2013-05-21T14:55:21-04:00 Pete Enns http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=pete-enns Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Pete Enns Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1219124 2012-01-23T07:44:35-05:00 2012-03-24T05:12:01-04:00

Pete Enns http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pete-enns/
If evolution is right about how humans came to be, then the biblical story of Adam and Eve isn't. If you believe, as evangelicals do, that God himself is responsible for what's in the Bible, you have a problem on your hands. Once you open the door to the possibility that God's version of human origins isn't what actually happened -- well, the dominoes start unraveling down the slippery slope. The next step is uncertainty, chaos and despair about one's personal faith.

That, more or less, is the evangelical log flume of fear, and I have seen it played out again and again.

In recent years, the matter has gotten far worse. Popular figures like Richard Dawkins have done an in-your-face-break-the-backboard-slam-dunk over the heads of defenders of the biblical story. They've taken great delight in making sure Main Street knows evolution is true, and therefore the Bible is "God's big book of bad ideas" (Bill Maher) and Christians are morons for taking it seriously. Evangelicals have been on high alert damage control mode.

Then you have the mapping of the human genome. It's a done deal: humans and primates are 90-something percent related genetically. The best explanation for it, geneticists tell us, is that humans evolved from primates. Since my greatest scientific achievement is doing puppet shows with dissected feral cats in high school biology, I feel I have no right to contest -- and I likely speak for many other evangelicals in that regard (sans puppet show). And it doesn't help things that an evangelical, Francis Collins, was the one who pointed all this out, got the Presidential Medal of Honor for it, and talked about it (twice) on "The Colbert Report."

If that wasn't enough, evolution is being used nowadays to explain all sorts of things about us humans -- including why we believe in God. If God is a product of evolution, like bipedalism and tool making, well, the jig's up (and not just for evangelicals).

Evolution is a threat, and many evangelicals are fighting to keep Adam in the family photo album. But in their rush to save Christianity, some evangelicals have been guilty of all sorts of strained, idiosyncratic or obscurantist tactics: massaging or distorting the data, manipulating the legal system, scaring their constituencies and strong-arming those of their own camp who raise questions.

These sorts of tactics get a lot of press, but behind them is a deeper problem -- a problem that gets close to the heart of evangelicalism itself and hampers any true dialogue.

It has to do with what evangelicals expect from the Bible.

Evangelicals look to the Bible to settle important questions of faith. So, faced with a potentially faith-crushing idea like evolution, evangelicals naturally ask right off the bat, "What does the Bible say about that?" And then informed by "what the Bible says," they are ready to make a "biblical" judgment.

This is fine in principle, but in the evolution debate this mindset is a problem: It assumes that the Adam and Eve story is about "human origins." It isn't. And as long as evangelicals continue to assume that it does, the conflict between the Bible and evolution is guaranteed.

Since the 19th century, through scads of archaeological discoveries from the ancient world of the Bible, biblical scholars have gotten a pretty good handle on what ancient creation stories were designed to do.

Ancient peoples assumed that somewhere in the distant past, near the beginning of time, the gods made the first humans from scratch -- an understandable conclusion to draw. They wrote stories about "the beginning," however, not to lecture their people on the abstract question "Where do humans come from?" They were storytellers, drawing on cultural traditions, writing about the religious -- and often political -- beliefs of the people of their own time.

Their creation stories were more like a warm-up to get to the main event: them. Their stories were all about who they were, where they came from, what their gods thought of them and, therefore, what made them better than other peoples.

Likewise, Israel's story was written to say something about their place in the world and the God they worshiped. To think that the Israelites, alone among all other ancient peoples, were interested in (or capable of) giving some definitive, quasi-scientific, account of human origins is an absurd logic. And to read the story of Adam and Eve as if it were set up to so such a thing is simply wrongheaded.

Reading the biblical story against its ancient backdrop is hardly a news flash, and most evangelical biblical scholars easily concede the point. But for some reason this piece of information has not filtered down to where it is needed most: into the mainstream evangelical consciousness. Once it does, evangelicals will see for themselves that dragging the Adam and Eve story into the evolution discussion is as misguided as using the stories of Israel's monarchy to rank the Republican presidential nominees.

Evangelicals tend to focus on how to protect the Bible against the attacks of evolution. The real challenge before them is to reorient their expectation of what the story of Adam and Eve is actually prepared to deliver.

These kinds of conversations are already happening, though too often quietly and behind closed doors. Evangelicals owe it to their children and their children's children to bring the discussion out into the open.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.681169 2010-08-15T09:32:53-04:00 2011-05-25T17:20:22-04:00

Pete Enns http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pete-enns/ know this new job is right where God wants me," or more important issues like, "I know the Bible is the word of God," or, "I know Jesus is the Son of God."

But Christians do not have sure knowledge of these things. They believe them -- deeply and sincerely, and for all sorts of reasons -- but they do not know them in the same way that we know that fire will reduce a book to ashes, that there are billions of galaxies in the universe, or that gravity works. Some Christians claim this kind of knowledge, but they are wrong.

The same goes for Christians -- and any religious person -- who would say, "I know God exists." No one can know that God exists in the sense of proof or logical demonstration. Rather, people of faith believe God exists for all sorts of reasons that can't be laid out in a spreadsheet or observed through a telescope.

Atheists are in exactly the same boat.

What holds true for religious people when they talk about God holds for atheists when they talk about not-God.

Some atheists claim to have a sure and certain knowledge about spiritual things. "I know -- through reason, logic, and evidence -- that God does not exist." These atheists feel that their position is intellectually superior to a belief in God. God does not exist because what cannot be established through "reason, logic, or evidence" is not real.

This sounds rational and objective, but there is a lot of belief tucked away in this assertion. Atheists do not know God does not exist; they believe it.

To say that God's existence is detectable with certainty through reason, logic, and evidence is a belief because it makes some crucial assumptions. For one thing, it assumes that our intellectual faculties are the best, or only, ways of accessing God. This is an assumption that privileges Western ways of knowing and excludes other wholly human qualities like emotion and intuition.

It also reduces God to an object, a thing, a being among all other beings, whose existence is as open to rational inquiry as anything else. It is an old argument but a good one: any god worthy of the name is the source of all being, and therefore not one more being alongside all others subject to rational control. Any god like that isn't God at all.

People can think what they want about God. My point here is simply this: no one knows whether our intellectual faculties can determine with certainty whether there is a higher power, prime mover, or whatever you want to call god. That is a belief.

Also, all people, atheists included, believe worthwhile things for which there is no compelling evidence whatsoever. For example, many people -- scientists, philosophers -- believe in the principle of uniformity: what we observe now of the laws of nature happens everywhere in the universe, always has and always will.

I happen to believe this is true, but what I believe isn't the point here. The point is that there is no empirical evidence for this principle, nor can it be logically proven. In fact, there is no evidence for the principle at all unless we assume it to begin with.

Why do people accept the principle of uniformity? Because it can be used to construct coherent scientific explanations of the universe, and that is a good reason to accept it. But this is not too far from what religious people say about their faith. Religious beliefs can be used to construct coherent explanations for things like why there is something rather than nothing.

All of us accept as true ideas that seem to work well, that make sense of our reality. We do not know with certainty that they are true because of reason, logic, or evidence; we believe they are true because they work.

I know some real live atheists, and they do not claim to know as much as some others do. The reason that they are atheists is that "God is" is a less compelling proposition to explain their reality than "God is not."

They did not come to this sure and certain conclusion by a calm and logical assessment of the evidence (as opposed to the unreasonable and illogical faith of religious types). Rather, they came to their atheism for many different types of reasons, some of which are too subtle to quantify.

They do not claim to know that God does not exist; they believe it to be so because it makes most sense of their own lives and the world around them. This is not sure and certain knowledge; it is a belief.

Oddly, some Christian fundamentalists and some atheist fundamentalists suffer under the same delusion, that their view on ultimate reality is fully supported by reason, logic, and evidence.

Both are wrong.

For both the religious and atheists, there is mystery. Atheists are free to be atheists, but they don't know any more than anyone else.

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Pete Enns http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pete-enns/ comments on the results of a telephone poll commissioned by the Center for Public Policy of Virginia Commonwealth University and published in May of this year. The study polled 1001 American adults on matters of science, and one line of questioning pertained to matters of faith. This is the portion of the poll Coyne seems most interested in, and I share that interest.

The poll reveals that one's thoughts on evolution depend on "the nature and extent of religious belief," as Coyne laments. I agree, the two are most definitely connected. Coyne also argues against "the accommodationist technique ... to accept that people are religious but to convince them that evolution really doesn't violate their faith." I agree that simply tacking evolution onto Christian faith minimizes the theological challenges. For many Christians, that theological challenge has involved a thoughtful re-examination of assumptions about the Bible.

Many Christians have been actively doing just that ever since Darwin. As I read the poll and Coyne's comments, however, I am struck by how the pollsters themselves, and likely those answering, seem wholly oblivious to that fact. At the end of his comments, Coyne complains of scientific ignorance and the importance of educating "people about what evolution is and how much evidence supports it." I agree that this is important, but theological ignorance is as much a problem as anything in the evolution/Christianity debate.

Let me give two illustrations.

On the question of how biological life originated, 43 percent said, "God directly created life," and 24 percent said, "Life developed over time, God guided the process." Coyne laments that 67 percent are "either creationists or believe that God directed evolution." Coyne lumps the two together, which is very unfortunate, but given how the poll is worded, I don't blame him. The phrase "God guided the process" suggests that God is pushing the buttons behind the scenes to "guide" evolution every step of the way.

Those two options don't reflect current discussions among theologically aware Christians. The pollsters should have given another option, something like: "Life developed over time, and that is God's chosen mechanism." This won't satisfy Coyne, I'm sure, but it describes what many Christians think. The third option is just as bad as the second: "Life developed over time, God didn't guide it" (18 percent). The problem is that "not guiding" implies that "guiding" is the only way that God and evolution can be reconciled, which is simplistic and fails to reflect what many thoughtful Christians actually think.

There are other problems with the poll, some of which Coyne addresses. What concerned me most is their question about the Bible. The choices offered are indicative of the fundamentally flawed notions about the Bible that contribute to the polarized discussion over evolution and Christianity:

Which of these statements comes closest to describing your feelings about the Bible?

• Actual Word of God: 40 percent


• Not everything to be taken literally: 34 percent


• Bible written by men: 21 percent


• Don't know/refused to answer: 6 percent

Here is my beef: the first three options are not mutually exclusive. To present them as such is, to put it gently, misguided -- and I dare say any first-year seminarian could point out the problem. Yes, there are people who think like this, but they are as wrong as are people who believe in a flat, 6,000-year-old earth that sits in the middle of the solar system. Faulty notions of the Bible may reign in some fundamentalist circles, but what this poll presents is not even a remotely accurate description of what Christians across the spectrum have believed about the Bible for two millennia.

For the Bible to be the "actual Word of God," that means that "not everything is to be taken literally" and that it is "written by men." These are not separate options. All three belong in one positive statement of what the Bible is. Coming to grips with this historic Christian conviction about the Bible will not end the debate, but it will surely help insure that the discussion won't be hijacked by extreme voices on either side.

The options given in the poll about evolution, science, and the Bible are unwittingly set up to give the very results that neither Coyne nor I are terribly excited about. Coyne feels the poll gives clear reasons why the entire discussion is fruitless. I am more miffed at how these superficial poll questions set the entire discussion down a tedious and dead-end path. No one should be surprised by the results when questions are asked that way.

Only something slightly less than a mass theological education is needed in order for all sides to move beyond a superficial, either/or grasp of the issues. That sounds harsh, but we are dealing with matters that require a scalpel, not a sledgehammer, and neither extreme in this debate seems to be aware of it -- and neither are the pollsters.
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Pete Enns http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pete-enns/
The topic in general doesn't raise hackles. Conservative Christians have pretty much learned their lesson from Galileo: you can't count on the Bible to answer scientific questions. But for conservative Christians today, "science and faith" is a trigger for much bigger problem: evolution and Christianity.

The special creation of humans is found in both parts of the Christian Bible, the Old Testament (Genesis 1 and 2) and New (Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15). That is why conservative Christians have a hard time yielding ground to evolution. In fact, many conservative Christians are warned to avoid the conversation altogether in order to keep (godless) science from damaging faith.

Conservative Christians are not the only ones who have trouble with science and faith. Popular atheist writers like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and others warn their readers that there should be no such conversation at all. Talking about "faith" poisons the scientific pursuit.

For conservative Christians, science is a threat to faith. For atheists, faith is a threat to science. For either, the science/faith conversation does not -- cannot -- exist.

Surprisingly, one reason for this shared antipathy has to do with the Bible.

I've read enough of the New Atheists to see a pattern in their thinking about the Bible, and it is disturbingly similar to what you see in the Southern Baptist Convention or Bob Jones University. Conservative Christians and New Atheists share naïve views of what the Bible "ought" to be, namely the notion that if the Bible is really the "Word of God," it will provide accurate historical and scientific information.

Conservative Christians are very clear about this assumption, and it is just under the surface for New Atheists. This shared assumption is taken in polar opposite conclusions.

New Atheists point out that Genesis is wholly out of sync with scientific reality. This is true, but they assume that this sort of thing is sufficient grounds to declare the Bible a stupid book, Christianity a stupid religion, and Christians stupid people. "See how sloppy the Bible is with basic facts known to every middle schooler? And you call this the 'Word of God!' Get over it."

Lack of elementary scientific credibility renders the Bible suspect. Oddly enough, conservative Christians hold the same assumption. If the Bible is not historically, even scientifically, accurate, then God is a "liar" and there is no reason to trust him. The Word of God cannot make such huge factual errors. Based on this assumption, the scientific evidence is either ignored, marginalized, selectively appealed to, or re-interpreted to ease the tension.

New Atheists and conservative Christians have all sorts of reasons to be at odds, and their shared naïveté about the Bible is certainly one of them. Both have false expectation of what the Bible ought to deliver, and this sets them on a collision course. Both sides have some homework to do.

To state the obvious, no ancient writer was aware of what we take for granted today about the creation of the world and the evolution of life. You'd think that wouldn't need to be said, but it does. You cannot expect the Bible -- written in ancient times for ancient eyes -- to enter a modern scientific discussion, and you cannot fault the Bible when it fails to answer our questions.

This is not a new insight. Augustine said famously 1600 years ago that Christians embarrass themselves when they appeal to the Bible to settle scientific matters (cosmology was the issue he was dealing with). Even if many Christians throughout history did assume that the Bible is scientifically accurate, the problems with that position have been understood for a very long time, long before the modern era.

The problems with thinking of the Bible as a science book have been made clearer in recent generations. Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, archaeologists unearthed other creations stories from the ancient Mesopotamian world, the same environment that produced the Bible. These discoveries have helped us understand a lot about how creation stories worked in the ancient world.

Ancient peoples did not investigate how things came to be; they assumed that there was a "beginning" when the gods formed the earth, people, animals, trees, etc., as you see them now. You can hardly blame them for making this assumption. The "how" question of creation was settled. They were interested in the "who" question: which of the gods is responsible for all of this? Each society had its own answer to this question, which they told in story form. The biblical story cannot claim a scientific higher ground. It, too, works with ancient themes and categories to tell Israel's distinct story.

New Atheists reading this might say, "Thanks for making my point, Enns. The Bible tells stories and so it can be ignored." Not so fast. What if God likes telling stories? Why assume that fiction is a problem? Why assume that for God to be God he needs to speak in modern ways of knowing?

The Bible may not be of any value as a scientific conversation partner, but that has nothing -- nothing -- to do with the character of God or the Bible. And it certainly does not devalue the science/faith discussion as a whole. Most Christians I know are far beyond fundamentalism and have thought long and hard about all of this. The New Atheist response to "faith" is a caricature.

Conservative Christians might respond, "The Bible can't deal in ancient stories. It is the Word of God. It is different. It has to be at least consistent with science." Not so fast. However different the Bible may be, intersecting with modern science is not the reason why. Many Christians understand that the Bible speaks in an ancient idiom and that we need to learn to ask its questions, not ours. False assumptions about the Bible erect a barrier to honest scientific investigation.

Simply put, both sides need to be clear on why it is a problem for God to tell stories.

Conservative Christians need to do a much better of job of keeping the Bible out of discussions where it does not belong. Atheists need to do a better job of not letting Fundamentalists define for them how thoughtful Christians have been thinking about science and faith for a very long time. ]]>