23 February 2008

Crossing the divide

I recently recommended a very nice new blog by Mike Beidler called The Creation of an Evolutionist. It's subtitled "My journey from young earth creationism to evolutionary creationism," and it's downright fun to read. Mike is engaging and bright. He writes with enthusiasm and joy, so it's hard to imagine that his journey might have been difficult in places. But I'm sure it was.

Others have shared here and elsewhere about the trauma that many experience when considering the abandonment of creationism, an experience I mostly avoided because I never fully embraced creationism, and certainly never adopted a young-earth position. But it's easy for me to understand the emotional environment in which such struggles occur, and that's why I'm glad commenters like David O. have insisted on pointing out that the debunking of crude folk science (like the Reasons To Believe train wreck) is not helpful in the absence of a sound theological framework. Why? Because the obstacles that keep most Christians from embracing evolution and an ancient creation are not merely (or even mostly) academic in nature. They're deeper, much deeper than that: they're emotional, tied to the most basic ways by which Christians define themselves.

In the newest issue of Science, a remarkable News Focus piece tackles this very subject. You need a subscription to access the article online. I'll quote it extensively here, but if you are at all interested in this topic, I urge you to get a copy and read it. I find the article remarkable not just for its coverage of the issue, but for the fact that it is published in Science, one of the most prominent science journals in the world.

The article is "Crossing the divide," written by Jennifer Couzin, and it displays this tagline: "Like others who have rejected creationism and embraced evolution, paleontologist Stephen Godfrey is still recovering from the traumatic journey." Godfrey works at the Calvert Marine Museum in Chesapeake Bay; he was raised in a "fundamentalist" Christian environment but came to a "staunch acceptance of evolution."

Godfrey's "anguished path" began with his study of fossils. 'Anguished' sounds right:
With this shift came rejection from his religious community, estrangement from his parents, and, perhaps most difficult of all, a crisis of faith that endures.
After noting the immense emotional appeal of creationism and the cruel God-or-science choice it typically presents, Couzin observes:
People like Godfrey tend not to advertise their painful transition from creationist to evolutionist, certainly not to scientific peers. When doubts about creationism begin to nag, they have no one to turn to: not Christians in their community, who espouse a literal reading of the Bible and equate rejecting creationism with rejecting God, and not scientists, who often dismiss creationists as ignorant or lunatic.
Gosh, that paragraph about sums up one of my main goals as a Christian biologist: to offer fellow Christians at least one other choice. I hope it saddens you as much it does me, and it oughtn't matter whether you believe or not.

There are some rough spots and simplifications in the piece: Couzin refers to the "fateful apple" in Eden, for example, and seems to suggest that only "biblical literalists" hold that "belief is generally an all-or-nothing proposition." (Though I think I know what she means.) The descriptions of the harrowing journey from YECism to evolutionary creation, however, are raw and jarring. Woven into Godfrey's story are quotes from Denis Lamoureux, Brian Alters, and Christopher Smith, Godfrey's brother-in-law who is a Baptist pastor here in Michigan. But it is Godfrey's "anguished path" that is laid out in disheartening detail. Examination of fossil strata (and footprints therein) finally leads to the "explosion" of his YEC ideas.
Godfrey ran through bitterness, anger, and disappointment about having been deceived for so many years. He sought out creationists and confronted them. Late in graduate school, he and his devout Christian wife, mother-in-law, and mother attended a weekend symposium at a Bible school in New York state, where Godfrey says he angrily stood up at the end of a talk and argued passionately with the speaker.
Well...gulp. That reaction is understandable, even laudable, but I think Dr. Godfrey would agree that it's not the way that things should go for long. Indeed, he identifies at least some times when one ought to let sleeping dogs lie.
But sometimes, former creationists believe, changing minds is not worth the heartache it brings. Godfrey no longer considers evolution worth mentioning to his parents, now 78 and 79 years old, and he asked that they not be contacted for this article. “You can live your life just fine and not know squat about evolution,” he says.
The hardest parts of the story for me to read were those that described his parents' distress, convinced as they are that "their afterlife depends on embracing creationism." But before you conclude that he (or I) would embrace laissez faire, consider his passion here:
Just as he longs for biblical literalists to be more receptive to evolution, Godfrey also wishes that biologists would join the discussion. He was incensed 5 years ago when, participating in an evolution-creationism debate at Bishop’s University, where he once argued against the fossil record, no one from the biology department attended.
Ouch! Not in my house.

According to Couzin, "Godfrey is conflicted about how, and how forcefully, to press his case." He co-wrote a book with his brother-in-law; his father prayed that it would fail to be published at all, and Godfrey seems unconvinced that the book had any impact.

I want to hear voices like Godfrey's, and David Opderbeck's, and others who have traveled this "anguished path." I've explained elsewhere why I don't think laissez faire is always – or even usually – the right approach. But my path was far less anguished, and I never knew the complete isolation that so many of these wise people experienced. (Thank God.) So I'm listening.

Christendom cannot continue to construct and support folk science and desperate dishonesty. It must not continue to employ falsehood in the "defense" of the gospel. But the dismantling of these corrupt and toxic structures has to be done for the sake of the gospel, and not for any other reason.

That's my pledge. Hold me to it.

13 comments:

Ian said...

A friend of mine tells the story of a classmate of her's from seminary who told their professor at the end of their Bible history class "you have destroyed the basis of my faith".

I just don't understand how someone can be a biblical literalist if they know anything about the Bible. And creationism seems corrosive to faith. What kind of person tels someone else "your faith depends on believing this" when "this" is such an obvious lie?

At church, I've had conversations with people who say "I was brought up to read things in a certain way, and although my head tells me to read it differently, my heart is still reading this passage as I was taught when I was a child". That makes perfect sense to me. But what motivates a person to say "evolution is a lie"? Either they don't know what they are talking about, and they are just repeating what they have been told, or they do know, and they are intentionally deceiving people. Even in the first case, you are setting yourself up as an authority about something you don't understand. And claiming authority when you don't understand is still engaging in deception.

What inspires well-meaning people to engage in deception? What inspires well-meaning people to deceive their own congregants? What is it that allows such evil to pervade our churches? I can't find any other word for it but evil. And in the end I suspect that it will be the death of the church.

Anonymous said...

"their afterlife depends on embracing creationism"

What exactly does this mean? Do they think accepting evolution means going to hell? Or do they think if humans developed from other animals, then there would be no heaven?

I ask these questions because I have been trying to figure out why so many Christians seem to be terrified of evolution.

If creationists do think evolution equals no heaven, I agree with them. Since humans are just animals, and just one of the ape species, it really doesn't make any sense that human apes and only human apes should be selected for some mythical paradise after they die.

I think a person who really understands evolution and who completely accepts the evidence for it, has no reason to believe in god at all. The creation of species was probably the most important reason gods were invented. If a god is not necessary for something as complicated as life, it's fair to say a god is not necessary for anything else.

In America more than half the population rejects evolution. This is disgraceful. I suggest the only solution to this problem is to get rid of the real reason people reject the cornerstone of biology, and that reason is religion. It may take centuries, but America must somehow rid itself of all religious beliefs.

Rachel said...

Steve,
like your blog! And good article. I went to a pretty fundamentalist church for a while so I probably accepted 6-day creation at some point, but I don't remember the transition being all that traumatic.

Anonymous said...

"Gosh, that paragraph about sums up one of my main goals as a Christian biologist: to offer fellow Christians at least one other choice."

And keep up the good work! Discovering this network of blogs has been the best thing for me. I can relate with Godfrey that we often have no one to turn to. Most of my Christian friends will think me a heretic and most of my evolutionary friends already think I'm a quack for belief in Jesus at all.

I have been struggling with my beliefs of the Bible. I haven't yet come to terms with the first few chapters and to be honest, a good deal of the OT itself. You guys have been a major source of information on recommending reading as well as just general encouragement. It is very encouraging to know you are out there and I have been faithfully reading most of your posts.

Thank you again.
Pete

Anonymous said...

I'm on that "anguished path" right now, although it's a lot less anguished than it used to be. Except for the connections I make through my blog, I'm almost completely alone on this journey.

It's a hard road, but I can't say I'd rather be somewhere else.

Darwin said...

I think one of the big dangers put out there by the "creation science" crowd is that because in many cases they're much more interested in the "creation" part than the "science", they have a tendency to be selective and fudge without even realizing it. What that does, however, is lay a trap for any of their followers who actually have the curiosity to look too deeply into the evidence.

In a difference context, Galileo talks about this a lot in his Letter to The Grand Duchess Christina, in which he extensively quotes St. Augustine. Augustine himself long held back from Christianity because he'd run into come Christian apologists who were totally ignorant of the astronomy/physics of 4th Century. Augustine figured that if Christian apologists held to ludicrous scientific ideas, they probably didn't know much about philosophy and theology either.

Clearly, it's a problem that 1700 years later is still with us.

CMinor said...

Came by to read thinks to Darwin's mentioning the article--very thought-provoking!

As a Roman Catholic, I never experienced the sort of divide described here. As a Southerner with many fundamentalist acquaintances, I often find myself parsing my words to avoid a conflagration.

I'd be interested in any thoughts others may have on disagreeing agreeably--can it be done?

Mike Beidler said...

... it's hard to imagine that his journey might have been difficult in places. But I'm sure it was.

Steve,

Firstly, thanks for the mention. It's reactions like yours that make my blogging experience enjoyable. =)

Secondly, each of us, as we experience paradigm shifts of whatever sort — whether they be soteriological, eschatological, etc. — may find only portions of the road to discovery are fraught with anguish.

Some have grown up in traditions in which certain views of origins or the end times are considered to be either non-negotiable dogma or a sure-fire path to spiritual destruction. Thankfully, my experience has avoided that, for the most part. (I may blog about several exceptions.)

Then there are those who have much to lose in the way of their career. To use the origins debate as an example, what do you think Ken Ham would do if he came to realize the truth about God's evolutionary creative processes? If I were a betting man, I'd guess he'd rather suffer in private pain than admit he was wrong, discredit his entire life's work, and cause additional emotional and financial anguish for his employees. I already know of someone in certain theological circles who's made a paradigm shift privately, but doesn't have the guts to come out and speak what he believes to be the truth! Why? For the very reasons I just listed.

For me, however, the anguish has been of a more reflective nature. Here I am, in the "middle" of my years, just now discovering what I perceive to be the truth. Who to blame for that? Sometimes I blame myself for not being more studious. Other times I blame the Church for being so close-minded. It's a vicious cycle, to be sure.

And then there's the private struggle of reexamining portions of your faith that are impacted by the fact of cosmic and biological evolution. As a self-admitted "intellectual" God-worshiper (see Gary Thomas' Sacred Pathways), my mind usually doesn't slow down until I feel I've reached some sort of "resting place." God knows how many sleepless nights I've had grappling with my various paradigm shifts.

And that's why I blog. I want to let other Christians trapped in YEC theology that it's okay to change your mind when the truth compells it to do so, regardless of the implications. I want to give people tools they can use to sort out the spiritual and theological confusion, and then pass on what they've learned to their family and friends who may have excommunicated them emotionally. I want to help people on that road to discovery and recovery.

And I want to have fun doing it. =)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this post Steve. My journey away from YEC wasn't that difficult. I was really only directly confronted with YEC after I had graduated from a good Christian liberal arts college, so I was mostly just annoyed by what I heard.

My problem was, and somewhat still is, graduating from highly concordist old earth creationism to some sort of view that allows for evolution. At some point, I had read a couple of Hugh Ross' books, and they were very helpful to me in staying away from the YECism that my local church was serving up. I also took in alot f the early ID literature and was convinced by it. I found some of the things Ross was saying interesting and wanted to study more, but life was busy.

Only in the last couple of years, in mid-life, have I had time to really study this stuff carefully. I joined the ASA and its listserv and POW, I got slammed immediately by an anti-ID, anti-Ross tyrant who was then on the list (no one around here). I had a crisis of faith, which recurs from time to time. You mean even the stuff about progressive creation and the flood that "liberals" like Hugh Ross are saying doesn't hold up? Then what if anything in the Bible is true? How do I know what to discard and what to keep? Is the whole basis of my spiritual identity as an evangelical -- the reliability of the Bible -- a sham? If I can't figure out who "Adam" was, is there any point in all this talk about original sin and atonement? If I open myself up to these ideas, am I a long way down the road towards leaving evangelicalism for some kind of wooly liberal faith?

Well, I can't say I've resolved all these questions. I think I'm getting better and living with some uncertainty about them. I know I've studied the Bible, theology, religious epistemology, and the doctrine of scritpure harder and deeper than I ever have before. I think I can see places where my theological views need to moderate a bit, but I still see some places where I think some bottom lines in theology might have to push back against the implications of the scientific story. And I'm starting to develop a network of friends, online and in "meat space," who aren't afraid to think these things through. I know what I need to always remind myself is that no Christians at any time in history have gotten all of this exactly right. The human condition overwhelmingly evidences human need, the scriptures overwhelmingly testify to human uniqueness, and the cross and resurrection overwhelmingly evidence God's provision and love for human beings; the details are fascinating, difficult, frustrating, wonderful, mysterious, and important -- but not essential.

Stephen Matheson said...

Ian: I take it we're soulmates.
BobC: what they mean is that they believe (erroneously) that failure to acknowledge the historicity of Genesis amounts to a disowning of the gospel, which means damnation. The notion that "evolution means no heaven" is too ridiculous to merit further comment.

Stephen Matheson said...

Rachel: thanks for visiting! I like your cool blog a lot too. Keep it up! Sometime I'd love to hear more about your journey away from creationism. Coffee's on me.
Pete: I'm partly ecstatic that you've found the blog such an encouragement, and partly sobered by the same fact. Walk on, as U2 would say, and thanks for the enormously encouraging words.
Vera: Hang in there, and God bless you. Let me know if/when I screw up in this project.

Peter B said...

Steve
You have a great blog going here! I am a calvin grad from 2005, but sadly didn't get to take any classes from you. I was more on the psych/ soc side, and continue to be in grad school (organizational behavior phd), so my experience with evolution has tended to come with the evolutionary psychology theories, which are quite popular in my discipline right now.

I am trying to think if I had ever had a strict view of literal creationism, and I don't think so (at least never feeling like I had parents or church teachers that were ANTI evolution)... so when I learned about it it felt as though I were just learning about HOW god created. Even with this perspective however, there have been times of feeling the tension between creationism and evolution... or understanding God, and understanding the world apart from him. As such.. I am going to try to explain some of that tension (for me, and people I have talked with about the issue).

At times, the accepting of evolution and theism doesn't feel congruent, as it feels as though I am speaking at different levels of analysis, one which is naturalistic, and the other supernaturalistic. And then it feels like there is a tendency is to have God crowded out of the equation, as in many empirical scientific fields, the naturalistic explanation tends to be emphasized (that is the goal of science in many ways... to find the causal explanations behind things with naturalistic mechanisms). Now, I think this feeling that the "god level of analysis" should be crowded out if partly because of having clearly defined concepts for the naturalistic explanation (e.g. the mechanism behind evolution), and more 'fuzzy' or less tangible concepts for religious terms like "god." As such, one can feel a bit of cognitive (or even spiritual/intellectual) dissonence to say evolution is how man came to be, and.... um.... God is behind it. This is why I think there is a tendency to either 1) reject this naturalistic account of the worlds origins, as those who learn about it AFTER believing in the literal creation account feel like it crowds out the 'God' hypothesis, or 2) accept the evolution account, and feel the "God" hypothesis marginalized or taken to an abstract poetic level of analysis. The first response is anti-scientific, and the second I don't believe is integrated enough and it further propagates a dualist understanding of the world... with the sacred and the secular, the good and the bad, religion and science.... which again I think is insufficient.

Again, in this, I am working through this issue a bit from a phenomenological perspective, and trying to see how the movement between strict creationism and evolution is experienced. This is thus separate from the normative question of how they should be understood. Just some thoughts from someone who has experienced similar tensions.

Claire said...

Hey Steve, thanks so much for this blog. I am a Christian (evangelical, born again- you know the variety) and I have been so encouraged by your blog. I have a Ph.D in microbiology but spent my research science years with my hands over my ears, screaming, "I'm not listening! I'm not listening!" because I was fairly sure evolution was incompatible with the Bible. January of this year I borrowed "The Language of God" by Francis Collins and I haven't looked back (although initially I felt like a heretic). I have got every book I can on the topic over the past four months and I am now pretty convinced that I am not a heretic and God's word is true and He used evolution to bring about biological diversity. I think it's really important that Christians are vocal about the compatibility of evolution and the Bible because this "it's God or science" lark is like emotional blackmail. Think of the scientists who are put off following Jesus because of creationists' claims and think of the Christian young people who fall away from Christ when confonted with the evidence of evolution.