Randal Rauser's Blog, page 105

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a Partisan Hack with No Class

Neil deGrasse Tyson could be a great science educator if only he would stick to science. He’s clever, articulate, highly knowledgeable, and has an undeniable folksy charm.

Unfortunately, he also has an unfortunate penchant for engaging in wholly gratuitous and uninformed attacks on religious people. And this is where things get ugly. Tyson may know a lot about science, but his knowledge of philosophy, theology, and religion is abysmal as I have pointed out in the past (see here, for example, and also here).

But yesterday Tyson posted a tweet that was notably worse than his usual anti-religious bile:

Evidence collected over many years, obtained from many locations, indicates that the power of Prayer is insufficient to stop bullets from killing school children.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) February 16, 2018

Using a mass-shooting as an opportunity to score cheap shots against theists and thereby drive a further wedge of division between deeply polarized groups that are already inclined to misunderstand and demonize one another?

Truly this man is without class. He may know a lot about the cosmos, but his utterances on religion are a black hole.

The post Neil deGrasse Tyson is a Partisan Hack with No Class appeared first on Randal Rauser.

In case you have any delusions of grandeur about becoming an author, here’s the reality

I’ve published 11 books. A couple of them were with university presses, several more were with various Christian publishers, and my most recent book was self-published. Several of my books have received very good reviews. One of them (Finding God in the Shack) exceeded all expectations of commercial performance, particularly after it became a massive bestseller in Portuguese translation. But with the exception of that book, every one of my other books has been a commercial disappointment, certainly for me if not for the publisher.

I was recently sharing my own bad experiences with a friend who has published a couple books of his own. He replied by putting matters into perspective. He began by noting that his most recent book had recently received a very positive review in the prestigious Times Literary Supplement. He reasoned that this would result in an impressive boost in sales and a decent royalty check.

So imagine his reaction when his annual royalty statement arrived and he read that he was owed … $8.

Yes, that’s right: eight bucks.

But in fact, he didn’t respond as you might think. Being the optimist that he is, he immediately saw the silver lining. “Eight bucks is two Starbucks coffees!” he thought to himself. “At least that’s something!”

Then he read further in the statement: “Royalties will not be paid until the amount owing is at least $50.”

Ouch.

Okay, so he can forget about his Mocha Frap: at that rate, it could be years before his book can help subsidize his Starbucks habit.

Eight bucks is definitely at the low end. But the reality is that the average new book published in North America sells fewer than 200 copies … many of them far fewer. For every New York Times bestseller, there are thousands and thousands (and thousands) of books that are launched with the eternal optimism of a blushing author only to sink beneath the waves of obscurity.

The post In case you have any delusions of grandeur about becoming an author, here’s the reality appeared first on Randal Rauser.

What’s the Value of Social Action in the Name of Jesus?

I recently posted the following survey on Twitter with some interesting results:

Christians: you have $100 to donate to one of two organizations:

Organization 1: provides clean drinking water to Saharan villagers.
Organization 2: evangelizes Saharan villagers.

Don't bother with "false dichotomy" replies. This is a real choice.

So … who gets the $100?

— Randal Rauser (@RandalRauser) February 13, 2018

The Value of Gospel Branding

In this article, I’d like to build on the topic of NGOs (non-governmental not-for-profit organizations). In this case, let’s imagine that the two NGOs are devoted to the same mission: equipping villagers to build the infrastructure required to give clean water to Saharan villagers. Both organizations also have the same modus operandi: they teach the villagers how to dig and maintain wells and they provide them with the required equipment to dig and maintain those wells.

But there are also three important differences: first, while the one NGO — Water for Life (WFL) — is avowedly Christian, the other NGO — Clean Water Communities (CWC) — is secular. Second, WFL is clearly branded as “Christian”. The workers tell villagers they are Christian and that they come in the name of Jesus to bring water. Third, WFL devotes an additional 10% of its funds to administration and this leaves 10% less available for carrying out the primary mission of water resources. The key is that you don’t know where that extra money allotted to administration is going.

WFL (Christian)                         CWC (Secular)

Promotion           10%                                                      10%

Administration   20%                                                     10%

Mission                 70%                                                     80%

Here’s the question (for Christians in particular): do you value WFL’s Christian branding (a tacit form of pre-evangelism) sufficiently that you will support WFL over CWC despite the fact that WFL has an unexplained additional 10% in administrative costs?

The post appeared first on Randal Rauser.

Who is the Fool? How Christians misread the Bible to attack atheists

This article is an excerpt from my 2015 book Is the Atheist My Neighbor? Rethinking Christian Attitudes Toward Atheism. It’s a book that J.L. Schellenberg, one of the leading atheist philosophers of religion, recommended as “brief and lively but remarkably full and acute” and “impressively fair”. You can decide whether this brief excerpt lives up to those descriptions.

Let’s begin by considering Psalm 14:1, a text with which we are already well familiar from our survey of Christian attitudes toward atheism in chapter 2. Beginning with the “Atheist’s Day” anecdote, we saw that Christians have repeatedly appealed to this verse to support the Rebellion Thesis. But is that really a correct reading? James Spiegel certainly believes so. He speaks for many when he writes:

When smart people go in irrational directions, it is time to look elsewhere than reasoning ability for an explanation. And Scripture gives us clear direction as to where we should look. Consider the psalmist’s declaration that “the fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1). The Hebrew term rendered “fool” here denotes a person who is “morally deficient.” And elsewhere in the Old Testament Wisdom Literature we learn of various symptoms of this moral deficiency. The book of Proverbs says “a fool finds no pleasure in understanding” (Proverbs 18:2), that “fools despise wisdom and discipline” (Proverbs 1:7), that “a fool finds pleasure in evil conduct” (Proverbs 10:23) and is “hotheaded and reckless” (Proverbs 14:16).

As with several other Christian writers surveyed, Spiegel simply assumes the text applies to atheists and he infers from this that it supports the Rebellion Thesis. But are these assumptions justified? I will argue that they are not.

Let’s begin by conceding for the sake of argument (and only for the sake of argument) that the text is addressing intellectual atheists. In other words, when the psalmist speaks of the individual who “says in his heart there is no God,” what he is, in fact, referring to is the individual who denies that God exists (i.e., the atheist). On this interpretation, Psalm 14:1 reduces to the following:

(1) All fools are atheists.

However, that is not what the Rebellion Thesis claims. In fact, on the Rebellion Thesis the order is reversed:

(2) All atheists are fools.

And this is where the problem arises, for any attempt to infer (2) from (1) commits the logical fallacy of illicit conversion. To illustrate, all Ford Mustangs are cars, but it doesn’t follow that all cars are Ford Mustangs. By the same token, even if (1) all fools are atheists it doesn’t follow that (2) all atheists are fools, for it may be that other atheists are not fools (i.e., that they are intelligent, reflective people). Since the Rebellion Thesis does claim that all atheists are fools, one cannot appeal to Psalm 14:1 to justify it.

Thus far I’ve granted for the sake of argument that when the Psalmist refers to the one who “says in his heart there is no God” we should understand that to mean “is an atheist.” Even with this assumption, I’ve demonstrated that the text does not logically support the Rebellion Thesis. Now it is time to go further and challenge the assumption itself, for I believe it to be demonstrably false. In order to see why, we can begin with an important hermeneutical truism: In any reading of a text, attention to context is of paramount importance. As Aaron B. Hebbard observes with only a touch of hyperbole, “Conceivably the three most important rules in interpretation are context, context, context.” There are different levels of context relevant to understanding a passage, and we shall consider two here, the broader cultural context and the immediate literary/textual context.

We begin with the broader cultural backdrop (or worldview) in which this text was originally written. Our starting point is to recognize that intellectual atheism as it has been understood since the seventeenth century played no part in that cultural backdrop. As we saw in our survey, intellectual atheism is a phenomenon which belongs in large part to the modern world. While intellectual atheists in Europe were exceedingly rare prior to the seventeenth century, they were simply unheard of more than two millennia earlier in the Ancient Near East (ANE) when the psalms were written.

One simple way to illumine the radical difference between the ANE and the modern West is by recognizing that ancient peoples did not maintain the distinction familiar to our age between nature (the natural world of mundane human experience and scientific enquiry) and supernature (the spiritual world of God and created spirit beings). In our modern age, we clearly distinguish these two spheres. And so today theists attempt to conceive how God and the supernatural realm interact with the natural realm while atheists aim to do away with the supernatural realm altogether.

The crucial point to appreciate is that this whole debate is a modern one and thus it was simply not on the horizon of ancient peoples. While ancient peoples recognized there were aspects of reality inaccessible to them, they didn’t have a neat division between nature and supernature. Instead, they perceived reality to be a unified whole such that the natural world of daily life was freely explained in terms of the activity of divine beings. For example, natural events like floods, storms, droughts and earthquakes were all explained seamlessly as the actions of God or the gods. The ANE world lacked the conceptual space to conceive the world apart from the reality of supernatural beings. Given this vast difference in worldview, it is hopelessly anachronistic to read back into Psalm 14:1 a modern atheistic position that conceptually distinguishes nature from supernature and then denies the existence of the latter.

So if the psalm is not addressing intellectual atheism, then what is it concerned with? At this point, we can shift our attention from the ancient cultural context of Psalm 14:1 to its literary context. To get a handle on that context we will expand our view beyond verse 1 to encompass the next two verses as well:

1 The fool says in his heart,

“There is no God.”

They are corrupt, their deeds are vile;

there is no one who does good.

2 The Lord looks down from heaven

on all mankind

to see if there are any who understand,

any who seek God.

3 All have turned away, all have become corrupt;

there is no one who does good,

not even one.

One thing becomes clear when considering the wider context of this psalm: The psalmist’s ultimate target is not intellectual atheists or any other subset of the human population. Instead, it is the whole human race. The point, as the psalmist makes luminously clear, is that all human beings have turned away, all are corrupt, and not one does good. This bleak picture provides us with the key to what is meant in the first verse. While everybody in the ANE professed belief in God (or gods) with his or her mouth, the psalmist observes that nobody lived consistently with that confession. While the entire human race may be the ultimate target, the immediate target is the community of Israel which confesses faith in Yahweh and yet fails to live up to that faith. (Covenantal faithfulness, like charity, begins at home.) Consequently, the psalmist is most immediately concerned to indict the rampant hypocrisy of those in ancient Israel who live as if God doesn’t exist, even while they profess that he does.

Given the fact that Psalm 14:1 is so commonly used as an indictment of atheists, it is surely ironic to observe that it is, in fact, an indictment of devotees of Yahweh who fail to live up to their professed belief. Indeed, the use of this text as a proof-text to smear atheists calls to mind Jesus’s strong words against the sin of (religious) hypocrisy. Consider as an example the following sober warning in Matthew 23:2-3: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’s seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.” Needless to say, it is the height of hypocrisy for religious leaders to enforce standards of observance on others that many in their own community (and perhaps they themselves) fail to maintain. To put it another way, how ironic it is that a text which was intended to warn against religious hypocrisy is instead proof-texted as a rhetorical bludgeon against atheists who make no such faith confession in the first place.

And just who is the fool exactly?

Spiegel, The Making of an Atheist, 51.

Even worse, (1) is itself false because some fools are theists. In fact, I argue below that the real force of this passage is to serve as an indictment of, and warning for, those foolish theists.

In case you’re wondering about the context of Hebbard’s statement, see Reading Daniel as a Text in Theological Hermeneutics, 142.

See Saunders, Divine Action and Modern Science, chapters 1, 2.

The post Who is the Fool? How Christians misread the Bible to attack atheists appeared first on Randal Rauser.

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep: Evangelism and the Ethics of Scaring the Hell out of Children

Illuminated image from Hortus Deliciarum. Public Domain

Father John Furniss, a nineteenth-century Catholic evangelist, became renowned as the “Apostle to the Children.” Father Furniss (and yes, that was his real name) was infamous for his lurid descriptions of children in hell. Consider this excerpt from his 1861 bestselling collection of nightmarish bedtime reading, The Sight of Hell:

“See on the middle of that red-hot floor stands a girl : she looks about sixteen years old. Her feet are bare. Listen ; she speaks. ‘I have been standing on this red hot floor for years! Look at my burnt and bleeding feet! Let me go off this burning floor for one moment!’ The fifth dungeon is the red-hot oven. The little child is in the red-hot oven. Hear how it screams to come out ; see how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor.” (Cited in Edward White, Life in Christ: A Study of the scripture doctrine, 3rd ed. (London: Elliot Stock, 1878), 60.)

And you thought Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was a wee bit intense for the kiddies! Yet, as horrible as this is, these images of children writhing for eternity in flames and being baked in an oven are just the beginning. On page after gory, blood-spattered, smoking page, Furniss continues the assault on the senses, presumably driven (so one must charitably assume) by the evangelistic intention of scaring the hell out of as many precocious little pipsqueaks as possible.

Many Christians today will look back with utter dismay, if not disgust, at the so-called “ministry” of Father Furniss, believing that he accomplished little more than traumatizing a generation. That’s a pretty harsh charge. But the evidence surely warrants it, no?

So let’s consider for a moment: if Father Furniss were around today, how do you suppose he might reply to the charge? I bet he would say something like this:

“Emotional abuse? You accuse me of emotional abuse? Oh dear me, how dare I have the temerity to preach the whole counsel of God! Excuse me, benighted and softhearted denizen of the 21st century, but ‘Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.’ Perhaps you missed that bit of scripture? Do you milquetoasts bother to read the Bible at all?

“How cavalier you people are with your child’s eternity. And how hypocritical! If a child is in danger of playing near a scorpion’s den, you can jolly well bet that a loving parent will put the fear of scorpions into that child to ensure that she stays away. Well let me tell you, your children play every day on the yawning edge of the smoking pit of eternal damnation, and you say nothing. And you reprimand me for warning your very children of the scorpions at their ankles?

“Rather than wag your finger at me you should be warning those future burning coals that the devils are waiting to drag them into the furnace! ‘Flee hell child! Run to Jesus!’ Instead, you prefer a conspiracy of silence as you teach your children about ‘gentle Jesus meek and mild.’ But make no mistake: that same Jesus that you fancy a Father Christmas will soon judge the universe. You residents of the twenty-first century pride yourselves on being so enlightened and humane. How ironic that is, for your ‘humane’ silence is the cruelest lie of all.”

Whew! Father Furniss, why don’t you tell us what you really think!

The truth is that whatever you think of Furniss’ preaching, there is an undeniable logic to it. If a fate as horrible as hell potentially awaits every human being, then why are we Christians not more diligent about warning our children of the danger? During the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 my wife and I were desperate to drill the most rigorous hygienic procedures into our daughter (WASH your hands! USE sanitizer! DON’T LICK any doorknobs!), and all because we wanted to spare her a bad case of the flu. How much more vigilant should people be in ensuring that young children avoid eternal damnation? Needless to say, if the Christian doctrine of hell is correct then hell is infinitely worse than any case of the flu. So why does our discipleship of our children not reflect that conviction more clearly? Set against the prospect of children being damned forever, Father Furniss’s revivalist preaching may not be that shocking after all.

The post Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep: Evangelism and the Ethics of Scaring the Hell out of Children appeared first on Randal Rauser.

Can Evangelicalism Be Saved? My Debate with Frank Schaeffer

Last week I appeared again on Unbelievable with Justin Brierley. This time the debate was with renowned author and commentator Frank Schaeffer, son of evangelical legend Francis Schaeffer. The topic? Evangelicalism, and specifically whether evangelicalism is worth saving in the age of Trump. Schaeffer argues that it isn’t while I provide an evangelical defence. I found this to be a very enjoyable exchange. You can listen to the show here.

Believe it or not, this was my seventh apperance on Unbelievable. It turns out that guest appearances on Unbelievable have become an annual part of my social calendar. If’ you’re interested, here are links to my previous appearances:

2017 with Justin Schieber: Based on our 2016 book An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar, Schieber argues that religious disagreement supports atheism and I argue that it does not.

2016 with Michael Ruse: A Devil’s Advocate debate in which Ruse defends Christianity and I defend atheism.

2015 with Alom Shaha: A dialogue (no real debate here) in which I provide a sympathetic reading of atheism and Shaha, the atheist, agrees.

2014 with Hemant Mehta: A debate with the renowned Friendly Atheist on the afterlife and the concept of heaven.

2013 with John Loftus: A debate on The Outsider Test of Faith and miracles (the latter based on our 2013 book God or Godless).

2012 with Ralph Jones: A debate and conversation on some popular atheist objections to Christianity.

The post Can Evangelicalism Be Saved? My Debate with Frank Schaeffer appeared first on Randal Rauser.

Apologetic Debate, Philosophy Robotics, and Clear Thinking

It all started when I tweeted the following quote from John Thatamanil:

“if a theologian were to broadcast her convictions about molecular or evolutionary biology without some years of careful reading and study, she would be met with jeering laughter and summarily dismissed.”

A commenter named “Baldious” replied as follows:

“Nobody need study that which has never been demonstrated to exist in the first place to have a valid opinion on the subject – that’s the difference.”

For ease of reference, we can call that “The Baldious Principle”:

BP: “Nobody need study that which has never been demonstrated to exist in the first place to have a valid opinion on the subject.”

Presumably, BP is taken as the first premise of an argument:

(1) Nobody need study that which has never been demonstrated to exist in the first place to have a valid opinion on the subject.

(2) The God of Christian theism has never been demonstrated to exist in the first place.

(3) Theology is the discipline that studies the God of Christian theism.

(4) Therefore one need not study theology to have a valid opinion on the God of Christian theism.

One problem with BP is that “demonstration” requires definition. But however one might define “demonstration”, the principle is still a bad one. I made the point in a reply by way of a reductio ad absurdum. That is, I assumed the premise for the sake of argument and then demonstrated that it leads to absurd consequences:

“So since the cosmic strings of string theory haven’t been demonstrated to exist in the first place, I need not study physics to have a valid opinion on the subject! That’s awesome!”

At this point, we went back and forth in a few tweets. (If you care to read the entire exchange, click here.) Finally, I said,

“If you want to revise your principle to restrict it to a subset of claims about the “supernatural”, then restate the principle. But be careful of producing an ad hoc, gerrymandered concept.”

Baldious replied by suggesting I had somehow misunderstood the principle due to inattention to the context in which it was presented:

“The principle I was commenting on was in relation to your comparison between the study of theology and molecular/eco biology. Sorry if this wasn’t obvious to you.”

So I replied thusly:

“If you believe I have misunderstood your principle in some way because of inattention to context, feel free to restate the principle with more clarity so we may assess its adequacy.”

Baldious replied:

“Randal, are you capable of having a conversation without resorting to philosophy robotics? I’ve clarified my angle for you so I’m pretty sure you understand what I’m saying.”

What is “philosophy robotics”? I’m not sure. I replied as follows:

“Asking people to define their terms and defend their claims is just clear thinking. You can’t start building the second floor before you’ve laid your foundation.”

I recount this exchange here because it manifests a very common pattern that I find when debating with people. It starts when a person makes a claim (e.g. BP) which is easily refuted. I then provide an objection (like my reductio) and ask the person either to revise or abandon their principle.

At that point, we end up spinning our proverbial wheels as my interlocutor attempts to advance the argument without revising or replacing the critical underlying principle on which the argument depends. Often I am accused of obfuscation, a disingenuous attempt to control the conversation, or as in this case, “philosophy robotics”.

If that happens to you, don’t be deterred. If you demonstrate that a premise in an argument is faulty, don’t allow your interlocutor to continue advancing the argument. Granted, if they want to save face by changing subjects, you should definitely oblige them. But if they want to persist on the same topic without having the required foundation, don’t let them move onto the second floor. As I said, that’s not philosophy robotics: it’s just clear thinking.

The post Apologetic Debate, Philosophy Robotics, and Clear Thinking appeared first on Randal Rauser.

In Christ Alone and the Interesting Worship Wars

The term “Worship Wars” typically refers to a battle over musical styles: Hymns vs. choruses: drums and guitar vs. organ and choir, etc. I am not particularly interested in that debate. (You can see my attempt to contextualize it in this article.)

To my mind, the far more interesting worship wars are those that are concerned with the theological content of songs. And these days, it’s hard to find much theology in some of the contemporary choruses. (For example, consider the refrain of “I’m Trading my Sorrows”: “Yes Lord, yes Lord, yes yes Lord, amen!” One this is clear: this song has a horrendous theology of lament.)

A notable exception is the popular Stuart Townend song “In Christ Alone,” a song with some actual substantial theology.

In Christ alone, who took on flesh

Fullness of God in helpless babe

This gift of love and righteousness

Scorned by the ones He came to save

‘Til on that cross as Jesus died

The wrath of God was satisfied

For every sin on Him was laid

Here in the death of Christ I live, I live

https://randalrauser.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/In-Christ-Alone-clip.mp3

Townend describes atonement here in the terms of penal substitution: Jesus Christ suffered in our place to appease the wrath of God the Father against (our) sins which were imputed to him. Those who embrace penal substitution as the correct theory and/or a metaphor of atonement, sing the song with gusto. (Countless others sing the song with gusto because they like the tune.)

But others are unhappy with this theology. They repudiate penal substitution as a false and harmful conception of God and atonement. And so, the offending lyric has been edited as follows:

‘Til on that cross as Jesus died

The love of God was magnified

It’s important to note that this edit does not contradict penal substitution since the advocate of penal substitution agrees that the love of God was magnified on the cross. However, it does remove a very specific theological statement that the original lyricist intended to convey. Is this an acceptable compromise?

The post In Christ Alone and the Interesting Worship Wars appeared first on Randal Rauser.

Teaching the Destruction of Jericho to Children

The way that “children’s Bibles” alter and distort biblical violence is a source of great interest to me as I’ve continued to mull over how best to introduce an R-Rated text to a general audience. In my book What’s So Confusing About Grace? I identify three common reading strategies. And here I’ll give an example of one of them: distortion. Consider this retelling of the destruction of Jericho in Joshua 6:

Notice that there is no reference to defeated peoples, let alone their slaughter. Instead, the text refers only to the fact that Rahab and her family were saved. Saved from what? The answer, of course, is that they were saved from the slaughter that the text chose not to mention. Indeed, one assumes the choice of the word saved instead of spared is intentional. So according to this retelling, the famous story of Jericho is nothing less than a rescue operation.

That most certainly is a distortion of the text. But is it a permissible distortion? Or are there better and more responsible ways to teach this narrative to children? Or should we just not teach it at all until we can responsibly give them all the gory details?

The post Teaching the Destruction of Jericho to Children appeared first on Randal Rauser.

Is the biblical God ignorant about science?

In “Did the biblical concept of God evolve from polytheism?” I reprinted one of the opening statements from my 2013 debate book God or Godless authored with John Loftus. That was so much fun that I decided to add a second instalment. In chapter 14 Loftus’ debate resolution is “The biblical God is ignorant about science”. I’ve included my opening statement below.

The real question here is whether we can credibly believe that God revealed himself through a book that reflects a scientific view of the world that we no longer accept. And to be sure, we don’t accept the ancient Hebrew three-storied view of the universe. The biblical writers held to an obsolete science and the attempts of some conservative Christians to read biblical texts in a way congruent with contemporary science is naïve and harmful. The question is whether that obsolete science discredits the text’s revelatory status.

This question brings us to another: if God should not have used ancient Israelite science when revealing himself to the ancient Israelites then which science should he have used? I’m guessing that John thinks God should have used our science:

“In the beginning 13.7 billion years ago there was a cosmic singularity. After a period the energy cooled sufficiently and God formed subatomic particles…”

Yes, that’s how God should have done it, with Genesis 1 and 2 introducing Big Bang cosmology, Einsteinean relativity, quantum physics, plate tectonics and evolutionary biology. Give those ancient Israelites a real science education.

Alas, there are two glaring problems with this suggestion. The first is that such an account of the world wouldn’t have made any sense to the ancient Israelites. Can you imagine a person who considered a chariot cutting-edge technology trying to get their minds around E=MC2? If God had revealed himself to the ancient Israelites in the science of the twenty-first century, he would have ensured their inability to understand the text.

John might reply that at least we’d understand it. Perhaps, but this immediately leads us into the second problem. If the history of scientific progress to this point is any guide at all, scientific theories will continue to be revised year by year, sometimes to the point where they are replaced altogether. For example, it is only in the last ten years that scientists have stumbled upon dark energy, a mysterious entity which likely composes the bulk of what constitutes the universe. Even more bizarrely, some scientists are now arguing that all matter is really a holographic projection. This claim is linked somehow to the strange fact that black holes appear to record information about the things they consume on their surface like a magnetic strip. I don’t pretend to understand this but I do glean this lesson: while our view of the universe has things less wrong than the ancient Israelites, that hardly means we have things right. And this leads us back to the same problem. If God revealed himself in our science, then in a century people would reject the text for the same reason John rejects it today!

Forget the naïve assumption that God should have revealed himself in the science of our day. Let’s refashion the atheist’s objection to say that he should simply have revealed the way things are, period. For example, as we speak scientists are searching for the Grand Unifying theory which can reconcile the four fundamental forces (the weak and strong nuclear forces, gravity and electromagnetism) in a single parsimonious explanation. Let’s say that this is the GUT equation: S=WF / GR. So now we ask why God didn’t place S=WF / GR at the beginning of Genesis 1.

Unfortunately that suggestion encounters multiple problems. To begin with, what if we do not discover S=WF / GR for centuries or millennia to come? In that case we are suggesting that God should have privileged people in the distant future while leaving the rest of us in incomprehension. To compound the problem, what if human beings never discover S=WF / GR? What if the calculus behind it is simply too difficult for the human brain to grasp? In that case our demands on the revelatory text would have fated it to permanent irrelevance. Finally, even if some day far in the future a few scientists come to understand the truth of S=WF / GR, does it follow that they would then accept the Bible as revelation? Hardly. No doubt many would dismiss the fact that S=WF / GR appears in the biblical text as a fluke. Indeed, since the ancient Israelites didn’t know what S=WF / GR even meant, the atheist would probably claim that reading the GUT equation into the biblical text is as naïve as we consider reading contemporary cosmology into the biblical text.

Rather than fashion his revelation to meet the demands of the twenty-first century skeptic, God entered into history by accommodating to the limited horizons of the ancient near east while bringing a message of salvation history which would remain relevant for all people and all times.

The post Is the biblical God ignorant about science? appeared first on Randal Rauser.