Some Christian friends of mine are PhD students in one of Michigan State University’s science departments. They recently told me about the stir the November 1st Origin Summit is causing among their colleagues and about their tension in how to respond. The Origin Summit is a one day conference being held at MSU arguing for creationism and setting out to debunk evolution. There are debates going back and forth amongst their non-Christian scientist colleagues on if they should aggressively confront those putting on the conference or if they should just ignore them so as to not draw the attention the creationists are looking for.
This saddens me as a follower of Jesus in so many ways.
Do I start with how there are multiple views of creation within orthodoxy and that those who know proper hermeneutics clearly understand that a 7-day, 24 hour day, young earth creation account is not the only view a Bible-believing Christian can hold about creation?
Or do I start with the attacking, mocking, arrogant, prideful (sinful), little-man-syndrome method that these creationists are using to promote their conference?
Or do I start with how these creationists are acting as if their message about the age of the earth is the gospel itself?
I’m so sad.
Let’s start with some facts about Genesis (pasted and modified from a post I did a while back entitled, “Should We Read Genesis Literally?”)
What is typically lost when we read Genesis is the foundational approach needed for reading any book of that Bible and that is the essential question: What was the original author’s purpose for writing this book?
Pop quiz:
Do you know who wrote Genesis?
Do you know when it was written?
Do you know who it was written to and why?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you cannot read Genesis accurately and biblically. If we ignore the author’s original purpose for writing a book and we simply read it for the purposes we want, we are reading in an unbiblical way.
Moses and his scribes wrote Genesis in approximately 1450 B.C. Did you know Genesis was written 650 years after the time of Genesis 12’s Abraham? And who knows how many years after the time of Noah, Adam, and Eve? It was not a newspaper written for you this morning by Adam, Noah and Abraham, so don’t read it that way. It was written as a sermon to a specific congregation, who had just gone through some very traumatizing life experiences.
God revealed the truth of Genesis to Moses and his scribes after the Hebrew people had been freed from 400 years of slavery in Egypt. They were miraculously rescued from their Egyptian captors via the 12 plagues and the parting of the Red Sea. These people had been slaves for 400 years, had no identity, and worshiped the Egyptian gods. They were 5-7 generations removed from Joseph, the last character of Genesis. These people had assumed that God had abandoned them and forgotten about them. They had no idea who they were, or what their purpose going forward was.
So God gives them Genesis to tell them these things.
He tells them who made them, where they came from, and what their purpose is. He tells them who He is and what their identity is as his image bearers. These are the reasons Genesis was written. It was not written to tell us the age of the universe, what the fossil records mean or if there were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark or not. Why would a non-scientific people who had no clue who they were or if God even cared about them anymore care about any of these scientific arguments? Genesis was not a science book dropped out of heaven to a group of ex-slaves, it was a sermon about how God wanted to bring order to their chaos.
To read it any other way is to read it on our terms, not on Moses’ terms. And if we aren’t reading it on Moses’ terms, we aren’t reading it on God’s terms.
At the end of the day, science and faith answer two very different sets of questions:
Science can tell us what things are and how they operate.
But only faith can tell us who we are, why we are here, and what our purpose is.
Neither one is meant to answer the questions of the other and we would be so much more productive (let alone accurate) if we left things this way. Combative posturing like the Origin Summit make it so scientists don’t even want to consider what the Bible actually has to say them.
Outside of bad hermeneutics and telling the Bible what you want it to say, a much more damaging problem arises from the hardline creationist view. When one teaches the only interpretation of Genesis 1-3 is that the earth is a few thousand years old, was created in 7 literal 24 hour days, and that evolution is false, the message of creation begins to get confused with the message of the gospel itself. The gospel being (1 Corinthians 15:3-4) that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. This is what we are to be evangelizing as Christians, not how old the earth is.
The Origin Summit website posts the following text at the bottom of their homepage. This is a screenshot:
Do you notice how the Origin Summit is pitching their donations? They are trying to get potential donors to think that they are “reaching the unreached” if they donate. A clear call to evangelism. But evangelism to what? To Jesus? To a saving faith in the blood of Christ to take away our sins? To repentance and falling in love with Jesus? Or to a young earth and a belief that evolution is false?
This honestly makes me sick to my stomach.
It’s not just the contents of the screenshot, it’s the mindset behind this stuff. That the Bible can be proven by making truth claims on it that it never claims for itself and that somehow through this combative argument of “proof”, a non-believer is going to then take the humble step of surrendering their life to Jesus.
Or how the entire attitude of the event is arrogance, pride, and mocking. Seen in such photos as:
Or in their childish calling out of Michigan State professor Dr. Robert Pennock:
Even if you are a staunch creationist and you’d consider evolutionists your opponent, or even your enemy, when does the Bible ever tell us we are to mock our enemies or that we will convert non-Christians through prideful arguments and “challenges”? It sounds more like a challenge to fight at the recess flagpole rather than anything that resembles the model of Jesus.
Talks at the Origin Summit include: Blind to the Obvious, The Big Bang is FAKE and Hitler’s Worldview.
Sounds like a great strategy to “reach the unreached.” I don’t know what people like more than being insulted with comparisons to Hitler, calling them blind to what’s obvious, and telling them the theory they believe (along with the vast majority of top level scientists everyone) is all-caps-FAKE.
So if anyone in the scientific community at Michigan State is reading this blog, I want to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for misguided efforts by Christians. I’m sorry for the pride and arrogance. I’m sorry that the Church has time and time again failed to represent Jesus to you. There is no excuse for this. I pray and hope that you will experience the true love of Christ and that you can disassociate this event on your campus from that.
And to creationists, I’m not saying you can’t hold your view or that it’s not a credible view. I’m saying you need to drop your weapons and see the Bible for what it is, not what you’re trying to make it into being. With this comes a large dose of humility that God didn’t intend for us to know everything, especially about Genesis 1-11. Converse with love, gentleness and respect. And never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever confuse the gospel of Jesus and its power to change the human heart with your personal view of how the earth was formed.
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I agree with most of your article. It is very well written. However, faith and science cannot be so neatly separated. Both attempt to answer the question “How do we know what is true?” (Epistemology). Alvin Plantinga, a Christian and a philosophy professor, has shown that the starting point for our epistemology is ultimately a matter of faith. The core of this debate is over what (or who) we have faith in. Unfortunately, neither side is willing to look at that question.
Good point Sean. It reminds me: I think often we make “atheist” and “scientist” synonyms in these conversations. Whereas a scientist who is a Christian, or even someone like me who is not a scientist professionally, but is in wonder at the intricacy & complexity of science, can look at science as a way to get to know God more. The more intricate microbiology is and the more expansive the universe is becomes a method to be in more awe of our Creator, rather than some sort of proof that He doesn’t exist. And I agree with Plantinga’s point. That’s a good point to bring up. Everyone has faith in something/someone. An atheist has faith. Indirectly related, I think a very important part of the conversation is for us to stop associating “atheist” with “scientist” and vice versa.
“But only faith can tell us who we are, why we are here, and what our purpose is.”
No. I can get answers to these questions from science.
Hi Bjorn, thanks for your comment, I really appreciate your perspective. Please know I don’t say this to be argumentative, but I say it as someone who wants to learn from someone with a different perspective from me. Can you talk about how you get those answers from science and what answers science gives you? And I think related to what a previous commenter (Sean) wrote, do you feel it requires faith for you to believe those answers? I definitely learn better when I hear from people with different perspectives and worldviews than mine. Thanks again for chiming in Bjorn.
Possible answers:
Who we are: Animals that share common ancestry with all other living beings on Earth.
Why we are here: Because Earth happens to be a place where natural processes were conducive to our origin and subsequent evolution.
What our purpose is: There is no purpose that we do not ourselves decide upon.
According to the evidence we have from science, there’s no afterlife, no deity who created us, and no one besides ourselves to give our lives meaning.
We can, however, choose to make very meaningful lives out of what we’ve got, like flourishing, loving, helping others, being happy, having experiences, improving ourselves, finding beauty, etc.
I don’t have any faith; I require evidence to believe in those answers.
(If you want to talk more about faith, please define it.)
Bjørn Ø
All 3 are the same question and seem to imply a maker. What is a hammer, why is it here, what is the purpose? Hammer, to hammer, and hammering.
It seems there are different sciences that should be distinguished, because I agree with Bjorn that in the realm of some human science no faith is required. It seems along the lines of the philosopher Vico’s verum factum principle that the true is the made, or the rule of the true is to have made it, but it follows that the mind perceives itself, it does not make itself.
In the science of math no faith is required to say the distance from point a to point b is minimaly a straight line, because humans invented points and lines as a construct to use as a tool. There is a difference between that science and other sciences where we apply those tools to things we did not make like animals, planets, and atomic nuclii.
Perhaps one could define faith as taking something to be true that we have not made ourselves.
I think this is a very helpful quote Adam.
I think your definition of faith is helpful, but has some limitations to it. I think your distinction between different sciences is perfect though. With the definition of faith, I guess a limitation I see is that there are a lot of things we didn’t make that we know are true based on proof — take something like photosynthesis. We didn’t make plants, but we can study them and know certain things are true about them, which doesn’t require any faith, as it’s something observable that is repeated over and over again. Maybe faith comes in when it’s no longer something observable, such as the afterlife, as I mentioned in my reply to Bjorn–we are all taking a leap of faith when it comes to the afterlife because we won’t know for sure if there is one or isn’t one until we get there, because we haven’t been able to observe it.
But I guess there are observable things that we will still conclude different things on. A Christian observes the stars and sees evidence that there is a God who created something so expansive, orderly, and beautiful, whereas an atheist sees the stars and only sees the scientific explanation of them. So the Christian is observing and using faith (to explain something he can’t prove) whereas the atheist is using faith that those stars in all of their beauty and expansiveness and orderliness got their randomly (something he can’t prove). Neither one of us can prove our points, but we have faith in them based on how we interpret what we observe.
Noah, this quote really gives away how little understanding you have of how science works.
“whereas the atheist is using faith that those stars in all of their beauty and expansiveness and orderliness got their randomly (something he can’t prove). Neither one of us can prove our points, but we have faith in them based on how we interpret what we observe.”
I honestly do not mean to be rude, but I have to say that this is pretty dismal. I respect your freedom to believe whatever you want, but I am sad that you espouse views on science when you don’t understand it.
Peace.
Hi Bjørn, thanks a lot for the reply and the dialogue. I think one of the main differences between your worldview and mine is that I see humans as uniquely distinct from animals in that we have souls and animals don’t. I’m not bringing this up to argue, but just to identify where a key distinguisher is that puts us in different places in several other points in the conversation. One critique of your answers is that to answer “What is our purpose?” with “there is no purpose…” isn’t really an answer in my opinion, at least not to that question. I think it’s another way of saying, “We can’t come up with a purpose, so there is none.” Or maybe more accurately, combining the first and second part of your answer, it’s like saying “We can’t come up with a purpose, so you’re on your own.” Science didn’t come up with the purpose, the individual person did based on other factors. Which sheds light on my original statement that science is inadequate to answer certain questions, such as “what is our purpose?” and faith/religion is inadequate to answer other questions.
I guess I’m defining faith as “believing in something you can’t know for sure.” For example, it takes faith for you to believe that there is no afterlife and that when you die, you will simply not exist, rather than go to heaven or hell. You believe this based on evidence, but not on firsthand knowledge or on proof. So it’s still a “leap of faith” and you’ll find out for sure once you die and experience it first hand. So we all have faith about something or in something. And we get to that point of faith based on evidence. I also base my belief that there is an afterlife based on evidence, it’s just a different type of evidence than the type you are looking at. Which I can talk more about, but I’m more just trying to answer your question / make the point that we both are using faith to believe something we can’t know for sure, and we have deduced that faith based on evidence. Does that make sense?
Right, there is the whole soul business. Something that we have no evidence for whatsoever. In your answer to “why we are here” you are assuming there is a deity that tells you what your purpose is. Religions can come up with many answers to that question, and none of them can be verified in any way, so it ends up being a matter of choice anyway.
“believing in something you can’t know for sure.” Yeah, by that definition we all have faith, but then that is everything, and therefore it becomes an empty notion. There is nothing we can know for sure (i.e., 100% certainty). This is how it is in science (and everywhere else). However, if you think of faith as believing in something without any evidence (or sometimes even contrary to evidence), then it is a whole different story. That kind of faith I do not have. The two kinds of knowledge (scientific vs. religious) differ in kind, and are not of the same type at all.
Afterlife: I don’t believe in it because there is no evidence for it. No, I can’t know for sure, but until there is some positive evidence for a claim, there is absolutely no reason to believe in it. Russell’s teapot comes to mind.
Yes, please do tell me what kind of evidence you have for an afterlife.
Hi Bjorn, I apologize for my 3 month absence on this thread. Catching up on all of my blog comments today after 3 months of busyness. I’d like to say 2 things in reply to your last comment, one about evidence and one about the afterlife.
You are defining “evidence” by your own set of rules. You are saying “the only evidence that counts is scientific theory evidence.” So I show you evidence that isn’t scientific theory evidence, but is evidence nonetheless, such as personal testimony or life change or experience or observable evidence, but you reject it because it’s not scientific theory evidence. This isn’t fair. You’ve made up your own rules and then reject anything that doesn’t fall into those rules.
On the afterlife, it’s going to be the same as the ‘soul’, something you reject. A rejection based on the belief that humans are no different than dogs, bacteria, or trees in that we simply live and then die. I could try giving you evidence of people who have died, seen heaven, and were brought back to life. Suspect for sure, but enough of them that it does make one think. I could give you three stories of trusted friends of mine that were with people in the hospital with they died, one that seemed to go to hell, another two that seemed to go to heaven, based on what they were speaking about as they died, their peaceful demeanor, or the way they fearfully clutching their hospital bed. I’m sure you could explain away with some scientific explanation of nerve synapses firing or that these things are inconclusive. But honestly, I think the best argument for a soul, that we are eternal beings, for the afterlife, is that we just know it. Which you probably laugh at, because this conversation must fit into your set of rules and “just knowing it” doesn’t. But I think that humans can look at a cat and know that we were created differently with two different purposes–in fact I think it’s one of the most obvious things in the entire universe. Something so obvious yet some of the smartest people on our planet have managed to miss it; outsmarted by their own smartness. The obviousness that between me and a cat, one of us has the ability to create and the other doesn’t. One has the ability to reason and the other doesn’t. One’s purpose is simply to survive, to find food and to exist, while the other has a purpose greater than this, to love, to share, to emote, to empathize, to be altruistic, to serve, to leave a legacy, to make a difference. One has the ability to know God, the other doesn’t. You said:
I think what shows that humans have souls is that we know we have a purpose. That we look at the complexity of how we are made, how different we are from the rest of creation, and we reject the idea that there is no purpose for us beyond being worm food someday. That at a funeral viewing, we know that the corpse of the person we loved is not that person. That that person (their soul) and their physical body are two different things. That a soul and a body are two different things.
But your second statement of the above quote again shows you have to reject this for you have submitted yourself to a self-made rule that if it can’t be proven by the scientific theory, it must be rejected…a rule that ensures you are always right and everything else can be rejected. Which is sad, because it’s a rule that prevents you from seeing and experiencing so much.
And you’ll likely tell me this is dismal, which you have told me before. I wonder what it’s like to think that so many people on the planet are dismal? Honestly, that would be a heavy perspective to have to bear.
Interesting points. I appreciate your interpretation of Genesis as a Book about theology, human nature, and human’s relationship with God. When I read in Genesis that Cain feared the other people from other cities when God sent him away from Eden, so God marked him to protect him (wait, what? The Bible even shows that all people didn’t originate from Adam and Eve as so many Christian Leaders argued), I realized that even the text itself doesn’t support that it is a science or historical account of physical events. It is about theology and Spirituality, as you show here. I wonder if your techniques though for reasoning with Creationists are the very same ones that you critique in them? Also, I do think that the study of science, truth, origins, creation, and knowledge outside of the Bible can be great building blocks for teaching spirituality, forgiveness, faith, and the gospel. For example, many of the most powerful ways that I have learned how to care for people, support life, or healing public policy do not come from the Bible, but they are means for learning to live the gospel and bring the healing gospel to others. Of course implicit is the idea that the Gospel isn’t simplistically a shallow interpretation of john 3:16 that believing in Jesus, the son of God, gives you eternal life.
Hey John, thanks for the comment! Along with what you said:
…another really interesting verse is Genesis 1:2 which talks about all sorts of things (waters, a deep, darkness, a surface) that were around before God ever said “Let there be light” on Day 1, which is when we always say the Bible says creation began. Again, just shows it wasn’t intended to give a step by step about how everything was made. Interestingly, it never says that when God made water in all of Genesis 1. Funny the things that we just glossed over growing up when reading with a certain lens.
I agree with you I need to be careful not to mock the creationists, I hope I wasn’t doing that. I was just disappointed in their approach and so expressed my disappointment. It’s not even the positions they take that bother me, there would be a lot in there that I agree with or parts I really just don’t get into, but the bothersome thing for me is their posture about the whole thing.
Science is a gift from God, just like mathematics, medicine, technology, etc. They are all things he has equipped us to learn more and more about. The Bible doesn’t give us much about any of these things, and that is okay. But all of these things need Christians becoming experts in them and like you said, using them as ways of living out the healing gospel in front of others.
Also, the Pope recently also stated your similar beliefs on the reason of scripture and Genesis as are shown in this article published in the respected British journal The Independent, titled, “Pope Francis declares evolution and big bang theory are right and God isn’t ‘a magician with a magic wand'” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-francis-declares-evolution-and-big-bang-theory-are-right-and-god-isnt-a-magician-with-a-magic-wand-9822514.html
great article, thanks John. The Pope goes further than I would actually. While I think nuanced forms of evolution can definitely be consistent with the Bible’s account of creation, you still have to make room theologically for a literal Adam. This is because the New Testament refers to Adam several times as the one who brought sin into the world. Some argue that it’s referring to a metaphoric or theological Adam, but if God truly created the world good and without sin in the beginning, there would have had to have been a specific breaking point (the Fall) that actually happened because of an actual person, which is always how the NT writers refer to Adam. this is why I like what is called “the apparent age” theory, which says things were created with age, so all the aged markings of evolution would have already been in effect when God created everything. But this is only one theory. There are others who also account for a literal Adam and consistency with scientific evolution.
I find Lee Strobel’s “A Case for Creation” a helpful, humble investigation on this topic. We can forgive our Creationist activists for being a little too aggressive once-in-while. After all, evolutionists have arrogantly bullied the Christian faithful and our naive youth for a century. Essentially, it takes more faith to believe in evolution than creation, and leads us to hopelessness in life-major factor for the shocking suicide rate among American College students and crime. Too much of modern science is agenda driven and as such is corruptible. We do not have to prove our faith scientifically. Science itself is theoretical. We Are all in a search for meaning and truth. That is where the revelatory Creator encounters us individually and as a community, and find hope to live into.
Thanks for the book recommendation Mark, I haven’t read that one yet but it sounds good. Honestly, I think anything humble is good when it comes to this conversation. I can forgive our Creationist activists, but I still think they need to be called out / I don’t think their actions are excusable. Just because we have been slapped, doesn’t mean we should slap back. For all the resources they are pouring in, I’d much rather they be impactful than simply push people further away from God, which is what happened here in East Lansing.
And great points on the rest of what you said.