In my former post on Genesis 1 I focused on the first part of Genesis 1: the creation of 'heaven and earth' - whereby 'heaven' is the sun, moon, the stars in general (as the authors saw them with the naked eye, presumably), and planet earth. Now let us move on to the creation of the animal kingdom and the human being.

Adam, made of dust

A question to Bible believers, to kick-off: did you ever ache for an encounter with Adam, or Eve? I mean, not the sexual lust that might have been provoked by some artistic depiction or so, but the wish for a real encounter?

Maybe some of us may have thought once in a while that it could be fun, or interesting. Maybe children may have thought for a while that it would be wonderful to talk with Adam, or with Eve (that may have something to do with storytelling to them). But from the Biblical narrative, I do not think much people would naturally feel tempted into aching for an encounter with these two giants of mankind. Why not? Simply because the first human couple in the Bible is not presented in any particularly amiable fashion. We don't know about any real conversation between them, there's just a distant reporting of the few things they said and did.

( Read more... )

We started from a positive acceptance of the scientific data, or facts, on evolution, so we did not even consider a reading Genesis 1 with any fears for 'contradiction' with science. This approach is of course very different from making up our mind upfront, based on our (often primitive, and interpreted) understanding of the Biblical account. When our views need to change, it is not really science changing biblical views, but our own understanding of our environment that changes - and it changes all the time of course, because "times are changing" as the saying goes. In religion, some things never change - but that is particularly true for the high appreciation of the human being, less so for how we perceive the universe for instance.

On evolution, remember that while evolution theories are a way to making sense of the data, explaining the facts in a consistent way, the principle of evolution is simply the sum of scientific data about our ancestry. Even without theory, or with just very primitive theory (basic classification of what we observe), this data shows clear patterns or what obviously looks like a slow development of life towards a figure we recognize as us, mankind, the human being. A believer who has an open mind and eye for it will observe that the human being in Genesis 1 is a surprisingly modern human being. Calling the scientific documentation of the traces of our diverse past evolution is not contradictory with Genesis 1. In science, evolution is the only way to accurately name the process. In theory formation, one cannot look at traces of human ancestry, and then bring in Genesis 1 and say: "God created these traces as we see them". That would be like looking at a car and saying: "God created this car at once" - no building up of all the individual pieces was necessary. This is not how science works of course. And we must respect that. It follows that a creation account is something different than science - but not any less true for that reason.

With this in mind, let us now look at Genesis 1, knowing that we should not treat the Bible as a scientific document.

What kind of story is Genesis 1?

The reading of Genesis 1 may impose a problem if you learned to read it as a literal report on how the creation actually happened, in stead of reading this as a report on more important aspects not covered by science.

As we have seen in our former blog posts, the Genesis 1 account reads like an allegory of some kind. Saying allegory is taking a shortcut, as Genesis 1 has also often been described as elevated prose, or a theological manifesto, and other descriptions. It is important however, to realize that allegory does not indicate it has no basis in reality. An allegory is not a fiction. Allegories always have a historical basis. Santa Claus is not an allegory. Most of the parables, a narrative style often used by Jesus, clearly had a historical basis. This was the way stories were often handed down in ancient times, for educational purpose. Still, there is history writing behind it in almost all cases (e.g. the naming of genealogy trees: those names were not just invented of course). You cannot exclude historical truth from an account just because the style of an ancient document was different from what we are used to. Accuracy may not always have been the prime purpose - for instance in Jewish genealogy trees we find gaps. That does not make the account untrue - it just makes it inaccurate on certain points (e.g. exact timing) from a modern viewpoint. The modern viewpoint does not allow unqualified judgments about ancient writings of course: all things must be judged against the background of the time of occurrence. So one may have to make corrections to get the timing right - but historians know how to do this. There's nothing that compares with a fantasy story here.

( Read more... )

[Originally published on September 2, 2008. Last revised on Feb 18, 2009.]

In previous article we talked about the basic scientific idea behind evolution and why the theories must not be 'injected' into the Biblical account. Theories made up from a naturalistic viewpoint (as is traditionally the case with an atheist point of view) must also be separated from science, a domain Christians must not let hijack by atheists as has happened for far too long. Further on, unlike the atheistic interpretations of the data of evolution, we are interested in the scientific data as it is. Besides all this, we are also interested in the question how we can understand creation in view of evolution. But we first try to understand a little more about what the evolution concept of the human species is really about. We have to talk about Homo Sapiens, and a little bit about the Neanderthal as well.

Scientific theory locates our ancestry in Africa. An African origin of mankind may appear to be contradicting with Christian faith, given that the garden of Eden leads us to what is now Iraq - not Africa. But are we talking about the same thing here? Given what we saw in the former blog, it is clearly justified to argue that the scientific outlook may not be the point where the Bible starts talking about Adam & Eve.

( Read more... )

[Originally published on August 31, 2008. Last revised on Feb 15, 2009.]

Why is it that the Genesis 1 account makes so many believers feel like they should reject evolution? That is the key question in this article, and I will suggest to stop doing this. Do not instantly fear as if I would necessarily feel uncomfortable with the idea of creation. I believe in the creation as described in Genesis 1. Yet I think evolution is conform to what happened besides the Genesis 1 story. It is my wish that at the end of this series of blogs on creation and evolution, some Christians may become less scared about the whole evolution thing. And I don't mean less scared as in "I'm not scared! God is in control!!"... (which sounds to me like scared anyway). I mean less scared as in "I'm not scared because I see that there's no conflict between science and religion".

We may need to rethink our understanding of some key issues. Basically, there can be no real reason to reject scientific data, nor should the idea of 'creation' be considered impossible just because a majority of scientists seems to think so. Some 40% of scientists believes in a God of some kind - that was not supposed to happen if creation would be such a foolish idea.

In my opinion, the picture is not that bleak for Christians - not at all. Provided that we can at least see the difference between what was written in Genesis, and how it is interpreted by some, or many, of us.

Science itself is on nobody's side. Science is a means of gathering data, categorizing this data, increase our knowledge about the world, the universe, and everything in it. Science is not a panacea against the diseases of mankind, or against religion, or against atheism. Science has its limits, and so has evolution, especially evolution as a theory.
( Read more... )

[Originally published on July 12, 2008. Revised on Feb 5, 2009.]

The topic of new atheism I will leave behind now, more or less, and we will move forward to a subject which is related both to religion and atheism: the the hot potato of secularization, the separation of Church and State. One of the reasons why I attempted to separate atheism from the fundamentalist views of new atheism is, on the one hand, for the sake of atheists who do not want to be modern 'Jihadists' (no decent atheist deserves this), and on the other hand, because no society deserves it to go through the separation of Church and State only to get in return a fundamentalist ideology such as 'new atheism'. Atheism however ('normal atheism' if you want) is not necessarily an ideology - and in that case is often (reasonably) close to agnosticism. Many Christians have also their 'agnostic' side if you want - they realize that they cannot know everything (nor is 'everything' included in the Bible of course). But if 'new atheism' would define how the secular state should look like, it would be just as ridiculous as asking Jerry Falwell (anno 2007), or Pat Robertson, to define the rules for the secular state.

The whole issue of secularization is of utmost importance to us, modern citizens. It is out of the question to cover this topic completely at once. I plan 2 articles on secularization and that will only scratch the surface. In the future, we will try to understand what it is that Nietzsche meant, when he suggested that it is actually Christianity itself who 'killed God' - and deservedly so (in his opinion) because the God that Christianity had made / deformed (the dogmatic God) didn't look anymore like the God as we, or the Jews, had known Him initially. (Nietzsche was Jewish, and on top of that, maybe the most brilliant philosopher ever - even while he is VERY hard to deal with for most Christians). Yet, this article is just anticipating a little, by arguing that atheism does not have the ultimate or best answers to the quest for an ideal society. In other words, a secular state cannot is not an atheist state. But it could probably be described as an 'agnostic' state. My favorite would be: a truly humanist state.

I will not fully dig into the question where Christianism is to be found in this whole picture. Christianism, in my opinion, is not an answer unless we understand what its true tenets are. I have a lot of blogs to go, just to explain exactly that (or try to)... In the meantime, we are just 'having a good scratch' on a cuople of closely related topics.

( Read more... )

[Originally published on July 8, 2008. Revised on Feb 3, 2009.]

Let us now look into the problem of proper understanding of religion in general. This is just meant to give some clues for those who are willing to consider a more realistic view on religion, in stead of drifting upon the wave of the new atheist rage.

Are all religions (equally) flawed?

Most religious conflicts that Harris had on his nifty list (see previous post) are Islamic conflicts (although he does not mention them all). Northern Ireland refers to a Christian conflict and in the Israel-Palestine conflict the Jews are involved. But most religious conflicts in the world today are Islamic. That however is not how Harris talks about it: he treats them as 'religious conflicts'. New atheists are isolated with this opinion, in the midst of an ocean of other observers and intellectuals who clearly see major differences between different religions, including differences between the monotheist religions.

( Read more... )

[Originally published on July 7, 2008. Revised on Feb 2, 2009.]

Let me address a specific phenomenon here. In three subsequent articles from Sam Harris, published on myspace, there was a remarkable rehearsal of a particular claim. Actually there were more things subject to 'repetition', because if you just take the three subsequent titles, there's already the obvious common factor completely demeaning thought about religion in general. The titles speak for themselves: Religion as a Source of Violence, Religion as a Black Market for Irrationality, and The virus of religious moderation. [Update: I removed the links to these blogs because they have now been deleted - it seems also questionable if that profile is really owned by Sam Harris, because there is a very hostile small group of radical anti-theists on myspace who just use any kind of tricks to 'spread the word' of Sam Harris. The content of these blogs originated from real Sam Harris articles though.] Of course there have been wrongs about religion, including Christianism, I have no desire to deny that. But to define religion as the sum of its mistakes is strange, unprofessional, and irrational.

Any wise man on the planet - be it an agnostic or atheist or believer or whatever - can always tell you that there's inevitably something wrong when you criticize someone in such a way that you leave no room for him or her to defend. Even Dawkins - a renown scientist - managed to write 400 pages against religion (his The God Delusion) and could not find a single good thing to say about religion. If scientific theory would treat data this way, theories would no longer be theories but ideologies. What's wrong with these guys?
( Read more... )

[Originally published on June 28, 2008. Revised on Feb 13, 2008.]

The name New Atheism may not sound familiar to everyone. A search for 'New Atheism' on Wikipedia (EN) anno June 30, 2008 redirects to the entry Antitheism.

Who are they?

The New Atheists is the club spearheaded in the first place by the radical atheists Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris - sometimes called The trinity of militant atheism. Dawkins is a scientist, Dennett and Harris are qualified as philosophers. On the website newatheists.org, Christopher Hitchens in addition makes a "fab four" of frontrunners of the so-called 'New Atheists' - so there's little discussion about the naming convention. Hitchens is more of an entertainer. He does it just 'for the fun of it', in his own words.

( Read more... )