Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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?
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
>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.
--
BMO
Do you believe in everything for which there is no evidence? If not, how do you decide?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Actually, the Jewish bible can be divided into four types of text. The first are the stories, essentially the legends and myths of a group of ancient near-east tribes that were originally passed down orally and eventually written, along with a few more recent stories found in the Writings section of the bible (the Jewish bible has three sections, Torah, Prophets, and Writings). Then there are the laws, which are the civil and criminal laws of an ancient near-east country. Related to the laws are the chronicle-type texts, which are a combination of court records, military records, and historical documents (with a bit of mythology mixed in, which was apparently the style of that time). Finally there are the prayers / poems, which are things like Psalms, Lamentations, Song of Songs, and so forth.
/. this morning who would like to weigh in, I invite them to do so.
As for what should be taken as a metaphor, in general the legal sections are not taken to be metaphors, although some of the legal sections are not applicable anymore (e.g. pretty much everything concerning the temple in Jerusalem), and some have been expanded or superseded by later legal texts (e.g. the Talmud). The mythology and historical sections are almost always used as metaphors or in the context of teaching lessons about morality, or to put parts of the legal code into context. The prayers are still used in Jewish religious ceremonies, and people frequently read their prayers metaphorically.
Of course, the view I just described is very much not-orthodox, and if there are any orthodox Jews reading
Palm trees and 8
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.