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Evangelical Scientists Debate Creation Story
Hugh Pickens writes "Polls by Gallup and the Pew Research Center find that four out of 10 Americans believe humanity descend from Adam and Eve, but NPR reports that evangelical scientists are now saying publicly that they can no longer believe the Genesis account and that it is unlikely that we all descended from a single pair of humans. 'That would be against all the genomic evidence that we've assembled over the last 20 years so not likely at all,' says biologist Dennis Venema, a senior fellow at BioLogos Foundation, a Christian group that tries to reconcile faith and science. 'You would have to postulate that there's been this absolutely astronomical mutation rate that has produced all these new variants in an incredibly short period of time. Those types of mutation rates are just not possible. It would mutate us out of existence.' Venema is part of a growing cadre of Christian scholars who say they want their faith to come into the 21st century and say it's time to face facts: There was no historical Adam and Eve, no serpent, no apple, no fall that toppled man from a state of innocence."
When I had religion in primary school they had basically told us that the Genesis was to be taken metaphorically and not literally, in secondary school we had a light analysis of certain Jewish cultural things in that story (like 7 days, and a garden being paradise for a tribe which lived in the desert...)
I didn't think people still believed it LITERALLY, this is news to me.
Why even bother with a theology you must admit contains errors? Which part of the Bible contains the facts, and which doesn't? And if you don't know, then what's the point of your faith? Only when it apparently contradicts science you can reject a doctrine, or what is the verification principle at play here for these "Christian" "scientists".
Notice I'm not coming out in favor or against either science or religion here. I'm pointing out, I think these people are nothing more than deep-cover atheists. Their entire movement hinges on reconciling contradictions, by discarding the one assertion (religious dogma) in favor of the other (science), and then claiming the religion saved - which is at worst, a willful deceit, at best (I'm being charitable here) a collosal failure in the history of all rationality, and casts their ability to do logical inquiry into doubt. Neither alternative makes me willing to trust them.
Yes, yes they are.
I think perhaps the title is misleading. Evangelical Scientists would be scientists who were evangelical about science.
These people are Evangelical Christian "Scientists", who are part of the evangelical christian movement. While it's good they realise that the genetic evidence gives a good case against their religion, what they have failed to realise is that they are now no longer fundamentalist evangelical christians because they have just put reality over and above the idea of inerrant scripture.
It's pretty funny, actually. They take their smartest creationists, put them in a room together, and tell them to think about it for a while. The result? "Yeah, this can't actually be true."
What, exactly, did they think would happen?
If there was no fall, there was no need for redemption. If there was no need for redemption, there was no need for a savior. And without a savior, there is no Christianity.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Not if you define seperate species as species that are unable to interbreed. Various lines of Homo could have descended separately down the evolutionary tree for a while, but not diverged enough that when they came together again, they were unable to interbreed.
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And any evangelical could have told them, "Why would you listen to someone who's going to burn in Hell for not believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, anyway. Genesis is Science. (Go Rick Perry!)"
See, when you have one religious believer arguing with another, it's like a retard fight. There are never winners, only losers.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The really funny part is that the Bible itself says that it uses allegory! (Trivia question! Name a word which occurs exactly once in the entire Bible!)
http://scripturetext.com/galatians/4-24.htm
Which things are an allegory...
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Evangelical Christians believe they have been reborn and saved by Jesus and it's there duty to spread the word. Fundamentalists Christians believe in the literal interpretation of the bible as being absolute (despite over a thousand years of modifications, but I digress). You can be an Evangelical Christian and believe in Evolution. You just can't be an Evangelical-Fundamentalist Christian and believe in evolution.
One of the biggest problems with denying the Adam and Eve story is that it negates the fundamental reason Jesus appeared - that is, to take on "our sins" created by the fall. Denying Adam and Eve pretty much throws a wrench into the whole works of Christianity, so this is bigger than just admitting that it is allegory or metaphor...
"The land of Nod." (Genesis 4:16)
And I agree. Most people fail to realize several important contextual clues in the biblical genesis stories.
1) genesis 1:26 implies multiple humans, simultaneously. Not just adam.
2) genesis 2:5 says specifically that god had not yet created FARMING humans. (No man to "till the earth"). Hunter gatherers could well exist, but are not mentioned, since they are not the focus of the story. This is reiterated in genesis 3:22.
I would say that the genesis story does what many ancient histories/verbal accounts/stories of myth do, which is to focus on the people that are deemed important to the story and omit any extra content. For instance, the odd lack of female characters in the geneology section, except where there are extraordinay circumstances. The omissions do not mean that males greatly outnumbered females, it means the recorders of the tradition valued males more highly, and considered the women's names superfluous. By the same vein, mentioning nomadic hunters outside "eden" would be superfluous except where they come into the narrative though interacting with a major character, such as Cain. (In the land of Nod.) Keeping the story simple is essential for these early traditions because written language has not been invented yet. (Agriculture predated written language by several thousand years. As such any such traditions or origin stories would HAVE to be oral ones. That is why there are omissions for the sake of simplicity.)
Taking such a literal approach as to imply adam was the only human at the time is absurd both from the perspective of the narrative itself and from any biological perspective as well. As such this article only should upset dyed in the wool literalists and super fundies.
Actually, the Bible does not say that Cain married his sister. It does not say who her parents were at all. All it says is that after Cain killed Abel he went to the Land of Nod, then it says that he made love to his wife and she became pregnant and gave birth (which is the first and only mention of her in the Bible). The Genesis story does not rule out the possibility that God created other humans besides Adam and Eve at some point after creating Adam and Eve.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Finding oil is a very important and high-stakes issue for oil companies. Literally trillions of dollars are riding on it. Exxon's exploration budget alone is around $20 billion per year. When the chips are down and they need to find the most likely spots to drill - what kind of geology do they use? Flood geology, or mainstream? Which one actually delivers the goods?
Let's assume the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Where did the oil come from? Was it created in the ground with the rest of the Earth? If so, is there a way to predict where it might be found? Or perhaps it really did form from plankton (with a few plants and dinosaurs), but about 10,000 times faster than any chemist believes it could in those conditions? Any way you look at it, a young Earth and a Flood would imply some very interesting scientific questions to ask, some interesting (and potentially extremely valuable) research programs to start. How come nobody's actually pursuing such research programs?
Why don't creationists put together an investment fund, where people pay in and the stake is used as venture capital for things like oil and mineral rights? If "Flood geology" is really a better theory, then it should make better predictions about where raw materials are than standard geology does. The profits from such a venture could pay for a lot of evangelism. Why isn't anyone doing this?
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6-10 thousand years is a pretty trivial amount of time in evolutionary terms. There is simply no way that 2 people could produce in 10k years the diversity we actually see in actual living humans unless they mutated so fast that practically every single person would be born with fatal mutations.
Actually the evidence is much like you suggest in terms of there being one unique woman, Mitochondrial Eve, that falls in the female line of every living human being. There is probably likewise some point at which you can find a single male line in every living human lineage, but they didn't happen at the same time, weren't a couple, and nobody ever living at any one given instant was ever descended from those two people. Beyond that the timelines are MUCH longer. The last bottleneck was at least 50k years ago and there was probably another at 200ky.
The upshot is certainly that human lineages are vastly older than most bible scholars seem to think, at least those who are at all literalistic.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
The Christian creation story is an allegory for the evolution of free will.
Humans evolved in their present form hundreds of thousands of years ago. But for some reason civilization didn't take off until about 7,000 years ago, give or take. The reason civilization could not take hold everything to do with man's ability to live in a herd.
We already know that humans can't deal well with herds of more than 150 people. For settlements to grow past 150 people meant that individuals would regularly come in contact with other humans that they did not directly know. For any stable settlement to occur, past 150 people, there had to be some new advancement in herd management, or as we call it: religion.
At some point, or possibly in multiple places, humans developed this idea of god. God was the invention that allowed humans to live in a herd of more than 150 because it created an immortal, infinitely powerful alpha that could not be toppled via violent means. We hacked our own evolution. By trusting in a god, instead of a human leader, herds could grow past the 150 person limit. By trusting in a god rules could be handed down in his name and people would follow them (for the most part) without having to be beaten into submission. These rules, like don't sleep with your neighbors wife and don't kill each other, laid the foundation for larger and larger settlements.
This advancement did not happen everywhere at once. It was a gradual transition. "Civilized" settlements would often come across humans who had not made this leap. To to the civilized, these rogue wanderers would seem like animals. They would be controlled by the desire to eat and rape and probably had no qualms about violence. Look at herds of baboons to see how aggressively they handle their herds.
Free will, as we know it, is the idea that we are not controlled by our basic animal impulses. Those who lived in religious settlements could control their desire to rape and make decisions for the good of the herd. Those who lived outside those societies were still animals with no free will -- they lived only to eat and rape.
The creation story is an allegory for this development. We used to live as animals (Garden of Eden) and were happy (though full of rape). Ignorance is bliss. Then, at some point we discovered free will (Tree of Knowledge). Forever after we would be cursed with the knowledge of our own death, but able to live with one another.
>Only a very small fraction of Christians - even evangelical Christians - insist on taking every word of the Bible literally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism
http://www.gallup.com/poll/27682/onethird-americans-believe-bible-literally-true.aspx
1/3 of the US are literalists. That's not a small number. And they are motivated.
And they are telling you and me that we are going to Hell.
--
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I'll admit, it does seem remote, especially if you're dealing with time periods of 50,000 years or so. What do you think the likelihood of this event occurring is? A million in one chance, per year? One in a billion per century?
Let's go even further, way, way out there. What if it was one in 10^24 per 13 billion years?
Just so we're clear on the numbers we're using, that's 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance per 13,000,000,000 years.
This is really, really, really, really, really unlikely. However, statistically speaking, this means that there are... dum dum dum...! 9 planets in the entire universe where this has occurred so far. Earth is one of them. :)
This, of course, assumes the lifespan of the universe to be 13 billion years and the number of stars in the observable universe to be 10^24. Which, based on our current scientific estimates, is about right give or take (see sources). It could be off by, say, five or six planets either way -- although we're only dealing with the *observable* universe, so there could be many many many many many more.
The scientific world is an amazing, wonderful, powerful, inspirational thing that is just so incredible in its majesty and beauty that it seems so very belittling to claim that there's a divine hand behind this truly unique and awesome thing called existence.
Bonus question: If the universe created God, what created God? If X, why can't X apply to "the universe at whole"? If NOT X, then why can't the universe be held to the same standard? "It always was, and always will be..."
Further reading:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Improbable_things_happen
http://www.symphonyofscience.com/
Sources:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
Do you believe in everything for which there is no evidence? If not, how do you decide?
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It's been 15 years, and still most people (including most Christians) have not picked up on the fact that the Catholic church concluded this long ago.
In a papal statement on the subject of evolution, dated Oct. 22nd 1996, pope John Paul II stated that "truth cannot contradict truth", and therefore the Genesis story of the Bible needed to be interpreted metaphorically, not literally.
For those who are interested, the message is available here: http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp961022.htm
How is it that Christian people (Catholics in particular; the pope is supposed to be your earthly representative for God) just seem to "forget" this ever happened?
It doesn't rule out extraterrestrial life either, or say that Earth was the only place He created life in the universe.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
The thing is, the Bible says that the most recent common male ancestor (Noah) was significantly closer in time than the most recent common female ancestor (Eve). So, the Biblical account, also, says that the most recent common male ancestor was not the husband/mate of the most recent common female ancestor.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
As an agnostic, I have to point out the logical error of asserting that god does not exist. The only logically sound argument that does not fall victim to the fallacy is to assert ignorance of that which is provably unknowable.
Do you assert that the tooth-fairy doesn't exist?
I'm quite happy to assert the non-existence of very many silly and unlikely things that there has ever been a shred of evidence either for or against. I don't see why god gets special treatment.
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Perhaps, but the whole flood story becomes vastly suspect in any case since it is clearly impossible that there was a worldwide flood within recent prehistory, nor can anything even close to a literal interpretation of the Noah story make any sense. Clearly it is at best an allegorical tale and/or cultural myth. Once we accept that any given Bible story is clearly not literally an accurate attestation of fact then there's no particular reason to expect any other part to be particularly either.
I'd say that tales like Genesis are actually pretty good summaries of the common sense reasoning of the day. People are seen to be related and families and people's increase in number over time, so logically you would expect to be able to go backwards to a time when there were "only 2 people", and likewise to some sort of time when the world began in some fashion or other.
In other words I just don't think there's much point in debating the actual scientific relevance of Bible stories. They're pre-scientific legends, informed by some common sense reasoning but no actual facts. They may happen to match with scientific findings in some random cases, but at best that shows that some science is also common sense, and at worst indicates that no matter what fantastical tall tale you tell sometimes you get lucky and the truth bears some (albeit faint) resemblance to your story.
In any case, most Christians throughout history have not held that there was any great specific literal accuracy to the Bible. Even ancient late classical Christian theologians pretty much took it all metaphorically, and so have Jews and Moslems going all the way back to ancient times. Other posters are right about the super literalism prevalent in some places in the US today being a recent phenomenon. I dunno what it is about the US, but we sure do breed a unique form of fanatics.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
So, they'll make it to heaven with you? Even though they don't believe Jesus Christ is Lord?
That's a prevailing belief among many Christians.. The explanation I was given was that the Jews are grandfathered in under the old contract, so long as they kill and burn a lamb every now and again. But anyone just joining has to go under the new contract, which involves swearing fealty to Jesus and taking a bath.
This is due to our heavy consumption of High Fructose Corn Syrup and our public school system.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That is normal mental condition, the expected result is generally called "hope".
An atheist is simply someone who does not believe in the existence of any gods. It does not necessarily follow that he or she believes they can prove that no gods exist. The question remains as to why you make such a big deal out of god. Do you always make such a long-winded defense if someone tells you they do not believe in any other one of the infinite possible metaphysical claims out there?
Although an empirical disproof of the existence of god is impossible, that doesn't rule out discounting specific definitions of god a priori.
Happy people make bad consumers.
Interesting, we're in the same field of study. How did you solve the problem of pancake tectonics in the event of a sudden movement of the plate?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You can be an Evangelical Christian and believe in Evolution.
Heretic! To suggest the bible may be full of stories and poems and metaphors, heresy! A product of the culture 2000 years ago, and subject to interpretation, hogwash! Jesus wrote the bible with his own hand, neigh, with both hands writing at the same time, and he's still PISSED OFF over losing the whole "sun is the center of the universe" debate.
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