Genesis and Education

I went out by myself on Sunday afternoon. I left the rest of the family playing Minecraft in the basement and headed over to a repurposed old church building to see Wichita Community Theater perform Inherit the Wind.

According to Wikipedia, the playwrights had McCarthyism in their sights when they wrote this fictionalized version of the Scopes "Monkey" Trial in 1955. Perhaps so, but here in Kansas it is progressive science pitted against religious fundamentalism that still speaks volumes. I tucked my copy of Evolving in Monkey Town into my purse on my way out the door so I could brush up on the facts of the historical case while waiting for the show to start.

Darrow (left) and Bryan (right) at the Scopes Trial, 1925

Many years ago, my dad rented the 1960 film version of Inherit the Wind. Perhaps that was the month we studied transcripts from the Scopes Trial in our Wisdom Booklets. It was clear to us then that Clarence Darrow's character (Henry Drummond in the play) was the villain while William Jennings Bryan's character was the unfortunate champion of truth who mistakenly followed Ussher's notes in Scofield's Bible.

None of us had ever heard of Chromosome 2 back then. We'd never seen photos from Hubble. When we took field trips to zoos, or state parks, or museum exhibits depicting the glaciers that covered Michigan during the Ice Age, we were instructed to disregard signage referencing "millions" or "billions" of years. Those numbers were lies Satan wanted us to believe, the better to trick us into thinking we didn't need Jesus to keep us out of hell. Ken Ham was still my hero then, and we had a timeline (courtesy of ATI) mounted in our front hallway that placed Noah's Ark around 4000 BC. I used to study it while waiting my turn for the bathroom.

Anyway, I've always been fascinated by courtroom drama, and this play was magnificently performed. Sometimes a bit too magnificently for my comfort zone--between the mid-calf dresses, the references to the heat, the sucking-up mayor, the old-time religion, and a big "honorary colonel" keeling over with a heart attack, I felt like I was in Knoxville all over again.

But this was Dayton, Tennessee (excuse me, the play calls it Hillsboro) in 1925, not 1995, though I could swear that navy and white dress from the closing scene played a part in my personal history. And this time, I found my tension so often relieved by the sneers and smart-ass remarks of H.L. Mencken's godless character, I wanted to hug him, watch-chain and all!

Some of the lines delighted me all over again: "Do you think about the things you do think about?" Drummond's line of questioning about the sun standing still for Joshua made me wonder how my younger self had refuted the scientific evidence offered by the irreverent trial lawyer.

The director made a point to state his belief that science and faith need not be contradictory. And churches had taken ad space in the program, no doubt hoping to attract searching souls.

But in the end, I don't think the Scopes Trial, or Kitzmiller v. Dover Board of Education (2005), or Ken Ham's debate with Bill Nye last night is about religious faith at all. It's about whether one generation has the right to restrict children's education to what makes the previous generation comfortable. 

"The Fall of Man" by Lucas Cranach the Elder. 

Do our children have the right to keep up with the advance of human understanding? What if we our religious faith states that are things "God doesn't want us to learn"?

Where are the limits? Can a homeschooling family who believes in "white pride" isolate their children from exposure to racial integration? Or teach them that the Holocaust was a fraud? What if parents want to keep their children from learning multiplication tables? Or tell them they don't need to know how to read? What makes the study of the sciences unique in this debate?

We fucked, we made children. How much authority does that now give us to regulate what data enters their minds?  Is it fair, after all these years of scientific exploration, to fence our children off from certain branches of the Tree of Knowledge ?

What are we afraid of? Of losing their souls? Or of losing control of their minds?

Ken Ham: The Evolution of a Bully

Last week, in an approach founder Ken Ham described as "cordial and engaging", the creationist organization Answers In Genesis sponsored billboards like this one in several major cities. I can't help wondering who Ham's atheist friends are, and how long they will remain his friends with engaging expressions of cordiality like these.

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I first encountered Ken Ham at an ICR conference in Michigan. I was a young homeschooled kid and adored Ken Ham from the first time he opened his mouth. I loved his Aussie accent, his beard, his jokes. I retold his story about "nursing the baby" way too many times. Science was my least favorite subject, but I liked history and social studies and I believed his every word. It never occurred to me then that Ham might be wrong about fossils, Cain's wife, homosexuality, or the book of Genesis itself. 

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In 1974, Ken Ham himself was searching for answers. Ham taught science in a public high school in Australia, but apparently, teaching about evolution and millions of years presented a challenge to his faith. A church friend directed him to the book The Genesis Flood by Henry Morris (a hydrologist and founder of the Institute of Creation Research in California) and John Whitcomb (a theologian).

Morris viewed the Bible as a history book and was excited to share his notions of catastrophism and how a global flood a few thousands years ago could have shaped all the geological forms we see today. Morris was greatly influenced by a Seventh-Day Adventist named George McCready Price, who went searching for geological evidence to support the visions of Ellen White, who proclaimed that the fossils were "thus preserved as an evidence to later generations that the antediluvians perished by a flood. God designed that the discovery of these things should establish faith in inspired history".

Morris, a Baptist, read Price's book on "flood geology" in 1943, then quietly repackaged this novel approach to geology in his 1961 book The Genesis Flood. A decade later, Ken Ham was thrilled with Morris' solutions that could simply do away with the "millions of years" question. He felt compelled to tell as many people as he could about these new answers.

Ham quit his teaching job in 1979 to start Australia's Creation Science Foundation (CSF) with fellow schoolteacher and fundamentalist John Mackay. At first, CSF operated out of the Hams' home. Ken Ham later wrote that Mackay had suggested on multiple occasions that he (Mackay) and Ham could be the two witnesses described in Revelation 11 (an idea Ham says he could not accept).

Dr. Carl Wieland, a medical doctor and former atheist, believed he had encountered the supernatural while playing at card tricks with his wife. Recognizing that modern science and telepathy were incompatible, Wieland became a creationist and even founded a creationist magazine Ex Nihilo. When Wieland joined forces with the fledgling CSF, the young magazine's name was changed to Creation.

In 1987, Ham moved to America with his wife Mally and their five children, first to work with Films for Christ on a creationist documentary, then to work for the Institute of Creation Research as a traveling speaker to popularize ICR's creationist message. Ham continued to direct CSF from across the Pacific until 2004. Carl Wieland, still recovering from a near-fatal car accident that took his sight in one eye, served as CSF managing director in Australia. But the Creation Science Foundation was about to rip wide open.

Margaret Buchanan, a widow, and her disabled daughter, Debbie, joined the CSF staff in 1984. Margaret served as Ham's personal secretary. Shortly after the Hams left Australia, John Mackay, angry about being replaced as editor of Creation magazine, called Buchanan at her home, told her not to come in to work, and made bizarre accusations. Mackay claimed Buchanan practiced witchcraft and necrophilia and was a tool of the devil. (Mackay told Ham that he had had to cast demons out of his dog and a black cat because of Buchanan's satanic influence.) Another staff member then sprinkled Buchanan's office space with grape juice to cleanse it of evil spirits. Buchanan agreed to take a four-week leave of absence while staff considered the whole affair.

When the board finally decided Buchanan was innocent, Mackay laid down an ultimatum. He would not stay unless she was dismissed. So Mackay left, with a handful of followers, to lead his own creationism organization. When Margaret and two other staff members tried to meet with Mackay at his home, he threatened them with police action if they did not leave his property. Mackay was later excommunicated from his Baptist church. CMI's website includes more than 63 sordid pages of documents dealing with the allegations, investigations, witnesses, diary accounts, signed letters, and more.

In the stormy aftermath of Mackay's departure, Dr. Andrew Snelling, a CSF scientist who later followed Ken Ham to ICR, admitted to having had concerns about Mackay's "extremely sloppy research":

I worked alongside Mr. John Mackay for some years when he was with the Foundation...

As a Christian and a scientist, I have become more and more concerned with some of the claims he has been making, particularly in the area of geology. Instances have come to my attention that are either totally untrue, or misleading, even to the point of deception. Even while working with him I was concerned about an emerging pattern of extremely sloppy research, coupled with a tendency to gloss over opposing facts, even when they were graciously brought to his attention by myself and others, which drew progressively closer to the borderline between honesty and dishonesty. My concern, then as now, was his growing potential for bringing discredit to the whole creation movement.

Warnings such as these are difficult to give about someone professing to exercise Christian ministry. Undoubtedly, if past experience is any guide, Mr. Mackay will skillfully seek to have them interpreted as further 'persecution'.

(Meanwhile, Dr. Wieland ended up divorcing his wife and marrying Margaret Buchanan. Of course, this added to the tension within the organization as some staff members believed the Bible forbade remarriage after divorce.)

In 1994, the Hams left ICR to found their own layperson-oriented creation ministry (CSM), and moved to Kentucky with the Creation subscriber list. CSM (USA) and CSF (Australia) were closely tied and their leadership overlapped significantly. Before long, "the board decided to change the organization’s name to “Answers in Genesis,” to reflect the fact that the ministry was not just about “creation,” but the authority of all of Scripture—as well as about evangelism and equipping believers to build a biblical worldview."

According to Ham, the Australian and American AiG organizations made a "mutual" decision to separate in 2005 over differences of philosophy and organization and met "cordially" to iron out the details. Other sources describe the split much less pleasantly, writing of a years-long "bitter power struggle", "domination", taped phone calls, and accusations "of deceptive conduct". The Australian organization rebranded as Creation Ministries International (CMI). Still more friction arose over printing and distributing Creation in the U.S., with AiG introducing its own Answers magazine sometime after the Creation Museum opened in 2007.

Today, creationism has become a multi-million industry with AiG strongly dominating the market. AiG materials are available in 77 languages. The organization conducts evangelistic campaigns and literature distribution at the Olympic Games. Plans are in place for the construction of an amusement park around a "replica" of Noah's ark, partly to serve as a warning of God's judgment for tolerating homosexuality.

Ken Ham and his brother Steve authored the parenting study Genesis of a Legacy, in which they teach that children are foolish sinners who are actually disobeying God when they disobey a parent. Instead of "reasoning" or allowing "questioning" or "delay", the Hams advocate John MacArthur's approach: "short, stinging strokes to the backside", "painful enough to make the consequences of disobedience... unforgettable". 

Based on the story of Adam of Eve, Ham is a staunch opponent of gay marriage. He has written an article suggesting that if homosexuality is to be deemed morally acceptable, then child sacrifice should have an equal status. He also opposes efforts by schools to accommodate transgender students. His suggestion that transgender students are disguising their real motives betrays a truly painful ignorance of gender issues:

Sadly, these school authorities don’t recognize the sinful heart of man and what can come out from it. Surely schools officials have thought about the potential for high school boys to pretend to “identify” as a female just so they can have access to the girls’ restroom and, maybe, to their locker room—winking to their friends as they do it?   

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AIG prayed for my request :)

For years, I read Ham's books, got his newsletter, sent him my money and my prayer requests. I was excited about the progress of the creation museum as they overcame the opposition of the community to build a temple to unchanging Truth.

Then, I had kids of my own. Before I knew it, they started to gravitate toward picture books about dinosaurs and stars at the library. My parents had always rejected books that mentioned "millions of years" or talked too much about biological "adaptations". I didn't want to discourage my kids with unnecessary censorship, and I didn't want them to grow up feeling as uneasy around science as I was. So I started researching. As a homeschooling mom, it was important to me to be able to teach them accurately about dinosaurs and astronomy and geology. And as a Christian, I looked for trustworthy sources who shared my belief in the inspired truth of the Bible. 

But what I learned shocked me, and sparked new questions. The next time I visited my parents' house, I pored over the latest book from AiG, studying their answers. And I felt lied to. AiG isn't about the data, or the scientific method. AiG doesn't offer scientific responses to questions about the rock strata or the age of the earth or fossils of whales with hips. They can't offer plausible explanations for day and night and light and vegetation on Earth before the Sun appeared on the fourth day of creation. Most of their "answers" can be summarized as "Well, a global flood could have caused..." And they pretend there is no contradiction in the two Genesis creation accounts. 

AiG is about one specific religious agenda--a fundamentalist approach to Biblical doctrine that assigns everyone who is "wrong" to hell. Suddenly Ken Ham, my former idol, looked more like a bully.

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In 2010, Rachel Held Evans rocked many in the evangelical world with her book Evolving in Monkey Town, in which she considered the scientific validity of theistic evolution. When Ham shook his head sadly over the "indoctrination of our age" and "compromising church leaders", dismissing the faith of Christians who also embrace modern science, Evans posted an articulate and heartfelt response on her blog:

"We are tired of fighting. We are tired of drawing lines in the sand. We are tired of Christianity being cast as a position in a debate when it is supposed to be a way of life.

"What we are searching for is a community of faith in which it is safe to ask tough questions, to think critically, and to be honest with ourselves. Unfortunately, a lot of young evangelicals grew up with the assumption that Christianity and evolution cannot mix, that we have to choose between our faith in Jesus and accepted science. I’ve watched in growing frustration as this false dichotomy has convinced my friends to leave the faith altogether when they examine the science and find it incompatible with a 6,000-year-old earth. Sensing that Christianity required abandoning their intellectual integrity, some of the best and brightest of the next generation made a choice they didn’t have to make....

"Ken likes to frame his position as an unwavering commitment to the authority of Scripture, but in reality his is an unwavering commitment to one interpretation of Scripture."

The following year, Ham was banned from speaking at a homeschool convention in Cincinnati after making "mean-spirited" remarks about another speaker, a Bible scholar and theologian who approaches the Old Testament very differently than Ham does. AiG also used its deep pockets and legal staff to bully a smaller Christian ministry with a similar name, threatening them with charges of trademark infringement.

And this month, AiG's billboards appeared. Responding to criticism over his message to his "atheist friends", Ham both defended and reiterated his satisfaction with his own belief that atheists will spend eternity in hell, while mocking the notion that dead people cease to exist. He described atheism as "sad" and "purposeless".

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exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science

Many, many followers of Jesus doubt Young Earth Creationism, and even St. Augustine considered the Creation account to be allegorical. But no one told me that. I swallowed the whole Ham sandwich: you couldn't have faith, or sin, or Jesus, or heaven, or God... without Adam, Eve, Eden, a global flood, and less than 10,000 years. The only problem was, when I could no longer believe in a young earth, the rest of the story disintegrated, too. 

Once upon a time, my meager tithe checks helped build Ken's creation museum. Today I am one of his "atheist friends", taking my kids to see dinosaur footprints and ancient rocks. Ham's cartoons (the red "Abortion" balloons flown from the castle founded on Evolution) and his jokes ("God didn't make Adam and Steve", "fossils don't come with labels!") led directly to my atheism. 

My life is neither sad nor purposeless. But if it makes him feel better, Ham can thank his God that I'm finally wrong. 

Making Family Transitions

When we had exited fundamentalism and wrung the last nourishment we could get from the breast of evangelicalism, we switched to a church in a liberal mainline denomination (United Methodist). And the kids kept us there longer than we likely would have stayed ourselves.

Making that leap was hard on our littlest one, because she had friends at the old church and missed it sometimes. But the older two were willing to explore new territory with us. And by that time, they were beginning to be aware of the unpleasant side of fundamentalist Christianity.

We saw the continuity as important for our children. We also realized the value of socialization, especially since we were still homeschooling and few of our local friends had children.

The Methodist ladies who volunteered in the Sunday School were so nice and they adored our children. We liked the positive reinforcement from adults who generally shared our values. The church was intentional about encouraging the kids to serve the community, to think globally, to embrace diversity, and to be sensitive to the needs of others. Our kids loved the crafts (I really hate cleanup!) and the emphasis on the arts was tremendous.

So we stayed while we tried to figure things out. We prayed less and less at home, but we still read Bible stories, still had an Advent calendar. I joined the church's bell choir and C-- joined the pastor's weekly Bible study. At one point we even talked to our oldest about getting baptized.

We tried many different small groups at the church, but every one was worse than the last. We began to wonder if the church was changing, or if we were. We got invited to join a prayer class even though the Sunday recitation of the Lord's Prayer had become the only time that we prayed. We kept dropping the children off at Sunday School and choir practice, but then we would sit in the balcony with library books about agnosticism, evolution, physics.

Public libraries have often been my salvation. During our transitional year or two, I brought home stacks of children’s books: books on mythology, legends, “just-so stories”, creation myths, sages and proverbs, gods & goddesses--from every culture and era I could find. It helped immensely to see how human societies have always tried to imagine, interpret, and illustrate the intangible from what can be observed. I especially enjoyed the Jewish creation tales, which have a long tradition of maintaining relevance through addition, embellishment, daring imagination, and constant re-interpretation.

We saw how societies have always attempted to illustrate and inculcate their values through their religious narratives. And how too frequently those narratives were also used to keep the powerful strong and the downtrodden weak.

Eventually my husband and I just knew *we* were done--done with church, done with prayer, done with the Bible, done with faith and belief and doctrine and God. Done with the whole package. Life means what we say it means so let’s make it good, and better!

We'd tried to keep tabs on the kids' emotional connection to the church throughout our time there. So now we asked again how they were enjoying the programs they were involved in (which had continued to evolve while we were there). Our kids were 9, 8, and 5 at the time. And their answers surprised us. One said, “I think Mrs. _____ says some things because she thinks that what she’s supposed to say in church. I don't think she really believes everything she says.” Another said when they sang, he “tried not to think about the words”. Okaaayyyy. This was not quite the response we expected!

The youngest had the best experience there—she’s an extrovert and it was more like “playing church” for the preschoolers, complete with a miniature chapel with its own stained glass and child-size pews. But when we asked, “How would you like to stop going to Sunday School and go swimming at the Y with Daddy instead?”, she was game, too.

So we set a date about a month out—time to sing the choir songs they’d rehearsed and serve out the acolyte schedule. Being a bigger church we’d only attended for two years, it was easier to slip away from than a more intimate congregation would have been. Also, the senior pastor was transferred to another city right after we made our decision, so it was a natural time for us to move on, too. We even helped staff the kids’ activities for Easter (that was strange!). We already knew two of our kids were going to public school in August, so socialization was less of an issue by then. And though the people were kind, we hadn't developed any close friendships.

For a while I encouraged the kids to keep reading their Bibles, and we would talk about what they read. That lasted several months, until M-- reached some of the more horrible stories in Joshua and Judges and was incredulous that the God her grandparents serve would approve—even insist on—such carnage. The children started wanting to get rid of Bible story books and and Christian music and Veggie Tales movies and fish necklaces they'd received at church. We tried to make those changes at their pace. All three are happy atheists now.

Last Christmas, we pretty much hung up all the tree ornaments, religious or not. We used a secular advent calendar (our first with chocolates!). We listened to fun holiday songs with lyrics about kindness and friendship and taking time to enjoy life (instead of carols about sinners, curses, virgin wombs, and "Satan's tyranny"). We talked about the Winter Solstice and the many traditions surrounding that season. As we took the tree down in January, we considered what the ornaments represented and which ones we wouldn't really miss next year. We have a Peanuts advent calendar for this December's count down to Christmas Day.

We didn't display the wooden cross model for Lent this year, and we didn't watch The Gospel of John. (M-- says she might want to see it again sometime, but the other two have no interest.) We paid attention to the new season unfolding around us: the robins' reappearance, birds nesting, budding branches, baby bunnies in the backyard, bulbs bursting out of the ground and making colorful blooms, the fragrance of flowering trees. For Easter weekend, we participated in fun community events. We colored eggs and celebrated spring.

Sunday mornings are so much more relaxed now. We can sleep in if we need to. Nobody has to dress up. Sometimes I make a fancy breakfast or brunch. During the school year, the kids often go swimming at the Y with their dad. This summer, we've had time to sit together on the front porch together sipping coffee while the kids eat their cereal on the steps or play in the yard. We listen to the bells from the church down the street and chat with neighbors out for a stroll with their dog.

Most of our family traditions are unchanged. We celebrate birthdays the same way. We still go to see fireworks on the Fourth of July and swap candy with our neighbors on Halloween. We still roast a turkey and see family for Thanksgiving. We still put up a Christmas tree and bake cookies and watch the Rose Parade on New Year's Day.

And there is always room for trying new things that could turn into traditions down the road. Like getting milkshakes at Sonic before bed or playing along with the Beatles on Guitar Hero. 

As we discussed a church sign we'd passed last week, my daughter and I agreed that once you leave the religious mindset, it is difficult even to imagine being in it again.

Faith, Facts, and Fossils

A Matter of Life and Death
In my family's religious subculture, judgments were frequently made about a person's eternal destiny (i.e., heaven or hell) based on that individual's affirmation of evolution or creationism. Our dear grandmother was known to accept evolutionary scientific theory and to enjoy PBS nature specials, therefore we besought God to change her heart and save her soul before it was too late.

As children, our reading material was closely monitored for Darwinian concepts which would be exposed as false and countered with the truth of "God's Word". We were indoctrinated with publications and videos from ICR and Answers in Genesis in addition to our science textbooks from A Beka, Bob Jones University Press, and Christian Light. The sciences never interested me as much as history and language arts, anyway; I only learned enough to get by.

When I began raising my own kids, though, I found that smugness was a poor substitute for understanding. My son loved to find picture books about dinosaurs and astronomy at the library and I felt intimidated by the pages that referred to "millions of years ago". I began to encounter references to evolutionary history in an assortment of unrelated contexts and my curiosity was piqued. I'd never actually learned what scientists meant by "evolution", only that it was factually and morally wrong. As a homeschooling parent, I felt obligated to clarify and fortify my own understanding of science so I could better direct my children's curiosity.

The Biblical Record
A closer look at Genesis revealed two distinct creation accounts. In the first, men and women are created together, on the sixth day in God's image to rule over the other creatures and everything is good. The earth is shapeless and empty; light appears, and darkness, and day and night (preceding the rest of the galaxy). Photosynthetic plants show up on the third day, the sun and moon are added the next day. Men and women (or man and woman?) are created at the end of the sixth day to be the dominant life form and they are specifically instructed to eat the plants. Everything is good, and God takes a break.

Chapter 2 offers an alternate version: there are no plants yet, and no rain. God molds a man out of the earth and breathes life into him to give him a soul. God plants a garden near some rivers and puts the man in charge of it. The man is permitted to eat from all the trees save one. But the man is too solitary and that's not good, so God sets out to make him a helper. He forms the ground, like play dough, into every kind of animal and every kind of bird, and sends the new creatures to Adam to see what he will call them. When none of them prove satisfactory, God puts Adam to sleep and surgically removes a rib which he shapes into a woman. Adam is thrilled when he wakes up--since neither of them have heard of clothes--but "the woman" goes unnamed until the end of the next chapter when she starts bearing children.

For centuries, intelligent men attempted to organize the Bible's many stories (Creation, Noah's Flood, Abraham, the Exodus, the Promised Land...) into a workable historic timeline. One of those men was James Ussher, Archbishop of Ireland, who in the days of Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth coordinated the biblical accounts with the best known history of other cultures to determine that the world must have been created in 4004 B.C. As scholarship advanced through the Enlightment and beyond, scientists (many of them Christians) began to talk about the age of the earth in much longer terms, and many in the Church kept pace with these new discoveries. At the same time, however, Ussher's calculations were printed in the King James Version as standard reference notes, where they remained for 200 years and eventually featured in America's Scopes Trial of 1925, a defining moment for  fundamentalist Christianity.

Christianity and Evolution
I first heard Dr. Francis Collins on NPR. A Bible-believing Christian who accepted evolution? I had to learn more. His book The Language of God opened a new world to me. Real scientists, he explained, are "anarchists", always seeking to revise theories and overthrow old research. One of the great revisions of the last century was the conclusion that the universe began at a single moment (14 billion years ago). To Dr. Collins, "The Big Bang cries out for a divine explanation."

Dr. Collins writes frankly, kindly, and convincingly. He patiently answers the common creationist arguments ("the watchmaker", entropy, fossils) while pointing out that three types of radioactive carbon dating yield concordant results: 4.5 billion years for Earth's oldest rocks. He summarizes current scientific understanding about the descent of Homo sapiens. And as the director of the Human Genome Project, he includes some information that was most definitely not in the materials from Answers in Genesis or ICR twenty years ago.

As it happens, humans have 46 chromosomes while chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas have 48. Interestingly, the second human chromosome has the appearance of being fused (parts midway in the chromosome resemble what are usually the telomeres, or ends) and the genes on that chromosome share the order of the genes in two smaller ape chromosomes (2A and 2B). Denisovan hominids had the same fusion we have, suggesting this change in chromosome number occurred previous to the first human. Scientific genetic evidence now strongly indicates a fusion of those two chromosomes took place a million years ago or even more. A rare mutation would later have reduced the number from 47 chromosomes to 46. Human life is no less amazing for having evolved--if anything, the wonder seems greater! I had to keep reading.

"You cannot get to Young Earth Creationism without throwing out the fundamental principles of geology, of biology, of chemistry, of physics, of cosmology, of paleontology."  

               --Francis Collins








  "No serious biologist today doubts the theory of evolution to explain the marvelous complexity and diversity of life."   --Francis Collins



Scientific Evidence
In A Natural History of Time, geophysicist and researcher Pascal Richet traces mankind's attempts to determine the age of the earth, our solar system, and the universe. Beginning with mythology, religion, and philosophy and culminating in geology, astronomy, physics, and the discovery of radioactivity, the curious kept imagining, exploring, calculating, and reaching ever closer to an accurate chronology. Richet brings the names to life: from Aristotle to Isaac Newton, from Lord Kelvin to Percival Lowell. This book took me months to get through, but by the time I reached the end I was cheering each new scientific discovery and was convinced that our planet really did form 4.5 billion years ago.

Even if one does not accept that fossils can be dated by their location in the rock strata, there is the inescapable issue of "missing links". I was taught that there were none, that the fossilized skeletons we find today are simply extinct species, or variations of the same species that exist on earth today. Turns out there are plenty of transitional forms in the fossil record: a manatee with legs, serpent-like whales with tiny feet, walking whales, the Tiktaalik fish, the Dimetrodon which looked like a dinosaur but wasn't, toothed birds, a flatfish with an intermediate eye position, the early bipedal dinosaur Eoraptor, the mammal-like reptile Thrinaxodon, and so on.

Additionally, there is the beautiful and predictable sequence of life forms, from most simple to most complex, that unfolds through the rock strata. Mammalian fossils are not found in the oldest rocks, nor are flowering plants. The sheer number of fossils is staggering. If all fossils were formed during a single flood, the pre-flood oceans would have been crowded with an unsustainable number of creatures! Fossils remind us that humans have not always been Earth's dominant species. We are only the latest on the scene, at the top of an ancient and elaborate tree.

Ken Ham and other evangelical creationists have been emphatic in their interpretation that there was no death until after "the Fall". Nothing died until the woman first disobeyed God. Therefore, Adam and Eve and all the first animals, fish, birds, and insects were originally created to be vegetarian. The ignorance of this simplistic explanation came to mind when I took my first college course in biology and realized that plant cells are every bit as alive as blood cells. Life and death are so much more complex than eating forbidden fruit and suddenly beginning to age.


Facts and Faith
I gradually embraced evolution--not as a "worldview" that allowed me to do what I want, but as an evidence-based way of understanding the world I live in. Which is probably why the following blog post by Libby Anne resonated so strongly with me last year:

"If my parents had not elevated creationism to the same importance as the virgin birth, I would never have had my crisis of faith. Doing so gave my faith an Achilles heel. I’m not saying this happens to everyone raised to equate creationism with Christianity – it doesn't. What I am saying is that elevating things like capitalism and spanking to the same level of truth as the trinity creates a Christianity in a box. It shuts off questions and exploration. It closes the door to differences of opinion. It creates a situation where you are either in, or out. And, more importantly, it creates a situation where questioning something as simple as capitalism means rejection and changing your mind on something as little as anti-gay rights means potentially throwing everything from the trinity to the divinity of Jesus into question."

"My parents reacted negatively to me not because I had rejected Jesus but because I had rejected creationism."    --How Creationism Drove Me Out of the Church

Young earth creationism no longer makes sense to me. The universe is too immense to be contained in 6,000 years of history. Starlight finds us from millions of light years away. Fossils give us clues to secrets that are millions of years old. Rocks bear silent testimony to billions of years of atomic energy. Antarctic glaciers record over 8 million years of history in their frozen hearts. Life is a mystery, a puzzle to tease out bit by bit, each of us adding to the random but intricate and kaleidoscopic pattern that will cause future generations to marvel.

Library Shelf: Evolving in Monkey Town

"I was a fundamentalist in the sense that I thought salvation means having the right opinions about God.... Good Christians, I used to think, don't change their minds."

Two years ago I ordered this book from Amazon.com and immediately knew I'd discovered a kindred spirit. I devoured it over two days.

Rachel Held Evans is one of those authors who doesn't so much share new information as express what the reader is already feeling. Rachel is brutally honest with her questions, and doesn't have to wrap up everything up neatly at the end. Evolution, after all, is an ongoing process.
She talks frankly about her experience growing up in the evangelical world, and about the aspects of Christianity that posed a challenge to her belief as she matured. Every issue she brings up here--patriotism and war, Young Earth Creationism, the Religious Right, the cosmic lottery, hell, homosexuality, the Holocaust, the Taliban, pond-scum theology, Judgment Houses, poverty, prayer, hurricanes, Christian apologetics, feminism, fundamentalism--are subjects I was already trying to make sense of. I already knew the "correct" answers, but they weren't working very well, at least not well enough to pass them on to my children.

Evolving in Monkey Town may have been the first post-modern book I ever read; certainly it was the first Christian post-modern book. The freedom to ask anything without apology and to make observations based on subjective personal experience was intoxicating. Rachel gave me permission to think. And her unwillingness to accept answers that were frayed from trying to make them fit the question emboldened me to keep searching, too.

In addition to the book and her blog, Rachel pointed me to authors she was reading, and my trips to the library became a kind of scavenger hunt:  What was theistic evolution? Where did the idea of hell come from? How did the Bible get to us? What was the role of women in the early church?

Though over time I've reached different conclusions than Rachel did, I can understand the form of Christianity she clings to today and I respect her courage. It takes a lot of courage to adapt what you believe, and Rachel is more adaptive than most. Our lives--and beliefs--will continue to evolve, and that's a good thing.

Belief or Truth

(January 12, 2012)
I was a child when my parents took us to a 2-day creationism conference. There were workshops and kids' sessions, slide presentations of Mt. St. Helens and cartoon drawings of Adam and Eve hanging out with dinosaurs. One guy talked about imagining in his bathtub how a flood could cause a forest to petrify. Another described being hit by lightning while on a mountain in Turkey, looking for Noah's Ark.

Ken Ham

My favorite speaker had a short beard and an Aussie accent. A kind of missionary to America, Ken Ham explained that fighting social evils like porn and abortion and divorce was futile as long as people kept believing in evolution. To really rebuild society, we needed to start by converting people to Biblical creationism. If they weren't convinced that the universe was formed by God in six days, they couldn't accept the concept of sin and salvation and needing a blood sacrifice to gain forgiveness and even if they claimed to be Christians, their faith would be wishy-washy at best. Using cartoons and an overhead projector, Ken made us laugh at ignorant "scientists" who believed they could tell how old fossils were, tossing in some anti-gay humor for good measure.

Mike Warnke

On the long drive to the conference, we listened to a Focus on the Family broadcast. Mike Warnke was giving his "testimony" and we were both riveted and entertained. Years later, Mike was exposed as a fraud--never having been the Satanist high priest he said he was, yet still selling Christians his lurid tales of degeneracy and conversion. Mike never denied the devil, as it were. He stands by his discredited and impossible stories today and continues to peddle his "ministry" to gullible audiences.

The creationist speakers turned out to be dishonest, too. While I thought they were trying to teach me to love truth AND scienctific research, they were priming me to support their agenda. A decade after the conference, I was mailing them my prayer requests, along with checks for a new museum project in Kentucky.

Another decade passed, and I was in church watching Focus on the Family's "The Truth Project". It slowly dawned on me that unqualified men were still trying to define "truth" for me. Men who did not share my thirst for knowledge. Men whose scientific "facts" were predetermined by their theology and political leanings. Men who were more willing to deceive than to consider evidence that would challenge their biases.

Dr. Francis Collins

I started to ask new questions. I heard an NPR interview with a scientist who was a Christian, yet accepted evolution as scientifically proven. My curiosity piqued, I started reading about the history of physics and geology and the age of the earth. I read books about social issues by left-leaning Christians and by atheists. We found a more liberal church. I read about sexuality and private schools and American history and how we got the Bible. I enrolled in community college. I began to teach my children about creation myths and how stars are born, and how Judeo-Christian beliefs about Satan and hell "evolved" slowly.

I no longer listen to men who insist the universe is merely thousands of years old, that women were divinely designed to be their husbands' submissive assistants, and that the Creator killed his own son to save the world but is glorified when believers of other faiths are punished forever. I don't laugh when they scoff at liberals, atheists, or gays. I want my children to recognize frauds, and to follow truth wherever it leads.