Book Write-Up: Let There Be Light

Mark Leonard.  Let There Be Light.  WestBow Press, 2015.  See here to buy the book.

Let There Be Light is a young-earth creationist science fiction novel.  It focuses on two scientist friends: Bill, an atheist with a Jewish upbringing, and Michael, who presents Bill with creationist arguments and arguments that are skeptical of human-caused climate change.  Bill invents a time machine and ends up shortly before the time of the Flood.  He observes that dinosaurs and humans co-existed, meets Egyptians and learns how and why the pyramids were built, and gets trapped in the Flood.  How will he get out of this?

Let’s start with the positives.  The book was enjoyable.  Bill and Michael were likeable characters, and they were given a back story, which allowed them to appear real and developed.  The book also advances arguments: that the atmosphere was different prior to the time of the Flood, allowing people to live longer and throwing off conventional dating methods;  that fossils of supposedly different time periods have been found together; and that mountains were lower in the time of the Flood, meaning that the Flood was not exactly covering Mount Everest.  In presenting these arguments (however incorrect), the book at least was giving readers something to consider.  The military is upset by Bill’s time machine, and a crusty colonel gives legitimate reasons to fear time travel.  There were vivid scenes in the book, as when Bill looked outside his time machine and saw waves depositing fossil layer on top of fossil layer.  Even after Bill becomes a creationist, he believes in some form of natural selection.  And, notwithstanding the book’s climate-change denialism, Bill makes a robust case for taking care of the environment.

Now for the negatives.  The book would have been better with footnotes, particularly for the claim that fossils from supposedly different time periods have been found together.  There could have been a greater spiritual element.  Bill’s conversion was somewhat rushed, and there were very few references to why Noah was building the Ark and what that said about the character of God; the book lightly touched on whether God wants the truth to be overly evident to people, and how some will not want to believe the truth even when they know it is the truth, but the spiritual element of the book could have been developed more.  There was a materialistic character who thought Noah’s construction of the Ark was a waste of time, and he was an asset to the story, yet (except perhaps for the king of Egypt) the characters were not particularly wicked, as Genesis 6 depicts the antediluvian age as being.  And Bill’s defense of environmentalism was somewhat spoiled by his claim that Christ will come back when things get too bad.

As far as the book’s arguments go, responses to them are out there.  Talk Origins has an “Index to Creationist Claims” that succinctly responds to several of those arguments. The book also presents everyone speaking Hebrew prior to the Flood, which is likely unrealistic.

In terms of whether there were contradictions in the book, the book alleges that conventional dating methods are unreliable, yet they were only a few millennia off when Michael used them to locate Bill in time; one would expect greater discrepancy, the way some creationists talk!  The book claimed that there are cases in which fossils from supposedly different time periods are found together, yet it also held that, generally-speaking, less developed animals are found in the lower layers and more developed animals in the upper layers.  This may not be a contradiction, however, since the book presented different fossils being juxtaposed together as an exception.  The book maintains that the animals in the lower and upper layers were contemporaneous, as the developed animals were able to rush to higher ground.  A response to this creationist argument is that there are fossils of developed animals that are rather deep in the ground and fossils of marine animals that are higher up, and that one can observe development in marine animals from one strata to another.

This book is entertaining, with a compelling story.  In terms of prose, the book is clear, well-organized, and well-written.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through BookLook Bloggers.  My review is honest!

Book Write-Up: How I Changed My Mind About Evolution

Kathryn Applegate and J.B. Stump.  How I Changed My Mind About Evolution: Evangelicals Reflect on Faith and Science.  Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2016.  See here to buy the book.

How I Changed My Mind About Evolution contains reflections by scientists, theologians, pastors, and biblical scholars about their journey with the creation-evolution controversy.  The contributors include Scot McKnight, Tremper Longman III, Francis Collins, John Ortberg, N.T. Wright, and others.  Most of the contributors wrote their essays specifically for this book; a few essays appeared in other sources and have been reprinted in this book with permission.  

Most of the stories are about how an author of an essay initially interpreted Genesis 1-2 literally, but his or her exposure to evolution and other scientific ideas challenged his or her Christian faith.  The authors varied on how open-minded their religious background was and when in their life they converted to Christianity, but most of the essays overlapped in that they dealt with how the authors changed their mind about evolution: they went from disbelieving it to accepting its truth, while still maintaining their Christian faith.  An exception to this pattern was the essay by N.T. Wright.  Wright’s essay was not about changing one’s mind about evolution, but rather it compared American responses to evolution to British responses.

The essays got better as the book proceeded.  The earlier essays referred to books that might be useful to people on a similar journey, and they had endearing stories, but the later essays were better because they got into more scientific meat, while still being accessible to the layperson.  For example, Daniel M. Harrell said: “I tried to preach about how entropy was a consequence of the fall, but physicists in my congregation were quick to correct me on that.  Had there been no entropy in the Garden, Adam and Eve would have been up to their necks in bacteria and bugs” (page 126).  Rodney J. Scott said that he used to believe that similarities among animals testified to a common designer rather than evolution, and he likened that to similarities among automobiles.  He says on page 162: “This illustration was actually more compelling in those days, but as I’ll mention below, insights from the genome projects make it less compelling now.”

Occasionally, essays in the book offered theological reflections on evolution or scientific insights.  One author compared the scientific view that order came from randomness with Christian beliefs about God’s sovereignty in the face of human free will.  A few essays wondered why God would wait millions of years before finally creating life on earth, and one author said that God takes God’s time.  

A question that I wish more authors had addressed is why one should become a Christian.  They seemed to assume the truth of Christianity, and they tried to show by various means how evolution can be consistent with Christianity, or at least not inconsistent with it.  But why believe in Christianity?  Why not conclude that Genesis 1-2 contradicts modern science because the Bible was written by human beings rather than God?  What makes the authors of this book think that Christianity is true?  Even though most of the authors told stories about how they came to faith, they did not wrestle with the question of why Christianity is true; rather, they assumed it.  There were a few incidents in which authors came close to saying why they thought that Christianity was true: one appealed to his experience and said that God continued to work in his life, even after he accepted the truth of evolution; another appealed to a physicist who said that the cosmos looks like it developed with human beings in mind.  Overall, though, they did not explain what it was about Christianity that made them want to believe in it, amidst the challenges posed by science.

This is still a good book, though.  Those with similar struggles can read it and feel less alone.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.    

Movie Summary: A Matter of Faith

I recently watched the 2014 Christian movie, A Matter of Faith.  See here to watch the trailer.  Familiar faces in the movie include Harry Anderson, who played in the 1980’s sitcom Night Court, and Clarence Gilyard, who played in Matlock; Walker, Texas Ranger; and the first two Left Behind movies.

The movie is about a young woman, Rachel Whitaker, who goes off to a secular university to study biology.  There, she takes a class that is taught by Professor Kaman (played by Anderson), an evolutionist and an atheist.

Unlike the atheist professor in God’s Not Dead, Professor Kaman is much more irenic and hopeful in his worldview.  His approach is to attract flies with honey, not vinegar.  He gives students a “C” just for showing up to all of his class sessions.  He uses humor and visual aids (i.e., the rubber chicken and the egg).  He is optimistic about the direction in which evolution could go, as he notes that people run faster today than they did in the past.  He is not against people looking to faith for comfort, but he is happy when his students “think for themselves” and question conventional wisdom.  He did, however, perform one act of intolerance when he first joined the faculty: he got a creationist biology professor, Professor Portland (played by Gilyard), fired for teaching creationism.

Rachel is open to Professor Kaman’s concepts, and that concerns her father, Stephen.  Stephen, notices that she has not looked for a church yet, and he learns that she has not been reading her Bible.  (He left money in it, then the money fell out of the Bible when he later opened it, showing that she hadn’t been reading it.)  Stephen visits the university to meet with Professor Kagan, and Professor Kagan challenges him to a public debate over evolution vs. creationism.  The university regularly holds public debates, and Professor Kagan’s department is up, so Professor Kagan has to find a topic.  Stephen is reluctant to be in a debate, since he has no experience doing that.  What’s more, his daughter, Rachel, does not want him debating in front of the school, since that could embarrass her.

A fellow student, Jason, a Christian, works for the school newspaper.  Jason gives Stephen books to prepare him for the debate and suggests that he contact Professor Portland, who refuses to help Stephen because he is bitter about being fired.  Jason also reaches out to Rachel, telling her that Professor Kaman is wrong, and encouraging her not just to “add” Jesus to her life, but to submit to Jesus.  This is a spoiler, but we learn later that Jason and Rachel crossed paths years before, when they were kids.  They were at the lake, a coin was on the ground, and Jason took the coin from Rachel.  Jason’s dad used that as an opportunity to teach Jason that he was a sinner who needed a savior, and Rachel’s dad used that as an opportunity to teach his daughter that we need a savior because we deprive God of the glory and obedience that God deserves.

The night of the debate arrives!  Professor Kaman has his students attend.  People from Stephen’s church arrive.  Stephen, in his opening address, essentially says that what exists needed a cause, and that the complexity and beauty of the universe could not have just happened.  Professor Kaman in his speech then says that there is laboratory evidence for evolution, and that the fossil record demonstrates evolution and the old age of the earth.  Stephen then asks Professor Kaman about God, and, echoing Freud, Professor Kaman argues that people made up God out of their insecurity about life and death and their desire for ultimate justice.  Professor Kaman then asks Stephen what proof Stephen has that the Bible is true, and Stephen replies that he does not have proof—-he just has a sense that the Bible is true.

Then Professor Portland enters the debate!  He was sitting in the audience, which was unknown to Stephen.  Stephen lets Professor Portland take his place in the debate, and Professor Portland gives a speech.  Professor Portland says that he doubts that people invented God, for many would prefer not to believe in a God who would tell them how to live their lives.  Portland says that the laboratory results showing that organic matter can come from what is inorganic is not an argument against design, but rather for it, since someone intelligent, the scientist, was conducting the experiment.  Portland states that there is an absence of transitional forms in the fossil record.  Portland then acknowledges that Kaman could come back with counter-arguments, and that Portland could then counter Kaman’s arguments.  According to Portland, evolution vs. creation is a matter of faith.

Portland also critiques how he himself handled the issue as a biology professor years earlier: he was proud, he said, and he tried to teach students to believe in creation, when he should have presented students with both sides and encouraged them to acknowledge and follow the ramifications of their positions.  Portland prefers the creation model, however, both because it makes sense to him, and also because it has better ramifications (i.e., hope).  Portland then apologizes to Professor Kaman for harboring bitterness against him all those years.

Professor Kaman is crestfallen after the debate, whereas he is usually energetic and talkative.  One can tell that he is questioning whether he was right to be promoting atheism all those years.

Also, there is the sub-plot about a student trying to seduce Rachel.

I’ll stop here, for now.  Sometime next week, I may share my reactions to the movie.

Book Write-Up: Dinosaurs, by Dr. Tim Clarey

Dr. Tim Clarey.  Dinosaurs, Marvels of God’s Design: The Science of the Biblical Account.  Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2015.  See here to buy the book.

Tim Clarey is a young earth creationist, who serves at the Institute for Creation Research.  According to his profile at the ICR’s web site, he has a Ph.D. in Geology from Western Michigan University.  He was also an exploration geologist for Chevron, and he taught geo-science at Delta College in Michigan.

Clarey presents a young earth creationist perspective on dinosaurs.  This perspective is that God created the dinosaurs on Day 6 of creation, when God created the other land animals (Genesis 1).  According to Clarey, this means that the dinosaurs were on earth thousands of years ago, not millions, and Clarey challenges the reliability of scientific dating methods that point to an older age for the dinosaurs.  Clarey believes that all of the dinosaurs were originally vegetarian, and that the carnivorous ones became carnivorous only after the Fall of Adam and Eve; these dinosaurs had a vegetarian diet on Noah’s Ark, however.  For Clarey, the dinosaur fossils were the result of the catastrophic Flood in the time of Noah, and this accounts for phenomena better than uniformitarian and evolutionary explanations.  According to Clarey, Noah took some dinosaurs onto the Ark, and Noah was able to fit them on the Ark because the average size of dinosaurs was about the size of a bison, and Noah took the bigger ones onto the Ark before they hit their growth spurt; the dinosaurs on the Ark, in short, were not huge, so they could fit.  For Clarey, humans and dinosaurs inhabited the earth at the same time, and this is evidenced by stories about dragons and representations of creatures that look like dinosaurs.  Clarey believes that dinosaurs became extinct after the Flood: before the Flood, Clarey argues, there was a higher concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, and that suited the cold-blooded dinosaurs, but the environment was not as warm after the Flood.  Clarey also criticizes evolution in the book: he states that there is no evidence of transitional fossils when it comes to dinosaurs, and he disputes the idea that dinosaurs evolved into birds.

That is Clarey’s perspective.  Does he try to support it?  He does.  He argues that organic material found in dinosaur bones, and carbon-14 dating, indicates that the dinosaurs are thousands, not millions, of years old, since organic material would not last for millions of years.  He believes that phenomena demonstrated in the fossil record—-animals dying suddenly (and at various stages of life), dinosaurs being mixed with marine creatures, footprints indicating that dinosaurs were fleeing from something, and fossils of herds found together, etc.—-are consistent with a catastrophic Flood.  In arguing against the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs, Clarey notes differences in the breathing apparatus between birds and dinosaurs, and Clarey also states that “Birds with real feathers are found in rocks much deeper and buried before the most birdlike dinosaurs” (page 125).  In conventional science, deeper in usually earlier, so, for Clarey, the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs fails even on conventional scientific grounds.

Did Clarey interact with other points-of-view, or alternative explanations?  He did refer to alternative explanations.  He mentioned the view that the carbon-14 dating of material in dinosaur bones may be due to corruption of the sample.  He said that scientists have proposed ways that organic material could have been preserved in dinosaur bones for millions of years.  He referred to the view that ancient people may have developed their ideas of mythological creatures after finding dinosaur fossils.  He also said that scientists have attributed certain examples of fossilization to local catastrophes (i.e., floods) rather than a single global Flood in the time of Noah.  Did Clarey go into a lot of depth in refuting these ideas, or answer many of the objections to Flood geology that scientists have made?  Overall, he did not, but some of his discussions were more in depth than others.

Did Clarey attempt to provide a young-earth creationist interpretation, or way to account for, the evidence often cited in favor of uniformitarian, evolutionist explanations?  He did, at times.  One argument against humans and dinosaurs co-existing is that human fossils have not been found with dinosaur fossils.  Clarey tried to account for this by saying that humans and dinosaurs lived in separate places: dinosaurs were on the low ground, whereas humans and various other mammals were on the high ground.  Clarey also tried to account for fossil layers, which mainstream science says demonstrate chronological successions of life and evolution over millions of years.  Clarey, as a young-earth creationist, does not think that one fossil layer on top of the other means chronological succession, for he believes that the animals in all of these layers existed at the same time and were destroyed by the Flood.  Clarey sought to explain the fossil layers by saying that the Flood could have buried one ecosystem on top of the other, and that marine creatures would logically be deeper in the ground than creatures that were able to find higher ground in the time of the Flood.  For Clarey, that explains why fossils of marine creatures are deeper in the ground than dinosaurs and mammals.

Some of Clarey’s proposals may be original to himself; many things that he says have been said by young-earth creationists before.  Young-earth creationism is rejected by most scientists, and there are many web sites out there that respond to young-earth creationist arguments from an evolutionist or uniformitarian perspective, and that highlight problems in Flood geology: www.talkorigins.org, www.thenaturalhistorian.com, www.ncse.com, and www.edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com are sites that come to mind.  These sites, and others, provide a lot of arguments and rebuttals, and I will not rehearse all of them here.  Many of them demonstrate that there is more to the story, or more nuance, than what young earth creationists present.  I would like to highlight some anti-young earth creationist arguments that I found particularly compelling.  One argument asks why, if dinosaurs are young rather than old, it is such a rarity that we find organic material inside dinosaur bones?  Another argument maintains that the young-earth creationist view that more developed animals could run to higher ground in trying to escape the Flood does not work, for there are fossils of developed animals that are rather deep in the ground, and fossils of marine animals that are higher up.  Plus, one can observe development in marine animals from one strata to another.

I am not a paleontologist, or even a scientifically-minded person, but, even before looking at the web to see ways that scientists have responded to young-earth creationism, I had questions in my mind as I read Clarey’s book.  Clarey’s book is not just a defense of young-earth creationism, but it also aims to describe the characteristics of various dinosaurs.  One can almost get the impression in reading the book that certain dinosaurs were designed to be meat eaters: their body was structured in such a way that would enable them to catch their prey or to eat meat safely, or the T.Rex’s appetite could only be satisfied by eating quantities of animals.  The information that Clarey presents, in these cases, appears to conflict with his view that the carnivorous dinosaurs were created by God to be vegetarians.  In addition, I would submit that evolution may account for some of the details that Clarey mentions better than design does.  Clarey argues, for example, that an animal having sharp teeth does not preclude it from being a vegetarian, for we know of vegetarian animals that have sharp teeth.  Why, though, would God design an animal with sharp teeth that it does not need?  On the other hand, evolutionists point to animals who have organs or body-parts that they do not seem to use, and they believe that is consistent with evolution.

In looking at the web—-and ignoring the creationist web sites—-I do get the impression that Clarey highlights at least one controversy within the mainstream scientific community, and that concerns the question of whether birds evolved from dinosaurs.  There does appear to be some debate about that within the mainstream scientific community, as some say that certain dinosaurs may have evolved from earlier forms of birds.

I give this book four stars because Clarey does attempt to support his position and to interact with other points of view.  His love for his subject matter was also evident and endearing.  The book may also be a helpful resource on the history of research into dinosaurs and dinosaur characteristics.  Moreover, this book can stimulate thought and research, particularly if it encourages readers to find out about what other scientists think about young earth creationism, the phenomena that Clarey discusses, and the rationales for their positions.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book through Cross Focused Reviews, in exchange for an honest review.

Does "The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan" Agree with John Walton?

I have been reading “Adam and Eve,” which is in The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden.  The book is often known as “The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan.”  It is a Christian work, originally written in Arabic and translated into Ethiopic. Its date is uncertain, ranging anywhere from the fifth century C.E. to the ninth century C.E. (see here, here, and here.)

In reading “The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan,” I was thinking of an argument that biblical scholar John Walton made in The Lost World of Adam and Eve (see here for my review).  Walton argued that the Garden of Eden was God’s sanctuary, where Adam and Eve served as priests for humanity.  By eating from the Tree of Life, within the context of a relationship with God, Adam and Eve could be immortal.  Outside of the Garden of Eden, however, even before Adam and Eve sinned, people and animals killed each other.  After sinning, Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, deprived of access to the Tree of Life, and thus got old and died; the implication may be that they were inherently mortal even before the Fall, but they could extend their lives as they continually ate from the Tree of Life.  Once they were expelled from Eden and cut off from the Tree of Life, however, that possibility was closed to them.

This interpretation is an attempt to reconcile two concepts, or at least to show that they are not mutually contradictory: the Genesis 2-3 story about the Fall of Adam and Eve, and the existence of killing and death for millions of years, even before the date of the biblical Fall, which was only thousands of years ago (if there even was one).  There are many Christians who believe that there was no death before the Fall of Adam and Eve, for Paul in Romans 5:12 states that Adam, by sin, brought death into the world.  Notwithstanding the Christian view that death entered the world only after the Fall of Adam and Eve, numerous fossils appear to indicate that death and killing were around much longer than that, for millions of years.  Is there a necessary contradiction between the biblical Fall story and the existence of death for millions of years?  Walton does not think so, for he proposes a model in which the biblical story is consistent with the existence of death even prior to the Fall.  According to this model, inside of the Garden before the Fall, Adam and Eve were living by partaking of the Tree of Life; outside of the Garden, there was death.

I heard a similar argument on the British radio program, “Unbelievable.”  In the episode, “Is God the Best Explanation for Apparent Design in Nature?”, the host, Justin Brierley, was interviewing Jonathan McLatchie and Cory Markum.  Markum is an atheist and a blogger, and McLatchie is a Ph.D. student in cell biology who believes in Intelligent Design.  McLatchie was addressing the question of how there could have been death prior to the Fall, and, appealing to William Dempski, he suggested that the pre-Fall death was God’s retroactive punishment for the Fall.  Revelation 13:8 states that that Jesus was slain from the foundation of the world, even though Jesus was actually killed later, in the first century C.E.  Many Christians believe that some of the redemptive benefits of Christ’s death were applied retroactively, prior to Jesus’ life on earth and death, which would explain why God in the Old Testament is in a relationship with sinful humanity rather than killing all people for their sins.  For McLatchie (if I am interpreting him correctly), something similar is going on with the Fall: God is retroactively punishing the world with death prior to the time of the Fall.

Walton in his book admits that there is not a whole lot of support for his model in the history of biblical interpretation.  Indeed, the Jewish Book of Wisdom, in Wisdom 2:24, appears to imply that the Fall brought death into the world.  Moreover, Walton does not believe that Adam and Eve were necessarily the first human beings, which would be consistent with what mainstream science and history say about the history of humanity.  The history of biblical interpretation, by contrast, tends to say that they were the first human beings.

Now for the question that the title of my blog post raises: “Does ‘The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan’ Agree with John Walton?”  Is this ancient Christian work an example from the history of biblical interpretation that would agree with what John Walton and Jonathan McLatchie propose?  I have not read “The Conflict of Adam and Eve” in its entirety, but I do notice overlap in what I have read so far, as well as differences.

Allow me to highlight the overlap between “The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan” and what McLatchie and Walton have proposed.  First of all, the “Conflict of Adam and Eve” maintains that God designed the world in anticipation of the Fall.  Even before God made the world and Adam and Eve, God knew that they would sin, and God designed the world accordingly.  In 1:2-4, we read that God created a sea north of Eden in which human beings could wash themselves, for God knew that Adam and Eve would sin and leave the Garden.  In 13:12-13, God said that he made the sun so that human beings could work during the day, whereas they would rest at night.  But there was no day and night in Eden, for it was always light there, and that is why Adam and Eve are struggling to adjust to their new post-Fall reality, in which they have to deal with darkness at night and the blinding sun during the day.  God, prior to creating Adam and Eve, created the sun and the moon knowing that Adam and Eve would sin and leave the Garden.  God fashioned the way the world was with the Fall in mind.  That somewhat resembles what Jonathan McLatchie was saying about God retroactively applying the effects of the Fall to the world before the Fall even took place.

Second, to repeat what I said above, life in the Garden is different from life outside of the Garden.  Inside of the Garden, there is continual light.  Darkness is not present there.  Day and night are irrelevant inside of the Garden.  But day and night do exist outside of the Garden; God, after all, created day and night, the sun and the moon, prior to creating Adam and Eve.  That somewhat reminds me of Walton’s suggestion that Adam and Eve were living within the Garden of Eden, whereas people and animals were dying outside of the Garden.  And what “The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan” presents may be consistent with seeing the Garden of Eden as a sanctuary for God—-a place that is apart from the world, a place that is timeless.

There are differences between “The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan” and Walton’s model, however.  “Conflict” presents Adam and Eve as the very first human beings, whereas Walton does not.  “Conflict” has Cain marrying his sister, whereas Walton appears to lean towards saying that Cain was marrying someone outside of his family (since, for Walton, there were more people besides the family of Adam and Eve).  Walton does not see Adam and Eve as naturally or inherently immortal in the Garden, for their immortality came from eating from the Tree of Life.  “Conflict,” by contrast, seems to believe that Adam and Eve lost something that was a part of their original nature in the Fall: prior to the Fall, they were luminous beings; after the Fall, they were flesh.  In “Conflict,” the Fall of Adam and Eve does have profound natural consequences (or that is presented as a possibility): Adam and Eve after the Fall fear that the animals will no longer be subordinate to them, as they were in the Garden, as if the Fall changed the animals’ nature.  Walton, by contrast, would  argue that the animals outside of the Garden were already killing each other, even before Adam and Eve fell, which would imply that the Fall of Adam and Eve did not change the animals’ nature for the worse.

I do find the areas of overlap interesting, though.

Book Write-Up: Darwin's Forgotten Defenders

David N. Livingstone.  Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders: The Encounter Between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought.  Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1987.

Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders is about evangelical Christian reactions to the theory of evolution in the United States during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  It profiles many figures, including James Orr, B.B. Warfield, and Charles Hodge.

Livingstone essentially argues that, until the early twentieth century, many evangelical Christian thinkers did not object to evolution on biblical grounds.  Some may have believed that there was not sufficient evidence for evolution, or that questions were unresolved.  Some objected to attempts to present evolution as something that undercuts the idea that the earth and life on it had a designer.  But many evangelical Christian thinkers believed that there was no contradiction between the truth of Christianity and evolution.  Some said that the days of Genesis 1 could have been longer than 24-hours and that God could have used evolution as his method of making the different animals.  Some maintained that God creating human beings in his image could have entailed God providing humans with a soul at a particular point in time, meaning that Genesis 1 was not necessarily incompatible with the existence of early man.  In the early twentieth century, however, a greater commitment to literalism emerged, as many Christians in America sought to protect their culture from certain trends.  Interestingly, Livingstone notes that a book by prominent young-earth creationist Henry Morris about scientists who believed in creation actually (maybe unknowingly) favorably profiles scientists who accepted evolution.

From my summary above, some may think that the book rehashes a debate that many already know.  Many of us are aware that there are Christians who try to reconcile Genesis 1 and science by saying that a day could have been longer than 24-hours, or that some (such as Pope John Paul II) posit that God could have put a soul into a form of human beings at a particular point in time.  While the book does repeatedly present people who held to those ideas, it has so much more.  There was the difference between William Paley’s model of design (the divine watchmaker) and other models of design (i.e., did God fashion animals according to their environments or simply use common models for them?  Should we focus on the structure of animals or laws?).  There were those who believed that God performed unique creations throughout history.  There were those who sought to reconcile evolution with original sin, saying that evolution does not necessarily imply progress, or that evolution’s emphasis on heredity is consistent with human beings passing down original sin to their descendants.  Some believed that there were parallels between evolution and Calvinism, since evolution could inspire thought about determinism and freedom.  There were different versions of evolution: Darwin’s model, which saw mutations as random and not necessarily heading in a specific (or better) direction, and Lamark’s model, which held that evolution was innately progressive and that animals could consciously adapt to their surroundings.  (What’s more, according to Livingstone, Darwin actually came to lean towards the Lamarkian model!)  There was the relevance of evolution to racism; while evolution was used to support racism, so was creationism, and some Christian thinkers actually critiqued racism by appealing to evolution.  There was the question of whether Christ could have died for pre-Adamic man or space aliens, as some maintained that Christ’s atonement could have been extended to them, even if they were not involved in the Fall of Adam.  There were people who criticized evolution from a perspective that was not even distinctly Christian; one person did so on the basis of German idealism.  And there is Livingstone’s thoughtful final chapter that reflects on creationism, arguing that creationists raise valid concerns about the application of evolution to non-scientific realms (i.e., politics, philosophy), and referring to an article questioning whether the Left should side with the scientific establishment over creationists, with all that the scientific establishment does that is inimical to its aims.

If I had a favorite character in this book, it was Charles Darwin.  Darwin was someone who had tried and failed at many things in his life, but he met an academic who saw his potential and believed in him.  Darwin was willing to reach out to those who did not entirely agree with him.  And Darwin honestly admitted that his own theory was not perfect and contained unanswered questions at the time (i.e., missing links, the question of how a mutated animal can bring about mutation in the body of animals, etc.), even if he believed that it had enough evidence and explanatory power to be valid.

The book did not really address, as far as I could see, the question of whether evolution was inconsistent with Adam’s Fall bringing death into the world, when death is an important aspect of the theory of evolution.  After all, the evolutionary model holds that there was death millennia before Adam supposedly lived.  Maybe the Christian thinkers did not address such questions.  I will not rule out that they did, though.

Good book!

Book Write-Up: Biblical Portraits of Creation

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. and Dorington G. Little.  Biblical Portraits of Creation: Celebrating the Maker of Heaven and Earth.  Wooster, Ohio: Weaver Book Company, 2014.  See here for Amazon’s page about this book.

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. is an evangelical Hebrew Bible scholar.  Dorington G. Little was pastor of a church that Kaiser and Kaiser’s late wife attended when Kaiser lived in Massachusetts.  Both men contribute chapters to Biblical Portraits of Creation: Celebrating the Maker of Heaven and Earth, with Kaiser contributing the vast majority of them, and Little contributing three.  The book interacts with the topic of creation as it appears in various places throughout the Bible: Genesis 1-2, the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Isaiah, and even the New Testament.

The aim of the book seems to be threefold.  First, it seeks to educate believers about the biblical teachings about creation and the significance of God as creator.  Second, it wants the biblical teachings to have a significant place in current Christian debates about origins.  And, third, it argues that the primeval chapters of Genesis (Genesis 1-11) were intended to be historical, to describe what happened in history.  Kaiser is maintaining this position against theistic evolutionists and Christians and scholars who dispute the historicity of Genesis 1-11, seeing it instead as poetry or myth.  While Kaiser offers a brief criticism of Young Earth Creationism (and renowned Old Earth Creationist Hugh Ross endorses the book), neither Kaiser nor Little really engage Young Earth Creationism throughout most of the book.

A lot of the book, in my opinion, states the obvious: that God is wise, and that God created things.  I cannot say that these parts of the book particularly thrilled me with any fresh insights. I suppose that readers who want to exalt God as creator could enjoy these parts as devotional reading, but they could get the same edification from just reading the Bible.  Another deficiency to the book is what it does not really engage: the scientific arguments regarding evolution, and the debates within Christianity about the age of the earth.

At the same time, the book is valuable because of its engagement with scholarly ideas.  Kaiser argues against biblical scholars who maintain that the biblical writers were relying on Mesopotamian documents or tales, that the biblical authors believed in a flat earth covered by a dome, that Genesis 1:1 depicts God using already existing raw materials rather than creating ex nihilo, and that Genesis 1 and 2 are two different creation accounts that contradict each other.  In making some of these arguments, especially in the appendix (which provides a 1969 article that Kaiser wrote), Kaiser refers to scholars who are not particularly evangelical and thus are not aiming to uphold the authority of Scripture.  Kaiser also interacts with thought-provoking questions, such as whether wisdom in Proverbs 8 is a being (such as Jesus Christ—-you may be surprised by Kaiser’s answer!), and whether the Bible contradicts itself in its assertions about whether the cosmos is stable or will be destroyed.  Kaiser’s arguments range from being unconvincing and unsatisfying to being informative, interesting, and even rather convincing.  In any case, those looking for an alternative scholarly perspective may find Kaiser’s arguments (and his references) well worth the read.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Book Write-Up: The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

Mark A. Noll.  The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.  Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans/Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994.

I first learned about this book at a graduate school Intervarsity meeting that I attended.  It had a guest speaker, and she was talking about faith and academia.  In the course of her talk, she mentioned Mark Noll’s book.  Someone from the audience clarified what Noll believed the “scandal of the evangelical mind” was: that there was not much of an evangelical mind.  The point here was not that evangelicals are dumb, but rather that the American evangelical sub-culture has neither done a lot of rigorous thinking nor contributed significantly to the world of academia.

I have wondered for a while whether or not I wanted to devote my time to reading this book.  I thought that it might be dated.  Not only are we now approximately twenty years after the time that Noll wrote this book, but it also seems to me that a number of evangelicals are within academia.  This is true in biblical studies, but also in the natural sciences.  I was curious about whether or not the book was still relevant.  I then read a blog by someone who had a Pentecostal background, and he attested that the book helped him immensely.  He is a young adult: he was probably a small child when Noll’s book first came out!  Yet, what Noll had to say resonated with him, due to his religious background and his longing for a Christianity that would honor God with the mind.

Noll’s book was more nuanced than I expected.  It’s not the case that evangelicalism was completely outside of academia, even when Noll wrote.  After all, Noll quotes scholarly evangelicals!  Noll acknowledges that evangelicals have participated in academic biblical studies, theology, and philosophy (though, on philosophy, Noll seems to be arguing that evangelicals are not contributing anything distinctly evangelical, but are resting on the work of other versions of Christianity, such as the Dutch Reformed, who have differences with evangelicals on such issues as the emphasis placed on conversionism).  Noll does not believe that dispensationalism is particularly rigorous intellectually, contending that it does not make a habit of interacting with other ways to interpret the Bible, and yet Noll does note that evangelicals are in biblical studies, while giving his opinion that the evangelical contribution to theology has been better than the evangelical contribution to biblical studies.

Of particular concern to Noll is the dearth of evangelical contributions to social and natural sciences.  Whereas Protestant Christianity, including the Puritans and Jonathan Edwards, reflected on how Christianity can speak to the way society should be, American evangelicalism has largely backed away from this.  It turns to end-time scenarios and conspiracism rather than thoughtful reflection about why the world is as it is, and how Christians should address it.  Noll does identify what may be changes in this current, such as the religious right and left, but he is not sure where they will lead.  On the natural sciences, Noll laments the growing influence of young-earth creationism, contrasting that with the openness to science that existed among earlier American evangelicals or fundamentalists, including such conservative Christian heroes as B.B. Warfield.  Noll is also discouraged by the lack of evangelical contributions to literature.  Noll mentions Frank Peretti’s Darkness books, but he does not appear to care for them, contending that they disregard the complexity of human nature in favor of some spiritual warfare model.  The overall problem, according to Noll, is that many American evangelicals choose not to engage the world.  More than once, Noll calls their approach “Manichean,” as if they embrace dualism in their withdrawal from the world.

To what does Noll attribute this scandal of the evangelical mind?  Well, he mentions a variety of factors.  Revivalism coincided with a zeal that did not exactly promote the life of the mind.  Noll also appears to believe that American Christians hastily adopted democracy and capitalism without a whole lot of reflection, as a way to fill the void in American society after America seceded from the British empire.  The Scottish Enlightenment’s influence on the United States also played a role, according to Noll, and it seems to me that the role was two-fold.  First, by emphasizing knowledge through intuition more than Scripture, the Scottish Enlightenment was contributing to forces against which many American evangelicals would rebel, leading them to retreat from the world and wait for Christ’s Second Coming.  Second, the Scottish Enlightenment’s emphasis on intuition of self-evident truths would still impact American evangelicals in that it would discourage them from rigorously trying to figure the truth out: after all, they intuited it!  This is my understanding of Noll’s beliefs about the historical significance of the Scottish Enlightenment, and I am open to correction on this.  I should also note that, on some level, Noll has problems with American evangelical Baconianism: its modernist attempts to pick out truths in the Scripture to convey absolute truth about the world.  For Noll, such an approach disregards the historically conditioned nature of both the interpreter and the texts that are being interpreted.

For Noll, a way out of the scandal is to exalt Jesus Christ: to recognize that Jesus Christ did not forsake the world but became incarnate and died for it.  Therefore, Christians should be interested in the world and what goes on in it.  Noll also promotes a Christocentric approach to Scripture, thinking that this would discourage the prophetic speculation in which dispensationalists engage.

In my opinion, Noll was probably on to something.  Yet, I have reservations.  First, I do not think that Noll was entirely fair, for, while I can see Noll’s point that young-earth creationism in focusing on the Flood resonated with dispensationalists who believed in a coming catastrophe, I do believe that young-earth creationists can appreciate nature, which is a far cry from rejecting the world around them.  Second, I question whether a Christocentric approach to Scripture is beneficial to the life of the mind.  It strikes me as reductionist, and I believe that it could ignore the complexity and original contexts of the Hebrew Bible’s writings.  While I do believe that dispensationalism is a rather flat approach to Scripture, I wonder if it can have insights that could encourage the life of the mind in terms of biblical interpretation.  Noll notes a dispensationalist belief that Scripture serves not just to foreshadow Jesus but to glorify God, and perhaps this is how it seeks theological significance in the various ways that it believes God has dealt with humanity.  Maybe such an insight can be reconciled with attempting to theologically deal with the diversity and historically-conditioned nature of Scripture.  Third, while I admit that many dispensationalist views on current events are simplistic and us vs. them, I believe that they should be engaged within intellectual dialogue.  Rather than dismissing conspiracy theories about the UN or knee-jerk Zionism, engage them, as much as you can (assuming the dispensationalists want a dialogue, which may not always be the case).

I do not know what Noll currently believes, but I wonder: Are things better now than they were when Noll first wrote the book?  I would say “yes,” in areas.  Biologos is an evangelical attempt to address and interact with science.  While I would not label evangelical fiction as “literature,” I do believe that, on some level, it acknowledges the complexity of human beings.  There are more evangelicals who are politically progressive.  And yet, many of the phenomena that Noll criticizes still remain, and that is probably why the book continues to resonate with certain people.

Book Write-Up: Coming to Peace with Science, by Darrel R. Falk

Darrel R. Falk.  Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds Between Faith and Biology.  Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2004.

I would like to thank InterVarsity Press for sending me a review copy of this book.  Click here to see InterVarsity’s page about it.

Darrel Falk is a professor of biology, and he is also an evangelical Christian.  This book contains his reflections about his own attempts to bridge those two worlds, and it promotes tolerance within the church towards different views on origins.

I would like to make three points about this book.

First of all, the book has a lot about science.  The book is especially helpful in that it clearly explains how we can know that the earth is old and that evolution has occurred, and it presents lucid answers to young earth creationist objections.  On dating methods, fossils, and the second law of thermodynamics, Falk’s presentation is excellent.  I found chapters 5-6 to be rather difficult, however.  His overall point in chapter 5 was that animals around the world have a common descent yet have features that fit their environments, and Falk argues that evolution is more consistent with the evidence on this than the view that God performed a special creation of all species, or that the species evolved from a set number of “kinds” that God created.  Chapter 6 was about genetics.  Falk was making important points in these chapters, but I was getting lost in the details of some of Falk’s discussions, and I think that he should have organized them better, especially for us non-scientists.

Second, the book is about Falk’s personal spiritual journey.  Falk says that, earlier in his Christian walk, he was afraid to learn about biology because he feared that doing so would undermine his faith.  This may puzzle some people, who might ask: if he was so sure that Christianity is true, why would he have feared learning new things?  But, on some level, I can actually understand where his younger self was coming from: Falk wanted to grow as a Christian, and he did not desire any discordance or confusion in his worldview.  Fortunately for himself and others, he chose to wrestle with hard questions, and to write his thoughts in this book.  Another story Falk told that I appreciated was about how he decided to start going back to church so that his children could have the same positive church experiences that he had growing up.  He was initially reluctant to attend church because he did not know if people at a conservative church would accept him, a scientist with views that challenge young-earth creationism.

Third, the book contains Falk’s reflections about theology and the Bible.  On the one hand, Falk tends to treat Genesis 1 as figurative, one reason being that he believes that the science contradicts a literal interpretation.  Atheism does not appear to be on the table for Falk because he genuinely believes that he has had a spiritual experience, and so he maintains that the Bible is true in some way, even if it is not always literal.  Falk appeals to the existence of figurative language in the Bible and also the views of Augustine, John Wesley, and John Calvin.  On the other hand, Falk seems to maintain that Genesis 1, on some level, communicates what actually happened.  He notes, for example, that God in Genesis 1 “lets” things happen, which is quite different from God taking an active, micromanaging role in creation, and is consistent with letting nature take its course in the development of plants and animals, with God’s involvement (somehow).  I did not think that Falk’s theological reflections were always consistent, yet I respected what he had to say as a pilgrim trying to make sense of science and religion.  I also appreciated some of the passages that Falk quoted near the end of his book: C.S. Lewis’ statement that the layperson with a literal view of God and a process theologian essentially worship the same God, and conservative Christian James Orr’s statement that, even if Genesis 1-3 are not literally true, the fact is that there is sin in our world, and we need to be healed.

Falk’s book was an enjoyable, albeit a sometimes daunting, read.

Spiritual Lessons from David's Life, and Ken Ham's Possible Evolutionism

For its Bible study, my church is going through The Unbreakable Promise: God’s Covenants with Abraham, Moses, and David, With Michael Rydelnik.  Last night, we did the first lesson about David.

What I appreciated most was the spiritual lessons that Rydelnik was mentioning on the DVD.  First, Rydelnik was saying that David was more qualified than Saul to be king because David in challenging the Philistine Goliath was putting his regard for God’s reputation and honor above his own personal safety.  The king of Israel was to be Israel’s champion, fighting her enemies, and Saul was not doing that when Goliath was taunting Israel.  Saul was afraid, but David put his regard for God’s honor above his fear.

I like this lesson because it is about honoring someone greater than myself.  Someone in the group, whom I call “Joe,” said that he did a search of “forty days” in the Bible, for forty days was the amount of time that Goliath was challenging Israel.  Joe concluded that forty days often relate to testing: Jesus was tested in the wilderness for forty days, the spies in Numbers who brought back the report were gone for forty days, and Jonah predicted that Nineveh would be overthrown after forty days.  According to Joe, God during this time was testing people or giving them an opportunity to look inward.  In I Samuel 17, God was watching to see what Israel would do: would Saul step forward as Israel’s champion?  If not, God would demonstrate that David would be the more suitable candidate for kingship.

A professor of mine once said that we should not look for deep meaning in biblical numbers, for they are probably tropes.  Granted, I am not sure if forty days always means testing.  When God flooded the earth for forty days and forty nights, what did that have to do with testing?  But I do not want to take off the table the idea that numbers in the Bible may have some theological significance.  I want to go more deeply into the Bible to get more profound concepts, not fewer.

Second, Rydelnik was saying on the DVD that David’s flight from Saul was an opportunity for David to learn lessons that he would need as king: lessons of leadership, of compassion, etc.  David led men while he was on the run from Saul, and he had opportunities to show mercy to Saul.  I like this lesson because it says that times of apparent exile can serve as opportunities for us to learn lessons, or to become prepared for the task ahead.

I was thinking about a sermon that Tim Keller gave about the David and Goliath story while I was listening to Rydelnik’s points.  Rydelnik seemed to be mentioning spiritual lessons that we should apply, whereas Tim Keller made another point: that we should identify, not with David, but with the Israelites whose champion David was.  Because David defeated Goliath as Israel’s representative, Israel could reap the blessings of security from Philistine rule.  Similarly, Christ as our representative defeated sin and death on our behalf.  I like this passive way of looking at spirituality, as leery as I am of Christological interpretations of the Hebrew Bible, and yet it does not have to be passive, necessarily (as Tim Keller would probably acknowledge).  If God indeed brought us blessings, could that not motivate us to have an active faith: to be grateful rather than grumbling, to see people as beloved of God, etc.?

After the study, we were briefly discussing creationism.  A couple of people in the group were talking about a radio segment that they enjoyed about God’s creation.  It was about God’s animals and some of their strange, unique features that helped them to cope and to survive.  They thought these features demonstrated divine design.  The thing is, after watching the Bill Nye-Ken Ham debate on creation yesterday, I wonder if Ken Ham himself would attribute these animals to evolution, in some manner.  Ham does not believe that millions of species were on the ark, but rather that millions of species descended from a mere thousands of kinds.  In this scenario, even some of these strange animals that my friends were talking about came about through evolution, rather than as a result of God performing a special creation of each new specie that would come along.  At least that is my impression: Ken Ham seemed to acknowledge microevolution.

I’ll stop here.

My Thoughts About the Nye/Ham Debate

I watched the two hour and forty-five minutes debate between TV “science guy” Bill Nye and young-earth creationist Ken Ham.  See here for NPR’s summary of the key points of the debate, and also to watch the debate itself.  Here are some of my thoughts.  Please keep in mind that I am far from being a science person, so please be gentle in your criticisms.

1.  The debate would have been much better had each side presented its arguments from science, and then the other side would have been given an opportunity to respond or to rebut.  Instead, what happened was what followed: Nye Gish-galloped by presenting a whole bunch of arguments in his first presentation, whereas Ham did not have the time to respond to all of them; Nye was cheerleading about how the U.S.A. should not fall behind in science and thus should rigorously acknowledge evolution and the old age of the universe; Ham appealed to the Bible as an authority, as if that would convince someone who did not hold his religious presuppositions; and Ham name-dropped published, educated scientists who are young-earth creationists.

There were times when both were presenting significant arguments pertaining to science that should have at least been addressed by the other side, but they were not:

—-Nye asked how trees that are older than the alleged date of the biblical flood survived the flood, since trees normally don’t survive floods.  Ham did not respond.

—-Nye argued that it would have taken a lot of time for the millions of species there are today to have developed from the thousands of species/kinds that were allegedly on the ark, and that the span between the time of the Ark and today is not sufficient for that.  Ham did not respond.

—-Nye disputed Ham’s claim that animals before the Fall were vegetarians by noting that lions have teeth, which indicates they were always meat-eaters and never vegetarians, and Ham responded that there are vegetarian animals that have sharp teeth.  Nye did not respond to that.

—-In arguing that dating methods are unreliable, Ham pointed to a scenario in which a tree was encased in basalt, and the basalt was dated millions of years older than the tree encased within it, which is puzzling.  Nye did not understand that Ham was arguing that the tree was encased in basalt, and thus Nye’s argument against Ham on this point appeared rather ineffectual.

—-In response to Nye’s question of how Ham could reconcile the travel of starlight over a long distance with a young universe, Ham appealed to “the horizon problem.”  Nye did not respond.

—-Nye mentioned 680,000 layers of ice, arguing that this indicated 680,000 years (since a layer of ice is presumably laid each year), and he asked how Ham would reconcile that with a young earth.  Ham appealed to catastrophism as an explanation for how the layers could have developed within a short time-span.  Nye did not respond to that argument.

I’m not saying that Ham’s arguments were good.  This post explains why Ham was off-base in his basalt-and-tree argument, for example.  Still, it would have been nice had they responded in more detail to each other’s arguments, or had the format been more conducive to that sort of interaction over scientific substance.

2.  One of Nye’s prominent arguments was that evolution and the old age of the universe need to be acknowledged for the U.S. to do well in scientific advancement.  Ham, however, was distinguishing between a historical science that purports to describe the past, and the kind of science that looks at present realities.  Ham’s implication seemed to be that the U.S. did not need to accept evolution or the old age of the universe to make scientific observations and to invent things; after all, Ham was showcasing a young-earth creationist who contributed to the development of MRI technology!

Nye, in my opinion, did not sufficiently detail how evolution or acknowledgment of the old age of the universe could contribute to technological development.  Don’t get me wrong: he’s probably right about the earth’s natural past.  Nye, after all, presented more and better scientific arguments than Ham did, overall.  But Nye should have detailed the practical ramifications to evolution and the old age of the universe.

2/15/2012 Links

1. Mason Slater on his blog is featuring a YouTube clip in which Peter Enns is interviewing N.T. Wright on the question of whether the Bible should be interpreted literally. What stood out to me in Wright’s response was his characterization of Genesis 1 as a story about the earth being a temple for God. In the ancient Near East, a temple would be built over a period of time, and that culminated in the image of the deity being brought into the temple. In Genesis 1, the cosmos is being fashioned over a period of time, and that culminates in the image of God—-man and woman—-inhabiting it.

I’ve heard the argument that Genesis 1 is related to the concept of temple, but I did not really understand it until I watched that clip of N.T. Wright. But I wonder if that argument is relevant to the question of whether or not we should interpret Genesis 1 literally. Is Wright saying that Genesis 1 is not a literal, historical account of creation but a metaphor, as the cosmos is being compared to the temple? Is his point that we should go with the meaning of the story—-that God made the cosmos to be a temple for himself and his image—-rather than assuming that the story itself is what really happened? Does he believe that P did not regard his creation account as what really happened, but was simply telling a story to convey a theological point? If so, my question is this: Couldn’t P have thought that he was writing what actually happened and that the cosmos was a temple for God and God’s image?

2. In a comment under her post, Silence is not the answer, Sarah Moon links to an article by Peggy McIntosh that defines and illustrates white privilege. Reading that article reminded me of a couple of things.

First of all, when I was a student at Harvard Divinity School, I had to attend discussion sessions on the issue of white privilege. The facilitator concluded one session by saying that, if we don’t ordinarily think about our race or gender or sexual orientation, then we are most likely a part of the privileged class. I admit that, ordinarily, I don’t think about my race. I don’t have to be worried about being stopped by a cop because of the color of my skin, or being looked at suspiciously when I go into a public place. But people who look different are regularly reminded that they look different, and that they are a minority.

Second, I thought about David Nilsen’s last three posts about his daughter from Guatemala, and how people who ask about her or talk to her highlight how she is different, whereas David wants for her not to have to feel out-of-place (see here, here, and here).

3. My church is starting a new Bible study tonight. For six weeks, we will be going through Margaret Feinberg’s Scouting the Divine: My Search for God in Wine, Wool, and Wild Honey. I’ll blog through this study, the same way that I blogged through my church’s study of Tim Keller’s Prodigal God. To be honest, I’m having a difficult time getting into Feinberg’s book and the workbook that goes with it, both of which are packed with detail. (The workbook is practically a book in itself!) But I won’t be surprised if this study turns out to be a blessing, and blogging through it will hopefully help me to internalize some things that I learn, as did my blogging through Tim Keller’s Prodigal God.

A Distant Origin

There are some episodes of shows that I can watch over and over again. One of them is "A Distant Origin," which is an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. In "A Distant Origin," there are intelligent descendants of the dinosaurs in the Delta Quadrant, a far off region of space in which the the Federation vessel Voyager happens to be stranded. These creatures are called "Saurians." According to their doctrine, they were the first race to emerge in their particular area, which gives them the right of dominance. But a Saurian scientist named Gegan holds a different view. According to him, the Saurians are not natives to their region at all but were descended from beings of another planet, namely, Earth. For him, the Saurians were originally intelligent dinosaurs who fled from Earth in a space ship in order to escape catastrophe.

Gegan discovers human bones that have an almost identical DNA makeup to that of the Saurians. In Star Trek: Voyager science, humans and dinosaurs are related because they both came from a common ancestor, so that explains the similarity. Gegan learns that there are other humans on a nearby ship, Voyager, so he kidnaps Chakotay, a scientist and the ship's first officer. Although Chakotay doesn't like being kidnapped, he agrees to help Gegan in his goal: to convince the doctrinal council of the distant origin theory.

Gegan has to stand before the council because of his heretical beliefs, and the hearing turns out to be a sham. The council is not interested in the truth but rather in enforcing the prevalent doctrine. Chakotay tells the council that it has revised doctrine before in light of new scientific findings, but the chair is not convinced. She says that the distant origin theory disgusts her, for it presents her race as a bunch of weak creatures crawling out of their planet in a struggle to escape. Chakotay responds that he looks at it differently. For him, the Saurians were the first intelligent life on Earth, and they survived in the midst of terrifying creatures. They managed to discover space travel, and they boldly and courageously set out into space not knowing what they would encounter. Chakotay admonishes the chair not to turn her back on her race's true heritage of bravery and exploration.

Well, the chair is not convinced, and Gegan is forced to retract his beliefs. But Chakotay gives Gegan a globe and expresses the hope that he will one day visit Earth.

This episode makes me think about creation and evolution. For me, creation grants more dignity to humanity, whereas evolution presents a picture that (quite frankly) troubles me. In my view, the idea that God created people in his own image is a doctrine that ennobles human beings. By contrast, the notion that we are descended from pond-scum and had to fight to survive promotes meaninglessness and a "dog-eat dog" contempt for the weak. I am aware that scientists point to evidence for evolution, and what they say deserves a lot of thought and consideration. Still, even if evolution is true, I don't know how to construct a meaningful existence on the basis of it.

But I can picture Chakotay telling me that I'm looking at it all wrong. Actually, evolution ennobles humanity. We have learned to survive, and that tells us something about our strength. And, in our struggle for survival, we have learned to embrace certain concepts that can help us on our journey. Morality ensures that a community can thrive, and a dependence on the supernatural helps us get through the problems of life. Morality and religion give us meaning in life, and that assists us in our continuing survival. Consequently, evolution can co-exist with a regard for the weak and a belief in God.

Still, even if evolution can coincide with a noble view of humanity, the picture appears to idolize human beings. It emphasizes what we have learned and accomplished, but it doesn't necessarily glorify anyone above and beyond ourselves. Can morality be solid if it comes solely from ourselves rather than an external authority? But, then again, perhaps we can say that God has allowed us to learn, grow, and make mistakes in our pursuit of survival.