Evolution or Genesis: You Decide

"Why does Christianity always seem to be changing to fit the knowledge we obtain through science?" This is a question that often puzzles me for a number of reasons which I will try to explain.

The only view I can think that we appear to be wavering on is our "origin of life" view. The claim is made that Christians have always believed that the world was created in six literal days. The claim, however, is false and ignorant of the thinkers throughout church history. Origen (3rd century) opposed the idea of six literal days, Saint Augustine argued that Genesis 1 and 2 were written based on the understanding of the people at that time and Thomas Aquinas felt the same. The idea of a literal six day creation, although most certainly held by some previously (they had no "alternative"), is really a 20th Century advent of fundamentalist, North American based, Christianity.

It would seem to me that some atheists also view Christian acceptance of evolution as a win for naturalism and more proof of the delusion that is Christianity. That in this century of discovery and knowledge, we are grasping at the straws of a belief that - as we come to learn more about how the natural world works - is doomed to failure. I know what this kind of reasoning is like, I too used to think like this, even as a believer. I had no explanation for how God did what was claimed in the Book of Genesis, I just thought there was no way it could be done through evolution, because that meant God wasn't needed. But this line of reasoning was near-sighted and almost demonstrable to my faith as I starting to talk to people, whom I knew and trusted, that studied and endorsed evolutionary biology. They had no reason to lie to me, and I knew this; I was presented with a dilemma. Or so I thought...

Being thoroughly convinced of the existence of God and of the divinity of Jesus, I just couldn't make sense of it all, and was forced to put it on the shelf (way in the back, and covered it with a towel). But as of late I have been doing some thinking about it and came to realize just how foolish I had been. Evolution is far from being a defeater to belief in God or belief in the Christian religion for that matter. I have come to view it for what it is, a natural explanation and it has served to strengthen the conviction of my beliefs and to appreciate God's creation even more. See, once I realized that Evolution by "natural" selection is a presupposition of science based on what is testable, to use it as a logical means to conclude that God doesn't exist just doesn't follow and is really just begging the question/ arguing in a circle. Science is limited, it can't touch God and once you bring God into the equation, you are being philosophical and like I said, arguing in a circle.

As a Christian I believe that the supernatural, created the natural; that God created a natural world and I believe this is the view that has always been held by Christians (they just had no idea where natural ended and supernatural began). The world which God created would have to be self-regenerative, and a world in which He would have to interject as little as possible, if at all, except at the very moment of creation. A universe who's events were planned out in advance to bring about the existence of human beings - child's play for an omniscient Being. God knew that man would be curious in nature (again with the omniscience) and would seek answers to the way in which the world around him works (2 Timothy 3:7). God gave us free-will and made us highly intelligent, so as to not make the case so convincing for His existence that we were forced to conclude that only a God could make it happen, we can conceive of other ways (sort of).

Back to the Genesis account and evolution. Let me pose this to you, and it is somewhat along the lines of Saint Augustine. If you were a Jew living 3500 years ago and God came to you and gave you, seven visions or dreams, or say one vision separated by evening and night, of the history of creation from start to now, how would you describe it so that others around you could relate to it ? Scientifically? But science wasn't even a thought. Would tell it as a tale, as a summary of the events you witnessed? That sounds more like it. The funny thing is, the more we learn about the history of the universe and our planet, the more it looks like a long drawn out tale of the genesis account. We have a long way to go, but everything had a beginning, like an ancient man wrote down long, long ago.

I may be deemed an "theistic evolutionist," but if that is the case then I am also a theistic cosmologist, physicist, chemist, logician, et al. I believe God created a natural world, not a supernatural one and as such our science is only studying His creation, which is representative of His omnipotence and omniscience. Now, if you think I am dismissing the Genesis account I should say that I believe it is a literal representation of the events through the eyes of a ancient man, in an ancient time, who described what was shown to Him as it was shown to him and that is something that every scientist on the planet would kill to see: the very formation of our universe and of our planet from the beginning of time, up until this age.

Never again will I be able to understand how the exploration of the natural world eliminates God, for me it has only enhanced my understanding of Him. Christians are not changing in their beliefs and although we may differ on second, third or fourth order beliefs, this is because we are human and our understanding is where we differ. Our core beliefs remain the same, we believe that God exists and that Jesus died for our sins, just as time goes on we come to know more about our God through the natural world, and a God that we come to know more and more about as we build off of present generations, well, that's a God I can not only come to appreciate, but one in whom I can, and indeed have, come to love.

Pentecost 2012

          Today is the day of Pentecost which marks the day that we were given the hope that dwells within us, namely, the Holy Spirit. Can you remember when you first accepted Christ as your saviour and the Great Comforter entered your life? This is a great day to sit back and really think of the Gift that God has given us! Rejoice, my brothers and sisters!
          Here is a little bit of reading from the Book of Acts, I urge you to really take some time alone today and remember the time you first accepted Christ as your Lord and Saviour. We come to Him in faith, and it is accredited to us as righteousness.

In Christ,

P.L.

The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost

2 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. ² Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.³ They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

⁵ Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. ⁶ When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. ⁷ Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? ⁹ Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰ Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome ¹¹ (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” ¹² Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

¹³ Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

Peter Addresses the Crowd

¹⁴ Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. ¹⁵ These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! ¹⁶ No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

¹⁷ “‘In the last days, God says,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people. 
Your sons and daughters will prophesy, 
    your young men will see visions,
    your old men will dream dreams.
¹⁸ Even on my servants, both men and women,
    I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
    and they will prophesy. 
¹⁹ I will show wonders in the heavens above
    and signs on the earth below, 
    blood and fire and billows of smoke.
²⁰ The sun will be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood 
    before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
²¹ And everyone who calls
    on the name of the Lord will be saved.’^[c]

²² “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. ²³ This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men,^[d] put him to death by nailing him to the cross. ²⁴ But God raised him from the dead,freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.²⁵ David said about him:

“‘I saw the Lord always before me.
    Because he is at my right hand,
    I will not be shaken.
²⁶ Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
    my body also will rest in hope,
²⁷ because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
    you will not let your holy one see decay. 
²⁸ You have made known to me the paths of life;
    you will fill me with joy in your presence.’^[e]

²⁹ “Fellow Israelites, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. ³⁰ But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. ³¹ Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. ³² God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. ³³ Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. ³⁴ For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said,

“‘The Lord said to my Lord:
    “Sit at my right hand
³⁵ until I make your enemies
    a footstool for your feet.”’^[f]

³⁶ “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lordand Messiah.”

³⁷ When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

³⁸ Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹ The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off —for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

⁴⁰ With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” ⁴¹ Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

The Fellowship of the Believers

⁴² They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. ⁴³ Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.⁴⁴ All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵ They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. ⁴⁶ Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,⁴⁷ praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Intelligence of the Ancients

         I once got into a very heated debate with a friend of mine who thought that we were more intelligent, these days, then the people in ancient times. I couldn't help but ask him if he considered himself more intelligent than the likes of Socrates or Plato. This was meant to be a rhetorical question, but to the rolling of my eyes, after looking up Socrates, and having discovered that believed thoughts originated in our chest cavity, he concluded that he was in fact smarter than Socrates.  

As frustrating as I found this discourse between he and I, I also learned something from it; a lot of people confuse knowledge with intelligence, and this has instilled a false sense of pride in people living in the modern age.

Firstly, knowledge is defined as information and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, and intelligence as the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. I would like to think that by defining the terms my point becomes clear, but I just can't "define and dash," so I will attempt to illustrate my point more perspicuously.

Let's for a minute put ourselves in the shoes of the ancients, say the same time as Socrates, in and around 450 BC. Human intelligence has not evolved since this period – I would even argue it has taken a few steps back on the species as a whole – and so you would be you, accept of course you would be you as you would be if you were born a fifth century BC Greek. You would be subject to the cultural milieu of where you would be born, but you would still be you. Here is the question to ask yourself: would you consider yourself an idiot? Well of course not! Just because you lack the knowledge of the modern age doesn't mean you are stupid. Available to you are all the cognitive faculties that you posses now. Think about it, you are no more intelligent than they were, the only thing that has changed is the knowledge that surrounds you, not your intelligence, this is something we as humans cannot change. This is the fundamental difference between knowledge and intelligence.

To address the second half about the misunderstanding of knowledge and intelligence and it's relationship to a false sense of pride amongst people living in the modern age, I offer two questions: (1) Did we all wake up one morning knowing what we now know today, and (2) are we still human?

Both questions have easy answers, “no” to the former and “yes” to the latter. What I am trying to illustrate with the first question should be obvious and found within the definition of knowledge. We did not come to our present knowledge of the world and it's inner workings by rolling out of bed one day and it all being there for us, it has built upon the shoulders of giants. From Newton to Einstein to Hawking, all of these men had equals from by gone eras whose successes and mistakes helped to shape what we know today. Moreover, take into consideration how brilliant the people must of been who first figured out how to write, or make clay pottery, or discovered the smelting process, or architecture. Do you think you could have figured that stuff out on your own? I doubt I could have, and I know I am no idiot.

The point of the second question is that people are people regardless of what era we live in and as such we are truly no different than those of us who are alive today. That is the false sense of pride, just because we have their knowledge to reflect on, does not mean we are more intelligent than were, as a matter of fact, we are not.

There is a religious significance to what I am saying here. You can say that people from a bygone era were more superstitious than us, but I say they just didn't know where nature ended and super-nature began. These days the lines are much more clear, but you shouldn't have a false sense of pride because our knowledge of the natural world somehow means the supernatural doesn't exist, science can't touch that, only your presuppositions can. Six billion of us believe in a God, even with all the knowledge of our natural world we posses today. There is something more to belief in God than objective evidence. It is not just some mechanism that we use to connect the dots in the knowledge that we don't yet posses. It is something we feel, something we have always felt and those people who lived back then were the same as you and I who live today. They couldn't explain it either, but they knew it was real, they same as us who believe today. Reflect on that.

In Christ

P.L.     

Thought of the Day

You know, I'm not sure if it is hilarious or sad that I was impressed by the activity of my first day of blogging, only to click on the "stop counting my visits button" and come to the realization that I was the only one visiting. Now I am considering changing my blog's description to "philosophy's colostomy".

Christianity VS Philosophy

         I am often left astonished that people in the believing community shun fellow believers for their foray into the discipline of philosophy. With so many of the "village type" atheists claiming logic as a weapon when belittling believers on Youtube or various other forums, philosophy and subsequent branches such as logic and reason have become four letter words for a large portion of the body of Christ. I am unsure if this is due to a lack of faith or anger, but one thing I am sure of, is that it is misguided. If you have ever heard the expression "fight fire with fire" then you should be able to follow my point I am trying to make. 
         When a skeptic says that the arguments for God's existence are "weak", they usually forget to mention that the arguments for their position are even more "weak" than ours. They usually will counter with "you can't prove a negative" but this is simply false, all one has to do is show that something is self-contradictory, - i.e. a married bachelor -  to prove it doesn't exist. If they say they still don't understand, then point them in the direction of a group of arguments called the "Incoherence of Theism" which tries to show the various attributes of God are self-contradictory; the omnipotence paradox for example. What has also been demonstrated is why the "I lack belief" card gets played. Here is a blog entry from PZ Myers addressing that. But let's stay on point.
         Now what I did there was use what I have learnt in my ongoing study of philosophy - like there is any other kind -  to answer something you hear and read so often. You can prove a universal negative! But I didn't learn that in the Bible, just like I am sure you didn't learn the many skills you use at the workplace or at home, such as cooking for instance. Philosophy is a discipline like any other, and Christian philosophers (and there are lots of them) are members of the body of Christ too.          
         So "fight fire with fire"? Well a lot of people cite Colossians 2:8 to try and drive the point home: See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. Here is the kicker to this, as William Lane Craig so eloquently put it (although I am unsure if he can lay claim to this quote),"The man who claims to have no need for philosophy is the man who is most apt to be deceived by it." In other words, if you want to ensure that you are not fooled by hollow and deceptive philosophy, you have to fight fire with fire. Or put your fingers in your ears, literally or figuratively, either way is fine.        
         We are all philosophers whether we realise it or not, we can be good at it and reap the benefits, or we can be bad at it an be conned out of the incredible gift that God gave to us, when His precious Son died on the cross for our sin.


In Christ


P.L.

Mable's Suffering

        One of the hardest things about belief in God has to be the suffering in the world. Whether it is the philosophical probabilistic problem of evil or an emotional problem brought one by the loss of a loved one or for tribulations we face in our lives, suffering sucks. This is something most of us in the 1st world really only experience in small doses and where suffering and pain and evil is what keeps most of us in the first world from belief in God, in the third world it is the complete opposite. 

        I, myself, have endured some horrible things that I wouldn't wish on anyone. But I know that it was through suffering I was brought to God and through suffering I came to belief, through suffering I have been strengthened and through suffering I will be sanctified. My story is one you don't hear everyday and this story that I am posting now is one that is different and ultimately inspiring. It brought tears to my eyes, and I for one can't wait to meet Mabel so I can let her know just how much her example of endurance helps me to persevere through my own challenges. This is taken off of a transcript of one of William Lane Craig's Defenders class over at the Reasonable Faith website.  

In Christ

P.L.

In weakness, God’s power is displayed most manifestly. So Paul accepted all the more gladly the weaknesses and the sufferings that were his lot because God’s power is made perfect in weakness.

I can think of no better example of this than the story of Mabel, which was shared with me by one of my former colleagues at Westmont College, where I taught for a year. Some of you may have heard this story when we talked about the problem of evil, but I want to share it again because I think it illustrates the point that I am trying to make here about the perfection of God’s power in suffering.

Tom, my colleague, had the habit of visiting nursing homes in the area where he would try to bring some cheer into the lives of the people who were there. And he talks about how one Mother’s Day he visited a particular nursing home. He says:

On this particular day I was walking in a hallway that I had not visited before looking in vein for a few who were alive enough to receive a flower and a few words of encouragement. This hallway seemed to contain some of the worst cases. Strapped onto carts or into wheelchairs and looking completely helpless.

As I neared the end of this hallway I saw an old woman strapped in a wheelchair, her face was an absolute horror. The empty stare and white pupils of her eyes told me that she was blind. The large hearing aid over one ear told me that she was almost deaf. One side of her face was being eaten by cancer. There was a discolored and running sore covering part of one cheek and it had pushed her nose to the side, dropped one eye and distorted her jaw so that what should have been the corner of her mouth was the bottom of her mouth. As a consequence, she drooled constantly. I also learned later that this woman was 89 years old and that she had been bedridden, blind, nearly deaf and alone for 25 years. This was Mabel.

I don’t know why I spoke to her. She looked less likely to respond than most of the people I saw in that hallway. But I put a flower in her hand and said, “Here is a flower for you, Happy Mother’s Day.” She held the flower up to her face and tried to smell it and then she spoke and much to my surprise her words, though somewhat garbled because of her deformity, were obviously produced by a clear mind. She said, “Thank you, it’s lovely, but can I give it to someone else? I can’t see it you know, I’m blind.”

I said, “of course,” and I pushed her in her chair back down the hallway to a place where I thought I could find some alert patients. I found one and stopped the chair. Mabel held out the flower and said, “Here, this is from Jesus.”

It was then that it began to dawn on me that this was not an ordinary human being. . . . Mabel and I became friends over the next few weeks and I went to see her once or twice a week for the next three years. . . . It was not many weeks before I turned from a sense that I was being helpful to a sense of wonder. And I would go to her with a pen and paper to write down the things she would say. . . .

During one hectic week of final exams, I was frustrated because my mind seemed to be pulled in ten directions at once with all of the things that I had to think about. The question occurred to me, what does Mabel have to think about? Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, not even able to know if it is day or night. So I went to her and asked, “Mabel, what do you think about when you lie here?”

And she said, “I think about my Jesus.”

I sat there and thought for a moment about the difficulty for me of thinking about Jesus for even five minutes. And I asked, “What do you think about Jesus?” She replied slowly and deliberately as I wrote, and this is what she said,

I think how good he has been to me. He has been awfully good to me in my life, you know. . . . I’m one of those kind who’s mostly satisfied. . . . Lots of folks would think I’m kind of old-fashioned. But I don’t care. I’d rather have Jesus, he is all the world to me.

And then Mabel began to sing an old hymn:

Jesus is all the world to me,
My life, my joy, my all.
He is my strength from day to day,
Without him, I would fall.
When I am sad, to him I go.
No other one can cheer me so.
When I am sad, he makes me glad.
He’s my friend.

This is not fiction. Incredible as it may seem, a human being really lived like this. I know, I knew her. How could she do it? Seconds ticked and minutes crawled, and so did days and weeks and months and years of pain without human company and without an explanation of why it was all happening – and she laid there and sang hymns. How could she do it?

The answer, I think, is that Mabel had something that you and I don’t have much of. She had power. Lying there, in that bed, unable to move, unable to see, unable to hear, unable to talk. . . , she had incredible power.

I think that that is such a beautiful illustration of this point: God’s power is made perfect in weakness and manifested there. So we are, indeed, walking sticks of dynamite; but this may not evidence itself in great triumph or great success in some persons, who are called upon to suffer for the Lord. It may manifest itself in incredible strength and perseverance in hardship.

An Old Joke

When I heard this a while back it was introduced to me as "an old joke", so I will introduce it as the same. 

A first year philosophy major bursts into his professors office early one morning. His face unshaven, hair a mess, bags under his eyes and the same clothes on from the day before. He had the look of someone who had been up all night. In his hands he clutched a book by Descartes and with tears in his eyes said, "Professor! Do I exist!?" His professor looked at him with a cheeky grin and asked, "Who wants to know?"

Some Argumentation and Logic Basics Part 1

      Perhaps one of the scariest things you can hear is when someone refers to logic as "their logic". When I hear this I often think to myself that they have no idea how right they actually are, as often times, their rules of logic are just that, their own and no one else would dare to lay claim to them. Often times too, people get critical thinking confused with logic, but this is something we will cover in another series. In this series I want to cover the basics, being as how I am not a professional philosopher or logician myself, this is probably the only area I should be covering. Let's start with arguments; what they are, different types and what makes them sound.  

So what is an argument?

It's not a heated quarrel that often times leads to physical altercations, or hair pulling (if you play in the NBA). Well, it can be, but that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about an argument in the philosophical sense, which is a group of statements called premises which lead to a conclusion.  

What kinds of arguments are there?

There are two kinds of arguments. There are deductive arguments, whose conclusions are guaranteed from their premises and inductive arguments, whose conclusions are more probable than their negations. 

What makes for a sound argument?

Four things: 

1) It must be formally valid, which is to say that it's conclusion must follow from it's premises via the rules of logic. 

2) It must also be informally valid, which is to say that although it may be formally valid, it commits an informal fallacy in one or more of it's premises thus negating it's conclusion or must be reformulated.

3) It's premises must be true.

4) It's premises must be more plausible than their negation. You do not need to be 100% certain, and the more you get into philosophy, the more you realize that only your own existence can be 100% certain. A lot of people seem to forget this, or are just ignorant to it and presuppositions go a long way in what side of the argument you end up on.

So that is a quick introduction into argumentation. Next we will get into the 9 laws of inference. For a deeper discussion on philosophy from a Christian perspective - and what I am using as a reference - I would suggest picking up a copy of Philosophical Foundations For A Christian Worldview . I can't stress enough how important it is that if you are a Christian, and interested in philosophy, to be learning this from a Christian perspective. 

For a more in-depth discussion on inductive and deductive arguments I would suggest going here:

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy 

In Christ

P.L.

Introduction

Hi there! I'm writing this as a short introduction to you about me, in hopes that I come across interesting enough for you to come back.

So who am I? Well, first off, that is a deep question! But in descriptive terms, I am a Christian; a sinner saved by Grace; a disciple of Jesus; a lover of philosophy; apologetics; creative writing; science; music; clean humour and athletics. If these things interest you too, than you may be interested in this blog. You still might not be interested in my blog even if you are interested in these things, but that's OK, we can still be friends.

Hope to see you around

In Christ

P.L.