Harvard Professor on the Origin of Life

I've been listening to Mark Driscoll's (Mars Hill Church in Seattle) sermon series on doctrine while I work out. It's kind of like systematic theology in a nutshell. I'm loving the refresher on some of my classes at SBTS from last year and would commend the series to you if you're looking for a little theological nibble. (You can download it for free on iTunes under Mars Hills Church.)

In his sermon on creation, Driscoll quotes Nobel Prize winner and Harvard biology professor Dr. George Wald:

"When it comes to the origin of life, we have only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution; the other is a supernatural creative act of God. There is no third possibility…spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved one hundered years ago by Louis Pasteur, Spellanzani, Reddi, and others. That leads us scientifically to only one conclusion- that life arose as a supernatural creative act of God…I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution."

Hmm. So a Harvard biology professor is basing his understanding of the origin of life on a personal philosophical preference? Pretty scary, when you consider how widely accepted this disproved theory is in the scientific community today. (If you don't believe me, check out my post on the documentary Expelled.)

I love what Driscoll says to encourage the Christian who isn't sure what he believes in the old earth/new earth debacle that divides so many Christians today:

"To my Christian brothers and sisters, who say 'I believe in one God who created the heavens and the earth and I don't know how old the earth is...,' do not feel ashamed and embarrassed that somehow you are negating scientific methodology and coming to your presuppositions with biases. You are coming to the same logical conclusion as a Nobel Prize winner, and you are accepting the facts where he is unwilling to, by his own admission."

For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
Romans 1:20

Satan and Sin: Watch the Nightline Face-Off

I've been studying the origins of sin in my systematic theology course this semester, and along with it the Christian understanding of Satan and other fallen angels. So, this Nightline Face-Off is timely (thanks, Matt!). I love Mark Driscoll's loving, articulate responses.

Watch it here!

Stand Against the Wind

The 1960 film "Inherit the Wind," depicts the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which John T. Scopes (who is called Drummond in the movie) "inherited the wind" (i.e. was convicted; read Proverbs 11:29, KJV) for teaching evolution in a high school classroom in Tennessee, where only creationism was permitted. Today, Christians must stand against the wind in order to defend their rights to believe in intelligent design from not just an emotional/spiritual perspective, but a scientific one as well.

When I was in eighth grade, my Grandpa Russell (my mom's dad) gave me a book called Defeating Darwinism by Philip Johnson. The following year while taking honors freshman biology, I devoured the book, desperate to defend my faith in a Creator God to a hostile public school teacher. I didn't know it then, but Johnson is recognized by the Christian academic community as a pioneer in the scientific argument for creationism. A lover of both science and apologetics, he has paved the way for much of the Darwinian evolution vs. intelligent design debate (what little debate is allowed, that is).

His book helped me articulate my position (why I believed in micro-evolution, or gradual evolution within a species, but NOT macro-evolution, i.e. Darwin's theory, for instance) before my teacher and my classmates. It helped me to ask the questions that my teacher couldn't answer adequately because there currently isn't a satisfying answer (for example, how precisely did life start from nothing? or where exactly is the fossil evidence that proves macro-evolution?) While I certainly wasn't going to win any arguments with this teacher who pretty much berated me--a fifteen-year-old--for my lack of faith in Darwin's theory (which even then was taught as fact), I think I did, at the very least, raise a dialogue that would have otherwise not been possible. The experience was formative.

Years later, the situation has intensified. Darwinian evolution is being taught--to an even greater extent than during my high school years--as factual, and at the exclusion of other theories. The secular climate of the times is pervasive. Friends here in Nashville, the Christian hub, were shocked when their second grader came home from school talking about the Big Bang as though it was proven scientific data. Her father sat with her and went over the biblical account of creation at length, instructing her impressionable mind in apologetics, which she'll need in her public school career, even here in the Bible Belt.

The next night, I returned to my (very drawn-out) reading of J.P. Moreland's Love Your God with All Your Mind, and was disturbed to read the following excerpt from an official document instructing California teachers in how to handle a student's objections to the Darwinian theory:

"At times, some students may insist that certain conclusions of science cannot be true because of certain religious or philosophical beliefs that they hold...It is appropriate for the teacher to express in this regard, 'I understand that you may have personal reservations about accepting this scientific evidence, but it is scientific knowledge about which there is no reasonable doubt among scientists in thier field, and it is my responsibility to teach it.'"

This dogma is outrageous, but very true to my high school--and college--experience. With untrue and unfounded statements like these flying in public school environments, obviously Christians must stand strong in order to expose the fallacy of the evolution-as-fact fraud. Moreland agrees, but he is critical of the Christian climate of our time for allowing science to exclude religious thought as it has in our country:

"Note carefully that the California board of education regards religious, that is Christian, beliefs as personal, private, subjective opinions to be contrasted with the true, public, objectively rational affirmations made by scientists. Where do secular people get this image of Christian doctrine? May I suggest that they get it from watching the Christians they meet, and more specifically, from watching the role that reason and truth play in the evangelical community....If unbelievers do not see a vibrant intellectual life when they observe Christians at work, or engaged in fellowship and worship, are they to be blamed if they conclude that truth and rationality do not matter much to us?"

Last week some friends had suggested watching Ben Stein's documentary, Expelled. Our viewing couldn't have been better timed, as we've been talking about creation in my systematic theology II class this semester and it has come up again and again in my personal reading/experience as well. So on Friday night, we settled in for homemade pizza and a movie I would commend to anyone wanting to know more about science and science education in the 21st century. Watch the movie trailer here.

The best part of the movie (and I wish I could find a clip of this...but you'll have to check out the film for yourself!) is Stein's interview with Michael Ruse, a prominent defender of Darwinism at Florida State. When Stein asks him how life started on earth, Ruse explains that it may have begun "on the backs of crystals." Stein asks, "yes but how did life start?" And Ruse, in a hilariously high-pitched voice of exasperation, says "well I've just told you...on the backs of crystals!" Stein asks a third time, "but how did life start?" And Ruse answers similarly. The discourse highlights the fact that there is still no answer to the question of "how?" in Darwinian thought. Atheist and Darwinian leader Charles Dawkins expresses similar exasperation in an interview with Stein, even to the point of claiming that while the idea of God is implausible, it is quite likely that aliens are responsible for intelligent design.

Stein also interviews a host of professors and writers who have been excommunicated from academia because they simply mention intelligent design in the classroom or in private research. The overall point of the film seems to be that there is a lack of freedom of thought in academia and the scientific field at large on this issue. In a country that claims to value freedom of thought, there is an alarming lack of freedom and an equally alarming religious dogmatism in the science classroom and lab. It has often been said that Darwinian evolution requires more faith than the intelligent design theory, and Expelled seems to prove that point--Darwinists have created a religion that excludes all other thought.

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.
1 Peter 3:15-16

On the Sharpening of the Christian Mind, Part I

I'm reading an interesting book entitled Love Your God with All Your Mind, by J.P. Moreland. If you're not familiar with Moreland, he's a reputable scholar who studied under Dallas Willard (now Moreland's mentor), and he currently teaches philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University in California. He has a B.A. in chemistry, masters degrees in theology and philosophy, and a Ph.D. in philosophy, to boot. To say that Moreland's a smart guy would be the understatement of the year, but don't be intimidated by his book! He calls the modern church to be not merely a feeling body, but a thinking one (to put it in the terms of the Myers-Briggs). And this feeler (meaning me) is encouraged--he suggests that thinking and feeling don't have to be in opposition with one another.

(On that vein of thought, consider the Hebrew word for "heart," which is lev. In early Jewish thought, the lev was considered the seat of action and emotion. In other words, emotion and logic worked hand in hand to mobilize one's responses to life.)

In the first chapter, Moreland sets out to explain what he calls "the loss of the Christian mind in American Christianity." He writes that until the 1800s, Christians from the Early Church on were known as some of the most brilliant minds of their respective eras. Take for example, Augustine, who shied away from Manichaeanism because the Christians had a more reasoned explanation of faith and life. Augustine's conversion, Moreland writes, was largely thanks to the intelligence of Christian men in his life. In the recent centuries, the Church has taken a more passive approach to intellect, creating a wishy-washy gospel that is unattractive to the scholarly world. Moreland urges Christians to intensify their study of scripture, to study apologetics, to become more articulate by sharpening their minds.

As I think ahead to this book and it's relevance to my stage of life (I'm caught between two extremes as a sometimes-frivolous sorority girl and a closet nerd starting seminary in the fall), I'm reminded of some quotes about the life of the Christian mind from my favorite authors:

"I wonder whether there is anything as exquisitely lovely as a brilliant mind aglow with the love of God." -A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of Man

"Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened. One of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself." -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

"When the Spirit illuminates the heart, the a part of the man sees which never saw before; a part of him knows which never knew before, and that with a kind of knowing which the most acute thinker cannot imitate." -A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of Man

"People say the Church is growing and expanding; yes, it's ten miles wide now and about a quarter inch deep." -Leonard Ravenhill, British Preacher

"The temper of religious thinking in our times is definitely not theological." A.W. Tozer

"Whatever weakens you reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, and takes off the relish of spiritual things--that to you is sin." -Susanna Wesley, mother of John and Charles Wesley, (emphasis mine)

"The Church today is languishing for men who can bring to the problems of religion reverent, courageous minds intent upon a solution. Christians are parrots...content to sit safe on their familiar perches and repeat in a bright falsetto religious words and phrases." -A.W. Tozer, God Tells the Man Who Cares

Disclaimer: My aim here is certainly not to bash the Church, but to take an honest look at where we all fall short as a body in encouraging the collective mind. When Moreland writes that "the Church must train high school students for the intellectual life they will encounter at college," I am as guilty as the next youth worker in regards to students I've ministered to. I'm challenged by these brilliant minds (i.e. Moreland, Tozer, Lewis, and others).

More on this book once I get a little further in...