Recovering Evangelicals

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Christianity’s response to discoveries of ancient hominids today is exactly the same as their response to previous discoveries of “non-Adamic” people in the Americas … “they’re not human!”

Christianity today is not handling well the recent discoveries of ancient hominids. To call it paradigm changing would be an understatement. And one shouldn’t be surprised by this, nor wonder about how they might try to cope with this new knowledge, because we’ve already seen the playbook before: when the Church in the 17th century had to wrestle with the discoveries of indigenous peoples in far-off continents that were only accessible by the best technology of their era: ocean-going sailing ships. This discovery raised HUGE theological questions, as well as political ones. “How could there be people in the Americas or in the far polar regions if they can barely make canoes? They couldn’t possibly be descendants of Adam. And if not, are they even human? Do they have souls? If they’re not human, can we capture them and sell them as slaves?”

In this episode, we talk to Dr. David N. Livingstone, author of Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins, which explores that part of Church history in great detail.

We first looked at how the Church and Christianity understood anthropology and human origins over the course of three thousand years. Back when the Babylonians and Egyptians were in charge, the ancient Jews were fully committed to a worldview that all humans descended from a primal couple that were created by YHWH. Then the Greeks and Romans took over and introduced a new idea: the possibility that there were “monstrous races” that looked very non-human, living at the furthest reaches of the maps that they generated in their explorations. In fact, Pliny the Elder in the 1st century created a whole taxonomy of those creatures: in addition to the one-eyed cyclops that you may have seen in B-movies, there were people with dog-heads, and others with gigantic feet that were used to shield their heads from the sun; and many others. When the Roman Catholic Church took over, they debated a little bit about those “Plinians”: Augustine, in the 5th century, wrote a whole treatise on whether they were human or not, let alone “of Adam” and therefore possessing a soul. By the time of the Renaissance, though, the Church (and the world that it ruled) were fully committed to the idea that all people on Earth descended from Adam and Eve. And that Adam and Eve were Caucasian! (just look at any paintings from that period of history.) But then explorers set out across the oceans, “discovering” new continents and dutifully reporting that they never saw any “Plinians” … but there were other humans! Indigenous peoples of the Americas and Greenland.

And that’s when those uncomfortable theological questions sprang up, and thinking Christians had to start re-writing their theology.

We then talked with David about the amazing close and provocative parallels between that period in Church history and the present one four centuries later, when we started discovering ancient hominids. And learning that some of the latter had the potential to be as intelligent and religiously-minded as Homo sapiens are.

There’s a lot of food for thought here, as we continue through this mini-series of episodes looking at the impact of recent scientific discoveries of ancient hominids on Christian theology.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this …

Find more information about Dr. David Livingstone at his faculty page.

If you enjoyed this episode, check out our collection of episodes on human evolution, or Luke’s book Standing On The Shoulders of Giants: Genesis and Human Origins.

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Do we need to update our theology in light of Christian-bigotry toward our genetic cousins?

During the millennia that Biblical characters were living out their lives, Biblical authors were writing their texts, the early Christian church was forming, and the medieval Church fathers were constructing a Christian theology, nobody had any idea that humans had genetic cousins: Australopithecus (“Lucy”), Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo floresiensis, Homo juluensis, and so many more. But we today DO know about those hominid cousins, and that knowledge raises many, many, huge questions for the Christian theology that emerged during those 4,000 years of JudeoChristian history. Much of modern Christianity has been in denial of the existence or relevance of those “cousins”:

Anwers-in-Genesis re-label any new hominid discovery as either human or ape, nothing in between (if the “human” doesn’t quite look human enough, they’ll invoke some kind of musculo-skeletal disease, inbreeding, or a reference to “the Nephilim”);
Pew Research have for decades been tracking public perception of various things, including human origins: even today, a significant fraction of Christianity insist that we humans have always existed in our present form (rather than evolving over time);
a new biology textbook written for Fundamentalist high-schools declared the following in its opening pages: “If [scientific] conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them.”

Luke described a strategy that Christians typically employ when trying to cope with the new scientific evidence: first try to just extend the timeline (from 6,000 years to a couple hundred thousand years, but otherwise keep all other parts of the Adam&Eve story intact), then start admitting that “God used biological evolution” instead of a potter’s wheel and Adam’s rib to create the first humans, and then finally accepting that the origin of humans was very much a random, unguided thing.

We discussed a wide range of [theological] questions that are raised by these scientific discoveries of our hominid ancestors. Some of those questions are of the “low-hanging fruit” kind that always come up immediately in any conversation about this topic:

what then does it mean that we’re created in God’s image?
what does it mean to “be human”?
what do we do with the fact that “Adam and Eve” are not literal?
what about the sinful nature we inherited from Adam&Eve?

But there are other questions that are hanging a bit higher up on the tree that are rarely, if ever addressed by other speakers/writers/podcasters:

without an Adam&Eve to serve as our starting point, how far back in human history do we go to extend the full scope of the overall Divine plan, or the Human-Divine relationship …. ten thousand years? …. fifty thousand years? ….. 300,000 years (to the very beginning of the H sapiens line?
if we do go back 300,000 years to include all Homo sapiens, do we also include our genetic cousins — Neanderthals, Denisovans, H Heidelbergensis, H floresiensis, H juluensis — with whom we interbred and interacted at that time?
Neanderthals also built societies, showed compassion, believed in an afterlife, possibly worshipped deities; and H juluensis had a brain which dwarfed our modern brains and Neanderthal brains, so it likely was much more intelligent than we were at that time ….. perhaps they too worshipped the Deity that we H sapiens later called YHWH?
could H sapiens end up going extinct (suicide by nuclear and biological weapons) and the world go on for another billion years while other species evolve and far surpass our peak state …. Would they also be included in the overall Divine plan, or the Creature-Creator relationship?
Much of Christianity holds a worldview which has no place whatsoever for these genetic cousins. We act like God has only ever been concerned about the last 0.02% of the entirety of history when H sapiens existed.
John 3:16 is not only about humanity!

Maybe it’s time that we come up with an updated, more inclusive Christian theology.

We’re going to unpack many of these questions/ideas in the next handful of episodes:

Gareth Roberts: evolution of the English language
David Livingstone: Pre-Adamites invade the 17th century
Doug Ottati: theological changes raised by these discoveries
Michael Shermer: the Moral Arc of humanity
mailbag: listener’s comments and questions

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

If you enjoyed this episode, check out our mini-series of episodes on evolution, or Luke’s book Standing On The Shoulders of Giants: Genesis and Human Origins

Episode image by Andrew K. Thanks Andrew!

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The anniversaries of two pivotal legal cases brought by evolution deniers got us talking to the National Center for Science Education about their work

2025 is the 100th anniversary of the infamous Scopes Trial (aka, the “Monkey Trial”), in which a high school teacher in Tennessee was convicted of violating a law that banned teaching human evolution. 2025 is also the 20th anniversary of the Kitzmiller v. Dover Trial which ruled that a school board in Pennsylvania had violated the Establishment Clause by requiring teachers to present Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolutionary theory.

To commemorate these pivotal events, we reached out to the National Center for Science Education, a non-profit organization dedicated to pushing back on the efforts of Creationists and Intelligent Design proponents in promoting science denial. Deputy Director Glenn Branch and science education specialist Wendy Johnson gave us a quick overview of the history of anti-evolutionism and the mission, scope, and activities of the NCSE:

although science deniers come in all shapes and forms — anti-vaxers, Flat Earthers, conspiracy theorists, the Apollo moon landings ….. even the “Birds aren’t real” movement — the NCSE focuses its resources on the two primary forms of science denial in elementary and high schools: Creationism and climate change denial;
most of their efforts pertain to development of school curricula, although they also collaborate in important ways with legal teams litigating lawsuits in the courts and debating bills submitted to federal and state governments;
anti-evolutionist strategies tend to fall into three main categories:
- ban the teaching of evolution altogether (as was the case in the 1925 Scopes trial);
- balance the teaching of evolution with an equal admixture of Creationist teaching (as was the case in Kitzmiller v Dover);
- blunt the teaching of evolution with “free speech” aimed at undermining confidence in the theory and its underlying data and sowing suspicion against evolution proponents (as is the case of many more recent cases).
we looked at the American education system (a complex choreography between federal, state, and district bodies, although ultimately the actual teaching is done by individual teachers who comply to varying extents), and made comparisons with education in other countries (Canada; the United Kingdom; Australia);
we also compared science denial in Christians with that in Muslims …. in the US versus Britain;
finally, we talked about high profile Creationist organizations like Answers-in-Genesis and the Discovery Institute, and what motivates them: is it ignorance (of science), religious zeal, or fear?

As always, tell us what YOU think …

Find more information about our guests and the National Center for Science Education at their homepage. And if you like what they’re doing, you can make a donation there!

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like our interview with Dr. Janet Ray Kellogg (#138) who’s actively pushing back on science denial, or our two mini-series on Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design.

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Time magazine’s pick for “most influential Evangelical in 2015” tells his own story of leaving behind traditional Evangelicalism.

Over the past five years, we’ve interviewed many people who are “Recovering Evangelicals” … people who were handed an Evangelical/Fundamentalist faith that they eventually found they had to reject. As they explored their faith from different angles, they found it just didn’t work anymore: they had to keep giving up one belief after another until they thought they had nothing left. We have a web-page that collects over a dozen such stories.

But recently, we thought it was important to show that these “slippery slope” experiences are had not only by “average” lay-people: Christian leaders, pastors, and theologians are also prone. So a few weeks ago we heard from John James Kirkwood, who was a pastor of an Evangelical church during the years that he was giving up on traditional Evangelicalism (#180). And then we heard from Peter Enns, who was a professor and theologian at an Evangelical College when he walked the same path (#181). Both had to contend with the tension of helping other Evangelicals build up their Evangelical faith while tearing apart his own.

In this episode, we hear from Brian McLaren: also a pastor at a large and flourishing Evangelical church during the years that he was giving up the traditional Evangelicalism he grew up with. But he was not “just another pastor”: he assisted in the development of several new churches, was a guest lecturer for denominational and ecumenical leadership gatherings around the world, and a prolific Evangelical author with a couple dozen book titles to his credit. In 2015, Time magazine named him as one of the 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America!

He, too, became a Recovering Evangelical.

This is his story.

We’ll hear about how he grew up in a Plymouth Brethren environment, steeped in Biblical literalism and Young Earth Creationism, and at the ripe old age of 12 defiantly declared he’d renounced that form of Fundamentalism because it couldn’t handle evolution and was too obsessed with sex. About a transcendent spiritual experience on a hill-top in his teen years that crystalized his faith in a God of love. About his slippery slope experiences while he began to pursue a career as a college professor of English literature, then stumbled into a career as a pastor, an author, a seeker, a culture warrior, and a Jesus freak.

And about where he’s at now in his Christian worldview …. faith expressing itself in love.

And the cherry on top in this interview was a sneak peak at his next book to be released: the first in a trilogy of sci-fi novels that will add a new dimension to his message of pursuing meaning and fulfillment.

Find more about Brian McLaren and his many books at his website.

If you enjoyed this episode, you might want to check out a similar conversation we had with another world-class Exvangelical author … Philip Yancey (#113) … as well as our collection of other “slippery slope” life stories.

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Are they just fun parlor tricks? Spiritual gifts and miracles like the ones we read in the Bible? Demonic manifestations? Or simply mind-over-matter?

Dr. Alan Streett was on a career trajectory to be a professional baseball player when a major arm injury and a psychic healer diverted him into Seminary studies as a non-believing church pastor-in-training who got drunk on Saturday nights, preached Billy Graham sermons the next morning, and spent the rest of his time researching the paranormal!? After finishing his PhD, he had a life-changing spiritual experience and became a sincere Christian and a professor at a Christian college … and continued his fifty year long research project trying to understand the paranormal and psychic phenomena.

His interest in the paranormal was sparked by the psychic healer, who failed to restore his arm but told him many stories, recommended books to read, and got him connected to other people in that world. He became fascinated, and dove head-first into this pursuit. Over the course of 50 years, he went through four distinct stages in his understanding of that strange paranormal world.

Stage 1: he enrolled at a Bible Seminary (even though he wasn’t a Christian) and tried to integrate what he was learning about the secular paranormal with examples of the supernatural in the Bible. To him at that time, they were one and the same. It was all just neat stuff: harmless and interesting.

Stage 2: the cognitive dissonance of being a heavy-drinking non-Christian on the inside, but a Seminary student and pastor-in-training on the outside, finally triggered a mental crisis and then a profound and life-changing conversion experience. He was born-again! And on fire! And while attending a charismatic church service, he learned that the paranormal/psychic phenomena were in fact demonic! He immediately made a 180 degree turn away from that world, and completely rejected those phenomena.

Stage 3: after finishing his Seminary training and becoming a professor of Evangelism and New Testament at a Christian College in Texas, he invited a guest lecturer to speak on “Magic: real and fake.” That guest convinced Alan that, in fact, many of the paranormal and psychic things that had previously so fascinated him (Stage 1), and then terrified him (Stage 2), were actually just devious parlor tricks and fraudulent illusion. His guest even showed him how to do some of the tricks used by mentalists (“the Amazing Kreskin”; David Copperfield; Darren Brown), palm-readers, Tarot card readers … and even poker players (who read their opponents’ “tells”). And Alan started perfecting the art himself: he too was now entertaining the crowds while teaching students and church audiences that this was not scary supernatural stuff … just simple deception.

Stage 4: with his interest in psychic phenomena renewed and re-directed, he studied it from a new, more analytical perspective. He learned about brain states: the fast, excited brain waves of the beta state which provides focused concentration and the fight-or-flight response, versus the slower, relaxed brain waves of the alpha state, the relaxation response and day-dreaming. He noticed the marked similarities — the slowed breathing and intense mental focus — between the meditation used in yoga, the centering prayer used to have a spiritual encounter with God, the hypnosis used to quit smoking or ignore bodily pain, and the Lamaze classes that are taught to cope with labor and delivery. In other words, the psychic phenomena are largely mind over matter.

We then talked about how Alan’s Stage 4 understanding explains many of the things that we see happening in private spiritual practice (visions; prayer; a peaceful spiritual experience) as well as in very public healing meetings (which are predominantly geared toward dealing with a wide variety of pain and mental issues, and not so much restoring amputated limbs or correcting enzymatic deficiencies like diabetes). It also explains how athletes overcome what appear to be insurmountable barriers. For example, it was long thought to be “impossible” to run a 4-minute mile; until Roger Bannister did it in 1954, and now it’s commonplace. Likewise in figure skating: for decades no one could do the triple axel, until Vern Taylor did it at the 1978 World Championships … and now nearly all competitive skaters can do it. In the same way, this also explains how some people feel “the universe” co-operates with their wishes/needs (“the Law of Attraction”): their persistent determination has them repeatedly trying over and over until they finally breakthrough their perceived barrier and achieve their goal.

I think there’s a lot of food for thought in what Alan had to tell us.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find out more about Alan at his faculty page, and his book at Eerdmans Publishing.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like our collection of episodes dealing with the religious experiences and spiritual encounters.

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A Harvard-trained sociologist gives us far more than downward church attendance graphs and the “rise of the nones” that Pew and Gallup dish up

None of our listeners would be surprised by news that religious faith is in decline. Pew and Gallup have been talking about “the rise of the nones” and of the “spiritual-but-not-religious” for many years now. Church attendances are down; church closures are up. Again, this is not news.

But we talked to Dr. Christian Smith, a Harvard-trained sociologist who’s just published a book entitled Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America. “Obsolete” is very different from “in decline”! And he doesn’t say that it’s “on its way to obsolescence”: he says it’s already gone obsolete! And to add insult to injury, he says this obsolescence was unplanned (in contrast to the planned obsolescence that our Western economies are built upon) and largely self-inflicted!?

He delineates dozens of factors and events that contributed to this phenomenon. Far too many to list here. You’ll need to listen to the episode to hear some of the more important ones, and then read his book to fully unpack all of them. But suffice to say that these factors include a variety of slowly-developing trends …. changes in demographics, society, culture, science, politics, and the economy …. as well as a number of key events (the 9/11 plane attacks; church scandals; end of the Cold War; the internet). He refers to a series of perfect storms converging. The pivotal year was 1991, and everything was in place by 2009.

He does concede to some caveats. Most importantly, he concedes that he’s not talking about religion in general: instead, his story is about “TRADITIONAL religion” … “in the US.” And he defines what he means by “traditional” (mainline Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Mormonism) and “not traditional,” at least not in the US (Buddhism; Hinduism; witchcraft; astrology; New Age beliefs; the Laws of Attraction; alternative healing; crystals …. and a long list of other belief systems that ARE indeed growing in America). And that’s another thing about obsolescence: it doesn’t mean useless. It just means that fewer and fewer people want to use it, and that more people are choosing something else (for example, music aficionados will never give up their vinyl records, while a vast majority of people opt for digital media). Just think about all the Baby Boomers who grew up in religious homes in the 60s and 70s, but who have raised a generation of Millennials who don’t go to church!? And how church-ey will be the yet-to-be-seen generation being raised by those unchurched Millennials!

Another concession: he doesn’t think that America will go totally secular. Humans are fundamentally spiritual/religious at their core. In every part of the globe, every civilization and culture all through human history, we’ve always had religion. Religion spans all ages, all genders, all races, and all socioeconomic brackets. And see what happened in cultures that intentionally tried to suppress religion: Communist Russia/China, or the French Revolution.

So what does Dr. Smith see replacing that traditional faith in America? A new millennial, post-boomer zeitgeist. A cultural re-enchantment. Something that is individualistic, anti-institutional, anti-authority, presentist (not a deep sense of history), very relativistic and subjective (think Postmodernism, and people talking about “my truth” versus “your truth”).

We also talked briefly about whether this book has anything to say about the apparent or claimed growth of Protestant and Catholic faiths in Africa, in South America, or even recently in Britain. And what about us Canadians who live just next door to the US and are so deeply tied with it? The short answer is: yes …. and no.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Dr. Christian Smith at his faculty page, and about his book at Oxford University Press.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like a mini-series of episodes we did near the end of COVID entitled “Back to Church.”

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A theologian and professor at an Evangelical Theological Seminary describes a very unique, but instructive, “slippery slope” experience.

As promised, here’s our second conversation with someone who walked that “slippery slope” out of Evangelicalism, but did so while leading and teaching a large group of Evangelicals who were still quite comfortable with their own Christian worldviews. Last week it was John James Kirkwood, as the pastor of a church with strong Christian Nationalist leanings. This week, it’s Dr. Pete Enns, a theologian and the Abram S. Clemens Professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University (formerly Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary).

We talked about the Christianity he grew up within (German Methodist), and his early years at Messiah University (a private evangelical Christian university in Pennsylvania) getting his BA in Behavioral Science, followed by an M. Div from Westminster Theological Seminary, and then a PhD at Harvard University (Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations). During those 16 years of academic learning, Pete’s understanding of the Bible changed completely. He now saw human fingerprints all over it, and his interpretation of it looked very different from that of many Evangelicals (and completely heretical for Fundamentalists).

We talked about that journey, and why it seemed to look and feel so different from the “slippery slope” experience that many of the rest of us typically describe. Instead of the incapacitating elements of confusion and disorientation, for him it was more of an invigorating intellectual evolution. He also didn’t experience the peer pressure that I had expected: the coercive influence of what his peers (scholars; professors; intellectuals), his employer (the University) or his students (bright-eyed Evangelicals themselves) might think. Instead, he was motivated by being true to himself and following the evidence to its logical conclusion … being authentic and maintaining his integrity. But he did experience one other key element of the “slippery slope” syndrome: the emotional collapse at the end of the journey. He described the sadness he felt when he realized “I may never sing another Christmas carol again.” The isolation, and loss of a community. The uncertainty of having no guardrails, nor Someone constantly watching over him.

We also talked at length about his confrontation with the Board at Westminster Theological Seminary, where he had been teaching for years, and how it ended with the resignation of almost a dozen leaders at the University, including Pete himself. How it was clearly a battle over orthodoxy, and the control of orthodoxy, especially how that crystalized around one particular book that Pete had written (Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament) … the VERY different perceptions about that book held by the Board, the Faculty of the University, his book publisher, his readers, and even himself.

Finally, we also talked about a couple other books he’d written which were particularly relevant to this discussion: The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More than Our ‘Correct’ Beliefs (a clear reference to orthodoxy), and Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming (or How I Stumbled and Tripped My Way to Finding a Bigger God).

We thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, and are sure you will find much to learn from it. Enjoy!

Find more information about Dr. Pete Enns at his faculty page, his podcast page, and this link to the books he’s written.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also want to look at our collection of similar life stores of people leaving traditional Fundamentalism/Evangelicalism to find a Christianity that looks completely different.

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One of our listeners tells his story of chipping away at Christian ideas, only to find a faith that feels more Christian.

This week and next, we’re going to hear the life stories of two more people who grew up in a Fundamentalist / Evangelical world, but embarked on a journey with which our listeners are very familiar: one that is strewn with baggage, rejected ideas, and old theologies. Those who’ve walked this path will all say that when you reach the end, you feel like you’ve lost it all … only to find that you hold a faith that looks completely different from the one you started with … but which feels more Christian.

Today, our guest will be one of our listeners who walked that journey while being the pastor of a very Fundie/Evangelical church: John James Kirkwood.

We heard a bit about the kind of Evangelical faith that was handed to John in his childhood, and how he essentially ran away from that in his teen years. But the story really begins when this Prodigal Son returns home and begins pastoral work at his father’s church. For twenty years!

At first, he tried to build a persona that might be best described as a cross between Ravi Zacharias (before the scandal) and Rush Lumbaugh. He wrote a very conservative column, hosted a radio show and became very vocal about politics. His views morphed into Christian Nationalism: he was often reacting against perceived abominations (like boycotting Target because they don’t say Merry Christmas) … gun rights were sacred … the US was the new Israel.

That changed when Donald Trump first became President. The reception given by the Religious Right started some very unsettling questions for John. He started to read some books (the first tell-tale sign of that “slippery slope”) and listening to speakers on the forbidden list (like Bart Ehrmann), particularly in the areas of Creation/Evolution, and the origin of the Bible. One night, after slamming shut Francis Collins’ book the Language of God, he said to his wife “I can’t believe I’ve been wrong all this time.” And then he apologized to his two teenage sons for what he’d been teaching them.

As he continued to jettison one idea after another and replacing them with new ones, while still pastoring at the church and putting the spotlight on the ministry and teaching of Jesus, people began to complain. And then some started leaving.

Eventually it was time for John to leave too.

He now finds himself in Arizona, involving himself in a variety of ministries, targeting “the Nones and the Dones,” with a new Christian worldview that looks nothing like what he had thirty years ago.

And John couldn’t be happier.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this episode …

To find more about John, go to his podcast Sparrow’s Call.

Episode images used by permission.

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An exploration of belief, unbelief, delusion, and critical thinking, and some (coping) strategies in dealing with this peculiarity of being human.

Humans can believe some pretty crazy things. Pew Research has at times found that 1% of Americans believe the earth is flat. And that 6% aren’t quite sure whether it is or not! In 2017, Peter McIndoe started a movement that claims the federal government has exterminated all birds and replaced them with look-alike drones to spy on citizens … a movement that now has 100,000 followers. In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult committed joint-suicide in order to board Comet Hale–Bopp, which they believed was a disguised alien space ship that would take them to a beautiful new world.

As diverse as these movements are, they have a few features in common. The adherents collect their own data, make their own interpretations, and label any counter-evidence or counter-arguments as lies and conspiracies.

Sound familiar? The Kennedy assassination? The 9/11 plane crashes? Anti-vaxers and COVID19/measles? Global warming? Gender issues? Republicans and Democrats? Fundamentalist Christians? Young Earth Creationists?

This week, Scott and I discuss this quirky characteristic of humans. And we brought in a guest that we’ve had on more than once in the past — Doug Traversa — because he’s on “the other side” of Scott and me when it comes to the two most divisive of topics — religion and politics (he’s an American, and an atheist) — and yet he also has a long track record of modeling what Scott and I think is an excellent way to interact positively and respectfully with others who think very differently from him.

First, we explored the diverse manifestations of this human characteristic of dismissing evidence and explanations from qualified experts and replacing them with their own. The list is too long — and too distressing — to repeat here.

Then we identified a number of contributing factors, because you can’t fix a problem if you don’t fully understand it. Here are some of the ones we found:

isolationism, social bubbles, echo-chambers and silos
home-schooling
pledges of allegiance, shibboleths, creedal statements
control of books that can/cannot be read; people who can/cannot be listened to or associated with
“the algorithms” of social media
people intentionally or unconsciously creating their own algorithms (choosing the news media they listen to; the way they do Google searches)
being selective in the attention we give to the reasons for/against something
we’ve lost the ability to identify authoritative people, credentials
lost the ability for critical thinking and reasoning
Postmodernism: no absolute truth; people speak of “my truth” versus “your truth”
self-fulfilling reasoning and confirmation bias
peer pressure
cognitive traits inherited through our long evolutionary journey
- herd mentality (which plays into our tribalism)
- primates need to be in-group, and fear social isolation (the rationale behind jails and prisons)
- need to be suspicious of outsiders (plays into our racism)
- software that tries to make sense of a limited data-set in order to create a simplified user-friendly version of reality (even if that only fits some of the data points, and forces us to reject the other data points)

Finally we talked about our responses to this:

don’t blame, mock or demonize them …. we’re ALL just running limited data sets through clunky software on patch-work hardware
read more broadly; ask more questions; validate your assumptions and suspicions
despair … if humans can believe such diverse and often mutually exclusive ideas — and be fully convinced that THEY have the real truth — then how can I be so confident that what I believe is true?
become more comfortable with uncertainty

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

If you want to learn more about Doug, check out our episodes in which he tells his full life-story, or why he decided to give up his faith, or get his views on the Richard Dawkins / Ayaan Hirsi Ali interview.

For episodes that are closely related to this topic, check out what we said about science denial, or a collection of episodes that focus on Evangelicals.

Episode image is a modified still image from the 1999 block-buster film The Matrix.

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Many people think that the church burned scientists and their books during the Dark Ages; they would be wrong …. and here’s why

We’re still discussing the book Of Popes and Unicorns: Science, Christianity, and how the Conflict Thesis fooled the world.

Last week, we spoke to one of the authors of that book — an academic historian (James C. Ungureanu) — about what this Conflict Thesis is (“the church and science are inherently at war … always have been, always will be”) and who it was that originated the idea (two 19th century American scholars: John William Draper and Andrew Dixon White).

This week, we’re talking to his co-author (David Hutchings) about how and why the Conflict Thesis is so embedded in the 21st century Western zeitgeist. As a testament to how embedded that is, Luke talked to a dozen non-experts (friends, family, neighbors) and asked them straightforward questions that give glimpses of this underlying Conflict Thesis thinking.

In particular, we talked about Galileo’s story, Bruno’s story, stories of the Church burning science books and even whole libraries, and the period in human history commonly referred to as the Dark Ages when the church is said to have suppressed science forcefully and brutally. In each case, we explored:

what my polling group have heard and seem to remember about those stories
how they’ve received those versions of the stories through science textbooks (high school, college, university), documentaries, TV shows (Family Guy), popular books and movies (Dan Brown’s series of books — Da Vinci Code; Angels & Demons; Origin; Inferno — have sold over 250 million copies worldwide and are published in 56 languages), and popular influencers (Carl Sagan; Neil DeGrasse Tyson; Richard Dawkins; the late Christopher Hitchens; Sam Harris; Joe Rogan; and others)
and how the version of those stories held by academic historians does not at all involve martyrdom, book burning, or suppression of science for theological reasons, and that the period of time which non-experts label “the Dark Ages” were actually a period of prolific scientific discovery, development of technology, and the active pursuit of such knowledge through logic, reason and wide-spread publication …. all largely at the hands of monks, priests, Christian thinkers, and the Church!

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Click here for more information about David Hutchings’ books, including the one we discussed today: Of Popes and Unicorns.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like our mini-series of episodes on:

a Christian response to Evolution (11 episodes)
Young Earth Creationism (9 episodes)
Intelligent Design (8 episodes)

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Almost everyone in the 21st century Western world have bought into this unfounded myth (very possibly YOU too!?)

A few days ago, it was the 1st of April …. April Fool’s Day! Instead of playing some kind of prank on our listeners, we thought we’d look at a great book about a hoax — on the level of a conspiracy theory — that has hoodwinked the world for almost two centuries! This con-job has most people today believing in “the Dark Ages,” and that the church in the past often tortured and even killed scientists, and burned down the ancient library of Alexandria (containing thousands of books, the collective knowledge of the world at that time). When you, the listener, hear about the whole “Galileo Affair,” does your mind immediately jump to religion vs science, or do you imagine two different groups of philosophers/scholars disputing cosmology using Greek philosophical arguments?

The book we’ll be bringing to our listeners this week is Of Popes and Unicorns: Science, Christianity, and how the Conflict Thesis Fooled the World, by David Hutchings and James C. Ungureanu. This week we’ll hear from James (a PhD historian), and next week from David (degree in physics; popular speaker and apologist).

James did his entire PhD thesis on the Conflict Thesis and who first proposed the idea. He and David dug through historical archives, chasing down footnotes in textbooks, newspaper clippings, and letters between scholars, and the trail converged on two 19th century American scholars: John William Draper and Andrew Dixon White. And their idea — the Conflict Thesis — claims that “the church and science are at war … fundamentally at odds … always have been, always will be.”

Draper and White were both brilliant polymaths, energetic intellectuals, and recognized scholars in a scholar’s world. Draper was a scientist, White a literary scholar who had been on a path toward preaching, but was enticed away by intellectual influences into more secular pursuits. Both wrote books which became the foundation for the Conflict Thesis. Draper’s (History of the Conflict between Religion and Science) was dense and only readable to professional egg-heads, while White’s (A history of the warfare of science with theology in Christendom) was aimed at a more popular level.

And both were Christians! In fact, Draper was not attacking religion itself, but advocating for a return to a pure, rational form of Christianity; he saw the Protestant Reformation as a turning point not just for religion but for science as well.

Nonetheless, both held, developed and passed on a distorted view of history of the relationship between church and science, which was then picked up and promoted by later scholars over the ensuing decades, and then more recently popularized by influencers like Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Joe Rogan, to name just a few. The Conflict thesis can be found in textbooks used in high schools, colleges, and universities … in the introductions to scholarly papers published in scientific and medical journals … in magazine articles and documentaries … popular TV shows (Family Guy) and movies like Dan Brown’s blockbuster the Da Vinci Code. It’s no wonder that anyone growing up in 21st century Western society just absorbs this idea (the Conflict Thesis) by osmosis, takes it as a historical fact, and makes it a part of their worldview.

Luke was curious about how Draper and White got their grossly distorted understanding of history: “Were they just honestly stupid, or deceitfully biased, or perhaps misinformed?” We also talked about members of a mysterious “X Club” who met in lounges over cigars and drinks and discussed big ideas. About the Free Religious Association: radical Unitarians, Universalists, spiritualists, transcendentalists, and other religious minorities who promoted free thought and more philosophy without the constraints of institutional Christianity, and promoting a new religion of Humanity. About Stephen Jay Gould and “non-overlapping magisteria.”

And about why this Conflict Thesis just doesn’t want to go away. Luke asked if historians have given up debunking the distorted history. James replied historians are growing tired of trying; that the public just prefer to have a simple good guy / bad guy story, rather than the highly nuanced but much more accurate understanding.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Click here for more information about Dr. James Ungureanu and the book we discussed.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like our mini-series of episodes on:

a Christian response to Evolution (11 episodes)
Young Earth Creationism (9 episodes)
Intelligent Design (8 episodes)

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Scott unpacks the journey he’s been on, and the very un-Evangelical and very unorthodox faith he now holds.

Three weeks ago, Luke sketched out what his faith looks like now, after completely deconstructing and reconstructing the one he grew up with. This week it was Scott’s turn!

We first traced out the common path we’ve both been on. Both of us spent our pre-teen years in a church-world that was largely irrelevant to us because it was imposed on us by our parents. But we then both dove headfirst into a very Fundamentalist Evangelical faith of our own during out late teens and early twenties. But our inquiring minds and adventurous spirits took us down a path that constantly reevaluated that faith … we were on that metaphorical “slippery slope” … eventually finding ourselves decades later with a much more liberal faith that looks nothing like that Fundamentalist Evangelical one. It was NOT that we had neglected our faith and just simply let it grow cold: instead, we actively pursued our faith and belief system, and it died slowly by a thousand cuts. Many other people, including many of our listeners, have walked that very same path. A path that ends at a fork in the road: a decision that one must either reject faith entirely, or find an entirely new faith that is sustainable, meaningful and rewarding.

Scott then unpacked what he believes (and doesn’t believe) now.

First, God. Scott begins with accepting the existence of God as a given rather than looking for or requiring evidence or logic to prove that existence before moving forward. Luke then pushed Scott on the hiddenness of God, whether God insists on a blind faith, whether God must be transcendent (completely beyond space and time), God’s aseity (existing of and from itself), Panentheism, Process Theology, and even Deism.

Next, Christianity and Jesus. Scott talked at length about the humanity of Christ: a Jewish rabbi, with human limitations, an extraordinary individual who lived in an obscure place and time, but nonetheless had an incredible impact on human history, and even a Messianic figure. When pushed to talk about Christ’s divinity, Scott admitted to a lot less precision here, but felt he could at least say that Jesus channeled Godhood and God-awareness in a unique way, and that the face of God is the face of Christ. And what about the meaning or ‘purpose’ of Christ’s death? After briefly talking about the Moral Influence theory, about Jesus needing to die in order to light a fire within his followers, and Substitutionary Atonement, Scott landed more firmly on Christus Victor theory of atonement (overcoming through love and suffering). We noted that humans are learning to emulate his example (Moral Influence theory again?), overcoming and finding liberation through passive resistance, love and suffering (Ghandi in early 20th century India, and the civil rights march at Selma Alabama in 1965) rather than the vicious cycle of violence (Israel and Hamas today).

With only a few minutes left, and so much more to talk about, Scott briefly touched on the nature of faith, and some talk about heaven.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

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The book-end to our conversation last week with a conservative scholar, this time with a leading thinker on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Last week, Dr. Roger Olson — a highly-credentialed conservative Christian theologian — gave us his critique of liberal Christian theology. In that discussion and in his book, he referred often to another highly credentialed scholar from the liberal end of the theological spectrum: Dr. Douglas F. Ottati. We thought it would be good to get Dr. Ottati’s responses to Dr. Olson, as well as his comments on our theology.

We first asked him to define “liberal” theology, and where it came from. He talked about “historically particular circumstances” and “historically particular societies” … the discovery of previously unknown people groups in the Americas … the intrusion of modernity, and wanting to engage with sciences … and the re-discovery of the social gospel.

Next, the definition of “orthodoxy” and Dr. Olson’s insistence that liberal Christians are not “orthodox.” The word literally means “correct teaching,” but can also refer to adhering to a long-standing tradition. Dr. Ottati challenged both meanings: “orthodoxy develops over time” … “there are orthodoxies, plural” … “one man’s orthodoxy is another man’s heresy” … “some statements of orthodoxy are just not found in the Bible!”

We then addressed the same four points that Luke focused on when he put his own liberal theology on the table two weeks ago, and asked Dr. Olson to comment on those four points last week:

the Bible: the difference between taking the text literally and taking it seriously. It’s a “historically particular resource,” in the sense that it is written to/by ancient Jews. Luke asked if it’s being too dismissive when coming up against difficult or disturbing Bible passages to say: “that’s just ancient Jews talking.” Dr. Ottati: “it’s even ancient Jews talking in the passages you like!”
God: some people want to anthropomorphize and personify God (ascribe gender: body parts [his face; his hands] and emotions), and have a personal relationship, while others (like Luke) see God as an unfathomable cosmic force or energy. Dr. Ottati said the Bible often uses metaphors/analogies, some of them personal, some not (a burning bush). We also talked about the hiddenness of God, and whether God is interventionist (intervenes in our history or timeline). What’s the point of prayer?
the personhood of Jesus: the human Jewish Messiah versus the cosmic divine being, and his mission.
the human condition and need for salvation: Dr. Ottati spoke at length about the importance of grace. Luke also asked for specific comments on his new understanding of the human condition: that humans did NOT lose something in the Fall (perfection; sinlessness; immortality; a close relationship with the Divine), but have been evolving toward a divine image, have always been on a long search for God, and had to live by a code of ethics that we might now condemn (being selfish; stealing; killing; sexually promiscuous) in order to fulfill the FIRST divine command (to be fruitful and multiply) before we were ready for a new and better code of ethics that was best taught and modeled by Jesus Christ. Dr. Ottati said this might be labelled heterodox (rather than unorthodox) but not heretical, and that many other prominent Christian thinkers who have proposed similar things.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Dr. Ottati at his institutional web-page, and his many books at Amazon, including the one we highlighted today: A theology for the twenty first century.

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This is the conversation that motivated me to start Season Six: the book that got me questioning whether “my [liberal] faith was in vain”

Folks, this interview is the one that rebooted the podcast! The previous three episodes that started Season Six were all a lead-up to this conversation. It was an article written by our guest today — Dr. Roger Olson, Professor Emeritus of Theology at Baylor University, one of the biggest religious universities in the United States, and the biggest Baptist University in the world — that got me seriously questioning whether I was allowed to still call myself a Christian. That article — Why I wrote Against Liberal Theology — caught me at a time when I was getting very comfortable in my liberal/Progressive Christian skin, and very disillusioned with the Christianity of my Fundamentalist Evangelical past. It prompted a deep introspective dive into what DO I really believe (or not believe) … and why?

In this conversation — a very calm, collegial, and respectful one by the way! — we asked Dr. Olson to define liberal Christian theology and explain why he sees it as “heresy.” We also asked him to define orthodox Christian theology (essentially, the Nicene Creed), the gospel message, and the label “Christian.” We talked about whether Christianity truly has an unchanging core tradition set over a millennium ago by the church fathers, or whether it has always been evolving. Other stopping points in our conversation included: miracles, the resurrection of Jesus, the Wesleyan quadrilateral, naturalism, and Carl Sagan. And in the last part of our conversation, I asked for his comments about my very liberal Christian view on the human condition and our need for salvation — a view that, I’ll admit, looks very different from the traditional, “orthodox” view — and about my insistence on using the label “Christian.”

Truth be told, it was a great conversation, and I highly recommend Dr. Olson’s book — Against Liberal Theology: putting the brakes on Progressive Christianity — to any listeners who “want to hear both sides of the story” on the conservative/liberal Christian spectrum.

Next week, we’ll talk to an equally prominent theologian from the liberal end of the theological spectrum. In fact, one whom Dr. Olson frequently mentions in his book and in our conversation as perhaps the absolute best representative since Friedrich Schleiermacher of the Liberal Christian Theological movement that he was targeting in his book!

As always, tell us your thoughts …

Find more information about Dr. Roger Olson at the Patheos web-site that now hosts his blog posts, and find his many books at Amazon, including the one we discuss in this episode: Against Liberal Theology: putting the brakes on Progressive Christianity.

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Using the modified Wesleyan quadrilateral to summarize my current understanding of the Bible, God, Jesus and the human condition.

In this episode, I explain how my Christian understanding on several key theological ideas has changed. I came from a very Fundamentalist Evangelical upbringing, and all our listeners know that I’ve completely left behind the Young Earth Creationism and superficially literal readings of the Bible that characterized the Christianity of my first three decades. And they’ll also know that I’ve been developing some rather creative transformations of a variety of aspects of my Christian faith. But what about the very basic core elements of Christianity? Where have I landed on those?

Before we get into that, let’s be clear how I’ve modified and used a centuries-old theological tool for clarifying true, meaningful and practical beliefs: the four pillars of the Wesleyan quadrilateral. Many others emphasize the load-bearing capacity of two of those pillars: scripture and church tradition. How many times haven’t we heard Fundamentalist phrases like: “if the Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it” and “we’ve always thought that way”? But I’ve given full flexibility and load-bearing capacity to all four corners so that, in some cases, reason and experience can bear most of the load, sometimes even eclipsing the explanatory power of scripture and church tradition. In response to those two well-worn Fundamentalist phrases I just quoted, I’m not hesitant to ask whether certain difficult Biblical passages are “just ancient Jews talking” (Psalm 137:8,9), and to suggest that “Christianity has ALWAYS been evolving in response to science, philosophy, culture, and politics.” And I’ve added in that ramp of reason that focuses and re-directs the leap of faith.

Using this tool, I explain where I now stand on four central Christian ideas … the Bible, God, Jesus, and the human condition? For this episode blurb, I tried many times to summarize these deeply nuanced shibboleths into just a few pithy sentences. But I kept finding myself adding more and more paragraphs to each. So …. instead of reading it here, you’re going to have to listen to me unpacking those in the conversation recorded with Scott.

Next week, we’re going to talk to Dr. Roger Olson, a very prominent Conservative theologian and scholar. We’ll ask him to comment on my new found theology, and to explain why I can’t call it “orthodox” … in the literal sense of that word (“true teaching”) rather than the traditional one (adhering to a literal reading of Scripture or a long church tradition). And the week after that, we’ll do the same with an equally prominent scholar on the other side of the theological spectrum, Dr. Douglas F. Ottati.

As always, listen and then tell us your thoughts on this discussion …

If you enjoyed this episode and want to dig deeper, you might want to go to our previous episodes on:

the deconstruction and reconstruction of Luke’s faith
how humans gave us the Old Testament
how humans gave us the New Testament
how humans re-wrote the Biblical texts
Divine inspiration
a personal relationship with the Divine
prayer as a cognitive exercise
human consciousness and the evolution of our mind and soul
Jesus as a human Jewish Messiah and a cosmic divine being
Atonement theology and what science has to say about it
a new meaning of Easter
the evolution of human religion and human morality

Episode image by Andrew … thanks Andrew!

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Before describing our new Christian worldview, we thought we should talk about the tools and strategies we used to get there.

Our goal, over the next few weeks, is to have two world renowned Christian theologians — one very conservative and the other very liberal — give us feedback on our now very liberal Christian theology. But before we do that, we thought it would be fair to our listeners to lay out that liberal theology. We’ll do that next week, but this week we feel we need to explain how we arrived at our new liberal Christian worldview. How does one create and revise a theology.

So today, we start off with asking: “how do we know what we know” …. aka, “epistemology.” The Socratic method: learning by asking questions. We also get into what the term “deconstruction” really means: it’s not simply breaking apart, smashing, and leaving a pile of scattered rubble. It’s more like dissection than demolition: carefully taking something apart in order to learn how it works.

We also take a walk through history, looking at how humans in different periods went about finding truth: the Hellenic Greek period … the Age of Reason, or Enlightenment … the Reformation …. Modernism. Then a period in which we saw the erosion of certainty (Wittgenstein and Gödel destroy the idea that everything can be fully explained purely through mathematics; Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle; Einstein’s theory of relativity: different frameworks produce different realities), which crystalized into Postmodernism, which says there is no absolute truth.

Then we see how these ideas apply to constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing a Christian worldview, which typically involves an appeal to authorities. This is true not just for the evolution of Christianity in general over the past two thousand years, but also Christianity in each one of us over the course of our lifetime.

It’s easy to say that God would be the ultimate authority. But few of us get to hear from God himself … directly. So we then defer to hearing from God’s spokespeople:

prophets who begin their proclamations with: “Thus sayeth the Lord …..” Not just the prophets from many millennia ago: I’ve been in many church settings in which “prophets” or people who “have the gift of prophecy” will cloak themselves in this level of authority.
the Biblical authors, which then puts the idea of Divine Inspiration under the microscope.
the Fathers of the Church (in the first few centuries after Christ, who proceed to hammer out entirely new elements of Christian theology, and formulate these into church tradition and creedal statements such as the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed.
parents, pastors, Sunday school workers and youth pastors

In the course of this exploration through Church history and Christian epistemology, we learn about a useful interpretational tool or exercise: the Wesleyan quadrilateral … shaping and refining ideas through a lens or prism or filter that has four corners or pillars: scripture, church tradition, reason (science; philosophy), and experience (culture; historical events and crises). Many Christians would prioritize two of those poles: scripture and church tradition. We advocate for having more flexibility between the four, even allowing science to question scripture (which we now see as a very human document). “Discovered truth” (science and philosophy) versus “Revealed truth” (theology).

Finally, we add one other feature or strategy to that Wesleyan quadrilateral: running the ramp of reason before making a leap of faith.

Next week, Luke’s going to use this modified Wesleyan quadrilateral — with full flexibility in all four corners, and a built-in ramp of reason — to present his revised Christian worldview, one which was very Fundamentalist Evangelical but is now quite liberal. And then we’ll get those two world-renowned Christian theologians (one ultra-conservative, the other very liberal) commenting on that.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like previous ones in which we’ve done a deep-dive into the human fingerprints all over the Old Testament (#57) and New Testament (#81), Divine Inspiration (#101), and an egregious example of people using God and scripture to justify crazy ideas (#98).

Episode image by Andrew. Thanks Andrew!

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A sneak-peak at what’s in store for S6 …. and why!

Season Five ended rather abruptly, in part due to practical reasons (the Fall is always a busy time … teaching, hunting, shutting the property down for the winter). But there was also very much an internal, philosophical/theological thing going on: getting increasingly disheartened and disillusioned by things going on in the world. Western society seemed to be increasingly in upheaval (and that was months before what descended on us in January!?), the Evangelical world was getting more and more weird, social media becoming toxic, and we were struggling with re-evaluating what we still believed. Or didn’t believe. As we started the New Year, I [Luke] was resigning myself to the fact that I’d given up most of the Evangelical faith that I’d grown up in for fifty years, and was becoming more comfortable with the label “Liberal Christian.”

And then my social media offered up to me an article written by a highly-credentialed conservative theologian who had been THE Professor of Theology at the biggest Baptist university in the world, introducing his new book: Against Liberal Theology: putting the brakes on Progressive Christianity. Dr. Roger Olson described Liberal Christianity as not only unorthodox, but even heretical! It hit me like a slap in the face! Well, call me a sucker for punishment, but I felt I needed to talk to this scholar to see if my reasons for embracing Liberal Theology were solid and defensible. While preparing for that conversation, I discovered an equally highly-credentialed liberal theologian — Dr. Douglas F. Ottati — who wrote his own book: A theology for the twenty-first century. Well didn’t that title catch my eye!?

I contacted both scholars, and within hours … literally … both said they’d be happy to talk to us.

And thus, Season Six was birthed!

This episode sets the stage for that conversation with two titans on either end of the Christian spectrum. Scott and I discuss whether we need to re-brand: do we need to change the title of our podcast, given that we’ve given up on Evangelicalism? We polled our private Facebook discussion group about this and got a clearly decisive answer …. m’eh!? We also discuss whether the mission and trajectory of the podcast will be different in Season Six: we shared comments from our listeners, who see the podcast as a community, a support group, and providing role models, tools, and ideas. We’re going to lean more heavily into that.

We close out the episode with a sneak-peak at what’s coming down the Recovering Evangelicals pipeline. After we hear what Drs. Olson and Ottati have to say about Liberal Christian Theology itself, we’re going to hear from several people who themselves made the transition out of a Fundamentalist/Evangelical faith into something more liberal/progressive, but did so from very different perspectives: one as a professor in the Academy (Peter Enns) and the other as a pastor (Brian MacLaren).

As always, tell us your thoughts on this episode in the comment box below.

If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy several previous ones we referred to, covering the Gospel (#12), Atonement Theology (#19 and #20), a new understanding of Easter (#112), Jesus as the Jewish Messiah (#82) or Cosmic Divine Being (#83), as well as a collection of personal stories from listeners transitioning out of traditional conservative Evangelicalism.

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A retrospective that spotlights a provocative thread with huge theological and existential implications: the primordial cosmic ‘egg’ was fine-tuned, preprogrammed, and front-end loaded!

In this Season Finale, we look back at an incredible series of episodes — most of them in the past few months, but many others from as far back as four years ago — and tease out a thread that’s central to the re-building of our Christian faith. In contrast to the traditional Young Earth Creationist version of the origin of the universe and life, we look at a narrative that has grown out of on-going work done by scientists. Millions of scientists, working over many centuries, many of them self-identifying as Christian, pursuing a divinely-inspired search for truth.

The primordial cosmic egg that ‘exploded’ in the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago — estimated to be “the size of a grapefruit” — was packed with an amazing array of ingredients. Over the past couple months, several world-class astrophysicists, mathematicians, and philosophers talked about those ingredients including quantum mechanics, relativity, string theory, atomic properties, and a couple dozen physical constants (such as the cosmological constant, gravitational constant, speed of light, weight of an electron, and many more). But we also heard in Season One about other ingredients: thermodynamics, entropy, randomness, probability, order, predictability, determinism, massively large numbers, dynamic complexity, chaos theory, and biological evolution.

Those conversations had us repeatedly using three provocative descriptors of that primordial cosmic ‘egg’, descriptors that have huge theological and existential implications.

(1) that ‘egg’ was fine-tuned. Among scholars who are properly trained to weigh in on this aspect of astrophysics, there is little disagreement that this ‘egg’ was incredibly fine-tuned to produce a universe full of ‘useable stuff’ … stars, planets, and a Periodic Table full of elements (from cell-building blocks like hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon and oxygen … all the way up to biochemically-reactive inorganic metals like iron, nickel, copper, manganese, selenium and zinc). The delicate balancing of the various physical constants is often compared to balancing a pencil on its sharpened tip.

(2) that ‘egg’ was preprogrammed to produce life. Other scholars who are properly trained to weigh in on biology and biochemistry will agree that “life hit the ground running.” In the cosmic equivalent of the blink of an eye, almost as soon as Earth formed, thermodynamics, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and inorganic metals began churning out the building blocks of life, forming ever more complex organic structures, biochemical synthetic pathways and “prebiotic entities” which eventually produced living organisms. The latter then embarked on a journey of inventing and exchanging newer genetic solutions to physiological and environmental problems, until we see the rich, diverse ecosystems of today.

(3) the ‘egg’ was front-end loaded to produce agape-capable beings, and the cognitive machinery in our heads evolved to point us toward something much bigger than ourselves. No one can deny that humans are a religious species. It’s built into our brains. Why?

This episode had us reminiscing over the many conversations we had with dozens of scientists and philosophers, and we called out the episode numbers that each of them featured in so that you can go back and unpack the claims they made.

In the end, we feel that in trying to make sense of how we humans came to this point in space and time, it comes down to a choice …. a leap of faith. One either believes in some kind of a Divinity, or believes that we’re a computer simulation in some multi-dimensional hypercosmic experiment, or believes that we are the product of a mind-breaking stroke of luck, a freak cosmic accident. What’s at stake in that choice? … meaning, purpose, fulfilment, self-actualization.

Once again, this is the end of Season Five. If you want to be notified when future episodes will start coming out, you’ll need to subscribe. In the meantime, check out our archive of 170 episodes: they’re listed chronologically, thematically, and by name of our guest experts. Tell your friends, family, and followers about this rich resource made freely available to anyone who wants to explore aspects of science, theology and philosophy from an exVangelical point of view.

Yet another novel creation by Andrew, to whom we give a huge thank you for your many other contributions over the course of this podcast!

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After life got a foothold on Earth, it immediately set about to filling the various emerging ecosystems with new organisms.

If you compressed the 3.7 billion year march of life on this planet down to 24 hours: earth comes into existence at midnight, the first fossils of life appear in the wee hours of the morning, the first multicellular life forms at dinner time, the first fish, land plants and amphibians by 10 pm, dinosaurs by 10:30, birds and mammals by 11:30 at night, and humans at midnight.

A lot happened during the last few hours of that day: what was life doing all morning and afternoon? We found out last week, in our conversation with Dr. Stephen Freeland, that it was building things using the complex macromolecules synthesized by non-living minerals around deep ocean hydrothermal vents, integrating together metabolic and genetic networks. Increasing the levels of complexity. Building genes, and sharing the information with neighboring bugs. Writing pages and pages of ideas. And then, right around the dinner hour on our metaphorical clock above, life hit the ground running. Combining, consolidating, integrating, experimenting …. producing plants, fish, amphibians, reptiles, insects, birds, mammals … and consciousness.

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Simon Conway Morris about that cosmic terraforming experiment, and some of the mechanisms involved. In particular, we talked quite a bit about convergence: different life forms on parallel evolutionary journeys landing on the same winning strategies again and again. I used the analogy of “reaching into the freezer” for solutions to physiological, environmental and evolutionary problems. That ‘freezer’ was the collective biotic genome that had been building up during the first two or three billion years … between “the wees hours of the morning” and the late afternoon on our metaphorical clock. Dr. Conway Morris wasn’t too comfortable with my ‘freezer’ analogy …. it sounded too much like Intelligent Design, and he is absolutely no fan of that ideology (nor am I or Scott). His preferred wording was to refer to the genome as being “seeded with inevitabilities”, which I think resonates perfectly with our overall theme of fine-tuning to produce life.

We also spent some time talking about Simon’s latest book: From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution. He clarified some of the myths that have been built up around so-called ‘missing links’, mass extinctions, human exceptionalism (how we’re so different from all the other animals), extraterrestrials and the Fermi Paradox.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Dr. Simon Conway Morris at his university page.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like a couple we did three years ago with Dr. James Shapiro and with Dr. Jeffrey Schloss on the topic of speciation, or the many other episodes we’ve released on the subject of Fine Tuning.

Episode image is once again thanks to Andrew.

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Deep ocean hydrothermal vents may have been the stage for the biggest play on earth: the origin of life!

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been exploring the fine-tuning of the universe to produce life … complex, intelligent life. This week and next, we’re going to look at how it seems that the appearance of life was baked into that fine-tuning. That the moment the universe had presented a platform or stage, life appeared almost immediately on that stage, and just as quickly began to complexify, as if it were all preprogrammed.

We talked to Dr. Freeland, who studied at Oxford, York, and Cambridge Universities, did his post-doc at Princeton University, and spent four years as project manager for NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, leading a team of astrophysicists, astrochemists and astrobiologists, all focusing their efforts on trying to understand the origin of life.

We began with the fact that it took roughly 10 billion years to create Earth itself, but then only half a billion years for life to appear and spread across that newly formed Earth to such a degree that it left fossil evidence that we can now read several billion years later. (Earlier this week, it was in the news that the same may have been found on Mars!)

Next, we talked about the conditions on Earth that seemed to be so permitting for life: there was almost no oxygen, no land, and relatively few free minerals! But two key ingredients that were present was tectonic activity and hydrothermal vents on the ocean surface. Those vents began spewing out minerals, heat, and acidity, which in turn began to create oxygen, electricity, and complex macromolecules. All of those together … somehow … then created life! And life began complexifying. One of the things that living organisms did was replicate the conditions around those hydrothermal vents: they learned how to use complex lipid membranes and inorganic metals to set up gradients of acidity and electricity, and use those to then generate energy molecules (we now call these mitochondria). At the same time, they were creating genetic information, and setting up metabolic and synthetic networks. And they started freely sharing that genetic information, passing it around through horizontal gene transfer (neighbor-to-neighbor transmission, in contrast to the more familiar parent-to-child transmission).

This may be the first step toward solving a few of the biggest questions in origin of life research: how did life originate … was it genes/reproduction first, or metabolism/energy production first, or lipid membranes first. The answer that Dr. Freeland posits: minerals alone were creating complex macromolecules first, and life then learned to copy or replicate what the minerals were already doing (some listeners might here recall an often used analogy of the wooden scaffolding needed to produce stone archways). For the past few decades, people have been talking about the RNA World that preceded our own DNA World; but both were preceded by the Mineral World!

Putting all of this together with the past three episodes, what we get is a Big Bang that seemed to be finely-tuned to produce stars, planets, atomic elements, and the periodic table, which in turn followed their own built-in rules and properties to create complex macromolecules and even more complex bundles of amino acids, nucleic acids, and lipids (‘prebiotic entities’, loosely comparable to what we now call viruses), which eventually combined to produce what we would now call ‘life’.

We ended with what all of this has to say about any possible meaning and purpose of the universe!

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Dr. Stephen Freeland at his current institutional faculty page and his web-page at NASA.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #66, in which we talked to Dr. Freeland three years ago, or the many other episodes we’ve released on the subject of Fine Tuning.

Episode image is once again thanks to Andrew.

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An atheist response to fine-tuning: a super intellect ‘monkeying’ with the physics, a cosmic computer simulation, the multiverse hypothesis, and “the Gambler’s Fallacy.”

So far, we’ve heard from five different university-trained scholars with theistic worldviews about fine-tuning of the universe: a Christian astronomer, a Jewish mathematician/physicist duo, a Christian astrophysicist, and a Christian theologian/philosopher. In this episode, we’ll hear from another university-trained astrophysicist on the same subject, but this one describing himself as a card-carrying atheist … and who nonetheless agrees that the data strongly suggests the universe is indeed fine-tuned. Dr. Geraint Lewis grew up in Wales, was a science junky from the time he could first read, who later found he was good with mathematics and physics, and eventually found himself as a Professor of Astrophysics at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy. And he firmly accepts fine-tuning … but without a “Tuner”!?

We first checked if he means something different than our other five guests, when he refers to “fine-tuning.” He too points to the fundamental constants of the universe: he agrees that scientists have discovered equations which explain various aspects of the universe, through a process of contemplation, reasoning and scratching away on chalkboards, but those equations have certain constants that can’t be derived in any way …. they just have to be measured.

For example, almost everyone has heard of Einstein’s famous equation: E=mc2. Reasoning alone drives him (and them) to two conclusions: that energy and matter are interchangeable (we said in our introductory episode that matter is a frozen form of energy), and that the amount of energy (“E” in the equation) in a chunk of matter depends on the amount of mass in that chunk (“m” in the equation). That makes sense! But the conversion factor between energy and mass is defined by a constant — the speed of light (“c” in the equation) — which can’t be derived from any equation or reasoning. It just has to be posited, and then measured and accepted at face value. Why? Why that constant?

(As an aside, for me this is an example of a scientific equation that is so elegant and provocative that it makes one’s jaw drop. I mean, energy measured in units of joules or kilowatt hours or tons of TNT being determined by one thing measured in grams and another thing measured in meters per second!? Really!?)

Dr. Lewis agrees completely (as do astrophysicists of all stripes) that when you put those equations into a computer model of the universe and then tweak some of the constants just a little bit, the model collapses — in our metaphor from a few weeks back, the pencil standing on its sharpened tip falls over — and you no longer get a universe with a Periodic Table. And thus, no life.

We asked Geraint to give us an insider’s perspective on Sir Fred Hoyle, the world-renowned astronomer with a deeply atheistic worldview who rejected the Big Bang hypothesis because it “gave too much to the Creationists” but nonetheless also said: “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has ‘monkeyed’ with the physics as well as the chemistry and biology.” Getting a fuller understanding of the context of Hoyle’s words, it seems to me that Creationists may have added a bit too much spin to both stories.

We also asked him about non-theistic explanations for fine-tuning. He said some non-theists entertain the possibility that we might be part of some kind of cosmic computer simulation, while others opt for the multiverse hypothesis. We asked: if by definition we can’t get any real-world evidence for a multiverse (because it’s outside of our own universe), can this really be called science, or is it a faith statement? And also: isn’t appealing to the multiverse hypothesis committing the “inverse Gambler’s Fallacy.” You’ll need to hear the episode to know what that Fallacy is all about … and Geraint’s response to both push-backs.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Dr. Geraint Lewis at his university faculty web-page and his own personal web-site, as well as his latest book that he co-authored with last week’s guest, Dr. Luke Barnes.

If you enjoyed this episode, you should really check out the many other episodes we’ve released on the subject of Fine Tuning.

Episode image: another prize-winner by Andrew, after giving his AI the prompt “a universe that generates itself.” Thanks Andrew!

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A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos

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It takes an incredibly finer level of fine-tuning to produce a universe that has carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sodium, potassium, calcium, iron, copper, zinc, selenium, molybdenum and many other trace elements needed for life.

Last week, we explored the first of three meanings of the term “fine-tuning of the universe”: the delicate precision and balance of the fundamental constants and laws needed just to produce a universe full of simple atoms (like hydrogen and helium), planets and stars.

This week, we look at the second meaning of that term: how that delicate and precise balance has to be even more finely tuned so that a wide variety of different kinds of atoms are produced … including those that are absolutely essential for life. Not just the lighter ones that are necessary for making the basic structural components of cells (hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur) and the slightly heavier ones necessary for basic cell physiology like generating electrical signals and causing contraction (sodium, potassium, calcium), but also the much heavier and more complicated atoms that give many enzymes their core functionality that is so necessary for life (the iron in your blood cells, or the copper, zinc, selenium, and molybdenum in your liver enzymes).

We talked to Dr. Luke Barnes (PhD in astronomy from Cambridge University), who continued the conversation that Elie and Aaron started with us last week. He explained how those fundamental constants and laws of physics needed to be so very precisely tuned in order to produce the bewildering array of atomic elements (we have 118 of them here on earth) that are so necessary for intelligent life. He also told us how that precise tuning is so provocatively disturbing that even the staunchly atheistic astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle said more than once to his equally atheistic peers: “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.”

Dr. Barnes also talked at length about how the common atheistic response to this fine tuning is to appeal to the multiverse, and how those that do so don’t properly understand that the probabilities do NOT in fact substantiate their belief (that word “belief” is chosen carefully and deliberately), and this appeal is really not much more than a “luck-of-the-gaps.” Using the multiverse to “explain” the problem is not scientific, since it can’t ever be put to any kind of a scientific test. And, in one sense, it pushes back the goalposts, since even that multiverse would need to be incredibly fine-tuned in order to be capable of producing a finely tuned universe.

The episode concluded with the “so what?” question … What do we do with this idea of “fine-tuning”? How does it affect us? Does it say anything about the meaning of life, or whether God exists?

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Dr. Barnes at his university faculty page and his personal web-site, and check out his book A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos.

Episode image: once again a work of genius from Andrew! I asked him: “How about taking the iconic image of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, and have God manipulating a machine with buttons/dials/knobs etc., and that machine producing living animals?” And this is one of many images he came up with using his generative AI! Thanks Andrew!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always, tell us your thoughts on this.

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

Image by Andrew. Thanks Andrew!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Give it time!

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

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

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

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

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

But do they? Fully?

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

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

Episode image by Andrew. Thanks Andrew!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

his recent introspective posts on his own identity, his core theology, and his goal/mission for the blogs and videos he produces
why is he so focused on AiG and Ken Ham? … answer: “because they’re the ten-ton gorilla in the YECist game”
in 2022, AiG reported $62M in annual revenue (roughly three times Eerdman’s; almost as much as Zondervan’s) plus $112M in assets … they’re building a multi-media empire!?
with so much excess cash on hand (~$20M above expenses, every year), why don’t they invest in some high-quality scientific experts who can speak with actual expertise and authority to the YECist topics which they address? [answer: such experts with a YECist worldview don’t exist!?]
instead, in addition to the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter, they’re using the extra cash to build a replica of the Tower of Babel. Literally! Seriously! Here are two posts that AiG themselves released in 2021 and in 2022 announcing this development.
despite not having qualified experts to promote the scientific claims they make, they are nonetheless able to comprehend the criticisms against their claims (in other words, they’re not just blind to their own folly); Joel told an interesting story about how a colleague transformed one of AiG’s posts ridiculing Flat Earthers by replacing the word “flat” with “young” and turned AiG’s own article into a perfectly cogent argument against YECism!? Here’s a link to the original story and a link to Joel’s own unpacking of that story.
how does Joel deal with the frustration of YECist leaders/speakers who do not work within the scientific areas on which they pontificate, while he himself does?
why was YECism introduced, and why has it become so widely accepted and popular? [the answer lies in some history from the 1800s]
AiG’s primary motivating factor is that the Theory of Evolution is the root of all of society’s problems (homosexuality; abortion; crime; corruption)
is YECism growing, or dying out? While the numbers might be going down, the fervor of those persisting has not!
is home-schooling part of the problem? It was, but fewer people are opting for that: however, AiG are stepping into the gap by creating all kinds of educational curriculum for school systems!?
young people are being recruited and groomed to become YECist ambassadors, but in the process of dissecting the arguments for Evolution in order to come up with counterarguments …. they end up becoming convinced and then leave that YECist worldview (often even rejecting Christianity entirely)
recent changes in the leadership level at AiG: Ken Ham isn’t getting younger, so who’s standing in the wings?
recent changes in some of their talking points:
- growing emphasis on societal issues
- hyperspeciation (hundreds of millions of years of evolution being condensed down into a few thousand years!?)
- a greater appeal to miracles in order to deal with scientific criticisms
recent changes at the membership / adherents level? …. diminishing? … youth today are changing their focus
how do we respond to YECists in our personal, daily interactions (family, friends, colleagues)?
a few words about the Institute for Creation Research, and the Discovery Institute (headquarters for Intelligent Design).

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

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

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

Episode image by Andrew. Thanks Andrew!

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

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

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

at Regent College, he was exposed to a less literal, more symbolic/metaphorical view of the book of Revelation, and its literary parallels with the first eleven chapters of Genesis; this inspired him to develop new curricula for teaching high school students
his first teaching position in California: developed a World View course/program, and another course which unpacked what he’d learned about Revelation and Gen 1-11; these courses were generally well received by the students
got Masters degree in Old Testament studies at Trinity Western
started teaching at a school in Arkansas: delivered the same courses mentioned above, but these were less well received here… he was forced to leave
was recruited to another school in Alabama: those same courses worked reasonably well for several years
then a new headmaster was hired who insisted on eliminating any and all challenges to Young Earth Creationism, and bringing in curriculum that was created by Answers-in-Genesis and Bob Jones University; sparks fly; toxic relationship; was essentially forced to quit
adjunct teaching position at U. of Alabama, then moved back to Arkansas
the main drive in Ken Ham’s work is not so much a literal Gen 1-11 or to understand science better, but to fight the culture war (modern views on sexuality, abortion, etc.) against secular liberals
we talked briefly about other academics who were forced out by YECist revisionist administrations (Peter Enns is one that our listeners will recognize) … this is how the YECist world works!?
Theory of Evolution is viewed as equivalent to atheism
the doctrine of inerrancy is also a major problem
Joel’s book: The Heresy of Ham: what every evangelical needs to know about the Creation-Evolution controversy and what we can all learn about rigid ideology and fighting the culture war
for whom was he writing … what is the purpose of the book?
linking of Evangelical faith with politics ….. culture wars
many parts of his book resonate closely with what we heard from Dr. Mark Noll last week (“The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind“)
what advice did he have for how we should interact with family, friends, co-workers, neighbours who are YECist?

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

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

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A retrospective journey through four years of episode releases had us asking this fundamental question. The short answer: of course it is!

A few of the most recently released episodes prompted us to think back to about a dozen other episodes we’ve released in the past that focused on the cognitive machinery in our heads, and got us asking: are spiritual/religious experiences a figment of our imaginations?

This retrospective line of thinking began with the pair of episodes released a couple weeks back, looking at the emotion of awe (#151 and #152): a uniquely human emotion which always accompanies a spiritual experience (animals seem to experience other emotions like joy, rage, surprise, sadness … but not awe, because they don’t exhibit the other physiological changes in breathing, heart rate or goosebumps that accompany awe).

One of those guest experts had already talked to us a couple years ago about two other forms of software in our head which also contribute to a spiritual or religious experience: the “hypersensitive agency detector” and the “promiscuous teleology detector” (#78). Those two detectors are behind the human tendency to think there’s a reason or explanation for things that happen and an intention or will or agent behind it (“why did that family have to die in that tornado?”). This reminded us of three episodes we did a while back that looked at the neurobiology — the “wiring” — behind a spiritual or religious experience, one that can be hijacked by hallucinogenic drugs (#43, #44, and #45), as well as the machinery and molecules that seem to contribute to our sense of having a soul (#8, #9, #10, and #75) and consciousness (#16). I’ve outlined all of this and more in a lot more detail in my third book: Soul-searching: the evolution of JudeoChristian thinking on the soul and the afterlife.

That collection of cognitive machinery explains a number of other religious/spiritual phenomena that we looked at in other episodes: humans feeling a special connection to another unseen dimension or being (#147); the “personal relationship” with the Divine (#42); speaking in tongues (#100); prayer (#99); the belief in divine inspiration of scripture (#57, #81, #101) and divine revelation (#115); the evolution of a religious streak and morality in humans (#76, #77). In fact, it would also contribute to the output of the entire brain in general, and so we might also list the dozens of episodes we’ve done looking at this-or-that aspect of philosophy, theology and science.

So again, this integrative retrospective at that string of episodes over the past four years had us asking: “are spiritual/religious experiences all in our head?” We went back and forth on the topics of: solipsism; the circular logic of Descartes’ famous line: “I think, therefore I am”; where and what is the soul; Artificial Intelligence developing consciousness and becoming sentient; our own reality being a computer simulation (like Neo in the Matrix); the nature of the soul, Alzheimer’s disease and Phineas Gage.

And then we tried to pull all these thoughts together into some kind of conclusion, which kept weaving back and forth between yes and no:

of course it’s all in our head … but so are all our other experiences. I interact with my wife using the same machinery; in fact, I experience everything around me (a mosquito on my arm) or inside me (that bowl of bean and lentil soup that’s stirring things up inside me) using that same machinery. We don’t negate the existence of any of those … nor should we feel compelled to negate the reality of our spiritual/religious experiences.
what about the fact that we can measure all those other things using science and scientific tools, but we can’t [yet] measure the spiritual realm? Well, there was a time when science couldn’t measure ultraviolet light, atoms, or radioactivity either…
does that mean we have to be sheeple, and superstitiously embrace every claim out there? No, we’re allowed to question things (something that religion finds to be prohibitively dangerous … the dreaded “slippery slope”).

For four years, this podcast has been questioning and testing theological claims. And at this point, we find that accepting the reality of a God, a creative life force, or even just a Universal Consciousness helps put certain things — like the exquisite fine tuning of the physical constants of the universe, beauty, and life itself — into a framework that makes better sense of our reality. As CS Lewis said: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

We ended the episode off with the question of why we humans have this cognitive machinery in the first place. Did it evolve, or were we given it? Was it an accident … an evolutionary “spandrel”? Does it confer some kind of selective advantage? Or is it a toy that some higher being(s) gave humans to play with? Or did the Divine intend some kind of divine-human relationship, for the same reason that we might get a pet? Or all of the above?

Let us know how you might answer those questions by email, our by leaving comments at the podcast’s WordPress site, my public Facebook page, or at our private Facebook Discussion Group.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy …. well … any of the ones we linked you to in the text above! Or some of the other ones listed at our theme page entitled “Religious experiences, spiritual encounters“

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

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For some, the Bible takes on a deeper meaning when you read it less literally … exchanging certainty and rigidity for the fluidity of symbology, metaphor, and mysticism.

If there’s one characteristic that sets Christian Fundamentalists apart from other forms of Christianity, it’s an over zealous commitment to a literal reading of the Bible. Exaggeration, embellishment, hyperbole, and wordplay are all part of daily conversation, but Fundies seem to think these have no place when it comes to the writing, reading and interpretation of scripture. Just think Young Earth Creationism and the Chicago statement on Biblical Inerrancy.

Today we talk to someone from the other end of the Christian spectrum, one who grew up in a Roman Catholic environment, spent the first 20 years of his life as a Baptist, but was eventually drawn into the Eastern Orthodox tradition. In fact, he has carved a career out of symbolism. Jonathan Pageau is a world-recognized sculptor from Montreal Quebec, who has devoted his talent to Eastern Orthodox iconography; he often speaks on that art form and on that Christian perspective. In our conversation with him, we talked about:

mysticism is missing from much of evangelical practice, even though it was practised by the earliest Christian fathers and leaders …. “read the gospel of John for goodness sake!”
there is a long history of mysticism in early Christianity
reason vs symbolism, and their roles in the spiritual experience
deep familiarity with Roman Catholicism, Protestantism (Baptist), Evangelical youth culture
in his 20s, Jonathan went to college, which led to reading books and exploring questions that eventually drew him to the world of Eastern Orthodox faith and its art (first painting, then later iconography)
iconography is a powerful language … tries to capture patterns, resonances all around us (in daily life … in science … in the Bible)
iconography is a visual language …. universal …. developed very early in Christianity
Jonathan exchanged the certainty and rigidness of Evangelical religion for a more fluid, symbolic form in Eastern Orthodoxy
Jesus always taught in parables, rather than literal didactic sermonizing … very symbolic and metaphorical
teleological language is every where in scientific discussion
also see this in the secular world: Star Wars, Marvel Universe, Burning Man are drenched in symbolism and imagery; devotees of things like these are [unconsciously] exploring religious themes … maybe even Christian themes …. they are being liturgical
Tolkien, allegory, eucatastrophe, and “True Myth”
Christ and the self-sacrificial motif, which is also employed in all kinds of stories, movies, songs
we asked if, having left a literal, rigid, Evangelical world for a symbolic Eastern Orthodox perspective, does Jonathan now find the Bible becomes more real when you take it more metaphorically
in the world of science and math, Logical Positivists thought they could reduce reality to numbers and equations, and take meaning out of reality…. but they couldn’t! They found language and symbology to be more effective
Western society has tried several times to remove religion from our world/reality, and the result has not been good, sometimes even disastrous (French Revolution; Communism). Today, the Enlightenment has played itself out, and left us empty. Now we see religion coming crashing down on us in the form of Woke Culture … bending truth, twisting meaning and reality …. some things you can’t say because they’re “sacrilegious.”

As always, tell us what you think (comment below, or in our private Facebook Discussion group) …

Find more information about Jonathan Pageau at his website and at his YouTube channel.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like our previous conversation with Dr. Louis Markos about literature, mythology, and Jesus as “the True Myth,” or the one with Dr. Seth Hart about how scientists can’t avoid injecting purpose and meaning in their descriptions of science, including evolutionary biology.

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A northern Irish philosopher (who grew up in the 30-year war between “Protestants” and “Catholics”) gives us a whole new perspective on this ancient religion.

This week, we’ll hear from a very thought-provoking philosopher — Dr. Peter Rollins — who we guarantee will have you thinking about Christian faith in entirely new ways. Peter grew up in Ireland during “the Troubles” …. a 30 year conflict between “Catholics” and “Protestants,” marked by bombings and brutally vicious killings. At that time, identity became weaponized (much as we see happening today). Nihilism triggered a fundamental rupture of his worldview, and the resulting cognitive crisis led Peter into religion and religious studies. His academic studies “broke [him] in the best possible way.” He’s “not a confessional Christian” (he doesn’t define himself along a set of doctrines and beliefs). Instead, he’s interested in “different modes of being” and is drawn to the Christian mode of being: “Christianity is the insight that there is a fundamental antagonism, assymetry or lack at the heart of everything, and the universe is fundamentally incomplete, fundamentally contradictory. The cure is the ability and the courage to embrace this contradiction at the heart of everything.”

In our conversation with him, we spent about ten minutes on each the following five main themes:

(1) Christianity: the contradictions and incompleteness inherent in the universe and experienced reality, and how that frustrates the insatiable desire of humans to fill an inner void through money, love, power, sex, knowledge …. or even religious faith. But all of these will fail. Christianity is unique among other faiths in having a belief in the death of God and a self-divided absolute: this frees us from the pursuit of trying to be happy, whole and complete. Hegel provided a whole new perspective on Christ’s cry: “My God, why have you forsaken me?” Philosophers thought they could find certainty in mathematics, but even there they found contradictions and paradoxes.

(2) God: Supreme Being? Beyond being? Ground of being? Event? Anselm: God is that which none greater can be conceived. The mystics (Eckhart): God is the name for that which cannot be conceived. Existential thinkers (Tillich): that which you cannot objectify, but is present in the rationale behind truth and reality. Karl Barth and the numinous. Kant versus Hegel. Kierkegaard versus Hegel (or Hegelians). Roger Penrose: quantum indeterminacy and proto-consciousness. Transcendence and immanence. Jacques Derrida: deconstructing words and ideas.

(3) God-is-dead theology. The notion of the death of God actually began with the Apostle Paul, who saw this notion as essential for salvation. Luther, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud all built on this idea. We also talked about one of Rollin’s latest projects: “Pyrotheology” (the inspiration for this name came from Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruti, who once said that “the only church that illuminates is a burning church”).

(4) the Bible, and Divine Inspiration. Rollins puts a new spin on inerrancy and infallibility: we have to treat the Bible as real and “literally” true in the same way that a psychoanalyst needs to take their patient’s dreams as real and literal before looking for the true meaning deep down. We need to take the words, images, ideas as absolute truth, and then begin to parse and deconstruct them.

(5) Christ. The paradox of his humanity and divinity. Tertullian: I believe in the crucifixion because it’s absurd. Hegel and the monstrosity of Christ. The historical Jesus versus “the Christ.” The paradox of the incarnation (and resurrection) within a first century Hellenic Greek context (which saw the body as evil, and the spirit as good).

Find more information about Dr. Peter Rollins at his website and at his YouTube channel.

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An experimental psychologist and a theologian with a PhD in psychology give us their perspectives on the emotion of awe and its role in the spiritual/religious experience.

Last week, we explained why we decided to look more closely at the emotion of awe and its role in the spiritual / religious experience, as well as how scientists measure this emotion (external physiological and behavioral changes; internal changes in emotion, perception). We also heard a personal story of someone whose life was altered dramatically by his experiences during a solar eclipse.

This week, we talked to two scholars, one of them an experimental psychologist (Dr. Justin Barrett), and the other a theologian with PhD training in psychology (Dr. Kutter Callaway). Our conversation with them covered a lot of diverse territory:

the distinct overlap between the experiences had by a non-religious person during a solar eclipse, and a new religious convert having a “born-again” experience during a church revival rally
Emmanuel Kant, the sublime, the numinous
awe can be measured/experienced in six dimensions:
- altered time perception
- sense of self diminishing
- sense of connectedness beyond the self (to people, the university, …. or deity)
- sense of vastness
- physical sensations like goosebumps
- need for accommodation
awe can be mixed with other emotions which modify the experience and give it a positive or negative impact
- … with fear (it’s not just overwhelming …. can also be scary, terrifying)
- … with affection
- … with surprise
- … joy
awe falls under the umbrella of “positive psychology” (some people might think psychologists only look at dysfunction like depression or schizophrenia), and thus can promote well-being at the individual and societal levels
awe can have impact on social dominance orientation (aka, racism), and can be manipulated when presenting an ideology (protests, rallies)
can animals experience awe (given that some species seem to experience happiness, sadness, grief, gratitude)?
if this is a uniquely human thing, why did humans evolve this complex response (or why were we given it)?
is it “just” an evolutionary spandrel (one of the triangular spaces between two arches in a cathedral) or “exaptation” (in other words, is it an accidental by-product)?
Gobekli Tepe, the world’s oldest temple, has massive anthropoid monoliths which, when struck with your palm, emit an eerie moan or gong sound: experiencing this during dim lighting, burning incense, animal sacrifices must have been an incredibly awe-inducing experience! Such an experience could unite the group, draw them closer, make them feel like they were led and protected by a supernatural being … all of these outcomes would confer an evolutionary advantage if/when the group faced an external threat
does awe play into spiritual/religious experiences today? We talked specifically about people who deconvert but still want to be “spiritual-but-not-religious,“ as well as proponents/adherents of Intelligent Design ideology
humans are inclined to seeing purpose and agency, because of two peculiar cognitive processes (“software”) that have evolved in the human brain: the “promiscuous teleology” and “hypersensitive agency” detection systems.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find out more about Dr. Kutter Callaway at his personal web-page or faculty web-page. Learn more about Dr. Justin Barrett at the web-page for his new professional outlet … Blueprint 1543 … as well as to a video library in which he explains a variety of aspects of cognitive anthropology.

If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy our previous episode with Dr. Justin Barrett, in which we talked at length about the “promiscuous teleology” and “hypersensitive agency detection” systems in human evolution, or our episode with Dr. Seth Hart addressing how even atheists cannot avoid invoking teleology (purpose, design, directedness) when speaking about biology (a prime example of the promiscuous teleology detection system?). Or check out our collection of episodes which focus specifically on the religious experience and spiritual encounters.

Episode image by Memory Catcher from Pixabay.

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After a quick primer on this uniquely human phenomenon, we’ll hear from someone who had a profound, life-changing experience during a solar eclipse, and then relate all of this to religious/spiritual experiences.

Humans seem to be unique among all other species on Earth when it comes to the emotion of awe.

Whether it’s experienced while standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, staring up at Niagara Falls from the bow of the Maid of the Mist, looking at Earth while doing a space-walk outside the International Space Station, or physically bumping into Taylor Swift getting out of her limo, awe evokes a physical response: you might gasp, start breathing faster, your heart races, you get goosebumps on your arms and the hairs on your neck start to rise. You’ll also experience cognitive changes: you suddenly feel small, or that your very being begins to dissolve …. you might suddenly feel more connected to humanity, to nature, to the universe … or to Deity.

Psychologists and anthropologists are now paying a lot more attention to the emotion of awe. It seems to be important to a greater sense of well-being. And it might be an important part of a spiritual/religious experience. Next week, we’re going to hear from an experimental psychologist and a theologian about that last point. But in this episode, we thought we should first give a bit of background on this uniquely human emotion (many animals seem to experience joy, rage, fear, sadness/grief, curiosity …. but not awe!?).

And we wanted to give you a prime example of a personally profound awe-experience. Before witnessing a solar eclipse a couple decades ago, David Makepeace really had no religious/spiritual inclinations whatsoever. After encountering one, though, his life was changed: his relationship with the universe became personal, and existentially compelling. He found a reason … a purpose … for his existence on this planet at this time. He now understood what Carl Sagan meant about humans being a way for the universe to know itself. And he now has a greater sense of happiness, fulfillment … even gratitude. My words won’t do justice to his story as he tells it: you need to hear it from him. And I guarantee you’ll find it provocative; it will definitely make you think. And ask questions.

One of the questions Scott and I asked ourselves was: how is David’s experience different from a typical spiritual/religious experience that one might have at a revivalist church meeting? There is so much overlap with respect to the physical, cognitive, and emotional responses. Both result in a complete reorientation of one’s place in “the big picture.” In fact, David’s enhanced sense of being a conduit for the consciousness of the universe sounds quite a bit like some newer forms of Christian theology — Open Theology and Process Theology — which claim that God experiences history and time along with us as life happens and we make choices (that he’s not omniscient).

Let us know what you think.

Find more information about David Makepeace, including contact info, upcoming appearances, and a number of “awesome” videos at his personal webpage and his business webpage.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like our previous episodes looking at the brain software that equips humans to having spiritual/religious experiences (episodes #43, #44, #45, and #78), or our episode on Open Theology and Process Theology.

Episode image by fe31lopz at Pixabay.

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Many Christians can fully accept the idea of human evolution, but they use a language which betrays Young Earth Creationism. If we don’t update our language, we may lose a whole generation of Christians.

Many Christians are perfectly fine with human evolution: descent over millions of years down a family tree we share in common with the chimpanzees and orangutans on the one hand, and with Neanderthals and Denisovans on the other. And yet they still use language that is rooted in Young Earth Creationism: referring to people as “fallen creatures” or “broken image bearers,” or saying that we need to be reconciled to God, or “we need to get back to the garden.” These terms, and others, lose their meaning in a worldview that sees humans evolving up the evolutionary ladder. More importantly, these terms force certain theological views and assumptions that might be problematic for making progress in the evolution of our theology (yes, Christianity has been evolving for 2000 years!). For example, moving away from the Biblical belief that mental disease is caused by demons, and towards the modern scientific understanding that the cause is more related to neurochemical imbalances and neuronal damage, will lead to better treatment of the problem.

Our guest today — Dr. Andrew Torrance, from the University of St. Andrew’s, Scotland — helped us through this discussion.

We first talked about the words “creation” and “evolution.” Too often, these terms are used and understood to be in diametrically opposed conflict: “creation versus evolution.” These don’t have to be either/or …. they can be both/and. God can create using evolution. We looked at how the Creation accounts in Genesis themselves use evolutionary language: the plants and animals didn’t pop into existence out of thin air … Genesis says “the land produced” them.

To get around the perceived problem between creation and evolution, some Christians feel the need to refer to “theistic evolution,” rather than just “evolution” as scientists understand the word. But we don’t refer to theistic combustion, or theistic erosion, so why do so here with evolution? It seems the big concern is the random or unguided aspect of evolution: they want God to have control, sovereignty. They need him to intervene in certain places; to bridge the gaps. Not only does this become God-of-the-gaps thinking, but it also starts to sound an awful lot like Intelligent Design, both of which we at this podcast have long ago considered and rejected.

Next, we talked about the terminology used to describe the origin of humans, particularly the trajectory implied within that terminology.

On the one hand, all explanations which try to keep the Biblical accounts in view have humans starting from an elevated position: biologically and cognitively, they’re created in the image of God; morally, they’re sinless; theologically and spiritually, they’re in complete harmony with God. But very quickly, according to those Biblically-based explanations, we lost that preferred status. The “Fall in the Garden.”

Explanations that rest more heavily on science, on the other hand, show the opposite trajectory: humans started off from a lower position, and have been climbing up the evolutionary ladder in all these respects. Biologically and cognitively, we came from simple life forms and up through the primate tree, and have been developing morally and philosophically along the way. At the same time, we’ve been growing theologically and spiritually: we came from life forms that had no concept of God whatsoever, and have been creating temples and religions in our tireless quest for the divine. We didn’t rebel against God, or hide from him: we’ve always been searching for him. Christ’s appearance in human history marks a major inflection point in that upward journey.

Critics of this new worldview always point to recent wars, and the dropping of nuclear bombs. Those critics don’t seem to realize that the same kind of argument works against Christianity (now pointing to the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, and the abuse and genocide of indigenous people groups). Those critics also have too short a timeline in view: human progress shouldn’t be measured over 50 years, but over 50,000 years. In that more distant past, humans weren’t launching disaster relief efforts, or building schools and hospitals, or working to abolish slavery and economic inequalities. They weren’t protesting against wars, the subjugation of women, or racial discrimination. Our progress through these sociological issues may be too slow for some, but these are moral values that are now in our social consciousness when they weren’t in our heads even just a few thousand years ago.

This new worldview also better explains the theological concept of original sin. The Young Earth worldview tends to point to actions (biting into “an apple”, or lying, stealing, lusting, hating, etc.) and inheriting some kind of spiritual disease. But the Hebrew and Greek words used for “sin” in the Bible are both taken from archery, and literally mean “to miss the mark,” in the same way that an arrow fired at a target might land too short, too high, or to either side. That sounds an awful lot like a trajectory! Humans as a species are on that upward climb, and have been making progress over the past many millions of years, but as individuals and societies we just keep falling short of our full potential (which is to be like God).

Christianity needs to change. If we don’t revise our terminology, and even our theology, we may lose a whole generation of Christians; recent trends in church attendance and religious self-identification, revealed by reputable polling agencies, suggest we may be witnessing an extinction event. But the change may go in unpredictable and truly disturbing directions. We talked a bit about how Christian groups around the world are blending their Christian theology with other ideas and worldviews that are arguably anti-Christian (exhibit A here being Evangelicalism amalgamating with the Prosperity Gospel or Christian Nationalism).

A lot of food for thought here!

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also want to peruse our earlier episodes focusing on Young Earth Creationism, or our episode looking in more detail at this more scientific understanding of original sin (in contrast to the traditional theological understanding).

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A week after Easter 2024, and in response to questions from our listeners, we discuss a whole new perspective on who Jesus was, and what he gave the Jews, and the world, when he died on the cross.

Several members of our private Facebook Discussion Group asked us to explain how we’ve been able to reject so much of our Evangelical faith, and yet still hold a worldview that we can call Christian.

We first compared Evangelicalism to a crystalline figurine: well-crafted and beautiful, but brittle. Great to look at, but absolutely not up to being handled too roughly: if you test its limits by asking questions and entertaining certain “what if ….” scenarios, the crystalline figurine starts to fragment. And it seems that cracks always form in the exact same places for everyone who walks down this “slippery slope”: scientific challenges … Christian exclusivism …. inerrancy/infallibility ….. Penal Substitutionary Atonement and eternal conscious torment in Hell …. these are all the same fault lines that everyone finds.

But Christian faith doesn’t have to take that crystalline form: there are other ways to hold a Christian faith. The concept of “God” doesn’t have to look like what you were taught in Sunday school and youth group, or by your parents. Divine interaction with humans doesn’t have to look like the stories you were told: overly literal readings from ancient Jewish texts. It is possible to completely set aside a traditional Evangelical form of faith and still have a sincere Christian faith.

I gave one example: how my perspective on Easter is now completely different. My new understanding of that critical event no longer needs to be shrouded in the supernatural or superstition. The details given to us in the Gospel accounts themselves can be re-interpreted in a way that is 100% rational historically and scientifically, and yet still delivers a profoundly inspirational punch.

The Easter story is a purely Jewish event. A Jewish story. When you carefully read the story of Jesus in the Gospel accounts, without imposing a modern Western Christian worldview on it, it’s all about a Jewish Messiah coming to liberate a captive nation of Israel. Not a cosmic story of blood-spilling to pay the way into an eternal bliss in heaven (and thus avoid an eternal conscious torment in hell). This is how THEY spoke about it …. how THEY saw it. Including Jesus himself, according to his own words, and the impact that his message had on his listeners. We 21st century Western/Christian people, wearing our modern Evangelical glasses, interpret many of the things that Jesus said in a way completely different from the meaning those words would have had for 1st century Jews.

We talked a bit about how Jesus identified fully with the label “Son of Man,” rather than “the Son of God” (in fact, he shunned that latter label), and how this label referred to a figure in one of the prophet Daniel’s visions, a vision of a human being elevated to a new position in the courts of heaven. That said, though, it seems that even Jesus himself may not have understood the path he was taking: how/why a Jewish Messiah was supposed to capitulate to the Roman Empire and the Jewish leaders. Were these latest developments — the crucifixion especially — really part of the plan?

While he was at it — preaching his Jewish Messiah message — Jesus also taught a universal message of love, liberation, sharing, getting along, seeing others as equal … even if it kills you.

I can FULLY accept all of that as factual, historical, and 100% believable. And yet it’s also inspirational. As the non-believing historian Tom Holland concludes, modern Western society is founded on Christian teachings. Jesus was the inflection point in human history. Good can triumph over evil, even through passive resistance: Ghandi in 1930s in India, Martin Luther King in 1965 in Selma Alabama, and Desmond Tutu in the mid-80s, standing up to apartheid in South Africa, all took a page out of that Jesus story, and made it part of their own. Trying to bring heaven to earth. I can climb on board with that message, try to make it my own guiding principle, all without bringing in any emotional or theological baggage from my Evangelical upbringing.

Even atheists and anti-theists can take that approach to the Jesus story.

But then I show how it’s possible to take those steps a bit further: to run the ramp of reason before taking a leap of faith. I can meditate on that story while remaining open to greater possibilities. I’m still open to the idea of a God …. something much bigger than the Big Daddy that I learned about in my Evangelical world. And to the possibility that that something takes an interest in us, in much the same way that I might show interest in a snail crawling along a gravelly bike path, and compassionately move it off the path so it doesn’t get crushed. So maybe that higher being might have used that Jewish guy spreading a message of love and liberation, to nudge our species a bit further along on our journey up the evolutionary ladder.

Why not? Because that sounds too Evangelical? Or because it sounds more rational to say that we’re completely alone in the universe?

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #82, where we talked in detail specifically about Jesus being the Jewish Messiah, or to our series of other episodes in which we build a whole new Christian worldview.

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Brian takes an entirely new and unexpected direction in this latest book: it’s not enough to talk about bringing heaven down to earth, we have to stop creating hell on earth.

Brian MacLaren is widely recognized in the Evangelical community. In fact, in 2015, Time magazine named him one of the 25 most influential Evangelicals in America! But he’s been on a journey through Evangelicalism that whole time, and he recounts some of that history during the first few minutes of our conversation with him. He’s documented the details of that journey in his many books … over two dozen of them. If you’ve read even a few of them, especially the most recent ones, you’d be forgiven for making hasty assumptions about the subject of this next one. But I guarantee you would never have predicted this one.

Life After Doom is about the coming apocalypse …. total ecological and societal collapse. As he put it: “we have created a civilization that, the more it succeeds, the faster it accelerates toward suicide … we’re sucking more resources out of the earth than it can sustain, and we’re pumping out more waste products than the earth can detoxify … we’re destroying our life support system.” After years of fact checking and careful research, he’s not sure if it’s even possible to turn our civilization around, or if the better thing is to let this one fall apart so that something better can be built in the ruins. Many experts feel it’s too late for change.

Brian envisions these two major collapses — of human society, and of Earth’s ecology — interacting with each other, producing four likely outcomes:

Scenario 1: Collapse Avoidance: civilization destabilizes the ecology, and ecological decline destabilizes civilization; humanity gets its act together and drops in number to a level that Earth’s ecology can sustain (~2.5 billion people); this will be a slow, painful, and costly outcome.
Scenario 2: Collapse/Rebirth: civilization doesn’t learn fast enough, and essentially collapses; but the ecosystem rebounds in time for a remnant to survive and rebuild that more sustainable (and possibly even enjoyable) existence on the planet, in harmony with the planet
Scenario 3: Collapse/Survival: civilization collapses, and devastates the ecosystem in the process; humanity manages to build something from the ruins, but it’s a meagre struggle for mere survival
Scenario 4: Collapse/Extinction: civilization collapses and nations resort to catastrophically destructive means (total nuclear, chemical, biological war) to protect their interests in an attempt to “survive” … and completely ruin everything in the process

Folks, these are not happy scenarios. Think about what happened when recent societal collapse in parts of Asia or South America sent only a few million migrants into Europe and the United States — the anti-immigrant response … forced encampment …. Fascism (in Europe) and White Supremacy (in the U.S.) — and then multiply that conflict by several thousand when not just a few million, but a few billion people are similarly affected.

Brian places a lot of blame on the fossil fuel industry, for using huge amounts of money to cover up the data which predicted these outcomes decades ago, just so that they could continue to make more money.

But he also says that, really, we’re all culpable for ignoring the warning signs. He uses a great analogy of a lumberjack cutting down a tree with a trunk 10 meters in diameter. As the lumberjack gets through the first half of that cutting, the tree continues to stand. Seven meters in … it’s still standing. By eight meters there’s a little bit of creaking and groaning. When the cut is just over nine meters deep, the tree gives out a couple sudden explosive warning shots that reverberate through the forest, and the worker pauses. But the tree is still standing, apparently unaffected by the deep cut. The only real sign of any damage to the tree is a small pile of sawdust accumulating beside the tree. The worker continues. But he only manages to cut for another minute or two before there is one more thunderous crack that he can feel in his chest. At this point, it’s too late. The die is now cast. There is absolutely nothing that can be done to stop the inevitable. No quick fixes will keep that tree standing. The outcome is assured. And final.

In this analogy, the small pile of accumulating sawdust is the smog in our air, and the grunge in our waters. The loud thunderous cracks are the melting of the polar ice caps, the shut-down of the ocean currents, and the massive and accelerating species extinctions going on around the world.

Do we really need to wait for that one last irreversible explosive warning shot before we ask whether we know what we’re doing, and whether we should maybe stop?

And Brian also attributes an additional but different kind of blame on the shoulders of Evangelicals. They typically dismiss the warning signs by thinking/saying things like: “it’s all gonna’ burn, right? … Jesus is coming back and he’s just gonna’ torch the place anyway. We’re just accelerating the timeline for him.” In all honesty, that kind of thought went through my own head when I was in my Fundamentalist teen years. Evangelicals also contribute in their tunnel-visioned science denial, resistance to authority and controls, and by aligning with big money interests. Brian paints a convicting picture. The shoe does fit.

But not content to just dramatize and criticize, Brian then provides four steps towards solutions. You’ll need to read the book to find out what those are.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more about Brian MacLaren’s story, his books, and upcoming appearances at his website.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #67, where we talk specifically about the Evangelical response to Climate Change, or a series of episodes dealing with Evangelical science denial.

Episode image used by permission of Brian MacLaren.

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A social anthropologist, with decades of scholarship on people striving to connect to another dimension, gives us her perspective on the Evangelical version of this phenomenon.

“It’s not a religion … it’s a relationship!”

Many Christians claim this is what separates their faith from all others.

There was a time when I myself made this claim. I don’t anymore. Not because “we broke up.” But because, by any definition of the word “relationship” in every other context in my life, it was never there to begin with. What I mean is, I do have many other relationships where there is a back-and-forth engagement … a sharing of presence, and even of ideas …. perceptible or even tangible exchanges. But despite decades of sincerely trying to make any kind of connection with the Divine, I have essentially nothing to show for my efforts: any evidence that I might present to substantiate that relationship pales in comparison to the other ones I have with other people, with organizations, and even with my pets.

I know I’m not alone in feeling like this.

And yet others claim they have been and continue to be successful: they “hear from the Lord” and “sense his presence” all the time.

As a wannabe-Christian, it’s hard not to feel left out.

We’ve already done one episode talking about this solely from our own perspective (Episode #42). In this episode, we talk to a social anthropologist — Dr. Tanya M. Luhrmann — who studied this phenomenon in detail, and wrote the book When God Talks Back: understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God (2012). She has done numerous studies of people groups around the world who believe they have a special connection to another dimension of reality that is not usually accessible to most other people. But it was a conversation she had with an Evangelical Christian who claimed to “have coffee with Jesus all the time” that began her in-depth study of my own in-crowd.

And she noticed a recurring theme running through all those claims of spiritual experiences, whether they came from people practicing dark magic (aka: witchcraft, Wicca, Naturists) in England, or local religions in five different countries in Africa and Asia …. or from Evangelical Christians on the western coast of the USA. She kept hearing that it takes a lot of work and effort … that time and practice changes you and makes it easier … and that some people are better at it than others. It seems that Christians aren’t the only ones who have a proverbial “prayer warrior” in their midst!?

And she wasn’t just watching all these practitioners from a distance. She entered their worlds, went to their meetings, practiced the rituals with them, and got to know them on a personal level. And she did find that doing so began to change her … to alter how she thought, her experiences, her sense of reality. She saw visions, and felt “warm fuzzies”!?

Our conversation covered a wide variety of points:

she grew up in a diversified religious context (Baptist; Fundamentalist Evangelicals; Christian Science; conservative Judaism), but does not claim any religious affiliation of her own
she not only observed druids & witches in England, but she immersed herself in their world, and learned their rituals and beliefs
much of their training involved focused meditation, envisioning things happening, and imagining the sensations that accompanied those happenings; as she practiced this, she felt she was being changed inwardly, that she was seeing the world through new eyes (sometimes literally …. she recounts one vision of druids appearing in her backyard); for me, it was uncanny how much this all sounded like Ignatian prayer, which many Christians practice
are some people just wired differently in order to have these experiences?
can we adjust our brain’s wiring through mental practices (have you ever heard of cognitive behavioral therapy?)
her work with Evangelical Christians in USA “having coffee with Jesus” …. “imagining that Jesus is right there” … setting an empty chair for Jesus at the dinner table
she spoke of their meditative/prayer practices, which were, again, very much like Ignatian prayer
she remarked again how often she heard the same phrases from the Evangelical Christians that she heard in her earlier studies with the Wiccans: “it takes a lot of time and effort (going to worship services, weekly study groups, practice at home) … it takes work and dedication … some people are better at it than others … people who practice a lot, they change.”
the Jesus movement of the 70s and 80s: people giving up LSD for speaking in tongues
this tendency to develop a spiritual/religious paradigm seems to be a universally human phenomenon. Is it an adapted trait? What might be the evolutionary advantage? Is it a mechanism for gaining a feeling of control over a scary world? Or is it because we humans are such social animals that the concept of “God” serves as a social bonding agent.
humans have evolved a tendency to see Agency everywhere (the “Hyperactive Agency Detection System” that we talked about in Episode #78).
psilocybin mushrooms provide a comparable religious experience

Luke then asked Dr. Luhrmann for her expert opinion on his new understanding of why some Christians might claim to have those “God moments.” After spending so much time and effort in prayer, meditation, going to weekly meetings (or even multiple times per week) and actively looking for a spiritual connection with the Divine, they’re essentially curating an ever-expanding database of experiences, and are then developing cognitive skills aimed at looking for ways to “connect the dots.” Through confirmation bias, and massaging the data, and loosening the boundaries around certain words and ideas, it becomes easier to find ways to connect those dots. A somewhat crude analogy is the “Texas Sharp-shooter Fallacy”: someone who sprays dozens of rounds into the side of a distant barn, then paints a bulls-eye around the densest concentration of bullet holes … and then claims to be a sniper.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more about Dr. Tanya Luhmann at her personal webpage or her institution’s faculty page, and these links to her book When God Talks Back: understanding the American evangelical relationship with God (2012) and her more recent one How God Becomes Real: kindling the presence of invisible others (2022).

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like our first episode on the “personal relationship” that Christians claim to have (or not have), or our episode on prayer, or a series of episodes on the neurobiology and psychology underlying spiritual experiences.

Episode image used by permission.

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We trace the evolution of the human construct “Hell” (Sheol; Hades; Gehenna; Dante’s Inferno), then talk about how hell may not be a place of eternal conscious torture by fire (the modern Evangelical version), but a transitional process intended to purify (Purgatory and Universalism).

One of the most disturbing elements of the “Good News” preached by many Evangelicals has to do with an eternal conscious torment in a fiery hell. This element is often the reason why so many people give up that form of faith, and the reason that so many people seek psychological and pastoral help for the trauma they are experiencing and from which they are trying to recover. Nonetheless, it’s a point that so many Evangelicals double-down upon and get so very animated about. Think about the reaction that Rob Bell evoked when he published his book Love Wins! Netflix still carries a great movie — Come Sunday — which centers around the deeply polarizing response that an up-and-coming Evangelical preacher experiences … from family, from members of his church, and from his denominational leaders … when he begins to question everything about eternal conscious torment in a fiery hell.

In this episode, we talk to an Exvangelical pastor (Derek Kubilus) about his book (Holy Hell: a case against eternal damnation) in which he describes discovering a deep hell-shaped well of trauma in his congregants when they asked him to teach a class on heaven and hell, and also discovering a whole new understanding of hell when he actually studied what the Bible had to say (or not say) about hell:

some Christians seem to need there to be a hell …. they can’t tolerate the idea that there might not be a place of eternal conscious torment for people outside their tribe…. it’s a motivating ingredient in their “Good News” message
Derek grew up Methodist …. spent time as an Evangelical …. then came back to Methodism …. obtained his Master of Divinity degree and is now vicar at a local United Methodist church in Ohio
after doing research for the class on hell referred to above, he emerged as a committed universalist
for thousands of years, the ancient Hebrews had only a vague understanding of the afterlife: they talked about “Sheol,” which was neither heaven nor hell, but a dark dusty place much like the Babylonian picture of the afterlife. It was absolutely NOT a place of eternal conscious torment and punishment.
despite that fact, most translations of the Old Testament translate “Sheol” as “hell” if the context seems to be negative, but as “grave” or “pit” if the context is neutral ….. or even pleasant! Yes you read that right: there are places in the Old Testament where Sheol is actually a pleasant place of peace and rest. We get into detail about that in the episode.
Hell is NOT just the absence of God, as many Christians like to say when they’re trying to soften the offensiveness of Hell, because there are Biblical passages that say God can even be found in Sheol
there is nothing in the Old Testament that suggests Sheol or hell is a place of eternal conscious torment
Lot and Abraham holding each other’s testicles (I kid you not!?) to make a vow is an anachronistic element of what Jews of their time understood about living on into the afterlife ….. you’ll have to listen to the episode to get the explanation!?
Greek thinking then replaced the world’s Babylonian understanding of the afterlife. Jewish scholars/writers started using “Hades” as a metaphor of Sheol. Hades was also NOT a fiery pit of eternal torture. In fact, it had some very pleasant places: the Elysian fields and the Asphodel meadow. The worst part of Hades was Tartarus, where certain gods and demi-gods were punished by having to carry out endless meaningless tasks: like rolling a boulder to the very pinnacle of a mountain only for it to roll back down the other side (Sysiphus), or carry water in leaky buckets (Danaides), or have their liver eaten out by an eagle, only for it to grow back overnight and then be eaten again, every day (Prometheus). But the average Greek person did not think anything like these punishments awaited them: again, their HADES was NOT a place of eternal conscious torment in a lake of fire.
at this time, Jewish scholars/writers started also using Gehenna — the name of a garbage dump in a small valley outside Jerusalem (and now a Recreation Park!) — as a metaphor of the afterlife. Again, this was NOT a place of eternal conscious torment!!!!
Derek provided a whole new perspective on the story of the sheep and the goats. In this story, Evangelicals like to point to the words “eternal” and “punishment”, but Derek explains how those words can have an entirely different meaning, closer to the idea of a process of pruning or purging (Purgatory).
nonetheless, modern day Christians turn the concept of hell into a weapon, and “wield that weapon like a kid who found his dad’s gun. And we’re just waving it all over the neighborhood, trying to get people to do what we want them to do, because it is a very, very powerful weapon.”
Derek questioned if they REALLY believe hell is as bad as they say. Because if they did, their preaching efforts should take on a whole new level of urgency. In his book, he wrote: “All the violent means of conversion from the Middle Ages and the Spanish Inquisition would start to make much more sense. The foul tactics of Westboro Baptist Church would seem reasonable and appropriate.”
this is the motive behind Derek writing this book: the Christian Church has been causing indescribable pain to people, and too many of the rest of us have too long allowed that to continue unchallenged. As Derek said, “I’m not trying to win a debate [with theologians]; I want people to be able to live without being afraid of their God.”
Derek now has a more redemptive view of hell: it isn’t an eternal fire of conscious torment, nor is it “a happy place where we all hold hands and sing Kumbaya,” but it is a place of purgation where impurities are burned away before enjoying an eternal life
Dante is most remembered for his “Inferno” picture of hell, but Derek prefers to point to Dante’s other depiction of the afterlife: Purgatory, with a beautiful story and imagery.

Luke finished by asking for an opinion on his own uncertainties about any kind of afterlife (because who can really know?), in contrast to the certainty that there is a hell/heaven to be experienced on this side of the grave. That we should be working against the many forms of “hell” that we create here and now on earth, and work towards bringing heaven down to earth (as Christ said: “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”). Derek agreed with the “here and now” part of Luke’s idea, but still feels there’s also something metaphysical about it … that there is something as well “on the other side.”

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Derek Kubilus at his own web-page, or at Eerdman’s page for his book.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like our previous episode about Hell (Episode #88), or our episodes on religious trauma related to the threat of hell (Episode #46 and #47), or our 7-part miniseries looking at the soul and the afterlife (Episodes #5 to #11) . Also check out Luke’s own book on the soul and the afterlife.

Episode image used by permission.

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David Morris, with a PhD in psychology and theology, tells us about the psychology behind forming a spiritual/religious worldview, and then rejecting that worldview, and the mourning process that follows.

In this episode, we talk to Dr. David Morris, who holds a PhD in psychology and in theology, worked for one of the largest publishers of Christian books (Zondervan), and is now starting up his own publishing business.

David first gave us his personal story of growing up in a very Evangelical home (Southern Baptist), but ended up giving up almost everything he believed …. twice! Once after coming through university, and encountered a number of intellectual assaults on his faith, from which he reconstructed a very different (more liberal) Christian faith. The second time, though, was more a result of religious abuse, from which he’s still recovering.

Having his doctorate in both psychology and theology, he had to process the wide range of emotions he was going through as he deconstructed and deconverted … again, twice. Fear, anger, grief, betrayal, …. as well as peace, release, and a new understanding of himself.

David then talked to us in detail about the psychology behind the formation of a world view and belief system, as well as the psychology behind leaving both of those. We covered a wide range of topics, all related to the first half of his book — Psychology of disillusionment, mourning and a return of hope — in which he gives a foundational understanding of the history, sociology and psychology of a theology:

sociological surveys
Sigmund Freud
the Jesus movement of the 70s and 80s
America founded by Fundamentalists; Canada founded by French/Catholics, and then by British/Protestants
Fowler’s Faith Stage Theory …. religious/spiritual formation parallels cognitive/behavioral/psychological development from childhood to independent adult
Erik Erikson … the interaction between self and society; famous for coining phrase “identity crisis”
how we need safe spaces to explore spirituality and religious world views
the fifth chapter of his book: longest one in the book (2-3 times longer than the other ones) is all about mourning the loss of faith
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief (denial; anger; bargaining; depression; acceptance)
Freud’s mourning versus melancholia
diffusing the negative emotional energy of painful memories, and then reinvesting that in/with something new
getting “stuck” in a certain stage of development (Erikson/Fowler) or of grieving (Freud/Kübler-Ross)
Melanie Klein and “pining” for something new after the grieving of leaving something old

In the second half of his book, David devotes a chapter to each of six different individuals: people in many respects much like any one of us (in other words, not prominent leaders or personalities) who went through a convoluted, complex, difficult spiritual journey that involved at least one re-formation of their worldview and spirituality. I’m sure the listeners will relate personally to at least one of these six people (I particularly related to Randall … giving up the faith of his father). In each chapter, David applies the psychosocioanalytical tools described in the first half of the book.

One of several threads that ran through all six stories? … it’s a long process or journey, lasting decades.

At the end of our conversation, we asked David about the subtitle of his book, particularly the phrase: “… and a return of hope.” What is this hope? His answer ….. coming alive to life, finding things that bring you joy that you can connect to …. becoming a whole person, and being able to ask all the questions you want to ask and finding a space to talk about those things … community again!

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

You can find more about Dr. David Miller at his personal webpage, or the one for his publishing business (Lake Drive Books), and his blog page.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like ones we’ve done before on the neurobiology of the spiritual experience and on spiritual/religious abuse (seven to choose from here).

Episode images used by permission from Dr. David Morris.

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For Sarah Henn Hayward, reading a few too many books, meeting a few too many beautiful non-Christians, and asking a few too many questions, was just too much for her Evangelical faith.

For five years, we’ve been building a community of like-minded people wrestling with a spirituality that didn’t work for us …. or even harmed us.

We’re all Recovering Evangelicals.

In this episode, we talk to yet another Recovering Evangelical … Sarah Henn Hayward … who just published her deconstruction story in Giving up God: resurrecting a spirituality of love and wonder.

Through her first two decades, Sarah was fully on board with her Evangelical faith, wearing it on her sleeve and actively laboring for it. But she was also a voracious reader, and a critical thinker. Ultimately, we’ll find, she simply asked a few too many questions and read a few too many books, and that led to her leaving that worldview and starting a journey to look for another one.

Going to university to pursue a career in health care immediately began to chip away at her Evangelical beliefs and values. One student she befriended was full of life, joy and goodness: however, he was gay. Another fellow student who seemed to share all of Sarah’s values and deep religious conviction, was a Muslim. Sarah’s relationship with both of them, and others, caused her to question so many ideas that she had grown up accepting fully, and so many parts of the Bible which she thought were absolutely condemning of friends like them. At the same time, Sarah discovered the writings of an Episcopalian Christian mystic — which further challenged many of her Evangelical ideas, especially those pertaining to hell. And then, ironically, the fourth serious challenge to her Evangelical faith was a number of theology courses that she took: learning about how the Bible and Christian dogma were put together by humans was eye-opening, to say the least.

“A world full of blurred lines and shades of grey felt scary compared to the simplistic black-and-white views I’d held before. Now I had a harder time reading the Bible with all this cultural context added in.”

Sarah Henn Hayward

Sarah finished university with a much more liberalized Christian faith. As she began pursuing her career, and a husband, and having kids, she continued going to church. But she was still reading …. and asking questions. Her husband opened her eyes to the disturbing links between Evangelicalism and American politics. Simply looking for some medical information to develop promotional material for her health care clinic had her learning about the evolution of the human foot … and about human evolution in general. We heard the same thing from Paul Enns (“Paulogia”), who told us that simply looking up some basic information about dinosaurs, so he could more accurately draw them in a video he was creating, that opened up his eyes to the truth about evolution … and shattered his Evangelical faith!

And then the COVID pandemic happened.

It forced Sarah to close her clinic temporarily. With her husband now working at home … and able to watch the kids during their nap time … Sarah had hours to go on long walks as she contemplated all this new information, and new perspectives. As well as the racial unrest and deep partisan divisions that were tearing society apart … the crazy things that Evangelicals were saying and doing (and not doing) about COVID … their involvement in politics and the election. A world full of cruelty, hate, racism, murder, cancer, suffering …. couldn’t God have done better? It was all too much.

Ultimately, it was theodicy — the problem of a good God and so much evil — that finally pushed her over the edge. She could no longer believe in God.

In the final few chapters of her book, Sarah describes how she’s trying out a few new hats … new labels for her spirituality: Poetic Naturalism? … Agnostic? … Christian Atheist? Yes, you read that right: that juxtaposition is intentional. Sarah can no longer believe in God, and yet she recognizes that her Christian upbringing has shaped her: she will always be Christian …. “it’s in my cells …. my DNA.” We heard the same kind of thing from Frankie Schaeffer when we interviewed him last year: Sarah is a Christian who doesn’t believe in God … Frankie said he’s an atheist who believes in God.

In the last few minutes of our conversation, we talked with Sarah about whether it was really the traditional Evangelical conception of God which shattered, rather than other possible conceptions of God. And we asked if she could set aside all this talk of original sin, divine wrath, blood sacrifice, and eternal conscious torment in hell (the Evangelical “Gospel”), and yet still embrace a spirituality that talks about love and liberty, enjoying community and creation (the Christ-ian Gospel). Sarah resonated with that to some extent, but it seems that the baggage related to the Evangelical concept of God is still holding her back.

As always, tell us your thoughts …

Find more information about Sarah and her book at her website.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like similar interviews we’ve had with Frankie Schaeffer and Paul Enns (“Paulogia”).

Episode image used by permission from Sarah Henn Hayward.

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Setting the stage for the next season of episodes, and how we want to move beyond merely “dancing in the ruins” of a deconstructed faith

We’re back! After a 3-month hiatus to recalibrate and strategise, we’re now embarking on a season in which we’re emphasizing reconstruction of a new Christian worldview that works … for us at least … in the 21st century. We had been experiencing some cynicism and disillusionment around the end of Season 4. In fact, we both admitted to sometimes feeling like we had left a cult!?

We first discussed certain highlights from one of the latest (2022) PEW Research polls on the ever increasing numbers of people who see themselves as religiously unaffiliated (previously referred to as “the NONES”), and their biggest reasons for leaving faith:

just stopped believing the central tenets (56%)
negative treatment of LGBTQ+ people (30%)
family was never really that committed to faith (29%)
disillusioned by church scandals (27%)
religious trauma (18%)
church became too focused on politics (17%)

After talking about our own deconstruction, disaffiliation, and disillusionment, we decided it was now time for some more deliberate reconstruction. That it’s not enough to “dance in the ruins” of a deconstructed Evangelical faith. This has been a long-standing goal of this podcast, and we’ve frequently released episodes in which, after deconstructing a number of key ideas, we showed how we’ve put together a New Christian Worldview.

Many have asked how we can still call ourselves Christian when we’ve rejected so many ideas and tenets which they view as essential to Christian faith. Our answer: we’re rejecting ideas that other humans have added to the basic teachings of Christ:

in the 19th century, Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism introduced scriptural inerrancy, Young Earth Creationism, Dispensationalism, and Christian Nationalism
in the 17th century, Puritanism added Millennialism and an overly zealous emphasis on sobriety and chastity
in the 16th century, the Reformers brought in Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theology, and coupled that with a supercharged and distorted version of eternal conscious torment in hell built on Dante’s 14th century view of hell
two millennia ago, Christianity absorbed the Greek philosophical idea of Substance Dualism — an immaterial soul riding in a material body — which many people today (both believers in the pews, as well as non-believers) think is essential to a Christian understanding of the soul and the afterlife
the Gospel writers themselves clearly projected their ideas on the stories they wrote; as one example, we call particular attention to Matthew’s claim of a Virgin Birth that he believed fulfilled ancient prophecy …. and now today that idea has become a litmus test question to establish whether one can call themselves a Christian or not!?
the Apostle Paul, whom some see as the one who invented Christianity, added quite a bit of theology to the teachings of Christ

All of those ideas, and others, are seen by many to be essential core tenets of Christian theology. Those may be “Christian” in one sense of that word, but Christ-ian they are not! Those ideas were never part of Christ’s Gospel message.

We remarked on the influence that the historian and author Tom Holland has had on us: especially in pointing out how dependent modern Western society is on Christ-ian ideas.

Before explaining why we want to hang on to the label “Christian,” we thought we should emphasize two reasons that do *not apply. It is not at all some kind of Pascalian Wager (reducing it some kind of insurance policy against an unpleasant afterlife): we do not hold onto the idea of an eternal conscious torment in Hell. And it is not* because of any claim to have a personal relationship with Christ: we’ve explained previously why we just don’t buy into that kind of thinking.

Certain other people might claim that many Christian teachings can be found in other world religions. Again, “Christian” maybe, but not “Christ-ian.” For example, many religions teach “love your neighbour”; but Christ taught “love your enemy.” Many religions teach “don’t steal”; but Christ taught “if someone steals your coat, give them your shirt as well.”

Instead, we think that Christ-ian teachings are essential if humanity is ever going to survive its climb up the evolutionary ladder. You’ll have to listen to the episode if you want an abbreviated version of what we mean by that. But we’ve previously given a much longer and more in-depth version of that in our episodes on Original Sin and Atonement Theology.

As always, tell us your thoughts …

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A brief retrospective on Season 4, and a longer one on the journey that the podcast has taken us on through Christian belief.

Well, we kept it going for over a year, and added 54 more episodes to our archive. But all good things must come to an end. And so this will be the finale for our fourth season of episodes.

This podcast grew out of a blog site I started almost 10 years ago. Both were vehicles for my own personal quest to find a new Christian worldview to replace the one that was handed to me in my teen years, and which no longer worked for me. And it also didn’t seem to work for others of my generation who grew up in it: it seems that most of them no longer follow that version of Christianity, and almost none of our own children seem to do so either.

The podcast was a vehicle … a catalyst … for my journey out of 20th century North American Evangelicalism, and into a new version of Christian belief. And it has become a public record of that personal journey.

After taking a brief look back at this fourth season of episodes, and trying to decide whether we started to get mired in the science weeds, Scott and I talked about where this podcast has taken each of us in our respective personal belief systems, and shared our new perspectives on:

the Bible, and Divine inspiration
God, Divine intervention in human affairs, Deism and mysticism
Hell, and the second coming of Christ
the ever-elusive “personal relationship” with the Divine
humans need something transcendent, or we slip into anarchy and savagery
the relative merits of Christianity versus humanism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

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Biology is unique among the sciences in its apparently absolute dependence on language that implies a goal, direction, or intention. Does this mean that biology IS goal-oriented, or directed? If so, that has huge philosophical and theological implications!?

Our deep-dive into Intelligent Design got us wondering why so many people embrace that worldview. Not just “sheeple” who can often blindly follow vocal proponents of even crazy beliefs (COVID was a global government-orchestrated event; vaccines cause autism; everything Q-Anon; the “stolen” election), but even many with impressive academic credentials who appear to have researched the question. In trying to understand this, we came across an article with the title The Teleological Menace: Why Biology (Still) Requires God by Seth Hart, a doctoral candidate whose current research project asks: does Darwinism (Natural Selection as a causal mechanism of evolution) require teleological concepts? He made many great points that are worth sharing with our listeners.

Some of the main points we discussed with him included:

biology is more dependent upon teleological language than all the other sciences like physics, chemistry or astronomy; both the Darwinism of the 19th century and the more modern Extended Synthesis are dependent on this
organisms don’t just occupy their niches … they create those niches and then occupy the latter. In other words, they are agents in their own evolution.
definitions of “teleology” and “teleological language” … roots in Platonic thinking; highly developed by Aristotle; points toward ultimate meaning and purpose
during 13th to 16th centuries, there was a movement away from teleology within the natural sciences; this was a theological decision led by Theists like Descartes and Bacon, not an anti-religious one! Likewise, it was Jewish and Christian thinking that began to move the world away from invoking spiritual explanations into natural phenomena
however, biologists like William Harvey, Robert Boyle, William Paley were very resistant to this effort to remove teleology from biology; Darwin went back and forth on using/resisting their influences
today, teleological language is used everywhere and all the time in biology: “birds have wings so that they can fly” … “viruses and bacteria mutate in order to find better ways to infect you better” … “Natural Selection wants to maximize efficiency and reproduction”
we reflected on comments made by two widely recognized philosophers when we asked them the same questions: Dr. P. Z. Myers doesn’t see teleological language in biological literature, while Dr. Denis Walsh acknowledges biologists do often use that kind of language, but they don’t mean it.
is this overuse of teleological language “just sloppy language,” much like how we humans will often personify inanimate objects (referring to a car or boat as “she”)

At the end of this discussion, we addressed what seems to be two inevitable conclusions:

biology doesn’t (or can’t) make sense without teleological language. Therefore life must be teleological: it has purpose and meaning.
a Theistic worldview seems to be the only philosophically coherent way to hold this to be true.

If those two conclusions didn’t slap you in the face, you need to read them again, more carefully.

Two equally provocative implications of those two statements:

are humans the inevitable end-point of evolution?
is Evolution a mythological origin story as much as religions are?

Let us know what you think of those conclusions and their implications …..

If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy our retrospective of our Intelligent Design mini-series, in which we summarize our current understanding of that worldview, including why so many people embrace it.

Find Seth Hart at his university profile page or this Academia profile page. Also make sure to check the article that first brought Seth to our attention on this matter.

Dr P. Z. Myers is a Professor of Biology at the University of Minnesota Morris, and founder of and writer at the Pharyngula science blogweb-site.

Dr. Denis Walsh is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.

Episode image by meineresterampe from Pixabay.

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The details behind the story of how bacteria mutated in order to grow bigger and better by eating oranges, instead of sugar.

Last week, we talked to a member of the Long-Term Evolution Experiment, Dr. Zachary Blount. He and his colleagues followed 75,000 generations of bacteria competing for a limited food resource — sugar — and described many different kinds of genetic changes in 57 different genes. Creationists and ID-proponents dismiss this as “simply breaking genes.” In this episode, we take a very deep-dive into the story, and show how this is actually a prime example of evolution proceeding through gene duplication, progressive modifications, and the building up of new regulatory pathways and metabolic functions. How it is that well educated anti-evolutionists, especially the biochemists among them, can only see this as destructive and detrimental either says something about them being biased and misled … or deceptive!?

Before we asked Zach to give us the details, we provided some background introductory information:

evolution often involves duplication of stretches of DNA, followed by modifications which eventually lead to new functions, while leaving the original copy intact. This is NOT “breaking the gene”
we give a crash course on how bacteria extract energy from glucose (see the color image attached below)
evolution often happens in three steps:
- (1) prepare for new function (or “potentiation”) – changes occur which by themselves don’t appear to affect function, but they set the stage for something else
- (2) get the new function (or “actualization” or “instantiation” – the “something else” suddenly appears as a new function, although usually in a very weak and inefficient form
- (3) refine the new function – tweaking and optimization

Bacterial metabolism of glucose through biochemical conversions (buckets) involving other molecules such as acetate, citrate, and succinate, producing energy molecules (the green “E”s in the figure).

A potentiating mutation (#1, highlighted in pink) allows acetate to escape the process, thus accelerating the flow of glucose through the top half).

An actualizing mutation (#2, highlighted in yellow) allows the OCEAN of citrate that the bugs are swimming in to now flow into the process, making it possible to grow on citrate in the presence of oxygen when glucose levels drop.

[nb: this chart simplifies the story to the point of being inaccurate, but at least a non-expert can follow it!]]

With that introduction in place, we then got deep into the details of this story:

after 30,000 generations and 16 years, mutant cells had gained the ability to grow on citrate in the presence of oxygen (something that their non-mutated cousins couldn’t do)
although the LTEE had found many other mutations that occurred in all 12 test-tubes, this one new function only happened in one of the 12 [and this is still true even today!]; this raises raises big questions regarding evolution, and became Zach’s research project (had to test 44 trillion cells to get some of the answers!!!)
they went back to their “Frozen Fossil Record” (see last week’s post), and learned that mutations happened a year prior which weren’t detectable because the advantage was miniscule. BUT IT WAS THERE! And it could then be refined (which it did by 33,000 generations)
some changes enabled the bugs to take up much larger amounts of glucose, but at the “expense” of pooping out acetate, which later became a new food source through a new loophole that connected to citrate
other changes that “Potentiated” … set the stage to use citrate as a food source
the “Actualization” step was a duplication of a citrate transporter gene that was put under the regulation of glucose levels (the original copy was left in place and still regulated by oxygen levels … in other words, NOT BROKEN!!); now citrate uptake and metabolism can happen when glucose runs out! Like the Energizer Bunny, these mutant bugs now just keep on going when their non-mutated cousins are slowing down and dying
ID-proponents, especially their biochemists, should be able to see this as an increase in function, information and complexity, but they PERSIST in dismissing this as “just breaking genes” or asking ignorant questions like: “did they see any examples of entirely new nanomachines?” (again, see last week’s episode) Contrary to the Creationist party line, this is precisely an example of small changes which accumulate and eventually become a new function.
Evolution may be “clever” and innovative, but often it won’t be elegant; we talked about bizarre and inelegant designs like the anatomy of the recurrent laryngeal nerve, or the biochemistry of a photosynthetic enzyme in plants called rubisco; in the same way, this new re-design of citrate metabolism is also a “clunky” design, but it lets these mutants grow and thrive while their non-mutant cousins go extinct
the new citrate-using bugs at generation 75,000 are growing better and better on the citrate/succinate microenvironment they’re creating (niche creation), but at the same time, are getting worse at growing on glucose (their ancestral resource). They are becoming a new species … becoming ecologically specialized!

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about our guest, Dr. Zachary Blount at his university profile page and his own lab’s web-site. Learn more about the LTEE itself, including descriptions of the team members and lists of their publications, at their webpage. You can also watch a video in which Dr. Blount regales Dr. Richard Lenski on the latter’s 60th birthday, and recounts the whole history of the LTEE.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like the mini-series of episodes we did focusing on Intelligent Design and its misrepresentation of science.

Episode image by Andrew Kirkham. Thanks Andrew!

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Two very different interpretations of the same set of data: one from Creationists and ID proponents, and the other from the scientists actually doing the work. Here, we talk to one of the latter.

A frequent talking point for creationists and Intelligent Design proponents in their anti-evolution rhetoric is a ground-breaking scientific project referred to as “the Long-Term Evolution Experiment.” Almost forty years ago, Dr. Richard Lenski began studying bacteria competing for limited energy resources (sugars) — generation after generation — looking for any genetic changes which gave any kind of advantage in that competition. His group have recently reached 76,000 generations, and documented many dozens of genetic mutations: rearrangements of regulatory pathways, elimination of genes which were no longer needed, introduction of new metabolic functions, shuffling of genetic information. In the process, there has been an incredible increase in fitness. This is much like someone deciding to train for a marathon — losing layers of fat, toning up muscles, revising their diet, replacing their normal wardrobe with ultra-light clothes and expensive runners, shaving seconds off of their run-time, increasing their stamina — and in the process, becoming a lean, mean running machine.

Nonetheless, creationists and ID proponents persist in diminishing the LTEE findings to just “breaking genes” and losing information.

After a brief introduction to the LTEE and the primary variables that they were monitoring (oxygen; fuel sources), we then talked to Dr. Zachary Blount, a member of the LTEE team who is continuing and broadening that research program, building on the findings and strategies of the LTEE. Points that we discussed included:

the history of the LTEE: its founder, leaders, goals, and basic methodology
twelve different “test tubes” of populations were kept separate, in order to see how the ancestral populations might try different evolutionary strategies
they’ve now reached 76,000 generations; every 500 generations, they’ve frozen samples of the bugs so they can do follow-up experiments and/or recover from technical mistakes without having to start all over at the beginning …. they refer to this collection of samples as their “frozen fossil record”
aerobic versus anaerobic metabolism (meaning with versus without oxygen) of glucose and another fuel source called citrate
why did the experimenters add citrate to the medium in the first place?
years later, the cells suddenly acquired a new ability to grow on the citrate in the presence of oxygen, something that their original bacterial ancestors were unable to do
exactly how/why does metabolism of citrate change in the presence/absence of oxygen
what were the “stressors” being imposed on the cells … answer: no “stress” or “stressor,” but rather simple competition for limited resources (fuel sources)
what were the original goals of the LTEE project?
the “randomness” of genetic variation
mutations are not just simply individual “point-changes” in the base sequence of the DNA base, or individual amino-acids in the whole protein sequence; they can also include movements/insertions/deletions of whole segments of the DNA (thousands of bases at a time), duplication of large segments, and other forms of gene rearrangements
the 12 separate populations of the ancestral bugs mutated in different directions and in somewhat different ways, but often landed on the same gene targets (although changing those genes in different ways)
the mutated cells are much larger than the original ancestor (the researchers had expected a progressive reduction in size)
the LTEE team found 57 different genetic changes …. and these were NOT simply just “breaking genes” or losing information, as creationists and ID proponents will so often say
Dr. Blount then got into a very detailed and technical description of the whole citrate story, which is the one detail that creationists and ID proponents will particularly dwell upon, but we’re saving that part of the conversation for next week

Scott and Luke then reflected a bit on what Zachary told us so far, and how that relates to the on-going discussion going on between creationists and anti-evolutionists:

how it’s okay to be skeptical about scientific claims … to ask questions, and put the claims to the test … this is part of the Scientific Method and something that scientists do all the time; however, once those follow-up questions and tests have been answered and the claim still stands, a good and unbiased scientist accepts the claim and moves on. But creationists and ID proponents keep circling around the same inaccurate counterarguments
the LTEE’s finding that 12 different populations set out on 12 different evolutionary journeys and yet often arrived at similar endpoints sounds an awful lot like life’s common ancestor spreading out to several different geographically isolated parts of the globe, exploring different evolutionary pathways and often coming up with very similar and yet fundamentally different answers (comparisons between mammals and marsupials were the specific example here)
once again, the frustrating tendency of creationists and ID proponents to focus on just “breaking genes” and degradation of information; cells have a genetic toolkit which enables them to shuffle parts of genes or whole sections of DNA around; perhaps the best and most complicated example of this genetic shuffling is our immune system
some might think that an evolutionary advantage of “only a couple percent” is too small to realistically provide a driving force on evolution; however, say that to an athlete who’s just trying to shave a few seconds off of an event that lasts minutes or hours … or to an investor who’s comparing stocks that make either 4% or 6% gains, or the manager’s expense fees being raised to 3% from 2.5%
Luke’s intense frustration with the leaders and scholars of creationist and Intelligent Design worldviews, who are educated and smart enough to understand the science here, but who persist in misrepresenting and distorting that science (possibly intentionally so!?)

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like the mini-series of episodes we did focusing on Intelligent Design and its misrepresentation of science.

Episode image by WikiImages from Pixabay.

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Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray, a deeply Evangelical believer and state college professor, has long been speaking to and educating Evangelicals about their science denial

Unfortunately, science denial and pseudoscience run rampant in Evangelical circles. In our previous episodes, we’ve learned about the exceptionally strong correlations between being Evangelical and: … being against COVID protection measures (vaxing, masking, social distancing) … being against evolution (particularly so about human evolution) … denying climate change … accepting the Sunday School version of the Noah’s Ark story as historical … and otherwise disagreeing on several other points which many others take for granted.

Our guest today — Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray — has been teaching, speaking and writing to Evangelicals for decades about this science denial. Here, we talk about her latest book coming out next week from Eerdmans: The God of Monkey Science: People of Faith in a Modern Scientific World.

Points that we covered include:

science denial and pseudoscience run rampant in Evangelical circles
phylogeny (creating a “family tree”) of anti-evolution arguments shows how their arguments gradually evolve, and also how Evangelicals will use the “play-book” for their anti-evolution campaign (e.g., the Scopes Monkey Trial) in their war against COVID policies, or climate change, or vaccines, or ……
her first book, Baby Dinosaurs on The Ark: the mental and theological gymnastics involved in explaining or rationalizing the Noah’s Ark story, and a comment made by a Young Earther in a discussion forum about the logistical hurdles in floating that boat: “let’s not get caught up with logic when dealing with faith,” which is a perfect example of one of the things that Mark A Noll wrote about in Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.
Evangelicals and Evangelicalism have become not only anti-science but also anti-intellectual, as seen in their rejection of whole categories of art, music, philosophy
the Galileo Affair didn’t have the impact that the “Scopes Monkey Trial” did. Why?
Biblical Criticism (introduced by Julius Wellhausenin the mid-19th century) crystalized a response in Evangelicals against science and intellectualism, leading to an embrace of Biblical inerrancy and infallibility
the birth of the new Young Earth Creationism — Intelligent Design — which was presented as an “alternative science”
Evolution Theory became a target for Evangelicals, who saw it as the source of all social evils (abortion; homosexuality; rape; murder; etc)
science became the front in a culture war … anti-COVID measures were seen as an assault on religious rights and Christianity itself
the creation of an education bubble …. Evangelicals set up their own elementary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions, and poured themselves into home schooling; also set up their own publishing houses and music industry. Answers-in-Genesis and Institute for Creation Research even warn parents not to send their kids to certain Christian schools (the ones that are friendly towards evolution teaching). This leads to intellectual and cultural siloing and cloistering.
America has a very broad Evangelical demographic, including “Evangelicals” who don’t attend church
Evangelicals have learned to approach/do science with pre-existing assumptions, leading to all forms of pseudoscience (ivermectin; hydroxychloroquin; Young Earth Creationism; Flood geology; Intelligent Design) because secular scientists can’t be trusted (“they’re in on it”).
Evangelicals lose the ability to discern between an expert and an authority. A celebrity, athlete, family doctor or pastor can substitute for nationally and globally recognized scientists (Francis Collins), doctors (Anthony Fauci) and institutions (national and global medical boards). The YEC film Is Genesis history? features individuals with scientific degrees who defend views and interpretations completely opposite to those held by a large majority of their peers. Our previous episodes featured ID “experts” who don’t actually work in the scientific fields on which they speak, contradicting scientific experts who do work in those fields.
people feel empowered by the internet to be their own experts (“doing the homework”; “following the data to where it leads”)
the damage done by denying science and denigrating scientists … Evangelicals can no longer discriminate between authorities versus experts, or recognize when someone is speaking with or without expertise
cherry-picking, misapplying and misquoting Scripture in defense of bizarre scientific claims
the exponential development of the apologetic industry, making the Bible speak to science, and vice versa, sometimes in order to prove the existence of God
science is trying to exorcise itself of teleological language (talking about Evolution as if it had agency, and intention/purpose). Intelligent Design tries to re-insert teleology back into science
Dr. Ray teaches at a state [secular] university and is open about evolution: Christian students sometimes feel threatened by her (in their minds, she becomes the Hollywood-ized professor whose goal is to kill their faith). She has had to develop strategies to best teach evolution as well as a healthy Christian response/attitude to it.
the damage/costs of an anti-science bubble: opportunity costs (esp. with respect to employment) and health risks (vaccines; transfusions; mental health; sex education; prolongation of the COVID epidemic because of anti-vaxers). That bubble can also actually predispose young people towards losing their faith (they’re not able to deal with the contrary evidence).
does evolution have any impact on ones ability to do medicine? ….. or to do research?
pro-evolution Christians need to involve themselves in confronting science denial …. get in the conversation (otherwise, you remove self from the conversation) … become relevant.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find out more about Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray and her books at her profile page at Eerdmans Publishing, or at her FaceBook page.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like our mini-series of episodes on:

Young Earth Creationism (9 episodes)
Intelligent Design (8 episodes)
Evangelicalism (10 episodes)
a Christian response to Evolution (11 episodes)

or maybe individual episodes on science denial (#27), COVID-denial and pseudoscience (#61), the Evangelical response to science (#24), a prominent social influencer whose faith was destroyed by YECism, aka “Paulogia” (#25), or another one whose faith was ruined by working for Answers-in-Genesis (#31).

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

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After a seven-episode deep-dive into Intelligent Design, we finally arrive at our better informed opinion of our position on this worldview.

We started this 7-part mini-series introducing the Intelligent Design proposal that many creationists hold, and also shared our position at the outset on it: at that time, we were not convinced, feeling like we should embrace it but still a bit skeptical, and not really knowing what to do. It took seven episodes — three in which we gave you, the non-expert, some conceptual foundations to follow the scientific arguments (what is Intelligent Design; how do genes work; how are proteins made), and then the interviews with two leading Intelligent Design proponents (Michael Behe; Jonathan McLatchie) and the counterarguments from three scientific experts (Nick Matzke; Matt Miller; Mark Pallen). We now feel ready to make a better informed opinion about the ID worldview.

In this episode, Scott and Luke pull the threads together, compare notes, and try to make sense of the differing arguments presented. Points that we covered include:

the reasons why we decided to do this deep-dive into ID, despite the warning that listeners might not be too interested
the leaders in this new wave of creationism (Michael Behe; Stephen Meyer; Jonathan McLatchie) are much more highly credentialed in relevant academic fields than those in the first wave (Duane Gish; Henry Morris; Ken Ham)
the leading ID proponents and the scientific experts that we brought in told very different stories!? Non-experts listening to these two groups aren’t well-equipped to discern the differences, and to evaluate which side is bringing the better information or interpretation.
both Luke and Scott went into this deep-dive willing to give ID a fair chance, but both found the perspective conveyed by the ID-advocates quite unconvincing (and their modus operandi annoying), and the perspective from the scientists to be not only convincing, but even exhilarating
despite the protests of its advocates, ID still comes across as God-of-the-gaps thinking
the talking strategy that ID advocates tend to use is:
- selectively cherry-pick the scientific papers/studies they’ll consult or refer to when addressing any given issue;
- use technical jargon which goes far above the heads of most of their listeners;
- use glitzy, well-produced videos to mesmerize their audience into an absorptive state (just like watching TV at the end of a hard day);
- misrepresent (or misunderstand?) the opposing or contradictory scientific evidence;
- use a lot of hyperbole (e.g., genetic mutations cause “cataclysmic” failure of the organism).
ID advocates love to bring up the “junk DNA” story as if they were the ones to set the scientific world straight on this point, but we explain why they have no more claim over this than secular scientists themselves
Luke is annoyed when they tirelessly defend arguments that have been repeatedly debunked: this persistence borders on wilful ignorance …. or even deception?
we wondered if the tendency towards ID thinking arises from nature (the human tendencies to perceive agency and to be awe-struck) or nurture (Sunday school upbringing; a culture that is increasingly skeptical and questions authorities; the internet encourages us to think we can be our own experts; a culture that replaces credentialed experts with celebrities, athletes, or anyone with a degree who will say what they want to hear)

We also took time to respond to some questions/comments from our listeners:

Skyler: ID isn’t (and can’t be) a scientific theory;
Edward: what’s the difference between ID and Theistic Evolution?
Nathan: what’s the difference between ID and Biologos?
Nick: what are the falsification criteria for ID? (the problem is, ID advocates hide behind “we don’t know the design constraints” to shut down the conversation, just like AiG use “were you there” to do the same thing);
John: ID is making God look deceptive;
Mi K.: too much God-of-the-gaps argument;
David: ID adherents reject the consensus opinion of a majority of experts, and instead latch on to a minority opinion
anonymous pro-ID person: they know at least one scientist out there studying the flagellum who is pro-ID (Luke wonders why that person is so unheard-from);
Ian: was pleasantly surprised and pleased with our episode featuring three experts describing an emerging scientific consensus on the origin of the flagellum.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

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After last week’s scientific experts cleared up much ID-rhetoric, we ask a rising star in the ID movement — Dr. Jonathan McLatchie — to respond to our reinvigorated questions, concern, and critiques of Intelligent Design

After starting this mini-series with an interview with one leading ID proponent, and then hearing from a number of scientific experts who gave a different perspective on things, we now want to finish this on-going conversation with an interview with another leading ID proponent — a relatively new face — Dr. Jonathan McLatchie. With three graduate degrees in biology and evolutionary biology, he may be a rising leader in that movement. Before the interview, we gave him a list of the anti-ID challenges we’d be raising, so that we could get fully prepared and informed responses to those questions. Here are his answers, and our other points of discussion:

Challenge #1: for us, ID is still just God-of-the-gaps thinking
Challenge #2: ID doesn’t explain anything, it just attributes phenomena to an intelligence without saying anything about exactly how that intelligence might have done it. ID proponents often refer to this as an inference to the best explanation, but is it really just an inference to the best attribution?
Challenge #3: where does the science go after the attribution has been established? Does ID make testable predictions which actually advance scientific knowledge?
as always happens in discussions with ID proponents, “junk DNA” came up as one of ID’s greatest scientific advances
Challenge #4: ID proponents often make reference to astronomically huge numbers when refuting evolutionists (“the chances of that happening spontaneously are one in 10 with eighty-nine zeroes behind it“) …. again, this just betrays God-of-the-gaps thinking
Challenge #5: ID proponents are always attacking “Darwinism.” We need to move away from simple Darwinian mechanisms and recognize that genetics has moved far, far beyond simple point mutations; we now know about large-scale movements and reorganizations of DNA
what exactly does “Darwinism” mean to an ID proponent?
we started to wade a bit into the evo/devo world (a term for evolutionary developmental biology, which pertains to how a single-celled embryo organizes itself into a multi-cellular fetus)
Challenge #6: ID proponents often resort to hyperbolic appeals to “cataclysmic failure” and “death” and “extinction” in order to push back on discussions of genetic mutations and rearrangements being the creative engine of evolution; they only see genetic changes as harming a given protein/function, and avoid or ignore the possibility that a genetic change might morph that function into a new one (a process referred to as exaptation)
gene duplication with modification is the R&D department of the cell
as ID proponents often do, Dr. McLatchie quoted from a small select group of scientific studies which supported his pro-ID or anti-evolution point(s), while not accounting for the much larger number of scientific papers which come to the opposite conclusions (“cherry-picking”)
Dr. McLatchie claimed that there is very little evidence of gene duplication and modification producing new functions; we countered with one example of the family of receptors that convey smell (there are thousands of these, all just a little bit different from each other), but didn’t have time to talk about visual receptors, ion channels, protein-eating enzymes, carbohydrate-eating enzymes, neurotransmitter receptors, signaling molecules called GPCRs, antibodies, ………… the list goes on and on
ID proponents re-defining the adjectives “detrimental” and “beneficial” when talking about genetic mutations
disparaging misrepresentations of the Long-Term Evolution Experiment; we will be talking to one of the members of that project in the next few weeks to fact-check statements from Dr. McLatchie (in this episode), Dr. Behe a few weeks ago, and from ID proponents in general
Dr. McLatchie sees evolutionary mechanisms simply “degrading genetic information,” while we see this as life getting creative and trying new things, and re-purposing old ideas
function becomes conflated with design; just because something has a function, this doesn’t mean it was “designed” to do that (did someone “design” an old broken brick to hold that garage door open?)
strange/awkward designs (backwards wiring of the retina) and truly malevolent designs (convergence of the wind-pipe and food-pipe, or childbirth) make it hard for many of us to embrace ID; a designer working from the bottom up wouldn’t design it this way
when asked why humans couldn’t have been “designed” with thicker necks having a food pipe on one side completely separate from a windpipe on the other side, the response can’t be “well, that would look weird”
the accumulation of gradual changes that we see in living organisms over time (complete with genetic dead-ends and fragments of old, out-dated designs) is not consistent with the idea of a Master Designer
what do ID proponents think of common descent of humans and primates (they’re quite divided on this), and how exactly do they explain speciation?
why is the scientific community at large so resistant to ID-thinking?
the ancient Hebrews thought the weather involved God having jars of rain, closets of lightning bolts, and breathing out the wind and the dew; today, we can set up mathematical models that only take into account gradients of temperature, pressure and humidity and predict the weather out over the next week or two
exactly how would “the Designer” design things? What would this look like? Is he/she/it tirelessly tinkering away at a work-bench, or just dropping in from time to time to nudge things over key evolutionary hurdles? Jonathan’s answer included a reference to periodic injection of information content into the global pool of living organisms (“the biosphere”)

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more about Dr. Jonathan McLatchie, including upcoming public speaking engagements and writings, at his web-site.

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Three internationally-recognized, world experts on the bacterial flagellum connect the dots regarding the evolutionary origin of the flagellum, and draw some compelling comparisons to the evolutionary emergence of the Bible!

Three episodes ago, Dr. Michael Behe used the bacterial flagellum as Exhibit A in his defense of the Intelligent Design proposal. Last week, we heard Dr. Nicholas Matzke, who actually does cutting edge research on the flagellum, give his understanding of the bacterial flagellum, with comparisons to claims frequently made by the ID community.

In this episode, we hear three world-leading scientific experts on the flagellum discussing the latest scientific data on an amazing evolutionary journey which seems to explain the origin of the flagellum. Those three are Drs. Matthew Baker (University of New South Wales, Australia), Mark Pallen (University of East Anglia, UK), and Nick Matzke (University of Aukland, New Zealand).

Some of the technical points they discussed include:

how to make direct measurements of individual flagellum motors freshly isolated from a test tube of bacteria
why is there so much interest in the bacterial flagellum ….. why have so many researchers using such high-tech equipment studied this thing?
the flagellum is not just one unchangeable thing (as ID proponents will often suggest); instead, the broad scientific community agrees that there are MANY different kinds of bacterial flagella (hundreds of thousands), each with different genetic sequences, and some of which seem to be missing parts, and yet still work for their hosts
at the heart of two bacterial nanomachines there is a third nanomachine called “the type III secretion system” whose function is to squirt out proteins; the one in the flagellum squirts out the proteins that make the long propellor whip, while the one in “the injectosome” squirts out the toxins that the bacteria uses to capture its prey
these are two examples of machines built on top of machines – Mark referred to it as “a modular system”
there is yet another bacterial nanomachine — “the “ATP-synthase” — whose function it is to generate energy molecules called ATP; given how fundamental this function is, ATP-synthase is probably one of the oldest of cellular machines
there are many striking similarities (genetic; structural; functional) between ATP-synthase and the type III secretory system, which suggests a common ancestral origin; in other words, those two very different enzymes seem to have both descended from yet another earlier enzymatic precursor
there is some reason to suggest that the precursor for the type III secretory system (and for ATP-synthase) might have been related to one that modifies RNA, an enzyme called RNA-helicase; one of those reasons is the fact that all three are made up of six globular proteins that form a ring wrapped around a central filament of protein (in the case of the type III secretory system) or a filament of RNA (in the case of RNA-helicase), and all three spin like rotary motors as they do their job
the type III secretory system is NOT a devolved bacterial flagellum (as ID proponents will often claim)

Altogether, the evidence starts to point to a possible scenario involving a recurring theme of gene duplication with subsequent modification of the copies, followed by selection for a useful function:

an ancient primordial gene for an enzyme that comprised a rotary motor that spins around some filament was duplicated
those two primordial gene copies morphed and diverged such that one specialized for RNA (the helicase) and the other specialized for proteins (becoming a generic protein pump)
somewhere in that transition, one of those two new genes duplicated, and the resulting copy started to code for a rotary engine that ran in reverse and latched onto a protein to drive it to generate ATP (ATP synthase)
the gene for the generic protein pump was duplicated and the copies began to specialize for pumping certain subsets of proteins … one for flagellar proteins (thereby becoming a propellor, the bacterial flagellum) …. and the other one for toxins (thereby becoming a weapon, the injectosome)

Parts of this story are more speculative than others, but the emerging picture is looking quite clear that the bacterial flagellum is the product of a long evolutionary journey. That hypothesis then prompts new research questions which flesh out the details of this evolutionary journey. There was an extended conversation about how genes/proteins can change/morph over time and take on entirely new functions …. and how this phenomenon is precisely paralleled by the evolution of language (the words loyal, legal, and lawful all have a common ancestral origin), and even of the Bible itself!

I asked our guests to comment on Michael Behe’s claim that secular scientists themselves are doing the scientific work of Intelligent Design by “doing their experiments from a Design perspective without calling it that.” Admittedly, it’s pretty hard for scientists to say anything about evolution without using wording such as “this protein/trait is designed to enable the animal to XYZ” or “this organism evolved toward being able to XYZ.” This is goal-oriented language … wording that conveys purpose, meaning, direction, guidance … otherwise known as “teleological” language. One response to this assertion was that it can also be “sloppy language,” just like humans have the tendency to refer to Earth as “her” or to a truck as “him.”

I also asked our guests if it is possible to meet the ID proponents in the middle by saying that there is indeed “a designer”, but that designer is the cell itself (which orchestrates the genetic changes) and evolutionary pressures (which select out the good stuff). One guest replied provocatively, but entirely legitimately, that if ID proponents insist on personifying “the designer” by referring to him/her/it as intelligent, then how do they explain the flagellum being so well designed to move the bacterium around through the human host’s body in order to mediate such nasty, devastating, destructive disease outcomes.

Interesting conversation indeed!

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about our guests at Nicholas Matzke’s profile, Mark Pallen’s profile, and Matthew Baker’s profile.

Episode image by Arek Socha from Pixabay.

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A scientist who specifically studies the bacterial flagellum using some of the most cutting-edge research tools clears up a few myths and misconceptions.

Much of Dr. Michael Behe’s defense of Intelligent Design rests on claims made about the bacterial flagellum. It certainly has become his signature, and one could even say it’s become the symbol or mascot of the ID movement (like the polar bear became for the global warming movement). Some of his claims are often challenged by opponents of ID. To shed some light on the subject, we reached out to several scientists who actually work with the bacterial flagellum (Behe does not). Here, we speak to Dr. Nicholas Mitzke, who gives us a basic introduction to this bacterial machine, demystifying it and clearing up some misconceptions that have been built up around it. Points that we discussed included:

misconception #1: the flagellum is not just one unique thing that cannot be altered in any way without completely losing its function. There are in fact thousands of different versions of the flagellum, each with differences in their amino acid sequence (which necessarily means their gene sequence was changed), and some of them are even missing certain protein parts, and yet all of these altered versions retain their function.
misconception #2: the flagellum did not in fact arise through a series of intermediate steps, each intermediate being non-functional, before finally becoming a functional machine. Instead, we’re now getting glimpses of its evolutionary journey through various stages of different functionality.
proteins in general can evolve, changing amino acid sequences in many ways, and yet retain their original shape, and therefore full function
how the rotary engine in the flagellum converts chemical energy into a rotational movement; it uses an acid battery that spins an “electric” rotor
the flagellum is made of multiple copies of 20 proteins; 99% of the flagellum is the long whip (tens of thousands of copies of one particular protein); the other 19 proteins are at the base of the flagellum, forming one machine that creates the flagellum (the “type III secretion system”) and another machine that rotates the flagellum (the motor).
misconception #3: given the statement above, the type III secretion system is NOT a “devolved” flagellum
misconception #4: cellular machines (like the flagellum) do not need a mechanic to assemble the different parts into a functional machine (a misconception based on our familiarity with human-made machines). Instead, cellular machines can make themselves!? Self assembly!!! [we talked about this in detail in episode #131]
misconception #5: the flagellum motor does not work through pistons, gears, fan-belts, and other such moving parts (as might be misconstrued by the frequent references to the flagellum being “like the outboard engine of a boat”). Instead, they work through a series of simple shape-shifts … the protein parts just bend a bit this way or that, causing other subtle shape-shifts in their neighbors.
we introduced another bacterial machine called the ATP-synthase, because this will become a key star in next week’s episode about the evolutionary origin story of the flagellum. It’s basically two small machines combined into one: an ion pump, and an energy molecule factory.
we heard a very condensed version of that evolutionary origin story, one that links three very different bacterial machines (the type III secretion system, ATP synthase, and the flagellum), in order to whet listener’s appetite for next week’s episode. This story is very much like someone encountering a complete stranger, noticing some absolutely striking resemblances in facial features, and finding out that the stranger is a cousin/sibling they never knew about.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic.

To learn more about our guest expert, visit his faculty profile page.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you’ve listened to our interview with Michael Behe (or listen to it again, now that you’ve been informed). Also, if you haven’t already heard the other episodes in this mini-series, you might benefit from our basic introductions to how genes and proteins work.

Episode image by Raman Oza from Pixabay.

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Most people don’t know: the genome is a formatted database with read/write memory systems which can reorganize itself to produce new species.

This is a re-release of an episode we put out almost two years ago. In the episode that preceded this re-release, and which set the stage for this interview, we had given a thumbnail sketch of genetics as most people understand it. We distilled that common understanding into five basic statements, and showed how most people think new species (or new cellular machines, like flagella) somehow arise from genetic mistakes and accidents. And we said we would be talking to Dr. James Shapiro, a world-leading geneticist with 60 years of experience in the field and who co-leads a large group of world-leading scientists working to correct this fundamental misunderstanding of genetics and evolution, in order to fact-check that common understanding. It turns out, it’s not just outdated, but deceptively wrong!

Here’s what he told us about those five basic statements.

Fasten your seat belts!

(1) it’s all about DNA: who you and your children are is all completely determined by your DNA;

Your brain cells, muscle cells, blood cells … and all the other cells of your body … have exactly the same DNA; and yet they’re so very unique in many ways! What makes them different from each other — and you from anybody else — is determined largely by another molecule: RNA.

(2) DNA is a long molecule which gathers together many genes, like beads on a string, which code for the proteins that your body is made of;

Only a very small fraction of your genome (the total collection of all your genetic material) codes for proteins; just a few percent in fact. Most of the rest of your DNA codes for RNA molecules which regulate the entire genetic machine. Also, any given “gene” (discrete chunk of information) is not like one of those beads on the string: instead, it has bits and pieces scattered all over your genome.

(3) cells do everything they can to protect those genes from any kind of change;

In fact, your cells have built-in mechanisms which do the exact opposite of that: they actively change the organization of your DNA, in response to evolutionary pressures, by:

– moving large chunks from one position to another, even between chromosomes (recombination and reorganization);

– moving large chunks between completely different species (“horizontal transmission”, in contrast to the standard “vertical transmission” from your parents);

– combining the genomes of two different related species to produce a new third species (hybridization) or produce an entirely different kind of organism (the origin of the mitochondria and chloroplast);

(4) UV light and mutagenic chemicals cause random mutations in the DNA, which can alter the function of the proteins they encode;

Cells have very good error-correcting mechanisms which undo those kinds of mistakes, as well as those made when the “photocopier” (the DNA-duplicating machine) goes on the fritz;

(5) those random mutations accumulate over time, producing individuals with new characteristics (e.g., blood type; hair color) and eventually … a new species;

The occasional random mutations which might make it through the error-correcting mechanisms referred to in #4 above are completely unable to explain the origin of major changes in a given species (new “phenotypes”), let alone the origin of entirely new species.

How much more wrong could we have been?

This new and improved understanding of genetics and biological evolution opens up new ways to defuse the debates which keep coming up when creationists push back on the Theory of Evolution. Or on the evolutionary origin of the bacterial flagellum!

As always, tell us what you think …

If you want to hear our summary of the common [mis]understanding of genetics, and the backdrop for this interview, check out Episode #69. As a bonus, that episode also explored nine reasons why some people push back on the whole idea of evolution (in some cases, because they just don’t properly understand genetics and evolution).

To find more about Dr. James Shapiro and the group of scholars he co-leads seeking to bring awareness to this new understanding of genetics, go to The Third Way of Evolution.

Episode image from Pixabay (and modified).

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Dr. Michael Behe, a biochemist and Intelligent Design proponent, gives us his perspective of ID, and responses to several counterarguments against ID. To start off our deep-dive into Intelligent Design, we wanted to talk to a knowledgeable representative of that movement. Dr. Michael Behe, a biochemist who has been waving that flag for three decades […]

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Before hearing from Intelligent Design advocates, we thought we’d give our listeners some useful background information about how cells work …. it turns out it’s all about making shapes out of string. Before we present our interviews with Drs. Michael Behe and Jonathan McLatchie (both leading proponents of Intelligent Design), we feel we should give […]

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A short introduction to start a mini-series on this Christian apologetic idea, and some of the reasons why we have such difficulty with it. Intelligent Design” has attracted much criticism — certainly from the secular, scientific community, but even from Christians of all stripes … including ourselves. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to […]

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“Why not just throw the worship service out the window, and re-think what it means to be a Christian community?” Most Christians today have nestled into, or hopped between, a very standard modern expression of Christian faith, one that involves meeting for an hour on Sunday and having an unchanging mixture of songs, scripture reading, […]

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Four particularly toxic ingredients make it especially hard for some (many?) Evangelicals to maintain their belief system beyond a few decades. Christianity, in the West at least, is certainly experiencing a “great falling away”: churches closing, memberships dropping, people leaving the faith entirely. Some might conclude they’re leaving in order to better enjoy “sex, drugs […]

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A traumatic experience while serving in a church led to a complete deconstruction of her Christian faith: she’s still “a hopeful Christian agnostic” who finds Jesus’ message “beautiful and life-giving” Another one of our listeners tells her story. Rachel Sanders also grew up in a conservative Evangelical home, and went to a Southern Baptist church, […]

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Her spiritual journey was going perfectly well, until life circumstances blind-sided her and the “body of Christ” failed her, putting an end to her journey. This week, another long-standing member of the podcast discussion group drops into our “studio” and shares her spiritual journey. She was perfectly comfortable for the first few decades with her […]

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Another listener tells his story of navigating a long and meandering path through Evangelicalism: many detours, but the same destination. This week, we talk to an old friend of both of ours: Paul Almas. Paul played a key role in Luke’s reconstruction journey, was someone that both Luke and Scott looked up to 20 or […]

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Getting to know one of our listeners, and his very unique and thought-provoking path into and out of Evangelicalism. We talked to Doug, one of our listeners, to learn a bit about his very unique story through Evangelicalism: from Fundamentalism, through progressively more liberal churches, eventually going back to Bible Seminary as an atheist to […]

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Science now makes the former no longer tenable, leaving three options for believers: ignore the problem, reject the Bible, or revise one’s theology. The story of “the Exodus” has traditionally been seen to involve millions of Israelites following Moses out of Egypt: this image is derived from a literal reading of the Old Testament, with […]

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Although the origin story for Jews, and the foundation for much of Christian theology, many scholars will ask: did it really happen? Moses leading the newly-born nation of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, wandering through the desert for 40 years, and taking possession of Canaan is an iconic story. Not only is it the […]

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We look back on the previous four episodes, evaluate what we learned, pull together some loose threads, and set some objectives for future episodes. This is our fifth and final episode in our mini-series on the Christian view of human sexuality and gender. After listening to four scholars give their various expert perspectives on this […]

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A scholar’s perspective after decades of research: “we’re talking about a whole network of politicized ideals that has used the bodies of adolescents to gain political power … Purity Culture has become rape culture.”

This movement seems to be anything but what it appears to be. Evangelical leaders compelling adolescents to be sexually pure (Purity Pledge cards and rings; Joshua McDowell’s True Love Waits, and Josh Harris’s I Kissed Dating Goodbye), while they themselves were embroiled in sex scandals and cover-ups (the Southern Baptist Convention; Falwell Jr; Swaggart; Haggard; Ravi Zaccharias). The rise of a Purity Movement based on so-called “Biblical” principles which are not found in the pages of the Bible. A movement with laudable goals (purity; integrity) and naive promises/hopes which ended up causing an immense amount of pain and suffering through shame, guilt, and condemnation.

We talked to Dr. Sara Moslener, who has spent decades researching this movement, interviewing people and scholars, and writing a book about her findings. Some of the things we talked about include:

the rise of this movement was driven in part by religious pressures (the Moral Majority, the Religious Right; True Love Waits [SBC]; purity pledge cards and purity rings), but also political pressures (Federal Welfare Reform bill; Abstinence-Only education) and federal funding
boycotts against Disney (Ellen Degeneres “coming out”)
the Free Love generation and the Sexual Revolution
Evangelicals borrowed much of their sexual ethics from Roman Catholicism, but didn’t take the corresponding theology because “that’s Catholic theology” …. Evangelicals don’t have a theology of the Feminine Divine, or of celibacy, but do have confused and naive ideas about “a Biblical marriage” and other “Biblical principles”
“we’re talking about a whole network of politicized ideals that has used the bodies of adolescents to gain political power”
the backlash against the Purity Culture movement, both within Christianity and from the public/secular sector
Purity Culture tells young girls that “if you have sex before marriage, you’re a chewed up piece of gum”
female authors like Rachel Held Evans, Sarah Bessy and Elizabeth Esther push back on Purity Culture; Emily Joy Allison starts #ChurchToo
Josh Butler writes Beautiful Union — a deeply male-centered perspective in which sexual pleasure (for men) is emblematic of God’s love for the Church — which receives immediate criticism and is quickly withdrawn, and Butler resigns from his ministry
“purity culture is rape culture”; the former teaches that male sexuality is innately aggressive, and feminine sexuality is innately passive and nurturing: put these two together and you naturalize rape … an anthropological truth: it’s women’s job to make sure that men’s sexuality is contained (James Dobson and others)
numerous sex scandals involving the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, and many individuals (Swaggart; Haggard; Lentz; Falwell Jr; Hybels; Ravi Zaccharias, … )
this normalization of a rape culture is in part behind white Evangelicals voting for Trump despite his morality, life-style and what he says (the infamous Access Hollywood tape)
the myth that the white Evangelical family, as the foundation of the nation state, is a safe place, and that church is also a safe place. But both turned out to NOT be safe places!
the linkage between Purity Culture and Christian Nationalism
creating home school coalitions
Trump’s attempts at religious piety (e.g., holding up a Bible in front of a church which had been cleared of protesters using tear gas; references to Bible verses)
the more impactful sexual revolution happened in the 1920s, when it became acceptable to separate sex from procreation
the sexual revolution(s) eventually hit Evangelicalism (in the 70s?)
what we didn’t have in the 70s was the concept of consent …. and Purity Culture did not help: Purity Culture became rape culture
gender identity, and the corresponding politics
the After Purity Project: interviewed 65 people who grew up in and out of Purity Culture, and now talking to scholars about the data; a book is in the works.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more about Dr. Moslener at her personal website, and at Central Michigan University’s article which highlights the After Purity Project.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like you may also like Episode #48, where we talk to Kristen Kobes Du Mez about Christian Nationalism and toxic masculinity, or Episode #114 with Frank Schaeffer about the birth of the Christian Right and the rise of the Moral Majority.

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Too often, the Christian response to questions about human sexuality is to point to Leviticus, and similar Biblical passages.

Like other religions, Christianity has a few laws, taboos, and prohibitions about a variety of life issues (diet; holidays; technology; money; dead bodies). But when it comes specifically to human sexuality and gender, Christians have come up with a very, very ….. VERY …… long list of things to regulate and prohibit.

And the application of that preoccupation starts very early for many Christians. Many children find out before they’re two or three years old that touching their genitals actually feels kind of good, but the typical parental response to this self-exploration is to quickly scold the child and tell them how “you don’t do that …. at least not in public!” That’s the beginning of a life-long journey of associating sex with being dirty, and of feeling shame and guilt. As the kids get older, they get dire warnings about masturbation, about not dressing in a way that causes the men in the church to stumble, about the dangers of dating, and the lectures about premarital sex. And once those kids do get old enough to start exploring their own world of sexuality, that shame and guilt is complemented with condemnation if they stray even a little bit outside of very narrowly prescribed pathway of what is called “normal” sex.

That shaming, condemnation, regulation and prohibition isn’t only a parent-child transaction. Evangelicals will also direct it at pastors and worship leaders who have been caught in a sexual affair, and the response is usually an immediate termination of employment and ostracization. They’re much more forgiving and compassionate if the offence is a substance abuse problem (drugs, or alcoholism), or embezzling ministry funds; but an illicit sexual affair …. that’s just too much for them.

And typically, Evangelicals justify all of this regulation, prohibition, shaming and condemnation by pointing to Biblical passages taken from the Old Testament, especially Leviticus, or to other ones in the New Testament which in turn point directly or indirectly to those Old Testament ones.

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Stephen Simpson, who has grad level theological training, is a practicing clinical psychologist with expertise in sexuality and marriage therapy, and is an Associate Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary where he teaches Human Sexuality. We asked him: “why does Christianity cares so much about human sexuality?” Some of the things we talked about include:

the Bible really doesn’t say anything about premarital sex
the strongly negative preoccupation that Christianity has toward sex (and aversion to it) stems from GrecoRoman thought (which holds a dim view of the physical, and a high view of the spiritual) and Western capitalism (which sees women as property, and marriage as a financial arrangement)
sex for love versus sex for reproduction
when revising Christian thinking about human sexuality, do we seek guidance from medical doctors and scientists, or follow the lead of society (as we’ve done before regarding women in the workplace, or working on Sundays), or invoke the Wesleyan quadrilateral (church tradition; reason; Christian experience; and scripture)?
how the Bible might NOT be the best place to get such guidance (especially not the Pentateuch) because any golden nuggets of Divine truth that might have been there originally are now obscured by ancient male Semitic fingerprints
whether or not the Levitical laws were an improvement over the existing cultural norms of that era (Luke is very decidedly in the “NOT” camp on this idea)
the fact that Christians will often invoke “the image of God” in discussions around human sexuality, even though there’s no wide agreement about what that phrase means, and no definition of that phrase that brings in aspects of God’s own sexuality and sexual nature (please note: I’m not suggesting that God even has a sexuality or sexual nature; instead, that bringing that phrase into the discussion is just not relevant)
how the people sitting in the pews are always decades behind in the thinking of Biblical scholars and theologians; is this because those pew warmers don’t want to stray too far from their parent’s religion, or because their pastors don’t have the boldness to push them out of their comfort zones, or because the seminaries aren’t properly training the pastors, or because those seminaries depend on the pew warmers themselves for funding and support
how this Christian preoccupation with sex exacts a heavy toll in the form of shame, guilt and condemnation, much more so for girls/daughters than for boys/sons

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Dr. Simpson and his work at his faculty web-page.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #101, where we talk about Divine Inspiration, or of course the two previous episodes in this mini-series on Sex (#117 and #118).

Episode image from Victoria Chentsova.

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The typical modern Christian reflex response to sexuality is to point to the Old Testament Levitical laws: so let’s look more closely at those.

The ultimate goal of this mini-series of episodes on sex and gender is to get the Christian / Evangelical perspective on why this is such an important and sensitive topic. But knowing that they will almost immediately point to passages found in the Old Testament — especially the laws found in Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers-Deuteronomy, and the creation narratives found in Genesis — we thought we should first talk to a scholar of Jewish and Christian thinking, who was raised in a devout Jewish home, and who wrote a book entitled “Traditional Jewish Sex Guidance: A History” … Dr. Evyatar Marienberg.

There are many peculiarities around the Mosaic Law that sound more like ancient Semitic males writing their own ideas than a divine benevolent Being of cosmic proportions dictating them. For example, for the first thousand years (from “Adam and Eve in the Garden” to Israel in Egypt) God did not find it necessary to issue any kinds of law whatsoever about sexuality (other than “be fruitful and multiply”). And then during the 40-year march through the desert immediately before Israel established its nationhood, there is a sudden explosion of “613” laws of Moses. That Mosaic law pays a great deal of attention to fluids that come from the genitalia (men having wet dreams; women having periods), but absolutely nothing is said about those that come from the mouth (saliva; vomit), eyes (tears), nose (boogers), ears (wax), skin (sweat), belly buttons (dust bunnies), or digestive tract (feces). There is also a great deal of discrimination against females: they are literally worth less (as slaves, or as babies) and have much less freedom. And then there are the horrid laws around how to sell your daughter into slavery, and how to claim a young virgin who was captured in war. These are only a few of the examples that challenge the Divine origin of these laws, rather than their human origin, and call into question the universality and timelessness of these Laws.

Some of the other points/questions that we covered include:

there are well over 600 specific laws contained in the Mosaic Law
“is polygamy legit or not?”; the transition within Judaism toward monogamy
the Mosaic Law does not forbid many forms of sex outside of a monogamous marriage relationship (premarital sex; multiple wives; concubines; virgin prisoners-of-war), and doesn’t describe any kind of marriage ritual
clean versus unclean
males and females are treated differently because, in the eyes of the Mosaic Law, males and females are simply viewed as clearly different … they are just not the same
slavery; people being treated as mere property
what does “males and females being created in the image of God” mean?
what does the image of God have to do with gender and sexuality (Christians often invoke the imago Dei when they defend their views on gender/sexuality)
divine inspiration of scripture, and incarnation of God
what is the modern Jewish attitude towards homosexuality
what does “the two will become one flesh” mean?
premarital sex
divorce
Song of Songs (a sexually explicit book in the Bible)
is it really God who’s so concerned about sex and gender, or is it just human males using God as the justification for their views?

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Dr. Evyatar Marienberg at his institutional profile. Also check out his book on the traditional regulations given to Jewish couples about marital sex, as well as another focusing on how Catholicism influenced the rock icon Sting.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #57, where we talk to Dr. Pete Enns about the origin and evolution of the Old Testament, or Episode #101 where we talk about divine inspiration of scripture.

Episode image: Moses with the Ten Commandments by Rembrandt, 1659 [Gemäldegalerie, Berlin].

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The first in a series of episodes on this question, this one being a scientific perspective from an ex-Mormon social psychologist

This is the first in a multi-part series of episodes that focuses on that very question. It will NOT get into sexual ethics, morality or normativity. Instead, we’re exploring why it is that religions pay widely varying attention to this or that aspect of human existence (diet; money; dead bodies; government; medicine; technology; war), but ALL religions across the board have much to say about sex and gender. This is especially true of Christianity. As always, we’ll get a number of scholars to weigh in on this from their diverse perspectives.

This week, we start with an ex-Mormon social psychologist — Dr. Jordan Moon (Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse) — who will look at this from the scientific perspective. He recently published a paper in a scientific journal with the title: “Why are world religions so concerned with sexual behavior?” We thought this was a perfect place to start. Some of the points/questions we talked about include:

sex and gender precede the fossil record of single cell life
there’s no clear evolutionary advantage, because some life forms still reproduce non-sexually even though they have the ability to do so sexually
although each religion might have certain laws about fundamental aspects of life (like diet; what to do with dead bodies; the use of mind-altering chemicals; technology; money; how to wage war), they ALL say something about sex and gender; this has been true across the globe and all through recorded history
Christianity in general, and Evangelicalism in particular, have MUCH to say about sex, gender, and sexuality
attributing sex to any form of Intelligent Design calls into question the “intelligence” of the Designer: ” …. “why run a sewer system through the middle of the playground?”
religion is so obsessed with this because “the stakes are very high”; however religions are not so uniformly or universally concerned about other matters for which the stakes are high (dietary laws; money; technology; war)
can human preoccupation with sex/gender be a product of evolution if we don’t see seeds of this preoccupation in our closest genetic relatives (apes)
animals don’t seem to have taboos about masturbation, nudity, public displays of affection, homosexual acts … this is all a uniquely human thing
if religion’s preoccupation is related to population control or reproductive success, then why is it against polygamy
Christian values vs Puritanism
correlation studies show one’s degree of religiosity (a psychological term) is better predicted by attitudes about sex than by moral values such as compassion
do religions give us our values, or do we gravitate toward religion based on values we already hold
do we choose religion because it aligns with our subconscious reproductive goals
if religion’s “interest” in sex is primarily related to controlling/encouraging reproductive success, then why do they reserve so much condemnation and shame for people who want to simply enjoy sex for the sake of intimacy and personal pleasure … and why would religion want to stomp out promiscuity
the evolutionary cost/benefit ratio for monogamy vs polygamy
why did ancient Israelite culture tolerate polygamy, but gradually transition to a monogamous society
history has shown that the majority of human cultures have been polygamous
does monogamy make human culture more stable and harmonious by keeping the unmated male youths “off the street and out of trouble”
the celibacy paradox: why do so many religions require their professional holy men to be celibate
why do religions attach so much condemnation, guilt and shame to all aspects of human sexuality, and why is this applied so much more heavily against females/daughters than against males/sons

Needless to say, it was a candid and stimulating conversation!?

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Dr. Jordan Moon at his faculty web-page and his personal web-site.

If you enjoyed this episode, you might like our previous episode that focused on Intelligent Design.

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Words without spaces or vowels and multiple manuscript versions with different words are only the beginning of the problem!

Have you ever wondered why there are so many different versions of the Bible: the King James, the Revised Standard Version, the New Revised Standard Version, the English Standard Version, the New English Bible, the New International Version, and dozens of others? Ever wondered why scholars can still be haggling over how to translate a given verse?

The problem doesn’t only begin with needing a trustworthy lexicon that lists the various English meanings for any given Hebrew or Greek word, nor trying to figure out from the context of the words around that ancient word to decide which English meaning to choose. Sometimes you have to guess at the word itself …. because the ancient Hebrews didn’t use spaces or vowels!? So translators had to first decide which strings of letters formed which words, then insert different vowels to see what made the most sense: for example, did “CRT” mean “create”, “crate” or “court”?

Our expert — Dr. Mark Elliott — also tells us that the problem isn’t only needing to choose between different possible words, but sometimes you had to choose between different versions of ancient manuscripts which used entirely different words and phrases. Usually, it would seem, you go for the oldest manuscripts because they’re closer in time to the original, rather than the newer manuscripts which might have undergone editorial changes since the original was written. But the older manuscripts tend to be in worse condition: more moth-eaten, mouldy, fragmented, and therefore missing key portions of the text message.

And sometimes the decision to choose between different manuscripts came down to the one that aligned more closely with the theology and politics of the translators themselves!

We then go through three examples of contentious Bible translation to highlight how these decisions are made, and how they can radically alter the theology that is conveyed in the passage:

was Jesus angry when he healed a leper who stopped him on his missionary journey (as an older reliable manuscript indicates), or was Jesus compassionate (as per the newer manuscripts)?
did Abraham refer to God in the plural form because he was just confused and misspoke, or because he was condescending to his polytheistic audience, or because he was indeed a polytheist at the time?
did Matthew “get out of his lane” when he took an ancient Hebrew prophecy about a young woman conceiving and birthing a son as a sign that would be fulfilled just a few years later, and turned that into a centuries-old prophecy of the Virgin Birth of Jesus?

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about our guest, Dr. Mark Elliott, at his faculty web-page.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #57 (Dr. Peter Enns; origin of the Old Testament) or Episode #81 (David Carr: origin of the New Testament).

Episode image from Pixabay.

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A Baptist pastor and Yale theologian tells how he finds additional depth for his Christian faith by learning from other world religions.

Our previous two guests — Philip Yancey and Frank Schaeffer — told us how they recovered from the toxic Evangelicalism that they grew up with. The former found it possible to recover an entirely different Evangelicalism, while the other felt the best solution was to cut his losses and leave Christian faith behind.

Our guest today takes a third approach: Dr. Greg Mobley found it possible to take the Evangelical faith that was handed to him by his parents and his community, and bring that to a whole new level through music, poetry, philosophy …… and other world religions. Not just other strands of Christian faith, but deepening his theology by marinating in Judaism, Islam … even Eastern religions.

It was fascinating that he began as a Southern Baptist, had to go to Yale to become deeply familiar with Judaism, and later had to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to fall in love with Roman Catholicism.

One of the lessons he learned was how “everyone sees their own religion as full of grace and compassion, and all other religions as harsh and demanding.”

Another important insight: “Judaism and Christianity are siblings, separated at birth. ….. That the two movements eventually separated made possible the preservation of each. …. Jews and Christians can find lost fragments of themes of their respective faiths …. by talking to each other.”

And it was great how he liberally sprinkled musical references all through his commentary … his personal love for Blue Grass, but also references to the Band, the Monkeys, Jesse Winchester, Marc Cohn, Jimmie Dale Gilmor, Ray Charles, Mumford and Sons, and even Stompin’ Tom Connors. And he wasn’t just referring to their musicality: he finds important philosophical and theological nuggets in their lyrics. “I think the three greatest Christian theologians of my lifetime are Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Leonard Cohen … three Jewish guys, but they could see us and the beauty of Christianity.”

We learned so much from Greg; tell us what you think …..

To find more about Dr. Gregory Mobley, see his faculty web-page.

If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like our previous conversation with Dr. Justin Barrett , who shared a Christian perspective on humans evolving a mind which was naturally tuned to search for and find the divine and to create religions.

Episode image from Pixabay.

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An informal but deeply personal conversation with renowned Evangelical and ExVangelical author Frank Schaeffer.

Last week, we looked at a high-profile Evangelical author who grew up in the Evangelical world and fully embraced that worldview until reaching an age where he could assert some independent thinking and autonomy. By then, he had encountered a few too many questions that eroded the foundation of his Evangelical faith, and came to the point that he completely and utterly rejected that Evangelical faith that was handed to him.

The exact same things could also be said about another high-profile Evangelical author: our guest this week, Frank Schaeffer. But where Philip Yancey was able to find a new form of Evangelical faith that worked for him, Frank found he had to become an atheist. Well, a form of atheist: Frank calls himself an atheist who believes in God and prays every day. Interestingly, both Philip and Frank told us how they could see God better through nature, art, beauty and romantic love, than they could through their Evangelical communities!

Frank Schaeffer had an insider’s look at the Evangelical world unlike most other people. As the son of Francis Schaeffer — a Presbyterian pastor, theologian, philosopher, and art lover — he grew up in a small Evangelical community that ministered selflessly to broken and rejected people. His father’s writings soon caught the attention of Evangelical publishers and leaders, and they quickly found themselves writing best-selling Evangelical books, speaking before crowds of thousands, producing Evangelical films, flying across America on Jerry Falwell’s private jet, appearing frequently on national Evangelical TV networks like 700 Club, and meeting personally with American presidents and other Evangelical world leaders.

Frank started walking in Francis’s shoes, on a trajectory which would have had him continuing a nepotistic climb up the Evangelical leadership ladder. But the hypocrisy and corruption that Frank witnessed firsthand, behind closed doors and out of sight from the Evangelical sheep, was a caustic soul-destroying acid. He saw how the sausage was made ….. and he couldn’t stomach what he saw. Out of self-preservation, he rejected that Evangelical world.

But not carte blanche. When we asked whether “Evangelicalism” is still recoverable or needs to be forsaken, he was very careful to distinguish between the world of Falwell, prosperity gospel, and Christian nationalism of modern American Evangelicalism, from the grass-roots, selfless, humanity-serving Evangelicalism of his childhood.

And so Frank still retains certain core elements of his spiritual formation. He wrote a book with the title: “Why I am an atheist who believes in GOD“; look at the cover and notice his choice of font on that last word. He told us that he “was conditioned to pray and feels like his day hasn’t started without it.” And that “We are spiritual beings looking at a physical world that is purely mechanical and we cannot put these things together. It does not make sense. And so, it isn’t like we’ll find some big answer to the big question that makes sense. We don’t have the capacity to make sense of our most basic situation: that we are biological beings looking at the world through spiritual eyes.” And he continues to devote his time and energies to social justice and the prophetic ministry of speaking truth to power.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this story …

If you enjoyed this episode, you really should listen to its counterpart from last week with Philip Yancey, and you may also enjoy an interview with one of our listeners who grew up in the Evangelical world, but found he had to leave that and yet misses certain aspects of that life.

Find more information about Frank Schaeffer at his website and his podcast. He also recommended his books Crazy for God, Portofino, and Why I’m an atheist who believes in God.

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Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back

Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

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One of the most recognizable Evangelical authors today; and yet you won’t recognize the self-portrait that he gave us in this conversation!

Philip Yancey is one of the most recognizable Christian authors in Evangelicalism today. He has written dozens of books over the past five decades. 15 million English copies have been sold, and they’ve been translated into 40 languages. Two of those books (The Jesus I Never Knew …. and What’s So Amazing About Grace) have won the Book of the Year Award from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.

I’ve long had a mental image about Philip that he had always been a Christian, solidly convinced of his theology … that he grew up in a very typical, middle-of-the-road, white, middle-class to upper-class, Evangelical world, and in a stable, middle-of-the-road strand of Christianity … had a relatively typical and uneventful life … and was otherwise straight-laced, soft-spoken, and not overly emotional. You probably have/had the same preconceptions.

We would be wrong.

Now you’ll have to add to that list the fact that he was a born-and-bred racist … that he held KKK leaders up in high esteem, and fully accepted racial segregation … that he spent years totally rejecting Christianity, even spitting in the face of it … and that his family life included a lot of physical, verbal, and emotional abuse, substance addiction, and mental illness.

And in the middle of all that, Philip tells a story of a profound conversion experience … a powerful, life-changing spiritual encounter.

Philip has a unique perspective on Evangelicalism, which is the focus of this podcast. We originally wanted to talk to him about his love/hate-relationship with that world, even juxtaposing his perspective against Frank Schaeffer’s, with whom we’ll be talking next week.

But irrespective of his insights re. Evangelicalism, even just hearing Philip’s life story alone is worth the price of admission, folks. And when we asked Philip to sum up at the end of our session with him, he put this pearl of wisdom on the table: “pain redeemed impresses me more than pain removed.”

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Philip Yancey, his blog, his books and upcoming appearances at his website.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episodes #38 and #39, where we give a 101 on Evangelicals and Evangelicalism.

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Comments/questions from our listeners and members prompt this deep-dive into this most important of Christian holidays

It’s always tempting to do a blog or episode every year on Christmas and on Easter. They’re both such easy, ready-made topics, with many obvious angles and discussion points. Bloggers and podcasters find them hard to resist. In almost 10 years of blogging and podcasting, I’ve only given in once. But this Easter season, several comments/questions from our listeners and our private Discussion group prompted us to weigh in on certain points:

Bonnie, Ruth, and Joe: is Easter “just” a Christian appropriation of a Jewish holiday (Passover; Shabbatt) and/or of a secular/pagan spring celebration?
Ruth: why hasn’t the traditional bread and wine in this “supper” been upgraded to chicken and fries?
Merv: once one lets go of the ideas of “original sin” and penal substitution, what meaning is left in Christ’s death?
Mi K.: I would be curious about how in his death he destroyed his enemy.
Merv: how have others reformed the meaning of Easter?
Scott: Christ became the perfect Jew, fulfilling the covenant with Abraham/Israel
Luke: Christ needed to show humans the way to overcome reptilian thinking and achieve humanity 2.0
Luke: God owed a debt to the devil?
Edward: since Christ knew he was going to be resurrected, it wasn’t the same kind of sacrifice as a human with literally only one life to lose.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like episodes #18 (Original Sin), #82 (Jesus: Jewish Messiah) and #79 (humans evolving toward humanity 2.0).

Episode image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

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It’s been months since we looked through the boxes full of comments and questions that our listeners have sent to us through our web-sites, Facebook, emails, and podcast providers. Last week, we abstracted from our short list of favorite picks all the comments/questions that pertained to our 4-part Left Behind mini-series. Today, we look at the ones that were “left behind” after that abstracting!?

So, which comments/questions did we cover?

the idea of a so-called “Biblical lens” … or “Jesus lens”
any lens can actually distort the thing you’re looking at
are religions other than Judaism and Christianity also divinely-inspired?
the Incan god Viracocca sounds an awful like like Ezekiel’s and Isaiah’s YHWH, as well as like John’s Ancient of Days in Revelation
does the Bible talk about YHWH/God talking to non-Jews?
the Babylonian Emperor Cyrus was God’s Messiah?
how small the world of Western Evangelical thought is
what we can learn from Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians
inter-faith learning and ecumenism
Christianity gets some things right, and other things wrong?
if you (Luke or Scott) decided to leave your faith, how would your life change?

As always, tell us your thoughts on these points …

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #101 (divine inspiration), #57 (origin of the Old Testament), #12 (Evangelicalism and the Gospel), and #82/#83 (the humanity/divinity of Christ).

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Piecing together what the previous four episodes showed us about the End Times and Christ’s second coming.

After four weeks of talking to experts on various aspects of “End Times” theology, this episode is our chance to put together many pieces of the puzzle into a coherent picture. In part, this means we have to pull apart some pieces that had been put into the wrong place, or even didn’t belong to this puzzle, and add in some new pieces that we got from those previous four episodes. This debriefing was guided in part by feedback we received from our listeners as the mini-series unfolded (so it’s a little bit of a mailbag episode too).

We talked a bit about a new theological worldview that emerged in the 20th century — “Dispensationalism” — which is responsible for the wild distortion of End Times theology within Evangelical circles today. And we contrasted that against another theological worldview — “Preterism” — which sees the highly symbolic images and events described in the Book of Revelation as having been fulfilled in the 1st century.

We also felt we had to delineate one more time the negative impact of this traumatizing and damaging form of End Times theology, to impress on the listeners why this topic was worth devoting four episodes to exploring it, and why it needs to be pushed back on.

Another question we debated: why the Book of Revelation is even in the Bible in the first place, if it’s so problematic and easily misunderstood. My point of view is that in the same way that Genesis is not a science book, Revelation is not a history book. Instead, it’s there in our Bible because the human authors thought that way, and human editors compiled the book into the canon we call Scripture. At the same time, divine inspiration could also come into play here in the same way that we suggested divine inspiration was behind the sordid story in Judges 19, 20 and 21 (Episode #98): the passage doesn’t so much give readers an accurate perspective on the Divine, but exposes the flaws of the human heart.

Both Scott and I also compared our respective personal positions on whether the world will end in a violent, divinely-orchestrated destruction, or whether we eventually meet up with some kind of cosmic higher power (alien race? God?) that helps us get our act together; and what to do with the many passages predicting Christ’s Second Coming … “riding on the clouds”.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #82, where we talk specifically about Jesus being the Jewish Messiah.

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A close look at apocalyptic literature written before Jesus (and with which he interacted), and long after him (including John’s book of Revelation).

In this fourth and final episode of our miniseries on “the End Times”, we talk to Dr. John J. Collins (Prof. Old Testament; Yale Divinity School) about ancient Apocalyptic literature … a large genre/category of literature which deals specifically with End Times thinking in various groups of people at various times in history. We learned that there were two waves of Apocalyptic writings in and around the Jewish and Christian communities two millennia ago.

One wave occurred two or three centuries before Christ, in response to the rise of the Greek Hellenic Empire which massively shifted world thinking, politics, science, philosophy, and religion at that time. This is also the period in which Daniel writes his book, and it is this wave of literature with which Jesus and other religious leaders of his era interacted (Jesus referring to the Son of Man and the coming of the Kingdom of God, being two great examples). But that literature had no mention of the rising of a personified Antichrist, or any “mark of the Beast”, or any “Rapturing” of believers. Nor did Jesus talk about these things.

A second wave of this kind of literature came out in response to the destruction of the Jewish Temple by the Roman Empire a few decades after the death of Christ. A whole new geopolitical situation … a whole new national enemy … and a whole new set of questions for Jews and Christians alike. This would be the wave in which we find John’s book of Revelation, and his VERY different view of “the End Times”. And Dr. Collins also told us a bit about why John’s writing is so full of violence and symbolism and metaphorical imagery.

And then, two thousand years later, Evangelical Christians with a very “high view” of scripture take this book of Revelation, read it very literally, and apply it all directly to their own geopolitical situation: the church struggling against a fully modern, Westernized, American, narcissistic and consumeristic worldview.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Dr. John J. Collins at his faculty web-page at Yale.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #33, in which we talked quite a bit about predictions of the End of the World, including several made by Harold Camping. You may also enjoy a previous one in which Kerry Noble gave his dramatic personal story of being completely immersed into an Apocalyptic Evangelical paramilitary group who thought they needed to prepare for the Second Coming through guns and bombs (Episode #92).

Episode image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay.

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The “Left Behind” series of books and movies have sown seeds of fear, doubt and anxiety with life-changing and life-long psychological impact.

We’ve already heard in the previous two episodes that many people who grew up in the era of the “Left Behind” series of books and movies were negatively impacted by those forms of entertainment/indoctrination. Some would say they were traumatized, the most frequent complaint being the fear of having missed the Rapture or of somehow being made to take the mark of the Beast. But many also experience life-long and generalized anxiety, fear, and depression which they trace back to those formative years. Those books and movies also shaped the minds of that generation: they are always suspicious of every multi-government initiative being the leading edge of “the one world government” … of rising politicians and celebrities being the soon-to-be-revealed Antichrist … of every innovation in banking being “the mark of the Beast”. And polling agencies tell us that they’re less likely to care about pollution, climate-change, rising sea levels, and habitat destruction … and the respondents will explain it’s because they think “Jesus is coming back any day, and then it’s all gonna’ burn anyway.”

That’s quite a legacy that “Left Behind” has …. left behind. Which is why we’ve decided to produce four episodes in response to the recent release of another “Left Behind” movie back in January. Sure, this movie probably won’t be a blockbuster by Hollywood standards. It will probably only last a few weeks in big chain theatres, and maybe a bit longer in the smaller independent ones. But you can be certain that it will continue to be played in Evangelical churches, youth groups, rallies and colleges … and individual homes … across North America all year, maybe longer that. And it will be subtitled for release in other countries. We heard last week of the burgeoning wave of Pentecostals in the Southern hemisphere — one estimate says a billion by 2050 — who fully embrace this very toxic form of Apocalypticism (and many share a border with Muslim countries). So this recently-released movie will certainly be seen by many more people than the Hollywood box office numbers might indicate, and will shape the minds of yet another generation of Evangelicals!?

In this episode, we’re going to talk to two clinical psychological experts who specialize in a new and growing form of mental trauma: spiritual abuse. They come from two opposite ends of the faith spectrum: one an atheist Exvangelical, and the other a firmly-committed believer. But they share the common perception that this “End Times” thinking is dangerous and destructive. We’ll hear their stories and insights regarding the damage experienced by their clients.

We’ll also ask both of them whether it’s possible that Apocalyptic-thinking is an inherently human trait. Both of them agreed that it looks like it is: our evolutionary heritage engrained into us a constant fear of mortal threats all around us waiting to pounce. As Marlene put it: “our nervous system is wired to be afraid … that’s what we’re starting with”. And Evangelical producers of these “Left Behind” books and movies are exploiting that, and “dialing it up to eleven”!

As always, tell us what your thoughts are about this topic …

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy a previous one in which Kerry Noble gave his dramatic personal story of being completely immersed into an Apocalyptic Evangelical paramilitary group who thought they needed to prepare for the Second Coming through guns and bombs (Episode #92). You may also want to listen to our previous episode with Dan Koch talking about clergy abuse (Episode #89), or two other interviews with Janice Selbie (Episode #46) and Marlene Winell (Episode #47) dealing with religious abuse.

Find more information about Dan Koch at his web-site, his podcast, his music page, and this link to a free clinical tool that he developed for assessing spiritual abuse.

Find more about Dr. Marlene Winell at her web-site and that of her counselling service called Journey Free, which offers help for individuals seeking one-on-one recovery coaching; a group support (online forum and virtual support meetings 3 times a month); a professional development program; and upcoming retreats (the next one being June 8-11 in Cape Cod).

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A historian takes us on a journey through two millennia of evolution of Christian understanding about “the End Times”.

In last week’s episode, we compared two pictures of “the End Times”: one drawn by modern day Evangelicals, and the other drawn by Jesus while he was teaching in Palestine. And we found that those two pictures look completely different; the modern Evangelical picture always includes four main ingredients which Jesus’ picture just does not have:

the Rapture
the mark of the Beast
a personified Antichrist
complete global destruction (especially in America)

I fully expect push back on that claim, so let me be clear: there are elements in the Gospel accounts which can be manipulated and distorted to resemble those four ingredients (John’s Book of Revelation is a different story). And the first two of those are the ones that are the biggest causes of anxiety and fear in people who suffer psychological trauma from the Left Behind books/movies (we’ll explore that psychological perspective next week).

We wanted to understand how/why/when that understanding of “the End Times” changed so much in the two thousand years since Jesus. So we brought in Dr. Gord Heath, a Professor of Christian History, to take us on a journey through church time. At each important stop along that journey, I keep asking him: “is this where they start talking about the Rapture or the mark of the Beast?” [Remember: #1 and #2 in my list above, and which cause the most psychological trauma] And the same answer keeps coming up: “well …. no, actually.” Not until we get to the 19th and 20th centuries do we find that those four elements are brought in by a strand of thinking referred to as Dispensationalism. It’s completely a modern invention (when we’re measuring on a time-frame stretching 2000 years)!?

We also found out last week that this Dispensationalist-invented version of “the End Times” is especially prevalent in the Evangelical world, Pentecostals being the strongest proponents of all. The only reason why I single this group out so starkly is that when I asked our expert historian to try to look over the horizon and speculate how this End Times thinking might change over the NEXT few hundred years, he also said that this theology is a “critical mark” of a Pentecostal thinking which has been on a dramatic growth streak in the southern hemisphere (Latin America, Africa, and Asia). In fact, he said they were the fastest growing strand of Christianity, and are estimated to reach over a billion across the globe by 2050! And here’s his ominous warning: that volatile mixture of exploding numbers of people looking forward to a global Apocalyptic Ending are in many cases situated … on the borders of many Islamic countries. You better buckle up your seat-belt, folks!?

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like the other one we did a year ago on “the End of the World” …. episode #33, or one we did previously with Dr. Heath, looking at the evolution of the Evangelical world and how it morphed away from Jesus’s Gospel Message … episode #39.

Find more information about Dr. Gord Heath at his faculty web-page.

Episode image by Myriams-Fotos of Pixabay.

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The latest sequel to a long series of books and movies just hit the cinema!?

Yes, you read it correctly … yet another sequel in the Left Behind / Thief in the Night franchise of books and movies has come out. As if the previous ones which began coming out as far back as the 70s and 80s weren’t embarrassing and destructive enough.

We talked to Dr. Aaron Ricker, whose current major research interest is Apocalypticism … in the Bible … in comic books … in modern action hero movies … and in the zeitgeist of our day. And together with him, we first looked at some of the statistics gathered by polling agencies re. the various beliefs pertaining to “the End Times,” the anti-Christ, and “the Rapture” in society today (well, mostly in Americans). [Links for these data can be found below]

We also looked at the fact that every Left Behind movie or book has the same four ingredients: the “Rapture”, an anti-Christ who violently takes over the world, the “Mark of the Beast”, and global destruction. These are the hallmark features of this genre. This isn’t just a nerdy fun-fact: the reason it’s so noteworthy is that the “End Times” scenario that Jesus described doesn’t have any of these four ingredients!? At least not in any way that modern day Evangelicals understand these things. Disagree? Check out how we justify that claim.

Finally, we looked at some of the dangers and costs — to individuals as well as to society — of this “End Times” thinking:

the anxiety and fear that it creates in people, especially kids and adolescents, of having been “left behind” and now having to face a world-dominating anti-christ, global destruction, and ultimately …. eternal damnation.
opportunity costs: some who get sucked into this way of thinking question whether to go to university, or to pursue important careers, or even whether to get married (or they decide to get married too early) … all because they think “Jesus is definitely coming back in the next year or two, so why bother? Instead, we should just get ready for his return.”
making the situation on Earth even worse: the mentality that “maybe we can get Jesus to come back sooner if we just stir things up in Israel, or push international relations to the brink, or ruin the planet such that we humans NEED to be rescued (believe it or not, some people actually think this way)”.
inaction on important issues: “if Jesus is coming back in the next year or two, then why bother trying to save the planet (pollution; global warming; environmental collapse and species extinction), or fix the inner cities, because it’s all gonna just burn anyway, right?”
a distorted attitude re. foreign affairs, especially when it relates to Israel, because “this is all part of the plan”.
unnecessary suspicion about any enterprise that involves a variety of governments, because they all start looking too much like “part of the one-world government that paves the way for the anti-christ”.

Next week, we’re going to look at the history behind this way of thinking: how it has evolved over the past two millennia. And the week after that we’ll hear from two clinical experts who specialize in this kind of trauma.

As always, tell us what you think …

If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like the other one we did a year ago on “the End of the World” …. episode #33.

Our guest, Dr. Aaron Ricker, can be contacted at aaron.ricker@mail.mcgill.ca

Statistical polls discussed in this episode are available at Pew Research and at Lifeway Research.

Episode image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay (and modified). Movie promotional image from Amcomri Entertainment and Stonagal Pictures.

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Trying to find a silver lining in a very dark cloud: does it take an esoteric literary tool to redeem this classic Sunday School story?

Remember the story of Noah’s Flood from when you were a kid in Sunday School? The pictures of a smiling Noah stepping off a cute little ark with happy animals, and a happy sun beside a bright rainbow in the clear blue sky? At the time, did you notice all the dead bodies buried in the mud under the ark?

Yeah, my teacher avoided that part too.

This story of Noah’s Flood is a Trojan Horse for many Christians like me (the kind who ask questions). The parts of it that are in plain sight are perfectly fine. A sight to behold. Beautiful even. And so you let your guard down and embrace it. But it’s what’s hidden inside that could eventually destroy your faith.

For almost everyone who grapples closely with this story, it’s the incongruity between the details of this ancient Semitic story and our modern understanding of science which erodes faith. There’s just so much evidence against the story. Not just pieces of evidence, but so many different kinds of evidence. From geology … archaeology … genetics … ecology … hydrology … cosmology … engineering (of the Ark) … history (evidence for civilizations before and after the Fundamentalist dating of the event which show no evidence of a global flood). Even evidence from the Bible itself: the “Nephilim” which haunted the Semites even after the Flood!? And so one often feels forced to either choose science or the Bible, because it seems you can’t have both. [Although appearances can be deceiving.]

But another toxic ingredient in this story is the basic morality which you have to accept. That an all-loving God finds humans to be so evil that he has to wipe them out by drowning them. Ironically, the text says it’s their violence that he finds so abhorrent, and yet his solution to the problem is … violence!?

And finally, there are so many details that quite anthropomorphize God. He seems to be repeatedly making mistakes. First He says he shouldn’t have created humans, then later that he shouldn’t have destroyed them; and then his solution to the human problem evidently fails because there’s just as much evil after the flood as there was before the flood. What’s that common saying in baseball: “Three strikes and ….”? And that puzzling scene where God smells the meat that Noah is barbecuing (as a sacrifice), and finds it so pleasing that his anger is cooled: what’s that about?

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Dustin Burlet, who focused his PhD project on the story of Noah’s Flood. In particular, he used a specialized literary tool called “rhetorical critical analysis” to reveal a whole new perspective on this story: that the latter actually reveals the compassionate, loving and provisional side of God! And Dr. Burlet pushes back hard on all the points I raised in the paragraphs above. I’m quite open to being corrected on any/all of them: I just wish it didn’t require an esoteric and obscure literary tool and years of graduate level training in ancient Hebrew linguistics to find the golden nugget in this otherwise very disturbing story.

As always, tell us what you think …

Check out Dr. Burlet’s book at Amazon.

Episode image by Gerhard from Pixabay.

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In giving up or changing so many core “traditional” Christian beliefs, how can we still call ourselves “Christian”?

In an episode two weeks back, one of our guests challenged us to look at what now defines our Christianity This was in response to us listing one traditional Christian tenet after another which we were now redefining, softening, or even rejecting. Apparently, even an atheist was wondering if we were giving up too much, and taking a path which diverged so sharply from main-stream Christianity!?

Around the same time, another one of our listeners posted to our private Facebook discussion group an interesting article published in Salon magazine: “Not quite losing my religion: Being a liberal evangelical isn’t always easy“. Many of the things in that article resonated so much with me personally, and with the question/challenge articulated by our guest two weeks ago.

Both those events were the spark that led to this episode. And Scott and I thought the author of that article — Nathaniel Manderson — was the perfect guest to bring on to unpack the topic: his life story that eventually led to him becoming an ordained Baptist minister who passionately challenges many aspects of Evangelical thinking in his articles for Salon magazine was a perfect fit for the topic and for our podcast.

We ping-ponged our way through many questions around this central question of what it means to be a Christian:

the claim that it can be (must be?) seen as a “personal relationship” with the Divine
why do we feel the need to put an infinite Being into a finite box (personhood)? … is it to control God?
could you have Christians who don’t believe in a Theistic God?
does calling God “a creative life force” diminish him too much … or does personifying him diminish him?
what does it mean to say that Jesus is divine?
did Jesus always know that he was more than a Jewish Messiah bringing a message of liberation for Israel, or did he grow to realize his bigger broader mission to all humanity over the course of his teaching ministry?
can we be sure that the words of Jesus were recorded accurately (and/or that we have misinterpreted some of them)?
what does the label “Evangelical” really mean, and is it still worth hanging on to it?

As always, tell us what you think …

Find out more about Nathaniel Manderson at his webpage at Salon.

Episode image from Cruz&Co Business and Taxation Services.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #42, where we talk specifically about the “Personal Relationship”, or Episode #39 which explores what Evangelicalism is all about.

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How long will it be before AI becomes one of the staff members at your own church? How long before AI is generating sermons for the pastor?

Image from the Religious Studies Project

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a household word, but many people don’t appreciate how pervasive it is in our society. We’re all familiar with digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google, and also with the variety of spelling and grammar checkers. But how many know how AI is behind weather prediction … scanning X-rays to come up with a disease diagnosis … pre-screening job applications … forensic accounting and tax auditing … criminal investigations and parole board prejudgements? We know that AI re-directs our questions to the right desk at the bank, or your university, or a major business. But how many know that one can consult AI for personal advice, psychological counseling … even spiritual matters: Buddhism and Roman Catholicism have begun to use very limited versions of AI in spiritual guidance.

How long will it be before AI becomes one of the staff members at your own church? How long before AI is generating sermons for the pastor? You thought OpenAI’s “ChatGPT” was just a problem for learning institutions concerned about students using it to generate essays? We looked at how easy it was to use it to generate a sermon on the Second Coming of Christ, or Penal Substitution, or the utter wickedness of the heart of humanity. But there are other forms of AI out there, and once the software becomes available to the public, who’s to stop them from using it for whatever purpose suits them?

The genie is now out of the bottle!

AI models are “trained” by simply feeding them gigabytes of a certain type of information, and letting it look for patterns in that data set (X-rays; weather reports; criminal convictions). But what if the data set is distorted by humans? Criminal convictions and parole hearings in the past, for example, were often tinged by racist influences on/in humans: and when those historical decisions were fed into the AI intended to pre-screen parolees, its pre-decisions started to reflect … a subtle racism! In the same way, other AIs trained on historical data from the internet started to reflect their own sexist ideology.

And here’s where the problem becomes particularly worrisome. AIs such as ChatGPT were trained by a diet of millions of pages from the internet and digital books that were existent as of a couple years ago. But now that AI is being used to generate essays, books, songs, music, and art … all of which quickly become part of the information smorgasbord on the internet … its own output becomes part of the curriculum for future versions and applications of AI. In other words, it not only teaches our future humans, but also begins teaching itself! It creates a pedagogical feedback loop. Who knows where that road leads?!

Combine that idea with the growing use of AI in religious applications: AI creating sermons, blogs, internet articles, and theological textbooks. Could the day come when AI influences theology? If AI can become racist or sexist, can it become Fundamentalist? Could it eventually create a new religion?

If you ask me, this is something we need to think about a bit more carefully.

As always, tell us what you think …

To learn more about our guest Dr. Beth Singler, visit her website.

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Five exvangelicals compare notes about our decisions to either reject or reconstruct a faith system that just wasn’t working for us.

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Picture a gymnasium full of “kids” celebrating their 30-year high school reunion. After graduating from the same school, they all took different paths through life. Joined completely different professional societies. Mixed in different socioeconomic circles. But now they’re all doing the same thing: talking about how they’ve learned what’s really important in life …. that it’s not all about money, power, and control … showing pictures of their kids and grand-kids …. and looking for ways to re-connect and enjoy life together. And as the evening wears on, and the huddles get smaller and tighter, the conversation morphs gradually toward the unknowns and the unanswered questions.

In a way, that’s the experience that Scott and I had this week, talking to three of our listeners who started on the same path as we did, who made a choice radically different from our own …. and yet found that we arrived at the same spot.

All five of us had fully bought in to an Evangelical/Fundamentalist worldview. And we all had a similarly introspective, inquisitive, open-minded personality. All five of us took courses in religious studies at the college/university level, four of us doing so at the graduate level. But so much thinking, searching and learning generated so many questions and so much cognitive dissonance that we had to reject the faith system we started with.

We all became exvangelicals.

But that’s where our paths diverged. Two of us started reconstructing a new Christian faith system that just made more sense of the world around us, radically different from the one we started with, while three of us decided there wasn’t enough worth salvaging from the ruins.

And in this episode, we had that reunion experience I referred to above. We compared notes: believers vs atheists. We raised questions and shared perspectives that many of our listeners will relate to. About certainty. Doubt. Wanting to believe, and yet finding it hard to do so. Whether the label “evangelical” is worth hanging on to.

As always, tell us what you think …

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We look at some of the common ways that believers [mis]understand this, and share some other perspectives on the how’s, who’s and what’s behind it.

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Is the Bible divinely-inspired?

Often the first thing that Evangelicals will do when asked that question — after voicing a very vigorous “YES!” — is quote 2 Timothy 3:16-17, which begins with “All scripture is God-breathed …”

The problem is, that’s not the question that was asked.

To begin with, Paul is NOT talking here about the Bible! He’s writing this before the Bible as we know it even existed: before the Gospels or any of the non-Pauline books (from Peter, James, Luke, and one or more Johns) had even been written, and hundreds of years before a number of books were selected out of a large pile of sacred writings circulating at the time and collated into what we call “the Bible”.

He’s probably referring in part to the Old Testament books, but who’s to say he wasn’t also referring to yet other books? He uses a phrase which in the original Greek means “sacred writings” and which is translated in our modern English into “all scripture”. The Old Testament itself endorses many other ancient Hebrew books — “sacred writings” — that are not in our modern Bibles:

the Annals of Samuel the Seer (1 Chronicles 29:29)
the Records of Nathan the prophet (1 Chronicles 29:29; 2 Chronicles 9:29)
the Records of Gad the Seer (1 Chronicles 29:29)
the Visions of Iddo the Seer (2 Chronicles 9:29 and 12:15)
the Records of Shemaiah the prophet (2 Chronicles 12:15)
the Book of the Wars of the Lord (Numbers 21:14)
the Book of Jashar (Joshua 10:13)
the Annals of the Acts of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41)
Annals of the Kings of Judah (1 Kings 14:29).

Paul would also have been studying from other Hebrew religious books which were available to him. Some of these are collated into what we call the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha: you may have heard of the Book of Enoch, the four Books of Maccabees, and dozens of other ones.

And if modern day Fundamentalists hang their hats on the words “all scripture” — as in “ALL scripture” — then what does one do about other “sacred writings” and “scripture” that Paul would have known about? He would have known about the religious “sacred writings” of the Greeks and Romans (in fact, he quoted from a couple Greek philosophers), and that their slaves and business partners might have had their own “sacred writings” or “scripture” from yet other religions.

And then there’s the strange word that Paul uses: a compound word that literally means “God-breathed”. It’s only used once in the Bible, and only a few times in other Greek literature, so scholars really don’t know what to do with it. Does it mean “dictated”? Most translators and scholars have opted for the translation “inspired by God”. But even that: what does that mean? How does that work? Did God put images in the heads of the writers? Did he actually fire the neurons in their brains?

We look at a number of the “how’s” that likely played into that inspiration:

the zeitgeist …. worldview … of the cultures they lived in
circumstances and events in their personal lives and in the world around them
the way humans are wired … our tendencies and mental peculiarities that we inherited through evolution (or through creation?)
our emotions and values

We also looked at “who” might have been behind these subtle forms of inspiration: the agent behind that inspiration. It all depends on how you define “God”. We don’t all agree on this!

And finally, we look at the object of that inspiration. Do we have to say that only the Bible is divinely-inspired? That it’s uniquely inspired? Why not also those other ancient Hebrew books that aren’t in the Bible? Why not some of the Greek philosophical writings that were circulating at the time, and which completely re-shaped human thinking and was incorporated into Christian thinking? What about modern authors (I would nominate NT Wright, Philip Yancey, Peter Enns, and Brian MacLaren)? What about certain songs on the radio, poems, classical literature that really get you thinking deeper thoughts, asking existential questions, and re-organizing your life? I even think modern science and medicine are divinely-inspired: God motivating humans to search for truth and to apply that knowledge to the betterment of humanity.

As always, tell us what you think about what we had to say about this …

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A close look at the history, science, and theology behind this strange practice, and what it all means for us today.

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Most Evangelicals will have encountered the phenomenon of “speaking in tongues”, if only through reading about it in the New Testament. But I’m guessing very few of them are well-informed about the practice, even though they might actually do it (I’ll even say especially those who do it!). I’m also guessing that many of our listeners — Recovering Evangelicals — are embarrassed and even traumatized about it.

So we took a deep-dive into this controversial practice. And to help us with that, we brought in a guest who was a tongues-speaking Evangelical who became an atheist playwright and actor … who still regularly speaks in tongues in order to tap into his inner psyche, and recently ran work-shops for his theatrical colleagues teaching them … how to speak in tongues!?

After hearing Gary Kirkham’s amazing, hilarious, and provocative story, we looked at some of the science behind speaking in tongues.

Scholars of literature and of history will point out that the ancient Greeks and Romans were speaking in tongues in their own religious rituals many centuries before the New Testament Church took it up. And speaking in tongues is practiced in many other religions around the globe today. [And don’t jump too quickly to the common response that those are “counterfeits”, we address that too].

Anthropologists and linguists make it their careers to study humans making and using language. Despite being able to decode the languages of ancient Egyptian and Babylonian artefacts, and learning the languages of living aboriginal tribes who have never had contact with the rest of the world, those experts find nothing meaningful in recordings of Pentecostals and Charismatics speaking in tongues. The sounds, syllables, vocabulary, cadence and rhythm are on the level of baby-talk.

Neurologists look at the brain pathways involved … and not involved … in producing the “speech” of someone speaking in tongues.

Gary then unpacks some really fascinating insights into what he’s found to be the benefit of speaking in tongues [and remember, he now identifies as an atheist!?]. Basically, he finds it unlocks his inner psyche, and puts him in touch with his emotions. He finds it “hugely therapeutic” and “quite profound”. And people who attend his workshops find the same. And if they’re right, doesn’t this completely explain why speaking in tongues is so prevalent not just in Christianity — especially those strands which are so heavily focused on emotion in their spirituality — but also in other religions around the globe and down through history.

As always, tell us what you think …

To learn more about our guest Gary Kirkham, visit his website.

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Is prayer really a vending machine to get stuff? Or instead an introspective, meditative discipline to find out how you yourself can be the solution?

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Let’s face it. The experience of many believers, particularly listeners of this podcast, is that prayer doesn’t work. Ask for stuff — a physical healing … a solution to a problem … to ace a final exam … a parking spot!? — and the vast majority of the time you seem to only get what would typically happen if you hadn’t prayed at all.

We talked about Queen Elizabeth II, who’s been prayed for by millions of people around the globe, from lowly commoners to highly prominent clergy, numerous times every day, ever since she was born. And her health history was no different from most other people who enjoy a wealthy lifestyle and benefit from modern medicine in Britain.

We also looked at the famous “Harvard prayer experiment”, which evaluated the efficacy of prayer in the exact same rigorous way that they test the efficacy of the latest drug. And prayer came out with a big goose egg.

And yet there are some believers who are absolutely convinced that prayer DOES work. Especially for physical healings. At least, that’s what seems to happen at many faith healing services. But look more closely at the track record and you’ll find a disturbing pattern. At these healing rallies, there are always two very different groups of people.

On the one hand, there are those claiming a miraculous healing of a medical condition which often can’t be verified in any way, is known to be capable of reversing on its own through natural processes, and is often something related to pain. Who knows whether the “cancer” which was never properly diagnosed before or after the fact wasn’t an ulcer or a kidney stone — or just gas!? — all of which often resolve on their own? And even if it was cancer, cancers can also sometimes resolve on their own. And that pain? Your body can make its own natural, built-in painkillers under the right circumstances: this is why survivors of a plane crash can help carry out other wounded people even though they later find out they themselves had a broken arm or a broken ankle. Ever heard of a “jogger’s high”? The high-energy atmosphere of a healing service can easily trigger all kinds of physiological changes, including the fight-or-flight response which activates these built-in pain-suppression pathways.

On the other hand, one never hears about miraculous healings of a medical condition which has never been shown to reverse on its own. What I mean is, there’s never a restoration of amputated limbs. Never the reversal of a congenital physical abnormality (cleft palate; Down’s syndrome; cerebral palsy). Never the elimination of a straightforward, easily-verified genetic disease (cystic fibrosis; sickle cell anemia; blue-green color blindness). I guess God doesn’t do those kinds of miracles. [And by the way, when I say “never”, I’m completely ignoring all those claims that begin with “I heard from the friend of an acquaintance of mine about some unnamed guy in a far-off distant land (who you’ll never be able to track down, so you can’t follow-up on this claim), about him getting healed from ….”].

So we have natural, scientific explanations for all the kinds of healing that are often claimed, but no theological explanations for the kinds of healing that are never claimed. I mean, what theological reason could one possibly give for why can’t/won’t God restore a couple amputated legs?

But maybe that’s not what prayer is all about. It’s not about getting stuff … the cosmic vending machine … rubbing the genie’s lamp. Maybe it’s about meditative introspection to see how you yourself might need to change … or to be the change.

As always, tell us what you think…

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A sordid story of “divinely-sanctioned” violence in the Old Testament … which seems to be anything but that.

There are many stories in the Old Testament of carnage and slaughter, perpetrated by the nation of Israel, which are presented as divinely-sanctioned. In fact, the claim is that God / YHWH not only condoned them, but actually commanded them. Many books, articles and podcasts have looked at these and found ways to “justify” this violence. Explanations given include:

YHWH had put a curse on the line of one of Noah’s sons (Ham, from which the Canaanites came), commanding that those descendants would be perpetual slaves of another one of Noah’s sons (Shem, from whom the Israelites came);
YHWH had promised that land to Abram and Sarai, and the Canaanites were just in the way of Divine urban development;
YHWH had to use Israel to carve out a protective little niche in a savage heathen land in order to establish a Messianic bloodline;
the wickedness of the people of those lands was so great that YHWH couldn’t tolerate it anymore, and he used the nation of Israel to cleanse the land;
YHWH/God had his reasons, he does not have to explain himself to us, and we’re in no position to judge him on that.

Personally, I can’t accept those explanations any more: they’re entirely inconsistent with a God of love and forgiveness, and it’s appalling that an omnipotent God would use an innocent people (Israel) to do his dirty work. Imagine a religious leader or a winner of a Nobel Peace Prize sending his teenage-daughter with a shot-gun to the neighbours next door to slaughter every person and animal in the house because they did something to offend him.

But maybe we’ve got it wrong. Maybe those stories aren’t divinely sanctioned; maybe people were just being people and using their national deity as their alibi. The push-back on that suggestion is simply the slippery slope argument: if the text claims that God commanded it and we decide that he didn’t, then where do we draw the line on other parts of the Bible?

But there’s a story in the Old Testament which, in my mind, gets around the explanations listed above: an incredibly sordid story recounted in the book of Judges, chapters 19 to 21. Without getting into all the details: one individual Israelite is badly personally disrespected by the men of an Israelite town, so he rallies the entire nation of Israel to defend his honour by slaughtering the Israelite tribe in which this town is found. They had to attempt the attack three times before they were finally successful (so much for God being in charge). Once they realize that the tribe of Benjamin is in imminent danger of being completely eliminated (because they had killed off all the women and children), they attack another nearby innocent Israelite village, kill off everyone except the reproductively-viable virgins, and give those virgins to the survivors of their first attack.

And this is supposed to have been divinely ordained and sanctioned!?

This story has nothing to do with Canaanites (in fact, the “enemy” is a tribe of Israel, with whom YHWH had also made a covenant), or protecting a Messianic line. It is all about one truly despicable little man in a jealous rage igniting a civil war between Israelite tribes, all of it fuelled by offended Semitic male pride (just read the story). And yet the story claims that God “gave that city into their hands” because the attackers threw some magic dice and trusted that the outcome was God’s command, even though the dice were thrown AFTER they had already decided to go to war against their brothers. Let’s keep in mind that the story is not a dictation from God, but an oral history (transmitted by humans) which was eventually written down (by humans) and later revised, redacted and edited (by humans) over a thousand years later when the nation was trying to make sense of their Babylonian captivity.

Our motive in exploring this truly sordid story is not to discredit the Bible or the Christian faith, but to show that we don’t have to read the Bible literally and superficially, especially when it comes to things like the Canaanite slaughters. Instead, we have to admit that the Bible may be divinely-inspired, but it’s got human fingerprints all over it, and we have to develop the skills to read it critically and astutely. There may be golden nuggets in it, but you have to dig those out of the dirt and polish them off.

As always, tell us what you think…

Find out more about Eric Seibert at his university profile page, and his books at this Amazon page.

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Having children intensifies the deconstruction process, and can even re-start a whole new round of wrestling with long-dead questions.

Deconstruction is difficult enough on its own. But doing so while having young kids gives that process a whole new level of peril and fear. Even those who have deconstructed quite a while ago and have grown quite comfortable in their new worldview find that many of the questions they thought they’d wrestled into the dirt now come back all over again. Exvangelicals bring a lot of baggage to the parenting experience!?

To help us through this topic, we talked to Bekah McNeel, author of the book: Bringing Up Kids When Church Lets You Down: A Guide for Parents Questioning Their Faith.

Bekah shared her own story of deconstruction over the course of many years, and talked about some of the major reasons that motivate people to head for the “exit ramps”:

Biblical inerrancy
the subject of hell
politics, and the embrace of Trump
racism
rules around what a family should look like
academia; intellectualism; science

She then unpacked many of the issues and questions that tend to come up again for deconstructed parents when children enter the picture:

baptism, circumcision at birth
what if we got the whole “no hell” thing all wrong? Do we really feel confident enough to jeopardize their eternal future?
should we start taking the kids to Sunday School / church?
discipline, fear and shame
sex, sexuality, body image, masturbation
education, homeschooling, college/university

Our listeners also pitched in a few questions. What about the youth group, and its leaders? Are they open to kids asking tough questions: teenagers need a place where their concerns and questions are taken seriously. How your spouse feels about the deconstruction is hugely important: what do you do when the parents start believing very different things?

As always, tell us what you think…

Find out more about Bekah McNeel at https://bekahmcneel.com/, and about her book at https://bekahmcneel.com/book/

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Our listeners … and we ourselves …. raise some questions about the previous two episodes and the whole ideological motive behind asking “who is Adam?”

Over the last two weeks, we’ve been perusing scholarly works on the subject of “Who was Adam?” [note: a pet peeve of mine … Eve is almost always left out of this question!?]. We heard from two scholars who have written their own books on the subject (Joshua Swamidass, and Denis Alexander), one of them gave us a critique of a third scholar’s book (William Lane Craig), and we made numerous references to a large and growing pile of books written by Christian scholars on this very question (Peter Enns; C. John Collins; Fuz Rana; Denis Venema and Scott McKnight; …). Collectively, their ideas cover a lot of range:

a historical (“literal”) person, or a mythical/metaphorical (“literary”) figure;
a Homo sapiens in the area of Iraq roughly 6,000 years ago … to a Homo heidelbergensis in Northern Europe roughly 750,000 years ago;
a de novo creation made from dirt … to a representative plucked out of the human population that existed at the time through the process of biological evolution, and who was then rehabilitated or “upgraded”;
created “in the image of God” … as understood by the Hellenic Greeks (and which later Christianity adopted), or as understood by the ancient Hebrews who wrote the story in the first place;
the primal couple living in the wild open hinterland, or in a tiny protected private garden with a couple magical trees;
that primal couple having crossed some kind of line … broken some kind of law … and thereby consigned all of humanity to an eternity in hell, or to some form of death, or at least to a never-ending dispute on the matter between Christian scholars and theologians.

And those two episodes generated enough questions, problems, and concerns from our listeners to merit a response episode. So here we deal with some of those:

why are there two very different creation accounts in Genesis (note: that’s only part of the “problem” … there are also several more creation accounts in other parts of the Bible!);
how/why would a genetic lineage and a genealogical lineage come to very different end-points?
is the motive behind Joshua’s and/or Craig’s proposals simply to get agreement between the Bible’s version and the scientific version (aka, “Concordism”);
why does Craig go all the way back to H. heidelbergensis to answer this question?

After addressing those follow-up questions, we deal with Luke’s own major concern here: why is this question so important? It’s not just a trivia question like “why is the sky blue?”. It’s not a nerdy, esoteric hobby like collecting stamps. And it’s not a self-exploration like digging up one’s family tree to find out whether one is related to royalty, or some other famous person. Instead, this question has a whole ideological agenda behind it. A worldview. A theological motive. Which is, simply, “original sin”. That question is the beginning of a mental pathway that leads to the conclusion that all of us bear some form of guilt or debt simply because of something that a long distant relative is guilty of. And with the momentum gained by walking that path, one is carried to another contentious theological worldview … penal substitution. And then it’s only a short leap from that rock to another even more contentious boulder: hell, and eternal conscious torment.

Luke is quite motivated to challenge that train of thought. As he put it in this episode: “if I have a great-grandfather who’s guilty of some kind of mass murder, there’s absolutely no justice at all in making my grand-daughter even the least bit guilty of what he did.” Which is NOT to say that we’re recommending the whole Christian faith be discarded. We’re suggesting some revision to some of our core ideas. In a previous series of episodes, we described our revised understanding of original sin and atonement theory.

As always, tell us what you think…

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A geneticist unpacks the genetic evidence for human evolution, and critiques one recent proposal that “Adam” can be traced back 750,000 years to Homo heidelbergensis

This week, we speak to Dr. Denis Alexander, a scientist who is as committed to his life-long Christian faith as he is to the theory of evolution.

We first took advantage of the fact that he has spent decades doing research in the area of genetics, and asked him to unpack and explain some of the main lines of genetic evidence that support the idea that humans did evolve from an ancestor we share in common with gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, Neanderthals and Denisovans. That evidence includes pseudogenes (remnants of broken genes that are still intact and functional in other “lower” species), proviral sequences (remnants or “scars” of viral infections had by the ancestors of humans and chimpanzees), and an amazing story about our own chromosome #2.

We then talk with Denis about the large and growing number of books on the subject of “Who is/was Adam?” which have been written by Christian scholars over the past couple decades. Two books in particular are worth mentioning: Joshua Swamidass’s book (we interviewed him last week) about science being unable to rule out a very recent “Adam” …. even one as recent as a few thousand years ago. The other book, written by Dr. William Lane Craig, proposes that Adam goes back as much as 750,000 years, originated in Northern Europe, and was not one of us — Homo sapiens — but rather Homo heidelbergensis, the progenitor of us humans and of Neanderthals! Now that’s a bit of a stretch!

We also explored the question of why so many scholars are spending so much time and energy thinking, writing, and speaking on the question “Who is/was Adam?”. The two main reasons appear to be: (1) the need to identify a common ancestor on which to base the concept of original sin; and (2) the perceived need to defend the truthfulness of Scripture itself (because “if Jesus and the Apostle Paul seemed to believe in a literal, historical Adam and they were wrong about that, then what else were they wrong about?”).

As always, tell us what you think…

Find more about Dr. Denis Alexander at https://www.faraday.cam.ac.uk/about/people/dr-denis-alexander/

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A medical scientist who fully affirms human evolution and common ancestry with the apes shows that science can’t rule out a recent Adam&Eve. There are many who believe in a historical Adam&Eve as recently as six thousand years ago, based on a direct, surface-level reading of the first couple chapters of Genesis. And then there […]

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Our responses to a flurry of comments and questions to two recent episodes: one on Open/Process Theism, and the other comparing theology and science as legitimate avenues in the search for Truth. Two of our recent episodes both evoked a tremendous response from our listeners, in terms of comments left at our two Facebook sites […]

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An amazing story of a journey into an utterly bizarre worldview, and what it took to come back to reality. Do you ever look back on the things that you once believed with conviction, and now shake your head, asking yourself: “How could I have believed that? It’s so obviously not true. I just don’t […]

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Luke asks two theologians to convince him that theology is a legitimate avenue for coming up with robust models of our reality Science and theology are both human endeavours seeking to explain our past, our present reality, and possibly also the trajectory of our future. Both build elaborate ideas on the foundation of previous scholars, […]

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A brief introduction to two forms of theology that are as old as the Bible itself, but have labels that are only a few decades old. One of the biggest problems in Christian theology arises out of the simple belief that God is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful. The problem? … why, then, is there so […]

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An expert gives us his insight into this disturbing, embarrassing … and growing … problem in the 21st century church. Spiritual/clergy abuse has been much in the news as of late. Some of the names that have filled religious and secular news feeds in the past few years include large organizations like the indigenous residential […]

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Our understanding of Hell has been evolving for thousands of years … and we’re the ones making all the changes! Dr. Meghan Henning (Associate Professor of Christian Origins; University of Dayton, OH) gives a scholar’s view on the historical evolution of JudeoChristian thinking about this … “place?” … state? …. concept? For thousands of years,the […]

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A look forward at the ideas and episodes we’ve been working on for this new season. After a four month hiatus, we’ve come back! In this inaugural episode, we briefly re-introduce ourselves to the audience, explain the four month hiatus, talk about our modus operandi, reaffirm the mission or vision of our podcast and our […]

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A third and final look back at the last 20 episodes: our “Origin and Evolution of …” series. In this final episode of Season 3, we looked back a third time at the “Origin and Evolution of …” series of episodes that we started at the beginning of the year. That series was a deep-dive […]

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A close look at how this is quite different from mere resuscitation of a dead body, and how it’s the crucial evidence for Christianity being “the true myth.” For millennia, we humans have been making myths: stories of heroes, villains, tests-of-character, conflicts, rescue missions, and more. It’s a distinctly human trait, and the foundation for […]

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Literary scholars such as JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis see Christianity as not only the fulfillment of ancient Hebrew prophecies, but also the deep-seated yearnings of the human heart, expressed through a multitude of myths and religions. Our previous episodes looked at hominids a few hundred thousand years ago acquiring cognitive abilities which equipped them […]

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Paul and John seem to paint a different portrait of Jesus than those who walked and talked with him (last week’s topic). Last week, we looked at the first half of that paradoxical Christian expression: Jesus was “fully human and yet fully divine.” We learned that the people who walked and talked with him found […]

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The people who actually walked and talked with Jesus in the first century clearly saw him primarily as a Jewish Messiah. One particular Christian tenet that has been the hardest to wrap my brain around is the idea that Jesus was “fully human, and yet fully divine”. This week, we look at what the people […]

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Did decades of apostolic teaching of a cosmic divine universal Savior influence the eyewitness accounts — recorded in the Gospels many decades later — of a very human Jewish Messiah? Over the next few weeks, we’ll be looking at how the first century Christian church evolved its understanding of Jesus. To do that, we’re going […]

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Was this religion dropped onto a unified nation that had just marched out of Egypt, or did both the nation and its religion evolve over the course of millennia? We’ve been looking at hominids over the past couple hundred thousand years, paying particular attention to the evolution of cognitive abilities which contributed to the emergence […]

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Many Christians will say: “I’m OK with evolution, in general …. as long as you leave humans out of it”. It’s only been four weeks since we summarized our discussions in this podcast series that began four months ago (episode #74). But during the four weeks since then, we’ve crossed that line: we’ve added humans […]

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Hypersensitive agency detection and promiscuous teleology in human brains make a powerful religion-making machine Millions of years of evolution have produced a powerful neural reflex within animals: we immediately assume there’s a being behind every rustling in the grass. We see faces in puffy clouds and random patterns on the ground. If we hear a […]

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Signs of symbolism, abstract thinking, compassion, and even a religious streak becoming visible in hominids hundreds of thousands of years ago. We talked to Dr. Marc Kissel (PhD, Anthropology) about his work looking at the evolution of higher cognitive functions in ancient hominids — our ancestors — hundreds of thousands of years ago. They were a […]

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Evolution produces organisms who find more and more ways to work with each other to survive: the origin of the agape love we’ve been talking about? As soon as life appeared on earth roughly four billion years ago, its survival was driven by two opposing forces. One was entirely self-oriented, and commanded things like: kill […]

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A discussion about that point in our evolutionary journey when humans acquired the abilities to experience … “a soul”? At this point in our unfolding story, life has appeared on earth and produced countless different species of increasing complexity, a few of whom are beginning to exhibit characteristics and abilities that would make them good […]

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A look back at the last ten episodes and how they unpack a provocative new Christian understanding of how and why we got here. Over the past two months, we’ve been exploring the thesis that Dr. Chris Barrigar brought to us about a year and a half ago (Episode #29 and #30). One in which […]

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A geneticist explains to us how we have a common ancestor with chimpanzees, and a more recent one with Neanderthals. As he put it: “Neanderthals were us!” This week, we pick up where we left off last week: someone having the amazing insight to pull out fragments of DNA from deep inside a hominid bone […]

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The anthropologist who discovered “Lucy” answers many of our questions on human evolution. The cosmic egg has exploded and produced a universe full of stars, planets, and basic chemicals (episodes #64 and 65). Out of those basic building blocks, life began to appear on earth, from which all kinds of species started evolving (episodes #66, […]

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An update on Darwinism and the origin of species. Last week we heard about the mechanisms going on inside the cells … at the molecular level … to produce new species. This week, Dr. Jeffrey Schloss tackles the same subject, but comes at it from more of a whole organism level. We explore general themes […]

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Most people don’t know: the genome is a formatted database with read/write memory systems which can reorganize itself to produce new species. Last week, we gave a thumbnail sketch of genetics as most people understand it. We distilled that common understanding into five basic statements, and showed how most people think new species arise from […]

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A brief overview of genetics as most know it, and why many don’t buy the Theory of Evolution. Next week, we plan to wade into the deep water of genetics in order to understand the origin of species. So this week we thought it would be good to first give a brief Genetics 101 to […]

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Is there a transition of power in play within the YEC movement? Think about Young Earth Creationism (YEC), and you probably immediately conjure up a mental image of Ken Ham: he’s been the figurehead of that movement for decades. One can critique his scientific credentials and his way of interpreting anything scientific through his dogmatic […]

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Global warming, pollution, biodiversity loss, and humans. . It seems like every week there’s another record-breaking weather event: never-seen-before temperatures, rains, or winds. Weather-related devastation at scales or in places that were unprecedented. Floods, droughts, tornadoes, wild-fires. Earth is developing a fever. Even the ocean is getting warmer and more acidic. Dr. Adam Fenech (PhD, […]

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How did inorganic chemicals eventually become you and me? For the past three weeks, we’ve been talking about “the cosmic egg” that exploded and produced the space-time continuum of our universe. Out of all that energy, quantum particles were formed, which eventually became the matter that coalesced into stars and planets. Earth itself seems to […]

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. . . Dr. Robert Mann (PhD, Astronomy and Physics; U. Waterloo) shares with us his understanding of what evolved out of the “cosmic egg” that we’ve been talking about over the past couple of weeks … our universe. He has spent his career working on quantum physics and gravity and how they create Black […]

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Once again, a re-release from the past in anticipation of new episodes starting next week. Here, we look at one idea of how the universe came into existence. This is how we summarized it when we released this over a year and a half ago … When we read a paper1 published a couple years […]

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Are certain cosmological constants “too good to be random or coincidental”? . We’re repeating this episode in anticipation of a couple new ones that will be released in two weeks, after the holiday season has passed (we didn’t want those to be eclipsed by the distractions of the holidays). Those two new episodes in January […]

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Some ethical/theological perspectives on public responses to the pandemic, and how to prepare for what’s in store . We begin with a look at the public backlash against the authorities who are simply trying to save humanity from this existential threat: vaccine mandates vaccine revolts vaccine passports fake vaccine passports and fake consent forms masks […]

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Myths, misconceptions, and conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19 image from Pixabay, adapted . Last week, we focused on the science around COVID. Today, we’ve got pseudoscience in our cross-hairs. The misinformation, myths, science denial, and conspiracy theories that are put out by internet trolls and circulated through social media. Or which are simply a product of […]

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Comparing the R&D programs of humans (vaccines; drugs) and of COVID (variants) . This is our third update on COVID (also see #28 and #36), pulled together right around the time that COVID rolled out its latest disguise: the omicron variant. Here, we look at some of the scientific advances, including the large number of […]

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A new mutant of COVID-19 which is more transmissible than delta, and may evade our immune system Image from Pixabay . The W.H.O. tells us there’s a new COVID variant out there, one with numerous mutations on the spike protein which not only make it easier to spread, but it may also evade our diagnostic […]

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The first in a series of episode exploring the strained relationship between the church and science . The church has long had a reputation for being anti-science, even though it was people of faith who built the foundations of the scientific enterprise for millennia. Even in the story of Galileo being tried by the church […]

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Dr. Peter Enns gives us the first in this new “Origin and evolution of …” series of episodes. This week, we’re starting in a whole new direction. Well, two different directions, actually. One theme that we’ll be pursuing we’ve entitled “The origin and evolution of …” series of episodes. You’d probably expect that we’ll fill […]

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Dissection of a deconstruction journey and a search for truth and meaning. Last week, Boyd and I introduced you to the Sunday Assembly. We talked to Colin and Matt, who each lead Sunday Assembly chapters in their respective local communities (Halifax, Canada and London, UK) (#55). We had also intended to include 5 or 10 […]

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The Sunday Assembly build a community and celebrate life by rejigging a traditional church service …… but leaving out all the “God-stuff”. We’ve been hearing over the past few episodes how important community is in the faith journey … for devout believers returning to church (Ep. #51) … for those trying to now revitalize the […]

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Last week, we talked about believers starting out with a simple but passionate Christian belief (stage 1) which crumbles as doubts and questions erode the pillars of their faith (stage 3). This is such an unsettling experience for anyone going through that, but Brian McLaren showed that it is still possible to find Faith after […]

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Last week, we heard about people returning to church after COVID had kept the doors closed for over a year. This week, we hear about people returning to faith after doubts and too many questions kept them locked out for much longer. In his latest book … Faith after doubt: why your beliefs stopped working […]

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Last week, we talked to people considering the possibility/opportunity of going back to church. We learned about the things they missed most about not being able to go for so long … whether that was over a year because COVID kept them locked out, or whether it was much longer than that because of a […]

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COVID-19 is blamed for a lot of bad things, but there is one good thing it’s done for us: it forced us to stop everything and re-evaluate. Our healthcare system … government … business … schools … and even church. Almost two years after slamming the church doors on us, we’ve had time to re-evaluate […]

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We’re back! Here’s a sneak peak of what we’ve been preparing for Season 3. We began with a simple question: “Why should we go back to church?” Some people were forced out by COVID; others elected to drop out long before COVID because of a faith crisis. And many in both camps are now wondering […]

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In this season finale, we take a look back at our journey with you. Boyd and I had planned to take it in one direction, but as all great conversations go, this one went in a direction we completely did not expect! It really took on a life of its own. A couple episodes that […]

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Over the last two weeks, we’ve looked at how the Gospel of Jesus was changed from being a message of love, forgiveness and liberation into one of fear, guilt, shame, and unworthiness. This distortion was reinforced in the home, the Sunday Schools, Youth groups, and from the pulpit. And in the eyes and minds of […]

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In this second half of our look at religious trauma, we talk to Dr. Marlene Winell (PhD, Psychology), who literally wrote the book on this topic … Leaving the fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion … and is now the director of a large counseling service for those dealing with […]

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In the past few episodes, we’ve learned about the important role that other people play in one’s spiritual experience: we see, feel, and hear from God in part through our encounters with other people. This makes sense if the church is “the body of Christ.” Unfortunately, there’s a dark side to this fact: many people […]

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The neurobiology of the spiritual relationship is such a big topic, we thought it would be good to hear from a second scholar who comes at this from a completely different angle. Dr. Sarah Lane Ritchie obtained her graduate degree in Theology and Science studying consciousness, neuroplasticity and religious belief … we couldn’t have found a […]

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Having described the neurobiological mechanisms behind our relationships with other people, Dr. Smith then addressed our original question: “how do we humans relate to God?” Her answer: “in exactly the same way.” Some might be surprised that I even had to ask. They might shrug their shoulders or flip their hands and say: “Of course […]

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At this point in our mini-series looking at spiritual/religious experiences, we thought it would be good to understand how we perceive the rest of the world around us, including our relationships with other people, or our pets. This is still one of the biggest questions in science: one that is still entirely unresolved. And it […]

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Many Christians insist that this is the main thing that distinguishes Christianity from all other religions: “we have a personal relationship with the Divine”. I certainly heard this many times during the first few decades of my spiritual journey. The problem for me was, I just didn’t seem to ever experience what they claimed. The […]

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It’s a common phenomenon: people who say they’ve left the faith, but they just keep coming back to pick at it. It left a nasty wound, which has since scabbed over, but they keep lifting the edges We looked at the demographics behind this … not just in America, but also in Canada, the UK, […]

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We did not anticipate two seemingly unrelated episodes would be so fertile, producing a mini-series of six episodes and a massive volume of listener feedback. In hindsight now, though, we can see the two are causally-related … each episode unleashed more feedback which gave us more material for yet another provocative episode, and the cycle […]

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Our previous four episodes, and the tremendous listener feedback they generated, referred often to Evangelicals and Evangelicalism. Some listeners suggested that those terms were applied incorrectly, and that we should instead be using labels like Fundamentalists, Christian Nationals, Moderates, Modernists, or Liberals. Do those who self-identify as “Evangelicals” … in their daily conversations, or when […]

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The previous three episodes had us unpacking statistics, quotes, and teachings pertaining to Evangelicalism which … really didn’t make Evangelicals look very good at all. It made us wonder if we might be seen as being too hard on Evangelicals. Even “persecuting” them. And then, the Internet being what it is … delivered up to […]

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Months ago, we planned to kick off Season 2 with two episodes that … we thought … were quite unrelated: the Insurrection at Capitol Hill, and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. And yet our research revealed a common thread running through both: QAnon and Evangelicals walking hand-in-hand in revolt. While interviewing people to gauge their awareness and […]

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It’s been almost a year and a half since we’ve had COVID-19, and over half a year since we’ve talked about it. It’s time for an update. Global deaths have now exceeded 3 million, despite our having several vaccines with high efficacy. At the heart of this paradox: people refusing to wear masks, to socially […]

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We’ve all seen images of the storming of the US Capitol. Among those many images, did you notice the pictures of people carrying Bibles or crosses? Signs with Christian slogans? A flag with the words: “Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my president”? What was the connection between Christianity and the insurrectionists at the Capitol? […]

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After a hiatus of a couple months that stretched out to eight, we’re back! Here, we re-connect with our audience, look back at Season 1, and give a preview of what’s coming in Season 2. As always, tell us what you think. If you want to play this episode later on your device, look for […]

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View the autosave [This is a re-posting of an episode with a broken link] There’s never been a shortage of reasons to think that the Apocalypse was right around the corner. But Covid-19 and worldwide socio-political-economic unrest have recently ratcheted that fear to a whole new level. It takes some effort to not get caught […]

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. Looking back at the comments and responses which have accumulated at this WordPress site, at Facebook, and sent to us by email, we thought it was time to respond to a few of them in more detail. We noticed a couple recurring themes, one of which related to the Bible itself: how to read/interpret […]

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“I found my way out of Young Earth Creationism because I tried to prove Young Earth Creationism … and failed.” These are the words of our guest today. But it’s a well-worn confession, made by many before him who walked the same beaten path. Renowned historian Dr. Ronald Numbers identifies a recurring theme in the […]

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When we read a paper1 published a couple years ago by last week’s guest — Dr. Chris Barrigar — we felt his idea was a perfect book-end to our recent discussions about Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design. We’ve often referred to an image of God rolling certain ingredients — thermodynamics; entropy; quantum mechanics; biological […]

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After exploring one end of the spectrum of Creationist beliefs (Young Earth; Intelligent Design), we now move to the other end. This week, we talk to Dr. Chris Barrigar an Anglican pastor from Montreal, Quebec, who’s proposed an idea by which God might have front-loaded the intrinsic properties of the primal cosmic egg in such […]

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Right now, Covid-19 is turning the world up-side-down. Our social systems … education systems … industries … economies … everything has been shut down. Healthcare is straining. And we’re scrambling for answers to how to deal with this thing. Many don’t know that we actually ran into Covid’s brother just less than 20 years ago, […]

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We all do this: we dismiss verifiable scientific fact because we think we know better, or because we think we’re an outlier case. For some, this looks fairly innocuous. Resorting to medicinal herbs and Gwyneth Paltrow to treat health problems. Thinking that cell phones cause brain cancer … wind turbines cause leukemia … 5G networks […]

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Christianity has always existed alongside of science. Some of the greatest Biblical characters were highly educated people (Moses; Daniel; Solomon; Saul of Tarsus). Most of the early Church Fathers were fully schooled in the highest forms of Greek thinking (Irenaeus; Clement; Origen; Augustine). Many leading scientists from the past (Sir Isaac Newton; William Buckland) and […]

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When modern science conflicts with a Young Earth Creationist worldview, two common responses are either to deny the science (last week’s topic) or reject the faith. This week, we talk to someone who opted for that 2nd coping strategy. But the person we talked to isn’t just another one of the many people who quietly […]

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You may have heard that when an ostrich perceives a threat, it responds by sticking its head in the sand. The implied logic being that it no longer sees the danger, so it no longer feels threatened. “Out of sight, out of mind.” It turns out that this phenomenon isn’t true. It’s a myth! It […]

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Young Earth Creationism. “Really?” … you might ask. “Why are we still talking about this? I mean, how many people still think this way?” According to polling agencies like Pew and Gallup … “many!” For example, Pew asked two groups of people: “did humans evolve, or have they always existed in their present form?” The […]

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Are certain cosmological constants “too good to be random or coincidental”? Apologies to my high school geography teacher. The only thing I seem to remember learning in that class was how to balance pencils on the end of their erasers!? I’d seen street performers turn the art of balancing odd things into an impressive revenue […]

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Bill Gates created Microsoft. The Pharaoh Cheops built the Great Pyramid in Egypt. George Washington founded the United States of America. But did any of them actually get their hands dirty doing so? God may have created everything. But did he carefully design it — put molecule to molecule … assemble the bits and pieces […]

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The last in this four part mini-series. Previously, we’ve talked about what science has to say about “Original Sin,” and then last week about seven ideas the Church has had for ten or twenty centuries about “Atonement.” Here, we see how those seven ideas about Atonement stand up to our new modern understanding of human […]

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Atonement … aka, salvation. The whole point behind Christianity. In fact, the main reason we have religions of any kind. Atonement is basically about finding a way to God. Given that this is so central, you might think that the Christian church would have had a unified understanding about this right from its earliest days, […]

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Our goal next week is to talk about the core of Christian faith: Atonement Theology. But before we can do that, we need to talk about a fundamental concept on which it’s built: a concept called “Original Sin.” The Christian understanding of that idea is rooted in the story found in the third chapter of […]

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One of the core tenets of Christian theology … is also often one of the hardest to embrace, and all-too-often a reason for giving up on the faith. How is an abstract, theological concept like guilt or sin transmitted down through genetic lines? Can that really be inherited like skin color, or a tendency towards […]

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Mind. Personality. Soul. Consciousness. Spirit. These five things which account for the human experience are often seen as overlapping, or even interchangeable. Boyd and I see them all as related … but quite separate. For us, the first four are material and emergent properties of the brain and therefore completely within the scientific realm. In […]

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Chronological snobbery. Science of their day. Phenomenological science. These related terms came up many times in our previous episodes, and we kept saying “sometime we’ll have to get into that in more detail.” Here we come through on that promise. Clearly, the Biblical authors saw things differently than we do. the earth being unmovable, and […]

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What is it about Evangelicalism that sets believers up for their faith to fail when confronted simply by scientific facts? We suggest four answers to this question … (1) An inflexible adherence to inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture, and putting the Bible on too high a pedestal that borders on turning it into an icon […]

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Here, we take a close look at a dozen high-profile people who were once fully Evangelical in their outlook, and active in Christian leadership … with far more theological training and ministry experience than the average believer … and who found their Fundamentalist Christian faith increasingly didn’t make sense or was deeply disturbing. Although they […]

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Many times, Boyd and I have been asked “What’s with the name of your podcast?” Here’s our answer. In the first of a three part series, we take a look at how Evangelicalism has morphed and deviated away from its historical roots: the Gospel message itself. Boyd starts us off looking at our respective experiences […]

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An Old Testament scholar tells us that the Bible makes it very clear: there has to be a resurrection of the body. Early church fathers were convinced that this body would contain the very same molecules that we “owned” while alive on earth. And many Christians today, without thinking too deeply about the subject, imagine […]

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Can there be a materialistic explanation for the soul!? Does the soul have to be immaterial? In the previous episode, we found that scholars — scientists and philosophers — have long wrestled with the concept of an immaterial soul (and spirit) and come to a fully reasoned conclusion that it doesn’t work. Here, we first […]

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The vast majority of people — whether they be Christians sitting in the pews of our churches, or non-believers outside the church — think that Substance Dualism is a central and core tenet of Christianity. That one can’t reject Substance Dualism and still call themselves Christian. And yet many scholars — both Christian and non-believers […]

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Many Christians think they get their idea(s) about the human soul from the Bible. But the Bible doesn’t actually say too much about that. Which is rather paradoxical or ironic given that one would think that the Bible is all about the development of our soul. What exactly does the Bible have to say about […]

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Before we look at what the Bible has to say about the soul, we take a look at how the Biblical authors obtained their scientific understanding on things in general. Luke first introduces his understanding of “phenomenological science” — the science of their day — and then goes through several examples of science reflected in […]

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Very few of the believers sitting in the pews of our churches have a solid understanding of how we came to receive this collection of writings that we call “the Bible.” And most of them don’t realize how “Biblical thinking” evolved over the centuries during which those books were being written. Before we get into […]

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In this episode, Luke goes out to do “on-the-street” interviews, asking people three questions about what it means to be human. Since the three main words used by the Bible in this context are heart, mind and soul, he asked students during Frosh Week, people from my church, and professors at the university their ideas […]

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Boyd Blundell describes his journey through Christian faith, including the experiences which seriously challenged the traditional form that he grew up with, and which now motivate him to present a faith that evolved through facing those challenges. In particular, he found an intellectual rigidity within Christian communities as well as within intellectual/academic circles in the […]

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In this second half of his story, Luke describes why he didn’t go the whole way in becoming an atheist when his Christian faith became too uncomfortable to hang on to, but instead found a new Christian faith that was much more compatible with the 21st century. Part of the solution came from giving up […]

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Luke describes the first half of his journey in which three things kept eroding his Christian faith to the point that it finally became too hard to hang on to it. The first of those three eroding influences was science: a Fundamentalist world view that forced a six thousand year time-line on the origin of […]

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This is the unveiling of our new Recovering Evangelicals pod-cast. In it, we introduce you to the hosts — myself and Boyd Blundell — and tell you our motives behind teaming up to give you this, our academic credentials, and history, and a bit of a sneak peak into the two series of pod-cast episodes […]

Recovering Evangelicals: Recent Episodes

Luke Jeffrey Janssen