Another Republican Congressman Beclowns Himself

The Associated Press is reporting on a speech given by Georgia congressman Paul Broun, who is quoted as saying:

“God's word is true,” Broun said, according to a video posted on the church's website. “I've come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. And it's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”

Evidently, he was also quoted as believing that the earth is around 9 000 years old and was made in six days.

The truly scary thing about this is that he has a post on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. How does someone this scientifically stupid get on a committee like that?? Once again, this calls for some kind of rudimentary test of basic science knowledge and understanding to weed people out before they are appointed to these kinds of committees. In any sort of formal discourse, he will be next to useless because he doesn't accept the basic tenets of so many different scientific theories.

It is yet another example of a Republican congressman demonstrating for all to see that his education in science has completely failed him.

It is also an example of the narrow mindedness of modern fundamentalist evangelical Christianity, a movement that seeks to divorce itself from any deep historical roots or modern academic understandings of the world in which it finds itself.  I am reminded of what Bruce Waltke said about this movement:

“If the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult ... some odd group that is not really interacting with the world. And rightly so, because we are not using our gifts and trusting God's Providence that brought us to this point of our awareness,...”

Amen.

Where is Todd's Letter?

Panda's Thumb noticed something that I also did a few days ago. In this post, I commented on Todd Wood's letter to Governor Bill Haslam but remarked at the time that the link was busted. PT has noticed that there is still no link and suspects foul play. Nick Matzke writes:

Wood’s argument as stated wasn’t all that convincing, really – the law is necessary if your goal is to push creationism in public schools without getting in trouble, for instance. My gut instinct is that what was really going on was that Wood, for a long time one of the only self-critical, independent, and somewhat realistic voices within creationism, just doesn’t think that pushing ID/creationism via government power and the public schools is a good idea. It’s not even good for creationism – pushing your ideas in the public schools before they are accepted in the scientific community will instantly discredit your movement within science; it leads to heated political battles rather than academic discussion; and inevitably it has historically led to expensive and embarrassing court defeats for creationism, and tighter legal restrictions against teaching creationism.

Matzke opines (and I agree in the absence of anything to the contrary) that Wood, who is not your average creationist, got his hand slapped. I certainly hope that this is not the case as his is about the only sane voice (mostly) in the entire world of creationism. If someone has reined him in, that spells trouble.

It feels, in some respects, like the Bruce Waltke fiasco of a few years back where he stated that the Christian community needed to acknowledge the importance of the evolution evidence and was summarily drummed out of his position at Reformed Theological Seminary for saying so.

At Sunday school this weekend, one of the topics that came up was persecution of Christians. Every single person in the room, to a man or woman, stated that they had received more persecution from fellow Christians about their beliefs than by non-believers. How sad is that?

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Ken Ham on BioLogos and Proper Interpretation of the Scripture

I have resisted posting on this, after reading Darrel's response to it but, after reflection, I think it needs some response. Ken Ham has a twenty minute “sermon” on the problems with BioLogos. Remember, this is the same Ken Ham who got into hotwater a few months back and got uninvited to a home school conference because of his caustic and uncharitable remarks about BioLogos at the time. Here is the video:




A few thoughts:

• He shows a clip of Darrel talking about the age of the earth and what he would tell new students about how to integrate that information. Darrel states that he would refer the new student to some important books on geology and biology that would help them understand the evidence, to which Ham responds

  “By the way, I have a book I would refer them to.”

  That is snide. It assumes that anything that Darrel would provide in terms of resources would be worthless.
• Concerning the evidence for age of the universe and the earth, Ham states:

  This is not science, this is man's historical science, his beliefs about the past and he is going to tell us to let go of the Bible and what it says? See, belief in billions of years is science to them. It is not science, it is belief.

This idea that we cannot know our past (a variant of his "were you there?" statement) presents some cognitively dissonant problems. What if Mr. Ham walks into his breakfast room in the morning and finds a half-eaten bowl of cereal? By his own admission, he will never be able to determine what happened the night before because it would involve the use of historical science. While this is probably an overstatement of what Ham actually thinks, he never makes it clear that there is a problem here—that the same logical processes that one uses to reconstruct a murder investigation or an archaeological site are the same to reconstruct the prehistory of this planet. He never addresses this contradiction because to do so would reveal the logical error of his thought process.
• He states, about BioLogos (for whom I write) that they are starting to

  infiltrate the church. In fact, they are now producing a homeschool curriculum to get home schoolers not to believe Genesis.

  Maybe what they are trying to do is get kids to think intelligently about Genesis and avoid the one-dimensional reading of the scripture that Mr. Ham promotes.
• Later, he argues, in response to Francis Collins' comment that the Bible is not a textbook, that it is exactly that. He states:

  The Bible is not a textbook like a physics textbook, but it is a textbook of science because it is historical science that's talking, it is God's history book. That's the point. But when he says textbook of science, see they confuse these terms for people and that's what you have to understand, the difference between observational science and historical science. Where he finds the conflict, it is not because of the observational science, it is because of the historical science.

  It is not clear that Ham even knows the definition of historical science. It appears that he is saying that there is historical science that is biblically-based (the bible) and historical science that isn't (scientific reconstruction).
• About the whole kerfuffle surrounding the Great Home School Uninvite, he states:

  “When I found out what Peter Enns believed, and that he was selling his curriculum at the home school conference, I had to, in fact, we had already told the organizers that I can't speak unless I say something about him, not him personally, but his beliefs and I did and something happened that we still don't know what happened behind the scenes but I was eliminated.He wasn't eliminated. He was allowed to continue to speak." "And he was allowed to speak at a home school conference but they didn't want me there teaching about a literal Genesis.”

  This simply isn't so and Ham knows it. He was uninvited because of his "ungodly" and "mean-spirited" statements about some other speakers (Enns) and the convention. The organizers also wrote: "We believe that what Ken has said and done is un-Christian and sinful," That is pretty clear. Judging from the way that Nathan Ham, Ken Ham's son, responded, it was smack on the money too.
• In the early part of the video, he disapprovingly quotes Bruce Waltke, who also had a dust-up last year regarding evolution. Waltke states:

  “I think that if the data is overwhelming in favor, in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult, some odd group that’s not really interacting with the real world.”

  Ironically, Ham doesn't see that this is exactly what he is doing in this video—taking his followers down an isolated road in which they are a slave to one, narrow view of scripture to the exclusion of any other and in which all who do not accept this view can only be seen as enemies.

This response is stronger than that of Darrel Falk's and my inclination is to call Ham arrogant, pompous, misguided and divisive, all of which he is. But we need to pray for those he is trying to reach. He is not a scientist and his approach is to tap into the emotions that this subject brings out. Man's science appears to be at odds with his interpretation of the scripture, but he carries the idea of man's fallenness and limited understanding in only one direction. It never occurs to him that Pete Enns has come to a different understanding of the scriptures through prayer and a desire to learn about the cultural and literary context of the book that he and Ken Ham hold so dear. It only occurs to him that if Pete Enns and Darrel Falk don't understand the scriptures the way he does, then they must not be in the spirit. If Ham's behavior and statements look “cultish” to people like Bruce Waltke, someone who has spent their entire professional life studying the scriptures, what must they look like to non-Christians?

NPR on the Literal Adam and Eve

In the wake of the resignation of John Schneider at Calvin College, NPR has an article on their web site on the latest Christian controversy, the literal Adam and Eve debate. Barbara Bradley Hagerty writes:

[Dennis] Venema is a senior fellow at BioLogos Foundation, a Christian group that tries to reconcile faith and science. The group was founded by Francis Collins, an evangelical and the current head of the National Institutes of Health, who, because of his position, declined an interview.
And Venema is part of a growing cadre of Christian scholars who say they want their faith to come into the 21st century. Another one is John Schneider, who taught theology at Calvin College in Michigan until recently. He says 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.
"Evolution makes it pretty clear that in nature, and in the moral experience of human beings, there never was any such paradise to be lost," Schneider says. "So Christians, I think, have a challenge, have a job on their hands to reformulate some of their tradition about human beginnings." To many evangelicals, this is heresy.

The evangelical community certainly has its back against the wall on this one. Once upon a time, it was okay to take pot shots at young earth creationism because scientific support for that position is not well-founded. This is different. For many, an acceptance of Christianity does not hinge on how old the earth is or how the creation narratives are interpreted. Whether or not Adam and Eve exist, however, calls into question the very notion of salvation in Christ. That strikes a chord. Schneider resigned and even Daniel Harlow, who also writes in this area stated that he now has a cloud hanging over him:

"Evangelicalism has a tendency to devour its young," says Daniel Harlow, a religion professor at Calvin College, a Christian Reformed school that subscribes to the fall of Adam and Eve as a central part of its faith.
"You get evangelicals who push the envelope, maybe; they get the courage to work in sensitive, difficult areas," Harlow says. "And they get slapped down. They get fired or dismissed or pressured out."

This is the scandal of the evangelical mind of which Mark Noll wrote. As I wrote the other day, this will probably get worse before it gets better and, as the national spotlight shines down on it, it may reveal a cavernous divide in modern Christianity.  I pray that this is not the case.

Ken Ham's Updated Statement on Bruce Waltke

Many evangelicals are still reeling from the controversy surrounding the resignation of Bruce Waltke from Reformed Theological Seminary and the event has been a wake up call for scientists who profess a faith in Jesus Christ. It is not surprising, however, that the reaction by Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis has been different. Here is what he has to say:

It is so obvious to me that the BioLogos Foundation (now headed up by two Nazarene college professors who are ardent evolutionists and liberal in their theology) have loved having a world renowned scholar like Waltke endorse them, as they are being very aggressive in pushing their liberal theology agenda on the church. In fact, if you want to see where compromising evolution/millions of years with the Bible leads to, go to the BioLogos website and read their question and answer section.

This is an example of what Chaplain Mike wrote in his response to the dismissal of Dr. Waltke. It doesn't matter how devoted to the cause of Christ he was. It doesn't matter how much Christian scholarship he was responsible for. If he accepted evolution, his theology was liberal. Liberal? Liberal theology is rejecting the divinity of Christ. Liberal theology is rejecting the trinity. The simple acceptance of evolution does not a liberal theologian make.

Here is the litmus test Chaplain Mike described: evolution. Its evidence notwithstanding, if you accept it, you are branded as compromising your understanding of the Bible. No other viewpoint of scripture can be correct. Sad.

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BioLogos Post on Bruce Waltke

Here is BioLogos' post on Bruce Waltke and evolution in which the video in which he strongly suggested that the church needed to come to grips with evolution is discussed. One paragraph, in particular, stands out:

The fact that Dr. Waltke felt he was unable to leave the video in place, despite the fact that he still agrees with its contents, is an extremely important statement about the culture of fear within evangelicalism in today’s world. Leading evangelicals who support evolution are rightly fearful of personal attacks on the integrity of their faith and character. Even when they believe that scientific data must be taken seriously, and that science has revealed the ways in which God created the world, they are more willing to be associated with those who are clearly wrong about God’s truth as revealed within His World, and who are thereby also wrong about how they understand His Word. How will the Church ever come to discern truth and falsehood if academic discourse is neutered for fears of public perception? This situation, before us, more than any that we are familiar with in the one year history of biologos.org, poignantly demonstrates the importance of the task we all have.

Sadly, a few days after this was written, Dr. Waltke was asked by the Reformed Theological Seminary to resign his position. As it has been so many times in the past, the evangelical church is now at a crossroads. While there are many organizations that seek to unite the church with modern scientific teaching, there is an increasing radicalization of the evangelical church due to the influence of fundamentalist doctrine. Purveyors of this influence have completely rejected everything that modern science has to offer, instituting, instead, a doctrine that, scientifically, dates to the early 1600s. Such a doctrine is manifestly at odds with both a traditional understanding of creation and what God has revealed to us through the world that He created. This view is doing serious harm to the Christian message and to our ability to speak to the world about Jesus. As such, it cannot go unchallenged. I think this is our wake-up call.

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