Recovering Evangelicals

Getting twenty five fundamental constants and physical laws just right to produce a universe full of electrons, neutrons, and protons … all the way up to planets and stars

Last week, we learned that “Fine Tuning” can mean three very different things.  Today, we’re going to explore the first of those three: the exquisite precision needed to produce a universe made up of “usable stuff” … electrons, protons, and neutrons, all the way up to planets and stars. Our guests today — Elie Feder (PhD in mathematics) and Aaron Zimmer (physics, mathematics and philosophy) — are the hosts of a podcast which focuses exclusively on that question.

Scientists have long been looking for a Grand Unifying Theory: something that would explain everything.  What they’ve found are a variety of physical laws and a collection of 25 different fundamental constants.  And there’s something odd about those constants: they’re not straightforward numbers that derive cleanly from any equation … they can only be measured. And when measured, they’re not simple numbers: they’re unpredictable and often involve long strings of digits.  They look strange, contrived, and … “ugly.”  In our metaphor from last week, it’s like trying to explain why there are 1760 yards in a mile: … why 1760? … why not 2000, or 1500, or even possibly 1750?  Why?  Who came up with this number?  This was puzzling to astrophysicists.  A big mystery.

But as those astrophysicists continued to put a microscope on those constants, they learned something new; something very provocative.  As they developed methods to better measure the constants, they found the constants were tuned to an exceptionally high degree of precision. And if the constants were changed by a little bit, the equations wouldn’t work.  The analogy that’s often used is balancing a pencil on its sharpened tip.  It was as if we learned that it’s not 1760 yards to a mile, but rather 1759.4691269378 yards.  And adjusting that by even a few per cent was enough to make it so that global distribution networks like Purolator and Fedex would no longer be able to function.  Getting back to cosmology, changing these 25 constants by even a few percent means the universe can no longer make electrons or atoms …. can no longer make planets or suns …. can’t make the variety of types of atoms needed for life!

And then some highly educated people began to wonder if this exceptionally high degree of precision — this Fine Tuning — is actually the key to the Big Mystery referred to above.  There’s a future purpose to those constants: to create a universe full of “usable stuff,” including life.  Those constants aren’t random, but have to be precisely tuned in order to achieve that goal. As if those values were selected!  Some, for ideological reasons, opt for explanations that involve chance and luck, like multiverse theories or infinite iterations of a single universe; but Aaron and Elie show how those “explanations” actually fall flat when you look at them more carefully. Verbs like “selected” and “tuned” suggest agency, and intelligence. Of course, this is where theists will point to God, while atheists — again, for ideological reasons — might suggest we’re living in a computer simulation. 

We guarantee that if you listen carefully to what they say, and keep an open mind that doesn’t automatically discount logical inferences that have ideological consequences, you’ll see that this is not a mere God-of-the-gaps explanation intended to replace the reigning luck-of-the-gaps explanations.

Let us know if you think differently (we tell you how to contact us at the end of the episode).

Find out more about our guests Elie Feder and Aaron Zimmer at their podcast: Physics to God.

If you liked this episode, you might also like the one we released three years ago on the same topic, when our guest was an astronomer: Dr. Robert Mann.

Episode image by Andrew: it’s amazing what he can come up with when I simply ask for “something with knobs and dials that produces galaxies.”

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“Fine Tuning” really means three very different things, two of which are recognized by astrophysicists of all stripes; but one of them … not so much.

We have often looked closely at Creationism in all of its various forms, flavors and dimensions.  Two particular aspects of Creationism are foundational for the faith of many Christians (not a tenet of their faith, but a rationale, in the same way that Noah’s Flood or near death experiences may not be tenets of faith, but scientific evidence for both might be a rationale for their faith).  Those two aspects are Intelligent Design and Fine Tuning. 

Intelligent Design was at one point foundational for my own Christian faith.  But then we did a mini-series of episodes focusing on that particular idea.  We brought in two of the biggest ID-proponents (Drs. Michael Behe and Jonathan MacLatchie) and they gave their best arguments and used their favorite examples (the bacterial flagellum and the Long-Term Evolution Experiment, respectively).  Then we brought in four world-renowned scientists who actually do benchwork in both areas of scientific study and who have published literally hundreds of scientific papers based on that work, and they gave us completely different explanations than Behe and MacLatchie (both of whom have only ever read about the flagellum or the Long-Term Evolution Experiment).  And what’s more, the story that those experts told was much more believable (being based on evidence, not on rhetoric), more beautiful, and more mind-blowing than saying simply: it was Designed by God.  Both of us have since soured on the idea of Intelligent Design.

Now we’ve decided to also do a mini-series of episodes on Fine-Tuning (FT).  And once again, we’re going to bring in experts who actually work in the relevant areas — astronomy, astrophysics, and mathematics.  More on that later: first, we need to build a foundation for our audience, going through a few definitions and basic concepts, so they can better keep up with those experts.

One hugely important matter is for the listeners to see “Fine Tuning” as meaning at least three very different things.

First, there is FT of the universe to manifest itself.  We talk about how the Big Bang produced a universe-full of energy, which then cooled and pulled itself together into physical stuff (matter is a frozen form of energy).  Without getting into too much detail, the weak nuclear force holds subatomic particles together (neutrinos, bosons, etc.), the strong nuclear force holds atomic particles (protons and neutrons) together to form the nucleus, electromagnetic force holds the nucleus and electrons together, electrostatic forces hold atoms together into molecules, and gravity holds molecules together to form “usable stuff.”  There are lots of other fundamental particles and forces to talk about, but these are enough to explain Fine Tuning.  Astrophysicists, irrespective of whether they’re Theists or not, will widely agree that those particles and forces need to be incredibly “tuned” to a precision that boggles the mind: the analogy that’s often used is of a pencil standing up on its sharpened tip.  If the tuning is too much in one direction, then the particles produced in the Big Bang never come together, and the universe is never more than an ever expanding cloud of dispersed particles.  If too much in the other direction, the particles come together so fast and so hard that they quickly form one super massive black hole.  Either way, you don’t get “usable stuff” … the pencil falls over.  But if the tuning is just right — again to a mind-blowing degree of precision — the particles pull together in a way that produces electrons, protons, neutrons …. all the way up to planets and stars.

Second, there is FT of the universe to produce life.  The FT is further refined in a way that we just don’t end up with a few types of atoms, but focused to such a laser-point precision that it produces a bewildering and complex mixture of different kinds of atoms: from small ones needed to make cells (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen) and do basic cell functions (sodium, potassium, calcium) all the way up to larger and heavier metals that are exploited by enzymes (iron, magnesium, copper, manganese), and even the heaviest elements of all (uranium, plutonium). Sir Fred Hoyle, a world-renowned astrophysicist and ardent atheist, famously said that the carbon atom looked suspiciously like it was produced by some super-Intellect who had monkeyed with the physics!

Third, there is FT of the universe to support life.  This is the version of FT that I have little patience for.  It encapsulates a wide variety of arguments which point at the rotation of earth, its axial tilt, its distance from the sun, the positive influences of the moon, or Jupiter or Saturn, the position of our solar system in the galaxy, the wavelengths of light produced by the sun, the presence of oxygen and water in the atmosphere … and a long list of many other parameters like these.  And they all share this in common: their values or their influence are said to be ideally suited to life [on Earth].  Proponents of this form of FT don’t realize that they’re not pointing at FT of the universe for life, but rather FT of life for the universe.

One of our listeners asked why so many astrophysicists and proponents of Fine Tuning — be they Theist or atheist – say that the values of the physical constants “demand an explanation” or “scream design”?  Scott and I went through a little exercise that we think will give the listeners a really fun insight into what goes on in the mind of an astrophysicist atheist like Sir Fred Hoyle to bring out such conviction.  You’ll have to listen to our conversation if you want to be enlightened.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like our first look at Fine Tuning from three years ago, or a conversation we had with Dr. Chris Barrigar three years ago which looked at the primordial cosmic egg being finely tuned to create agape-capable beings, or a second one a couple months ago looking at biology and evolution being tuned to point those beings towards a Creator God. Or, for a better understanding of how atoms can interact and pull themselves together into molecules, check out our Introductory lecture on how proteins are made.

Image by Andrew. Thanks Andrew!

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Can we say God used evolution to produce a “good” creation if it involves so much pain, suffering, predation and death?

Our listeners asked us to do an episode on how to rationalize Christian faith with all the pain and suffering that is brought on by the process of Evolution.  We spoke to Dr. James Stump, whose recently released book — Sacred Chain: how understanding evolution leads to deeper faith — puts a spotlight on that question. Jim grew up in a very Conservative mid-west American world, but wasn’t personally committed to Young Earth Creationism, and never really encountered anything either overtly for or against the Theory of Evolution.  While getting a PhD in Philosophy of Science, and then splitting his career between teaching at a Christian college and writing for Biologos, he did a deep-dive into what Evolution was all about.  He became fully convinced by the data and made that clear in his writing.  However, this did not sit well with the College, and he was politely squeezed out (much like the story we heard from Joel Anderson a few weeks back, and from Peter Enns a couple years ago).

We spent some time talking about the first three quarters of his book, including a bit about scripture, divine inspiration, and Concordance between modern science and the ancient worldview. But we reserved most of our discussion for his fifth chapter: the problem of pain and suffering, which for many people doesn’t square up with God referring to creation as “good” let alone “very good.”  Jim first pointed out that declaring something “good” doesn’t mean that it’s “finished,” and that a baby becoming a full-grown athlete or a young prodigy becoming an Olympic athlete or a concert musician may be “good” at first but will encounter a lot of pain and suffering in striving to achieve their full potential.  God’s command to his new creatures to “be fruitful and multiply … have dominion over earth” reveals that he wanted it to grow, to develop, to change.  Humans could never be created with moral maturity: that needs to be grown into and earned through experience and choice-making.

We also looked at the full meaning of the Hebrew word (tov) that gets translated into English as “good.” It doesn’t just mean cute, cuddly, and happy smiley faces all around …. it also carries a nuance that means “something that fulfills a purpose for which it was created.”  With this more nuanced understanding of tov/good, we gain a whole new perspective.

Death is tov!  Without death, the world would very quickly be overrun by a seething mass of living organisms: we’d now all be trying to squeeze our way through a soup of insects and animals. Death is also the business end of the filter that selects out the more fit.  Some people find it to be so wasteful that 99% of all species have gone extinct: but another way to look at this begins with recognizing that all the animals and species that have ever existed could not possibly all live on earth at the same time, so this process of species coming and going allows a hundred times as many different forms of life to have their time on the stage.  This gradual appearance and disappearance of so many different life forms produced a much more dynamic and lavish show.

Predatory-prey relationships are also tov!  We talked about how the gazelle and cheetah each influenced each other’s evolution over millions of years: their speed, strength and agility were honed by that tight relationship.  We also unpacked a phenomenon observed in Yellowstone National Park that was representative of other parks all around North America.  For a long while, wolves threatened people and livestock alike, until local people completely exterminated that predator threat.  But then the elk population exploded, in part because so many individuals with diseases and broken limbs were able to survive: the elk herds started to look very sickly!  Without wolves around, the larger herds left the protection of the hills and pine forests, opting instead for the convenience of willows, aspen and poplars next to flowing waters.  The loss of those groves eliminated nesting sites for song birds, as well as the beavers.  The loss of beaver dams allowed the rivers to flow faster: their banks started to erode, marshlands disappeared along with their distinctive wildlife.  Then the wolves were introduced (against much opposition) and all those ecosystem collapses completely reversed.

We started talking about meaningless and wasteful suffering (tsunamis; the Holocaust).  This is a completely different question: it’s not about evolution, and humans with their free will and agency bring a whole new dynamic to this problem. And this bigger question has two parts: there is natural evil (kids with brain cancer) and moral evil (kids killed by a deranged school shooter).

We finished the conversation with a lighter question: if it were possible to “re-wind the tape” on evolution and let it play out again, would we still get humans.  Stephen Jay Gould famously said no, but Jim explains how he thinks that God had always intended for there to be image-bearers with a moral maturity, which Jim calls “human,” but that those image bearers might not necessarily have been Homo sapiens (perhaps Neanderthals instead?).  Luke pushed the point: could it have been dinosaurs/reptiles that instead filled that role of image bearers if the Chicxulub impactor asteroid never hit Earth?  You’ll have to listen to the episode to hear Jim’s response.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Dr. James Stump at his Biologos web-page, and his book at HarperCollins.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also episodes in our mini-series looking at various aspects of evolution.

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Humans have been developing the toolkit needed to fulfill the Divine command: “learn to get along and take care of the planet”!

Martin Luther King famously said: “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”   The popular political commentator and TV host Jon Stewart added something poignant to those immortal words: “That arc may bend towards justice … but someone has to bend it … while other people are pushing it back.”

This week’s episode is all about humans climbing up the evolutionary ladder … not just biologically, cognitively, technologically, and spiritually/religiously, but also in the moral/ethical sense … and in the process growing into a role of responsibility: fulfilling the Divine command to “learn to get along, and take care of the planet.” We had a conversation about this with Rabbi Doctor Bradley Shavit Artson, a supremely qualified expert on the evolution of human morality and ethics, taking a whirlwind tour through more than ten thousand years of human history, looking for evidence of the appearance and development of our morality.

During the prehistoric part of our history (before 5000 years BCE), humans were hunter-gatherers, migrating in bands of roughly fifty.  As is the case for all hunter-gatherer societies, they were probably mistrusting of outsiders (the precursor of our modern racism) even to the point of murdering and killing any strangers, and probably had a might-makes-right way of thinking (which kept women subservient and males competing for dominance), but with the potential for occasional acts of compassion.

Stepping into our ancient historical period (roughly 3000 or 2000 BCE), we find various empires (Akkadian, Sumerian, Egyptian, Babylonian) developing their religions and societies in the Near East, as well as Chinese and Vedic peoples in the Far East.  The development of writing enabled the progressive accumulation of knowledge … as well as of morality and values.  Nonetheless, there was still a might-makes-right mentality, a lot of killing and warring, women were still subservient, and slavery was everywhere and completely accepted.  There are no written records of any opposition against any of these.  But one small tribal nation introduced the idea of humans being made in the image of God. As Dr. Artson put it: “… this is one of  the most subversive and powerful convictions that ever exploded on the human scene … we still haven’t lived up to its implications.”

During the Axial Age (~500 BCE), there was a sociological explosion in knowledge, philosophy, and moral codes around the world.  This is the period of Hellenic Greek thinking and Hebrew scriptures, both of which dramatically shaped and altered thinking over the ensuing millennia with ideas about how we might be better people.  And yet we still see lots of murdering and killing, lots of enslavement, women are still not equal ….. and still there are no vocal public protests against war, slavery, or equal rights!

The Roman Empire (roughly 0-500 CE) provided roads and ships to spread new ideas all around the world, including those coming out of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Confuscianism.  And those ideas begin to bloom over the next thousand years.  Although we still see lots of killing and wars, we also see the beginning of humanitarian efforts, hospitals, and schools, even if those were largely directed toward like-minded recipients (Christians helping Christians, Muslims helping Muslims).  The beginnings of greater equality for women, and for other races.  The growing recognition of a fundamental human dignity.  Humanity is now finally beginning to flex a moral muscle.

And then we come to today’s world.  Killing and war are still commonplace (although we learned last week that, when you take into account the number of people on the planet during any given war, the death rate due to wars today is no different than when we were building “global” empires three thousand years ago, or killing off a rival hunter-gatherer tribe fifty thousand years ago).  But what are also commonplace today are global humanitarian efforts after every natural disaster and pandemic, and peace-keeping missions in war-ravaged countries. The creation of social safety nets, police forces, judicial systems.  And also commonplace: protests!  General populations rising up against all kinds of injustices, inequities, and wars. We now have it in our heads that things could be better, and we’re demanding those ideals. We may not yet have fully subdued our primal urges for killing and reproduction, but we are certainly adding new urges: to help, to heal, to build and co-operate …. and to get along across social, racial barriers. Which reminds me of the Apostle Paul’s challenge to “put off our old nature which belongs to our former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God.” We are changing as a species, but have a long way to go yet. 

Give it time!

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Dr. Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson at his faculty page and his author page.

Episode image by Andrew. He creates some amazing stuff using generative AI and just a few keywords! This time I told him simply: bending the arc of the moral universe, in the style of GIs raising the flag on Iwo Jima. Thanks Andrew!

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Human evolution is hard to take for some Christians, especially when we claim that humans have been climbing up the evolutionary ladder in the moral sense.

It was only a few years ago that Pew Research found roughly one third of Americans believe that “humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time” (and in case the obvious really needs to be said, this means they completely deny human evolution) and then went on to show that most of that opinion comes from the Evangelical camp.  If one third deny human evolution, then that means two thirds accept human evolution, right? 

But do they? Fully?

Probably everyone in that two thirds camp would agree that we’ve been evolving in the biological and cognitive sense.  Our bodies and brains emerged out of the genetic mixing bowl of life, and we’ve got a ton of science to back up that claim. Those are two lines in the sand that we in this camp find easy to step over.

And we’ve also been evolving religiously, theologically, and spiritually during that whole time as well.  In addition to the mountain of evidence for biological and cognitive evolution, we also have a mountain of evidence for this aspect of human existence.  But some of us in the two thirds camp might be just a little bit hesitant to fully accept that third aspect of human evolution, and to step over that third line in the sand.

But then we come to a fourth aspect of human existence: our morality and ethics.  This is where I find a substantial number in our two thirds camp suddenly stop marching with us and say “hold on a minute there.  That’s perhaps a step too far.”  And their explanations often include references to dropping nuclear bombs in the 1940s, or something along those lines.

In this episode, we look at statistics and history over the past fifty thousand years that show how the human species has NOT been getting more murderous or destructive over time (when you take into account the number of people on the planet at any given time), but that we HAVE been becoming more compassionate, respectful and helping. As you listen to Scott and I talking about this, open up this link that documents global death rates due to war, this link for estimated global population sizes, and this link for measures of human rights, over the past centuries and millennia. There clearly has been a distinct upward rise in global human rights, in recognition of equality (for other genders, races, sexualities), in demands for justice, and in protests against wars and discrimination.  Yes, we still have that murderous and competitive tendency that millions of years of evolution hammered into us (the infamous struggle for survival), but we also have this growing compassionate and cooperative side (the “snuggle for survival” that we talked about in episode #76).  We’re growing up as a species! Unfortunately, we’re currently in that awkward teenage stage, trying to navigate the transition from childhood to being grown up adults. That’s notoriously a difficult stage (ask any parent) and we’ve been at this stage for about 500 years! We just need to get past that mistake-filled stage of uncontrolled emotions coupled with unlimited powers.

And here’s why I’m beating this drum.  We humans are uniquely equipped to not only inhabit every ecosystem on the planet, but to also change all those ecosystems.  And whether you believe that we humans were Divinely-created and placed in charge here, or that we evolved here and worked our way into that pinnacle position, either way it has become our responsibility to take care of the planet and each other. We have it within our means to eradicate other species, and to rescue them from extinction. To destroy whole ecosystems, and to protect them. To divert massive rivers, cause floods, drain and pollute lakes, but also to manage water systems and conserve them.  To enslave and mistreat fellow humans, and to liberate them.  I could go on, but you get the point.  We have this unique ability, which I think then confers on us a unique responsibility.

We need to recognize that, and further develop our technology and our societies …. together with our evolving morality and ethics … and step into that stewardship role with conviction.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

If you enjoyed this episode, you might enjoy the book I wrote on human evolution and how that impacts our theology or our collection of other episodes that look at various aspects of human evolution.

Episode image by Andrew. Thanks Andrew!

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The scientist poster-boy for atheism and an ex-Muslim, ex-atheist Christian have a conversation (not a debate) about worldviews (not God).

One of our long-time listeners asked for our opinion on a ”debate” between Richard Dawkins and Ayaan Hirsi Ali: the conversation between the two of them raised many questions and points that resonated deeply with our listener.  We brought in another long-time listener, Doug Traversa, one who has been on the podcast many times in the past (you can find his life story in Episode #124), and dissected this conversation.

Everyone knows Richard; however, not all listeners will know Ayaan.  Briefly, she is a Somali refugee who fled to the Netherlands to escape a toxic radical Islamist world wedded to jihadist terrorism.  She eventually renounced Islam and became a vocal and scathing critic of Islam and a vocal and persuasive proponent of atheism: some even labelled her the latest addition to “the four horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse” (Richard Dawkins; Sam Harris; Christopher Hitchens; Daniel Dennett).  But then she rocked the world with her announcement less than a year ago that she had since converted to Christianity.

This, then, was the rationale behind bringing Ayaan and Richard together to have a “God Debate.”  Despite this headline billing, it was not a debate, nor was it specifically about God.  Instead, it was a conversation, and it focused on worldviews (not God).  We found it best to frame our dissection as a moral landscape with four different corners, each representing a different worldview:

(1) Christianity Richard and Ayaan dueled over two or three different expressions of Christianity.  Ayaan was accused of being a “political Christian,” while Richard admitted to being a “cultural Christian” and both of them referenced “moral Christianity.”  We talked about Christians cherry-picking or rejecting various specific tenets (e.g, Virgin Birth; miracles; eternal conscious torment in hell).  Christianity is NOT monolithic, and “cherry-picking” is in part behind Christianity dividing for two thousand years into so many denominations.  The constant friction between “liberal” Christians and Fundamentalists.  Christianity is used as a tool against Islam, or to influence American politics (to be Republican is to be Evangelical).  We frequently make Jesus or God in our own image.

(2) Atheism For a while, Ayaan was an avowed atheist, but eventually found Christianity to be more meaningful.  Richard: “faith offers you comfort and purpose, but that doesn’t make it true.”  Ayaan: “the hypothesis that God can’t be proved or disproved.”  Richard: “atheists can also have peace, comfort, morality, purpose.” 

(3) Islam  The two argued over whether Christianity and Islam have the same holy books and the same God. Richard said Christianity is now finally growing out of that phase and it’s about time that Islamists did too.  Ayaan replied that Christianity offers too much good and we reject it at our peril. [bodyguards story?]  Islam is also not a monolithic entity: we need to distinguish main-stream Islamism from radical Islamism. Shariah law is as endemic to Islam as the Mosaic laws about slavery and treatment of women are to Christianity.

(4) the moral vacuum being filled by radical Islam and Woke-ism  Ayaan is alarmed at this toxic mixture taking over university/college campuses across North America. There is deep irony in these two different worldviews with diametrically opposite goals and values finding value in becoming comrades-in-arms: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”?

We’d like to hear what you, the listener, thought about this conversation between Richard and Ayaan, and/or on our own dissection of it. Leave a comment on our Facebook page (if you’re a member) or the WordPress web-site.

If you want to follow up on some of the theological points we talked about near the beginning of this episode, you may enjoy our previous episodes about Atonement Theory (the traditional view, versus a more contemporary view), or about Jesus as Jewish Messiah or as the Cosmic Christ.

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Recent developments in the YECist world, according to a scientist who’s been watching them closely for two decades

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Joel Duff: a professor doing biological research at a secular state university, and teaching students that come from the Bible belt of the USA.  He’s been a popular blogger for twenty years, and more recently the host of a YouTube channel with an impressive following, both of which are focused primarily on examining and pushing back on YECist claims.  If there’s any arm’s-length expert on all-things-Ken-Ham-and-Answers-in-Genesis (AiG), Dr. Duff is the one. 

We covered a lot of ground in our discussion with Joel:

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find out more information about Dr. Joel Duff at his university profile page, his blog-site Naturalis Historia, and his YouTube channel.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like others which are focused directly on YECism, listed in our Thematic page “Young Earth Creationism.”

Episode image by Andrew. Thanks Andrew!

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Sparks fly when a Greek Orthodox evolution-accepting professor comes up against an Evangelical school headmaster bent on bringing in a Young Earth Creationist curriculum

Why are we doing yet another episode on Young Earth Creationism?  The biggest reason is because it’s still a very potent ideology in Christianity, especially within Evangelicalism.  YECist parents and YECist school systems do their best to instill this ideology into young impressionable minds, and the cycle repeats.  It’s a self-propagating problem which manifests in many ways throughout society: Pew Research tell us that roughly a third of American adults believe that humans have existed in their present form from the beginning of time (and many of them further believe that humans co-existed with the dinosaurs).  And a large number of people who leave Christianity (all too often shortly after they reach college/university) do so because a YECist worldview just wasn’t working for them in a 21st century world, and they aren’t aware that many other strands of Christianity do not require that short-sighted worldview.

This week, we talk to someone who has a unique perspective on YECist education. Dr. Joel Anderson grew up in a very Evangelical world, and obtained two university degrees at very Evangelical institutions before going on to teach at the high school and college levels in very Evangelical schools.  But during those post-secondary years, he was developing his own theological worldview, reading from Anglican, Catholic, and Greek Orthodox sources.  Eventually, he found that he was most comfortable with the Greek Orthodox expression of Christian faith.  And also quite comfortable with the Theory of Evolution.  For years, he taught in Evangelical schools in the south west USA.  Until a new school headmaster arrived, one who was deeply committed not just to YECism in general, but also to all things Ken Ham.  This is the part of his story that we have much to learn from:

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more about Dr. Joel Anderson at Resurrecting Orthodoxy, and find his book at Amazon.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like a similar conversation we had with Paul Enns (host of the YouTube channel Paulogia). You can also peruse our thematic collection of episodes on YECism, including personal stories and analytical deep dives.

Episode image used by permission.

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“The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind” (opening sentence of chapter one)

It’s no secret that modern Evangelicalism is not noted for its intellectualism.  In fact, with groups in our midst like Young Earth Creationists, Flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers, and climate change deniers, and the constant criticism coming from within our ranks directed at cultural changes and scientific advances, Christianity in general and Evangelicalism in particular have gained a reputation for being quite anti-intellectual.  We heard about this in spades when we talked to Frankie Schaeffer a year back. 

Over the past four years, this podcast has often referred to a particular book — The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind — which explores that Evangelical anti-intellectualism in detail.  In 1995, Christianity Today declared it the winner of the Book of the Year Award, and in 2004 they claimed that it had “arguably shaped the evangelical world (or at least its institutions) more than any other book published in the last decade.”  Today, on the 30th anniversary of its printing, we brought in its author: Dr. Mark Noll, a premier historian of American and Canadian Christian history.  He is an Evangelical himself, and has impeccable credentials within Evangelical academia, even though he has often been critical of Evangelicalism. 

We first needed to talk about the label “Evangelical,” since that has broad dimensions demographically and theologically, and the movement has become quite wrapped up with politics and partisanship.  In the process, it was important to distinguish “Evangelical” from “Fundamentalist.”

Then we talked about the anti-intellectual aspect of this movement, as seen in their shunning of philosophy, culture, science and so many other dimensions of modern society. Progress has been made: we now have world intellectual leaders like Francis Collins, Kathryn Hayhoe, and Biologos.  Unfortunately, those are not household names, and yet Ken Ham and AiG are widely recognized!?  There is now an ever-increasing level of sophistication in Evangelical theology and scientific literacy (again, Ken Ham and AiG notwithstanding), and yet there is also an increasing separation between a minority of university-trained Evangelicals and a majority of those who are not.   Another major problem: how Evangelicalism has become so closely tied to Republicanism and Trumpism, and there is a major racial division within Evangelicalism (white Evangelicals are predominantly pro-Republican, black Evangelicals pro-Democrat).

We explored why Evangelicals tend to shun intellectualism.  Historically, it began as a reaction against secular intellectuals in the late 19th century speaking against the authority of the Bible (evolution; textual criticism, etc).  It didn’t help that some scriptural passages devalue “the wisdom of man” and praise “the simplicity of children”; the resistance to scholarly authority was exacerbated by an emphasis on the “personal relationship” and “the priesthood of every believer.”  Churches/institutions who start to lean away from conservative thinking find their funding sources start to dry up, while leaders and thinkers who dare to push on theological boundaries are fired (Peter Enns is one example of this). 

Despite this negative summary, our guest expert is optimistic about the future.  We’re curious what you have to say … leave a comment at our web-site or our Facebook page.

Find more information about Dr. Noll at his faculty web-page, and the recently revised 2nd printing of his book at Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Company.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also find something interesting in our collection of episodes that deal specifically with Evangelicalism.

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In addition to enhancing hominid survival and reproduction, this software equipped us to become aware of and look for the Transcendent.

Once again we’re asking the question: “why do we have this cognitive machinery in our head that predisposes humans to having spiritual experiences and religion-making?” But this time we talked to a scholar on the subject.

We could have talked to a neurobiologist or psychologist (in addition to the handful we’ve already heard from; #43, #44, #45, #78, #152) … a paleontologist (we’ve had a couple of those as well; #77 and #72) … or a literary scholar who reads ancient texts and clay tablets.  But we chose to talk to a philosopher/theologian.  You see, scientists study the physical, but in the process of being reductive, often include a metaphysical claim that there is no ultimate reality beyond the physical world.  But that’s a metaphysical claim, not something that can be tested in the physical realm, so they can’t / shouldn’t be making that claim.  Philosophers/theologians, on the other hand, take a step back and look at the big picture, and are free to openly and honestly make the metaphysical assumption that there is a God (or not) when trying to make sense of the data.  Both groups can learn much from each other.

Our guest, Dr. Chris Barrigar, with a PhD in Philosophy and the pastor of a large church in Montreal, Quebec, has talked on our podcast before about big metaphysical things.  You can hear about his fascinating journey through Evangelical Christianity, then Buddhism, then atheism, and finally back to Evangelical Christianity in Episode #29.  And then in episode #30, we heard him talk about the ultimate meaning behind the universe! This week, we stumbled upon a paper he just published [“Evolutionary accounts of religion within a Christian account of Big History,” in Perspectives in Science and Christian Faith, 76(1): 35-54, 2024] which explored in great detail all the points we made and the questions we asked last week!?

Chris first walked us through some background material from two books authored by two prominent anthropologists.

One of these (Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, a clinical psychiatrist with graduate training in anthropology) outlined a series of seven or eight different cognitive advances that occurred in the minds of ancient hominids over the course of several million years.  They first evolved through progressively higher levels of intelligence until they eventually became self aware (a sense of self), then morphed that awareness into an ability to step into someone else’s mind (theory of mind, or empathy).  They also began to develop a sense of past and future, which eventually got them thinking about ancestors, and then about the afterlife.  That in turn set the stage for them imagining/creating gods and deities, moral/ethical laws, and finally religion-making.

The second author (Dr. Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist) outlined a different evolutionary time-line.  In particular, he focused on humans as paleolithic hunter/gatherers in Africa fifty thousand years ago, who migrated into Europe and Asia to become neolithic farmers/settlers in large cities ten thousand years ago. The transition from migrating bands of fifty to settled cities of five thousand required massive changes in cognitive ability, as well as a lot of rule-making (morality; ethics; religion).

Many “New Atheists” such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens see religion as harmful, and maladaptive. But Dunbar concluded that, given how much time and energy it took to develop and maintain a religious mind and behavior, there has to be something evolutionarily useful about it.  And being inclined to rule out anything metaphysical, he proposed that it was somehow useful for reproduction and survival.  Torrey, on the other hand, couldn’t identify a clear evolutionary advantage, nor a reason to see it as maladaptive, and so concluded that this cognitive machinery is just an evolutionary spandrel.

Dr. Chris Barrigar, on the other hand, remained open to metaphysical possibilities, and found that, in addition to being useful for survival and reproduction, this evolutionary process has been directed toward the appearance of and flourishing of intelligent, agape-capable beings who are equipped for relationship.  For Chris, this interpretation/proposal is far richer and more intellectually and existentially satisfying for explaining so much about humanity, than the conclusion that it was merely for survival and reproduction (or an accident).

We discussed how this cognitive machinery is universal in that we see it in all humans across all societies and periods of human history. But it’s also very vague and imprecise: it doesn’t point humans specifically to one transcendent being (for example, the Judeo-Christian God), but to something beyond the physical … “something bigger than us.” 

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy our previous conversation with Dr. Chris Barrigar, when he explained to us the meaning behind the universe. Or check out our other episodes which focus on the cognitive machinery in our heads: you can find those at our theme page entitled “Religious experiences, spiritual encounters.”

To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher.

Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive