Cognitive dissonance in theology
August 26, 200912 comments
Lately, I've caught some flack from some (on another blog) for my insistence that a belief in the very essence of Genesis is necessary to Christian faith. I don't see how one can believe in evolution and Genesis at the same time because the simple wording of Genesis 1 and 2 states that God created the world through direct acts rather than by molding an existing process or merely allowing that process to happen (which by happenstance produced humanity).
Genesis is hardly the most "absurd" thing to take literally or semi-literally. The resurrection of Jesus is arguably at least as "absurd." Think about it, for a moment. According to the Gospel narrative, Jesus was beaten, scourged, crucified, bled out by a spear, wrapped in a constricting funeral wrap and placed into a dark, dry tomb with minimal air flow (due to the huge rock wedged into the entrance) and left there for three days. By divine fiat, He comes back to life brimming with vitality and vigor (after 3 days of not eating or drinking), sneaks past a cohort of Roman soldiers and chills with His homeboys before ascending to the right hand of the Father.
Ahhh, but there is the strong testimonial evidence of the apostles and other witnesses like Mary Magdalene, you might say. Fair enough, but we take it for granted that these same reliable witnesses were wrote scripture under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The same Holy Spirit who was the one who revealed the Genesis story to Moses. It is very likely that the Holy Spirit was rather coy about the full details of the creation of the universe. It's hard enough to give divine revelation through human language, let alone do so accurately while explaining physical laws and events that are likely a millennium or more beyond our current knowledge of Physics, to a desert-dwelling, primitive tribe. For God to explain the full monty to Moses and have him dictate it to the Israelites would have been like Henry Kissinger trying to lecture a gerbil on Diplomacy.
To my knowledge, no human being has actually seen a nebula turn into a solar system with an Earth-like planet. For all we know, Genesis is quite objectively plausible and the secular narrative a textbook case of the post hoc fallacy. That's really no less likely than the events of the Gospel regarding the resurrection since we do know for a fact that no human being could, without divine intervention, experience the events that preceded the resurrection and come back to life. The fact is, their body would be too badly damaged, the conditions in the tomb too hostile and the lack of a fresh air flow, food and water coupled with the blood loss from the spearing would seal the deal.
I'm not saying you are ipso facto stupid or irrational for believing in the resurrection. I'm merely suggesting that you are the very least, straying off the reservation if you can believe that the resurrection with a straight face, but then dismiss those who believe in the intelligent design narrative of Genesis as crackpots and irrational fideists.
Genesis is hardly the most "absurd" thing to take literally or semi-literally. The resurrection of Jesus is arguably at least as "absurd." Think about it, for a moment. According to the Gospel narrative, Jesus was beaten, scourged, crucified, bled out by a spear, wrapped in a constricting funeral wrap and placed into a dark, dry tomb with minimal air flow (due to the huge rock wedged into the entrance) and left there for three days. By divine fiat, He comes back to life brimming with vitality and vigor (after 3 days of not eating or drinking), sneaks past a cohort of Roman soldiers and chills with His homeboys before ascending to the right hand of the Father.
Ahhh, but there is the strong testimonial evidence of the apostles and other witnesses like Mary Magdalene, you might say. Fair enough, but we take it for granted that these same reliable witnesses were wrote scripture under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The same Holy Spirit who was the one who revealed the Genesis story to Moses. It is very likely that the Holy Spirit was rather coy about the full details of the creation of the universe. It's hard enough to give divine revelation through human language, let alone do so accurately while explaining physical laws and events that are likely a millennium or more beyond our current knowledge of Physics, to a desert-dwelling, primitive tribe. For God to explain the full monty to Moses and have him dictate it to the Israelites would have been like Henry Kissinger trying to lecture a gerbil on Diplomacy.
To my knowledge, no human being has actually seen a nebula turn into a solar system with an Earth-like planet. For all we know, Genesis is quite objectively plausible and the secular narrative a textbook case of the post hoc fallacy. That's really no less likely than the events of the Gospel regarding the resurrection since we do know for a fact that no human being could, without divine intervention, experience the events that preceded the resurrection and come back to life. The fact is, their body would be too badly damaged, the conditions in the tomb too hostile and the lack of a fresh air flow, food and water coupled with the blood loss from the spearing would seal the deal.
I'm not saying you are ipso facto stupid or irrational for believing in the resurrection. I'm merely suggesting that you are the very least, straying off the reservation if you can believe that the resurrection with a straight face, but then dismiss those who believe in the intelligent design narrative of Genesis as crackpots and irrational fideists.
Categories: christianity ,
evolution ,
intelligent design ,
theology
Myself, I've never seen an electron. However, I have lots of reasons to believe that this invisible thing can impact my world. So too I believe in God.
I agree. I personally think that most Christians who claim to believe in both Genesis and macro-evolution are simply embarrassed by the creation story and don't want their non-Christian friends to think they're idiots.
Hear hear, Dave. I myself did not witness the Holocaust, nor the Apollo 11 landing. But there's at least as much if not more evidence to support Jesus and the Resurrection than those two events. Just because a lot of people think it doesn't make it so, especially since (in the case of the Holocaust) there are penalties to be paid for openly questioning it.
I too have difficulty conceiving how a professed faith in Christianity squares with TENS inside the same skull.
As for me, perhaps the Universe was created in a literal 6 days lasting 24 hours each. Or maybe, man lacked an extensive enough vocabulary to describe time, so Genesis was written in terms man could understand at that moment, with the result that epochs were termed days and 6 days is in reality 6 million bazillion years. Or possibly the earth was shaped by God to make it look like it evolved, just to play a game with people's heads and let their "reason" be a whore for Lucifer. Whatever story one wishes to believe, there is more and better evidence for ID than TENS, and attempts to square the round peg of conventional wisdom with timeless Truth will require either the CW or the Truth to be bastardized.
Besides, and maybe this is just my biases showing here, but I refuse to believe that I descended from monkeys.
Like Vox, I don't claim to know what the creation process looked like. I wasn't there, so only God knows what it was like. However, it is just not possible to pull anything remotely like TENS from Genesis without abandoning the actual language of it.
And in many cases they'll find out, like the Christians who sided with archaeologists against the Bible's claim that the Hittites existed that the Bible was right all along.
While I agree with the general tenor of your post, I would like to challenge a couple of points.
I am not certain we need to think that all of Genesis was revealed to Moses by God. Sure, Moses compiled it, but much of Genesis likely antedates Moses and he probably used several written sources from the times of Noah, Abraham, Jacob,... The discussion about Esau's descendants reads like this.
And while the Hittites definitely existed, I personally think the identification of the Anatolian Hittites with the biblical Hittites is tenuous. The biblical description of the latter does not fit a vast empire.
Elusive Wapiti , Hebrew language allows for the description of vast ages. Even if it didn't, the use of phrases could carry the same idea: As many years ago as the sand on the seashore God made the heavens, the stars, and the sun....
There are a great many things not in the Bible. The underlying message for those gaps is "it isn't important". The important parts are included. I don't mind athiests trying to come up with their own alternative explanations, but I wish they would come up with something more plausible than darwinian evolution from random chemicals forming protiens to the the diverse bioshpere we have today.
Though to be perfectly fair, I have witnessed random chemicals in my coffee cup evolve into mold in just a couple of days. So it could happen.
That's what you get for drinking water that comes out of the Potomac.
That's what you get for drinking water that comes out of the Potomac.
Funny, but so true. :)
Great post, Mike. I couldn't agree more.