BioLogos – Dr. Joel Hunter: The Danger of Preaching on Genesis
It would seem that it’s open season on BioLogos right now.
Following on from all of the controversy last week, we have a fresh attack on BioLogos courtesy of Jerry Coyne of Why Evolution is True, and predictably featured on Dawkins’ website.
This week the jolly assailment revolves around the following Biologos Video, featuring Dr. Joel Hunter, entitled: The Danger of Preaching on Genesis.
Here it is:
I was planning to spend time this morning carefully fisking and rebutting Jerry Coyne’s criticisms of this video and the BioLogos synopsis, however, to be honest, I find myself a little depressed and burdened with a “what’s the bloomin’ point” frame of mind. I blame the Methodist Conference for this.
I’ll let you review the criticisms if you can be bothered and leave you with the general observation that I can’t help but notice the incongruity of scientific atheists, pulling out their claws against scientific theistic evolutionists, or to use the pejorative description “accommodationists” as imposed by such opponents. Surely there are plenty of fundie science rejecting groups they could target, I mean, why attack a group that is attempting to promote the virtues of science within Christianity?
As it happens, I did pen a few thoughts on this paradox:
eChurch: P Z Myers & Phil Johnson still putting the boot in to BioLogos
Thought for the day: Nothing will ever please a militant atheist, so don’t bother to try.
Tags: Christianity, Science & Medical, Theology Doctrine Philosophy
July 3rd, 2010 at 8:43 am
You are quite right. Why are they wasting their time attacking those who do not believe the Bible, they’ve already won them over. Much more sensible for them to attack those who do believe God’s Word. But then the Devil has never had any true sense.
July 3rd, 2010 at 12:56 pm
The whole creation/evolution thing in the church is a non issue really:
Does believing either way make any difference to the person’s state of grace or salvation (no).
Does it make any difference to the gospel message if either position turned out to be true (no).
Was it an issue in the UK before 1991 when Ken Ham started coming here (not really).
What’s happened is that creationism has become a touchstone by which evangelicals use to judge the validity of other people’s conversion, in the same way that pentecostals sometimes use speaking in tongues.
You can add to this list dispensationalism, King James only, Israel in Prophecy, the claims of Ron Wyatt and the new world order conspiracy as issues which have been used as touchstones in evangelical circles.
The problem this creates for rationalists (inside and outside the church) is that these things often contradict observable fact and resul tin quite serious cognitive dissonance. Inside the church this manifests itself as unrest. Outside the church it manifests as any sort of faith being not reasonable (in the sense of not being within reason). It all smacks a bit of “lets all be cabbages for Jesus”.
July 3rd, 2010 at 5:48 pm
I do not use the KJV, or subscribe to any of your other little groupings that you mention. However, I do find an enormous problem in working out when sin came into the world if the Bible is not accurate (Genesis specifically).
It might surprise you to know that although Christians had allowed themselves to be browbeaten into compromise about the Bible in the 19th and 20th Centuries, people like Charles Simeon, George Whitefield, John Wesley, etcetera, all believed that what we are told in the Bible about Creation is accurate.
And after all, which of the ‘evolutionists’ was there when the world was created? I think you’ll find God was – and if the Bible (God’s Word) isn’t trustworthy then neither is Christianity – because our only proof text is the Bible.
July 3rd, 2010 at 6:53 pm
The problem there is that we now have a better understanding of Hebrew and can tell the difference between allegory, poetry and historical writings.
We need to split it into two issues:
1. Did God create all life forms as they are without any need for evolution?
2. Is the earth 6500 years old?
The two are not logically connected and #2 only comes about because of Bishop Usher and his dates ending up in the margin of most AV bibles.
I do think its a false fight and it also makes Christians willing to accept the other things on my list because the burden of required reason gets lowered and the bonus of faith gets raised.
Whether creationism is right or wrong is actually secondary to the effect it has.
July 3rd, 2010 at 7:07 pm
@ Dominic: As Charles Simeon, George Whitefield and John Wesley all lived well before modern science, the fact that they believed the Bible to be literally true is neither surprising nor illuminating. It’s exactly what you’d expect. They were products of their time, and knew no better.
As for the question “which of the ‘evolutionists’ was there when the world was created?” No human being has ever directly observed the Earth orbiting the Sun, either. I imagine there are more events on which key scientific deductions are based unwitnessed than not. This in no way invalidates them.
Following links from a previous echurch entry, I ended up reading an American group full of posters who believed in an historic Adam and Eve in a world without death. But decay is part of gardening, as any gardener can tell you. The very existence of the fateful fruit implies a lifecycle, pollination by short-lived insects, etc. Cell death takes place in all living bodies all the time – without it we’d look very odd. For death not to exist before original sin implies a world in which within a very short period all living things would develop bizarre growths, and living things would pile on other living things. It’s absurd. Put your mind to how it might have worked in reality and the practical problems are soon overwhelming.
Anyone determined to believe in the inerrancy of the Bible is forced into logical contortions that are both painful and baffling to witness. It must be very scary to believe that your salvation is entirely dependent on the denial of reason. I’m extremely glad the C of E takes a strong line against this.
July 3rd, 2010 at 7:12 pm
No – it is vitally important. If sin did not come into the world through one man (as Scripture teaches us) then we cannot say that it is forgiven through one man (as Scripture teaches us) because we are denying the Scriptures.
Anyone who troubles to work out dates in the Bible will end up with a period of about 6500 to 7500 years. Even given some leeway we cannot get beyond 10,000 years.
Now, this is important – we are apparently all now to say that our better understanding of Hebrew (better than Jesus’s, for instance, who believed in the existence of Adam) means that we no longer need to believe the Bible. That is sheer human hubris.
God said it because God did it. God said it because He would like us, His creations, to know what and how He did it. God said it because it leads directly into the issue that means there is a need for the person of Jesus Christ to die on the cross in order that we might have eternal life won back for us. God said it because it DOES matter, and has done in the Christian church worldwide for almost 2,000 years, until ‘modern man’ decided he wishes to judge God’s Word, instead of allowing himself and his ideas to be judged BY God’s Word.
Because some men scoff at Creation as the Bible teaches it does not diminish its importance, nor does it mean we should downplay it. After all, some men scoff at the crucifixion – should we cease to preach and teach and publicly uphold that to?
July 3rd, 2010 at 7:50 pm
@Sophie ” It must be very scary to believe that your salvation is entirely dependent on the denial of reason.” Thats what I have been trying to say for years, but you found the words in one sentence!
@Dominic There was no good samaritan, does that make the story of the good samaritan any less valid? No. same goes for Adam. I don’t see where your logic that if there was no one Adam there needs to be no one Christ comes from. Its not logical at all. If you follow that logic then he only died for Adam. Its a one to many relationship or indeed a many to one relationship. Many sinners – one saviour. At best Adam is the first sinner, but maybe we shouldn’t go there as that might turn out to be Eve!
July 3rd, 2010 at 8:34 pm
Any figure from ancient history, however eminent, transported into the modern world would find our everyday artefacts both appalling and miraculous. Cars, planes, TV, phones – the newcomer would be terrified. This would be no reflection on their intellect or their beliefs. However wise they may have been in their own time, current technology would shock them to the point of trauma. We are all products of our times. Those who claim to be utterly faithful to tradition are usually following recent fashions.
Divinely inspired or not, the Bible comes to us through human agency, and is unavoidably filtered through the beliefs and understanding of those who transcribed it. Anything, however divine, that is subsequently filtered through human understanding and specific historical and geographical prisms is bound to be flawed. Even if one sees the prophets as living dictaphones, they could only comprehend within their human limitations. The Bible is full of sheep, referred to in reality, used in analogies. We are told it’s timeless. And yet most modern children never see a sheep. Very few of us have ever met a shepherd. The Bible is of its time. And also of its place. Had the Bible been written by Polynesians or Inuits they would have used entirely different imagery. No sheep.
Factually speaking, there are so many contradictions in the Bible that (and forgive me for not knowing which famous person said this) “Anyone who claims the Bible is all true can’t have read it all.”
July 4th, 2010 at 8:55 am
Let me remind you of the most spiritually debilitating sentence in the whole of Scripture:
“Did God really say…?”
Still, several thousand years later, people allow that comment to direct their thoughts.
And by the way, Jesus believed in genesis, as did Paul and so on. So what you say is that all these men are to be dismissed because they believe what the Bible says rather than what some bloke today says? Either the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and is true, or it isn’t. Either we can depend on it or we can’t. You seem to have opted for the latter.
Goodbye.
July 4th, 2010 at 9:11 am
There is no evidence that Jesus believed that Genesis was literal history rather than allegory or poetry.
God did not speak the bible, not in the sense that “did God really say” refers to.
What you have is:
An interpretation of scripture inherited from the christian tradition you are curently embedded in of
a translation into English of a range of books from
Collections of
Hebrew and greek manuscripts
which were copied over and over and
not always written by the people who claimed to have written them
but written by real human beings who
believed that they were prompted to write them by God.
Thats a long way from God “saying”.
July 5th, 2010 at 10:56 am
@ Dominic: OK. So how do you explain the major contradictions in the Bible? A well-known example is Jesus’s family tree. Matthew and Luke both provide a genealogy but it’s by no means the same genealogy. They disagree with each other completely. One of them, at least, has got to be wrong.
As I quoted in a previous post, “Anyone who claims the Bible is all true can’t have read it all.”