I came across a comment on Digg today that expressed a sentiment that many atheists have erroneously tried to argue.
What I think is funny is how people consistently tie scientific understanding to atheism. Being an atheist has zero to do with evolution. Evolution has zero to do with a complete understanding of our existence. Evolution is a well supported theory of the development of every species on this planet. That is it.
While I grant that technically you can be a non-atheist–you can believe in some Eastern religions or an inaccurate view of a monotheistic god–and a believer in evolution, one cannot be a Christian–a little Christ, a follower of Christ–and a believer in evolution.
Many atheists have insisted that one can be a Christian and believe in macro-evolution for the origins of the species. Their fundamental error in that argument is that they are projecting a “Christianity” that is acceptable to their atheistic worldview. They believe that religion is acceptable as long as it is a convenient fairy tale to impart morality to masses–an opiate of the masses. However, that is only their convenient, sanitized, “atheist-approved” version of “Christianity”. While it is putatively Christianity, it is in actuality atheism. It is a fairy-tale “Christianity” that everyone, *nudge, nudge, wink, wink*, knows is not true. It is not an actual belief in God. It’s atheism.
Jesus said very clearly, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father” and “everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man… everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man”. James, Jesus’ brother, said, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”
It is a fairly simple fact of logic that if one believes something, one will act upon it. If I truly believe that a piano is falling on my head, I will step out of the way. True Christianity is the same way. Christ said many times throughout his time on earth, “I tell you the truth.” He did not come to proclaim a clever psychological trick of morality and wellness, he came to proclaim reality.
Yes, you can be a fantasy-based “Christian” (in reality, atheist) and believe in macro-evolution as the origin of species. However, it is impossible to be a reality-based Christian and believe in macro-evolution as the origin of species.
I would like to rest my case with a quote from G. Richard Bozarth in American Atheist Magazine:
“Atheism is science’s natural ally. Atheism is the philosophy, both moral and ethical, most perfectly suited for a scientific civilization. If we work for the American Atheists today, Atheism will be ready to fill the void of Christianity’s demise when science and evolution triumph. Without a doubt humans and civilization are in sore need of the intellectual cleanness and mental health of atheism.”
“Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the son of god. Take away the meaning of his death. If Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing!”
Richard Bozarth, American Atheist, Feb. 1978, p. 30
9 Responses
December 29th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
So all those people in the church of England are fantasy Christians (atheists) then are they Hans?
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Keep digging.
December 29th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
What baffles me is how anyone can follow just part of a message that claims to be the exclusive revelation from God and commands whole obedience to its message. Psi, as a logic-based, reality-based atheist, how can such a belief system (that believes only part of such a message) have any intellectual honesty?
December 29th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
I would like to talk about one more comment on that Digg thread. A commenter quoted a Catholic “Fr. George Coyne, Vatican’s chief astronomer between 1978 and 2006″:
I replied:
December 29th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
btw, psi, I finished reading The Blind Watchmaker. It is thoroughly marked up. I just need to start composing my thoughts on it.
December 29th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Hans, I certainly respect your religious beliefs and your right to hold them, however I question your willingness to so freely deride others as being false Christians for believing in evolution over the creation myth in the bible. Do you take every word in the bible as literally as the creation myth? Why is it so hard to believe that if there is a god he/she might have indeed used evolution as the mechanism for creating everything on this planet?
Question everything including your own faith. Develop better arguments then simple derision for others point of view. Think about things like whether or not the bible is indeed the literal word of god when it was written by the hands of many men over a span of time and has been translated many times in the past two thousand years.
December 29th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Good post. You’ve echoed many of my thoughts on the evolution/creation/atheism/theism debate, which I struggle to articulate.
The very basis of Christianity is in a literal creation, man sinning in the garden of eden (without sin there is no need for a Saviour), and Jesus coming as a sacrifice for sin. Christianity must grasp that, or I fear, become nothing more than what you’ve already stated; an opiate for the masses.
Digg on!
December 29th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Craig, I appreciate your polite, well-reasoned suggestions. If you check my archives (or Google my username, hansmast) you will find that I have devoted considerable time to thinking about and volubly debating those very issues.
Those issues you raise are indeed foundational to this post and I do need to have those right before I can make this post. Since I have thought about and had that debate many times, I am not especially interested in yet another iteration, especially given my lack of time. However, if you do have specific questions about my beliefs, I will do my best to answer.
I will answer a few of your questions (without the backing of the pages that I have written on the topic). I believe the Bible to be the literal word of God. I don’t find it hard to believe that He would have used evolution, except for the fact that He didn’t say He did. He said He spoke and boom, stuff was created.
I’m not trying to be derisive of others that call themselves Christians, but rather am trying to point to what I see as the self-evident fact that only those that follow the teachings of Christ should be called Christians, in the same way that only those that follow the teaching of Darwin should be called Darwinists.
December 29th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Hans, fair enough. Again, I believe that you have every right to believe what you believe. I will take the opportunity, since you offered so kindly, to ask a question. Please do not take it as flip as I wish to ask in the most sincere manner possible.
As someone who believes in Creationism and a literal reading of the bible, do you then deny the science (chemistry, genetics, geology, biology, astronomy, physics, etc.) that concurs on the important scientific facts that support the theory (scientific definition as opposed to lay person) of evolution? Each one of these various branches of science play an important part in our ultimate understanding of how the universe works (including evolution). In picking a part evolution you begin to question the very nature of how science is conducted and the things that we take for granted. How, if you do deny the science, do you reconcile living in a modern era with particle accelerators, nuclear reactors, computers, airplanes, space flight, etc.?
December 30th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
I believe the underlying science to be entirely accurate in most cases. I would need specific examples before I can say for sure.
The problem occurs in the interpretation of the objective facts of science. That is where one enters the realm of the subjective. That is also many times where one leaves the realm of the scientific method and enters the realm of the historical method.
One specific example that illustrates my beliefs is various methods of radiometric dating. I’m sure scientists are correct in calculating the various substances’ half-lives and decay rates. However, when one enters the realm of trying to reconstruct history from current realities and extrapolate how much of the unstable isotope was originally in the substances, one has a problem to solve that fundamentally requires circular logic. We cannot tell history except by extrapolation of current realities and we cannot extrapolate current realities without knowing history and how to properly extrapolate our data. Thus, assumptions are made–in many cases rather subjective assumptions–introducing error into the process.
Science does an excellent job of figuring out, describing, and exploiting present, physical realities because the present reality can be tested in a laboratory over and over. Unfortunately, we don’t have that luxury with history.
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