Evolution as Theology, Part 3; Calvinism's Twin?

(I contrast Calvinism with evolution in this post...but any religious belief with a strong emphasis on a God who uses nature and events for some greater purpose could be interchanged with Calvinism.)

One of the most basic presuppositions of Calvinism is that God is sovereign and nothing ever happens without His direct knowledge and will causing it to happen. Whatever happens was meant to happen.  The appearance of "free will" is just that, an appearance, not a reality.  This applies to not only people but also nature. Earthquakes have a reason.  Premature death has a reason. Coincidences have a reason.

Somehow, someway, everything works together to bring about what God wants and we are powerless to resist it, or exert our will upon it.

Taken at face value, this can be a comforting idea. If one surrenders to the idea, then every bad event has a good purpose.

Because a Calvinistic God is a constantly active God, guiding history and nature, there is a connection in how Calvinists use nature to uphold their doctrinal beliefs. Paying close attention to how Calvinism handles gender differences, it's possible to see how, besides Scriptural input on the matter, much is made of the nature of men and women.  Arguments will frequently veer into the biology of men and women, emphasizing the hard wiring of traits and tendencies into the physical body/mind.  Men are the way they are because God created them that way and set a universal pattern for them to be that way. Women are the way they are because God made them to be that way.

This is why conservative Calvinists get up in arms about masculinity, femininity, and gender roles.  Stepping outside those roles is not only going against God's will, but it is denying the inescapable nature of biology. In Calvinist theology, one could say that we know God has fixed roles for men and women because historically, and naturalistically, those roles have existed for millennia.

In other words....If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The interesting thing about this framework is how it could be tied to evolution.  We are the way we are because we could be no other way.  We were formed by our world and selection pressures to develop into what we are. The environment, food sources, and our relationship/interaction with other competing animals formed us. Different pressures would have caused different results.

In this case, Nature made us and there is no resisting Nature.

In reality, Calvinists could readily incorporate evolution into their theology because it would allow for a portrayal of evolution as God's sovereign, guiding hand. They usually don't, not because it couldn't be done, but because it would have implications for how they read and interpret Scripture.

In Calvinism, everything has a reason.  In evolution, everything has a result.

Calvinism assumes a purpose moving forward according to plan.  Evolution assumes a purpose discovered through the past. Calvinism assumes an intentional progression towards a finite, determined end.  Evolution assumes an infinite progression without an end, sprouting from a finite beginning.

They are mirror images of each other in a strange way.

Moral Law and Evolution, Part 2

I'm almost done with The Language of God, but wanted to jot a few thoughts down before I forgot them.

As I read further into The Language of God, my impression of Collins gradually improved. He is in his element when he gets down to details in his field and begins to argue against the YEC and Intelligent Design movements through scientific evidence and fact. The funny thing is that the very evidence he uses in his book is the very evidence that made me eventually come to accept evolution. I came across most of the examples he used while watching Intelligent Design on Trial, a NOVA special on PBS about the trial that took place in Dover, PA when the school board clashed over evolution and intelligent design.

The fact that there actually are transitional fossils, that Michael Behe's example of the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum has been proven incorrect, and that the human genome has a fusion of 2 chromosomes that are present, yet separate, in chimpanzees, giving us 23 chromosomes instead of 24 like other primates, showing a direct link and traceable mutation between humans and chimpanzees....well it all made me realize that most of the "scientific" arguments of creationism and Intelligent Design were simply false.

It was a huge turning point in my thoughts. I finally understood why evolutionists were so infuriated by Intelligent Design and Creationism and why even Christian biologists had no qualms about believing in evolution. Evolution wasn't an attack on God by godless atheists, it was simply making sense of the very good evidence that has turned up within multiple fields of science.

I couldn't deny evolution on the basis of counter-evidence....because there wasn't any counter-evidence.

Collins explains all of this quite lucidly.

Unfortunately, when he's done with "science-y" part, he immediately moves back to the argument from Moral Law and more quoting of C.S. Lewis. This is the weakest part of the book because Collins is out of his depth. It isn't that the argument from Moral Law can't be persuasive, but it has no grounding in all of his scientific points. What seems to happen is that Collins is melding two different magisteriums without acknowledging what he is doing, and he has slammed on the brakes and switched gears rather suddenly.

Collins, throughout the book, continues to make assertions about "godless materialists" and "unnecessary ultra-liberal interpretations of Genesis" and believing in the "God of the Bible" and much of Scripture as "eyewitness accounts of historical events".

His motives for retaining his faith are very unscientific. And that is my main criticism of the book; it is a bit of a bait and switch. It doesn't answer the questions that I think that most people who pick up a book subtitled, A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, are looking for. There is no "evidence", from a scientific perspective, for his belief. Instead, he provides a description of the personal synthesis of his scientific understanding and his religious beliefs.

Here is the dilemma that Collins misses, maybe because of his background and not coming from a seriously impassioned evangelical faith from youth: the crisis that evolution causes for many people of faith has nothing whatsoever to do with science. It is a crisis of epistemology, a crisis of knowing what information to trust and where to look for the truth.

Collins writes at one point:

I do not believe that God who created all the universe, and who communes with His people through prayer and spiritual insight, would expect us to deny the obvious truths of the natural world that science has reveled to us, in order to prove our love for Him.(pg. 210)

On the one hand, Collins keeps asserting that the "God of the Bible" is not denied by evolution, yet he doesn't define what his picture of the "God of the Bible" looks like. Is it the God of the Bible who commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? Is it the God of the Bible who made the sun stop in the sky so that Joshua could win the battle? Is it the God of the Bible who killed a man for accidentally touching the Ark of the Covenant?

These are the questions about God that many fundamentalists and evangelicals struggle with. The Bible is replete with stories in which people have to act in discordance with what they see around them in order to please God. The Bible, the Old Testament in particular, is replete with stories in which God is portrayed as somewhat capricious and mystifying in his actions.

I will assume that when Collins refers to the God of the Bible, he is referring to a milder Christian version of a loving, forgiving, always benevolent God. A God such as that is compatible with reason, and curiosity, and human potential.

Collins gets it backwards. Christians are not in need of a scientist who can affirm theology; they are in need of a theologian who can affirm science. Those are strikingly different things. Collins can't give YEC-ers what they need, because theirs is not a position beholden to science, it is a position beholden to theological imperatives.

Collins simply doesn't have the expertise in the relevant areas to communicate a true synthesis of science and theology and how the two might work together. Even if he did, it would come at the cost of reshaping many of those theological imperatives that he so blithely brushes by without any good alternatives.

In trying to deal with the theological implications of evolution Collins quotes Lewis again:

For long centuries, God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of Himself. He gave it hands whose thumb could be applied to each of his fingers, and jaws and teeth and throat capable of articulation, and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all of the material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated. The creature may have existed in this state for ages before it became man: it may even have been clever enough to make things which a modern archaeologist would accept as proof of its humanity. But it was only an animal because all its material and physical processes were directed to purely material and natural ends. Then, in the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say "I" and "me", which could look upon itself as an object which knew God which could make judgments of truth, beauty, and goodness, and which was so far above time that it could perceive time flowing past...We do not know how many of these creatures God made, not how long they continued in the Paradisal state. But sooner or later they fell. Someone or something whispered that they could become gods...They wanted some corner in the universe of which they could say to God,"This is our business, not yours." But there is no such corner. They wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere adjectives. We have no idea what particular act, or series of acts, the self-contradictory, impossible wish found expression. For all I can see, it might have concerned the literal eating of a fruit, but the question is of no consequence.(pg. 208) and also(C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, pgs 68-71)

The message comes across as "Genesis 1 and 2 don't have to be taken literally. Adam and Eve don't have to be real people.....but The Fall...that is definitely real."

Ok...maybe that's a simplistic evaluation of what Lewis is saying. After all, he wrote that passage many, many years ago and there is no telling how he would contribute to the current conversation in the context of further evolutionary proof and development. He was already ahead of many other Christians during his own time, we can't expect him to answer questions that weren't even being asked in his own context.

There is a problem with Collins using this quote from Lewis. On the one hand, he is unhooking the Creation story from possessing any scientific expectations or content. On the other hand, he is trying to locate the human condition within a real, historical, literal event labeled The Fall. Lewis, strangely enough, also isn't helping Collins' attempt to remove God as a constant interventionist in the evolutionary process. Collins, in his discussion of evolution, has said that tying God to the evolutionary process, and special creative influence upon it, is a bad idea....yet that is exactly what Lewis is talking about in this passage--God intervening to shape humanity, not only into a particular, mental/spiritual shape, but also in a particular physical/physiological shape.

I don't understand why Collins doesn't see this. In one breath, he is criticizing Paley's watchmaker analogy and ID and creationism as forming their arguments on human intuition, and in the next breath he is quoting Lewis, whose entire driving force in his work is predicated on human intuition about the Universe.

Collins doesn't seem to recognize it in Lewis, or in himself.

I still have a couple of chapters to go, and I think that I have at least one more post that I want to get to.

Moral Law and Evolution

In the midst of going back and reading my comments on AVI's post from a few years ago, I decided that I should read The Language of God, by Francis Collins because it was the focal point of AVI's posts and I never actually read the book.

I'm almost halfway through and I can definitely see what AVI meant when he referred to Collins as having used C.S. Lewis too much. The first couple of chapters are simply Collins rehashing Lewis' most famous apologetic arguments from Mere Christianity. I will assume that Collins does this because he thinks that his prospective audience is made up of those who have no knowledge of Lewis, or Mere Christianity, or the argument from Moral Law.

This is all well-traveled ground for me. Honestly, I'm at the point where when I pick up a Christian book and all it is is a rehashing of Lewis, or heavily dependent on Lewis' fleshed out fictional portrayals of the Divine, or simply dressing up Lewis' ideas and arguments, without even acknowledging that they came from him, that I seriously want to stab myself in the eye with a fork.

And it isn't even that I don't like Lewis. I have tons of his work on my bookshelves. It is simply that I expect more from a book than a reframing of someone else's work. I suppose that reframing is good every once in a while, but there are so many books out there reframing Lewis that I hardly see the point of why they continue to get published. How many do we need?

That's my little rant.

In one of the sections in which Collins interacts with Lewis, in the context of evolution and altrusim, Collins writes this:

Agape, or selfless altruism, presents a major challenge for the evolutionist. It is quite frankly a scandal to reductionist reasoning. It cannot be accounted for by the drive of the individual selfish genes to perpetuate themselves. Quite the contrary: It may lead humans to make sacrifices that lead to great personal suffering, injury, or death, without any evidence of benefit. And yet, if we carefully examine that inner voice we sometimes call conscience, the motivation to practice this kind of love exists within all of us, despite our frequent efforts to ignore it.

He goes on to dismiss evolutionary explanations for the conscience on the basis that sacrificing oneself denies one the privilege of furthering the individual's direct genetic line. It is not advantageous, evolutionarily speaking, for a person to die for an altruistic cause, so therefore the conscience that we have must be inexplicable in biologic terms. He refutes an example of worker ants sacrificing themselves in order to protect the queen because all ants from a colony carry the same exact genetic code, meaning that the worker ant is somehow involved, indirectly, in the propagation of its genes.

This is a weak argument.

Attempts to explain human altrusim in terms of evolutionary behavior that has a single individual's desire to reproduce will definitely seem strained. Many altruistic soldiers lay dead on the field of battle, cut down in the prime of their lives, no children, no contribution to the gene pool. The high death rate among altruists would seem to prevent altruism from developing as a beneficial, evolutionary trait.

On the other hand, many of the traits that humans possess, supposedly as a result of evolutionary selection, would seem to me to be directly related to a sense of altruism. Certain genes have a trickle-down effect and cause changes in the next generation, not only in one area, but in multiple areas at the same time. One example that comes to mind is the experiment done with silver foxes in Russia in which, by selecting for tameness and breeding only the foxes that seemed least fearful of and less aggressive towards humans, the experimenters wound up creating animals that were more like proto-dogs. Not only did the successive generations become more and more tame, but the coloring of their coats changed, they acquired the ability to make dog-like noises, their tails changed. In short, one selective pressure had a domino effect on their physical and social characteristics.

Isn't it possible that any number of evolutionary steps could have given humanity a radically different social and mental orientation?

One of humanity's unique cognitive traits is the ability to imagine: the ability to imagine the future, the ability to imagine what might have happened in the past if things were done differently, the ability to imagine what it would be like to be someone else, or what it would be like to experience what other people experience. It is the human imagination that allows planning and mental leaps of understanding and gives us an evolutionary advantage over other animals.

Because we have this imagination and are more prone to thinking beyond the simple individual urge to procreate, it would only be natural for humans to be altruistic when it came to the survival of their species as a whole. Humans are altruistic because they are socially tied to other humans and have the ability to see beyond themselves as individuals and to imagine the negative consequences for survival of not being altruistic.

We can recognize the value of altruism even as many altruists die. Because we can perceive how the sacrifice of one can save the many, we mentally reinforce the value within ourselves. Not all altruists die, either, and those who do may do so after already reproducing.

Also, we are the only species that has the ability to purposely direct our own evolution. At this point, purely biological/"survival of the fittest" evolution is a thing of the past for us. We influence our own biologic make-up, for good or ill, all the time.

We are more like those worker ants than we care to admit.

Does this do away with Moral Law? If we assume that conscience is the result of highly developed, constantly selected, evolutionary traits does that mean Moral Law has no merit?

I don't think that it does, necessarily. I do, however, think that it changes shape.

That's up next.

Salvaging Genesis

So, what to make of Genesis? If one wants to accept evolution, what does it mean for a coherent view of Genesis? How do we teach it? What theology do we form from it? What do we tell our kids about it?

Those are the nuts and bolts that the average Christian is struggling with in the middle of the evolution/creationism debate.

What does it all mean?

If we view Genesis as the best explanation offered to us by people who sought to explain God, Humanity, and their relationship to each other...there is still much value to be found in Genesis.

If we view Genesis as historical fact given to Moses in a vision, or in a direct, fireside chat with God....then it's hard not to be a YEC-er.

The outcome is determined by what we believe Scripture is and what its purpose is. I won't trot out the whole inerrancy argument, because I've already given my opinion pretty extensively on that subject in the past.

In the past, I used to read Genesis 1 and think,"Wow...that's really close to the concepts of the Big Bang and evolution." God creates the earth and heavens out of a primordial mess. He commands the water, earth and sky to be formed. He commands the land to produce vegetation...and it does. He commands the waters and land to produce living creatures....and they do. The last thing created and made is man....the most advanced creature produced by the evolutionary process.

It's not hard to draw parallels between the creation story and evolution. In fact, compared to other creation stories, Genesis 1 seems downright scientific; that is until you realize that Day 3 has the land being covered with vegetation before the sun is formed on Day 4. That throws a wrench into any idea that Genesis 1 is an inspired revelation of evolution taking place.

No sun=no plants.

If we place ourselves in the sandals of the ancients thousands of years ago, observing the world, nature, and life...we just might be able to understand Genesis a little better.

Think about the descriptions offered in Genesis 1. Distinctions are made between water, earth and sky. Those are pretty basic, observable categories. Most animals fall into one of those categories...except for maybe amphibians which could be water or earth creatures. Distinctions are made about plants and animals reproducing according to their own kind. What person has ever planted a peach pit and grown a pine tree? What cow has ever given birth to a sheep?

These are observable demarcations, even to the ancients, that are being put into use to explain the order of the cosmos. I would go so far as to say that the descriptions are "scientific" in their attempt to take what was observable and form a theory of creation from it. It's no coincidence that livestock aren't created until the land is covered with vegetation. What would they have eaten? Wild animals aren't created until there are birds and fish to munch on.

And then...at the end of the creation narrative...we have man's creation. Man is made to rule over the other animals. He is said to be made in the image of God. He is created male and female.

This is more general observation. Humans sense that they have something which other animals don't. They see that they have the power to shape and control nature and animals. They see that they are wholly "other" throughout the earth; somehow better, somehow more powerful.

This is what being made in the "image of God" is about.

Genesis 1 is "true"...without necessarily being "factual".

more later.

Evolution and Our Theology, Part 2

One of the most frustrating things for evolutionists who talk extensively with YEC advocates is the seeming refusal of YEC-ers to accept any evidence provided to "prove" that evolution is "true". How can they ignore so much evidence from diverse sources and fields of study? Why do they create pseudo-scientific explanations to explain away the data?

Usually, the conclusion is reached that YEC believers are anti-science.

I would say that might be true, but not in the way that it comes across.

The true root of this conflict has nothing to do with science, in and of itself. Instead the dispute arises from a mindset that knowledge has no neutrality.

Oh you mean they believe that the results are biased!

Yes and no. They believe the scientific results for evolution are biased, not because they think scientists simply are wishing evolution to be true and therefore massaging the data, though there is an undercurrent of that in YEC arguments. They believe the results are biased based on their theological beliefs about humanity and its ability to "know" things.

In a cosmology filled with angels and demons there is no middle ground.

Theistic evolutionists who are fighting to win over YEC believers are doomed to fail, not because of a lack of evidence, but because of the tenets of fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity. In a worldview that views humans as desperately wicked and blind to truth without an intervention from God, there is no motivation to trust what scientists say, especially scientists who don't believe in any sort of God, or any form of Christianity.

It simply isn't possible, with this mindset, to think that any person could objectively discover the truth about the universe, creation, and humanity without special revelation from God.

Certain Scriptures don't really help us out here, either.

2 Corinthians 11:14
14And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.

1 Corinthians 1:20-21
20Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

1 Corinthians 1:25-27
25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. 26Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

1 Corinthians 3:18-20 18

Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise. 19For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written: "He catches the wise in their craftiness"; 20and again, "The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile."

There are certainly times when evil might appear good. There are times when a wise choice looks foolish on the surface. It is true that knowledge does not necessarily lead to good choices.

These Scriptures are not "untrue" in what they communicate, but they certainly help feed the YEC conviction that believing something that makes no sense is further proof that they are on the right track. Any argument about a scientific theory which would remake the foundations of this version of Christianity will fall on deaf ears, because those ears have been conditioned to hear,"Just because smart people say it's true doesn't mean it is."

Those smart people might have been taken in by what appears to be an "angel of light" but is really just a harbinger of evil and destruction.

There is no way to overcome this view of humanity without completely reformulating opinions on whether man is a neutral being, and whether knowledge can be objectively obtained.

That may seem like a trivial thing, but it isn't. It permeates layer upon layer of thousands of years of theology.

Theology is like a giant game of Jenga; some pieces can be removed with little consequence to the overall structure, other pieces cause inescapable collapses of the entire tower when they are even slightly shifted.

This is what YEC advocates sense and what fuels their protection of their particular tower.

They see the wobbliness and are desperately holding their breath waiting for the tower to stop swaying and be still once more.

Evolution's Impact on Theology

AVI is doing a series of posts about Evolution and Young Earth Creationism that's really good. It grew out of a post about Creationism, Evolution and Politics.

While I enjoy his postulations about how the creation story in Genesis might reflect certain aspects of the development of humanity, I can't help but feel as if it's missing the point when it comes to the interplay between Evolution and Creationism and the theological implications of the two.

What we make of Genesis might be a good window into how we see the relationship between God and man, the Divine and the earthly.

Creationism is rooted in the idea that the story in Genesis is revelation from God. Some people take the story as literally as possible, believing in six, 24-hour days of creative work by God. Some see it as a general sketch of the creation of the universe by God and the explanation of humanity's spiritual state, drawn in broad strokes. These two camps of Creationism really only differ in their sense of time. Both generally believe in a literal, historic Adam and Eve.

Many Christians have made peace with the idea of evolution, seeing it as an explanation of how God created humanity without feeling that it intrudes on the why of God's creation. That's a reasonable approach and one to which I would be willing to grant approval and assent. However, if we truly go down the path of accepting evolution as the "true" explanation of life on this planet, even if we are simply accepting it as a God-driven mechanism, there are widespread implications for our Christian theology.

One simple and relatively minor example....God's directive to keep the Sabbath holy is directly tied the Genesis 1 view of creation:

Exodus 20:8-11

8 "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

What would the Jewish religion look like without the concept of Sabbath, a concept which was not only a weekly cycle, but which also appeared in the agricultural system and the idea of having a Sabbath year in which no one planted crops, leaving the ground fallow, resting until the next cycle of 6 years of productive work. The Sabbath dominated many of the ceremonies and rituals of Judaism, with special offerings made on Sabbaths. Even the story of the Israelites receiving manna from heaven has a reference to the Sabbath, with twice as much manna appearing on the day before the Sabbath because none would appear on the day of the Sabbath.

Here lies the heart of the conflict between christian evolution and creationism: What does evolution mean for the ideas which have served as the foundations of our religion? If the idea of a literal, six day creation is cast aside, large sections of the Old Testament become almost meaningless. Perhaps, that's overstating it...but, to be sure, it uproots any sense that the idea of a "Sabbath" as a reflection of creation is based on reality.

There are ways around this, theologically speaking. One could propose that the Sabbath-oriented Scriptures are God's concessions to working with beliefs which were already established within the Jewish community. An explanation in that form is only partially satisfying because it leaves us with communications from God which aren't based in reality, but which are based in God's willingness to use whatever means available to communicate "truth" to humans.

So....he didn't exactly create the world in six days....but the Israelites thought He did...so what's the harm? That's not a very comforting picture of God, as far as believing in a God who always speaks the "truth".

Another explanation can only be reached from a modern, Christian perspective; that of the progressive revelation of Scripture. The newer, Christ-inspired Scriptures of the New Testament outweigh and supersede the Old Testament directives.

Conservative, evangelical Christians are wishy-washy with this approach, usually using it when it suits them and they don't want to address the violence in the Old Testament, but also wanting to desperately cling to the parts of the Old Testament they like. Inspirational stories of biblical characters beating the odds with God on their side...."YES, we'll take those!" Violent stories of genocide and commands to stone adulterers, homosexuals, non-parent-honoring children and Sabbath-breakers..."NO, not so much!"

Honestly, I don't have a problem with that approach, except for the fact that most evangelicals won't own up to what they're doing. Instead of saying,"We don't believe X is truly representative of God's nature and his will for humanity, so we reject it as an imperfect, wrong approach to God," they will inevitably find a way to co-opt the violent texts and make them mean something that they really don't, or simply avoid them.

Anyone been to a great Bible study on Leviticus, lately?

My first example I mistakenly labeled as a minor problem. As a Christian in the 21st century it does seem minor to me because my worship of God is not tied to the rituals established in the Old Testament. To a Jewish person worshipping at the Temple 3,000 years ago, it would have been a major problem.

Christianity does not get off scot-free from evolution's impact. While the Sabbath directives have generally been loosened up to the point of non-existence, most of what we call "Christian" theology has Genesistic (I know that's not a word) themes running through it.

The theory of original sin is tied to Genesis. The division of roles for men and women as described in the New Testament have their roots in Genesis. Even the Christology of Jesus and his resurrection is tied into Genesis, with comparisons to Adam being made to explain Jesus' significance.

Adam of Genesis is the first Adam, Jesus is the last Adam. Luke's genealogy lists Adam as a son of God, presumably uniquely created, right after establishing Jesus' virgin birth and unique creation and the story of the voice from heaven declaring Jesus as God's son, after Jesus' baptism.

Paul, especially, goes into great lengths describing how sin and death came through the first Adam, and life is coming from the last Adam:

1 Corinthians 15:21-22

21For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

Essentially, our understanding of Jesus' coming and his resurrection are based on the Genesis stories.

I sound like a YEC advocate, which I'm not.

Yet...I understand the YEC movement and their fear and protestations to evolution. It isn't science which they are protesting; it's the loss of an entire paradigm of understanding God, Humanity, how those two relate, and what it means to be a Christian.

I'll offer more opinions on that later. This post is already quite long.

Update--Blogger Doug Chaplin gets to the point better than me.

Defending Dawkins?

While driving to work this morning, I was listening to a Christian radio station, which usually plays music with occasional DJ banter, or discussion. They had a producer of the movie, Expelled, on the air, and he was trying explain how the movie refutes Darwinism and shows the silliness of atheist Richard Dawkins for saying that life may have started on this planet by being seeded from intelligent life somewhere else in the universe, aka aliens.

Now, Richard Dawkins isn't getting any love from me. He's a complete blowhard when it comes to the discussion between Christians and atheists, with regards to the origin of life. That being said, I was still bothered by this 8 am DJ banter which was mocking and arrogant in its own right, and which was taking place among people who have neither read Dawkins, nor seen the movie Expelled.

Having read The God Delusion, I can confidently say that the super-smart, alien, designer theory discussed on the radio was not Dawkins first and only choice in defining the beginning point of life. Instead, his approach is more one of things are the way they are because that is the only way they could be in order to produce life. We are the lucky, random recipients of a perfectly aligned planet that was capable of providing just the right conditions for the development of life. To back up his argument he simply compares Earth to the billions of planets which inhabit the Universe and says it's simply a statistical given that at least a few planets could produce life among the millions and millions that can't. We just happened to have the winning lottery ticket.

So there. I defended Richard Dawkins from being caricatured by miscellaneous Christian DJs. It'll probably never happen again.

In the midst of all this, I was struck by how easily Christians can jump on a bandwagon without really knowing jack about what they're talking about. It's pretty sad. However, I don't think it's a phenomenon that occurs only in the Christian community. I read and hear the same thing from atheists who don't really know or understand much about Christianity, yet spout off arguments which aren't based in what they have studied, but what others have told them. No group is above taking up banners that a prominent member of the group has declared important. It happens.

I can't speak for atheists, not being one, but I can speak from a Christian perspective. If you haven't put any effort into understanding the opposition, haven't read anything they've written, haven't for a moment considered their point of view, then stay out of the conversation. You're in a far better position to simply cling to your faith as the reason for not accepting evolution then you are if you try to argue from a scientific knowledge base which you don't posses or fully understand. You can have your opinions. You can express your opinions. You should do both; just don't cloak it in scientific terms in an effort to get past the defense of the opposing team. It makes Christians seem arrogant, sneaky, and intellectually dishonest.

That's my little rant for the day.

continuing from yesterday.

4. Most evolutionary thought about the universal belief in God tends to classify such belief as either a "mistake", or as a beneficial mutation that helped to contribute to the survival of the human species by causing humans to work cooperatively or further the status of the group. If that were true, why the fight against it? Why the enormous effort to throw off a perfectly developed, successful adaptation chosen by natural selection? It seems sort of paradoxical. The concept that humans are what they are because of billions of years of adaptations, which have led to us being successful on this planet, should seem to fight against a desire to wipe out something so integral to human nature. Why resist concepts of God and fixed morality? If they have served us so well in the past, on what basis should we ignore them now? I argue this only from a wondering state of mind. I obviously think there is more to this universal predisposition, but am merely intrigued by the vehemence that is leveled at it sometimes.

5. Techskeptic commented about my earlier post that it assumes a destination for natural selection and evolution--that somehow evolution is moving towards something. Theoretically, I would concede that adaptation does not necessarily mean improvement. And yet isn't that really what has happened with humans if we evolved? Our minds are what give us the edge on this planet. We have walked on the moon; we have discovered how viruses and bacteria harm us and how to fight them; we have learned how to clone animals and human organs. I think that things have pretty much advanced to a higher state of being. Even Dawkins compares natural selection to a staircase climbing further and further up.

6. Tying in somewhat with an earlier point; why would homo sapiens be the only surviving species in the journey from primate to human. In order for humans to have changed so drastically, there have been several intermediate stages proposed by evolution. Presumably, each of those stages would have had an advantage over the previous one on their way to "humanness". Why aren't any of them still living? Why isn't there a pocket of the world somewhere where a small band of them could have survived? When adaptation occurs it doesn't mean that the unadapted portion of a group dies out. Think Galapogos islands and all those strange, different finches Darwin found. Different groups of the same kind exist even if one becomes more dominant and resilient. That's why when people say,"If we descended from apes, why are there still apes?" it shows they don't really get what evolution is saying. There would have had to be a pool of former ancestors existing for a long time during the process for homo sapiens' development. What happened to them? Why would so many stages of them be completely obliterated?

zounds..it's late....premature stopping point again

Lately I have been pondering evolution, science, human nature and God. Oh....and how to beat level 13 on Zuma.

Leaving Zuma for another day, I'll try to cover the former.

One of the difficulties in accepting an evolutionary process without God is accounting for the universal consciousness of human kind. The very acts of being able to comprehend abstract thoughts, make predictions about future events based on information and not actual experiences, and plumb the depths of thought not directly related to our survival or environment, speak to me as something for which atheistic evolution cannot account.

There have been attempts to do so. Many ideas have been postulated about the social behavior of our "ancestors", implying that moral and cooperative behavior would benefit the species leading to their edge in survival. Dawkins, and many like him, believe that religious beliefs themselves are a result of evolution and the development of the mind, albeit a development they view as faulty or as a "mind virus". They attempt to tie thought-life to biology and neurology, a result of a belief in materialism.

And yet.....

No matter how much I can appreciate science, no matter how elegant the concept of things slowly building upon each other over millions of years might seem, no matter how "logical" evolution may sometimes seem--I don't really believe it.

My unbelief is not specifically tied to my view of God as creator, although that does influence me. Instead it is drawn out by a few simple questions and concepts.

1. If life began in a primordial, chemical soup that was struck by lightning, bringing inanimate matter to "life" what would make this new "living" organism want to reproduce? And not only reproduce, but by what mechanism would it even be able to reproduce itself? If a chain of tiny proteins, which one moment before had simply been floating about, suddenly had the ability to do something other than merely float about, how would that happen? Once it happened, why would it reproduce itself? It's a chain of proteins. It surely would have no consciousness or desire to "survive" or grow. So then we would have to be able to explain the drive, or motivation, for the first life forms to evolve and procreate.

2. Moving ahead millions of years--If humans evolved from primates, was it because of a physical advantage--standing upright, opposable thumbs, stronger immune system--or a mental advantage? For instance, let's say that a primate evolved opposable thumbs, maybe even a more upright stance, all at the same time. While certainly being physically advantageous, how would that translate into intelligence? Maybe they would survive more easily on a daily basis, but would that lead to them being smarter? Would it lead to them developing concepts about their world and universe which had no immediate impact on their lives, environment, or survival? So, instead of wondering how they would catch their next meal or find shelter in inclement weather they would need to be able to plan how they could grow their own food, make tools, build their own shelters, or keep peace in their social group.

From my Christian perspective, this is what I think is meant by "being made in the image of God."

What separates humans from animals is not only a biological advantage, but the agility and ability of the human mind. It is safe to say that humans are the most advanced species on the planet. Why is that? If evolution and natural selection are always at work, why is there only one species on the planet that has achieved the same status as humans? Shouldn't each species be continually improving and getting "smarter" if intelligence is so important to the survival and dominance of a species? Shouldn't there be more than one intelligent, enlightened species after all these billions and millions of years?

3. Compassion/Morals...Are humans the only species to exhibit compassion towards other species? Primates are very social creatures. They care for one another, build relationships, and do show compassion and cooperation within their groups. However, is there another species which collectively cares about other species? Is there another species which would protect predators such as wolves, lions, and bears out of an appreciation for their role in the ecology?

Hate to end abruptly..but I have to get to work! I'll try to finish this later.

Evolution Has Some 'Splaining To Do

Evolution is always presented as a long, tedious process that takes many aeons to create current life forms. Things don't change overnight or have any sort of design or intelligence directing them. Or do they?

This article about Columbine Flowers and their nectar spurs has some intriguing implications.
Here's a a quote that summarizes the basics:

"In Darwin's race, plants with the longest spurs and pollinators with the
longest tongues [to tap the flowers' nectar] would be favored by natural
selection, and--in a never-ending process--continually drive the plants'
spurs and the pollinator tongues to exceptionally long lengths."
--Scott Hodges

The flower wants to be pollinated in order to reproduce. To lure potential pollinators, it provides food in the form of nectar. As the pollinator drinks the nectar, its body is dusted with pollen and fertilizes the flower. Thus, in order to be pollinated, the nectar spur has to match the body type of its pollinator. Small tongue, small spur. Long tongue, long spur.

Theoretically, the flowers with a specific length of spur would continue to flourish and grow their spurs. The pollinators accustomed to them would continue to grow longer tongues to feed on them. Evolution doesn't allow for the plant to say to itself, "I am perfectly comfortable as is. I think I'll stop changing now."

It seems that the Columbine Flower doesn't want to listen to Darwin. According to the study, the flowers stop "evolving" once they have a set of consistent pollinators. If the pollinators change suddenly, then the flowers change rapidly to adapt to the new pollinators.

How cool is that? It's almost as if they were designed to know what they needed to do. :-)

"Hey what happened to those bumblebees?.......Well, maybe I'll court that Hummingbird over there. He's kind of cute. I know just the thing....a longer nectar spur. He'll never be able to resist it."

This same sort of rapid change within a species has also been noticed in a study of foxes in Siberia. Since 1959, researchers have bred silver foxes for tameness and non-aggression toward humans. They definitely got what they were aiming for, but several other things began to happen. The foxes began to behave more like dogs than foxes. Breeding for tameness produced foxes that could vocalize like dogs, show the same type of social intelligence as dogs, have drastic color changes in fur, and even some cute floppy ears. All of these physical changes came from breeding for one behavioral trait. I recommend reading the entire article. It's fascinating.

Over the course of almost 50 years, a species has been changed drastically--physically and cognitively.

It has implications for how we view the development of animals. Instead of thinking that dogs evolved over hundreds of thousands of years as offshoots of wolves, it is quite possible that the changes necessary to produce what we would call a dog, could have begun to happen in hundreds of years--a blink of an eye in evolutionary thought. Watch Dogs That Changed the World from Nova. Besides showing lots of cute dogs, it delves into the devlopment of dogs as a whole, offering new theories about when and how they came from wolves.

Although flowers and foxes are completely unrelated species and fields of study, these studies have one thing in common; they are counter-intuitive to traditional evolutionary thought. We can see in both of these instances that drastic changes can happen quickly within a species. It is important to note this when being confronted with the certainty with which evolutionists seem to date specific developments of species and traits.

***UPDATE***

Through another website, I found out that "rapidly" may mean 1 million years! :-0 (in regard to the flowers)

So, take that part in stride. However, that is less than half the time normally thought to develop a species such as the Columbine. My point still is that there is a lot of uncertainty in the dating of evolutionary events. I just think it's interesting the way that pops up in science news.

Is Atheism Stuck In The Present?

I can't seem to escape atheism lately. It's on my TV, in the magazines I read, and proliferating online.

While blog-surfing the other day I clicked on a link that gave no indication that it was an atheist blog. Reading through the posts and comments was interesting, and I responded to one of them. One of the other commenter's statements set a tangential thought through my brain. He was expressing frustration that, when discussing atheism and evolution with non-atheists, things always come back to Ultimate Origins. He wanted the conversation to take place from The Big Bang and go forward from there. Well, there are a lot of reasons why that is simply ridiculous. You can't argue scientifically from a set of assumed facts that you haven't justified. I addressed some of my thoughts about The First Cause problem for atheists in an earlier post.

However, thinking about this commenter's remark, I realized the atheists' aversion to the past and the future. That may seem a silly assertion to make when considering atheists' attachment to evolution, the geologic record, and The Big Bang theory. After all, isn't the past the point from which most of their arguments are made?

Yes and no.

They do rely heavily on what they believe about the past formation of Earth and Life on Earth, but their arguments do not address the true beginning of the past--First Cause. Dwelling on the beginning of all things is uncomfortable because they have no scientific explanation for it. Instead, they begin to join the conversation in medias res.

So, why do I say that they also have an aversion to contemplating the future? It seems another silly statement when considering atheistic contributions to science fiction and speculations about what might happen to Earth and humanity in the future. They seem to look forward to the continuing evolution of man.

Yes, but the future is not solely about what will happen, but about where things are going. Evolutionists believe that natural selection is a process that is random and operates with no forethought or intelligence directing it. In this view, mutations and adaptations are meant for the here and now, not preparation for a different set of circumstances that will occur 50-100 years later. There is no "gearing-up" for the future of a species. To admit that mutations take the future into consideration would be to admit that something, other than physical matter, was operating. The ability to predict a set of circumstances that hasn't yet occurred, requires forethought and higher intelligence. While atheists would concede that humans possess the ability to speculate and accurately predict some future events, that is seen as a higher function that has evolved within us. If we go back into the past and try to assign that higher function to lower life forms or to a cellular level, evolutionists would be quick to attempt to obliterate such thoughts.


The past and the future are what give events meaning. The fact that we started somewhere, and are headed somewhere else, is what defines the Journey. But, of course, atheists would deny that there is any meaning to humanity's journey. Meaning implies purpose. Purpose implies intention. Intention can only come from a higher intelligence. Thus, to dwell too profoundly on where everything came from and where everything is going, would be uncomfortable for those who are assured in their own hearts that there is no Higher Intelligence.

Any opinions about this?

P.S....I am an evangelical Christian, but all of my posts about Atheism are being dealt with purely from a point of reason. I am not quoting Scripture, or trying to prove anything from the Bible, simply because it would be meaningless to someone who doesn't even believe there is such a thing as God.

Nightline and Proof of God

Despite the fact that I should have already been in bed, I was still awake last night at 11:30 watching Nightline.

Part of the program was a very truncated presentation of a debate between "The Rational Response Squad," a self-appointed group of atheists that have come up with The Blasphemy Challenge--a website that encourages people to deny the existence of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit--and Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort, christian evangelists-- actor and author respectively.

The debate took at least 90 minutes, but I think ABC only showed about 5 minutes of it.

Trying to prove that God exists to an atheist is really an exercise in futility. By the time a person boldly declares themselves an atheist, they usually have their minds made up; otherwise, they would simply call themselves agnostic or say that they don't "think" that there is a God.

But anyway....

Ray Comfort's main point, featured on the show, was that creation itself is an indicator that there is a God. He held up a painting, stating that the painting itself is proof that there was a painter that created it. The painting could not exist without the painter. At this point, Brian Sapient tried to discredit this point by saying that if creation warrants a Creator, then who created God? Who is the creator of the eternal being?

What bugs me most about atheists' thinking is that it is so often illogical and hypocritical in its application. For instance, asking who created God and of course not being able to get an answer that makes any sense to the human mind, an atheist will very smugly think that he has struck a fatal blow to religious belief. ("Haha! You can't tell me where God came from! That must mean He isn't real and you are just an irrational idiot!") However, people of faith already know that they can't understand the paradox of God's eternal existence and nature, so this question is not a real challenge to their faith.

What smug atheists often fail to do is to use their own logic on their beliefs. If you believe there is no God, and that matter is the only guiding force in the Universe, you must still reconcile those beliefs with the Beginning Of All Things. The Big Bang, physics, and evolution are fine ways to try and observationally look at the material world and create a framework for understanding, but they too must try and explain the Beginning. The question that atheists can't explain, any more than Christians, is where it all came from. If we rewind everything back to The Big Bang--a time in which every atom that exists was compressed and contained in a tiny space no bigger than a period--you still have to ask.......where did matter come from? If it wasn't created, what was there before The Big Bang? It is the atheist version of "Who created God?"

They can't explain it any more than we can.

This inability to explain where matter came from also trickles down into the theory of evolution. Evolution is based on the assumption of life starting at a bacterial, micro-organism level, and over billions of years, producing very complicated organisms. Yet evolution still cannot explain how inert matter and atoms were imbued with life. How does a chemical, primordial soup transform into a living form, focused on "surviving." Survive what? If chemicals suddenly sprung to life, how could they know that there would be "death?" How does a one-celled organism fear no longer living when only moments before it was an inanimate molecule?

Bah!

An atheist cannot answer any of these questions. Their belief system is full of holes and requires as much faith as any Christian's. The difference between the two is that atheists are loathe to admit the inconsistencies in their thinking. They cling tightly to their versions of truth, science, and rationality, but seem to lose all rationality trying to explain the First Cause of everything. They don't understand the why and how of the universe any more than a simple believer.

Science is their God. The only problem is that Science is not perfect and the emperor has no clothes.

**afterthought**

Isn't it interesting that the focus of The Rational Response Squad is focused solely on Christianity? Their blasphemy challenge has nothing to do with Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.

Also, why do atheists always seem to be so angry? Every time I encounter an online discussion or see something on TV, atheists always come off as extremely angry, outraged people. Maybe I'll post about it later.

Evolution and Morality

Discover magazine recently interviewed Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist and cognitive neuroscientist from Harvard, about his recent book Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong, in the May, 2007 issue. Hauser contends that millions of years of evolution have hardwired our brains for morality.

In response to an interview question about infants already having a moral code within them when they are born, Hauser says:

"Studies have shown that infants as young as 15 months are sensitive to the
beliefs of others--true versus false beliefs. That's crucial to the moral
domain" (page 64)

His explanation for the this innate moral code is that it is a stabilizer of social groups that allows the individual to develop in a more fit, genetic way, advancing the evolution of the species. In explanation of the importance of the group he says:

"So if I live in a world of defectors, I have no chance, whereas if I can find the cooperators [others who abide by the moral code] and cooperate with them, my own individual fitness will be enhanced." (page 64)

The article goes on to explore Hauser's theories through several comparative examples about moral behavior and its subjectivity. Here is where the folly of this line of thinking quickly falls apart. The examples given are extremely arbitrary and poorly thought out. It only took me about five minutes to tease out the subtle differences between them, and I didn't need to spend years at Harvard to do it.

Religious beliefs, according to Hauser, do not have any impact on the moral decision making processes of people. From his standpoint, there is the evolutionary code and religious belief is simply the stories we make up to flesh out those innate codes.

What is interesting about his thought process is that it really leads to the core of evolutionary thought versus faith. It is a classic chicken and egg story. Are we moral because we were designed to be that way, or because as evolution transpired, it was a natural development?

If one believes that there is no God and evolution is a chaotic process with no driving factor, why should there be any morals?

The motto of evolution is "survival of the fittest." But, if one takes evolution at its face value, from whence comes consciousness and the desire to "survive"? In order to get somewhere you have to know where you are going and how to get there. There has to be a drive outside of oneself. In order to evolve into more complicated beings, living things would have to be able to predict the effect of increased competition from other forms of life, understand the necessity for biological innovation, and possess the physical stamina to outlast other life forms. Evolutionists make no claim that evolution is a conscious process--that somehow birds actually purpose to produce more prominent feather displays or produce more varied calls. It is simply a biological process that takes place at a genetic level with no thought or guidance.

I find it telling that the discovery that all humans have an innate, moral compass within them does not lead Hauser and others to question themselves more about the implications of such an idea. It seems as if it is easier for them to mold that discovery into their already determined view of the universe, rather than take it as a sign that there is more to life and being human than evolution can explain.

I have a lot more to say about this and want to examine the examples that were provided in the article, but I am out of time right now.

I will post more about this later today or tomorrow.