Do historical matters matter to faith?

This book looks valuable and timely - "Do Historical Matters Matter To Faith?" - "a firm defense of Scripture’s legitimacy and the theological implications of modern and postmodern approaches that teach otherwise".

I can't tell from the brief Amazon description if it addresses the creation/evolution controversy. But the overall thesis certainly sounds vital to that area, especially whilst we are currently plagued by those of the ilk of Denis Alexander, Mike Taylor, Biologos et. al., who are determined to teach the church that you can keep the Bible's spiritual insights whilst gutting it of its historical foundation.

The Ministers of Alice in Wonderland

Kevin De Young recently did a post on “10 reasons to believe in a historical Adam.” It drew predictable criticism from the usual quarters.

BTW, we’re glimpsing an Alice in Wonderland sort of world when it’s controversial for a minister to defend Bible history. Shouldn’t it be controversial for a minister to deny Bible history? But somewhere along the line, certain segments of evangelicalism fell through the rabbit hole.

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/02/deja-vu.html

The Bible is not simply a bolted-on explanation

Someone forwarded to me a couple of extracts of two interviews with Dr Mike Taylor, "a computer programmer by day, and a paleontologist at the University of Bristol in his spare time." Here and the January 2012 issue of Christianity magazine (not sure if that's online).

According to Dr. Taylor, people who don't see issues of religion and science just the same way as he does are loonies who are wasting their time; they (I mean to say, we) give the impression that Christianity is an entirely unthinking religion - and the reason why we don't see things the way he does, is because we're not listening to him carefully enough.

I do like people who don't hide what they think from you. It saves a lot of time. But, from that I suppose he won't be interested in anything I have to say. Perhaps you will!

Here are a few points of unthinking lunatic non-interaction from me in response to quotes from him:

We'd probably all agree that science is the best available tool for figuring out what happens in the universe and how it happens. Religion, properly understood, doesn't really involve itself with those questions at all,

According to Christianity, the most important thing that ever happened in the universe is that the Son of God rose from the dead on the third day. How would Dr. Taylor verify that, since his position is that "religion" is unable to make claims about actual historical events? There was a physical resurrection, because physical death - one of the results of the curse - was defeated. Dr. Taylor seems to believe that the material world and the spiritual world are two distinct things; but the heart of the Christian faith says "not so"; we look for a new resurrection body, and believe that Jesus has gone ahead of us. As Paul says (1 Corinthians 15), if this is not so, then Christianity collapses. That's very far away from saying that Christianity doesn't care about such questions at all. Once you shunt the physical world outside of the concerns of "Religion, properly understood", you destroy the foundations of the faith.

Religion, properly understood, doesn't really involve itself with those questions at all, but with why things are as they are, and with who is ultimately responsible for it all. This distinction is of course is what Gould (1997) was referring to in his concept of Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA). Gould himself was an atheist, or at least agnostic; but he understood what kind of a thing religion is, and respected it on its own terms rather than holding it in contempt because it's not science.

First, it's clear that Taylor here is basing his views upon philosophical assumptions, not upon scientific ones. How did he learn that "religion" and "science" exist in hermetically sealed domains? That's not itself a finding of science, either actually or even potentially - it's a philosophical/religious dogma. Our views of to what extent "religion" and "science" overlap ought to be formed by the Bible (if we are Christians). And the Bible makes a huge number of assertions about what happened and when - creation, miracles, Jesus' death and resurrection being the major ones.

Secondly, Taylor should have taken more notice of Gould's atheism. Gould shoves religion out of the realm of the world as we touch and experience it, because that's where he wants God to be - out of the realm of relevance. He felt more comfortable with the religious implications of that view.

Gould's concept was atheistic to the core. According to Christianity, the Bible is God's word with authority over all things; seen, unseen, spiritual, physical. It does not simply have "magisteria" in a privatised, unseen (read: irrelevant!) "religious" world. The Bible begins by teaching us that God made the heavens and the earth; he rules over all domains, including over science.

The separation between "what happens" and "why it happens and who does it" is a profoundly anti-Biblical separation. God's word and his actions are inseparable; God acts in history and explains the meaning of his actions to us. Christianity is not simply a bolted-on explanation of the meaning of history; it is also a set of distinct assertions about the content of history itself. If Dr. Taylor wanted to know the route that Moses took out of Egypt, or what miracles were performed through him there, or what happened at the Red Sea, then how would he derive the answer? According to him, religion has no interest in such questions. The God who really is, on the other hand, seems to be very interested in them, and decided through those very things to reveal himself to us.

Once you cut God's actions in history out of the picture as irrelevant issues, then you ultimately cut God himself out - because it is through those actions that God has made himself known.

from any Christians who hang around this blog supporting creationism: guys, give it a rest. Religion is not science

and:

The first chapters of Genesis are about who caused the universe to exist, and why he did it. They are simply not interested in the mechanisms he used, any more than the John chapter 2 account of Jesus turning water into wine is concerned with the chemical reactions.

That's a straw man; the question is not "does Genesis explain scientific mechanisms?" but is the book of Genesis history? Is it intended to be an accurate account of God's actions, and in what duration of time it asserts he carried them out? No creationist thinks that Genesis is intended to give detailed scientific mechanisms. Creationists have been pointing out and correcting this straw-man from ever since this debate began; it would do Dr. Taylor's side of the argument well to either stop raising it, or to cease saying that the problem is that we're not listening to what he's saying carefully enough.

Dr. Taylor appears to allow that Jesus did turn water into wine. Suppose that in 1859 Charles Darwin had published a book demonstrating that water and wine are really the same thing, and that if left in a pot long enough, one will become the other without any intervention; that the action was simply nature taking its ordinary course - and that in fact the feast at which it took place was extended over several decades, and not a few days as John says? What would Dr. Taylor say to that? The point is that Dr. Taylor's neat "what/why/who" trichotomy, though simple to grasp and making for good sound bites, does not actually work when applied to the case in point. The questions are tied up closely together, and Genesis also makes assertions about "when" and "how long". To disagree with those assertions is one thing; but to simply rule them out-of-court because you arbitrarily assert that "religion" never makes such assertions is something else.

Christians who should be spreading the love of Christ are distracted into a fruitless argument that has nothing to do with the gospel

This is severe question-begging. We've seen that Taylor's view of Christianity is of a privatised spiritual religion that is hermetically sealed off from the real flesh-and-blood world - rather than of one in which the living God acts and has acted in our world in space and time to redeem. Where do we find the love of Christ? In dying for us in the 1st century under Pontius Pilate, as the early Christians were careful to remind us through their creeds. In his rising again, bodily, in a new glorious resurrection life. This was a foretaste of his coming again to remake this flesh-and-blood world - not to whisk us of to stay eternally into a privatised floaty ethereal spiritual realm. Why did he need to die? The Bible's answer is, it is because Adam sinned and Creation fell. This creation. The one in which we draw breath and in which he drew breath. Personally, I go out into the flesh-and-blood world to preach the love of Christ because I believe it's the same world that God created in six days, which fell when Adam sinned, the world which is populated with Adam's children who are under God's righteous wrath because of Adam's sin as their head and representative, and the world which is redeemed through Jesus' death. Taylor's theology redefines the root meanings of most or all of the terms and concepts in those sentences; it's hardly an irrelevant issue.

Principled disagreement is one thing. But to say that all these points are irrelevant, and that those who make them should be written off as thick loonies is another. It's sad that Dr. Taylor, who's evidently a clever man, has taken a leaf out of the "New Atheists"' book and decided that name-calling is the way forward, rather than honest and serious Christian debate.

This is what incoherence looks like

In a Guardian CIF article, Denis Alexander, as part of his hopeless quest to synthesise Darwinism with the Bible, asks the question, why did Jesus die? Good question; but he does not answer it in a coherent way. He gives no more of an answer than he did when he published "Creation or Evolution - Do we have to choose?".

Read it yourself and see if you can figure out the answer. Alexander himself during the article asserts that the Bible nowhere teaches that physical death is the penalty of sin (Alexander holds that death was always man's intended lot, a necessary part of the evolutionary process); yet also on the other hand asserts that Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for our sins.

Each time I come across something new from Dr. Alexander, I try to hunt for his explanation of how these two assertions harmonise. I'm not the only reviewer who's raised this issue and tried to get an answer; I'm not aware of anyone who's succeeded yet. Death is not the penalty for sin; Jesus experienced death as the penalty for our sins. I've read this latest one through three times, trying to spot the clue. I don't think there is one.

There's quite a few other give-aways about Dr. Alexander's departure from orthodoxy in the article; I've just chosen to highlight this big one in this blog.

Genetics and a historical Adam and Eve

Several Christian supporters of Darwinism, e.g. Denis Alexander, state with great confidence that genetics proves Darwinism. Others go further and state that it rules out any kind of historic Adam and Eve (even the kind that Alexander prefers, which isn't itself compatible with the teachings of Scripture). Usually - and this is said especially for Christians trying to address other Christians - this is stated without any examination of contrary evidence. Many Christian Darwinists seem to have adopted the campaigning tactics of the new atheists: state your conclusions with great confidence and bombast, skip the critical step of careful and responsible presentation of counter-arguments, and simply employ scoffing and scorn to dismiss any objection. Do this in the name of science, and claim that nobody sane disagrees with you. This approach intimidates many people into piping down or following suit (lest they become objects of scorn too), but this is not the way that servants of truth should behave.

Here is one good article giving some of the other side of the case: The Non-Mythical Adam and Eve! - Refuting errors by Francis Collins and BioLogos.

Sexual immorality and the evolutionary fallacy

Here's a supposed investigative piece by John Preston in the Telegraph, presenting the case that monogamy (one man, one woman for life), is unrealistic. Much of it reads like the author had a bet with a colleague as to how many different logical fallacies he could wedge into a fixed number of words.

The main one invoked as the premise of the article is the "evolutionary fallacy", which runs like this:

• Lots of people do X
• Therefore, X is natural
• Therefore, X is right

In this case, "X" is sexual immorality. Lots of people do it, so, perhaps as a species it's what we're meant to do... right? Evolution guided us into it, didn't it?

Perhaps the author should have ventured beyond just adultery and fornication; how about paedophilia? It's been around for thousands of years, so perhaps as a species we're just not meant to not molest children? Perhaps evolution never intended us to avoid burglary, rape, pillage and sticking needles in the eyes of investigative journalists?

Preston never discusses how we can know if something is moral or not. When he uses the word "moral" and purports to discuss morality, he simply discusses the results. He appears to know no difference between ethics and pragmatics or hedonism: what is good to Preston is what makes people feel good. The underlying assumption just appears to be, that if men are unfaithful, then unfaithfulness is good. Behold the cultural fruits of Darwinism!

The main character in Preston's article is a promiscuous homosexual called Dan Savage, who is presented to us as "America's leading relationships journalist" (as appointed by people who agree with him, presumably). The reality of Savage's life is clear from his words: he's doing wrong, he knows he's doing wrong, but he enjoys the wrong... and so he has come up with a "clever"-sounding theory to justify it. i.e. like every other fallen human being, he's been working hard to come up with reasons for why his wrong behaviour is OK. The upshot is that he believes everyone ought to behave like a promiscuous homosexual or at least be relaxed about it; that would (he thinks) make Savage feel a lot better about his life. That's the predictable way of sin too; we try to surround ourselves with people who've plunged into the same sins, and that assuages our guilt by deadening our consciences to it. Their comradeship in iniquity helps us feel less bad about our personal iniquity.

So, John Preston responds by writing a long-winded article toying with Savage's self-justifications as if they were very clever. It would have been wiser and more to the point to just ask, "Dan, why not repent?"

When Savage tells people his ideas, he recounts, they respond with disgust and horror. Instead of asking himself it there's something horrifically disgusting about his lifestyle, Savage assumes that people must feel very insecure about the rightfulness of faithfulness in marriage. They protest too much, he intones! I wonder why he thinks people are revolted by paedophilia or rape? Is that also the response of people who are not yet morally grown up and who still believe in Santa Claus? Is all moral disgust a sign of insecurity? Is there nothing in the world that is actually morally revolting?

See again the ways of sin: people keep telling Savage that his life is morally disgusting, but this persuades Savage to see himself as a moral superior. He's been able to rise above that "childish" sense of horror at a vile lifestyle.

Preston attempts some discussion of the origins of the idea of monogamy. He says that history is not on monogamy's side. In the Preston universe, history apparently begins somewhere in the 18th century, and all before that is the swirling mists of the beginning of time. Apparently monogamy only originated in the 1700s, and before that everybody thought it a completely stupid idea. The Preston education appears to have lacked some key points about the philosophical origins and development of European civilisations. Christianity, Judaism and the Bible do not appear once during this discussion; in the Preston investigation of why people believe in monogamy, they are not worth a mention. But the Inuit people do appear, and they're promoted as potential guides for us. Why? Who knows? Are they divine, or the gold standard of right living? How would we know?

Preston does interview a few people on the other side of the discussion, who point out that outside of the make-believe world of the rest of the article, infidelity brings ruin and misery to people's lives, and it was at least a good thing that the article finished with a man's confession that ending his first marriage was the worst mistake he ever made.

How does a promiscuous homosexual get to be presented as an authority on the subject of the goodness of life-long monogamy? How would he know? We might as well ask him if it's fun being an owl's left foot, what it's like to run marathons inside 5 minutes, or what Esther Rantzen had for breakfast this morning. He has no way of knowing what he's talking about.

Darwinism and Dawkins versus Mathematics

Here is a very interesting job advert. Two professors at St. John's College, University of Oxford, are looking for two assistants to help them do research into the mathematics of population genetics and Darwinism:

http://www.sjc.ox.ac.uk/3498/RA%20in%20Mathematics_FPs.pdf.download

Three things are particularly noticeable in the description of the job:

• The two professors are doing research that they hope will lead to mathematical support of Darwinism - i.e. they are friends of Darwinian theory.
  
• They frankly admit that mathematical geneticists "mainly deny that natural selection leads to optimization of any useful kind", and then go on to explain, equally frankly, that Richard Dawkins' arguments in his seminal work, "The Selfish Gene", are not supported by known mathematics.
  
• The description proceeds to explain that they are looking for mathematics that will provide a basis for many of the concepts that are the Darwinian philosophers' stock-in-trade. Or in other words, stating the implication of that, they admit that as yet, the stock-in-trade conversations of Darwinian philosophers are not grounded in any known mathematical reality.

Note again the first point: these aren't enemies of Darwinism looking to do research to tear it down. They are its friends, looking for the research to establish it, and along the way candidly admitting that the mathematics to do so does not exist and the idea is generally contradicted. And remember, these aren't clowns; these are mathematics professors at the wealthiest college in the UK's top university...

I've just hopped over to RichardDawkins.Net to see if the great non-existent misotheist has republished the job announcement yet. Seems he hasn't got round to it....

Free online creationist books

Creation Ministries International are giving free access to online versions of seven of their most popular books, here.

What theistic evolutionists believe

What do those who believe we can combine the Bible and Darwinism believe?

That "the Bible and Darwinism are consistent" is easy to say. But what happens when you try to work that idea out systematically, and answer the difficult questions? When you have to make hard choices over apparently conflicting ideas, what will give?

I took a look at that issue in the case of UK-based Denis Alexander and his recent writings.

Now Creation Ministries International have done the same with US-based "BioLogos", whom Alexander also works with.

What do they believe? In short, that when it comes to the interpretation of the Scriptures, Jesus and his apostles could have done with BioLogos being around to help them...

Adam and Eve - on-line chapter of "Should Christians Embrace Evolution?"

Michael Reeves' chapter of IVP-UK/P & R's "Should Christians Embrace Evolution?", on the topic of Adam and Eve, is now (by kind permission of the publishers) available on-line for free, here.

Inaugural Faraday Lecture

"Michael Faraday - Man of science, man of God". That's the title of the inaugural "Faraday Lecture" to be given at Westminster Chapel, London this Friday (9th April).

Faraday himself was an outstanding man in the history of science as well as being a Bible-based believer. The Royal Institute's website describes him using the pejorative language of today as belonging to a "literalist sect", which is secular-speak for believing the Bible to be - shock, horror - true.

I don't think Faraday would have been happy that in present times his name has been hijacked by the Faraday Institute in Cambridge - Britain's foremost think-tank for trying to promoting theistic evolution and trying to influence Bible-believing Christians to interpret the Bible's accounts of creation in largely non-historical ways.

So it's good to see this new venture which might claim back his name... more details here (I don't think it is organised by AiG but appears in the event calendar they maintain).

The Greatest Hoax On Earth

http://creationstoreuk.s3.amazonaws.com/infobytes/191_IB/191_christianbookUK.html

Theology relies upon ontology

I've read a few works by Christian Darwinists lately in the past few years. One of the main points I want to make in response to their interpretations of Genesis 1-11 is that they fundamentally do not work.

Christian Darwinists generally when looking at these chapters argue:

• From the narrative that the author of Genesis 1-11 wrote, we can learn theological truth X
• Now that truth X is clear, it is unnecessarily literalistic to insist that we also believe that we also believe the historical details of that narrative to be literally/historically true.

For example, the Genesis 3 curse teaches us that sin brings misery and spiritual death - but not that the ground actually started producing thorns and weeds at the time Adam sinned. Or the account of Eve's creation from Adam's rib teaches us the intimate relationship between husband and wife, and their equality as divine image bearers - but not that Eve was actually made from Adam's rib. We take the theological fruit - but must not get too hung up about the tree itself.

This does not work, because once you cut down the tree there can be no fruit left growing. In the Biblical way of thinking, God is Lord of all - seen and unseen - and there is only one world, not two. The "theological" and "historical" truth is one: the strands are integrated and intertwined, depending on one another in a symbiotic relationship. There is not a "neutral" physical world that any old interpretation can be placed upon, and then a repository of "spiritual" truth in the Bible that we Christians prefer as the favoured explanation.

In authentic Christian thinking about the doctrines of creation and redemption, the "spiritual" truths only arise as a necessary consequence of the factuality of the history, and not any other way. The resurrection accounts imply a bright future, in a God who turns things around and brings blessing out of hopelessness. But why do they imply this? Because Jesus actually rose from the dead in space and time! These theological fruits are just one small part of the consequences of Christ's real-world act. If Christ did not in fact rise, then the resurrection story ceases to function as a source of hope in this present world - it just becomes a "convenient" fiction that people can choose to draw on or not, depending on whether they like to find support from pleasant (but non-real) stories or not.

Similarly with creation. God's pronouncements about the status of the world, the consequences of sin, unity of humanity, etcetera, have value because they are actually rooted in real events. The theology flows from the ontology. They are not simply arbitrary interpretative additions. The Christian doctrine of creation is the true one - not an optional add-on. We should live with confidence in this world because this world is actually God's - in every part. We should live in the light of the theological truths implied by the account of creation, because they really are implied - because things really did happen that way. This way we can live with confidence - in the light of the factual truths about created reality, not just because we are inspired by a well-crafted story.

To give another example, Genesis is often treated as a polemic against polytheism - and then the author goes on to say (explicitly or implicitly), "now that we see how effective a polemic it is against pagan myths, we no longer have to be wedded to believing in the historicity of the details". But why is it such an effective polemic? Because the details are actually true! The real account of the history shows paganism (and lots of other -isms) to be defective, because of their deviance from the real history. The dichotomy made is an unnecessary and false one

To try to make this false dichotomy throws doubt upon the power and wisdom of God. If God is reduced to hunting to put a "spin" upon stories of non-historical events when he tells us about creation or redemption, then it seems he has lost control of his own world, or somehow not remember (or know how) to make one in a manner that allowed him to not operate in a more straightforward way. But that is not so. The true God made things in precisely the manner he has told us, and all the fruits that grow up from those roots can be relied upon for that reason. This is essential to hold onto to avoid the secularist dichotomy of "real/public/weekday world" and "private/personal/Sunday/religious beliefs" that is crippling many Christians in their thinking and living today.

Should Christians Embrace Evolution? (Review)

Reading reviews of one's own work is a new experience for me. I came across this blogger's review of IVP's "Should Christians Embrace Evolution?" - a thoughtful review from a Christian blogger who said that creation and evolution were not subjects he often read on, though he had read a well-known theistic evolutionary book (Francis Collins) and was interested in reading a response. His blog shows that he reviews books fairly frequently.

Reviews of this kind are particularly interesting because they come from "neutral" territory - what impression did the book read on someone without an already entrenched position, someone who is a wide-ranging reader?

http://www.wordandspirit.co.uk/blog/2010/03/07/book-review-should-christians-embrace-evolution/

Quote:

"Several contributors seek to demonstrate that the Bible not only presents them as historical characters, but relies on it to develop crucial doctrine. And this is probably the major achievement of the book. It demonstrates that a denial of the historicity of Adam and Eve (or at least a denial that they are the ancestors of all human beings) results in some grave theological difficulties further along the line. These include making a nonsense of much of Paul’s teaching about Adam, and coming dangerously close to Gnosticism and Deism."

"Earth's Catastrophic Past"

John Whitcomb and Henry Morris's book "The Genesis Flood" was the epoch-making book that gave Biblical creationism a big leap forward in the late 20th century. (Don't believe the propaganda that says it "launched" Biblical creationism - it had no need of launching; the story by which Darwin swept all before him and creationism died until it came back from America in the late 20th century is evolutionary propaganda, nothing else. Anti-Darwin thinking was always near at hand, and Britain had its own anti-evolution society that pre-dates Whitcomb/Morris by decades).

The below came via e-mail. It's a podcast from "Answers in Genesis" UK about a new book. If this book is what it aims and promises to be, then everyone interested in these issues ought to be getting a copy. It comes from a writer who has the credentials and experience to write it:

The 19th episode of our main podcast, Answers UK Radio, is now available, presented by Paul Taylor, Senior Speaker with Answers in Genesis (UK/Europe)

In this episode, Paul interviews Answers in Genesis Director of Research, Dr Andrew Snelling. Dr Snelling has just published his important new book - Earth's Catastrophic Past. This is basically the replacement and update for the classic Genesis Flood, by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris. Andrew's book is destined to be an equally important classic, presenting, as it does, a thorough biblical Flood geology for the 21st Century.

You will not want to miss this important interview.

This is the link: http://aukpodcast.com/2010/02/24/answers-uk-radio-episode-19/

Why Darwinism is Atheism

I just came across this great quote from David Berlinksi (who isn't a believer in any particular religion). It explains very concisely why Darwinism is inherently incompatible with any form of Christian theism. I'm not sure what the word "human" is doing in the first clause.

A mechanism that requires a discerning human agent cannot be Darwinian. The Darwinian mechanism neither anticipates nor remembers. It gives no directions and makes no choices. What is unacceptable in evolutionary theory, what is strictly forbidden, is the appearance of a force with the power to survey time, a force that conserves a point or a property because it will be useful. Such a force is no longer Darwinian. How would a blind force know such a thing? David Berlinski, “Deniable Darwin” Commentary 101 (June 1, 1996).

I was careful there to say incompatible with "Christian theism" not with "theism". The above argument does not work against deism. Deism is the idea that God merely set the laws of the universe, wound the machine up, and then let it work itself out. Deism can be reconciled with Darwinism - no surprise, but Darwin was a deist in his own belief (which gives the lie to the idea that Darwin was just doing science). A deist can easily believe that God invented the algorithm and then left it to run - and perhaps also rigged the "initial conditions" that the machine operated under to make give the outcome a high, perhaps infallible, degree of certainty. But that's not Christian theism, where God creates ex nihilo by a divine intervention such that the creation itself is an exemplification of his infinite wisdom and intelligence.

Throwing down the gauntlet to Dr. Denis Alexander

Regular readers will know that in the last year and a bit I've written a full-length response to Dr. Denis Alexander's insistence that evangelicals must make their peace with Darwinism. That response, tidied-up is itself now available as a book. I also contributed a chapter to the (IMO, devastating) IVP-published response, Should Christians Embrace Evolution?

Well, today I received something on the latter an editor at IVP. Dr. Alexander has finished reading it, and wants to contact the authors. He says that he does not have the inclination or the time to respond to the book as such, but just wants to alert us of a few factual points for correction. Hence he wanted to know our e-mail addresses.

Dr. Alexander has a pattern of avoiding meaningful interaction with people who disagree with him, so I didn't want to let this pass. Here's the reply I e-mailed to him and the other IVP authors, and I await his response. I've cut the quote referred to in the first paragraph as that was Dr. Alexander's own e-mail and I haven't asked him permission to publish it. (It's my own response; not all the authors are young-earth creationists as I am).

Hi Dr. Alexander,

I'm glad you've read the book and want to talk about it. For my part (this is referring to what's quoted below), I would much rather you would find both the time and the inclination to make a response on the substance of it and not just have a little side-discussion about a few points here and there. I read your book and noted that the interaction with genuine present-day creationists and their writings was basically zero - it was all "some Christians believe" but these "some Christians" normally only had a limited likeness to the positions of actual mainstream Darwin nay-sayers. (Henry Morris got a couple of footnotes: living representatives of creationism as it existed in 2008 got none). Yet at the end of the book there was a stinging criticism of creationists as time-wasters who don't spend enough time dealing with the real problems in the world. The impression was that in your book you had actually refuted year-2008 creationism and not a "some Christians say", "Here's what I've heard some folk say as I've been on my travels" folk-creationism caricature. You can't have your cake and eat it - either interact with us and then say you've done so, or don't interact and then don't claim afterwards that you did.

You've had time in 2009 to do a tremendously large amount of pro-Darwin activity, so I find it hard to stomach the idea that you don't have time to interact in a deep way with the main response to your position that's on the table. If we're going to have this discussion, let's have it properly or not at all. You've written that you're concerned science should be done properly - well, let's do theology (what my chapter was about) properly too. Let's not just quibble about minors around the edge. If your concern is that a private discussion wouldn't be as effective as all the public activity that's keeping you busy then that's fine - let's have it in public. I think my position stands up to maximum robust public scrutiny and am sure you feel the same about yours. So what have you got to lose by taking the time to do it properly? I have a
blog and your institute has a website - anything you write to me or in the other direction I'd suggest the other person gets full rights to publish (in full, unedited) on our own websites. Then perhaps that'll sidestep your concern, if that is what you're thinking. Over to you!

(Obviously I'm just speaking for myself here, not any of the other authors).

God bless,
David

Theistic evolution - what's at stake

In some questions which concern Bible-believing Christians, it's often possible to get a big hint by noticing that opinions can often split up into three:

• Those who assert that the Bible says X, and that we should believe and obey it
• Those who assert that it doesn't say X, and therefore they don't
• Those who point out that the Bible really does say X, but frankly they have no intention of believing or obeying it

This is often in discussions where X is something controversial and/or intolerable in a secularist society - something that will cause friction for a Christian when dealing with outsiders.

Theistic evolution is a classic case in point. The Bible actually really does teach that God made the world in six days through an immediate word - not through long ages of providential superintendence of natural processes. But most Christians who've considered the questions have felt the pressure at some time to accept an alternative explanation - one that won't mean they have to be at variance with the contemporary mainstream scientific consensus. One that means they can say "both are true; there's no problem; move along please!"

Those who come into the third category are normally the theological liberals. Cunning fudges to make the Bible both say X but also be compatible with something that is basically "not X" aren't something they need to bother with. They don't accept the premise that the Bible is God's word and needs to be believed as a matter of obedience to our Maker and Judge; they feel free to say "yes, of course the Bible says X - and it's not true, and we've moved on from it."

Which brings us to the infamous John Selby Spong, the American Episcopalian Bishop well-known for denying just about every article of Christian belief one way or the other - but normally simply by flat and frank contradiction. Here he is on the impact of Charles Darwin. As I am sure Darwin's theory is wrong, Spong's conclusion doesn't follow for me; but Spong's logic in following the implications if Darwin wasn't wrong are in my opinion unarguable:

“And Charles Darwin not only made us Christians face the fact that the literal creation story cannot be quite so literal, but he also destroyed the primary myth by which we had told the Jesus story for centuries. That myth suggested that there was a finished creation from which we human beings had fallen into sin, and therefore needed a rescuing divine presence to lift us back to what God had originally created us to be. … And so the story of Jesus who comes to rescue us from the Fall becomes a nonsensical story. So how can we tell the Jesus story with integrity and with power, against the background of a humanity that is not fallen but is simply unfinished?”

Notice that the cunning fudge, promoted by theistic evolutions such as Denis Alexander, is flatly exposed by the Bishop here. The historic Christian gospel only makes sense against the background of a space-time Fall that happened at the beginning of a pristine creation. Against any other backdrop it is simply incoherent and can't be rescued. The attempt to merge the Bible with Darwinism without butchering the latter inevitably means you have to butcher the former. Spong doesn't have any spiritual currency invested in the Bible's truthfulness as Alexander does, and makes no bones about simply declaring it false. And that lack of a cognitive bias forcing him - in this area - to argue that black is white enables him, even though an outright heretic, to state the reality of the issue with crisp clarity.

Why we can be sure Adam was a historical individual

Professor James Anderson (no relationship, well, unless you go back most of the way to Adam the historical individual...) gives a good concise summary of why evangelicals are compelled by the Bible to view Adam as a single historical individual in the same sense as you or I are: http://proginosko.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/was-adam-a-real-historical-individual/ . With a footnote offering a 13th that he forgot about the first time round!

Here's a conversation I had at the registry office whilst registering my intention to marry my now-wife. Earlier conversation had established that the registrar was a church-goer... perhaps it had been a slow day...

Registrar: Are you related to your future wife?

Me: Only through Adam.

Registrar: Your son?

Me: Ha ha! No.

New Book: Should Christians Embrace Evolution?

In this "Darwin year", we've been exposed to a glut of pro-evolution propaganda from a wide variety of sources. It's not unexpected that the "New Atheist" crowd should rely heavily on Darwin for their goals. What is grievously sad is to see the energetic efforts from groups within evangelical Christianity to promote a pro-Darwin agenda. The motivation and message seems to be that standing up for the Christian church's historic belief in a divine creation ex nihilo (out of nothing) that was accomplished by a supernatural divine word in the comparatively recent past is no longer credible. We don't want to look silly when Professor Dawkins pokes fun at us! These Christian apologists tell us that Darwinism has no theological implications, and can be reconciled with the book of Genesis easily.

On that particular matter, though, the "New Atheists" are right. The attempt to shoe-horn macro-evolution into the Bible, and the idea that where we came from has no meaning, is intellectual suicide. The methods of Bible interpretation used turn the Bible into a nose of wax that can be shaped to say anything you please. That really does make us look silly.

Neither is the effort to make peace with Darwin scientifically necessary. We live in times when Darwin's knowledge of biology has been vastly superceded. The fossil record and modern genetics falsify Darwin's theory again and again. Darwinism retains its place in the academy only because of the unthinkable nature of the alternative to the modern secular mind. To jump on this horse now, when the simplest analysis can show you that it's got three broken legs and has already been shot, is not a good move. And certainly not a necessary one!

And now for the good news. Here's the intellectual ammunition, Biblical, theological and scientific, to show you why you can answer the question "Should Christians Embrace Evolution" with a decisive "No!". Here's the book for the layman which explains the issues in a way that is careful easy to follow, and that covers all the bases.

Published by Intervarsity Press and edited by Professor Norman C. Nevin - an international expert in genetics - the editors include theologians and scientists; including on the scientific side leading experts and PhDs in genetics, immunology, thermodynamics, chemistry and geology (including four professors and a senior research fellow). The theological side is no less weighty, with chapters from writers who hold positions in UCCF, denominational apologetics committees, Bible colleges and very well known pastors. And (drum roll) your friend in the Rift Valley. Oh yes!

The preface says,

In the face of the new atheists’ claim that evolution has rendered faith utterly redundant there is a flood tide arising that demands that Christians must embrace evolution or acknowledge that they are opposed to science. This book believes that this is a false premise. It is written to set out a clear theological framework on the relevant issues and to confront the questions that this gives rise to. It is written with a compelling conviction that science and faith are not in opposition. It is written by theologians who are committed to the authority of Scripture and to the exercise of careful exegesis. It is written by scientists who are fully persuaded of the importance of rigorous scientific investigation but who are dissatisfied with the arbitrary exclusion of possible conclusions and the failure to follow the evidence wherever it leads. This is not written for a select readership that already has expert knowledge of the subjects. It is written for ordinary men and women, who have the capacity to weigh the information, seek further clarification and draw their own conclusions.

It's on pre-order at Amazon now, with a pre-order discount... go get it!