Does The Genesis Code Fudge the Bible to Make It Agree with Science?

I promised yesterday that I would write a blog post about the 2010 Christian movie, The Genesis Code, specifically the scene in which it claims that the sequence of creation in Genesis 1 matches what scientific consensus says about the order in which things appeared in the universe and on earth.  You can watch snippets from that scene here.

I’ve long been interested in this question, ever since I read biblical scholar Joel Rosenberg’s statement in the HarperCollins Study Bible that “Remarkably, [Genesis 1's] order of life-forms resembles that of our modern theory of evolution: vegetation, swarming creatures, fish, birds, animals (mammals), and human beings.”  Granted, as I talked about yesterday, The Genesis Code does not appear to agree with the existence of macro-evolution, but its scene in which science and believers in Genesis 1 dialogue about the order of natural events in the history of the universe and the earth was the sort of thing that I’ve long desired to see (in real life, though, with real scientists).

What I’ll do in my post today is this: I will post Genesis 1 in the King James Version, which is in the public domain, and I will add comments about each day of creation.  When appropriate, I will mention how the pastor in the movie summarizes the content of the creation day under discussion.  More importantly, I will tell you what the scientist-characters in the movie say about what occurred at each stage of natural history.  My question will be this: Is there truly agreement between Genesis 1 and science regarding the order of events in natural history, or is the movie fudging one or both sides to artificially foster an agreement?  I’ll be referring to sources, some of them pretty good, and some of them, well, I wish I could find better!  Moreover, please keep in mind that I am not a scientist—-far from it!  But this post is not intended to be the last word on this subject, but rather my aim is to ask questions.  Please feel free to correct me, but I will not publish or interact with comments that say or imply that I or anyone else is stupid.

Here we go!

Genesis 1

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Comments: The pastor said that the waters of v 2 represent all that was, and that the darkness in that verse is symbolic of chaos.  What happened on the first “day” of creation, which (according to the presenter on the movie) was 15.75-7.7 billion years ago?  A scientist-character said that there was the Big Bang, and with it came the raw material for all that would exist (i.e., protons, neutrons, electrons).  The earth was only in the form of stardust.  There was a ball of plasma from which light initially could not escape, due to gravity, but, with cooling, expansion, and the reduction of gravity, electromagnetic radiation finally managed to escape, meaning there was light.  Stars and galaxies were formed.

I thought that the pastor was fudging Genesis 1 here by not taking the waters of Genesis 1:2 at face value.  The waters, in my opinion, are significant, for it is on the issue of the waters that Genesis 1 overlaps with the ancient Babylonian creation story, Enuma Elish.  In Genesis 1, God separates the waters; in Enuma Elish, the god Marduk splits up the sea-goddess Tiamat.  The pastor near the end of the discussion says that Genesis 1 (whoever is its human author) must be divinely-inspired, for an ancient author on his own could not have been so accurate about the order in which things came to be, long before science found out about it.  But, by interpreting the waters in Genesis 1:2 as symbolic, the pastor is (intentionally or unintentionally, I do not know) obscuring where Genesis 1 overlaps with another ancient creation account.  Is Genesis 1 ahead of its time, or is it (in some manner) echoing or reflecting its ancient context?  In his push to prove the former, the pastor is interpreting the waters of Genesis 1:2 as symbolic, when they very well might be literal, which would mean that there is good reason to believe that the latter (that Genesis 1 is reflecting its own ancient context) is the case.

I was surprised, however, that a bigger deal was not made about the plasma.  I was expecting for someone to say that the plasma was the primordial waters of Genesis 1:2.  Plasma, according to this article, can have properties like those of a liquid.

I’ll talk more about stardust and stars when I talk about Day 4.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Comments: The pastor said that, on Day 2, the heavens were created and chaos was separated out.  A scientist then said that the second period of time had the galaxy and the Milky Way, along with the sun and the earth.  I’ll talk more about the sun when I get to Day 4.

I agree with the pastor that Genesis 1 is about God bringing order out of chaos, for the sea and the waters in the Hebrew Bible often relate to chaos.  And yet, as I said in my comments on Day 1, I think that the pastor is fudging Genesis 1 by not interpreting the waters as literal.  On Day 2, God divides the waters, putting some waters above the firmament and some waters beneath the firmament.  In my opinion, that’s different from the galaxy and the Milky Way forming.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

Comments: The pastor said that Day 3 had oceans, dry land, and the “first forms of plant-life.”  A scientist said that, 3.75 billion to 1.75 billion years ago, the earth cooled, water formed, and there emerged early plant and animal life, bacteria, and photosynthetic algae.

I have a variety of points, which may come across as nit-picking, but you can do with my points what you will.  First of all, Genesis 1 does not say that liquid water came to exist on the third day of creation; rather, the waters already existed during the first and second days.  What is occurring on Day 3 is that God is organizing the waters beneath into seas.  Second, there’s not supposed to be any animal life on Day 3, for God created the sea-creatures on Day 5, and the land-creatures on Day 6.  This is actually significant, for, according to this article, scientists generally maintain that fruit trees came to exist after there were fish, and that marine organisms existed prior to the development of land plants, whereas Genesis 1 appears to present the opposite (fruit trees and land plants preceded sea-creatures). 

There is a literary pattern going on in Genesis 1, as many observers have noted: On Days 1-3, God created places.  On Days 4-6, God created the inhabitants for those places.  God creates day and night on Day 1, and he populates day and night with heavenly bodies on Day 4.  Day 2 sees the division of the waters above (in the firmament) from the waters beneath, and, on Day 4, God creates the birds for the firmament and the sea-creatures for the waters beneath.  On Day 3, dry land and plants appear, and, on Day 6, God creates animals and human beings.  Genesis 1 has a neat pattern, but my impression is that most scientists do not believe that real life followed that neat pattern to a T (even though there may have been some overlap—-sea creatures came before land creatures, for example).

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Comments: A scientists talked about what went on 1.75 billion to 750 million years ago.  Initially, the atmosphere was “opaque.”  But, as oxygen became concentrated into the atmosphere, it became more translucent, and the sun, moon, and stars became visible.

I have two points.  First of all, this movie says that there were stars and galaxies on Day 1, and that the sun came to exist on Day 2.  But, as far as I can see, that is not what Genesis 1 is saying.  Rather, Genesis 1 appears to be saying that God created the sun and the stars on the fourth day, not that they merely became apparent after having already existed for a long time.  My second point is merely a question, not a dogmatic statement: How did the plants of Day 3 survive for so many years without sunlight?  This is a critique that I have heard of the Day-Age interpretation of Genesis 1—-the view that each day in Genesis 1 represents long periods of time.  The movie tries to distance itself from the Day-Age interpretation, saying that it believes that God made the heavens and the earth in six days—-but what were days to God amounted to longer periods of time from the standpoint of the universe and the earth.  Still, the same question can be asked of this movie’s scenario (and maybe even of science, if science indeed believes that the sun became visible to the earth after plants had been around for a long time).

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

Comments: The fifth day, for this movie, occurred 750 million to 250 million years ago.  During that time, sea life was dominant.  But, a scientist-character continues, 530 million years ago, the Cambrian explosion occurred, and every specie of land animal simultaneously appeared.

I have some points.  My first one will be rather nit-picky.  So is this movie saying that land animals came to exist on the fifth day?  Genesis 1 says that land animals came to exist on Day 6 of creation.  Second, referring again to the table in this article, most scientists believe that birds evolved from land animals, not that they existed before land animals (whereas Genesis 1 says that birds were created on the fifth day, and land animals on the sixth day).  See also this article, which discusses the debate about which land animals birds evolved from. 

Regarding the Cambrian explosion, this article aims to account for it from an evolutionary perspective.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.  29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

The sixth day, according to this movie, went from 250 million years ago to the time of Adam.  During that time, there were extinctions, and mammals and birds came to be dominant.  Then, human beings appeared.

I like this interpretation better than Young Earth creationism, for The Genesis Code simply places the dinosaurs in Day 6 of creation, rather than holding that they co-existed with human beings.  But I have some points.  First of all, to repeat what I said regarding Day 5, there is the bird problem: Genesis 1 says that birds existed before land animals, whereas science says that they evolved from certain land animals.  Second, this movie obviously believes that there was death before the Fall of Adam and Eve, whereas Romans 5:12 says that death entered the world by sin.  Granted, there are Christians who will argue that Romans 5:12 is talking about human death, not animal and plant death.  Fine, that would make a fine topic for discussion.  I’m just saying that the movie invites this sort of discussion.  Third, Genesis 1:30 says that God has given plants to the animals as food.  It’s on the basis of passages like this that many interpreters maintain that, according to the Bible (or a voice within the Bible), people and animals were vegetarians until after the Flood.  Does The Genesis Code agree with this, or does it maintain that animals ate other animals prior to the Flood?  It seems to me that, if there were extinctions going on during the sixth day of creation, as the movie suggests, then animals eating other animals had to play some role in that.  But would acknowledging that animals ate other animals before the Flood go against Genesis 1, which appears to maintain that people and animals were originally vegetarian?

My conclusion: Genesis 1 and science may overlap in areas (i.e., sea creatures came before land creatures), but there are also differences between them.  In my opinion, The Genesis Code fudges the Bible to make it fit with science. 

The Genesis Code: Overall Review

I recently watched the Genesis Code, which is a 2010 movie.  The movie explores the question of whether science and Genesis 1 are compatible.

I’m glad that I finally got to see it, for I was curious about it when I first watched its trailer online.  I learned about it as a result of doing an online search about Catherine Hicks, whom I love in Star Trek IV and 7th Heaven.  I wanted to see if she was in anything lately, and I saw that she was in the Genesis Code.  I also noticed that Fred Thompson, a 2008 Republican candidate for President, was in the movie, and, being someone who doesn’t watch much Law and Order, I wanted to see how good of an actor he was.   Later, I learned that actor Ernest Borgnine was in it as well, and I loved Borgnine in the 1955 movie Marty and the two-parter Little House on the Prairie episode, “The Lord Is My Shepherd” (see my post about Borgnine here).  Another noteworthy actor in the Genesis Code was Louise Fletcher, who won an Academy Award for playing the chilling Nurse Ratched in the 1973 movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

To be honest, when I first saw the trailer for the Genesis Code, I thought that it might be a Christian movie, but I was not entirely sure.  It looked to me like it might be an impartial exploration of the question of origins, with strong religious and skeptical characters.  After seeing it, and after learning about the immense support that elements of the right-wing gave to it (see here and here), I now know that it’s a Christian movie.  Moreover, the guy who plays the pastor in the movie, Jerry Zandstra, is the President of the company that produced The Genesis Code, American Epic Entertainment.  Zandstra, as you can see from the wikipedia article about him, is a minister and has a history in Republican politics.  See here for his thoughts on the film.

The thing is, this movie cannot be characterized as young-earth creationist propaganda.  Actually, it’s point is that science and Genesis 1 are compatible because time is relative, and so a day to God may be a much longer time for human beings.  The movie is essentially acknowledging an old earth.  And it also makes the point that the sequence of creation in Genesis 1 is similar to what science says about the order in which things came to be.  Moreover, the movie does not say that dinosaurs co-existed with human beings, but it places the existence and extinction of dinosaurs within the sixth “day” of creation, the sixth day being from 250 million years ago to the time of Adam.

Tomorrow, I’ll have a post addressing the question of whether the film fudges on science or Genesis 1 to make the two agree.  I think that it does, in a sense, and yet I am pleased that conservative Christians have become excited about a film that has such a progressive approach to the issue of science and Genesis 1 (though the movie has had its share of conservative Christian critics—-see here and here).  I wish that the film had gone a step further and affirmed the theory of evolution, but, unfortunately, it had a couple of swipes against macro-evolution, some of them pretty misinformed (i.e., humans descended from apes), and some of them exemplifying standard creationist or Intelligent Design arguments against macro-evolution.  But the scene in which the pastor, scientists, and students are talking about the age of the earth and the sequence of events in the universe’s history makes the movie worth watching (although I could have done without the Christian protagonist smugly saying at the end of the discussion that science has caught up with the Bible).  I wish I could find the entire scene online, but here is a YouTube video that contains pieces of it.

As far as the rest of the movie was concerned, I thought that it was way too long, but there were a couple of gems.  First, there was the scene in which a skeptical youth is talking with the pastor about faith.  The youth is saying that he was convinced by the presentation about the harmony between science and Genesis 1, but he expected for faith to be a heart-issue rather than something that proceeded from hard intellectual work.  The pastor responds that people come to faith in different ways, some of them pretty mundane.  I appreciated this scene because it highlights that one does not have to believe in God as a result of a flashy experience, as some evangelicals seem to imply.

Second, while I didn’t care for most of the inane banter in the movie, I did like one scene near the end, as one of the characters refers to the TNT movie Purgatory, in which an angel said that the creator is tough, but not blind.  I love Purgatory, and I’m glad there are other fans out there!

I’ll be writing another post about this movie tomorrow, and maybe more posts after that.  We’ll see!

Why the Delay?

On page 100 of The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion, Herman Wouk (if I’m interpreting him correctly) talks about how human beings have been on earth for such an infinitesimal amount of time, in comparison with the vast age of the universe.  I once saw a visual aid about this in a museum: it showed a line, which represented the age of the universe, and a very tiny sliver of that line was how long humans have existed.

An atheist I know once made that point to me: If there is a God, he wondered, why did God take so long to create human beings?  Of course, young-earth creationists believe that God didn’t take that long, so they don’t struggle with this issue, but those who accept modern scientific consensus while also believing in God as the creator may wonder why there were so many millennia before human beings, who are supposedly the focal point of God’s plan, finally appeared.  Then there’s the issue of theistic evolution.  Many who consider a scenario that accepts evolution and God as creator may inquire: Why didn’t God simply create human beings in one fell swoop, rather than allowing them to develop from proto-human creatures?

I have the same sort of question about the narrative that I got growing up, within Armstrongism.  I was raised on the gap-theory, the belief that there could be billions of years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2.  The gap-theory accepted the scientific consensus regarding the age of the universe, and it was open to the eras of dinosaurs and mammoths occurring during that time.  But I wonder what exactly the point was.  Why didn’t God just cut to the chase and make human beings, who, as I said, are supposedly the focal point of God’s plan?

A common answer is that time is not a factor with God.  What to us is a long time is not necessarily a long time for God.  I’m cool with that, pretty much.  I’m a little skeptical when Christians apply that insight to eschatology, when they argue that Jesus’ statements that the end is near are not necessarily false for the simple reason that “near” to God may not be what’s “near” for us.  I’m skeptical because that would be mis-communication on the part of God: wouldn’t you expect for God to adopt our understanding of “near” when he speaks to us, since that’s essential to communication?  Moreover, if God were attempting to comfort suffering people with the notion that God’s reign is near, when it’s not actually near but could occur centuries after their time, then the comforting message is false.

But, when it comes to origins, I’m more open to the idea that God may not measure time as we do, that millions of years could have gone by, but that wasn’t much time for God.

Why would God use evolution, though?  I’m not sure.  Perhaps God foresaw that evolution by natural selection would lead to the result that he wanted—-intelligent life.  God’s strategy may not be so much to micromanage every little detail, but rather to allow events to unfold, and to be there whenever we want a relationship with God.

My Science Block

On pages 48-49 of The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion, Herman Wouk states:

“A distinguished physicist once gave me a book of his inscribed, ‘To Herman Wouk, one of the few who does not write if he does not understand.’  Not true here, alas.  About astrophysics, I am the man on the street.  As a Columbia freshman I registered for an astronomy course, but upon leafing the textbook crawling with calculus, I dropped out fast.  Astronomers, I guess, hear God talk all the time.  In that language, I never will.  Galileo and Newton need no further words of mine.”

Wouk is probably more of a science-guy than I am, though!  To be honest, I had a hard time getting into his discussions about science in The Language God Talks.  They just didn’t interest me, whereas his discussions about religion did.

I’ve long been this way about science.  I remember when my fifth-grade teacher was having conferences with each student to discuss grades, and she noticed that I stayed the same in science: in both periods, I got a “B”.  She said she had an idea about why I didn’t improve in science: because I didn’t like it.  And I was like, “Wow, how did you know?!” (And I was not sarcastic in my response!)

There were a few times in my junior high and high school years when I got more into science.  In seventh grade, I studied science diligently and got good grades.  Why?  I think it was because I admired my teacher and wanted him to like me.  He was also my home-room teacher, and so, in a sense, he exemplified to me the challenge of junior high school.  When I was able to answer one of his questions about science correctly, I felt smart.

In eighth grade, I was a diligent student in science.  I even made comic books about the class material in studying for my quizzes and tests!  I think that I was studying hard to be among the smart kids, since I was wanting to impress a particular girl.  But, to tell you the truth, science didn’t interest me then.

In high school, I took biology, chemistry, and physics, but they just did not engage me that much.  I usually studied for my biology and chemistry exams the day of the exams!  Regarding physics, I tried much harder, since it was Advanced Placement, but there were some physics problems that I simply could not figure out!  One science class that I actually enjoyed, however, was physical science.  This was true for a variety of reasons.  For one, I felt smart in that class, since I had an edge in the first semester of it, having already taken chemistry.  Second, the material was understandable to me.  It wasn’t over my head.  Moreover, I was becoming more religious, and so I was excited about studying God’s creation, without overdoing it by getting into territory that was too complex for me!

Math came easier for me.  I one time took an IQ test, and my math IQ turned out to be above average (not off-the-charts genius, but above average).  I took lots of math—-Algebra I-II, Geometry, Analytic Geometry, Trigonometry, and Calculus—-and I did quite well in my classes.

Yet, when I entered college, and I had the option of skipping a subject area, I skipped science and math altogether.  I was required to take a quantitative reasoning class, so I took logic.  And, in the Honor Scholars’ Program I was in, I had to take a seminar on science and postmodernism, but that class didn’t get into the depths of science that much, so I did fine.

Science still does not interest me a great deal.  Try as I might, I have difficulty getting into nature shows.  They just don’t interest me.  I prefer to watch documentaries about history, politics, and religion—-the adventures and struggles of human beings!  I get more interested in science when it is tied into religion, however.  I enjoy reading different perspectives on creation and evolution, for example.  In college, I read on my own time a debate on creation and evolution between creationist Duane Gish and evolutionist Ken Saladin, and I was fascinated by what Saladin was saying.  Whenever some of my more scientifically-inclined friends discuss with me their views on the interaction between astronomy and religious issues, I’m usually interested.  But, when the topic is science alone, I tend not to get excited.

I have contemplated, however, reading more elementary books about science.  My religious beliefs hold that nature somehow reveals the mind of God, and I have thought that perhaps studying science on a superficial level could help me to arrive at a greater appreciation for the order and beauty within nature (though not all of nature is orderly and beautiful!).

God, the Bible, and Meaning

I started Herman Wouk’s The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion.  Here, I’ll feature something that Wouk says on pages 10-11:

“…the Bible has long been waning as the core of religious upbringing, a way of life once handed from father to son down the millennia, rooted in an epic history and an encyclopedic literature; a practical guide to the insoluble mysteries, brief joys, harsh blows, and everyday workings of a human existence.  That upbringing survives here and there among our people, but most Jewish babies—-in Israel, in America, in all the diaspora—-are born today into the world view of Feynman and Gell-Mann; and a Nobel colleague of theirs, the physicist Steven Weinberg, has written lucid books in which the insoluble mysteries loom especially large, most of all the old agnostic paradox of an orderly universe without seeming purpose.”

Of course, a number of atheists will say that people can endow life with purpose, whether there is a God or not.  Perhaps the Bible reflects one attempt to provide life with purpose—-to give people a sense of mission beyond themselves, to guide them through the ups and downs of life, and to entertain them with stories with which they can identify.

Is the Bible “a practical guide to insoluble mysteries”?  I think that it contains a lot of insights that can instruct and edify people.  I wouldn’t exactly look to it for natural scientific knowledge, for my impression is that it reflects ancient Near Eastern cosmology rather than the cosmos as current scientists understand it.  But can the Bible surprise us by addressing things that some may not expect it to address, such as what’s going on in our lives, or insights of psychology?  I think so.  I like the rabbinic statement that we can turn the Torah and turn it again and be surprised when we find something new.  Texts are complex, as are readers.

If (or, according to most scientists, since) evolution is the way things are, is life without purpose?  I don’t think so.  Of course, as I said, there are atheists who believe that we can come up with our own meaning to life, even without a God.  But I don’t believe that evolution precludes God’s existence.  Perhaps God started the whole process and has watched it unfold for many years, as complex organisms have developed and as humanoids have learned and grown, and this God desires a relationship with us.

James H. Job, Sr.: I Can’t Help It: Do We Do What We Must Do?

I was in Indiana from February 16-25, attending my sister’s wedding and visiting with family.  I stayed for some time at my Grandpa and Grandma’s house.  For years at that house, I’ve noticed a pamphlet on one of the shelves.  It dates to 1925 (though there was an earlier edition in 1924), and it’s by James H. Job, Sr., a pastor, who also was my great-great grandfather (not that he was alive when I was born).  It’s entitled I Can’t Help It: Do We Do What We Must Do? 

The title long intrigued me.  I had heard that James Job, Sr. was a rather cold and hard man, and I thought that his pamphlet might be about our human struggle to fulfill our moral obligations to God and to our neighbors.  I tend to gravitate towards the theme of people who have weaknesses, and yet deep inside of them there is a humanity, love, and a desire to do what is right.  How many times have I felt that underneath my cold and aloof exterior is someone who genuinely cares for other human beings, but who struggles to express that care in his day-to-day life?  I can easily exclaim at times that “I can’t help it”, while asking if I do what I must, and, if not, why?  I thought that Job’s pamphlet would wrestle with those kinds of issues.

Because I wasn’t going to church when I was in Indiana, I decided to read James H. Job’s pamphlet and to blog about that on Sunday, in place of my usual Sunday post of blogging about the morning’s church service that I attended.  But, because the Internet connection was slow where I was staying, I decided to postpone my blogging for when I would return to upstate New York.  Well, I have returned, and this is my post on James H. Job, Sr.’s pamphlet!

It turned out that the message of the pamphlet was not what I anticipated.  It wasn’t about the human struggle to be good.  Rather, it was a defense of Calvinism.  It’s not that Job explicitly mentioned Calvinism or predestination, but his essential argument was that human free will is an illusion, which is why we need God to transform us unilaterally by God’s grace.  In certain respects, Job’s argument overlapped with that of Jonathan Edwards in Freedom of the Will.  Job contended that we have desires inside of us, and we follow the desire that is strongest at any given time.  We did not choose those desires, but they are just there, and we cannot help but to follow the stronger desire.  This is true of fallen human beings.  It is true of converted people, who have good and sinful desires inside of them.  It is true of God and of Satan.  It is even true of plants, which gravitate towards the sunlight.  We cannot act otherwise.

So, according to Job, how can we be held morally accountable, when we cannot help what we do?  And what is the basis for society to enact laws, if people’s acts are essentially determined?  For Job, we’re accountable when we know that something is wrong and do it anyway, though, on some level, we’re also accountable if we sin out of ignorance (since Luke 12:48 says that the one who does not know his master’s will and violates it will be beaten with a few stripes).  The reason for laws, according to Job, is to maintain societal order.  But how can laws maintain societal order, if we can’t help what we do?  According to Job, if I understood him correctly, laws can essentially influence our desires, strengthening some at the expense of others.  Remember that Job said that we follow the stronger desire.  Suppose that (say) Ralph desires to rob the bank.  Ralph has a desire for money.  But the law against theft means that Ralph could go to jail if he is caught.  That reality brings another desire into play: Ralph may want money, but he may also want his freedom.  If Ralph’s desire for freedom is stronger than his desire for money, Ralph would be discouraged from robbing the bank.  The law throws another desire into the mix, and that could dissuade Ralph from doing wrong.  Job is deterministic, but he realizes that the desires that we have come from a variety of factors, including the impact of other people upon us: we, as we are, are shaped by our environment, and we also have an influence on others.

That’s Job’s overall argument.  But there were a variety of side issues in his pamphlet that intrigued me.  Here are some examples:

—-When Job was comparing humans with vegetables and animals, I wondered if he was open to evolution.  It turned out that he was not, for he said that evolution was unable to explain the existence of the male and female sexes, whereas the Bible was, and that evolution could not account for the variety of organisms in certain environments.  Actually, my understanding is that evolution does explain why there are certain organisms in particular environments.  I don’t know how evolutionists would account for the existence of the two sexes, however, but I’m open to learning about this.

—-Many biblical scholars contend that Genesis 1-2 has two different creation accounts, by at least two authors.  Those who don’t accept that have to deal with a problem: God creates human beings in Genesis 1, and God creates human beings in Genesis 2.  So did God create human beings twice?  Some say that Genesis 2 is a microscopic elaboration on the creation that occurred in Genesis 1: Genesis 1 says that God created human beings, and Genesis 2 shows how God did so.  Arnold Murray (if I understand him correctly) maintains that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 present two acts of creation: the people whom God creates in Genesis 1 are not the same as the people whom God creates in Genesis 2 (which, according to Murray, would explain where Cain got his wife!).  Job has another proposal: Genesis 1 is about the creation of the soul, whereas God in Genesis 2 places that soul in a body.

—-I appreciated Job’s discussion of how we often act according to the knowledge that we have at the time.  When we make a mistake, we can learn from its consequences, but, unfortunately, we can’t go back in time and tell our earlier selves about the wisdom that we have gained.  We can advise others right now, however.  Again, Job is talking about how we are shaped by our environment, and how we shape our environment.  There is a determinism in Job’s scenario, but that determinism is consistent with human interaction and the messiness of life.

—-Job says that people should disobey unjust laws, and he cites Prohibition as an example of an unjust law.  Job says that, under Prohibition, Jesus Christ would be thrown into jail for turning water into wine!  This surprised me because my Grandma said that Job was a Baptist.  This would be consistent with his Calvinism, since there are Baptists who are Calvinistic.  (They’re called primitive Baptists.)  But why would a Baptist think that Jesus turned water into alcohol?  My reading of Job, on some level, was predictable, but there were a few surprises!

Sheila Suess Kennedy: Republican in the ACLU 2

My latest reading of Sheila Suess Kennedy’s What’s a Nice Republican Girl Like Me Doing in the ACLU? justified the mission of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as well as discussed the Establishment Clause.  I’ll focus on the mission of the ACLU in tomorrow’s post.  In my post today, however, I’ll talk some about what Kennedy says about church and state issues.

Why is Kennedy opposed to government-sponsored prayer in public schools?  In my latest reading of Kennedy’s book, I saw a variety of reasons: the First Amendment prescribes government neutrality on religion; public school children should not be a captive audience while public school authorities promote a religion; the role of instructing children in religion belongs to their families, not the state; etc.

In one case, I thought that Kennedy was not entirely clear about what is permitted in public schools and what is not.  On page 52, for example, she quotes from an article that she wrote in which she states that “The [Supreme] Court did not say [in the 1992 decision Lee vs. Weisman] that graduation speakers cannot refer to God, or that seniors cannot sing a song that mentions God.” But later in the article she says that “When a school has the right to select its graduation speakers and approve their speeches, that is considered an endorsement of what they say”, and so “If the speaker offers a prayer, the school has legally endorsed that prayer”, which the public school cannot legally do.  So can graduation speakers refer to God or not?  If the public school is approving of a speech that mentions God, is that the public school sanctioning a religion, making the speech unconstitutional at the graduation ceremony?  Or would that simply be the public school championing free speech and the right of a graduation speaker to voice her own opinion, not an endorsement of a particular religion?

Overall, Kennedy made good arguments in her chapters that discussed the Establishment Clause.  She defended her separationist view of the Establishment Clause through an appeal to U.S. history, and she ably attacked the notion that problems increased in public schools after the 1962 Supreme Court decision banning government-sponsored prayer in public schools through a variety of arguments: for example, she noted that most public schools prior to 1962 did not even have government-sponsored school prayer, since a number of state Supreme Courts prohibited it in interpreting their own states’ constitutions.  Kennedy also sought to debunk the idea that the ACLU is against students expressing their religious beliefs in public schools, for she said that the ACLU would actually defend a student who was punished for reading the Bible on the bus or for praying before lunch in the school cafeteria.  (Kennedy said on page 56 that prayer before eating the cafeteria meatloaf is “a prudent precaution in most school cafeterias”!)  She also denied that she opposes public schools teaching about religion as part of an academic subject.  What she and the ACLU oppose is the government encouraging people to adopt a religious belief.

I have a question, though.  In an interview here, Kennedy states: “Can Johnny get out of Biology because they’re teaching evolution? No, because they’re supposed to be teaching science, not religion. But, can Johnny get out of going to the Halloween party, yeah, because the Halloween party isn’t central to the school’s mission.”  I realize that Kennedy would most likely disagree with the people on the religious right who hold that evolution is part of the sinister religion of secular humanism (as if secular humanism is a religion), for she’d regard evolution as science, pure and simple (as do I).  But, in my opinion, teaching evolution in public schools and compelling students to be in the classroom while it is taught pose some of the same problems as government-sanctioned prayer in public schools.  Students with conservative Christian backgrounds are being told that the origins narrative that they learned at home and at church is wrong; even if that is not said explicitly, teaching evolution as fact challenges the literal interpretation of Genesis 1-3 that many conservative Christians hold.  How is that government neutrality regarding religion?  And, if Kennedy agrees with parents who don’t want prayer in public schools because they (the parents) want the authority to teach their kids religion, why would that same consideration not apply to parents who don’t want their children hearing in public school classrooms that evolution is fact, or is a viable theory, because they themselves want to teach their children which origins narrative is best?  I should note: Personally, I’m all for teaching about evolution in public schools.  But I believe that it should be done with a degree of sensitivity towards people’s religious beliefs.  Teachers can go ahead and be insensitive all they want, regarding conservative Christians who don’t believe in evolution as ignorant rubes, but that won’t accomplish anything constructive—-mostly it will invite backlash and resistance.

I’d like to close this post by talking about Barry Goldwater, the conservative Republican who ran for President in 1964.  After talking about Republican Congressman (at the time) David MacIntosh’s support for community-sanctioned prayer in public schools, Kennedy asks on page 68, “What has happened to the Republican party between Goldwater and MacIntosh?”  On the preceding page, Kennedy referred to a 1981 speech in which Goldwater defended the separation of church and state.  Barry Goldwater looms large in Kennedy’s book, for Kennedy often quotes Goldwater’s classic, The Conscience of a Conservative.  The implication that I get is that she regards herself as a Republican who is true to Goldwater conservatism, while she believes that Republicans adhering to or influenced by the religious right have strayed significantly from that.  I do not entirely agree with her on this, however, for there was a sense in which cultural conservatism was a part of Goldwater’s candidacy, which was during a time of cultural upheaval.  Goldwater even expressed opposition to the Supreme Court decision banning government-led prayer from public schools.  See here for more information, or google “Goldwater AND school prayer”.  Granted, Goldwater later in his career was an outspoken critic of the religious right, but he still championed a form of cultural conservatism in his 1964 campaign.

But, at the same time, I think that Goldwater’s principles of less government and respect for rights that transcend the will of the majority can be adopted to support the position on the separation of church and state that Kennedy espouses, even if Goldwater did not take those principles in that direction in 1964.  

Psalm 104

For my weekly quiet time this week, I studied Psalm 104.  Psalm 104 exalts God as creator, as it describes the natural world and its benefits for animals and for human beings.  Psalm 104 closes by saying (and I draw here from the King James Version): “Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless thou the LORD, O my soul. Praise ye the LORD.”

I have three items:

1.  One issue that came up in my reading was environmentalism.  On the one hand, some regarded Psalm 104 as a Psalm that supports environmentalist ideas in that it values, not just human beings, but plants and animals as well.  Richard Whitekettle of Calvin College had an insightful article in the Bulletin for Biblical Research (21, no. 2, 2011), in which he said that the Israelites believed that animals had rationality and intelligence, albeit on a “lesser level or quality” than what human beings possess (an issue that is discussed today).  On the other hand, there were people who used Psalm 104 against environmentalism, as they maintained that Psalm 104 presents God sustaining the earth, implying (for them) that it cannot be significantly damaged by humans.

I’ve long been struck by how there is an overlap between environmentalism and arguments for Intelligent Design.  Don’t get me wrong—-you probably won’t see the two in the same camp all that often (though, here, I cannot be overly dogmatic)—-but I’m saying that they sometimes present similar arguments.  Proponents for Intelligent Design often contend that (in a number of areas) the cosmos had to be created exactly as it was for there to be life—-that if certain factors had varied even slightly, an inhabitable universe would not exist.  Environmentalists, similarly, see an order in the natural world that preserves a balance that is beneficial to the life and well-being of the earth’s inhabitants—-human and non-human—-and they believe that human activity is distorting that balance, with devastating results.  Both think that it’s better for the natural world to be a certain way. 

Perhaps the anti-environmentalist readers of Psalm 104 are correct to say that a biblical view is that the natural world is not so fragile.  Or maybe Psalm 104 actually is consistent with an environmentalist view that the natural world is fragile and delicate.  Psalm 104:30 says that God will send forth God’s spirit and renew the face of the earth, but that does not preclude the possibility that humans can cause damage to the earth.  Perhaps Psalm 104:30 is eschatological and says what God will one day intervene and do, namely, renew the natural world and make it fertile (think Second Isaiah, and other prophetic books).  The Jewish commentator Radak interpreted Psalm 104:30 in light of the resurrection from the dead.

But that doesn’t necessarily have to lead to a view that we need not be concerned about the environment because Christ will come back and clean everything up, for Psalm 104 is about the beauty of the natural world and how God cares about all of the earth’s creatures.  In my mind, if God cares for all of the earth’s creatures, then so should we.

2.  The orthodox Jewish Artscroll commentary took some swipes at evolution.  It said that Psalm 104 presents God making habitations for animals rather than animals adapting to those habitations.  Appealing to Rashi and Radak, it states regarding Psalm 104:18: “At first glance, the remote and barren mountains appear to serve no purpose; but in fact they were created to provide a habitat for the wild mountain goats”.  The Artscroll said that v 24 teaches that God designed everything by God’s wisdom, which means that “No creature evolved by chance…”  A key theme in the Artscroll’s interpretation of Psalm 104 is that it teaches that God made a cosmos in which everything has a purpose: v 19 affirms that the moon is for festivals, and v 24 communicates that “God did not allow a single inch [of God's creation] to go to waste”, for the earth is full of God’s possessions. 

A few of the conservative Christian sermons that I heard about Psalm 104 took swipes at evolution.  The Artscroll interested me, however, for I got to see how some Orthodox Jews approach the evolution question.  And I will say that its thoughts were more profound and beautiful than what I heard in the conservative Christian sermons (which largely beat up on evolutionists and said that they didn’t want to submit to the preachers, cough, I mean God!).

Personally, I think that Psalm 104 is beautiful and contains truth, even if I do not adopt the cosmology of its author.  As many scholars note, Psalm 104 itself was probably influenced by the ancient Egyptian Hymn to Aten and various ancient Near Eastern motifs, so the author of Psalm 104 himself was drawing on sources—-some of which he probably did not regard as infallible—-in seeking to understand and to glorify God.  Psalm 104 is about the order and beauty of the natural world.  However that natural world came to be, I can still agree with Psalm 104 that it is wondrous.

3.  Psalm 104 ends with a desire that sinners and wicked people be consumed from the earth.  One view that I read said that this is because the wicked have no place in the beautiful, orderly world that Psalm 104 describes.  I can see this point of view, for evil is destructive and disruptive of harmony, whereas Psalm 104 is all about a harmonious natural world that benefits humans and animals.  And yet, I was drawn to another view that I read in the Midrash on the Psalms and the Artscroll (which cited Babylonian Talmud Berachot 10a): that one should read Psalm 104:35 to say that God will eliminate sins (rather than sinners), and that, once God does that, there will be no more wicked people.  The idea seems to be that God will destroy the wicked by converting them into something other than wicked: into good people.  It sounds rather universalist!  I’m not sure if Psalm 104 is really saying that.  But I still like the concept!

Rick Santorum’s It Takes a Family 14

In my latest reading of Rick Santorum’s It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, Santorum talks about education, from public education to higher education.  Santorum favors teaching students about Intelligent Design, while also allowing teachers to present the reasons why most scientists believe in evolution.  Regarding higher education, Santorum laments that it’s dominated by liberals.  While he applauds programs that bring conservative speakers to campuses, he does not think that goes far enough, since faculties are still overwhelmingly liberal and tend to persecute conservative students and professors.

On the one hand, Santorum appeals to the importance of debating ideas within education, and that’s why he favors including alternative points-of-view.  On the other hand, I get the sense that he also wants to counter ideas that he considers to be dangerous (not through censorship, though).  For example, although he talks about evolutionists who see a divine process leading evolution up to a good end, he treats evolution as a sort of nihilism that is inconsistent with teaching values.  That’s just my impression.

I’m one who believes that different points-of-view should be taught in schools and universities.  I’m aware that this needs a significant amount of fleshing out, for, obviously, we can’t teach everything.  But, if there is a significant amount of controversy about an issue, and schools are discussing that issue in their classes, then students should be told about the different perspectives about it.

“But evolution is not controversial, for the vast majority of scientists accept it”, people have said.  True, and that should be taught.  Yet, there are people who have problems with evolution, for religious or other reasons.  That should be acknowledged in schools, as well.  Simply ignoring that people have problems with evolution (even if they’re wrong) does not make that fact go away.

“But then shouldn’t we teach also that the earth came from the womb of the goddess?”, one could ask.  Look, if there was a sizeable number of people who had issues with evolution because they believed that the earth came from the womb of the goddess, then, yes, that belief should somehow be addressed in the classroom.  Ignoring it wouldn’t help matters.  I do think, though, that students should be exposed to evolution and the scientific justifications for it.

A Contract with the Earth 19

In my last reading of A Contract with the Earth, Newt Gingrich and Terry Maple quote a statement by Richard Louv in Last Child in the Woods:

“Nature—-the sublime, the harsh, and the beautiful—-offers something that the street or gated community or computer game cannot.  Nature presents the young with something so much greater than they are; it offers an environment where they can easily contemplate infinity and eternity.”

Louv’s point (in the words of Newt and Maple) is that “children need exposure to nature for the healthy development of their senses, to learn and to create” (page 181).  Louv believes that their lack of exposure to nature has contributed to ADHD.  Earlier in the book, on page 176, Newt and Maple refer to the example of Charles Darwin, who was enchanted with nature from an early age and whose “youthful enthusiasm for nature lasted a lifetime” (page 176).  (Is Newt a Republican who believes in evolution?)

I believe that nature is valuable apart from whether or not it benefits human beings, but I do agree with Newt and Maple that people lose out when they are not exposed to nature.  Nature makes us feel small when we look at its greatness and beauty.  It inspires us and makes us think about “infinity and eternity”.