Fish Tank Post: By Any Other Name?

Here it is.

Fish Tank Post: What Is Science?

Here it is.

Fish Tank Post: Of (Animal) Farms and Fundamentalism

My latest Fish Tank post is up.

Denis Lamoureux's Book and Genesis 1-11

I'm planning on reading Dr. Denis O. Lamoureux's Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution. I'm extremely excited, because Dr. Lamoureux (who is at the conference I am at!) has Ph.D.'s both in biology and theology.

This excerpt from the Preface seems to summarize the book's thesis:

"An assumption embraced by many Christians is that God revealed scientific facts in the Bible hundreds of generations before their discovery by modern science. This view of biblical inspiration asserts that the Holy Spirit dictated information about the natural world to secretary-like writers. As a result, there is purportedly a correspondence or alignment between Scripture and science. This is known as 'concordism.' Christians often claim that it is a feature of biblical inerrancy and infallibility. However, chapters 4 and 5 [of the book] review the astronomy, geology, and biology in Scripture and conclude that the science in the Bible is an ancient understanding of nature - the science-of-the-day a few thousand years ago. According to this perspective, the Holy Spirit descended to the knowledge level of the inspired authors by using their conceptualization of the physical world in order to communicate as effectively as possible inerrant and infallible Messages of Faith. This approach to biblical revelation is modeled on the greatest act of revelation - the Incarnation. God revealed Himself by descending into human flesh through Jesus, and in a similar way, the Bible uses a human understanding of the structure, operation, and origin of the world.

Chapters 6 and 7 [of the book] examine Gen[esis] 1-11 in order to determine whether concordism characterizes the relationship between the biological origins accounts and the facts of history. Like the ancient science in Scripture, it will be shown that these opening chapters include an ancient understanding of the origin of the cosmos and humanity. This ancient history is a vessel that transports inerrant and infallible foundations of the Christian faith: the universe and life were made by the God of the Bible, the creation is very good, only men and women are created in the Image of God, the Lord intended us to be in relationships with one another and in particular with Him, everyone has fallen into sin, God judges humans for their sinfulness, and He has chosen a special people through which to bless the entire world. Together, the four chapters on scriptural interpretation conclude that concordism is not a feature of Gen[esis] 1-11, and as a result there is no conflict with the modern understanding of origins offered by academic disciplines of science and history."

Some preliminary thoughts:

1. Buy or read the book!

2. Seriously. I saw Dr. Lamoureux present a lecture yesterday on evolution and intelligent design, and he is a fantastic, faith-filled speaker - with a killer moustache to boot.

3. There is nothing overly radical in Dr. Lamoureux's thesis. Virtually all Christians would deny that the Earth is flat or that the Sun revolves around the Earth, despite the several passages (e.g., Joshua 10:1-15; 1 Samuel 2:8; Job 9:6, 38:4; Psalm 19:4-6, 104:5; Isaiah 41:9; Daniel 4:11; Matthew 5:45) that could indicate otherwise.

The analogy, of course, is not perfect. Many of the references to the "ends of the earth" or the sun's rising and setting are poetic or metaphorical, not meant to be understood as "scientific" descriptions of the world. But this certainly is not always the case; one would be hard-pressed to believe that the author of Joshua, for example, wrote Joshua 10 the way he did whilebelieving that the Earth was a sphere that revolved around the Sun.

4. Of course, Genesis 1-11 are much trickier than Flat Earth theory or geocentrism, because Genesis 1-11 describes the Creation and Fall of Man - a topic of much more theological import than the shape of the Earth (cf. Romans 5-8, 1 Corinthians 15). Dr. Lamoureux promises to address these issues in his book.

5. All Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). We know this much. But we do not know what exactly it means for Scripture to be "God-breathed" (i.e., inspired) means without some careful investigation and reflection. And I, for one, am excited to buckle down and investigate.

Freud, Evolutionary Psychology, and Religious Experience - An Expansion

I would like to expand on one of the points considered in the previous post, and expound upon one of my own.

As for the second point, I completely agree that most psychological theories on religion are based on the "assumption that religious belief is unjustifiable." I think this is particularly important to keep in mind, because, as far as I know, religions claim to be true. Many - if not most - Christians would not be Christians if they did not believe (for example) that Jesus rose from the dead. If such an event occurred, then there is no need for a psychological explanation for religion - religious belief is justified by fact.

7. Freud writes, "[I]t is a very striking fact that all this [religion] is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be." I find this assessment to be patently untrue. While there are some Christians who will revise the teachings of Jesus to justify their prior beliefs, most Christians feel challenged by his teachings in one way or another. I wish that my religious beliefs could justify my pride or ambition or selfishness. But they don't. They challenge me to be very different than I would otherwise be in order to obtain salvation. True, they may grant me the opportunity for an eternal world beyond this life, but I don't find that desire particularly strong to begin with. Religion is an answer to my search for truth, a truth which is radical and discomforting to my natural state, not an opiate to appease me.

Freud, Evolutionary Psychology, and Religious Experience

Just read an interesting summary of some of Freud's ideas about religious belief and experience. (I also read parts 1 and 2 of the series.) A few thoughts:

1. The distinction Beck makes between the question "Is religious belief true?" and the question "Why is there religious belief?" is very important to keep in mind. You'd be surprised by the extent to which anti-religious discourse centers on the latter and not the former.

2. Often implicit in the question "Why is there religious belief?" is some assumption that religious belief is unjustifiable. In other words, people who pose the question "Why is there religious belief?" are often really asking, "Given that religion is implausible, why is there religious belief?"

3. Freud writes, "We shall tell ourselves that it would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent Providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be." (Or, as Beck puts it: "[F]or Freud, the fact that the very thing we vitally wish for is precisely the thing we believe to be the case seems a bit too coincidental.") In Freud's mind (as in the mind of many other people), potential psychological explanations for religious belief count as evidence against religion - the questions "Why is there religious belief?" and "Is religious belief true?" are somehow linked.

4. For some (hypothetical) fact to constitute evidence against religion, it must be a fact that would be incompatible with a particular religious worldview. But there is no prima facie reason to believe that God would design us not to be psychologically inclined toward religion; on the contrary, most religious people (or at least monotheists) would agree with St. Augustine's assertion in the Confessiones: "Thou [i.e., God] hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee." This is an important point to remember: For a fact to count against a certain belief, it must be incompatible with that belief. But the "facts" which Freud discusses - our natural inclination to desire that God exist - are not incompatible with most religious systems.

Of course, a non-religious account of religious belief and experience (such as Freud's) can possibly neutralize some arguments for religion that are grounded in design or experience. But it cannot neutralize religion itself.

In fact, I could construct an argument from Freud's psychological theories for the opposite metaphysical conclusion. I could "spin" the psychological evidence the other way: Given that we are psychologically inclined toward belief in God, is it not reasonable to conclude that God was somehow involved in our creation? Is it truly plausible that evolution accidentally inclined us toward belief in a fictional being completely unlike anything else in existence? Or that evolution would lead us to some philosophical abstract for our emotional consolation? (This echoes C.S. Lewis' line from Mere Christianity: "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.")

I am not saying that this is a good argument; in fact, I would be wary of it, because I am not an evolutionary psychologist. But the point remains.

5. As Beck notes, religious belief and experience are multifaceted and powerful phenomena. It will not suffice simply to identify some experience associated with "religion" and explain that experience. Religious experience varies tremendously within and among religious traditions. Can the same evolutionary hypothesis explain Benny Hinn, Laozi, and everything in between? I doubt it.

In my opinion, the fact that this entire debate is centered around "religion" betrays a central conceit of those opposed to "religion" - a tendency to group all "religious" people together. But from a psychological perspective, this hardly seems reasonable, given how differently a Taoist and a Pentecostal will "experience" "religion."

6. None of this necessarily means I disagree with any or all of the theories proposed by evolutionary psychologists concerning religion.

Is a Can of Beans Round or Square?

Interesting stuff, whether or not it's right.

Guest Article: Science and Christianity

Here we find a translation of the story of Creation as told by the Torah and, later, the Bible.

Link.

At it's most basic level, the story of creation does not address much about what Science has discovered about our universe. As for the thousands of galaxies, solar systems, suns, planets, etc. that make up the universe of which we are a part, Genesis merely says "God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars." This, of course, was simply to delineate night and day. Also, this took place after creating water and land. Both of these observations lead to a contradiction with what Science tells us, and thus a contradiction between legitimizing Christianity's story of creation and Science's.

As for Evolution, Genesis then states that God created creatures of the sea and birds in the sky, then some beasts for the land, and finally man to rule all of them. Now, according to the Theory of Evolution, birds evolved after primates; yet the Torah gives us the birds coming at least a day or two before Humans.

These are only a few contradictions between Genesis's version of Creation and Science's version. Obviously, Science of this century has more tools to work with at discovering how we originated than Genesis does. Do these contradictions really mean anything? Do they disprove Christianity? Probably not. They are relatively minor, and have little bearing on what will happen to our souls after we pass on.

Yet one crucial part of this opening chapter of Genesis does deal with our souls and our relationship with God; that part which states that God created Man in His own image. Now, as we physical beings cannot resemble a supernatural one in appearance, this must mean we are created in God's image in terms of the spirit, in terms of the soul. Yet Science and Evolution tell us that all creatures on the Earth come from the same organism, the same place: "The common descent of organisms was first deduced from four simple facts about organisms: First, they have geographic distributions that cannot be explained by local adaptation. Second, the diversity of life is not a set of completely unique organisms, but organisms that share morphological similarities. Third, vestigial traits with no clear purpose resemble functional ancestral traits, and finally, that organisms can be classified using these similarities into a hierarchy of nested groups."

As we research our genetic coding further, we continue to discover relationships to the other life on our planet at a closer and closer level to the subatomic. Things like the Golden Ratio of 1.618 which lie in a myriad of structures on different animals, including Humans, strongly indicate our inseparable relation to other animals. Yet if we all come from the same organism and all share the same basic genetic coding, how can some of us have souls and others lack them? I believe that if any of us has a soul, than all of us must; furthermore, if any human has a soul, than so must every form of life. This resembles some Buddhist theories about our relationship to the natural world.

The Bible does not address the issue of animals having souls; it does not even address the Dinosaurs. For many, a belief in a religion requires some questions and a few answers; after viewing Christianity with the lens of twenty-first century Science, we find many questions left unanswered.

Asa Gray's Thoughts on Evolution

These are some quotes from an article I recently read.


The Quotes

Theologians have a short and easy, if not wholly satisfactory, way of refuting scientific doctrines which they object to, by pitting the authority or opinion of one savant against another.

Probably from the lack of familiarity with prevalent ideas and their history, the theologians are apt to suppose that scientific men of the present day are taking up theories of evolution in pure wantonness or mere superfluity of naughtiness; that it would have been quite possible, as well as more proper, to leave all such matters alone. Quieta non movere is doubtless a wise rule upon such subjects, so long as it is fairly applicable. But the time for its application in respect to questions of the origin and relations of existing species has gone by. To ignore them is to imitate the foolish bird that seeks security by hiding its head in the sand. Moreover, the naturalists did not force these questions upon the world; but the world forced them upon the naturalists.

This doctrine [evolution] ... is fully compatible with dogmatic as well as natural theology ... it explains moral anomalies, and accounts for the mixture of good and evil in the world, as well as for the merely relative perfection of things; and ... "the whole scheme which God has framed for man's existence, from the first that was created to all eternity, collapses if the great law of evolution be suppressed."

Now, all former experience shows that it is neither safe nor wise to pronounce a whole system "thoroughly atheistic" which it is conceded may be held theistically, and which is likely to be largely held, if not to prevail, on scientific grounds. It may be well to remember that, "of the two great minds of the seventeenth century, Newton and Leibnitz [sic], both profoundly religious as well as philosophical, one produced the theory of gravitation, the other objected to that theory that it was subversive of natural religion; also that the nebular hypothesis - a natural consequence of the theory of gravitation and of the subsequent progress of physical and astronomical discovery - has been denounced as atheistical [sic] even down to our day." It has now outlived anathema.

Finally, ought not theologians to consider whether they have not already, in principle, conceded to the geologists and physicists all that they are asked to concede to the evolutionists; whether, indeed, the main natural theological difficulties which attend the doctrine of evolution - serious as they may be - are not virtually contained in the admission that there is a system of Nature with fixed laws. This, at least, we may say, that, under a system in which so much is done "by the establishment of general laws," it is legitimate for any one to prove, if he can, that any particular thing in the natural world is so done; and it is the proper business of scientific men to push their enquiries [sic] in this direction.

It is not, perhaps, for us to suggest that the theological army in the past has been much too encumbered with impedimenta for effective aggression in the conflict against atheistic tendencies in modern science; and that in resisting attack it has endeavored to hold too much ground, so wasting strength in the obstinate defense of positions which have become unimportant as well as untenable. Some of the arguments, as well as the guns, which well served a former generation, need to be replaced by others of longer range and greater penetration.

Now, the evidence of geology to-day [sic] is, that species seem to come in suddenly and in full perfection, remain substantially unchanged during the term of their existence, and pass away in full perfection. Other species take their place apparently by substitution, not by transmutation. But you will ask me, "Do you, then, reject the doctrine of evolution? Do you accept the creation of species directly and without secondary agencies and processes?" I answer, No! Science knows nothing of phenomena which do not take place by secondary causes and processes. She does not deny such occurrence, for true Science is not dogmatic, and she knows full well that, tracing up the phenomena from cause to cause, we must somewhere reach the more direct agency of a First Cause.

My Christian friends, these schemes of reconciliation become daily more and more distasteful to me. I have used them in times past; but now the deliberate construction of such schemes seems to me almost like trifling with the words of Scripture and the teachings of Nature. They seem to me almost irrelevant, and quite foreign to the true, humble, liberal spirit of Christianity; they are so evidently artificial, so evidently mere ingenious human devices. It seems to me that if we will only regard the two books in the philosophical spirit which I have endeavored to describe, and then simply wait and possess our souls in patience, the questions in dispute will soon adjust themselves as other similar questions have already done.

My Thoughts

Any idea when this article was published? January 15, 1874. It was written by Asa Gray and published in The Nation.

Now, imagine where we would be if we had listened to Asa Gray.

He raises some good points about "God of the gaps" apologetics. (I'll note here that atheists just use "Science of the gaps" arguments and say gaps in scientific knowledge will be resolved eventually. But more on that later.) Christianity will never thrive in the modern world unless it can be perceived as reconcilable with science. Which it can be, if people stop and think. Let's assume that the theory of evolution is completely false. So what? Why argue? Whose salvation does it affect? Why should we portray ourselves as backwards and superstitious people? Fortunately or unfortunately, I don't know of that many successful conversions coming from the Intelligent Design movement; what I do know is that there is a lot of scorn for ID advocates (especially Young-Earth Creationists) that is probably hurting Christianity, regardless of how old the Earth actually is.

Objections to evolution on scientific grounds should be raised; I don't think there's an open and shut case for it. What do I believe about evolution? I'm not a biologist, and I don't feel like devoting days of my life to studying it. So I don't know. What I do know is that our faith in Christ can't depend on this. The manufactured conflict between Christianity and science is not a novel development, and I see no reason to continue manufacturing it.

That being said, evolution cannot be proved (I prefer "proven," but Blogger gives me a red line). You can line up evidence for and against it, but in the end, you're going to need faith, because it already happened. Hmm... Sounds familiar.