Theology for the Masses

A few days ago, I posted a picture which I thought demonstrated the relationship between Modernism, Foundationalism, Fundamentalism, and Christianity.  I’d like to clarify what I am talking about there, here.

By Modernism, I mean the paradigm(s) of thought which owe their intellectual roots in the Enlightenment.  Essential traits of Modernism are as follows:

1. The elevation of reason as the ultimate standard.
2. The elevation of science as the ultimate measure truth.
3. The elevation of the observable as the only source of evidence.

A lot more could be said here, but those are the features I want to highlight.

Foundationalism is a modernistic epistemological framework which attempts to build a solid foundation of undeniable and fully provable (often by the criteria listed above) truth propositions upon which all other forms of knowledge are built.

Many, if not most, evangelical groups subscribe to a Foundationalist framework for building knowledge.  They all assert the absolute truth of the Bible, but, because of their unnoticed acceptance of the modernist and foundationalist framework, they  feel as though they must prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the foundation that is the Bible.  Once this is proved, then and only then can they proceed to demonstrate how the next piece of theology can be added upon the firm foundation that is the Bible.  Once added, then they can logically and rationally add the next brick. 

And so on.

And so on. 

After a while, you can build a nice systematic theology which is rigid and impenetrable.

…

Unless one of the bricks falls out.

Now you have a hole in your wall.  The bricks above now come a tumbling.  Suddenly, most of your wall has fallen down and you are standing there looking a fool holding a bunch of spiritual propositions (or laws).

You are very invested in making sure not a single brick ever moves.

After all, you have constructed theology.  Nay, you have constructed The Theology.  The truth.  It has set you free (to play within its walls, of course). 

…

Unless one of your scientific premises about the Bible, its accuracy (as you conceive it) and historicity (as you want it to be) is proven wrong by science, history, or any other endeavor.  Once you have proven the Bible, it and everything you build upon it suffers the same fear as one of the above bricks.

You see, the Bible is not prime in your endeavor, the scientific demonstration of the Bible’s authenticity is prime.

Because Foundationalists have capitulated to Modernism’s demands of knowledge and truth, we find ourselves arguing that the world is really a few thousand years old. 

We need to move beyond Foundationalism, beyond Modernism.

We need to grasp the edges of the scientific/historical/literary/modernist/foundationalist tablecloth and yank it out from under the Bible.

When we do, we will find that the Spirit of the Living God does just fine on his own.  Instead of needing justified, he justifies.  Instead of being an objective (i.e. scientific) description of reality/history/science, we find that the Spirit speaking through the Bible is the most objective thing in the universe because it describes the world as God wills it to be.

The scary thing is that we have to leave modernism behind.  Any such task is fought with fear because this necessarily means that we have to be postmodern.

This is not as scary as it seems on the surface or in Christian chain-emails.  In fact, though the road is dangerous, steep, and rocky, it allows us so much more.

… and Postmodernism did not give us relativism.  Modernism did.

But I’ll get to that in the next post.

Upcoming: How a post-modern framework might help us in our construction of Theology.  How Foundationalists often mistake the bricks for the foundation.

The other day I was speaking with a friend about the pessimism of our generation, how our Hermeneutic of Suspicion has so permeated every part of our lives that we are (at least I am) too skeptical even for the Holy Spirit. In an age when politicians have bombarded us with promises un-kept, when our preachers of holiness have had extra-marital lovers, and when our God seems increasingly distant, we do not feel we can trust anyone, especially the subjective “inner witness of the Spirit” which cannot be measured or counted by any kind of empirical method I know of.

Even we Postmodern’s who think truth transcends empirical verification struggle to discern the work of the Spirit precisely because we have no way of gauging it. We recognize, hopefully, that there are times when it seems the Spirit is leading us to do one thing, but then when all the chips fall we see that we regrettably misunderstood. Any college student who’s ever used the line “God is telling me to break-up with you” after previously saying “I think it is God’s will that we date” can testify to what this failure to discern looks like. But what are we supposed to do about this?

Paul tells us that if anyone has the Spirit of Christ then he belongs to Christ. But how do I know that I have the Spirit of Christ? He answers that we know this because the Spirit bears witness with our Spirit that we belong to God. But how is this witness sensed? Does this witness look the same for every person? What about when I don’t feel the witness of the Spirit or discern it in any way?

You see, I have trouble with this kind of reasoning – if feel that, in some way, Paul is leaving me to my subjective whims. One minute I may see the fingerprints of God on everything in my life, sensing the Holy Spirit in every footstep I take and every choice I make. The next minute (and this is far more prevalent), I feel abandoned, completely forsaken by any divine testimony, cold and wintry, alone. In fact, if I’m completely honest with you, often (especially recently) when I discern the work of the Spirit in my life, it seems like God is more of a Cosmic Sadist than a Lover wooing me to drink deeply of His Being.

In other words, there’s no consistency here. I have no objective means by which I can discern the witness of the Spirit from heart burn, upset stomach, indigestion, or….well, you get it. In the end, I lack the ability to empirically verify the work of the Spirit, and that’s the only way I know how to sense anything.

But even if I were able to discern the work of the Spirit through verifiable means – I surely couldn’t trust the statistics, could I? Often in our churches we have replaced genuine Holy Spirit movement with static’s about how many have attended or been baptized. Indeed, one clear sign that this isn’t a genuine witness of the Spirit’s presence is that, at least in my Southern Baptist circles, we have tended to lie about our numbers. So, empirical verification is out the window – too easily manipulated by our false-selves.

When we return to the subjective elements of this discussion, though, my skepticism goes deeper still. I wonder if maybe I don’t even want any kind of assurance or subjective witness of the Spirit. That is, when I look around at the comfortable Christianity lacing our pews, eating the greasy sermonic foods of pop-psychology and easy-believism I can’t help but wonder if inner witness and assurance make us fat. Maybe it is better that I never feel I am completely in the arms of God – for then, at least, I know I must continue to press toward the mark of attaining the resurrection of the dead. At least then I know I can’t sit comfortably in my pew assuming God is for me and not against me. Indeed, at least I cannot mistake false-assurance or false-witness for the real thing.

Interestingly, I hear people say things like, “God told me…” and I, sometimes, believe they are telling the truth. They are generally people I trust, who I know have a good relationship with God, so I have no reason to be critical of such a statement coming from them. But I wonder why there are so few times, if any at all, in my life when this has happened to me? Do I not read my Bible enough, fellowship enough, attend enough church activities, pray enough? Maybe I’m just not spiritual enough. Maybe I’m still fettered by Enlightenment rationalism and anti-experience. I just want God to tell me something – anything, that I can take and say, “Yeah, that was the witness of the Spirit, that was God telling me….” Unfortunately most of the time I feel He’s an Absentee Landlord.

I truly wish things weren’t this way. I wish I could write a much more positive and enlightening treatise on the Holy Spirit. Hopefully one day I will be able to. But for now – I can neither trust empirical evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work, nor my subjective whims which may be the by-product of having eaten at Taco Bell 2 hours ago. I think I’m just too skeptical for the Holy Spirit – and this scares me.

On Hank’s recommendation, I listened to Al Mohler’s radio show on Theistic Evolution from 6/1/7. In this broadcast, Mohler maintained that belief in a creator and belief in evolution are mutually exclusive. He said that it is absolutely impossible to have it both ways. Mohler even went so far as to question the authenticity of Christian schools that dared to teach Theistic evolution. :”(In describing these institutions, he called them “so-called Christian schools.”)”:

The Error in reasoning

What is the basis of this exclusion? For Mohler, evolution is a natural and random process. Creation is a directed and guided event. The natural and random basis of evolution must exclude the guided and directed nature of creation. On the surface this is correct; however, this is really a false dilemma. Mohler is correct to say that naturalistic evolution is incompatible with creationism. However, he never really compares theistic evolution with creationism. He falsely equates theistic evolution with naturalistic evolution. He does this false equating by telling his listeners that if you really know what evolution is about, it is a naturalistic process. Well, naturalistic evolution is, but theists have modified the theory to have God using the physical processes to bring about his creation.

No naturalistic scientist thinks that theistic evolution is correct, just as no theistic evolutionist thinks that naturalistic evolution is correct. It is erroneous reasoning to equate the two, there is an important distinction in how each one operates – one is driven by the creative hand of God, the other is random mutations and natural selection.

The divisive demeanor

I can understand intellectual errors, I commit them all the time. However, after explaining to his audience that evolutionary theory cannot account for the existence and diversity of life on earth, Mohler does something I cannot understand – he pulls out the strawman card. To further insulate his listeners from hearing the arguments for theistic (and perhaps naturalistic) evolution, Mohler says that theistic evolution proponents “… lack the intellectual credibility and the intellectual honesty to admit that you can have one or the other, you can’t have both.” Not only is this a sweeping statement that Mohler cannot possibly know to be true, but it also hinders the debate that Christianity needs to have. It is such a divisive statement – one that is not based in love and hinders the unity of believers.

I came across this today at slackivist via katagrapho. Slackivist is trying to discuss the purpose of origin stories. He begins by looking at a question of why crow’s feathers are black and then looks at the ultimate answer to the question:

Q: Why are the crow’s feathers black?

A: Courage and helping others are good. Remember that every time you see a crow.

Fred then suggests that the same thing happens in Genesis.

Q: Where do rainbows come from?

A: Selfishness is destructive — to you and to every living creature. Remember that every time you see a rainbow.

Again, the answer isn’t directly related to the apparent question because the apparent question isn’t really what the story is about. This may seem complicated, but if you read these stories it’s quite obvious. They’re not subtle about it. Their message is not some hidden meaning that needs to be decoded. It would be very difficult, in fact, to read or hear such stories without taking away the meaning they are meant to convey.

Thoughts? I can’t really give any of my own analysis of anything until next week (note the question posing nature of all most posts the last few months). Is this a good way to approach the book of Genesis? What are the pros? What are the cons? What are the ramifications/implications of each? Can one maintain inspiration and view some of the Bible stories in this manner? Once again, merely saying it is a Liberal Christan idea only sidesteps the issue. There may be things of value in Liberal Christianity. There may be things that desperately need to be changed in Conservative Christianity. Don’t just sling mud, help us understand the issues.

While I personally don’t buy into the theory of evolution, I have read a very promising article at cnn.com. Dr. Frank Collins is the head of the Human Gnome Project that is studying the human genetic code. He wrote this article where he presents his faith and science working together to create a deeper worship for himself. I like how he concludes the article,

I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God’s majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.

But here is what gave me great hope in reading this article. Dr. Collins writes this, “Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers. ” It is nice to see the Gospel infiltrating the ranks of leading science, even if its leading them to theistic evolution.

For the full article, click here.

In working on another post on the Emerging vs Emergent church, I came across Christian Ministries International (warning: flash-intensive, high-bandwidth site). As always, I took a glance at their articles section. I came across a few “the sky is falling” articles, the standard fare for conservative evangelical organization websites. One article in particular was entitled “The Fundamental Mistake of Theistic Evolutionists” by Jason Carlson and Ron Carlson. What is this fundamental mistake that shows theistic evolutionists for what they really are?

The fundamental mistake that is being made by Christian evolutionists all over the world is this: they are equating science with the theory of evolution. They have bought into a false definition that says “science equals evolution.” Thus, if someone legitimately questions the validity of the theory of evolution, theistic evolutionists assume that they are attacking science. This is 180 degrees from the truth. Young earth creationists are thoroughly committed to science and its method of observation and experimentation, along with its self-correcting abilities of verification and falsification based on the observable and repeatable evidence. Young earth creationists have no problem with science.

What is the problem here? Is he not correct that if one takes “science = evolution” then they have committed an intellectual error? I have no disagreement if that happens. However, I don’t think that Theistic Evolutionists do that uncritically. In fact, I think the opposite happens. I think that Young-Earth creationists start out assuming that evolution cannot be true. They start out with the following assumption: “science ≠ evolution.” Sure, Young-Earth Creationists have no problem with science, as long as you exclude any and all evidence that the earth is old, or that there is a progression in the fossil record.

While the article would be correct if Theistic Evolutionists did equate the science and evolution, the problem is that they don’t. Instead, they try to observe the world and build a theory of what would explain it in terms of their religious worldview. This is a more comprehensive approach than the Carlsons give them credit for. Remember, they are significantly altering the theory of evolution in a way that appalls secular scientists. In light of that, I think that their criticism of Theistic Evolutionists is unfounded.

They go on to say that the real problem with the Church in its conflict with Galileo was not that they were not using science, but that they were using pagan science. That goes along nicely with their thesis, but again, I think they miss the point. The Church was not going off of straight pagan science. Instead, they has completely reformulated it and used the works of Thomas Aquinas to build their worldview. It was a highly Christianized science, one from long ago that they had crystallized into doctrine. That crystallization of old science into doctrine was the fundamental error.

The Carlsons end on a conciliatory note, arguing for allowing Young-Earth creationism into the debate.

We all agree that God created the universe and our world, but the question is how? If we are ever going to answer this question correctly, we need to get back to the practice of true science, let”s not limit the discussion to only one framework of interpretation, and let”s allow for the possibility that the Genesis record of creation could be literally true. This is the only way that we will ever be able to engage in an honest pursuit of the truth; the truth revealed in the natural world and the truth revealed in scripture.

Ok, I am willing to do that, providing they also allow for other possibilities, such as the figurative, metaphorical, or spiritualized account of Genesis. Luther took the last approach as well as Augustine.

Moral of the story? When it comes to the basis of science, don’t assume naturalism and don’t assume a theological interpretation as the basis of science.

Today’s links of the day comes from one of my favorite periodicals, Scientific American. They are not religious in nature or bias (not that bias is a bad thing, everything has a color), but touch on Christian issues.

• Special Report: Has James Cameron Found Jesus’s Tomb or Is It Just a Statistical Error? Short version: He hasn’t.
• 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense Short version: “Debunking” evolution is not nearly as easy as you might think.

How do you understand a human being? Is it as enfleshed spirit, self-conscious flesh, a monistic interaction that can be distinguished but not separated? Or is it spirit against flesh, spirit over flesh, a dualistic separation with flesh at best a distraction and at worst an imprisonment? (Crossan, The Birth of Christianity p.xxxi)

I was finding it too hard to keep my comments brief, so I will turn this into a entry. And it’s also a “Christmasy” post, since I would like to delve into the incarnation, the conception of Jesus, and the impeccability of Christ.

The early church considered the Incarnation to be one of the most important truths of our faith. Because of this, they formulated what has come to be called the Chalcedonean Creed, a statement which sets forth very what we are to believe and what we are not to believe about the Incarnation.

This creed was the fruit of a large council that took place from October 8 to November 1, 451, in the city of Chalcedon and “has been taken as the standard, orthodox definition of the biblical teaching on the person of Christ since that day by” all the major branches of Christianity.[1] There are five main truths the creed of Chalcedon summarized the biblical teaching on the Incarnation.

1. Jesus has two natures — He is God and man.
2. Each nature is full and complete — He is fully God and fully man.
3. Each nature remains distinct.
4. Christ is only one Person.
5. Things that are true of only one nature are nonetheless true of the Person of Christ.

The first truth we need to understand is that Jesus is one Person who has two natures a divine nature and a human nature. In other words, Jesus is both God and man. We will look at each nature.

Jesus is God

The Bible teaches that Jesus is not merely someone who is a lot like God, or someone who has a very close walk with God. Rather, Jesus is the Most High God Himself. Titus 2:13 says that as Christians we are “looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus.”

Jesus is man

It should be obvious that if Jesus is God, then He has always been God. There was a never a time when He became God, because God is eternal. But Jesus has not always been man.

But what exactly do we mean when we say that God the Son became man? We definitely do not mean that He turned into a man, in the sense that He stopped being God and started being man. Jesus did not give up any of His divinity in the Incarnation. Rather, as one early theologian put it, “Remaining what He was, He became what He was not.” Christ “was not now God minus some elements of His deity, but God plus all that He had made His own by taking manhood to Himself.”[2]

So what happened at the conception of Jesus?

In Mt.1:20, the angel tells Joseph “that which is conceived of the Holy Ghost.” The egg was generated to life as God the Son entered the egg under the superintending ministry of the Holy Spirit. No one has ever or ever will be conceived in this way. This is why Jesus is the counter-example!

The Bible is explicit that the Holy Spirit was the divine agent who caused Jesus conception in the womb of Mary. Jesus became a biological miracle with no fertilization. As this happened, the Holy Spirit protected his sinlessness as God the Son entered the womb and gave life to the egg of Mary.

So what’s the point of Jesus being tempted?

So the new question probably is: How could He truly be able to ’sympathize with our weaknesses’ (Hebrews 4:15)? If He could not sin, what was the point of the temptation?

The Bible clearly says that Jesus did not sin. The question is whether Jesus could have sinned. Those who hold to impeccability believe that Jesus could not have sinned. Those who hold to peccability believe that Jesus could have sinned, but did not.

Which view is correct? The clear teaching of Scripture is that Jesus was impeccable – Jesus could not have sinned. If He could have sinned, He would still be able to sin today because He retains the same essence He did while living on earth. To believe that Jesus could sin is to believe that God could sin.

Again, although Jesus is fully human, He was not born with the same sinful nature that we are born with. He certainly was tempted in the same way we are, in that temptations were put before Him by Satan, yet remained sinless because God is incapable of sinning. It is against His very nature (Matthew 4:1; Hebrews 2:18, 4:15; James 1:13). Sin is by definition a trespass of the Law. God created the Law, and the Law is by nature what God would or would not do; therefore, sin is anything that God would not do by His very nature.

Those who hold to peccability believe that if Jesus could not have sinned, He could not have truly experienced temptation, and therefore could not truly empathize with our struggles and temptations against sin. We have to remember that one does not have to experience something in order to understand it.

Though this sounds simplistic, God knows everything about everything. While God has never had the desire to sin and has definitely never sinned ” God knows and understands what sin is. God knows and understands what it is like to be tempted. Jesus can empathize with our temptations because He knows”not because He has “experienced” all the same things we have.

Closing responses to Henry Micheal’s comments

I am using Jesus here as a counter-example, an exception that disproves the rule.

Jesus was the counterexample that disproves the rule. Do you agree or disagree?

We’re getting into ‘rules’ again, which to me imposes a system of logic and reasoning that doesn’t allow exceptions. Jesus was the exception to this rule.

While we are not iherently damned to hell coming from our good and wise creator, as a result of the Fall and the resulting cultures we have a natural tendency to sin – a lot

Two things:

1) We were damned to hell from moment Adam committed the first [original] sin in our human timeline. I make this distinction about the human timeline because this was no surprise to God as He sits outside of time.

We have to remember this was not God’s plan. He created Adam and Eve to live in perfect communion with Him. But because he created human beings and not robots, He gave them the ability to choose right over wrong and they chose wrong.

What is beautiful about this is that even though God knew these things were going to happen [Adam's sin, damnation, etc.], He had a plan in place to come into a point into human history to remedy the situation. This is while the Bible says, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Christ made a way for our salvation by satisfying God’s wrath towards sin through His incarnation and subsequent sacrifice on the cross.

2) The fall did more than just give us a natural tendency to sin-we inherit a sinful nature-or total depravity. The word ‘tendency’ presupposes we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps in our own power and not sin. That is what the Pharisees thought they could do by following the law. I think I remember Puritanbob saying that is your only other option if you don’t believe in total depravity. I agree with him. And the truth is, no one can follow the law perfectly. And since we can’t, we need to be absolved our responsibility to do so by someone who can fulfill it. That someone was Christ. He did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it [Matthew 5:17]

Either way, you have to deal with the question of how a fully human (and fully God) Jesus was not sinful, but the rest of humanity (save for Adam and Eve for a bit) were/are/will be. So, while there might be a work-around under the system – it just needs to be stated

In a sense, we have to accept that if God wants to work outside of a ’system,’ He can. In the conception and incarnation, we have an example of this. I hope I have tried to make an ‘official’ statement here in this post.

1. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (InterVarsity and Zondervan Publishing, 1994), p. 556.

2. J.I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1993 edition), p. 53.

Hank and Travis came over last night for some much needed video gaming. In the course of our conversations, several topics came up: Authorship of the Pauline letters, Creationism, logical consistency of being anything less than a 5-pointer, ect… Towards the end of the night, we talked some about Christianity and Science. Before I post some about that, I want to preface my posts with the following on my take on the relationship of science and religion.

The answer: No… well, sort of. Here is how I got there. So, are Science and Religion opposed? No, they are not. In fact, they often work(ed) together. Religion is very much in the business of explaining reality. In doing so, they co-opt the science that makes the best sense to them. For example, Aquinas used Aristotle and Christianized him to the point to which the Catholic church made his science official Church dogma. Recent creationists try to use science that seems to agree with their aims to refute the science that does not. Hubble’s discovery of the motion of the galaxies was a boon to the hopes of creationists in general because the subsequent Big Bang theory implied there was a creator behind it, whereas the Steady State theory needed no such “ummph” to get it started. Now, the question is, are the creationists and atheists doing good science? I’ll leave this one with a quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.

I hear often the complaint that Science presupposes Naturalism. This is because Science simply does not concern itself with God. It measures; it devises theories; it explains. Science does an excellent job telling us:

• Who?
• What?
• When?
• How?

What it does not do is tell us why. Whats that? Do I hear an objection?

Wait a second Henry. Science tells me why water boils when it reaches 100″C!

Well, you see, it does not give us the meaning of why water boils when it does. Instead, it really tells you how water boils. Take any scientific question – or historic, for that matter. The same thing applies every time. The historian can assign meaning or significance to his or her narrative, but at that point, they are not really doing exact and pure history. They are grafting interpretations onto the text. Not that doing that is bad, but it is not pure history.

Religion, on the other hand, gives us this why that Science lacks by Science’s very nature.

So, are Religion and Science opposed? Yes. But only in their subject matters. Sir William Bragg put it best:

“Religion and science are opposed . . . but only in the same sense as that in which my thumb and forefinger are opposed – and between the two, one can grasp everything.”

This is how I can have a keen interest in both Religion and Science. I yearn to understand how the world works and why the world works.

Materialism is a grammar which only recognizes nouns.

That is a quote from The Story of Philosophy that I came across today. The internet has been out at our place and I have spent the better part of the day running around MU trying to get ready for next week. That is the cause behind the effect of no posts or comments from me lately. Hopefully I will get back in the swing of things soon.

I added a poll to go with HT’s end-times musings.

The Attitude of some towards Science
A wide number of Christians reject the theory of evolution in all of forms. Some even reject the idea of the progression of the fossil record. To aid in their disproving of evolution, many Christians also deny the old age of the earth. They have built quite an elaborate array of arguments around and supporting this idea. Some more extreme or fundamental Christians have gone so far as to say that the fossil progression evident in the fossil record is actually a gigantic ruse by Satan to deceive us. Some say that God used Satan to fake the fossil record to test our faith.

Why is all of this the case? Why do Christians try so hard to disprove the popular science of the day? Actually, most of the reasoning is quite valid, even if it is not sound. It all comes down to assumptions, to one’s worldview. Worldviews, of course, vary from person to person, sect to sect, religion to religion, with varying closeness to reality. Some Christians begin with the following premises:

• God instantaneously created the first man from dust. (Gen 2:5-7)
• God created the Heavens and Earth and all of the life contained therein in 7 consecutive 24 hour periods. (Gen 1-2:3)

Now, if God created the first man directly and instantaneously from dirt then any and all other claims about the creation of man are mutually exclusive and therefore are false, since the above premises are considered to be true in a literal sense. Naturalistic Darwinian Evolution claims that humans are the product of many millions of years of trial and error in the replication of genetic material with the arbitrator being successful reproduction. This version of evolution clearly violates the above premises. Therefore, Naturalistic Evolution is necessarily false in the eyes of literalistic Christians.

Literalistic Christians place their reading of the Bible over science. What is science? At the very least, science is the philosophy of the observable world. That is to say, science, at its most basic level observes the natural world and tries to make sense of it. It has evolved over the years to take and increasingly naturalistic view of the world. It makes sense to prefer a natural explanation to a supernatural one.

Literalism is placed hard against a wall when it encounters what else comes from the dirt, fossils, and what lies above the dirt, the sky. As a person who wants very badly to be a literalistic, I see the fossil record and it showing a progression in the complexity of the organisms in the fossils and it is hard to deny their testimony. Words have have various meanings and we as humans err often in the interpretation of them.

Fossils, on the other hand, do not lie. It is undeniable, the progression of the fossil record, that there were simple organisms on the earth and then over thousands of years they disappeared and more complex organisms appeared, the most complex of those are humans.

This undeniable truth does not allow for the above literalistic interpretation of Genesis 1-2:3. What do we do with this? We can see that God did not create all of the organisms that have ever lived in one day. Empirical evidence shows us that this is not true. Now, I still maintain that the Bible is God’s word. I am therefore forced to conclude that another interpretation besides a literalistic young earth interpretation of Genesis must be correct.

Personally, when it comes to Genesis 1 & 2, I tend to favor Alan Heyward’s divine fiat theory. Under this view, God issued commands on six consecutive days and those commands took varying, overlapping periods of time to work themselves out. The upside is that it keeps to the narrative and at the same time allows for science to be science and for us to trust it.

When it comes to the story of life I am unsure. I have not read anything that convinces me that life can spontaneously arise. From what I have read, despite the hopes of scientists, they cannot recreate the processes that they hypothesize created the spark of organic life. In light of this, I very much believe (and think) that God did at the very least created the spark of life. What happened after that is where I lose my footing.

For a long time, I was strictly opposed to Darwinian Evolution. As a matter of fact, I was also strictly opposed to Theistic Evolution because the bible seemed to read the other way. However, science is starting to convince me about the actuality of evolution. Well, at least about evolution as God’s tool to develop the species up to man. The progression in the fossil record speaks for itself. My hanging points on the scientific side involved the arguments that Heywood gave against it. However, recent readings are changing my view on this. Consider the software program Avida, wrote by Chris Adami. For over seventeen years Avida has been emulating the evolutionary process. The project that was started in the late 1990s is considered to not only to mimic evolution, but be an instance of evolution. The creatures in Avida are small snippets of code that replicate, mutate, compete and compete with one another for resources. In the process of evolving they have demonstrated the finer point of Darwinian Theory. They evolve in spurts, similar to what the fossil record suggests happened on earth. This program and its results have been one of the final straws in winning over critics of Darwin by demonstrating in practice qualms found with the theory.

What about the origin of man? I think I can easily handle the evolution of all other beings, but my reading of Genesis 2:5-7 doesn’t seem to allow for the evolution of man. That combined with the hoaxes increase my suspicious about the origins of man from evolution.

I’d like to get some of your perspectives on this issue:

1. Can evolution be Christianized?
2. Can an evolutionary account of man’s origins be Christianized?

One last thing, history is what happened. If evolution is true, I must adapt my theology to fit it in.

I came across a very interesting article on Physics Web^[1] the other day. It was entitled Subtle are Einstein’s Thoughts^[2] and it was on the personal religion of Einstein. Yes, that was a pun and read on to find out why.

There are many quotes on religion from Einstein. Here is a sampling^[3] :

• Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
• The Lord God is subtle, but malicious he is not
• I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice

Perhaps the best quote of his that really captures his views on God and religion are

A legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist^[4].

and

Common to all these types [religion of fear and religion of morality] is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. ^[5]

The article from Physics Web makes it clear that Einstein disavowed in the strongest terms the idea that there is a personal god. It also gives a short history of his religious development:

1. He had a secular Jewish upbringing
2. Had a very intense religious phase at the age of 12 that lasted about a year.
3. Then he found ‘rational’ Euclidean Geometry’
4. This geometry offered a level of certainty that religion could not
5. This certanity freed him from the ‘merely personal’

This idea of the ‘merely personal’ was an existence dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings. Instead of the personal god, Einstein maintained a ‘cosmic religion’ that was rooted in the awe in the ability to understand the universe. He said that there were hints of it in the Old Testament, Islam, and Buddhism. The rationalization of God in its purest form, one rooted in Rational Science. It is suggested that Einstein thought a personal god was too small a deity to respect. He describes the cosmic religion in his essay ‘The World as I See It”^[6]

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery ‘ even if mixed with fear ‘ that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man’ I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence ‘ as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.

Religion absent of the idea of a personal god is very reminiscent of Pantheism^[7] This has lead many to brand Einstein as a follower of the ‘God of Spinoza’. However, he was asked once if he did in fact believe in such a pantheistic god. He said that he was not an atheist and did not know if he could define himself as a pantheist. The main difference was that while Pantheists maintained that nature was God and not created, Einstein thought the two were separate as nature was created and God was not.

As a personal note, while I am a Christian, I very much respect his thoughts on religion. The awe that captured him draws me to science and religion at the same time. The awe found in understanding what we are not a part of – moves my heart. I do disagree with the idea of a non-personal God. However, I do agree with that we should not anthropomorphize God. It may be that our tendency to do that is rooted in his non-human nature. We have a disadvantage because we lack words that truly describe God in an accurate way. This may be, as the Physics Web article suggests, why Einstein himself used personal words to describe his god, such as ‘malicious’ and ‘rational’. We simply lack the language to easily describe such a being without using ourselves a frame of reference.

Linknotes:

1. Physics Web
2. Physics Web – Subtle are Einstein’s Thoughts
3. Stanford.edu – Einstein Quotes
4. Quotes on Religion and Science
5. Positive Atheism – Albert Einstein on: Religion and Science
6. The World as I See It – Albert Einstein
7. Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Pantheism

This was cross-posted at the Unsound Agument

Scotsman.com News – International – Creationism dismissed as ‘a kind of paganism’ by Vatican’s astronomer

BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.  Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a "destructive myth" had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies.

He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a "kind of paganism" because it harked back to the days of "nature gods" who were responsible for natural events.

Well said. Religion and science are not opposed to each other. Science helps us learn about the phenomenumenal world and religion talks about the noumenal world. To quote Sir William Bragg:

Religion and science are opposed … but only in the same sense as that in which my thumb and forefinger are opposed – and between the two, one can grasp everything.

P.S. This post was cross-posted at Hundie Jo dot com and the Unsound Argument.