Teach the Controversy

I’ve been toying with an idea as of late that has to do with how children are taught in school. I think a problematic assumption that builds into the “If we should teach creation science in school, we should also teach astrology” is not so much that there is anything wrong with teaching astrology per se, but that the theory of evolution can only be successfully taught if children aren’t made aware of its present shortcomings. A state-based education that revolves around the idea that only one side of a story should be taught is what we otherwise call indoctrination, at least when what is being taught is something we don’t agree with.

Too much of education consists in “Learn these facts so that you can pass the test.” It is a very Chinese system of learning, which assumes that education consists in memorizing the wisdom of the elders (in this case “the scientists”). It replaces understanding cause and effect with understanding when to call something “cause and effect,” a wholly nominal system that doesn’t pretend to impart true knowledge of the theory that builds into our reasoning that water is H2O. (I won’t pretend that I learnt such a thing in my chemistry class, nor will I pretend to understand even now.) We are taught conclusions, and never reasons.

If we are supposing that the children will only believe evolution if its presented dogmatically (and we laugh at those creationists), then it follows we believe our children to be irrevocably stupid. What’s the purpose of education then? Should we be supplying tools of further learning and understanding so that those who are great may be assisted in their endeavors, or set “standards” of facts that ought to be memorized so that they can be placed onto a test at least once? What if creation science were taught, not merely in a religion class or social studies class as some phenomena of those categories, but in the science classroom? What do we have to lose? Is evolution so weak a theory that it will never be accepted if its shortcomings are pointed out and explained? Is creation science so successful we are afraid that the children won’t believe in evolution?

I think this reveals another problem with our suppositions of what it is to “teach” something. If something is taught, must it be taught as true? This doesn’t seem to be the case at all. Perhaps astrology should be taught, at least to provide students with an understanding of how its supposed to work and what its supposed to do. There already exists a large population who believe, quite sincerely, that there is something to astrology. If astrology were to be acknowledged and taught, then this would also provide an opportunity to teach why virtually all scientists thinks its bunk. On the other hand, if its never brought up, then how can it be successfully critiqued? Laughing it off (as we do with creation science at this point) does not allow it to be critiqued, and simply causes those who would believe it to insulate and compartmentalize those beliefs (as those who believe in creationism do already). Something must be explained in order for it to be critiqued; a negative theory without the positive theory is nothing at all.

As personal evidence in favor of “teaching the controversy,” I actually was taught phrenology and astrology in my psychology class. This is part of what made it a class wherein I learnt the most, especially of knowledge that I still use. In order for psychology to be taught well, my teacher presented a summary of what is thought to make the difference between science and non-science; he pointed out that something can be true even if its non-science, and that psychology-as-a-science would have to meet these criterion. In order to help illustrate what separated science from non-science, it was explained why astrology-as-a-science and phrenology-as-a-science were woefully inept at being so.

Teaching creation science would produce some rigor in the teaching of science in general. Instead of evolution being presented as some dogmatic fact, now it will have to be taught why scientists (generally) believe evolution over creationism. Students will learn to be critical, even of widely-held theories, and so they will be impelled to come up with better understandings of the world than they otherwise would have (assuming they care, which is the contingent of students that should be taught to). If we don’t provide the tools of skepticism and rational criticism, how can science go on? The scientific spirit essentially includes skepticism and rational criticism. And of course, it also shows how criticism is the same as disbelief. I can criticize the theory of evolution and still believe it. A criticism need not lead to the abandoning of a theory; at most, a changing of its understanding and scope. That is how we come to have strong theories which can withstand criticism; because we allow it to be criticized.

So we have nothing to lose in teaching creation science. It’s not likely that children will come out of such a class believing evolution is thoroughly bunk; in fact, I think it likely that creation science will be less believed in that it currently is. Kids aren’t stupid; just because you explain something to them it doesn’t follow that they’re going to believe it. Teaching creation science can only engender critical reasoning and impose on science teachers a more rigorous presentation of science as a method.

Read Full Post »

Polygenism and the Garden of Eden, Part 5

Part 4.

Now in this part, my intent is to answer the question about the relationship between the inspiration of Scripture and the author’s intended meaning. This essentially boils down to the question, If the human author of some Scripture intended X by saying Y, then can the inspired meaning of Y be different, even contradictory, to X? That is, for example, if Paul meant some particular thing, can we get out of what has been written something contrary to what Paul thought?

To get at answering this question, I want to begin with illustrating two examples where we wouldn’t accept our interpretation being bounded by what the human author thought, or didn’t think, his writing meant.

Prophecies in the Old Testament are a particularly good example. It is probably the case in several instances that everything we interpret as being a prophecy about the coming Messiah were not understood to be such by their author. But we’d be okay with that; obviously we can put the intention of meaning in the inspirer of Scripture, God, rather than the writer of Scripture, mere man. God could easily inspire Scripture to mean something apart, above and beyond, what the inspired author thought he was merely writing about.

Another example could be more directly seen in the Patristic interpretations of Scripture, which can be separated into four methods of reading Scripture; the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical. Reading Scripture with these four senses, we can derive a lot more from any single passage than the mere literal the author probably only meant. Yet, just because the author didn’t particularly mean more than the literal, we can chalk up our use of the other three senses to the inspiration of God that forms part of the passage.

That’s very well, you could easily say, but this doesn’t demonstrate we could interpret something out of the passage contrary to what the author meant. So, can and does God inspire meanings into Scripture contrary to the author’s original intention?

Again, I don’t think we need to be too skeptical of this possibility. Allow two considerations for me to flesh this out.

First, it is most likely the case that the author being inspired didn’t understand their writing to be inspired. The writings never make any claim by themselves to be inspired, but only ever have that designation given them by other writings (even if we understand them both as Scripture, this doesn’t demonstrate one particular writing to be self-consciously inspired), with a few rare exceptions (i.e. the Apocalypse of John).

Second, there are places we accept the human author to actually be incorrect, but, in accepting the inspiration of the text, accept even the incorrect claims to have a certain meaning. I think particularly of Ecclesiastes, where the author clearly does not have a belief in the afterlife, even though there is; yet Ecclesiastes is inspired, despite this inaccuracy.

Obviously we can work with a separation between “inerrancy” and “inspiration,” and I’ll point out I don’t find the “inerrancy” title to be very meaningful in light of the meaning I take “inspiration” to have. Inerrancy, as I have accepted it to be used, simply meant “The passage is true provided it is interpreted correctly,” but this isn’t a meaningful statement since it would allow even a basically inaccurate statement to be true provided a true interpretation (i.e. one in line with Catholic dogma) was gotten out of it. Hence, inspiration is a better, and more meaningful, term.

I think these considerations lead us to accepting that an interpretation contrary to the author’s intent is justified by the fact of inspiration.

Read Full Post »

Polygenism and the Garden of Eden, Part 4

From Part 3.

In this part, I will deal with 1 Corinthians 15:21-22;

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

I think there are two relevant parts to Paul’s parallels here. You have 1) the direct parallel between “the single man” Adam and the single man Christ, 2) and the death in Adam and the lift in Christ. We can look at teach separately.

First, there is this parallel between “the single man” of Adam and the single man, Christ. I think we already gave good reason in the last part for not accepting that Adam can’t be a mythical allusion to a group of people even if used, in a dynamic way, as a single man to represent this group. I think that the same case can be made here, of the same principle; there is a mythical, dynamic way that “Adam” as a single man can represent a group of men, without contradiction. Even though Paul’s use of Adam is as a single man in a mythical sense against a single man in a literal sense, the fact that Adam is in the category of myth allows just such a dynamic use, even if we think it to be a flirting with contradiction.

Second, the death of Adam. I think this now finally gives us some positive content to work with, a description of the Adam that says what he is rather than what he isn’t. Is he a single man or a group of people? is an irrelevant question at the moment, at least until we understand what it means “to die” in the sense that is congruent with the story of Adam.

The death of Adam, as recorded in Genesis, goes like this;

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Now let us not force an undue interpretation on the meaning of “when you eat from it you will certainly die.” I don’t think, and neither does a person advocating a literal death meaning, that it must necessarily be read to mean the death would be immediate upon consumption of the fruit. However, we do need to come to an understanding of what it means to die, and I think we can more easily understand this if we approach it philosophically, as Scripture nowhere says “and the meaning of ‘death’ as used in the Garden of Eden story refers specifically to…” making Scripture, well, inconclusive of itself. Therefore, mining its meaning by referring to our natural reason seems to be all we have to make sense of the meaning, and rather than say “The Bible simply has no meaning,” I think we can agree it is better to come to some sort of meaning, since after all why should God care to inspire the Bible if not to communicate to us some sort of meaning?

Now, as to death. Analyzing physical death as opposed to the real possibility of a spiritual death, I think we all understand which is much graver, which is more meaningful. To merely have a physical death is really not what we’re worried about, but it is the question of our spirit, or at least our souls, that underlies our worries about death. How shall I be judged? or at least Will I cease to exist? are the questions of death any person deals with (How will I be reincarnated? could be an Eastern variant). Our worries about death really aren’t worries about what will happen to our body (though we might fear the pain associated with what causes us to die, and I can’t say I wouldn’t choose a painless death) as much as what will happen to our identity and being, aka soul; if we have no soul, then obviously we cease to exist (unless, á la eliminativism, we never existed in the first place), but if we have a soul, there are spiritual possibilities, some good, some bad.

So I think in the light of these ponderings about the true import of death, its a very dull and haggard way of reading the Garden of Eden story to think that “death” is understood as a mere physical thing. Clearly, the worry is a spiritual death!

Now if the death is spiritual, then it follows that the “taking of the fruit” must at least denote some spiritually harmful action, i.e. sin. If the problem is sin, then this is an action that can be done by an individual as well as a group, at least in different forms. The tree of knowledge of good and evil clearly denotes the line between moral and immoral behavior, a line which once crossed cannot be uncrossed. From this, it follows that we still have nothing that warrants us to be yet critical of some forms of polygenism in the story of the Garden of Eden. Original sin, at least as told by Paul here in 1 Corinthians 15, therefore means we could have inherited it from an individual or group Adam.

On my next post, I’ll go on a tangent about Paul’s intentional meaning and inspiration, as I’m sure there will be some responses about that.

Read Full Post »

Polygenism and the Garden of Eden, Part 3

Alright, now we get to the fun part, trying to explain how polygenism and Catholic dogma are not in contradiction to each other. Mind you, there is still a significant amount of mining of revealed and dogmatic texts to be done, but, for me at least, this is more exciting than merely setting up the problem. Oh right, and this is continuing from Part 2.

Now remember, this is the challenge we’re attempting to meet, exposited in the Papal encyclical Humani Generis;

When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own. (italics and bold my own)

Now of course, let me first point out that encyclicals are not instances of Papal infallibility, so we aren’t going to treat this document as fully authoritative, though it still holds some power to shape our opinion. We are trying to answer the apparent contradiction between original sin and polygenism. First, let us go to source material about original sin.

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned. To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!

Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

Romans 5:12-19

Well gosh darn it, we’re barely even out of the gates and this here seems to outright condemn polygenism! There is a great parallel Paul is drawing between the one Christ and the one Adam. At the very least, this might (that is a strong ‘might’) remove the possibility of “Adam” referring a group of first men, squarely pushing us to accept the reality of one ultimate ancestor of all men through whom all are related.

However, I think we need to read more deeply than a literalistic approach of “Well, this said one here, so it must be one!” just to make sure we’re not stealing over possibilities. Now, I’ll note to the reader that I’m working through this for myself as well, so take my thoughts here with some slack; and I’m also being honest, for those worried about me wanting to “throw out the Bible.”

I think what forces us to pause and not so quickly accept monogenism is the fact that the Creation stories are myths. Now this is a bit more complicated, but allow me to draw out the meaning of this.

There is something more dynamic about myths. They can be shaped to relate to more things than just any old narrative, and they can be shaped to have more than one meaning (in fact, sometimes the true meaning is anything other than the literal). Now I’m not imagining the first 11 chapters of Genesis to be nothing but moralistic fables, but the comparison would help us get in the mindset for understanding “one” in an anything-but-literal sense; just as no one believes a fox ever talked to itself about sour grapes, yet everyone understands people will attribute a probable lack of satisfaction to things they aren’t able to attain. (“The Fox and the Grapes”)

“Christ wouldn’t die for a myth!” or so its been put to me by some fundamentalists, but this would be to misunderstand what is meant by the word “myth” when applied to the Creation narratives. Myth is not meant to be derogatory, but to express the very polyvalent potential present in the story of the Garden of Eden. Did a snake really talk to a naked guy? Well, the guy might really have been naked, but the snake part seems more likely to be due to the place the snake had in ancient Near East myths. So, why must the Adam be really one man? If Satan never really took on the form of the snake to seduce a man, but there’s a snake because of the place snakes had in the collections ANE (“ancient Near East”) mythos’, then it follows that the “one man” can easily be a stand-in for “group of men,” if we’re being consistent in reading the story in its, at least probable, culture.

So that renders Paul’s “one” in reference to Adam, at best, non-conclusive. Since the story of Adam is a myth, there is nothing wrong with treating and speaking of the Adam as a single man in this type of exposition (and Paul is one for exaggeration and speaking with philosophical embellishment), even if the literal reality underneath is that “the first man” is really “the first men.”

I’m afraid this series will expand into 10 parts at this rate. Still two more passages in Scripture to go through plus some documents from Ecumenical Councils.

Read Full Post »

Polygenism and the Garden of Eden, Part 2

Gosh, this is going to be such a boring post. From Part 1. I’m sorry guys for abandoning this series, but its just so hard to be motivated about these sorts of posts. What am I writing about? The implications evolution has for the beginning of man in a theological context.

Now I think we can make a sharp distinction between mere homo sapiens sapiens and man, where the first is merely the animal and the second is the enlightened, morally aware and responsible, human being. In other words, if we accept evolution, then we must accept that the first man had parents who were not human. This is not really a controversial claim; in fact, its a very simple solution to explaining man’s soul and giving a basis for God being the creator of man, in line with Scripture’s “Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground [evolution] and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life [special creation], and the man became a living being [the man became man].” (Genesis 2:7)

Another implication of evolution, however, is that species evolve together in groups. For evolutionary speciation to be perpetuated, there must be a group of biologically compatible sexual partners. As we already know, by evolution the first man must have a biological parent, even if that parent isn’t man but mere homo sapiens. For there to be parents, there must first be others of the same race; and from this it follows that, unless some awfully proficient disease wiped out all members of the race save one of the parents before the Adam (first man) was finally ensouled, there were other homo sapiens around at the time of Adam’s ensoulment.

Now what do we make of this? Was there an Adam and Eve, and their offspring mated with other homo sapiens (which seems to be implied by Scripture, if that is the case)? Were Adam and Eve a group of homo sapiens all spontaneously ensouled during some event? Were Adam and Eve particular persons, who were the patriarch and matriarch of the group of people?

Alright, I said this would be a short post. In the next post, I’ll start trying to formulate an answer.

Read Full Post »

Polygenism and the Garden of Eden, Part 1

Msgr. Charles Pope from the Archdiocese of Washington has been doing a series of blog posts about the implications evolution has with Catholic dogma. These have been interesting, and the general theme of his posts is not “Evolution is false because we must read the Genesis Creation accounts as literal history,” à la YEC and fundamentalism, but that evolution can be accepted but not without being careful to make certain distinctions, which are not particularly controversial (as I think, anyway). These boil down to making the emphasis that evolution did not happen by some sort of accident, as if evolution happened and we came around and surprised God with His almighty pants down. Rather, evolution was used by God to fulfill His intent of making man. There has also been discussion around the Catholic blogosphere about the relationship of evolution to the soul, but that’s not what I want to discuss here.

In Pope’s most recent post, he discusses polygenism and its seeming irreconcilable difficulties with Catholic dogma about Adam and Eve and the primordial original sin event. Having taken interest in precisely this topic before, I thought I would come at it again with my new knowledge and reference to other historical methods of interpretation by other Catholic Christians, particularly that relating to the Alexandrian school. Before I go on to discuss possible methods of reconciling the evolutionary polygenic implications with Catholic dogma, I want to first lay out relevant information detailing precisely what constitutes Catholic dogma where we are concerned.

First, I will point to the possible justification of reading the Creation accounts, including those that directly follow (I would presume, since the Creation-Adam and Eve-Cain and Abel-Noah-Babel arc is more or less in the same genre, and is put together to knit a foundational myth for the Jewish religion and Hebrew people).

337 God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine “work”, concluded by the “rest” of the seventh day. On the subject of creation, the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation,²⁰⁵ permitting us to “recognize the inner nature, the value and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God.”

362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that “then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”

With these two I wish to illustrate that the literal truths, in the Genesis accounts, are conveyed by symbolic stories and details. By this I mean to help show that, within the Catholic hermeneutics available to me, I am not limited to literal-historical methods, but can appeal to symbolism as containing a greater meaningful content of the revelation.

387 Only the light of divine Revelation clarifies the reality of sin and particularly of the sin committed at mankind’s origins.

These numbered quotes are from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and are thus not infallible texts, but faithful explanations of the dogmatic teachings of the Church, and so I’m not making my beef with these explanations (indeed, I’m trying to make my beef not with the dogmas of the Church).

Now the challenge I am trying to meet is this;

“[Polygenism] presents a problem for a Catholic who might wish to uncritically accept evolution, for, simply put, we cannot accept polygenism.” (Msgr. Charles Pope)

To back this up he quotes the Papal encyclical Humani Generis;

[T]he Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter…..When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

Depending on what is emphasized here, we are left with two interpretations;

1) Polygenism is in contradiction to dogma

2) Polygenism might be shown to be not in contradiction to dogma

I am choosing the latter, (2), and so this is why I am aiming at developing a way of overcoming this seeming contradiction.

There is one final text I which to quote that I will be dealing with; the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden. The relevant chapters are Genesis 1-4, Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15, and 1 Timothy 2. I daresay in discussing Adam so much I will have to touch upon his relation to Paul’s method of developing his Christology (considering the relevant sections about Adam in Paul’s letters). In my next part I’ll detail the relevant implications from evolution (hopefully a short post!) before moving on to discussing possible ways of reconciling the implications with the dogma.

Read Full Post »

The World’s Possibility as 4D Cube

Or, to use a more accurate title, “The Possibility of a World Presented to God like a 4-Dimensional Cube.”

Often there seems to be a thinking about God and Creation that doesn’t make sense; the idea that God could, or would, only create one world. From here, there is also the assumption that this world could only begin in one way, and that whatever results God wanted to occur would require His constant intervention. For example, in reference to evolution, it is held that Creation and evolution can be reconciled by saying that God “actively guided the process.” This I would reject, not because I believe God did not intend certain ends, but because I don’t see that He needed to be so active in this way.

First, allow me to reference “possible worlds.” I think its rather commonsense that, before something exists, it is at least possible that it exists. For example, before the iPad existed, it was a possibility that the iPad existed. This is just commonsense, is it not?

Now consider our own world as a possible world before its creation. Presumably, God didn’t need to instantiate this particular possible world; He could’ve instantiated another one. Whether He instantiated this one instead of or in addition to is not what I’m tackling right now (though it is something worth thinking about). But before He instantiated this world, it was a possible world, and if a world is a “sum of objects/events pertaining to a single enclosed reality,” i.e. this uni/multiverse, then it follows that not only was this world’s material composition presented to God (i.e. so many of these and those elementary particles), but it was presented to God as a composition of material objects (both of elementary particles and human souls and other composites) and temporal events (both of evolution, our free-willed acts, and miracles).

With this view in mind, it doesn’t seem proper to speak of God necessarily “guiding” evolution along (perhaps this is, though, a possible world in which His intervention in evolution formed an event of the composition of this possible world), but this doesn’t mean we are abandoning the notion that God had certain ends for this world, i.e. the coming-about of humanity, the Incarnation, etc.

This sort of view about possible worlds and Creation I call an “analogous 4D-ism,” not that possible worlds are necessarily presented to God as 4D cubes like apples might be presented to an apple-picker, but that it captures the analogy; God is not choosing only the material composition of His Creation, but the temporal composition as well. (Of course, this doesn’t say all worlds are 4-dimensional, but its a picture for our minds to help us understand.)

Read Full Post »

Pigliucci on Science and Fundamentalism

Massimo Pigliucci, an evolutionary biologist and philosopher of science, was interviewed by Luke in The Pale Blue Dot, Luke’s podcast attached to his blog, Common Sense Atheism. A series of links later, I found this wonderful essay by Pigliucci, which details contemporary problems in culture about the intersection of science and religion. I don’t agree with all that he says, but I can easily agree with the more broad statements he makes. Quotes in green, my words in black.

It seems to me that a lot of the debates surrounding the science–society–religion cultural triangle and the ensuing problems are caused by a failure on the part of scientists and science educators—and hence the media, elected officials and the public at large—to appreciate two crucial philosophical points.

This is a very fine observation of Pigliucci’s worth pointing out. The controversies between science and religion are usually deeply connected to philosophical premises. The philosophical premises in question are not so important as understanding the philosophical distinctions one should make about what science studies, what religion communicates with/about, etc, to see how there is no essential conflict between science and religion.

He later points out that it is right for scientists to argue against religious statements regarding scientific topics (i.e. age of the earth), but that these statements are not religion-qua-religion. I would point out that, on the other hand, religion would be right to argue against statements made by scientists that are on purely religious ground; he doesn’t make this explicit, but it is implicit in his entire essay, and is even what he himself is doing.

One of the basic fears of religious fundamentalists who challenge the teaching of evolution, be they ‘young-earth’ creationists, ‘old-earth’ creationists or the slightly more sophisticated crowd of ‘intelligent design’ supporters (Scott, 1997), springs from the idea that the teaching of evolution sets us on a slippery slope that inevitably ends with atheism. Leaving aside the fact that many scientists can be both religious and believe in evolution, and the obvious point that atheism is a legitimate philosophical position that—in a pluralistic society—ought to receive the same degree of respect as any other metaphysical school of thought, ‘slippery slope’ arguments are logically fallacious (Epstein, 1999). The fallacy lies in the fact that most people—including, alas, prominent science popularizers such as Richard Dawkins—do not make the subtle but crucial distinction between methodological and philosophical naturalism.

This is a wonderful paragraph. I had a discussion with a fundamentalist who styled himself philosophically-studied. When I outlined the method of the natural sciences, and used the word “empirical” to help explain what sort of evidence science considers, he replied with how epistemological empiricism is false. I pointed out the distinction between methodological and philosophical empiricism, but I may as well have tried to explain the difference between homoousius and homoiosis to a fundie-atheist type.

Simply, methodological empiricism does not presume that all that can be known will be known through empirical data, but only considers empirical data as evidence of the empirical. It doesn’t presume to speak about rationalism or the supernatural, because it is self-limiting, speaking only of the empirical.

I insist that the rest is read.

Read Full Post »

Theistic Evolution and Scripture, Part 5

I’ve decided to come back to this series after a break. See the posts before this one if you haven’t already so you have some bearing on what I’m talking about {Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4}.

In this part I want to answer the question

What then did Jesus mean by reference to Creation if it didn’t occur as told in Genesis?

This question is rooted in the understanding that, if Jesus is God, then Jesus knew everything. In His discussions with the people of His day, He never corrected them on saying “Oh, Creation didn’t really happen the way as told by Genesis,” or anything like that.

Now, I don’t want to get into the controversy over kenotic theology or two-minds dualism (one mind human, one mind God, and limited information transfer between the two), so let’s just take it for granted that Jesus knew everything, since my explanation will also work for Jesus-as-a-man-didn’t-know-everything models as well.

So, was Jesus lying to His audience by not correcting them on the correct history and explaining how Genesis could be read only allegorically? I don’t think so.

At most, it can be argued that Jesus was alluding to what His audience understood; the stories told in the Hebrew Scriptures. An allusion doesn’t amount to a particular agreement (or disagreement) with what is being alluded to. Allusions are used help more easily transfer a complex idea in a simpler way by explaining it as something like something that people already understand. If I were to reference Jekyll and Hyde, you wouldn’t have to take this as my believing the story really happened, but as some sort of explanation about how one person had two personalities that were morally opposed to each other, or something like that. When Jesus references Creation (or Jonah), His Jewish audience will understand what He’s talking about, and so more easily see how what He’s teaching relates to what they already understand.

But doesn’t Jesus need to be entirely truthful in His explanation? Doesn’t it seem He’s lying to His audience if He didn’t take time to explain how Genesis was meant to be read allegorically? Again, I don’t think so. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis for a wonderful insight in a book of which I can’t remember-which-it-is, “Jesus didn’t come to answer all our questions.” Jesus came to save people by dying on a Cross; He didn’t come to explain the theory of evolution, Leibniz’ Principle of Indiscernibility, or quantum mechanics. As such, His speeches don’t need to be read as advocating a literalist interpretation of YEC, when it can be understood that when He says “In the beginning, it was different,” you have to understand the meaning the Jewish audience understood, not force on it some anachronistic (and overtly unliterary, and ungracious) reading only concerned about the division of scientific and spiritual truths. If you understand what the Jews understood to whom Jesus was talking, or the  understanding that the Evangelists meant for their particular audiences, then you understand adequately what needs to be understood, and this understanding wouldn’t include an advocacy of a literalist reading of Genesis (or Jonah).

Read Full Post »

Theistic Evolution and Scripture, Part 3

This post will be dedicated to laying out the necessarily Christocentric nature of any reading of Scripture, giving a common foundation between theistic evolutionists and creationists.

First, I would like to reference a certain mistake I find predominant in arguments creationists make for creationism to theistic evolutionists. They often make the argument that;

If you don’t believe in the literal historical narrative of Genesis, then how do you believe that the Resurrection of Jesus is literal? It seems that by ridding of the necessity for the historicity of the Creation account, you would also be ridding of the necessity of the historicity of the Resurrection. There is an inconsistency present between your view of Creation and the Resurrection.

This is, I will grant, not an entirely irrational question or premise to suppose. After all, both the account of Creation and the account of the Resurrection are in Scripture; if I admit that Scripture doesn’t need to be historical to be theological, then why can’t the Resurrection be read as a ‘myth’ the same way as I would read the Creation story?

The problem with such equivocation is that the Creation and the Resurrection (referring to these as accounts of Scripture) are different things, and Christianity makes different emphasis of them. To make this most eminent, consider that we call ourselves “Christ“-ians, not “Creation-as-related-in-Genesis”-ians. Our faith is rooted in Christ, not in Creation. Creationists are a subset of Christians, not Christians a subset of Creationists.

This is an important note to make. There is an order to what we believe. I believe in Christ, therefore I believe in the Church, therefore I believe in the Bible. It doesn’t work the other way; in fact, such an order of belief is incoherent. As Christians, our religious beliefs are rooted in Christ. Christianity is Christocentric; the truth of Christianity rises and falls with the person of Christ.

As I pointed out in my last post in this series, if Christ did not really rise from the dead, then there is no proof that He really was God. If Christ was not really God, then our sins could not really have been forgiven. If Christ was not really man, then again, our sins could not really have been forgiven.

On the other hand, if Jonah never really existed, then there is no real consequence to our belief in Christ.

In this way there is an asymmetry. If someone denies that this asymmetry exists, then they can’t claim to be Christocentric in their Christianity, at which point they would be missing the point of Christianity.

Read Full Post »