Category: science

Deeper Waters Podcast 11/14/2015: YEC vs. OEC

What’s coming up on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This week, I’m going to be putting announcements up early for the podcast. Why? Because I’m visiting my in-laws for Thanksgiving and going early so that we can go to ETS/EPS together so if you’re there and you want to find me, let me know. We’ll see what we can do. Since I will be out, I do not plan on blogging and I cannot guarantee I’ll get the show in your ITunes feed ASAP, but I’m going to try! Today, I’ll be writing about what’s coming up Saturday and then tomorrow, who will be on on the 21st, and then the next day my guest for the 28th.

Christians are not without their share of disagreements. One that often raises its head up today is the age of the Earth. What does the Bible teach? Is it in accord with what we know from science? Does science tell us that the Earth is young or old? What does that say about questions like animal death before the fall? Would God have created a good creation that had predatory activity in it?

A few months ago I was contacted by Jay Hall who wanted to come on my show to promote his book on YEC. Now I do not hold to YEC so I laid a condition. I could have him come on if he would be willing to debate an OEC. He agreed and when I sent out a call for one, Ben Smith answered the call. Books have been exchanged and I’ve read both of theirs. Now we prepare for the second debate we’ve had on Deeper Waters. Also, while I am OEC, I will do my best to avoid any bias and it will be up to you and my guests to decide if I did a good job.

Our first debater to enter the ring in this next episode is Jay Hall. Who is he?

Jay Hall_pic

According to his bio:

Jay Hall is Assistant Mathematics Professor at Howard College in Big Spring, Texas. He has a Master of Science degree in Mathematics from the University of Oklahoma. Hall has 53 credit hours of Science courses in various disciplines. He has taught at the High School, Technical School and Community College levels. He also has experience in the actuarial field for a number of insurance and consulting organizations. Hall has previously published the Math textbook Calculus is Easy and has a paper on MathWorld. (One-Seventh Ellipse) He is also a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. You may contact Jay Hall at YoungEarthScience@yahoo.com, his website is YoungEarthScienceBook.com – go here to find the YES-YoungEarthScience YouTube page and connect on the various social media platforms.

As you’ve probably guessed, Jay will be arguing for YEC.

Our second contender in the ring is Ben Smith. Who is he?

Ben Smith current photo

According to his bio:

Ben Smith has been studying and teaching theology and apologetics for 30 years since becoming a Christian while attending Ga. Tech. He is the author of the book Genesis, Science, and the Beginning available now on Amazon and Kindle. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Christian Worldview and Apologetics from Luther Rice College and Seminary. He is the Ratio Christi Chapter Director at the University of West Georgia in Carrollton GA, teaches apologetics at Christ Fellowship Church, and is a regular speaker at the Atlanta chapter of Reasons To Believe ministries which meets at Johnson’s Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, GA. He is president of Discovering the Truth Ministries.

We’ll be discussing the issues of science and Scripture both on this show. I hope to have a fair debate and I hope to have you listening.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 10/31/2015: Mark Hunnemann

What’s coming up on the next episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Halloween is upon us. It’s the time where we think about all those scary things that go bump in the night and sit around campfires and tell ghost stories and try our hardest to scare each other. Some people really do get scared on Halloween and there are many concerns about how Christians as well should celebrate the holiday or even if they should celebrate it at all. Each year, I try to have someone come on who is familiar with the occult to talk about these kinds of things usually due to their experience in such matters. A few years ago I was advised to never study it for myself and I have followed that. Therefore, I decided to have my friend Mark Hunnemann come on who wrote Seeing Ghosts Through God’s Eyes. So who is he?

MarkHunnemann

In his own words:

I graduated in 1979 from ASU (Appalachian St U) with a BA in Philosophy…minor in religion. Went directly to graduate school or seminary at Covenant Theological Seminary in St Louis as well as Erskine, where I graduated…..3 year Masters of Divinity Degree. I debated on whether to get PhD in Philosophy and teach but felt the Lord calling me to the pastoral ministry. I was ordained in 1985 in the ARP (Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church) and was an assistant pastor for 4 years in my hometown of Greensboro, NC. I then started a church plant and was pastor for 10 years. I now focus on writing and educating people re the explosive growth of the occult worldview, which has now displaced secularism as the main threat of Christianity. I have also worked with people who are oppressed because their homes are demonically infested.

We’ll be talking about his book and famous ghost stories and what evidence there is that anything unusual is going on. What about in a day and age where there’s rampant skepticism of anything demonic? Don’t we live in America and in the 21st century and in the modern scientific age? What are people today to do about demons? On the other hand, are there not some people on the opposite end who do think that nearly everything that they see around them is demonic? I can’t help but think of a video Allie and I watched recently from the Prophecy Club that we just ended up laughing at, particularly when the guy who was an ex-satanist started saying that Pokemon was a plot to lure our kids into satanism. How do we find the fine middle line to avoid complete hysteria and complete ignorance? After all, Lewis told us years ago that a demon would be equally pleased with a magician as he would a materialist. We’ll also talk about some of those ghost shows that you see on TV and what we can learn from them or rather, not learn from them.

I hope you’ll be tuning in this Saturday to hear Mark, and Happy Halloween!

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Genesis, Science, and the Beginning

What do I think of Ben Smith’s book on Genesis and science? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I reviewed this book and Jay Hall’s book since I’m hosting a debate between both of them on my show. More can be said from my perspective on Smith’s book since it deals more with the interpretation of Scripture, which is something that I do know about. There are places where Smith does touch on scientific issues, many of which I don’t know much about, but one that is interesting to me is the eruption of supernovas as indication of an old universe. I will not be interacting with science in this review since that is not my area. Smith is also not a theistic evolutionist and he has a separate book for evolution and thus, that will not be covered.

Smith starts with talking about the dispute we have going on today and the many views that are out there on the first part of Genesis which he numbers to be ten, including his own. The book is up-to-date since it includes John Walton’s view, which has also been the view that I hold to and while I’m not sold on Smith’s view yet, he has intrigued me with it. In fact, in some ways, it looks like many facets of Walton’s view could be included in Smith’s view and I do not doubt that Smith would think that many of Walton’s insights are valuable, especially since Walton is often quoted favorably.

Smith holds to a view known as the Prophetic Days View. A similarity this view has with Walton’s is that the days are indeed 24-hour days. The difference is that in this week, God declared what it was that He was going to be doing without necessarily completing it on that day. I find this view intriguing and it could do a good job explaining some of the data, but I do wonder if this is still how the ancients would have seen this. Walton in his work was able to point to corresponding writings that indicated likewise in the ancient world. Smith’s view would be more convincing for me if he could do likewise.

Smith also does write about how he used to be YEC and points out the reason he was one for so long was that he never read anything that disagreed with him, until he picked up a Hugh Ross book and then found out this guy wasn’t the person that he was made out to be and ten years of reading YEC material had not prepared him for that. It was a hard change, but he eventually made the change. Smith rightly points out that this is a problem that we have in our day and age that few people will bother to read anything that really disagrees with them. It’s easy to be convinced your viewpoint is the right viewpoint when you stay in an echochamber of your own thoughts. Reading disagreeing material is one of the best ways you can grow.

I also agree with Smith that there are some on the other side who do accuse OECs of believing in a different god and a different gospel. This kind of language absolutely must stop. YECs should think that those of us who are OECs are missing the truth if they are convinced of YEC, but to say that we are outside the fold is something altogether differently. Fortunately, most do not do this, but the ones that do this tend to speak very loudly.

Smith also does have a section on the question of death before the fall. This is an excellent part of the book where he states that many of our beliefs on animals could arise more from sentiment than they do from the Bible. This is something that our culture must watch for, especially when we live in an age of Disney and we can turn animals into creatures that feel and think like we do and increase our sympathies towards them. Of course, many of us who have this concern don’t really hesitate to go and visit the McDonald’s and get a hamburger so perhaps it is not God that is inconsistent, but we that are.

Also, there are two appendices dealing with meanings of Hebrew words and a look at what is meant by the firmament. Both of those will be helpful.

I can’t say I’m sold on the concordist view yet. There are times that such a viewpoint has got us in trouble in the past because we read a text thinking it was talking about science when really it wasn’t. This is a danger I’m very concerned about so I’m hesitant at this point.

Overall, this is a fascinating book and the viewpoint is intriguing. Anyone who is skeptical of the Genesis account needs to give it a look.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: YES: Young Earth Science and the Dawn of a New Worldview

What do I think of Jay Hall’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’m not a YEC. I really don’t consider it a credible position based on what I’ve read, but when Jay Hall got in touch with me wanting to be on my show to talk about YEC, I agreed if he was willing to appear alongside an OEC and have it be a debate on YEC vs. OEC. Thus, I should state upfront that this is a review copy that I have been sent.

Something unusual about this book is I do not recall a single mention of God or of Scripture in the text. It could be my memory is faulty, but all I saw was scientific arguments. In some ways, this is refreshing to see. I did not have hammered down my throat that YEC is a literal interpretation of Genesis and is in fact the only literal interpretation. I also have not seen anything that indicates that people like myself who are more OEC are heretics. On both sides of the aisle, this is the kind of exchange that needs to stop. We can think each other’s position is problematic, but let us never make it a salvation issue.

As a non-scientist, I freely admit I did not understand much of what was written here, and if you are not a scientist, you will be lost as well. I do consider that more of a problem because if you’re wanting to write to a popular audience, you need to be able to speak in language that they understand. What you will see of is a lot of quoted material. While it is good to know that someone is doing the reading, as a reader of books that make arguments, I did notice some concerns. For instance, many of these quotations came from sources that could be around 100 years old or older. For foundational material, that’s understandable, but a great scientist today could likely never read Newton and you could be a great evolutionary biologist and never read Charles Darwin himself.

Furthermore, many of these quotes also had ellipses. I understand that many times quotes are too long and many times we do need to shorten them, but when it comes to that, I always wonder about what has been left out. Older material might be harder to come by and if all you have is quotes without a context, you have to give the author the benefit of the doubt, but if you approach a book skeptically as I try to do, you have to ask the question. Of course no one can always give the full context of every quote, but when many of these quotes have this, my skepticism goes up.

I cannot thus say anything on the positives or the negatives of the arguments themselves as I leave that for the people in the sciences to decide, but I can say that when in the end he says that YECs need not be bullied, with this I do agree. If anyone in the field has any argument to make, I think we should listen to that argument and make the best response we can. If someone is convinced the Earth is young, they have all right to go and do the research and experiments necessary and write the papers to try to demonstrate to their peers their opinion. At the same time, they have to be ready for any pushback that comes. This does not apply to just YECs of course. This applies to everyone. Science is all the better for hearing all sides and it could be the sides that we might consider the least likely could point out ways that we can refine our own position.

I would say if you want to see a lot of arguments that are claimed to be scientific for a YEC, this could be a good place to go to. As I said earlier, I cannot either endorse or condemn the science. I am not a scientist and I leave that for the scientists, but I am for good debate across the table, and I hope that the exchange of ideas keeps coming.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Seeing Ghosts Through God’s Eyes?

What do I think about Mark Hunnemann’s book on ghosts? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Mark Hunnemann is a friend of mine and I respect his knowledge and experience. I was eager to read his book on ghosts because this is just an interesting area of discussion. I don’t really watch ghost hunter shows or anything like that. I have seen a couple of episodes but frankly, it just looked stupid. When I was on my honeymoon with my wife, we went to a museum together at the beach and we were told there was a ghost walk going on where we’d hear stories about ghosts at Ocean Isle Beach. We thought we’d see what it was like since it was free. It started with a picture that was supposed to show ghosts through a window which I told my wife Allie that it looked to me like it just needed more Windex. Things kind of went downhill from there and to this day we can make jokes about the “Kindred spirit of the mailbox.”

I opened up Mark’s book then wanting to get a fuller look at ghosts from a biblical perspective. Mark comes from an area that is quite easily to identify as extremely Calvinist with a strong presuppositionalism. If you do not share this viewpoint, which I do not, then this can be problematic. If his Calvinism and his interpretation of Scripture holds, then his conclusion I think follows well, but while I am skeptical of ghosts, though I do try to remain open, there are some problems that I was facing as I went through that I did not think were being answered and this could be due to a lack of real data on the topic.

I would have liked to have seen more interaction with that data. For instance, I was not too familiar with EMV technology when I started the book and what its impact is supposed to be on studies of ghosts. I ended the book not familiar with EMV technology and what its impact is supposed to be on studies of ghosts. This kind of material was not dealt with. Of course it could be the data gathered from these means is bogus. It could be that these are faked accounts. I am not a specialist so I cannot say. The point is that it needs to be dealt with.

I also was left wondering what the view of the afterdeath was. For instance, it’s my belief that Heaven and Hell do not refer to particular places. They refer instead to states of relation between God and man. You could see my view as akin to Lewis’s in The Great Divorce. Thus, a person who dies I think could still be here, though I would not call them someone who appears as a ghost. They have to be somewhere after all. Does that mean they are wandering in a world apart from God? Not at all. That’s impossible. God is omnipresent and I think those on the other side to use a better term see the glory that is already there that we miss out on. Non-Christians meanwhile live in shame and anger knowing they are surrounded by the presence of one they’ve hated so much.

I could also agree with the writer that many of these are demonic beings coming in another form. I have no problem with that and while I do think it’s good to be skeptical of claims, one does not need to be unreasonably skeptical, but yet I couldn’t help but wonder if demons explain all stories. What also of more innocent stories such as the accounts of people who feel the presence of a loved one in their room suddenly for a brief moment and then the phone rings to tell them that that loved one died?

To get back to theory of people being here in some sense though dead, could that be behind some ghosts? Could they be in fact people who have died apart from Christ and are living lives of agony as restless wanderers at times? I am open. Could I know that? No. Could I establish it? No. Do I have any strong cases? No. I am just open. While we are told that ghosts are supposed to represent all of the public around us, I do not think we can really establish that. Too much of ghost hunting seems to be speculation built on speculation built on speculation. How could anyone know some of these things? One could have an interesting theory and maybe interesting evidence for it, but I hesitate to call it knowledge.

Mark no doubt writes with a knowledge and love of God and many of his statements on grace and forgiveness are beautiful, but being one who does not share the viewpoint of Calvinism or the presuppositional approach, I found myself just wondering about the other data. You can say all you want that the position of ghosts does contradict the Word of God. I would have no problem with that, but that does not mean that it does not need to be explained. One could argue from a more YEC perspective that evolution contradicts the Word of God. (I do not share this position but I am speaking on a hypothetical) Even if that is so, one still needs to explain the data and not just show that it contradicts Scripture. This is part of having a fully cohesive worldview to explain all the data.

On that note, the importance of worldview thinking I was pleased to see. Not enough people do think about the worldviews that they hold and frankly, I think many of the problems we see in the church could be corrected if we just had good theology. Perhaps indeed much of our speculation with ghosts and matters like that would be less prevalent if we just had good theology. I am concerned when our churches seem to put a fascination into us of the dark side when we don’t know enough about our own side. (And this is done even by having regular events that “expose” satanism or seeing satanism involved in everything.)

If there is another edition put out of this book, I would like to see more interaction with the data that disagrees and what’s wrong or inconsistent about it in itself. Also, while I understand the writer writes from a Calvinistic viewpoint, it does come out too strong and those who do not share that viewpoint will find it hard to relate to or follow the arguments or find themselves persuaded. The material on grace and forgiveness is good and encouraging, but the argumentation and data need to be improved.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Mark’s book is available for purchase here.

Deeper Waters Podcast 10/17/2015: Ken Samples

What’s coming up on this Saturday’s episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Let’s suppose you’re giving a defense of the resurrection using a minimal facts approach and you get to the appearances of Jesus. Now let’s suppose your opponent says to you “Look. I don’t doubt that the apostles were really convinced they saw something. Okay. I just don’t accept that testimony. After all, there are plenty of people who have eyewitness testimony about being abducted by aliens. If I don’t accept that, why should I accept your claim?”

What do you do?

How about find out about those alien abductions and for that, I spoke to my friends at Reasons To Believe to see if anyone wanted to come on and talk about alien abductions and the resurrection. From Reasons To Believe then comes Kenneth Samples.

Kenneth Samples Image

According to his bio:

Kenneth Richard Samples began voraciously studying Christian philosophy and theology when his thirst for purpose found relief in the Bible. He earned his undergraduate degree in philosophy and social science from Concordia University and his MA in theological studies from Talbot School of Theology. For seven years, Kenneth worked as Senior Research Consultant and Correspondence Editor at the Christian Research Institute (CRI) and regularly cohosted the popular call-in radio program, The Bible Answer Man, with Dr. Walter Martin.
As a youth, Kenneth wrestled with “unsettling feelings of meaninglessness and boredom,” driving him to seek answers to life’s big questions. An encounter with Christian philosophy in Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis led Kenneth to examine the New Testament and “finally believe that Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God, the Lord and Savior of the world.” From then on, he pursued an intellectually satisfying faith.

Today, as senior research scholar at Reasons to Believe (RTB), Kenneth uses what he’s learned to help others find the answers to life’s questions. He encourages believers to develop a logically defensible faith and challenges skeptics to engage Christianity at a philosophical level. He is the author of Without a Doubt and A World of Difference, and has contributed to numerous other books, including: Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men, The Cult of the Virgin, and Prophets of the Apocalypse. He has written articles for Christianity Today and The Christian Research Journal, and regularly participates in RTB’s podcasts, including Straight Thinking, a podcast dedicated to encouraging Christians to utilize sound reasoning in their apologetics. He also writes for the ministry’s daily blog, Today’s New Reason to Believe.

An avid speaker and debater, Kenneth has appeared on numerous radio programs such as Voice America Radio, Newsmakers, The Frank Pastore Show, Stand to Reason, White Horse Inn, Talk New York, and Issues Etc., as well as participated in debates and dialogues on topics relating to Christian doctrine and apologetics. He currently lectures for the Master of Arts program in Christian Apologetics at Biola University. Kenneth also teaches adult classes at Christ Reformed Church in Southern California.

Over the years Kenneth has held memberships in the American Philosophical Association, the Evangelical Philosophical Society, the Evangelical Theological Society, and the Evangelical Press Association.

The son of a decorated World War II veteran, Kenneth is an enthusiastic student of American history, particularly the Civil War and WWII. His favorite Christian thinkers include Athanasius, Augustine, Pascal, and C. S. Lewis. He greatly enjoys the music of the Beatles and is a die-hard Los Angeles Lakers fan. Kenneth lives in Southern California with his wife, Joan, and their three children.

This Saturday then, we’ll be tackling the question. The show will only be an hour long so we won’t get to cover everything, but I hope what we will cover will help to add to your apologetics arsenal and improve your witness for Jesus.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Near-Death Experiences

What do I think of J. Steve Miller’s book published by Wisdom Creek Press on Near-Death Experiences? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out!

Near-Death experiences are one of those interesting things to talk about. There really is something going on. There are people really convinced that they are having an experience and it would be hard to deny that the experiences are often life-changing. Some people have had their entire worldview altered by having a near-death experience. (NDE from here on) Some people have also claimed to see things going on that they would have no way of knowing about and when compared to people who did not have NDEs but just went by whatever they saw from TV shows and things of that sort, the people with NDEs were far more accurate.

In this book, Miller has gathered testimonies from many researchers of NDEs, including those who started out originally skeptical and decides to also go all over the world for them rather than stick to NDEs in a Western Christian context. Miller’s main point that he wishes to highlight is how the experience is different from what people who went in would expect and how there are so many similarities to the experience. In doing so, he also looks at naturalistic explanations of what goes on, including looking at Blackmore, and decides that ultimately these fall short to explain the data.

The emphasis on subjective experiences is interesting, but I would have liked to have seen more accounts of people who see items and events that can be verified when we have all reason to believe that they were “dead” at the time. The case of Pam Reynolds is one such case. There are also cases of people who come back and report seeing people on the other side who had died before they entered a state where they were subjected to an NDE and that they would have had no way of knowing. Many of these have too many perfectly timed events to just chalk up every time to coincidence.

Also included are looks at studies of people who are deaf, color-blind, and blind, and how they are able to see and hear and experience things that they had no place for prior to that in their life. If people want more, the authors suggests trying to talk to people in your area to see if any of them have had NDEs or if they know someone who has had an NDE. Miller tells us that here in America, about 1 in 25 could be expected to have an NDE and many people are hesitant to talk about an NDE to a doctor lest they be identified as crazy. Hopefully such a stigma is starting to be removed from our culture.

Miller’s book is interesting and also I think he would agree that it is a starting place. That’s why he gives further references at the end for people to do further research and that includes both sides. If you are interested in NDEs, this is something worth checking out.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Scripture and Cosmology

What do I think of Kyle Greenwood’s book published by IVP? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I always have an interest in books on science and faith and books I think could be related to inerrancy and books about the worldview of people who lived in Biblical times. With Kyle Greenwood’s work, I have all three. The heavy emphasis is on the third part with a still sizable portion on the first and just a touching on the second, but the reader who goes through this book will be informed on the topic under consideration better.

One of the great problems we have today is people trying to read modern science into the Bible. Christians want to act as if so much of modern science was predicted by the Bible long ago, as if God had a great interest in teaching people scientific principles. That He does not does not mean that He does not care about science, but it does mean that He was wanting to get across a major message and was willing to leave the rest for us. After all, God told us things that we could not know on our own and left what we could discover for ourselves to be discovered by ourselves.

For non-Christians, there is this idea of course that if God spoke, God would speak in agreement with our modern science. One can only wonder what would happen if we were living 1,000 years from now and how much of our science might be different. Would we need a whole new Bible at that point because the science had changed? If the Bible supposedly does not speak about modern science and in scientific language, then it should not be treated seriously.

Greenwood writes to first off show how the ancients viewed the world with the main elements being land, heavens, and sea. Was their worldview primitive by comparison? Yes. What of it? God did indeed speak in that world and used the terminology that the people would be familiar with. Rather than give a whole discourse on the scientific nature of reality, something that would be largely unintelligible to the people back then and would have no way whatsoever to be discovered and backed back then, He instead chose to use the terminology of their time and culture in order to give His revelation.

Of course, in some ways, the Hebrews did not borrow from their pagan neighbors as much as they might have shared similar cosmology. This wasn’t attributed to the gods and there wasn’t sacred space for various deities out there. Everything was attributed to the one God and it was the one God who kept everything in motion by His wisdom and by His power. Naturally, this continues in the New Testament where Jesus Himself is included in this creative force as being the agent of God’s creation.

Greenwood also interacts with how the worldview of cosmology was changing. The first major change was brought by Aristotle and then more change came later on through minds like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. Through this, interpretations had to be changed and could it be they had to be changed because we were reading science into the text to begin with and had removed it from its original context? This is why I have been especially pleased with the work of scholars like John Walton as well that point out that works like Genesis 1-3 are not written to answer scientific questions but to answer questions on the nature of God.

To be fair, while I have not been an extensive reader on the medieval period and history, I have done some and there were a few parts that I thought I wanted to check up on. I would certainly want to make clear that the time was not really a dark ages time. There was indeed great scientific advancement going on and I think the work that Greenwood cites illustrates some fine examples of that going on.

Now we come to today. What can we learn? It’s not that science and faith don’t mix. Of course they do. I think Greenwood would mainly agree with Galileo. It is the role of creation to tell us how the heavens go and the role of Scripture to tell us how to go to heaven. Many times when we have married a scientific interpretation to the Bible, it has led to embarrassment mainly because that’s not what the text was trying to teach us in the first place. Does this mean the Bible errored? No more than there’s an error when we talk about sunrise and sunset today. We simply have God speaking in the language of the people at the time. The nature of their cosmological claims does not alter the truth being conveyed. (The glory of God reaching to the ends of the Earth does not change depending on the size and shape of the Earth. God is still the most glorious.)

This will be a fine book in anyone’s library working to understand the worldview of people of the Bible and how better to interpret the text today.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Neil deGrasse Tyson Embarrasses Himself Again

Is Tyson speaking out of his area again? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Neil deGrasse Tyson of Cosmos has had a history of not getting his facts right when speaking to public audiences. I found out yesterday while browsing on Facebook that he had spoken to Bill Moyers on Moyers and Company. The Friendly Atheist gave a report on the interview here. Unfortunately, when Tyson spoke, he again revealed that he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about and this time it was done when talking about the second coming of Christ.

At the start, Tyson doesn’t realize apparently that there’s much debate about what is called the second coming. There are some Christians that see the discourse in Matthew 24 and the book of Revelation as referring to a future scenario. Then there are some who like myself see it more referring to a past event. We look forward to the future bodily return of Christ, but Matthew 24 is really talking about the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. Probably the best work you can read on Matthew 24 from that perspective now is Dee Dee Warren’s It’s Not The End Of The World. You can also listen to my interview with her on that book here.

Of course, Tyson doesn’t know about any of this. What I first was confronted with was a meme that someone made meant to show that the Bible cannot be trusted on anything, which is already itself a strange statement to make. Because the Bible was supposedly unscientific at one point, we cannot trust it on anything whatsoever? You can always count on fundamentalists to have all-or-nothing thinking, but let’s take a look at the meme itself.

starstoEarth

Once again, I would have liked to have thought that this was a misquote. I would like to have thought that he did not say this. Unfortunately, the link from The Friendly Atheist shows otherwise. Of course, Tyson in all of this is showing that faith and science are supposedly incompatible. Towards the end of the article, he makes statements that could help indicate the cause of his misconception.

So, this whole sort of reinterpretation of the, how figurative the poetic passages of the Bible are came after science showed that this is not how things unfolded. And so the educated religious people are perfectly fine with that. It’s the fundamentalists who want to say that the Bible is the literally, literal truth of God, that and want to see the Bible as a science textbook, who are knocking on the science doors of the schools, trying to put that content in the science room. Enlightened religious people are not behaving that way. So saying that science is cool, we’re good with that, and use the Bible for, to get your spiritual enlightenment and your emotional fulfillment.

Unfortunately, Tyson doesn’t realize that his hang-up on literalism is not one that was shared by the early church. The fathers, for instance, had a great love of allegory. This was also long before the rise of modern science. Saint Augustine wrote a book where he argued that all of creation happened instantly and did so in a book about the literal meaning of Genesis. In fact, you can find here a great statement from Augustine:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field in which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although “they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.”

Keep in mind this is long before modern science.

The irony is that Tyson is doing to religion exactly what he accuses of religion doing to science. Tyson is knocking on the doors of religion trying to get to insist on a literalist interpretation of Scripture and saying that this is how it should be done. You can be a strong conservative holding to positions like inerrancy and reject the idea of the Bible as a science textbook and insist that not everything has to be interpreted “literally.” Tyson thus wants to treat the idea that taking the Bible “literally” is ridiculous when not only does he do it himself, but he shows no indication that there are other understandings of the passages under question held by even conservatives.

It could be understandable why Tyson interprets the data of Scripture the way that he does given the modern context that we live in. On the other hand, Tyson could also recognize that when it comes to claims like evolution, for a number of people, it could be said that they just look at the data of the complexity of nature and the beauty of the universe and find that’s an inadequate answer. Tyson would probably say they need to study the evidence of evolution before dismissing it so quickly, and he would be right. I say the same thing back. Before Tyson speaks on interpretation, he needs to actually study it and how the text has been interpreted throughout the centuries and what some interpretations are of such passages.

Of course, he also ends with saying that many of us can go and still get our emotional and spiritual fulfillment. Tyson is unaware that many of us go that route for intellectual fulfillment. We believe in Christianity because it actually answers the questions of the mind. Whether or not it gives spiritual or emotional fulfillment is irrelevant, and frankly, many of us will often say that it does not. The Christian life is not always rainbows and roses. I like how C.S. Lewis said years ago that he didn’t go to Christianity to be happy because he knew a bottle of port would do that just fine. If we were searching for emotional and spiritual fulfillment, many of us would go elsewhere.

Now of course, I recognize Tyson is a scientist, but the problem is scientists like him are speaking about how much religious people who do not understand science are trying to speak on the topic without knowledge. I agree. I have a problem with that going on. I would join Tyson in that. The problem I have is that has to be a two-way street. Tyson does not get to speak on religion just because he is a scientist. If Tyson wants to make his audience more friendly to what he has to say, then he needs to learn to not speak on areas where people who do know what they’re talking about will only roll their eyes.

Will he and others like him ever learn?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: God’s Crime Scene

What do I think of Jim Wallace’s latest book published by David C. Cook publishers? Let’s plunge into the Deepest Waters and find out.

I consider J Warner Wallace a friend of mine and I was pleased to see he wrote a new book. Upfront, I’ll say scientific apologetics for the most part I don’t really find very interesting. I find science items quite interesting at times and I find I have questions raised when I read things about science for both sides of the atheism/theism debate, but for the most part, I just don’t get convinced. I also have a concern that we live in a scientism culture and if we marry everything to science, what will happen when the science changes? Hence, I prefer to go with metaphysics that has lasted through the years to demonstrate theism, but let’s talk about Jim’s book.

Jim’s book is written in an attractive format and for the most part it’s easy to follow. While it has a lot of pages, many of these also have illustrations so the book is not as large as it first appears. It’s written in a good chronological format that will help the reader go step by step. I suspect if one had just one issue in mind, that each chapter could be read in a stand-along fashion. Wallace also does not ignore the opposition and he does cite the people who disagree with him and includes them as expert witnesses.

Yet one of the best aspects is that each chapter starts with a story that will draw the reader in. Many of us love mysteries. I know I do. I have been disappointed for instance to find that he Monk mystery series has apparently come to an end. Wallace begins each chapter talking about a crime case that he’s covered and uses that to explain the data. It’s a wonderful illustration, although be warned that there are some crime scenes that you don’t want to hear the description of. Some will also just break your heart especially, like hearing about the deaths of children to violent crime.

Also, while I do not care much for science, there are other areas talked about such as a case for dualism or the case for the argument of objective morality. There’s also the answer to the problem of evil. These are definitely areas that I find more interesting and was pleased to see them discussed.

Now here are some things I would like to see improved if a second edition comes out.

I would like to see more emphasis on the metaphysical arguments that demonstrate God’s existence. I think it’s a shame that Protestants have tended to remove themselves from the classical arguments used by Aquinas. These are excellent arguments that have stood the test of time and do not depend on the science of the day. Another area I would like to see is the addressing of the question that I always get from atheists that I never saw mentioned in the book and that would be “Well you’re telling me God created the universe. Well who created God?” Now I think this is a question that needs to be answered, but not the defeater that many atheists think it is and yes, I think the Thomistic arguments answer it well.

Still, I would hope that Wallace’s book would do what I think he most wants it to do. Start the conversation. That’s why Wallace includes resources on both sides of the argument at the end of the book. Not convinced by your immediate reading? I think he would understand that and in some ways appreciate it. By all means go and look at the evidence, but consider this a book that can get your foot in the door. Again, while I do not speak as an authority on matters of science as science, I think the discussion is interesting and while I am not one much for scientific apologetics, if you are, this is a book you will want in your library. Wallace has done extensive research to make his case just like any good investigator. Being a good juror, you owe it at least a listen.

In Christ,
Nick Peters