|
February 25, 1984 Dear John Clayton: Please, please don't use mister. I've always found it too formal, and I hate formalities. (Though one day I may have to get used to them I would like to get away with ignoring them as long as possible.) My name is Todd. It amazes me that you can find the extra time to discuss this with me and I appreciate that fact. Thank you. Unfortunately, I guess I did not make clear why I consider myself to be an agnostic. What you say in your letter is true, and, as a matter of fact, I fully agree with it: The existence of a divine being is an idea that is separate and apart from whether or not once accepts evolution. I did not reject my belief in God because I accepted the idea of evolution. My acceptance of evolution caused my rejection of fundamentalism. Since my reason for believing in God was based on my belief in the Bible, what was I supposed to do when my reason for believing in God no longer existed? Of course, I could not honestly believe in God for that reason anymore, and I did not at that time and do not now have any other reason for believing in God. But I'm still looking. Also, I pointed out in my last letter that I don't really disbelieve in God — I don't say that I have evidence or reason to believe that God does not exist; I simply do not believe in him because I have no evidence for his existence. For most ideas we don't walk around saying, "Well, I don't disbelieve in this, this, and this idea because there is no evidence against it." What people usually do (except, of course, when it comes to their religious ideas) is simply not believe in those ideas that there is no evidence for. People normally postulate the existence of something only when such a postulation is necessary to explain something else. There is a story that Napoleon, after looking at Laplace's Celestial Mechanics, asked Laplace why there was no mention of God in the book. Laplace replied, "I have no need of this hypothesis." I don't believe in God because I have not found any need to postulate his existence. Some people, when I tell them this, say that I simply have to accept God by faith. But that is just my point, and is something that I mentioned in my essay. We shouldn't say, "Look, here's an idea. I think I'll accept it unless I find evidence against it." What we should say is, "Look, here's an idea, but I won't be willing to accept it until I can find evidence for it." To repeat the question of my essay: Do we require evidence for beliefs or do we accept beliefs without evidence? I have chosen the former method. On another point, I have not read only those things written by skeptics and atheists and etc. I refer you to the third paragraph of my previous letter. If anything, I was exposed, strictly, to the writings of only the fundamentalist creationists and theistic evolutionists (ASA) until just last summer (except, of course, for you)! My bias was for fundamentalism, but I knew this and kept myself aware of the fact in an attempt to be as impartial as possible. Furthermore, my doubts about creationism (and, indirectly, because of this I was also beginning to have doubts about biblical infallibility) came about before I came in contact with the books I listed in my last letter (which I only read last spring and summer). They simply confirmed many of the criticisms that I had already figured out concerning creationism. I realize there are a large number of Christians who accept evolution. I also realize that many, if not most, of this number do not accept biblical infallibility. But for me, divine authorship implies infallibility; reason tells us that when P implies Q and we find Q to be false, then P cannot be true. I cannot accept divine authorship of the Bible because the Bible is fallible. One does not need to choose between evolution and God. One does have to make a choice between scientific discoveries and biblical infallibility. Furthermore, one who studies just the Bible itself impartially cannot honestly accept biblical infallibility when they discover the internal contradictions that the Bible contains. Concerning the questions I sent to you: There is one major difference between the Bible and nature. We have all of the Bible. We have observed but a minute portion of nature. If the Bible is so accurate in all of its statements that impinge upon our independent observations of nature, then we should be able to trust everything that it says concerning such observations before the observations have even been made. We might find a number of times when biblical statements about nature turn out to be accurate when they are independently checked, but this would be no better than other prescientific, human writings that have also done the same thing. Divine authorship (at least that conceived by fundamentalists) requires that biblical statements be completely accurate in everything they say. Nothing less will do. The point of my first question is simply to show that many, if not most, statements about nature that are made in the Bible have caused people to believe wrong things about nature (take the ideas of creation and the worldwide flood, for example). Fundamentalists today simply say that in the past biblical statements about the flatness of the earth were just understood incorrectly. But why is it that nobody knew about this until people discovered, independently, that the earth was not flat? Surely, if the Bible really did mention a spherical earth, at least somebody would have said something about it. It is only with hindsight (and a sight from scientific discoveries, not biblical ones) that a fundamentalist can say those people understood the Bible incorrectly. I'm not saying that it is not possible for the Bible to be misunderstood. I'm just saying that when experts (and by this I refer to those who have intensively and extensively studied something) are unanimous or very nearly unanimous in their conclusions (remember, we're talking about a complete Bible and not the incomplete observations of nature) and we can see that they are not arriving at their conclusions simply through common biases, then it seems a bit rash to me to reject their conclusions simply on the basis of trying to affirm our own preconceptions. This is a perfect example of people reading ideas into the Bible rather that getting them from the Bible itself ("eisegesis" as opposed to exegesis). Add this to the fact that, right now, I can read statements in the Bible that obviously assume a flat earth and do not make sense in the realization of a spherical one. Remember, there are today a number of very strict fundamentalists who still teach that the earth is flat on the basis of biblical statements. Concerning my second question: This concerns an idea that opens up a very large kettle of fish. No matter how hard a person may try, there is no way to get around the fact that in a major portion of the Old Testament God is portrayed as being very cruel and vindictive and is a very provincial God. The question I asked simply brings a small part of this idea out in the open. Notice that I said that God commanded and allowed human sacrifices on his behalf. There is also the event of the Passover in Egypt in which the firstborn were killed. God is capricious. He caused the death of the son David had by Bathsheba. God is provincial. He ordered the destruction of dozens of towns in Canaan and thus the deaths of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people (men, women, and children — and if such actions were to take place today, we would consider them atrocities), again and again. I could go on and on, but it becomes monotonous. Some say that humans are not allowed to question the motives of God, but, wait just a minute, I am not evaluating God, I am evaluating the biblical description of God, and this is the kind of God I cannot accept. If this is the way God is, then I want nothing to do with him, regardless of the consequences. But, again, it is the Bible I am rejecting, not the idea of a God. As regards the destruction of the town of Ai as mentioned in the Bible: We can indeed postulate the idea that the town that has been exhaustively excavated in recent decades and has been declared to be the Ai of the Bible is not that biblical town at all; no, Ai has not been found yet. But, none of the evidence we have so far indicates this at all. The only reason for postulating this idea is to maintain a belief in biblical infallibility. This is another case of accepting a belief without evidence as opposed to accepting a belief only when there is evidence for it. My archaeological sources are non-fundamentalist, and I think this is why they say what they do. They don't have a preconception to prove. Does the explanation for Jesus being in the tomb for only two days and two nights have something to do with the Jewish method of counting days? Again, is there really evidence for this or is it an idea people have come up with in order to maintain a preconception? I'm not denying that the Jews had a different method of counting days. I am saying that one cannot deny the fact that Jesus was in the tomb for only two nights (it might be possible to get three days out of it, though the narrative indicates that Jesus rose before the sun came up, when it was still dark) when he said he was going to be in the tomb for three nights. Also, I'm not willing to listen to any arguments about Jesus having died on Thursday, not Friday. This is nothing but an absurd and desperate attempt that some have made to explain the contradiction. Now, with this being said, I will indeed be willing to read and consider Wayne Leeper's manuscript. And I thank you for the offer. Of course, the point of the fourth question is to bring out the idea that the Bible contains internal contradictions. If you are denying this general idea then I can go into many more examples of contradictions, and many of these contradictions are so obvious and plain that no efforts at obscure explanations will help to make the contradictions disappear. So, as you can see, the first four questions are designed to bring into discussion three separate but related inadequacies of the Bible: external contradictions, misconceptions of God, and internal contradictions. I use them to bring each of these subjects to the foreground of discussion when I as talking with a creationist (whose basis for believing creationism is nothing but the Bible). The other questions are designed to bring out the dishonesty and the unscientific methods displayed by "scientific" creationists in their "explanations." I would again ask that you at least look at the books I listed in my last letter (by the way, Dorothy Nelkin's book has been put out in a more recent edition under the title The Creation Controversy). Each of the authors, I believe, made it a point to say that a person can be a Christian and believe in evolution at the same time. Philip Kitcher wrote the last chapter of his book along with his wife and discussed this very topic. Dr. Kitcher did not say anything outright, but from certain indications in his book it seems to me that he is himself a Christian. I already own a copy of your book The Source (I bought it at your meeting in Cadillac). You should receive the one you sent me soon. But one thing I wanted to say about the book is that chapters 14 and 15 are several times misleading, incorrect, and contradictory. I would ask you to have a good talk with someone who has a good background in paleoanthropology and discuss the ideas you have presented in these chapters with her or him. For example, figure 49 on page 150 is far out of date and is completely incorrect. From another part of the book (p. 121) 1 see that the concept of the theory of evolution is identical to that used by "scientific" creationists and is just as wrong. Please don't take what I'm saying as insulting or as anything I'm saying against you. I'm simply pointing out some of the inaccuracies I have found in the book — you have said in your preface that you will, over time, "amend this effort." In your first letter to me you also encouraged me to write any objections or disagreements I might have. I want to take you up on that opportunity. And please don't hesitate yourself to object to what I say when you disagree. I can definitely go into detail about the various things discussed here if you feel it is necessary, and there are many other things I could have brought up. But, as you indicated, we'll take things one step at a time. Let me introduce myself a bit. I was born in Marshall, Michigan, but was only in Michigan for about two years before my parents moved to Austin, Texas. My mother was brought up in the Assemblies of God and my father was brought up in the Methodist church, but neither of them were faithful to either tradition. Along about 1969-70 my parents began to take an active interest in the Bible. They began attending various churches and comparing each church's teachings with what they read in the Bible. They ended up being baptized and attending the Cameron Road Church of Christ in Austin. My father entered the Preston Road School of Preaching in Dallas, Texas in the fall of 1971. We were in Dallas for two years, during which time I was baptized into the church. My father graduated in summer, 1973, and we moved to Deer Creek, Oklahoma for his first full-time preaching opportunity. The church there was (and is) heading for extinction, and there was little that could be done about it, though much was tried. We subsequently moved to Molalla, Oregon where my father preached for four-and-a-half years. I graduated from high school there in spring, 1979, left for ACU in the fall, and majored in Bible there, while my parents (and two brothers who were both born in Austin) moved to Houghton Lake, Michigan because my mother wanted to live closer to her parents, brothers, and sisters who all live here in Michigan. I am presently studying Mathematics and Physics at Oakland University and am planning to do graduate work in either astrophysics or particle physics at the University of Arizona beginning fall, 1985. Again, thank you for taking the time to discuss this subject.
In the spirit of Proverbs 4.13, February 10, 1984 Dear Mr. Greene: I appreciate very much your candid letter of February 2, and the willingness that you have to continue to communicate, even though you realize that perhaps we disagree on certain fundamental points. It appears that your position is basically that of being an agnostic and that you have centered your fundamental reason for disbelieving in God in areas that I believe are totally unrelated to the question of God's existence. Some of the things that have been done to us that you mentioned in your letter have been things that took place because of the misunderstandings of individuals in many of the same areas that I believe you are making an error. The fundamental problem is that I think you are confusing evolution and the questions related to evolution with the existence of God, which I believe is a tragic error. The existence of God is not in any way, shape or form related to the question of whether or not evolution has occurred or whether or not the Earth is one second old, or 60 zillion years old. The fundamental evidence for the existence of God comes from cosmology, teleology, ontology, moral arguments and other areas. It has absolutely nothing to do with the question of evolution or the age of the Earth. It seems to me in looking at the things that you said you have read you have made a point of reading everything written by skeptics and atheists and people who have a very negative viewpoint toward the Bible and toward Christians,without looking at some of the good material that has been written by those who are either Christians or sympathetic to the concepts that are developed in the Christian perspective of things, such as the work of Lewis, Robert Jastrow and others. The term brainwash seems to me to apply, even when that is done deliberately to ourselves by ourselves, and this is where I think the situation has been from what I can see in your letter. I would be very interested in providing you with some of the positive things that point to the existence of God, and which are the fundamental issues that need to be looked at before one gets involved in dealing with some of the specifics that you are attempting to wrestle with. I might point out to you that there are a huge number of Christians and a number of people in the denominations world who believe in evolution and believe in God, and I would put myself in that category. Our concepts may differ somewhat in the extent to which we believe evolution has been responsible for things as we see them, but the perspective that you seem to advance in your materials that one must choose between God and evolution is, I think, an unfortunate orientation and is perhaps the source of much of your frustration in this area. Let me point out to you some remarks on your questions for creationists to deal with some of the things that you pointed out just to try and emphasize some of the things that I have said. We then perhaps can deal with the more relevant issue of whether or not God exists, and perhaps avoid some of these other situations. Your first question about the question of the sphericity of the Earth is very easy to answer. Just as science has made errors in interpreting the historical record of the Earth, humans have made mistakes in interpreting the historical records in the Bible. Why is it that evolutionists for many, many centuries have followed in one form or another the concepts of gradualism and only in the past few years have come to recognize the more accurate and more sensible concept of punctuated equilibrium in the field of evolution. You see it is the same argument — to reject science because of this gradual improvement in information is not an intelligent orientation. Your second question, I think, is a matter of just simply not being careful about translations. Leviticus 27:28, 29, deals with possessions and not with sacrificing something to God. Verse 29 deals with punishment and not with some kind of sacrifice that God has given. You have to recognize that death is not viewed from a religious standpoint as the ultimate tragedy, which of course, an atheist is unable to accept, and therefore, in many cases was a better situation as far as the individual goes than living in a condition that was extremely negative. That is exactly the same kind of logic that is being used today to justify euthanasia and abortion, and without getting into that particular moral issue it is important to recognize the process involved. The other two examples you gave, especially the one in II Samuel 21, is not a record of something that God approved, but rather a record of historical events. Because something records history does not mean it condones history. Your third question I think, has come about because you have bad archaeological sources. Just as the city of Jericho has been debated as far as what was the authentic city, there has also been some debate upon whether the modern-day tourist attraction Ai is the same one that is recorded in the Bible. If you will read reputable archaeologists like Thompson, I think you will see that they indicate that that is not the case. It is not at all difficult to explain the apparent discrepancies between Mark and Matthew as far as the length of time that Jesus was in the tomb. I have a friend by the name of Wayne Leeper who has written a two hundred and some odd page manuscript dealing with that, pointing out from historical, secular and logical sources that it is not inconsistent. I don't suppose there is a whole lot of point in dealing with that in detail except to say it is not that difficult to explain it and if you are interested, I can get Wayne to send his material to you. Every single one of the remaining questions you use has dealt with the inconsistencies of religion. I do not in any way, shape or form attempt to back the work of Barnes, Gish, Morris, or even Davis Young, although I think that Davis Young has done a more credible job than the others. To discard God and to castigate religion because there are adherents who make mistakes and generate poor arguments, is not a valid position. There are many atheists who have done exactly the same thing, and many atheists who have done terrible things. No one is arguing for the support of organized religion, or for any particular denomination, but rather for the logical, credible arguments that can be made for the existence of God and the credibility of the system that He taught. Someone has said that just sitting in a hen-house does not make you a hen, and I would suggest to you that that same kind of logic is true in other areas as well. There are so many other things that we could deal with in this discussion, but I think the letter will get unbearably long if I do. I will just mention that there is a great deal of error I believe in some of the things that you have been taught, and perhaps some of the things you have examined yourself in connection with many of these issues. Just as an example, the Bible does not in any way, shape or form promote the idea that the Sun and the Moon and the stars were created on the fourth day. One can only come to that conclusion if they did not look carefully at what the language is that is used in the Genesis account. I am enclosing a book that I have written called The Source which goes into some of these things in more detail, and which I hope you will take the time to look over. I believe some of the things I have attempted to project are contained within this material. I hope you will be willing to take some time to look over it and to perhaps correspond further along those lines. Thank you for writing and for your interest.
Sincerely in Christian Concern,
Enclosure |