When the Bible and Science Agree (And When They Don't)

 Lately there has been some teaching and discussion in my church regarding the "agreement between the Bible and science", focused on a few of the places where the Bible seems to be teaching a scientific truth long before this truth was discovered by science. This is certianly interesting, and perhaps helpful to some who struggle with the reliability of the Bible. But what about when science and the Bible don't agree? I would suggest there are at least two reasons why biblical and scientific data might disagree:

1. Our understanding of the scientific data is incorrect.
2. Our understanding of the Biblical data is incorrect.
3. Both 1 and 2.

What bothers me is that option 1 is generally the only acceptable option, at least in the conversations I've had with the pastors and teachers at my church. There seems to be a basic denial of the the fact that the words of the Bible (biblical data) must be interpreted to be understood.

 When I asked my pastor who gave a sermon on this topic what we should do about the cases where science clearly teaches something contrary to "what the Bible teaches", he answered this way:

 "I believe that where they disagree the Bible has it right. It may take science a while to catch up and has from time to time but I go with the Bible." 

 With all due respect, this seems completely crazy to me. The implication that we can't possibly be wrong about our interpretation of the Bible seems arrogant to me. Now, call me a heretic if you wish, but given the obscure nature of the biblical texts, and given equal time and effort studying the data, might we be MORE likely to be correct in our conclusions about scientific data, than about biblical data?

 Is there some mystical force guiding our interpretation of the Bible, and not of science? Some may reply: "Yes! The Holy Spirit!" But if the Holy Spirit is a significant force in guiding Christians in their interpretation of the Bible, then God is intentionally sowing confusion in His church. The reality is that Christianity has an incredibly diverse array of beliefs (all based on biblical interpretation), and they can't all be right.

 “In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.” -Augustine, in De Genesi ad litteram, 415AD. [source]

"If a position is true, every avenue of reflection ought to point in its direction." -Greg Boyd [source]

Quote of the Day - 9/23/2009

Quote of the day for September 23, 2009:

"I disagree with these experts.  Someone has got to stand up to experts."
-Don McLeroy, Texas State Board of Education chairman, during their debate over Texas state science education standards.  (You can see it here at 0:55)

11. Dealing with Genesis

This is the 11th in a series of posts describing my transition from young earth creationist to theistic evolutionist. In the first post, I described how Alan Roxburgh's 5-phase description of paradigm change describes this transition well, and I have been using his framework to shape this discussion. See the introduction for a list of all the posts in this series.

If you have been following this description of how I became a theistic evolutionist, you probably can see why it was necessary for me to come to a conclusion (even if it was tentative) about the meaning of Genesis: I had been indoctrinated as a child with the belief that Genesis was God's way of communicating to us the process by which he created the universe. This belief was now gone, but the first few chapters of Genesis still required explanation.

I have found it very difficult to write this post. (This is one of the reasons why it has been such a long time between the last post and this one.) It is difficult to write for two reasons. The first reason is that the results are quite inconsequential (in a scientific sense). Although one can glean great insight into the thinking of the original authors and audience of Genesis, the conclusion that the Genesis accounts are not scientific leaves us with a purely theological message.

The second reason this post is difficult for me to write is that there is such a wealth of contextual information about Genesis 1-11 that any attempt to summarize it feels inadequate. Others have done so with great success, and it is not worthwhile for me to repeat their efforts.

For these reasons, I am going to be quite brief in my description of how I dealt with the creation accounts. I'll start by pointing out what I see to be the most significant aspect of Genesis 1-2, the observation that there are actually two creation stories. Next I will briefly discuss these stories' relationship within the context of the ancient near east. I'll end this post by describing some of my conclusions, however tentative.

About My Motive

One note: I will not try to hide my motive. As I have described in previous posts, I had determined that science was correct in its determination of the age of creation, and this was in conflict with my childhood beliefs. Seeing problems with the way young earth creationists read the Bible, my mind was fertile ground for a new system of belief (and method of biblical interpretation) that allowed the coexistence of biblical and scientific knowledge. It is only in retrospect that I have analyzed these new beliefs, and in doing so have gained confidence that they are correct.

Interpretation and Humility

One final thought before I begin: When faced with the seeming conflict between Genesis and science, it is often said (by young earth creationists) that “I just choose to believe the Bible”. I appreciate the sentiment of this statement, but let me expand that statement a bit, so it is plain what it really means. Choosing to believe the earth is young (because that's what the Bible says), despite all the evidence to the contrary, is in a very real way making the following statement:

“I am so confident that my interpretation of Genesis is correct that am willing to disregard the conclusions of every major scientific discipline. I am sure that this ancient text was meant to communicate scientific and historical information, and as a result, I am willing to throw out the observations scientists (many of them Christians themselves) have made about this world.”

I suspect that anyone who, in reference to creation, says something like “I just believe the Bible” or “That's just what the Bible says” is not considering the fact that every word or idea taken from the Bible must be interpreted. We have an interpreted Bible. It seems to me that this should bring an incredible amount of humility to any discussion about what the Bible “says”.

The Biblical Creation Accounts

One of the most revealing aspects of the first two chapters of Genesis is that they contain what is almost certainly two different creation accounts. If you haven't noticed this before, read them yourself: Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 and Genesis 2:4-25. Below is a summary of each. Please keep in mind that my purpose for discussing this is not to present an irreconcilable “problem” with the Bible that forces us to seek alternate interpretations of Genesis. My purpose is simply to show that there are good reasons to suspect that the authors of the creation stories were concerned not with history, but with theology.

Creation Story #1: Genesis 1:1 to 2:3

The first creation story is highly structured and great emphasis is placed on the order of creation. In the beginning, there is nothing. God speaks the universe into existence with a series of commands, i.e. “let there be light.” Gods creative activity takes place over six days. In the first three days, God does a lot of “separating”, and the result of this separating is several “containers” (or structures) which are ready-made for his creatures. The structures created on the first three days are:

Day 1: Day / Night
Day 2: Sky / Sea
Day 3: Dry Land

On days 4-6, God fills these structures with creatures. Notice the parallels with days 1-3: The structures are filled in the same order they are created:

Day 4: Sun /Moon & Stars
Day 5: Birds / Fish
Day 6: Animals & Man

This first creation story ends with the seventh day of the creation week, where God “rests” from the work of creation.

Creation Story #2: Genesis 2:4-25

The second creation story is less structured: First the author describes the creation of Adam, followed by God's planting of the Garden of Eden. In contrast to the first story, the focus is on Adam. God commands Adam not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and then decides that Adam needs a helper/companion. To solve this problem, God creates “all the animals of the field and all the birds of the air” but none are suitable to be Adam's helper. Then God creates a woman, Eve, from Adam's rib, and what follows is the familiar story about Adam, Eve, the serpent and the apple.

Notice that in this second story, there is very little emphasis on the order of creation. It would seem that Adam is created before plants and before animals. To illustrate this, compare Genesis 2 in several different translations: The word “had” is inserted in Genesis 2:8 and 2:19 in several translations, making the order of events ambiguous. In any case, it seems that the author was not interested in giving a blow-by-blow account of how things came into being, but was instead addressing more important questions, like the origin of sin and death.

Different Authors, Different Purposes

These two creation stories clearly were written to communicate different ideas. This is supported by the mountain of evidence that suggests four different sources for the book of Genesis. (See the resources section at the end of this post for more information) The easiest and most compelling example of this is the names used for God: In the first story, God is exclusively called “Elohim” (translated “God” in the NIV). In the second story, God is exclusively called “Jahweh” (translated “LORD God” in the NIV). If you have never noticed this, I highly recommend re-reading Genesis, paying attention to the names of God. Identifying the switch between the various sources (indicated by a change in the name of God) can help in explaining some of the more awkward transitions.

Context of the Biblical Creation Accounts

The context of the creation accounts is that of the ancient near east (ANE). The religions of the surrounding cultures were predominantly polytheistic, with gods in charge of almost every aspect of nature and daily life.

Other creation/flood myths were already in circulation and were familiar to the original audience of the Genesis creation accounts. These myths include many elements common the the biblical creation accounts; two of these myths contain the most stark similarities: the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish.

The cosmology of the ANE was primitive; the earth was seen as a flat disk surrounded by an infinite sea. The sky was believed to be a metal dome, separating infinite water above from the disk of the earth. The stars were thought to be embedded in the dome, and the sun and moon traveled across the dome. It was thought that under the earth stood an infinite freshwater sea, which supplied the rivers and lakes.

These contexts become important when considering the purpose of the creation accounts; even without additional knowledge, it is easy to see the influence of these cultural elements. The cosmology of the ANE is clearly seen in the first creation account, and the religious contexts and creation myths provide a compelling backdrop which helps to understand the motivation of the original authors.

So What's It About?

If the first chapters of Genesis are not chronological descriptions of God's creative acts, then what are they?

Here we see two stories written at different times by different people for different reasons. The authors were concerned with explaining the universe and the state of humanity, and they used common imagery that was familiar to their readers at the time. Their stories use elements from Babylonian and Sumerian creation myths to communicate theological truths, not historical or scientific information. These stories were direct rebuttals to the opposing myths and religions of the time.

Here are a few theological messages that can be seen at a first glance:

There is a God.
There is a single, all powerful God. (Not many gods with various powers, like the surrounding Babylonian culture insists)
Man is created in the image of God
God takes an interest in mankind's well-being
Creation was originally goodWe are destined to fail to live up to our divinely appointed roles
We are fundamentally alienated from our creator

There are surely many more. I don't intend to suggest that the message of Genesis 1-2 can be summed up in a few bullet-points. My point is simply that there is a message, and this message is not scientific.

To me it seems like many Christians who place an incredible emphasis on the historicity of Genesis 1-2 are ignoring the real meanings of this text. They have substituted a counterfeit message, obtained through a short-sighted method of interpretation, in response to a perceived threat from science. As I continued to learn about the contexts of the creation stories, I saw that science posed no threat to my faith. The physical world is just another source of revelation from God, and along with the Bible, we can come to an agreement on the big questions in life. It is important however, to address these questions to the sources that are appropriate for answering each question; Genesis can answer the question “What is wrong with the world?” but was not intended to answer the question “How did the world come about?”

In my next post, I'll continue to describe my experiences in adjusting to a new world that includes evolution, an ancient earth, and an even older universe. I'll describe what happened when I “came out of the closet” and revealed these struggles and beliefs to some of my friends and family.

Let us never throw ourselves head over heels into the headstrong assertion of any one [opinion]. Perhaps the truth, emerging from a more thorough discussion of the point, may definitively overturn that opinion, and then we will find ourselves overthrown, championing what is not the cause of the divine scriptures but our own, in such a way that we want it to be that of the scriptures, when we should rather be wanting the cause of the scriptures to be our own.

-Augustine writing in The Literal Meaning of Genesis [400AD].

10. Dealing with Young Earth Creationism, Part 2 – The YEC Hermeneutic

Dealing with Young Earth Creationism, Part 2 – The YEC Hermeneutic

This is the tenth in a series of posts describing my transition from young earth creationist to theistic evolutionist. In the first post, I described how Alan Roxburgh's 5-phase description of paradigm change describes this transition well, and I have been using his framework to shape this discussion. See the introduction for a list of all the posts in this series.

This is a continuation of the previous post. In it, I described how the motivation for young earth creationism (YEC) does not come from an rigorous and thorough examination of the scientific evidence, but instead arises from a belief that the Bible plainly teaches that creation is young.

From as early as I can remember, I was taught the “fact” that the Bible, when read correctly, plainly shows how (and when) God created the universe. I was taught that Satan invented the idea that the universe is millions of years old, and anyone that accepts the idea of evolution rejects the God of the Bible.

As I said in my last post: In all my years as a YEC, I had assumed that scientists that call themselves young earth creationists were YECs because they had examined the evidence and determined that it agreed with what the Bible says. I was shocked to learn that in reality, the opposite was actually true; YEC scientists believe the evidence points to a young universe because that is what they believe the Bible teaches.

In retrospect, this seem extremely naive. I'm a little embarrassed. It seems pretty simple and obvious to me now. I guess this kind of naiveté comes from being raised in a particular way, and rarely being exposed to ideas that disagree with what one is being taught. This kind of childhood indoctrination is a significant barrier to overcome.

So, at this point I had quite a few questions to answer: Would I reject all of modern science because of what the Bible teaches? Was the evidence for an old earth more important than what the Bible teaches? How do YECs read the Bible? Is that the right way to read the Bible? Does the Bible really teach that the universe is young?

So how do young earth creationists read the Bible? It was obvious to me that a literal interpretation is important, but there is more to it than that. Answers in Genesis president & CEO Ken Ham gives us a clue:

“Let’s be honest – if one just reads God’s Word, without any outside influences whatsoever, one would never get the idea anywhere of millions of years. This idea, which contradicts Scripture, comes from outside of it.” [source]

Ham is suggesting that we read the Bible without considering anything outside the Bible. He and other YECs state that we should read the clear meaning of the Bible, taking it word-for-word, and interpret it without outside influences. They are fond of labeling their reading as the “literal, straight-forward interpretation” or as “Biblical fact” calling all others “anti-Biblical”. They openly equate a literal interpretation with the true interpretation.

This interpretation starts with the principle that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, and as such, is completely free from error in every detail. The words of the Bible are treated as if they have been dictated word-for-word directly from the Holy Spirit, and as a result should be interpreted literally without any consideration for the historical context, genre, or human authors and audience.

The intent is to arrive at an interpretation that is free from outside influences and arrives at a single meaning for the text. This is a noble motive; it provides a seemingly self consistent framework for coming up with only one meaning, supposedly the meaning that the Holy Spirit intended.

Unfortunately, this fundamentalist approach makes the typical modernist assumption that one can read the Bible without subjectivity. This, of course, is completely false; Although one may attempt to rid oneself of all possible biases, we each approach the Bible from within our own cultural contexts.

To me, it seems the ultimate in foolishness to ignore the fact that these words came to us through thousands of years of history, from a people with a different language, culture, history, values, and scientific world view. It seems that the first step in understanding these ancient texts is to determine (as best as one can) the meaning intended by the original author.
Howard VanTill, in a great book called The Fourth Day, quotes this passage from Berkhof's Principles of Biblical Interpretation:

[In interpreting the Bible, one] "must place himself on the standpoint of the author, and seek to enter into his very soul, until he, as it were, lives in his life and thinks his thoughts. This means that he will have to guard carefully against the rather common mistake of transferring the author to the present day and making him speak the language of the twentieth century.”
-Berkhof, Principles of Biblical Interpretation, p.115 (originally seen in VanTill, The Fourth Day, p.18)

Young earth creationists, in applying their fundamentalist interpretation, make this very mistake. This failure to place the text in its original context results in several difficulties which arise when trying to understand the Bible as a whole.

One serious difficulty which arises from a literal interpretation is that it leaves the reader impotent to deal with the contradictions and discrepancies that exist throughout the Bible. Literalists must resort to explanations that push the limits of our credulity, and in many cases they must break their own rules, dismissing the straightforward meaning of the text in favor of a flimsy cop-out.

The greatest of these difficulties, however, is that a literal interpretation completely ignores the historical and human character of biblical revelation. As I discussed in a previous post, I was quickly beginning to see the nature of God's interaction with His creation as primarily that of delegation. God seems to act primarily in the world through his creation. This is especially true for the Bible, which was produced by over 40 different human authors in a huge range of cultures, languages and geographical locations, and with an equally wide range of genres and purposes.

To ignore the historical context of the Bible is to ignore the method through which God communicated these words, and any interpretation which does not take the original author's intended meaning into account cannot be a correct interpretation. Let me try to make this clear: My ascent out of atheism relied heavily on reshaping my view of God's action in creation and in my own life. Any interpretation which refuses to incorporate this view of God's involvement in history (and in the Bible) is completely invalid and utterly useless in helping me understand the God in which I have placed my faith.

So, it had become obvious to me that young earth creationism was wrong for three main reasons: First, its evidence for a young age of the earth had proven completely inadequate. Second, because of the independent evidence from widely disparate scientific disciplines, it required a sweeping rejection of the entirety of modern science. Finally, (and most importantly) the refusal to consider the contexts of the author when interpreting the Bible made it impotent to deal with issues arising from God's pervasive use of humanity in producing scripture.

At this point, the idea that Genesis might not necessarily be a historical narrative (while still containing divinely inspired truth) had been introduced to me several times.  Now that I understood how and why YECs interpret the Bible and how this interpretation fails, I was ready to take a closer look at the cultural and literary aspects of the creation story.

I'll close this post with the words of three Christians (all from vastly different time periods) whose comments are applicable to this post:

“In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.”
-Augustine, in De Genesi ad litteram, 415AD. [source]

“Men today do not, perhaps, burn the Bible, nor does the Roman Catholic Church any longer put it on the Index, as it once did. But men destroy it in the form of exegesis: they destroy it in the way they deal with it. They destroy it by not reading it as written in normal, literary form, by ignoring its historical-grammatical exegesis, by changing the Bible's own perspective of itself as propositional revelation in space and time, in history.”
-Francis Schaeffer, in Death in the City pp. 77 1969. [source]

"The tragedy of young-earth creationism is that it takes a relatively recent and extreme view of Genesis, applies to it an unjustified scientific gloss, and then asks sincere and well-meaning seekers to swallow this whole, despite the massive discordance with decades of scientific evidence from multiple disciplines. Is it any wonder that many sadly turn away from faith concluding that they cannot believe in a God who asks for an abandonment of logic and reason?”
-Francis S. Collins, in Faith and the Human Genome, 2002. [source]

9. Dealing with Young Earth Creationism – Is science really the issue?

Dealing with Young Earth Creationism – Is science really the issue?

This is the ninth in a series of posts describing my transition from young earth creationist to theistic evolutionist. In the first post, I described how Alan Roxburgh's 5-phase description of paradigm change describes this transition well, and I have been using his framework to shape this discussion. See the introduction for a list of all the posts in this series.

The fourth phase in Roxburgh's description of paradigm change is that of transition. In the first part of this transition phase I dealt with the arguments for atheism that had drastically diminished my faith. The second part of this transition phase involved dealing with Young Earth Creationism. This is the subject of this post.

Having grown up being taught (and believing) that the earth, moon, and stars are all 6000 – 10,000 years old, it was quite a painful and confusing process learning about how each scientific discipline paints the same story of the history of the universe. This is a story of immense antiquity: a 13.6 billion year old universe, 4.5 billion year old earth, and a convincing record of the history of life on this planet, showing that all life on earth has come from from a single ancestor.

Although believers in Young Earth Creationism invest incredible amounts of effort to provide “evidence” for their views, I had investigated these claims and found them extremely lacking. Not only were they totally wrong scientifically, but they bordered on deceptive. (I discuss this in a previous post) The final nail in the coffin came via a radio debate featuring YEC evangelist Kent Hovind. His incompetence made me embarrassed to call myself a believer. (I discuss this here)

In a future post, I'll discuss my interactions with the friends, family, and pastors who affected me significantly during this time. During this time, I had a lengthy interaction with one of my pastors (I am a member of a Baptist church). During our discussions he (and others) asked me to take another look at the evidence for young earth. One of the books he handed me was In Six Days – Why 50 Scientists Believe in Creation. As the title suggests, this book contains essays from 50 different scientists describing why they believe the universe and earth are young. (The full text is available here)

As I turned the pages of this book, I realized that this was a great resource: Here I had concise statements from 50 intelligent people who had rejected the scientific consensus on the the age of the earth. I could quickly determine how they had come to this conclusion, and by reading multiple essays, perhaps a common thread would emerge.

I decided to make a list of the reasons these scientists give for their personal belief in a young earth. But as I continued to read, I found this to be grueling; many authors gave similar reasons or evidence, and I was finding it difficult to tabulate everything. Soon I found two incredible resources, the first is an attempt to index every Creationist claim and give a rebuttal. The second is a Creationist's response to each item. Although I didn't consult it at the time, a third resource addresses each of the claims from an old-earth viewpoint:

Index to Creationist Claims
Creationist's Response
Old-Earth Response

Using these resources, it becomes easier to identify a claim, look it up in each index, and make a judgment as to its veracity. In this way, I was able to read each essay, tabulate the reasons given by each scientist, and evaluate the strength of the evidence.

A bit about motive: One might suggest that since I had already come to the conclusion that the arguments for a young earth were extremely weak and misleading, I would simply find what I hoped I would find. Would I simply see that there was a reason to believe in an old earth and stop there? Well, I agree that our preconceptions drastically affect how we perceive any argument, whether for or against our own views. I don't intend to try to convince you that I approached this exercise with an unbiased, neutral mind. That is simply not possible. I will simply describe my experience in investigating these claims. I invite you to do the same. If you come to a different conclusion, I'd love to discuss that with you.

As I read these essays, I noticed over and over again that the arguments these creationists gave were simply “reasons” that didn't stand up to any amount of serious thought. Claims like “The second law of thermodynamics proves that evolution can not occur” or “interpreting evidence is not the same as observation” are so easily dismissed, yet are so common in these essays.
It quickly became obvious to me that in order to be a consistent Young Earth Creationist, one must deny the basic principles of cosmology, physics, geology, biology and paleontology. These disciplines, using completely independent methodologies, have come to an undeniable conclusion regarding the age of the earth, and to claim otherwise requires a sweeping dismissal of all of modern science.

The real issue, however, is not science. The “scientists” of In Six Days don't dismiss the process of science because they have evaluated the evidence and have determined that it shows the earth is 6000 years old. No one would come to that conclusion without an external motive. That motive is the Bible.

In his essay, geologist Kurt Wise describes in an extremely instructive way what is really going on here:

Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand. [source]

Here Kurt says most plainly what all the others were saying: That it doesn't matter what science says, it matters what the Bible says. No matter how much evidence exists against a young earth, creationists will deny that it represents truth, and instead find ways to make science say what they think the Bible says.

In all my years as a YEC, I had assumed that scientists that call themselves young earth creationists were YECs because they had examined the evidence and determined that it agreed with what the Bible says. I was shocked to learn that in reality, the opposite was actually true; YEC scientists believe the evidence points to a young universe because that is what they believe the Bible teaches.

This realization convinced me that it was utterly pointless to continue examining evidence for Young Earth Creationism. The evidence would never convince me, because it is not the reason one becomes a YEC.

So, the next step in understanding Young Earth Creationism was to attempt to understand how YECs read the Bible, and to ask the strange question: Should I abandon science because of what the Bible teaches? This is the subject of the next post.

6. Four Tough Problems

This is the sixth in a series of posts describing my transition from young earth creationist to theistic evolutionist. In the first post, I described how Alan Roxburgh's 5-phase description of paradigm change describes this transition well, and I have been using his framework to shape this discussion. See the introduction for a list of all the posts in this series.


Four Tough Problems

In the previous post I described how my faith lost the battle with science and atheism. The dichotomy had been set up and reinforced since I was a child: Either my faith is real, or evolution is real. I was taught evolution was evil, and when I discovered that it was probably true, my faith went up in smoke.

I'd like to mention a few of the most significant problems that I struggled with in this period of my transition.

The Anthropic Principle

In my first post on this disembedding phase, I described how a large part of my confidence in old earth creationism came from the incredible amount of fine tuning evident in the universe. As I described, this ended up being a significant chink in my armor.

The anthropic principle (when adopted by creationists) states that the properties of the universe appear to be fine-tuned by God to be perfectly suited to support life. This argument is actually quite stunning. There are hundreds of physical constants and properties that, if changed only slightly, would not allow life to exist. God custom made our universe for us! Case closed, right?

Not really. The ironic fact is that the anthropic principle is actually the most easily dismissed argument for God. It's really quite simple: With all the millions of galaxies, stars, and planets in the universe, if life is going to arise, it will happen on the planet with the right conditions, orbiting at the correct distance from its star, in the galaxy with the right conditions for life to arise. In short, we are here because the conditions are right for us to be here. As Stephen Hawking said in A Brief History of Time:

"Why is the universe the way we see it? The answer is simple: If it had been different, we would not be here."

The Demystification of the Universe

Scientific explanations can take the wonder out of God's creation. A sunset can loose some of its splendor when one learns that it is due to particles in the air. It's easy to see why science has become the enemy of many Christians: God seemingly has less to do when he is not painting sunsets. [Pardon my sarcasm]

In the 1600s, while Kepler was developing his laws of motion, the motion of the planets around the sun was explained by angels beating their wings in toward the sun. Today, we don't need to invoke spiritual beings to explain many of the phenomena we experience.

In the words of Stephen Weinberg, in Dreams of a Final Theory:

"Once nature seemed inexplicable without a nymph in every brook and a dryad in every tree. Even as late as the nineteenth century the design of plants and animals was regarded as visible evidence of a creator... Today, for real mystery, one has to look to cosmology and elementary particle physics. For those who see no conflict between science and religion, the retreat of religion from the ground occupied by science is nearly complete."

Or, in the words of Stephen J. Gould:

“The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.”

Every time I learned something new about the universe, my faith became smaller. This is predictable, for when science is painted as the enemy of faith, new and exciting information about our world is credited to Satan, and against God.

Belief & Wishful Thinking

This third issue is a little more personal. As I said in my last post, I had always struggled with my faith, it hadn't felt real to me since high school, and that seemed like ancient history. At one point, I remember sitting in a Sunday School class at my church where our pastor asked the question: “Why do you believe in God?” One by one, each and every person who answered said something equivalent to “I believe in God because I have a relationship with Him.” I had never had a relationship with God.

I was raised in a Bible church with a strong Calvinistic theology, so I was familiar with the teaching that God chooses those whom He wants to be his “elect”, i.e. whom He wants to save. This teaching says that no one is able to believe in Him unless God himself gives them the ability to believe. The thought had come to my mind many times: Is is possible that I am simply not elected by God? Does He simply not want me? Could belief be something that I am just not capable of? I surely wanted to believe, but was finding it harder and harder to do so. I repeatedly begged God to give me faith. When it didn't come, Weinberg's words in Dreams of a Final Theory rang loud and clear:

“The decision to believe or not is not entirely in our hands. I might be happier if I thought I were descended from the emperors of China, but no effort of will on my part can make me believe it, any more than I can will my heart to stop beating.”

Richard Dawkins echoed this thought in The God Delusion when discussing the claim by Christians that we just need to “Believe in Jesus” to be saved. He responded to this by saying “What if I don't believe? Does God want a bunch of fakers?” [a paraphrase]

It seemed like my faith came down to a simple case of wishful thinking. I had a lot to lose: Most of my good friends were from our church, and while I'm sure they would still love me as an atheist, it surely would ruin many relationships. My family would be devastated, and who knew if my marriage would survive. Not to mention the promise of life after death! I certainly had an abundance of reasons to continue “believing” even if I was a faker.

Weinberg captured this thought in the single most devastating passage of any I have read:

“Unlike science, religious experience can suggest a meaning for our lives, a part for us to play in a great cosmic drama of sin and redemption, and it holds out to us a promise of some continuation after death. For just these reasons, the lessons of religious experience seem to me indelibly marked with the stamp of wishful thinking.”

Divine Action

The final issue I'll discuss is the problem of divine action. Christianity teaches that God is intimately involved in our lives, from moment to moment. This is one of the reasons prayer is important, since it can affect the course of our lives.

My problem was that I did not see this action in the world. Do not get me wrong! I had (and have) been blessed in so many awesome ways; My wife is incredible and custom made for me, my closest friends are truly gifts from God, and my family was just starting to grow with the birth of my daughter. The problem was that I could usually see the cause and effect relationships that lead up to God's supposed action. The world looked as if God wasn't doing anything. Anything anyone claimed to be “of God” or an answer to prayer was easily explainable by its natural causes. This is okay, if God is said to act only through nature, but it seemed incompatible with a God who does specific things; a God who is intimately involved with our lives.



So, these are just a few of the issues and ideas I struggled with toward the end of my disembedding phase. By this point, young earth creationism was gone. My faith was all but gone. Disembedding was complete.

The next phase in Roxburgh's description of paradigm change is transition. In the next post, I'll discuss how I tried to make sense of everything I've discussed so far. First, I'll talk about what happened when I shared my struggle with those close to me, and then I'll share my experience as I tried to reconcile my faith and scientific knowledge.

5. A Bit of Light Reading

This is the fifth in a series of posts describing my transition from young earth creationist to theistic evolutionist. In the first post, I described how Alan Roxburgh's 5-phase description of paradigm change describes this transition well, and I have been using his framework to shape this discussion. See the introduction for a list of all the posts in this series.


A Bit of Light Reading

In the process of paradigm change, the third phase (according to Roxburgh) is disembedding. He describes this phase as:

"...when we begin to feel that the current system is insupportable and we begin to disconnect from it - like Dorothy [in The Wizard of Oz] being carried away from Kansas by a tornado."

As I described in the last post, my disembedding process began by shedding my long-held beliefs in a young universe/earth in favor of old earth creationism. This included extensive reading of Hugh Ross' books which left me with a significant interest in cosmology and theoretical physics. I began to read books on these subjects and was fascinated by this new window in to the world.

Bill Bryson's book A Short History of Nearly Everything really kicked things off for me. It was an incredible description of the unfolding of the universe, from the very beginning to this very moment. It gave me an appreciation for the process of science, and helped me understand not only what science says about the history and operation of the universe, but how we figured this stuff out. It helped to whet my appetite for more.

Stephen Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell was next. I was awed by his description of the beginnings of the universe and the nature of time. Brain-bending concepts like supergravity, supersymmetry, p-branes and imaginary time were fun to tackle and I was surprised at Hawking's ability to explain these complex ideas so accessibly.

Richard Feynman and Ralph Leighton's Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! made me want to become a theoretical physicist. Its informal character stood in stark contrast to Hawking's books, but Feynman made the process of pursuing authentic knowledge seem so interesting and important. This, along with another book, Feynman's Rainbow, helped me understand that one can make profound advances in science without leaving ones desk.

I also read a bit more on evolution: Richard Dawkins' spectacularly written story, The Ancestor's Tale traces our ancestry from the present to the past, in an incredibly compelling survey of the theory of common descent. Also, Stephen J. Gould's essays in Evolution and Extinction were vital in understanding some of the nuances of natural selection, speciation and punctuated equilibrium.

Steven Weinberg's Dreams of a Final Theory blew my mind. Half-way through I was ready to pack my bags and head back to grad-school to become a particle physicist. I loved the idea that it might be possible to finally join the worlds of quantum physics (which I had studied in grad school) with cosmology (in which I was beginning to dip my toes) into one complete theory of everything.

Okay, I'm leaving something out. All this exploration of ideas that were previously deemed outright wrong across the board had brought me to the conclusion that I had been duped. The wool had been pulled over my eyes. I now saw that the universe was utterly ancient, and it was fascinating. This previously forbidden territory had opened up countless avenues of exploration, and each one I ventured down turned out to be more exciting and compelling than the next. But there was a profound and dire problem that I had yet to face: I had been taught that all of this was a lie; each exciting detail was in some way a deception perpetrated by Satan. Either the entire picture of the universe that had been painted for me was false in every detail, or my faith in God was a total sham. These two armies had become firmly entrenched in my mind, and it was only a matter of time before the battle would begin.

It didn't turn out to be much of a battle. My faith didn't put up much of a fight.

The first significant blow to my faith came from the final chapter of Weinberg's Dreams of a Final Theory entitled What About God?. In it, he discusses the implications of the search for a theory to describe everything on the existence of God; generally answering the question of whether the final theory will say anything about God, or even prove or disprove His existence. I'll discuss specific ideas in my next post, but I remember spending my lunch hour in the parking lot at my work, devastated by the feeling that my faith was gone. I remember talking myself through the steps that would be required to break the news to my friends and family. It wasn't pretty.

Well, feelings come and go, and apparently so does faith. I regained my composure, walked back into work, and proceeded to live my life. I continued to go to church with my wife, and existed in a state of denial for a while.

I should note that faith had never worked very well for me. I had never developed much of a relationship with God. My personal Bible reading and prayer time had always been boring and seemed pointless. It's easy to see why the battle was almost over before it began.

Curiosity made me pick up The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. [You should be hitting your forehead with your palm right about now...] Although Dawkins' tone was quite off-putting and condescending, I still got his message: I was raised by Christian parents, so I was a Christian. I want God to exist to make myself feel better about death. My faith is wishful thinking, nothing more.

At about the same time I read Bertrand Russell's Religion & Science and Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things. Both reinforced the conclusion I was quickly reaching: My faith was a sham. I was a fake. Faith had never worked for me because it wasn't true! I knew science was right, and Christianity was wrong. Evolution made sense; I saw it everywhere I looked. I was forced to choose between science and God. Science seemed so real. God seemed so fake.

In my next post, I'll finish describing the disembedding phase of my transition from YEC to evolutionist. I'll discuss a few of the specific problems that really bothered me in the reading I described above, especially those which became significant in the later phases of this transition.

4: To Old Earth Creationism via Clark's Gully

This is the fourth in a series of posts describing my transition from young earth creationist to theistic evolutionist. In the first post, I described how Alan Roxburgh's 5-phase description of paradigm change describes this transition well, and I have been using his framework to shape this discussion. See the introduction for a list of all the posts in this series.


To Old Earth Creationism (via Clark's Gully)

Roxburgh describes the third phase of paradigm change, disembedding, as:

"...when we begin to feel that the current system is insupportable and we begin to disconnect from it - like Dorothy [in The Wizard of Oz] being carried away from Kansas by a tornado."

As I described in the last post, my confidence in Young Earth Creationism took a huge hit when I heard creationist Kent Hovind make a fool of himself in a radio debate with evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci. This bothered me considerably, and was enough to overpower my comfortable ignorance and begin looking into the evidence for creationism.

A more profound effect of the rupture of these long-held beliefs was a heightened interest in the world around me. The new possibility of great age was enough to turn an ordinary rock from boring into fascinating.

My wife and I both grew up in Michigan, and we frequently travel between upstate New York and western Michigan. Each trip brings us over the Niagara Escarpment, a raised ridge that is prominent along the QEW expressway in Ontario. The Niagara Falls is also along our travel route, a feature which occurs where the Niagara river flows over the escarpment.

YECs believe that all the geological features of the earth came about as a result of Noah's flood, a theory which they call "flood geology". That had always seemed a little incredible to me: How could this massive step in the earth's crust be selectively carved or deposited by a big flood? How would that same flood deposit the layers into which the escarpment is carved? Even so, I had never had a reason to question these claims.

The new discontinuity in my YEC beliefs prompted me to look up the geological explanation for the Niagara Escarpment. I just couldn't drive up and down along it without knowing how it might have really been formed. I learned that it is the edge of an ancient sea; The remains of microscopic animals that lived in this sea had formed a layer of hard limestone, which has since eroded more slowly than the surrounding rock. Now that made a whole lot more sense. And it was pretty neat.

Also at this time, I had begun to take frequent hiking trips to the gullys that pepper the slopes of the finger lakes region of upstate New York. My favorite was a gully on the south side of Canandaigua lake called Clark's Gully. This is an incredible place. From an unmarked trail, a short 5-minute hike over huge boulders is rewarded with a view up a modest 30-foot waterfall. The sides of the gully rise sharply on both sides, cutting off access to all but the most intrepid. Those willing to climb up the slippery waterfall, or take the "long way" and trek up the steep slope around the gully are rewarded with an incredible array of features; Steep, ribbed cliffs line each side, while huge mossy boulders are placed in strategic positions as if by an interior designer. I know it sounds cheesy, but I left a piece of myself in that gully, and I think that piece may just be fully YEC.




The discovery of this new and exciting worldview (at least geologically speaking) prompted me to look into the next piece of the puzzle: The Big Bang. Whole volumes are written about the evidence for the Big Bang, so this is not the place to regurgitate this information. In short, I was astonished. The evidence is so complete, so compelling, that I became embarrassed for ever believing it was incorrect. I felt lucky that I hadn't shared my anti-Big-Bang beliefs with many of my non-church friends.

While I was learning about the Big Bang, I made another significant discovery: Other Christians exist that believe the universe is old, and that the Big Bang really happened. This is one of those things that I look back on and think: "Well, duh, of course!" But this disconnect with reality is a result of my history; I was taught a single (YEC) viewpoint as a child, and taught that it was the only correct belief, and that anything different (evolution, old earth) is evil and from Satan. Coupled with an overall disinterest in all things spiritual during my college years, I had never encountered another Christian who believed anything other than a recent creation 6000 years ago. This is why the discovery of old earth creationism was a surprise to me.

Hugh Ross is the most outspoken proponent of old earth creationism. I devoured his books: The Fingerprint of God, The Creator and the Cosmos, Creation and Time and Beyond the Cosmos. Ross describes a set of beliefs that acknowledges the validity of both science and religion, including the ancient age of the universe as well as the validity of the Genesis creation account. Typically, this approach inserts large amounts of time in the days of creation in Genesis 1, and proposes a parallel between the things that were created during the seven days of creation and the scientific description of the history of the earth. Evolution is generally denied in favor of "progressive creation" which suggests that God created via fiat miracle at various points in the history of life on earth.

Another aspect of this process that I must mention is this: Old earth creationists are very fond of listing scientific facts that point to an incredible fine-tuning of the universe and solar system to support life. This concept, called the anthropic principle, describes how properties of the cosmos, universe, solar system, earth, and biology are perfectly "tuned" to support life. This interesting and remarkable fact was key in bolstering my confidence, but as I will describe in the next post, ended up being a key chink in my armor in the following few months.

So, as Roxburgh describes, the third phase in the process of paradigm change, disembedding, involves disconnecting from the current system which has failed. As I've described above, the first part of this disembedding process involved embracing old earth creationism. This was basically the same YEC beliefs, with an acceptance of the theory and process of science, the old age of the universe and earth, and a modest change in the interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis. This might seem small, but I felt light-years away from were I was just months before.

But my disembedding process wasn't over. In the next post, I'll try to describe how my new interest in cosmology would lead me to the brink of full-blown atheism.

1. Paradigm Change: Introduction

One of the most significant elements in the story of my faith was my transition from young earth creationist (YEC) to theistic evolutionist. I went from believing that the earth is about 10,000 years old to a complete acceptance of the current scientific consensus on the origin and development of life on earth.

This was not an easy process. It is a very long story. I recently read a description of this process that gives a very accurate framework of this journey. In the introduction to A New Kind of Christian, Brian McLaren presents Alan Roxburgh's teaching on the process of paradigm change. Although it was included in the book to describe the transition from the modern to postmodern mindset, as I read it, I was shocked at how well it described my change from YEC to theistic evolutionist.

Alan Roxburgh, a colleague in the Terranova Project (an initiative to explore how Christian faith will reconfigure in the postmodern matrix), teaches people that this painful process of letting go of life as we have known it and embracing a new life on new terms (the process of paradigm change) typically follows five phases:

1. Stability, when life is fine, current theories explain everything adequately, and questions are few—perhaps like Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz living happily in Kansas

2. Discontinuity, when the old system seems to be working less well—reflected socially in Dorothy’s conflict with her witchy neighbor, psychologically in her ambivalent desire to run away from home, and physically in the approaching thunderstorm

3. Disembedding, when we begin feeling that the current system is insupportable and we begin to disconnect from it—like Dorothy being carried away from Kansas by the tornado

4. Transition, when we haven’t fully left the old world and we haven’t fully entered the new world—like Dorothy newly arrived in Oz, trying to get her bearings

5. Reformation, when we decide to make a go of it in the new world we have entered—like Dorothy setting out on her journey to see the wizard, invigorated with new hope and passion

Of course, while we are going through an experience, we are rarely able to say to ourselves: "Oh, I just entered step 2 of 5." In the midst of paradigm change, our final state seems quite uncertain, and no "process" can be seen. Hence, I can only see retrospectively that the description above is strikingly accurate. It describes very well my change from creationist to theistic evolutionist.

I plan to use the next several posts to describe my journey through this paradigm change. Here are links to all the posts in this series:

1. Paradigm Change: Introduction (this post)

Phase 1: Stability:

2. YEC, Born and Raised

Phase 2: Discontinuity

3. Enter Kent Hovind

Phase 3: Disembedding

4. To Old Earth Creationism (via Clark's Gully)

5. A Bit of Light Reading

6. Four Tough Problems

Phase 4: Transition

7. Dealing with Atheism

8. Dealing with Atheism, Continued...

9. Dealing with Young Earth Creationism
10. Dealing with Young Earth Creationism. Continued...
11. Dealing with Genesis

To be continued..

A Response to "Why I Am Not a Christian" (4/4) - Christianity Predicts a Different Universe

This is the last post in a series of four with the intention of discussing an essay by Richard Carrier entitled Why I Am Not a Christian. In his essay, he presents four reasons why he does not believe in the Christian God. I'll dedicate one post to each of these arguments. Each post discusses one of his four main points:
#1: God Is Silent
#2: God Is Inert
#3: The Evidence Is Inadequate
#4: Christianity Predicts a Different Universe

The fourth reason Carrier says he is not a Christian is that Christianity predicts a very different universe from what we actually observe. He suggests that the universe that we inhabit looks exactly like a universe should look if there were no god.

Right out of the gate, Carrier reveals one of his presuppositions that I think leads to this conclusion:

For a loving God who wanted to create a universe solely to provide a home for human beings, and to bring his plan of salvation to fruition, would never have invented this universe, but something quite different.

Carrier's starting assumption is that of God's purpose for creating the universe - that God created it solely to provide a place for us to live, and to bring about His "plan of salvation". As I've described in the first three posts on this topic, this is short-sighted. Of course, this universe was created to provide us a place to live, and He is in fact carrying out his plan of redemption. But these are not His only (or even primary) objectives. Carrier leaves out the key ingredient: free will.

If you haven't yet read my first post dealing with Carrier's essay, you should do so before continuing. It deals with the apparent fact that God values our free choice enough to allow us to choose to reject Him; to choose to spend eternity separated from Him.

I have chosen to use the words of Kenneth Miller to complete the rest of this post. He says it better than I could, anyway. I apologize for the long quote; if this bothers you, pretend they are my words. I believe every one of them.

Here are the last few paragraphs of his book, Finding Darwin's God, (with a few of my edits):

Science in general, and evolutionary science in particular... reveals a universe that is dynamic, flexible, and logically complete. It presents a vision of life that spreads across the planet with endless variety and intricate beauty. It suggests a world in which our material existence is not an impossible illusion propped up by magic, but the genuine article, a world in which things are exactly what they seem. A world in which we were formed, as the Creator once told us, from the dust of the earth itself.

It is often said that a Darwinian universe is one whose randomness cannot be reconciled with meaning. I disagree. A world truly without meaning would be one in which a deity pulled the string of every human puppet, indeed of every material particle. In such a world, physical and biological events would be carefully controlled, evil and suffering could be minimized, and the outcome of historical processes strictly regulated. All things would move toward the Creator's clear, distinct, established goals. Such control and predictability, however, comes at the price of independence. [This is the world Carrier says Christianity predicts, but...] Always in control, such a Creator would deny his creatures any real opportunity to know and worship him - authentic love requires freedom, not manipulation. Such freedom is best supplied by the open contingency of evolution.

If he so chose, the God whose presence is taught by most Western religions could have fashioned anything, ourselves included, ex nihilo, from his wish alone. In our childhood as a species, that might have been the only way in which we could imagine the fulfillment of a divine will. [This is why, as Carrier describes, early Christians (and todays Creationists) believed in ex nihilo creation.] But we've grown up, and something remarkable has happened: we have begun to understand the physical basis of life itself. If a string of constant miracles were needed for each turn of the cell cycle or each flicker of a cilium, the hand of God would be written directly into every living thing - his presence at the edge of the human sandbox would be unmistakable. Such findings might confirm our faith, but they would also undermine our independence. How could we fairly choose between God and man when the presence and the power of the divine so obviously and so literally controlled our every breath? Our freedom as his creatures requires a little space and integrity. In the material world, it requires self-sufficiency and consistency with the laws of nature.

Evolution is neither more nor less than the result of respecting the reality and consistency of the physical world over time. To fashion material beings with an independent physical existence, any Creator would have had to produce an independent material universe in which our evolution over time was a contingent possibility. A believer in the divine accepts that God's love and gift of freedom are genuine - so genuine that they include the power to choose evil and, if we wish, to freely send ourselves to Hell. Not all believers will accept the stark conditions of that bargain, but our freedom to act has to have a physical and biological basis. Evolution and its sister sciences of genetics and molecular biology provide that basis. In biological terms, evolution is the only way a Creator could have made us the creatures we are - free beings in a world of authentic and meaningful moral and spiritual choices.

Those who ask from science a final argument, an ultimate proof, an unassailable position from which the issue of God may be decided will always be disappointed. [Stephen Carrier included.] As a scientist I claim no new proofs, no revolutionary data, no stunning insight into nature that can tip the balance in one direction or another. But I do claim that to a believer, even in the most traditional sense, evolutionary biology is not at all the obstacle we often believe it to be. In many respects, evolution is the key to understanding our relationship with God.

-Kenneth Miller in Finding Darwin's God [pp. 285-291] (bold emphasis and bracketed text mine)

So it looks like the universe in which we find ourselves (the one described by the current scientific consensus) could be a necessary ingredient for God's plan to create beings free to choose to love him. What does that imply for the Creationist who rejects the scientific consensus of cosmology, biology, and geology? Must they also reject free will? Maybe not, but I have to agree with Miller, the Creationist's god is a weaker, marginalized version of the true Christian God.

A Response to "Why I Am Not a Christian" (3/4) - The Evidence is Inadequate

This is the third post in a series of four with the intention of discussing an essay by Richard Carrier entitled Why I Am Not a Christian. In his essay, he presents four reasons why he does not believe in the Christian God. I'll dedicate one post to each of these arguments. Each post discusses one of his four main points:
#1: God Is Silent
#2: God Is Inert
#3: The Evidence Is Inadequate
#4: Christianity Predicts a Different Universe

The third reason Carrier says he is not a Christian is that the evidence for Christianity is inadequate. A scientist through and through, Carrier uses the scientific method (or a form of it) to investigate the claims of Christianity. The basic argument takes the following form:

Christianity claims A.
If A is true, we would expect to observe B.
We do not observe B, we observe C.
Over and over again, Christianity's claims fail this test.
Therefore, Christianity is false.

He doesn't stop there; he also presents a parallel argument:

Naturalism claims X.

If X is true, we would expect to observe Y.

We do observe Y.
Over and over again, Naturalism's clams pass this test.

Therefore, Naturalism is true.

It's important to note that this approach is exactly how science studies something that is not directly observable: If the theory is true, each piece of evidence checks and supports the theory. The data is cumulative; no single piece proves the theory, but as each piece is added, predictions can be made about what further evidence should show… Every time the theory makes a correct prediction, (and does not make incorrect predictions) the more confident we are that the theory is correct.

In my previous posts on this essay, I have quoted snippets of his essay to present his argument in his own words. I'm not going to do that this time, for one simple reason: I think he is right.

Let me make myself clear; I think there is very little evidence for the existence of God from a scientific perspective. Anyone who seeks to determine the existence of God by looking for "evidence" will probably come up empty, over and over and over again.

The problem is, a large portion of Christians insist on subjecting their religions beliefs to this type of scientific scrutiny. This is most striking in the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. I'll save discussion of ID for a future post, but the topic at hand brings an important issue to the surface:

Science and religion are separate ways of knowing; they address issues in separate domains. Therefore they can only provide answers to questions from within their prospective domains. In other words, science and religion provide answers to different types of questions.

The insistence that we must use science to address the claims of religion (and vice versa) is an overstepping of the boundaries of both ways of knowing. The late biologist Stephen J. Gould was a strong proponent of this separation, saying in his paper Nonoverlapping Magisteria:

"The lack of conflict between science and religion arises from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of professional expertise—science in the empirical constitution of the universe, and religion in the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning of our lives. The attainment of wisdom in a full life requires extensive attention to both domains—for a great book tells us that the truth can make us free and that we will live in optimal harmony with our fellows when we learn to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly."

Although Gould was an agnostic, he understood the limits of his science. Unfortunately, it seems that people outside Christianity understand the proper roles of these two ways of acquiring knowledge better than Christians themselves. Don't get me wrong; science and religion will always provide clarity and inspiration across the border in both directions. In reality, the border is not easily defined, and there is a portion of inquiry which requires input from both science and religion. The majority of questions, however, lie squarely within one of these two domains.

Do Christians really need science to legitimize their faith? Do you really want to hand over your cherished beliefs to the authority and scrutiny of science?

The reality is that the nature of science is intrinsically atheistic. It operates under the assumption that the physical is all that exists, regardless of whether or not the scientists involved believe in the supernatural. This is by necessity because science can only study reproducible phenomena. God's will and action are inherently unpredictable, and therefore inaccessible by scientific inquiry.

Robert T. Pennock in a great paper on the subject, says it another way:

[A] characteristic of the supernatural... is that it is inherently mysterious to us. As natural beings our knowledge all comes via natural laws and processes. If we could apply natural knowledge to understand supernatural powers, then, by definition, they would not be supernatural. The lawful regularities of our experience do not apply to the supernatural world... The same point holds about divine beings--we cannot know what it is that they would or would not do in any given case. God works, they say, in mysterious ways.

If science shouldn't be used to defend the existence of God, what are we to do? How do we convince the world that they are in need of a savior? How do we convince them that Jesus is truly the Son of God?

I think Jesus gave us the answer in John while he was praying with his disciples:

"My prayer is not for them [the disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me." John 17:20-21

Here Jesus prays for unity in his church, a church consisting of true believers; true followers of Him. Francis Schaeffer, in his book The Mark of the Christian, calls this "the final apologetic", explaining that according to John 13, to be one with God (and therefore show the world that Jesus is God) means to show love to other believers and also to non-believers:

In John 13 the point was that, if an individual Christian does not show love toward other true Christians, the world has a right to judge that he is not a Christian. [But in John 17] Jesus is stating something else which is much more cutting, much more profound: We cannot expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus' claims are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians.

I have already written this post three different times, each ultimately ending up in my virtual trashcan. I just couldn't make sense of why, if there really is very little evidence of God's existence, do I still believe He exists? This morning in Sunday School, our teacher read the quote above from Schaeffer's book. It cut deep into my heart, and I remembered something I wrote in my journal several years ago, when I first wrestled with atheism. I was just coming out of the lowest point of my life, and I wrote these words:

"The love of these people [my Christian friends] is the only reason I still have any faith left at all."

The love I felt from the people close to me was the only thing I had left; it was the rope that kept me from falling headlong down that cliff. It really is the final apologetic.

Should we have answers for the issues Carrier brings up in his essay? Of course. But this should not be our primary defense. Instead, our love for our brothers and sisters in Christ will show the world that there really is something different, something real about our faith. It will show that Jesus really is the Son of God.

Schaeffer, in another one of his books, summarizes this entire post:

“[W]ithout true Christians loving one another, Christ says the world cannot be expected to listen, even when we give proper answers. Let us be careful, indeed, to spend a lifetime studying to give honest answers. For years the orthodox, evangelical church has done this very poorly. So it is well to spend time learning to answer the questions of men who are about us. But after we have done our best to communicate to a lost world, still we must never forget that the final apologetic which Jesus gives is the observable love of true Christians for true Christians.” Francis Schaffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster, pp. 164-165