Photo by Keren Rohe

Yesterday, my friends and I ventured out to Rockport, where I myself had a look of wonder in my eyes. I cringe as I type the words: I was trying to capture the beach, the rocks, the sun, the sky, the… oh, words are so insufficient. After flurry of snapshots and a flow of exclamations, I had to stop. What spread out before me was too beautiful to be real; too majestic to be confined to pixels; too wonderful to be captured in words. It was the deep fiery sun descending behind cotton-candy-like clouds in tender shades of pink, lavender, baby blue… it was the ocean, with thousands of diamonds sparkling on the surface of the water, winking at me in rapid succession. And me: too flattered to speak.

Tears came to my eyes as I stood there, in awe.

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork…The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple…Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” - Psalm 19: 1,7,14 (ESV)

You see, what made the tears come was not merely the breath of fresh air, a glimpse of the wonderful places beyond my beloved Harvard Square, but that God reached out and opened my ears to the heavens’ declaration of the glory of God (Psalm 19:1).

As my friends and I sat on a boulder to pray, I kept my eyes open, enraptured not only by the shimmering waters, but also its maker. Traditionally, I close my eyes during prayer to focus and block out distractions, but the beauty that was before me drew me closer to God, turning all of my senses towards Him—not detracting from His majesty, His glory, His beauty. Nature was proclaiming His glory, and we were partaking in that song.

My heart swelled as I recounted the familiar verse—“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). Yet, when I returned to my room, I found that in my Bible, this verse was not highlighted. In fact, I had read through the Psalms several times, and I had not highlighted this verse, while “The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple…Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer” (Psalm 19:7, 14) were both highlighted. Had I dismissed it, thinking it not applicable to me?

I wonder if I am alone in segmenting Psalms 19. There seems to be a jump from Psalm 19 verses 6 and 7. There is a shift from creation to the Torah, there are also grammatical shifts. However, the two are intertwined in that both sections are “words” testifying about God. Daniel Ashburn comments on this transition, stating that “the knowledge of God that is revealed in Creation is only very limited. Beyond the awareness of the Creator, the instruction of nature tells us little about the ways of God or what our response to God should be. Therefore, the psalmist turns to the instruction of God’s Torah.”

Yet, yesterday I realized that I had forgotten to look around and see the blade of grass rejoice in its Creator, to listen to the rocks cry out… I had forgotten to stop and look, listen. I certainly do not posit that observing nature can substitute the Word of God; for, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). I simply wish to share that “In the beginning, God created the heavens (“shamayim,” the same Hebrew word used in Psalm 19:1) and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), and if we just look and listen with our eyes, we can make out the fingerprints of God on the things around us, on the people we come in contact with, and, yes, on along the horizon as well.

And perhaps in awe, we will whisper: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer (Psalm 19:14).”

“Each of the evangelists arguably begins his Gospel by connecting the beginning of Jesus’ ministry with the beginning of the cosmos…the evangelists saw the doctrine of creation as meaningfully tied to the stories of Jesus that follow.” (p. 19)

Consider the following introductions to each Gospel in this light:

Matthew 1:1—“The book of the genesis/origin of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” (cf. Genesis 2:4 and 5:1, in which the same Greek phrase—biblos geneseos–is used to describe the beginnings of the world and of humanity, respectively)

Mark 1:1—“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Luke 1:1-4—“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.”

John 1:1-5—“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.  In him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

McDonough concludes:

“Like much else in the Gospels, the ‘beginnings’ (in every sense of the word) are questions to be pondered as much as they are statements to be affirmed, and insight may only emerge after multiple readings or hearings.  The gospel stories of Jesus’ redemptive acts prompt the question ‘Who is this man?’  The gospel introductions serve to underscore the point: ‘Who indeed?’  What, then, had been reported about Jesus that made them frame their gospels this way?” (p. 22)

The implications of this narrative clue are enormous for how we read the stories of Jesus that follow in each Gospel.  I’ll highlight only a few of the many ways that “creation” themes are present throughout the Gospel narratives:

*Jesus is the new Adam: in Mark 1:12-13, Jesus is in the wilderness being tempted by the serpent, and the “wild animals” (same word from Genesis 3:1) were with him.  In Luke’s version (4:1ff), Jesus’ temptation, which is so full of allusions to the original temptation story, is immediately preceded by the claim that Jesus is the “son of Adam” (3:38).  What creation (in general) and humanity (in particular) were intended to be, Jesus enacts and restores through his life.  Jesus is the true image-bearer of God, as God’s self-representation to the world and the one through whom He rules it.

*Jesus consistently manifests power over the created order in a way that is deeply analogous to statements made about God’s control over His creation in the OT.

*Jesus is the Lord, the giver of life: through his healings, through his miracles and teaching, through the forgiveness of sins, and—most of all—through his death and resurrection.  Indeed, the “God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

*The power of his words: Jesus speaks, and things happen.  Life springs forth out of death, the light is separated from the darkness, the chaos is tamed and subdued in the waters.

*In John 9, Jesus heals the blind man through the mud or clay of the ground (9:6).  Irenaeus argued that this is an intentional allusion to God’s original formation of human beings from the dust of the earth, and that Jesus is inserted into the role of (re)creator.  McDonough thinks Irenaeus’ exegetical intuitions were spot on.

While this list could be multiplied almost endlessly, the main point should not be missed.  Through his life, death and resurrection, Jesus has accomplished a salvation that not only offers individuals the forgiveness of their sins; it ushers in a new creation of cosmic proportions.  Easter is about the birth of a new world out of nothing (creation ex nihilo once again), emerging right now in the midst of this present evil age.  And Jesus is the one through whom God the Father is creating it, just as He did earlier at the beginning of all things (John 1:18, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Colossians 1:15-20, Hebrews 1:1-4).  And once more, this “new humanity” which exists as the pinnacle and point of the “new creation” has been given a commission (cf. Genesis 1:26-28) to extend God’s reign over all that He has made, to enact His dominion over the moral chaos and darkness that remains (Matthew 28:18-20), and to “bear fruit and multiply” (Colossians 1:6, 10, 23) in the faith and proclamation of the gospel.  This is what it means to be fully, truly human on the other side of the resurrection from the dead.  The rest of the story is still to be written.

For some time now I have wanted to do a second theological analysis of a piece of popular music; the religious thought of Top 40 musicians is so deep, and so little appreciated, that it seems incumbent on me to expose its hidden treasures to the public gaze. Today, I would like to direct my readers to a song that is a joyous exultation in God’s power to sustain all of creation: “Like a G6.”

“Like a G6,” by Far East Movement, is not the easiest piece to understand, because its layers of Biblical reference are so deep. In a way, listening to this song is like reading the richest scholarly writing of the Middle Ages, when the great church fathers assumed such a great familiarity with the Scriptures that they could make faint gestures towards particular verses and still be confident that their readers caught the references. Alas, our own age is not so well-versed in the Word; nevertheless, Far East Movement is doing an admirable job of urging us back to the scholarship of an earlier and wiser day.

The complex layers of reference hinge on the title of the song, “Like a G6.” The popular belief that ‘G6’ refers to a jet plane is, in fact, wrong; rather ‘G6’ clearly means the sixth chapter in the book of Genesis. This is the chapter in which Noah is introduced, and in which God commands Noah to build an ark in which to protect every kind of animal from the judgment on human wickedness that was rapidly approaching. Clearly, then, when the group sings, “Now I’m feeling so fly like a G6,” what they mean is, “My soul is suffused with hope, because I remember that God has made a covenant with me not to destroy me, just as he did with Noah (Genesis 6:18).” The singers rejoice that, despite their sin and weakness, God continues to preserve them, and proclaim that they feel like “a G6” (that is, Noah) who was similarly preserved.

The other key verse that this song refers to is Psalm 104:15: “He makes…wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart.” This is the verse that should immediately spring to mind when Far East Movement sings, “Popping bottles in the ice, like a blizzard / When we drink we do it right gettin slizzard.” Far East Movement is reveling in the ‘wine’ of Psalm 104—that is, by extension, the whole creation that the psalm lovingly describes and praises God for making. Psalm 104 is perfectly paired with the story of Noah, because it emphasizes God’s wonderful creation of all things, from the wild donkeys (11) to the great leviathan (26)—just as Genesis 6 emphasizes God’s preservation of all he has made.

The singers do not lightly gloss over the reality of sin, however. Although they can metaphorically “get slizzard”—that is, they can rejoice whole-heartedly in God’s creation—the very next line points us to the problem of setting all the pleasures of creation higher than creation’s Lord. “Sippin sizzurp in my ride, like Three 6” points us back to Genesis 3:6, “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” Just as Eve ate the apple because she thought that ‘wisdom’ from the tree was preferable to God’s wisdom, the singers confess that sometimes they “sip sizzurp” (i.e. sin) when they think that it could give them more than could obedience. However, the singers refuse to despair; in the next line they remind us, once again, that they “feel so fly like a G6,” saved from the floods of God’s judgment like Noah. Our God is a forgiving God, and he will not hold our sins against us forever.

And it is not simply our creation and salvation that we have to thank God for, Far East Movement reminds us, but also his final victory over all sin and death. The bridge consists of one line, repeated over and over: “It’s that 808 bump, make you put yo hands up.” In this short sentence is an amazingly complex set of concepts. It points to Genesis 8:8, which reads, “Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground.” This line calls to mind God’s faithfulness in saving his people, because we know that in the end the dove does find solid ground, and Noah and his family is able to live on dry land once more; but 8:8 is only the first time that Noah sends the dove out. This first time, the dove returns with nothing; it must be sent a second time before it brings an olive branch. This reminds us of the interstitial nature of the Christian life. We know how our story will end: Christ will come back and right all wrongs. However, for now we are still living in patient expectation, waiting for God’s final victory, just as Noah patiently waited on the ark for the waters to recede. To add a further layer of complexity, the image of the dove inevitably reminds us of the Holy Spirit, and the fact that we have been sent a Comforter to be with us until Christ returns. It is all of these ideas, sparked by Genesis 8:8, that cause the singers to “put their hands up” in worship. They cannot help but praise God for his mighty works, and exhort all around them to do the same.

BEYOND

The Creation vs. Evolution Debate

A talk by Professor Denis Lamoureux followed by a Q&A session.

SATURDAY, OCT 23 at 7 PM in EMERSON 210

Sponsored by the Harvard Ichthus, Harvard College Faith and Action, and Harvard College Alpha Omega

Abstract: Are there only two positions on origins: either “evolution” or “creation”? This lecture is an introduction to professional terminology, science-religion dialogue, and various views on origins (young earth creation, progressive creation, evolutionary creation, deistic evolution, and atheistic evolution). Denis O. Lamoureux is an Associate Professor of Science and Religion at St. Joseph’s College in the University of Alberta. He has debated leading anti-evolutionists, including Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, and Jonathan Wells. With Johnson, he co-authored Darwinism Defeated? The Johnson-Lamoureux Debate on Biological Origins (1999). Lamoureux has recently released Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution (2008) and I Love Jesus & I Accept Evolution (2009). He holds three earned doctoral degrees—dentistry, evangelical theology, and evolutionary biology. Lamoureux also shares his personal voyage from Christian to atheist, evolutionist to creationist and back again.

Richard Dawkins commented on Denis Lamoureux on The Agenda in 2008. Dawkins doesn’t seem too happy… Check out the video!

I’ve taken to running at night because the unfortunate thing about summer here is that heat and humidity comes with the seasonal abundance. But it’s a great way to end the day, as I get to enjoy the “nightlife,” if you will. As the sun sets and the stars appear, the ground begins to resemble the sky as the fields almost literally sparkle with fireflies. The moon is so bright that I can see my shadow (and my dog, who usually tags along and, without fail, is up to no good).

As I observe all this, I can’t help but be amazed at the sheer beauty of God’s creation. Man could never come close to creating the kind of intricate workings that make our world so beautiful. Everything bears the mark of God, and God has provided for us and all earthly creatures in such a way that we can rest assured that we will always have the resources to survive, even thrive.

“Then God said, I’ve given you every sort of seed-bearing plant on Earth, and every kind of fruit bearing tree, given them to you for food. To all animals and all birds, everything that moves and breathes, I give whatever grows out of the ground for food” (Genesis 1:29-30).

In a world of genetically altered plants, processed food, and food we generally can’t figure out where it came from, it’s easy to forget that God has provided everything we could ever need to care for ourselves. I think we are mistrustful of God’s creations, and unfortunately so; as more and more evidence comes out about some of the harmful chemicals we put on our skin and in our food, the more I’ve come to realize that we need to get back in touch with what God designed, which is perfect, and unlikely to harm us if we only eat the right foods and make use of His creation and the role He created for us within it.

One of my favorite things in our garden this year is the strawberries. Not only are they positively sweet and delicious straight off the plant, but they have taught me a lesson that led me back to the verse from Genesis. A single strawberry contains most of the nutrients we need to survive–and it also has the potential to generate many, many more plants from that one single strawberry. It reminds me that God has given us more than just what we need to subsist. He has given generously, and He has given us the chance to not only use, but also enjoy, His creation.

We need to face the facts: nothing we create will ever compare to the beauty of a single strawberry, or even a pesky weed that you pull out of the garden. Not only are God’s creations complex in and of themselves, but they are complex in the way they fit into the “grander scheme of things.” Yes, God has given us the power to create and do amazing things, but we will never even come close to the beautiful simplicity of a single strawberry. We need to trust God that He will provide; He has already given us more than we could ever need, as long as we know to use it.

Three days ago I went snowshoeing in the woods of northern Minnesota, where our family has a cabin on an island. We went out through the fresh drifts of snow while the sun was still shining brightly on the flocked trees, but by the time we turned back dusk was drawing on quickly, and the snow was blue in the evening light. As we walked, we could see the yellow light of sunset fading through the trees in front of us, while the moon behind us, almost full, grew brighter and brighter, until it cast shadows almost as sharp as the sun’s. The sky became a dark indigo, the first faint stars already more vibrant than those on a clear Boston night. At last we came to the final hill above our cabin, and the golden rim of sunset on the horizon shining through the black forms of trees was the same color as the golden light spilling from our cabin windows.

Be thankful for this world that God has given us. He has granted us sustenance and shelter to keep our bodies safe, but he has also showered beauties on us without number and without reason.

This Christmas Eve, two grandparents, four aunts, three uncles, six cousins, two parents, three siblings, three dogs, and I crowded into my grandmother’s living room and proceeded to all talk at once. There were bad jokes, good jokes, childhood stories, future plans, miscommunications, contradictions, wishes, dreams, expressions of gratitude, and lots of excited squeals as the presents were opened. I’m sure that no one was able to hear himself think for about four hours, but I am also sure that we could not have been happier. My grandmother often asks me, “Do you know how good you’ve got it?” Looking around the room at all my family, I think I did know how good it was.

Be thankful for the community that God has made for us. He has given us family and friends for help and support in the tasks that are set for us to do, but he has also made it pleasurable—no, necessary—to be with other people. By giving us other people to love, he has given us some small taste of the love that lies at the heart of the Trinity.

Today is the first day of the new year. It will hold new loves and new losses, new joys and new pains, new hope and new grief. Through it all, let us give thanks to our God, who has given us all that we need for life, more than we deserve or ever could have expected. Let us give thanks to our God, who gave us even Himself, that we might be freed from the darkness of sin and death. Let us give thanks for the Resurrection that blazes at the center of history like a sun, and let us give thanks for every dandelion that blooms for one day to make us glad. Let us give thanks for the vast panoply of stars and for a momentary return of hope. Let us give thanks for the strong love of the Church through the ages and for the smile of a stranger. This year, let us make a resolution together to see all that our God has done for us.

Be thankful.

Knoll’s epilogue is part summary, part argument, and part exhortation.  It is a summary in broad strokes of the evolutionary story told in earlier chapters; it is an argument (partly implicit) concerning the history and significance of the relation between science and religion; it is an exhortation on the basis of ecology to steward the earth.  My concern is with Knoll’s argument and his exhortation.  Aside from the emotional appeal of the rhetoric he employs to motivate us toward environmentalism, the worldview Knoll advances (and opposes to the religious worldview) fails to motivate.

Knoll’s story about science and religion is typical of Enlightenment-scientistic thought.  All religions (Knoll mentions Christianity, Hinduism, and Aboriginal mythology) are deprecated attempts to account for natural phenomena, their obsolescence was ushered in by the great Scientific Revolution of the seventeeth century, their emotional appeal has led the irrational masses to reject clear evidence for their falsehood, etc.  Knoll sets down none of this, but (I argue) it is clear from his identification of disparate religious traditions, his suggestion that creation myths be treated as parables (not, in itself, objectionable – but Knoll almost certainly has in mind the kind of parable we would do better relegating to anthropological or ethnographic investigation rather than the kind of parable that teaches important truths about the universe and our place in it), and his strange suggestion that science has allowed us to become like God(s).

Well, the Enlightenment-scientistic tradition is one that I have considered and rejected.  There are, I believe, good reasons for doing so.  But my point here doesn’t involve convincing anyone to reject that tradition.  I want merely to reflect on one way in which it differs from religious traditions, and particularly from the religions tradition with which I am most familiar – the Judeo-Christian tradition – and the significance of that difference for Knoll’s argument.  The difference I want to bring out is a difference in the sorts of claims the two traditions have the capacity to make.

Science is descriptive, predictive, and explanatory.  It is not normative.  That is, science can tell us what is and will be and why, but it can’t tell us what ought to be.  In fact, the thoroughgoing Enlightenment-scientist will deny that normative claims have truth values, or try to paraphrase normative language into language about occurrent emotions.  Religious language, on the other hand, abounds with normative claims.  One thinks, for example, of the Levitical law (“You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy”) or the teachings of Jesus (“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”), where imperatives are naturally understood to be equivalent to claims about what one ought to do.

So Knoll has a problem.  He feels strongly that the earth ought to be preserved; he would like to communicate his feelings to the reader; but his intellectual tradition gives him no tools with which either to articulate his own conviction or argue for it.  So he turn to emotive appeal: “If we can understand the immensity of our evolutionary inheritance, we may be moved to preserve it.”  It is ecology, Knoll argues, that convinces us to protect the earth.

But why?  Surely humans are ecologically dominant.  Surely we have the power to build and destroy.  Surely we could, if we chose, destroy the world as we know it.  But none of these merely descriptive claims get us any normativity; none of them tell us what we ought to do.  The Enlightenment-scientistic tradition is not permissive of normativity.  Ecology is not enough.

The reason I bring all this up is that I am frustrated by the prevailing misconception that one can be steeped in the intellectual tradition of the Enlightenment and yet keep the uniquely religious, or at least anti-Enlightentment, aspects of human experience like normativity.  No.  We cannot have our cake and eat it, too.  If we adopt Knoll’s worldview, biological diversity has no intrinsic value.  We should think of a living earth and a desolate earth with the same cool detachment.  We should be untroubled by the desolation of the rainforest or the death of thousands of miles of Carribean coral reef.  If we want to care about the earth at all, we need to step outside the Enlightment-scientistic tradition.  We must believe that some things have value and that there is a way things ought to be.  But if we do that, then we must regard Knoll’s claims and stories with some suspicion.  It is, I think, only when we see what we give away by endorsing the Enlightenment-scientistic tradition that we realize exactly how much is at stake in the dialogue between science and religion and begin to think about the issue with some clarity.

I was pleasantly surprised to receive the book (even though the text is available online), because it may be one of the most influential works of all time.

But I was also confused. Who has the money to hand out hundreds of nice, glossy books to college students? I checked the back cover and saw that the book had been published by the Bridge Logos Foundation.

Now, I was suspicious. A quick perusal of the “special introduction” by Ray Comfort confirmed my unease; Comfort had “introduced” Darwin by devoting fifty pages (!) to discrediting evolution, disparaging Darwin’s personal character, and asking the reader to pray Jesus into his heart.

I was annoyed.

The Gospel by any other name does not smell as sweet.

Doing some research online, I discovered that my little encounter on Mass Ave. was actually part of a much larger undertaking, a project to deliver these copies of On the Origin of Species to thousands of college students at America’s most prestigious schools. (This video summarizes the plan. And yes, that is that Kirk Cameron.)

Now, I don’t have any problem with the dissemination of creationist materials per se. I am extremely sympathetic to evolution, but it’s a free country, and we definitely need to discuss evolution more and not less.

Then what’s the problem with the project? Well…

1. It’s manipulative.

Comfort’s intention in distributing On the Origin of Species to college students is to convince America’s brightest young minds of creationism and Christianity. His website admits as much: “In one day, 170,000 future doctors, lawyers and politicians will freely get information about Intelligent Design (and the gospel) placed directly into their hands!”

If you want to convince people of creationism and Christianity, be my guest! I’m not in the business of convincing people that evolution isn’t true (I think creationism is based on bad science and – more importantly – bad exegesis), but I’m all for a healthy discussion about religion, philosophy, and science.

But if you want to convince people of creationism and Christianity, be honest and upfront about it. Don’t hide behind Darwin’s beard. Don’t pretend that you want to give me Origin of Species when what you really want to do is to evangelize. It’s true, Harvard students are probably more interested in On the Origin of Species than Why Evolution Is Wrong – but the solution to that is not dressing up the gospel in the very garb which you oppose. Introductions to On the Origin of Species should not end with exhortations to pray Jesus into your heart.

Comfort argues that this approach is not deceptive because his name will be on the cover. That’s a pretty weak excuse in my mind; if he really didn’t want to be deceptive, he could have made himself the author and added On the Origin of Species as an appendix.

To act otherwise is, in my opinion, to act out of sin and cowardice, completely unlike the  apostles. Peter and John claimed that they could not help but speak about what they had seen and heard (Acts 4:20); there was no doubt in anyone’s mind about what they were preaching. Similarly, Paul did not invite the Athenians to a symposium on Platonic thought; He preached “Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). We should do the same.

2. It’s ad hominem.

Comfort’s introduction devotes a few pages to Darwin’s (alleged) misogyny and racism, and mentions Adolf Hitler’s reliance on evolutionary theory. The implication is that evolution leads to eugenics and other horrors.

Maybe it does. So what? There have been plenty of Christians who used Christianity to justify racism and murder. Furthermore, evolution could be true even if it led to deteriorating morals.

3. It’s doubly ad hominem.

Comfort writes about atheist reactions to his project on his website:

“When [atheists] found out that I was writing an Introduction to [On the Origin of Species], they threatened lawsuits, tried to organize themselves into gangs with the intent of tearing the Introduction out of the book, and have even talked about book burnings.”

I’m sure there are some atheists who have overreacted to Comfort’s evangelistic means. But not all atheists have reacted in this way. The people from Comfort’s organization handing out books at Harvard yesterday were not disturbed at all by anyone.

Of course, even if atheists have acted so unfairly to creationists, Christians have not always been extremely charitable to non-believers. (In particular, Comfort probably shouldn’t write books entitled You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can’t Make Him Think.)

4. It undercuts serious discussion about evolution.

There are serious scholars who have qualms with evolution, and not all of them are religious. Ray Comfort, however, is not a scholar, but a preacher. I have nothing against preachers – my parents were missionaries in Brazil – but muddying the waters by conflating scientific criticisms of evolution with Evangelical Christianity is not the way to go.

5. It gets the gospel wrong!

If you’re going to preach the gospel, you should take care to make sure that you are preaching the actual gospel. Comfort’s introduction ends with a plea that the reader receive the forgiveness of sins by saying the following prayer:

“Dear God, today I turn away from all of my sins … and I put my trust in Jesus alone as my Lord and Savior. Please forgive me, change my heart, and grant me Your gift of everlasting life. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.”

The sentiment expressed in that prayer is exemplary – would that we could all offer prays to God such as that! But the Sinner’s Prayer is not biblical doctrine; it is a modern invention.

The Bible does not say that we are saved by prayer, but by faith, repentance, confession, and baptism for the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit (cf. John 3:5, 16; Acts 2:38-40, 3:19-20, 22:16; Ephesians 2:8-9 Romans 3:28, 6:3-7, 10:9-10; inter alia).

(If you don’t believe me, just ask the earliest Christians what they thought.)

Always and not at all, if we are to believe the pronouncements of most contemporary Evangelical thinkers.  I present as a starting point the following series of short excerpts from a systematic theology by John Feinberg, Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (emphasis added):

i) “We should not ignore the data of disciplines such a science, but as evangelicals we must our views insofar as possible on the basis of biblical teaching.”

ii) “Though some might see this issue [i.e. the interpretation of Genesis 1-2] as a test of orthodoxy, so long as one’s views do not clearly contradict biblical teaching on origins one could hold them without compromising evangelicalism.  There is room for charity toward many who hold views that differ with ours.  Having said this, I note that many theories that will be discussed seem to have originated in an attempt to fit Scripture with science.”

iii) “… I don’t think biblical data allow either an atheistic or a theistic evolutionary account.  This judgment is based both on exegetical and theological reasons, but also on a judgment of the scientific case in favor of any form of evolutionism.  This goes against the findings of the contemporary scientific community, but that doesn’t bother me unduly.”

My aim here is not to prove that Feinberg is wrong so much as to point out that his position seems inconsistent.  For how could we more patently “ignore the data of” science than by making no attempt whatsoever to fit Scripture with it?  Feinberg and many other evangelical thinkers, when questioned on this issue, initially present a vision of the interplay between science and theology according to which the two inform each other but Biblical evidence is given the final say.  Yet these very same thinkers would be extremely uncomfortable with the idea that the current scientific consensus concerning (for example) evolution puts any pressure on Christians to accommodate their views to the data.  Why?

If the answer were that these thinkers take issue with the most basic methodologies of modern empirical science, perhaps we would have no reason to blame them. Their position would be consistent, if almost unintelligibly strange.  But that can’t be the answer, because the same thinkers who so fervently refuse to countenance a single piece of evidence for evolution go on to argue on empirical grounds for the historicity of the resurrection and the traditional authorship of the epistles and a host of other evangelical positions.  Moreover, such thinkers always seem eager to produce evidence that the current scientific consensus on evolution is incorrect; not merely irrelevant, in which case they could happily admit that all evidence points towards an evolutionary explanation of life’s development, but incorrect – scientists have gone wrong in applying their own tools of investigation and endorsed a theory for which there is no good evidence.  Feinberg himself argues extensively that there is no cogent case for evolution; in short, that scientific experts have made silly mistakes.

So it seems like Feinberg and others believe on the one hand that scientific modes of inference are valid (scientists just keep getting things wrong about evolution) and on the other hand that science could never press us to shift our interpretation of scripture.  These two beliefs are inconsistent; to admit empirical grounds for belief is to admit that facts about the world could give us reason to re-evaluate our interpretation of scripture.  As long as we admit empirical grounds for belief, accommodation may not reasonably be regarded (a la Feinberg) as an inherently suspicious theological move.  We must, after all, be open-minded enough to actually weigh the evidence concerning evolution and other contentious scientific theses.

Perhaps my conclusion here seems weak or obvious.  If it does, I couldn’t be happier.  But I think that if we actually take my conclusion seriously, if we honestly weigh the evidence and seek theological consistency, we will have to make serious changes to our traditional evangelical approach to understanding scripture.  And the conclusion that we have become exceedingly narrow-minded in our ill-considered hermeneutical conservatism is neither weak nor obvious.

“[R]ejection of the supernatural should not be a part of scientific methodology…. [S]cientists should be free to pursue hypotheses as they see fit, without being constrained by a particular philosophical account of what science is…. If science really is permanently committed to methodological naturalism, it follows that the aim of science is not generating true theories. Instead, the aim of science would be something like: generating the best theories that can be formulated subject to the restriction that the theories are naturalistic… [S]cience is better off without being shackled by methodological naturalism… [Intelligent design] should not be dismissed on the grounds that it is unscientific….”

- Bradley Monton

I’ve blogged about philosophy of science before, and I’ve even read some arguments by Christian philosophers (such as Norman Geisler) arguing that intelligent design should be considered a scientific theory. At first, I was unconvinced, but Professor Monton’s thoughts forced me to reconsider my opinions, not just about intelligent design, but about Science in general. What is “Science”? What are its limits? Where does it end (and begin)?

I think everyone has a rough picture of what Science is, and I also think that our rough pictures tend to agree. Lab coats, graduated cylinders, complicated math: the markers of Science are pretty obvious.

But what, fundamentally, unites chemistry, physics, and the other sciences (while excluding, for instance, the study of literature)? It’s hard to say.

Bradley Monton, an atheist, thinks intelligent design could potentially fall within the purview of science.

The first problem is that there’s an ambiguity in the definition of “Science” (which my friend CDK pointed out in his comment on my aforementioned blog post). Science, it seems, consists both in the gathering of empirical data through observation and in the theoretical extrapolation from that data toward a more generalized understanding of the world around us. Except…how is that different from a posteriori reasoning in general? I don’t see an immediate answer. To me, the boundaries of Science appear blurry and arbitrary.

Let’s take intelligent design as an example. A lot of people believe that ID is pseudoscientific because its hypothesis cannot be tested. But I could easily argue (and have argued) that many evolutionary claims cannot be tested. For example, we know (or have very good reason to believe) that there are extinct species that left no fossil record, but we have no means of testing putatively scientific claims about how these species evolved.

The point isn’t that ID should be considered scientific, or that a systematic and coherent formulation of what constitutes “Science” is impossible. Rather, the point is that “Science” may be an arbitrary category (at least in the popular mind), whose exact definition depends more on the historical development of particular disciplines than on anything else.

Maybe Monton (and ID theorists) are wrong and Science should be grounded upon some sort of methodological naturalism. But we should at least ask why. Why should philosophers and theologians have the freedom (that is what it is) to consider ID as a potentially viable (if ultimately untenable) option, while scientists preclude it as “unscientific” from the get-go? Why assume methodological naturalism if we are not explicitly advocating metaphysical naturalism – or if we are explicitly arguing against metaphysical naturalism?

There may be good answers to these questions, but I am not sure they will amount to much more than pragmatic answers. And, if that is the case, it may behoove us to remove Science from its cultural and epistemic pedestal.

(Hat tip to CR; his blog is where I found the post that motivated my own thoughts.) ]]> http://www.harvardichthus.org/fishtank/2009/10/what-is-science/feed/ 5