis, as well as clouds the personality of Jesus in Scripture. If you are always on the verge of denying sense and evidence so as not to call Jesus a liar and walk away from his teachings, your faith, as serious as it is, is peremptory. Christian faith means taking on the identity of people formed by the Biblical story of God and seeing the world as described to us, not in trying to deny the world as it is. The attitude that makes faith inconsistent with reality is irrational, and irrationality, and the panic and doubt and intellectual frustration that attend it, is not from God.
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I object to the term “praise” applied to Darwin, and “one of the greatest discoveries of all time” for evolution. Evolutionary theory (specifically, common descent, and development across kinds) has provided no useful inventions, and has done great social harm.
I encourage people to investigate the circumstances of Darwin’s life (and social clime), and his own statements of purpose. He was greatly influenced by an atheist (Charles Lyell) who was determined to overthrow Biblical authority. Darwin said his goal in publishing “Origin” was to overturn the notion of creation by God. He was also a racist, who used evolutionary ideas to justify slavery.
This is not someone to admire, or “praise”. There is nothing wrong with logical thinking and inquiry, but there are much better role models.
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Beautiful, Scott. 🙂
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I’m such a person, Michael. One-time hard-core YECer and Evangelical. I became Catholic and discovered that the Church didn’t have a problem with science and found that such a view was quite liberating – in the best sense of the word. Ideas now click into place that were once askew, though happily askew before. Questions answered. And human freedom rings truer now. It’s nice to be able to understand that evolutionary scientists are not maliciously rubbing their hands together as they plan the demise of religion. It’s nice to see them as people.
And while my family knows I’m Catholic (and despairs), I’m afraid they’d anathematize me – know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have apostasized – if I told them I no longer believe in YEC. And, unfortunately, that’s probably not much of an exaggeration. They’d still love me, of course. But I imagine they’d pray for me in a slightly different manner, with a slightly greater sense of urgency.
That’s not to deride my family or brothers and sisters who are still YEC. They love truly and are good and sincere people. And that’s more important than their being accepting of evolutionary science.
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“For instance, if God created the world via the evolutionary process, basically as understood by Darwin, then why the detailed account in Genesis?? Why did God go into such detail about “evening then morningâ€; … ??? It just seems absurd to me that God would create one way (evolution), but then reveal it to us in a radically different way, albeit very detailed manner. This inconsistency between “reality†and revelation bothers me.”
As a friend of mine said. To go into the detail needed he’d have to teach Moses 40 books of science and physics and then only people he taught this to would be able to understand. That was not the audience at the time.
And others who know Hebrew much better than me (not at all) say it much more a poetic story in the original than the KJV makes it out to be.
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Adam the Catholic– “Have you ever noticed the connection that Adam’s bride came from his side. And also the New Adam’s bride came from his side?”
Yes — That is a beautiful foreshadowing. And also Jesus compares the coming of the Kingdom to earth to a woman travailing if labor.
Chas — Look at the big picture — the Creation Story is told from the point of view of a man standing on the earth watching it happen. The story is ordered in a way to teach the viewer God’s point of view as the “artist” of Creation — not the lab technician. 🙂
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Satan must surely delight in this topic, though probably not for the reason many Christians would imagine. If one of his chief aims is to distract Christians from living lives focused on Christ, lives that bear witness to the living presence of God with us, he’s hit a home-run with this one. This obsessive topic has it all. It permits Christians to self-righteously feel they are doing the “Lords’ work†as they slash and burn the heretics, whether they be other “so called Christians†or simply foolish pagans. It permits those with gentler natures and greater intellectual predilections to spend endless hours studying fourth and fifth-hand lessons in chemistry, biology, and biblical interpretation so they are able to teach others to see the “truth†concerning culture and the word of God. It thereby creates a superb distraction from Christ for any who may be open to hearing about Him. Christians themselves become the means by which Satan erects an effective offense. Potential seekers who make it through the first line of attack from the more zealous types must then contend with the next line of gentle persuaders. They fall away when they become convinced that honest intellectual pursuit is not an option for a Christian. If to know Jesus Christ means they must first accept science they know to be false, they finally have to say, “No thanks.â€
Who can blame them?
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Hi Chas, those questions are dealt with by a little digging around the Web. A friend of mine wrote a useful summary: Evolution and Biblical Inerrancy. There’s some other interesting material there if you search for “Genesis” or “Evolution”
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Admittedly I am not as far down the road to accepting theistic evolution as many others are. My problem is logical rather than scientific or even theological. For instance, if God created the world via the evolutionary process, basically as understood by Darwin, then why the detailed account in Genesis?? Why did God go into such detail about “evening then morning”; day one, day two, day three; six day and God rested from his labor??? It just seems absurd to me that God would create one way (evolution), but then reveal it to us in a radically different way, albeit very detailed manner. This inconsistency between “reality” and revelation bothers me.
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Hilaire Belloc, in his “Survivals and New Arrivals” (published 1929), has a very tart summation of the dispute as he saw it at the time (between ‘Literalists’ and ‘Materialists’):
“My third example shall be from another writer of high standing in our time, thoroughly representative of modern English thought and also in close sympathy with his great audience; skeptical in profession, though as Protestant as Dr. Gore in morals and tradition — I mean Mr. H. G. Wells.
Mr. H. G. Wells has been at great pains to discuss the fall of man, in which considerable catastrophe he puts no faith. But when he discusses the fall of man he always has in mind the eating of an apple in a particular place at a particular time. When he hears that there is no Catholic doctrine defining the exact place or the exact time — not even the name of the apple, he shrewdly suspects that we are shirking the main issue. He thinks in terms of the Bible Christian — with whom he disagrees.
The main issue for European civilization in general is whether man fell or no. Whether man was created for beatitude, enjoyed a supernatural state, fell by rebellion from that state into the natural but unhappy condition in which he now stands, subject to death, clouded in intellect and rotted with pride, yet with a memory of greater things, an aspiration to recover them, and a power of so doing by right living in this world of his exile; or whether man is on a perpetual ascent from viler to nobler things, a biped worthy of his own respect in this life and sufficient to his own destiny.
On that great quarrel the future of our race depends. But the inventors of Bible Christianity, even when they have lost their original creeds, do not see it thus. They take the main point to be, whether it were an apple — who munched it — exactly where — and exactly when. They triumphantly discover that no fruit or date can be established, and they conclude that the Christian scheme is ruined and the Fall a myth.”
It’s curious to see what he thinks will be the fate of the Biblical Inerrancy belief (that it will vanish in fifty or so years’ time) and he’s very scathing about Fundamentalism, which I think he misunderstood (on the other hand, he was dealing with the English not the American situation, and being deliberately provocative), but I think he hits the main points.
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If I ran into Catholics dogmatically pontificating about the angelic translation of the House of Loreto I’d suggest they take some advice from the Catholic Encyclopedia:
“…With regard to the papal pronouncements [about the Loreto tradition], it is to be remembered that in such decrees which have nothing to do with faith or morals or even with historical facts which can in any way be called dogmatic, theologians have always recognized that there is no intention on the part of the Holy See of defining a truth, or even of placing it outside the sphere of scientific criticism so long as that criticism is respectful and takes due regard of place and season.” (“Holy House of Loreto,” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13454b.htm)
Catholics are free to reject the authenticity of particular miraculous claims or private revelations (even those approved by the Church!), based on their own prudential judgment.
Regarding private revelation in general, “Test everything. Retain what is good.” (1 Thess 5:21). Guided by the Magisterium, Catholics are called “to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church” (CCC 67).
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And I thought my (now deleted) comment was funny. Oh well that’s what happens in these debates. All very serious.
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Sorry for my possibly intemperate comment earlier. However like many of the above readers, I was subjected to widely held naive perceptions of science amongst christians whom I respected. My conversion at age 18 in an intense spiritual atmosphere (a total novelty to an atheist kid) added to the intellectual confusion.
As I continued studying science and engineering I found it impossible to reconcile claims such as inerrancy, literalism, a young earth, or a grand atheist conspiracy by scientists. Arguments from science seemed increasingly challenging and disturbing to my nascent faith. Perhaps I ought to have studied more humanities & literature to spur some independent thinking.
Thankfully many great thinkers such as our RCC friends have studied these matters in detail and as Frances Collins asserts, there is definitely a way to understand the world around us without resorting to either extreme of reductionist materialism or blind faith.
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I was homeschooled as a child, and ICR/AIG stuff was part of the curriculum. I went merrily on my way believing in YEC for about 20 years, before reality started to intrude on my thought process. Fortunately, I found and read Francis S. Collins “Language of God”, which allowed me to solve the cognitive dissonance between my parent’s reading of the Bible and reality without rejecting the Christian faith. I was already a comfortable, intellectually satisfied theistic evolutionist before I even started looking at the Catholic Church, so it didn’t play a large role in my reconciliation with Rome. Indeed, I have had lengthy discussions with Catholic YECers, as Catholics are in no way forbidden from believing in a 6000 year old Earth, even if it is a fringe opinion. The whole range of opinions on the topic is found in both Protestant and Catholic circles, even though the official Church teaching on the topic is eminently sane.
As for your frustration with the Marian Dogmas and devotions…can’t say much that will probably make it all “click” for you, but I’ll venture a few words on the issue. The Perpetual Virginity, the Assumption, the Immaculate Conception, all these are things that have been believed, always, everywhere, and by everyone, at least as much by the same standard as any other orthodox dogma. When Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and St. Pius V all agree, it’s probably a Christian Dogma. It’s possible to disagree, but it’s also possible to disagree with the Trinity, the Hypostatic Union, or the Nicene Creed in general.
Particular things, like the House of Lareto, may or may not be true. Couldn’t say. A magical flying house doesn’t strike me as particularly ridiculous compared to the Creator becoming a human baby. The Catholic Church allows for truly bizarre miracles, but then so does the Bible, so that doesn’t mean I should rule them out because Science says houses never fly and the dead don’t rise.
My two cents, at any rate. That and three bucks will get you a cup of coffee, so do with it as you will.
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As a 12 (maybe I was 13 at this point) catechumen I remember distinctly asking Fr. Killian how the Church viewed evolution, how open was it to understanding that God may have used the evolutionary process in His Creation of the world. I had never been raised in another church, now. I was not a Christian – I was seeking. This was, believe it or not at that age, for me, an important issue. I needed to know the answer to that.
Fortunately, he told me it wasn’t a problem. That God had created the world, and us, on purpose, was the important issue – that we did fall and did need His saving Grace through Jesus – of course. So, the road for me was more open because of that answer. I’m very grateful that I did not meet a stumbling block there.
I very comfortably, today, believe in theistic evolution. I have no problem believing God is the Almighty Creator of all things and that He worked this evolutionary capability into the world. I don’t even have a problem thinking that Adam and Eve may have been a representative couple among many – perhaps. I don’t sit around thinking about it an awful lot. God breathed an eternal, living soul into Man exactly when He wanted to, on purpose. We “fell” however we did, however precisely that happened, and that caused a great ontological fracture in our cosmos as well as in our collective souls. God eventually became one of us in order to heal that fracture, to fix our brokenness – by and through Jesus. That’s the story, the important stuff.
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On a side note, I find very little difference in approach and attitude between a YEC/pro-life supporter and the approach and attitude of the Roman Church at the Council of Trent. In either case, there are minute definitions given, and anyone who does not support those minute definitions are to be considered anathema. I find the changes in the post-Vatican Council II Church to be much more toward stating some, but not all, of the same exact beliefs yet with significantly more humility, and without the anathemas. Now if we can only have a similar change in attitude happen among YEC/pro-life supporters.
iMonk, I would argue that the Roman Church has a hierarchy of beliefs that range from pure dogma down through popular religiosity. That is why you get the range from must be believed to should be believed to may be believed to need not be believed to very probably not true but has a devotional value (popular religiosity). Having said that, the Roman acceptance of popular religiosity has more than once simply been an unfortunate acceptance of an inappropriate syncretism.
Most Protestants want black and white. For many Protestants, shades of gray simply mean that you have not yet thought the issue through. Moreover, for many a Protestant, particularly those in groups with an Anabaptist bent, if it is not a 100% sure thing then the Church may not say anything authoritative to one on that subject. This is the other extreme from Roman, as the result of the Reformation.
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“If a brother or sister in Christ wants to believe the earth is 6,000 years old, I couldn’t care less and I would never think less of them”
Now, that is very tolerant. I couldn’t be that way. I can handle someone who believes differently on a whole host of moral issues, but when they look at the world and say it is 6000 years old, I realize that we have little to discuss. It means that they look at the physical world very differently. Ideas like geologic time, continental drift, size of the universe, are off topic because we cannot agree on basic data interpretation. And then I have to question how they interpret everything else.
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I have been in conversation with a geology professor about Christianity, the cosmological argument for the existence of God, and evolution. He has stated that he finds the Catholic positions on origins to be much more palatable, and I can see why. In conversations such as this, I see the young-Earth creationist position as one that needlessly drives scientists away from the gospel, whereas the RC position as one that encourages dialog. I’m not saying that we should do whatever works best; I prefer the RC approach on origins not only because it works better, but because it is compatible with both scientific and Biblical truth.
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Theo stated that he is OK with evolution except when it comes to Adam and Eve. To me, I’m fine accepting the idea that Adam and Eve were created apart from any evolutionary descent, but I won’t be dogmatic about it. All Evangelical theistic evolutionists I know would still say that they believe in a real Adam in a real Garden committing a real sin, and in Jesus Christ as the only solution for that sin. One doesn’t have to convert to the RC church in order to find people with a similar view of evolution.
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“At what point in the process of man’s evolution did that one guy suddenly qualify as the first human? So I find it really hard to believe in a literal Adam, and this does force me to think about what original sin is.”
The ‘inspiriting’ or marking as those in God’s image is a possible way to go. C.S. Lewis was helpful to me on this – as an Evangelical looking for a way out of being a fundamentalist. He was helpful to me on SO many points in that vein.
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Surfnetter
“Even if God made Adam first with his own hand, and then formed Eve, the first woman, out of one of his rib’s (and this only because Adam didn’t quite get along with the orangutan and the other animals presented to him)”
Have you ever noticed the connection that Adam’s bride came from his side. And also the New Adam’s bride came from his side?
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Regaring the RC position on these matters, I’d like to add that while the Church accepts the idea of theistic evolution as the means by which the human body was formed, it also affirms the special creation of the human soul. To pile on with quotes from the Catechism:
“The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God – it is not ‘produced’ by the parents – and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.†(CCC 366)
“The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that ‘then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being’ (Gen 2:27). Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.†(CCC 362)
The “Garden of Eden†is symbolic of a state of original holiness and justice that our first parents were given as a special grace from God (CCC 374-379).
It should also be noted that while Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis certainly includes a rejection of the idea that Adam represents some number of original parents, this does not establish monogeneis (one set of original parents) as a dogma of the faith in the way that the Immaculate Conception is. What Pius XII said was the Catholics were not permitted to advocate that polygenism is true because it could not be reconciled with the sources of faith. This is not an infallible pronouncement and consequently the official position of the Church on this matter could be modified by a future Pope. John Paul II was silent on that question when discussing evolution.
So Catholics are not – quite – yet – obligated to belive without doubting in a literal Adam and Eve. But basically I think Catholics, in general, don’t worry much about this. The particulars about the story of the creation, Adam and Eve and the Fall in Genesis are secondary to the truths revealed therein:
1. God created the universe
2. God played the ultimate role in the creation of the human being.
3. God created the human soul.
4. Man is fallen with a damaged nature due to Original Sin.
As the Catechism also states:
The whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man.” By this “unity of the human race” all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. (CCC 404)
Crystal clear, right?
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I dumped YEC while at one of the educational havens of it because of its arrogance, its sometimes bizzare logic, and its connection with a way of reading the scripture that was starting to make no sense to me.
Then 15 years later I joined the Anglicans. Not quite what you’re looking for, but similar, sort of. I guess. OK, not really.
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Stephen, thanks for the good info. Those are essentially the same conclusions I was reaching. It’s important not to draw lines in the sand over the minutae of creation, while also being careful not to undermine the essential teachings of the gospel.
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[MOD: I removed Repata’s comment]
Repata,
Hardly a helpful comment.
While I am not a YEC, I know a number who are quite thoughtful and well read concerning the issues.
That is why I found the book “The Genesis Debates” so good, because it looked at the issues from both sides.
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I’m not 100% sure on this but from what I rember, the House of Loreto came about by private revelation. A Catholic can take it or leave it.
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individual and corporate
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It is my own personal opinion that it is far more important that we understand the human condition as it relates to our own individual corporate well being in the now, than to know for certain how we got here. The stories in the first half of Genesis along with the ancient tale of Job do this — so long as you don’t need the details to be historical and scientific. When you get caught up in that, the power of the stories gets lost in the wilderness of details and argument.
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I have always found the Catholic view on this matters to be incredibly sane and helpful. It’s a crying shame evangelicals couldn’t have learned from this approach and not wound up in this situation we face now with Hamm/Hovind pronouncing most Christians enemies of the Bible.
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This is from catholic.com;
http://www.catholic.com/library/Adam_Eve_and_Evolution.asp
Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. Pope Pius XII declared that “the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—[but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God” (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36). So whether the human body was specially created or developed, we are required to hold as a matter of Catholic faith that the human soul is specially created; it did not evolve, and it is not inherited from our parents, as our bodies are.
While the Church permits belief in either special creation or developmental creation on certain questions, it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution.
Adam and Eve: Real People
It is equally impermissible to dismiss the story of Adam and Eve and the fall (Gen. 2–3) as a fiction. A question often raised in this context is whether the human race descended from an original pair of two human beings (a teaching known as monogenism) or a pool of early human couples (a teaching known as polygenism).
In this regard, Pope Pius XII stated: “When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church proposed with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam in which through generation is passed onto all and is in everyone as his own” (Humani Generis 37).
The story of the creation and fall of man is a true one, even if not written entirely according to modern literary techniques. The Catechism states, “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents” (CCC 390).
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iMonk,
Even after reading both your post, and the times article, I am not sure I fully understand the Roman Catholic position, especially as it comes to Adam and Eve.
Perhaps you or a reader could summarize it for us.
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For those interested in different Evangelical perspectives that look at various views considering creation, I found the book “The Genesis Debates” to be very good. Look for it on Amazon. Edited by Ronald Youngblood.
Also Robin Parry at Theological Scribbles tells us of a couple of books on the topic coming out this year.
Maybe a couple of books for my Christmas wish list?!?
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Why don’t we interact with the RC position? The argument that evolution = No Adam is very familiar to IM readers.
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“Verses like Romans 5:12 clearly teach that it was through Adam that sin and death entered the world, and it is through Jesus that we find salvation. I think understanding who Adam is is hugely important to understanding who Jesus is.”
This bothers me also. If humans evolved, then I don’t think there could have been a literal Adam. At what point in the process of man’s evolution did that one guy suddenly qualify as the first human? So I find it really hard to believe in a literal Adam, and this does force me to think about what original sin is.
Michael Dowd’s book talks about how sin is really our inherited proclivities from the primitive leftover reptile and monkey sections of our brains.
So if this is the case, then it makes the fall of man not a real fall but rather a metaphor for our inherited proclivities. And it makes Jesus’s role kind of muddy.
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This is basically why I believe evolution and Christianity are compatible. It’s also why I’m really cautious around the claims of supporters of the intelligent design movement.
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My pastor shouldn’t be teaching my daughter science, and her science teacher shouldn’t be teaching religion.
It’s similar to why I don’t home school her, even though it would save me a fortune in private school tuition. I might make a reasonably good math or science teacher, but can I teach English or history or, say, Spanish, as well as someone who went to school for 6 years to specialize in those subjects? No way.
As several people have brought up, I worry about Christians whose entire faith rests on a literal interpretation of the Bible. That’s a shaky foundation, true, but when we reduce the Bible to an instruction booklet somehow we demean it. The sacred is beyond fact, somehow.
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I’m no expert in evolutionary biology, but I am a scientist (about to complete a Ph.D. in physics) and a Christian. Most people make the debate about believing or not believing scripture (as in how literal do you read Genesis — old earth, 7 literal days… all that stuff), but the point where I get interested in this discussion is trying to understand how being pro or anti evolution affects our understanding of the gospel, who Jesus is, and why he came.
Verses like Romans 5:12 clearly teach that it was through Adam that sin and death entered the world, and it is through Jesus that we find salvation. I think understanding who Adam is is hugely important to understanding who Jesus is.
Personally, I have no problem with reading old earth into the creation story. For that matter, I’m even okay with evolution of plants and animals that takes millions of years to progress. These things have very little spiritual implication in my understanding. But Adam and Eve are different. They had a personal relationship with God and their actions profoundly shaped our relationship with God ever since. If they evolved from apes (or whatever), what is our understanding of death? What is our understanding of why we need a savior in Jesus?
I’m very curious to hear how theistic evolutionists approach the question of Adam and original sin as it pertains to the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is something you rarely hear discussed (at least I haven’t). For me, it has been the main sticking point in being able to affirm evolution as a Christian.
Thanks.
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Do you know that Orthodox Jewish Rabbis actually do strain at gnats when making food kosher?
Just thought I’d throw that in …. 🙂
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Is it wrong that I want to be an Old Earth Creationist just to rattle the most cages?
Yeah, probably.
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The Other Rob – her house in Ephesus is where she lived with John after the Crucifixion. The Holy House of Loreto is the family house from Nazareth (allegedly) 🙂
Is it actually the house? Beats the heck out of me. Is it a genuine 1st Century A.D. house? Have no idea. Is it a real Middle-Eastern house shipped overseas? Probably, but what do I know?
The Church says we don’t have to believe this is the actual house. We don’t have to believe the Shroud of Turin is the actual burial cloth. However, if faithful believers use these as means of devotion, and they’re not claiming anything contrary to Faith and Scripture, then it does no harm and we can’t say (unless we have definite, absolute proof otherwise) that they’re fakes.
On a side note, and going back to something Michael mentioned tangentially in an earlier post, things like this are why I’m a bit sceptical about items like the James Ossuary – because, like I said, if those kinds of things were any good as relics at all, we’d have them in Rome since the Crusades 😉
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Amazingly, we also venerate her house in Ephesus. I suppose she could have moved! 🙂
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Or handing out bananas. 🙂
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The whole question for me is answered in this — Humanity is not defined by the physical. True, fulfilled Humanness is being “in the world, but not of the world.” How ever God got us here, we are spiritual beings and we are on a Journey to becoming the Children of God.
On Ash Wednesday, no matter what the Magisterium professes to believe about the Origin of the Species, we still have ashes placed on our foreheads, with the phrase pronounced, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
I have no expectation that they will soon be putting monkeys on our heads. 🙂
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At over the age of 40 I am still unable to discuss this subject without strong emotion. As a youth I had been taught that if I could not trust the “plane and obvious†reading of the first chapters of Genesis the rest of the bible fell apart. As a result when my faith suffered the inevitable shocks of a secular university education I felt no qualms about rejecting it wholesale. I was not until I encountered a group of sophisticated Dutch reformed Christians (to a man theistic evolutionist) that I began to feel as if I could return to the church and maintain some kind of intellectual integrity. I thank God he guided me to these thoughtful men and woman. I lost nearly five years of my christian life to the false alter of biblical literalism. I can not think of a single greater stumbling block to the spread of the gospel then pseudo-science of scientific creationism.
God Bless
Steve in Toronto
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My wife often asks me, “Why do you care about how old the earth is (etc.)? The whole question is silly.†I’m a pretty open minded guy. If a brother or sister in Christ wants to believe the earth is 6,000 years old, I couldn’t care less and I would never think less of them (even though I’m an old earth guy). So, in the same regards, if a Catholic brother or sister believes in theistic evolution, that doesn’t bother me in the least. For me, having the option of believing in an old earth (not talking about theistic evolution yet) gives me the freedom I need to be intellectually confident that Christianity is true.
My problem comes, and it seems to happen quite often, when someone at my church (often someone in leadership position) tells me that I am “worldly,†or “Mike, you can’t be a real Christian†or “Mike, I believe my Bible†(as if I don’t) all because I believe in an old earth. I find that very irritating.
I also find it irritating when these same leaders tell our youth that the earth is 6,000 years old because “God says so!†The reason this is irritating is, when these youth go to college and figure out that the ICR stuff or Ken Hamm was not accurate (idiot science) and that the church has been lying to them, then they will throw God out with the young earth. I don’t want to see that happen. It’s the very same reason that I never told my kids that Santa was real. When they found out I was lying, they might think I was lying about God too.
Evolution of course could mean many things to many people. I am confident that you can love God, be a great Christian, be a great friend of mine and believe in theistic evolution. However, I could not be a theistic evolutionist myself for a few simple reasons.
When we talk about the meta-narrative of the entire evolution package, it is a true statement that “Necessity is the mother of Invention.” The whole package (from the big bang to earth’s primordial scum in geothermal vents or lightening strikes . . . up to the ape-human linage) was the only logical explanation for human life for a Materialist. They have no choice (unless you dabble in some weird metaphysical things). I don’t need that meta-narrative because I think I have a better one, as a non-Materialist . . . God’s creative act in time and space.
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I am one of those converts. I jumped into YEC as soon as I discovered that Jesus was the Son of God — this from 20 years of abject atheistic belief in random-event-self-generation-of-life-on-earth.
I took a lot of prayer and meditation and some understanding that most evangelical Christians are holding for dear life to conceptions fed to them by others in the same state, and would rather die than see the possibility of what the Cardinal is referring to. Science, as we know it, was developed by Roman Catholic clerics. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the RCC works to reconcile the Scriptures with the sciences.
Man being formed from the dust of the earth is an “evolution” if you see it happening by itself without the action of God. The dust “evolved” into the first man. If there are some steps in between — such as: dust, to single celled organisms, to more complex microbes, to fish, etc., on up to apes and then man, the second Creation story is not exactly accurate in every detail, but what it illustrates is that Man was the pinnacle of God’s creation. In that it is stunningly accurate and exquisite.
It is told from the point of view of an absolutely patriarchal culture. So — for the other side — our “better half, as it were — I want to point out something else left out of the Genesis account. Even if God made Adam first with his own hand, and then formed Eve, the first woman, out of one of his rib’s (and this only because Adam didn’t quite get along with the orangutan and the other animals presented to him), every other man who has ever existed not only came out of a woman, but was one in the womb before hormonal differentiation took hold, which answers the age old question — “Why do men have nipples?” (Although it doesn’t tell us if Adam had any — or a navel, for that matter.) 🙂
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I consider myself a young earther, although I’m not up in arms about it. Nor do I believe in evolution. I find myself in Anna A’s camp: the science is over my head. If, and I reiterate “IF”, there is a division between science and the Bible, I choose the Bible.
This makes me sound like a bumper sticker, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” But that isn’t the case. After public school pushing evolution, I think I have a good, but basic, grasp of it. After graduating, I heard/saw/learned enough scientific proof on the Creationist/Young Earth/Intelligent Design side of the debate. I understand the basic science on both sides. They both make sense.
Here’s my conclusion: Jesus Christ came to earth to redeem sinful man, of whom I am the chief. Whether I am right or wrong, or Darwin, I will be in heaven only because Jesus is able. Evolved or created, I am his.
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The key, I find, is the Cardinal’s statement “Is genuine Christianity obliged to adopt any of these positions?”
Obligation is something very concrete for us Catholics. We are obliged to believe in the Trinity, the sinless conception of Mary and to go to Mass on Sunday. We are not obliged to read Genesis as literal nor as we obliged to read it in any particular figurative way. Likewise, we are not obliged to ascribe the authorship of the Torah to Moses but we are obliged to not deny that it is possible.
Regarding the Holy House of Loreto (good example!), it is an approved site of devotion, so we are obliged not to deny its possible authenticity.
What I think we sometimes forget is that there is no great urgency to answer a lot of these questions. Non-essentials should not become litmus tests for “true Christianity”. Regarding the Holy House, to believe it is real is no danger to your faith, to deny it is real is no danger – the only danger is elevating your own judgment above the Church’s.
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Not all RC’s would agree with the Cardinal. My brother, a priest, would disagree. I would not. He can get just as worked up about it as any evangelical – maybe more.
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While I don’t believe it now I am open to the idea of theistic evolution.
I find it scary the reaction you got from the young earthers. It is like people are scared to see that their understanding of scripture may be wrong.
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Michael,
Perhaps I am one of those creationist evangelcals that you are looking for. I was, for several years even a member of the Creation Research Society. But, I dropped out because I couldn’t judge the quality of the science. It was either over my head in a disciple that I was not trained in, or “Look at this, how could this have evolved.”
The more that I read the less important to me, that the whole argument seemed. (I used to have a very nice collection of all of the standard texts that support Creationism.)
I had actually moved away from the idea before Catholicism was on my screen as a religion.
I am still bothered by museums and zoos teaching evolution as going from one kind to another, though.
I would like to propose a question for discussion, if I may. Would there have been as much discovered biologically if the idea of evolution (and therefore discoverable) had not been in play. If all life had been considered God’s area, and mysterious, what would biology be like now?
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