Gnostic Christian Testimony

From: "Christine S."
Hello Mr. Babinski:
From your website, I understand that you were a Fundamentalist Christian, went to university and took Science/Biology, and became disillusioned with religion and God. That is what I see in a nutshell, please correct me if I'm wrong. Maybe you were disillusioned before you went to university? Either way, I see you're either an agnostic or athiest.

ED: You can read my full testimony online, plug it into a search box by title: "If it wasn't for agnosticism, I wouldn't know what to believe." I explain that I remained a young-earth creationist during my entire four years in college. I think I explained that as well in my other online testimony concerning my loss of faith in young-earth creationism. I evangelized teachers and fellow students the entire time. It was years after college and after reading criticisms of young-earth arguments that I grew disillusioned about creationism. And it was years after that before I became disillusioned about Christianity in general.

I am a university graduate too, used to be an agnostic, too. Have you ever heard from a Roman Catholic turned agnostic, turned
kinda-Christian, turned Gnostic Christian?

ED: Cool. New Agey sort of Christian?

Truth be told, like you, I've always loved science. I was baptised into Roman Catholicism as a baby. From the age of 6 or 7, the most exciting thing for me was to bring home books from the library on cosmology, astronomy, geology, gemology, paleontology, archeology, paleoanthropology (nothing enthralled me more than paleoanthropology and astronomy however). So as you can see, I was a big lover of the natural sciences from very young, and I've read everything I could ever get my hands on about it my entire life. My specialist knowledge, such as required for a Bachelor of Biology, is just not there, however, I do have a great general knowledge of many types of physical and natural science just borne of reading of a natural curiousity.

Having been born a Roman Catholic, I know they have the spiritual truth. The Roman Catholic Church has accepted science and evolution, which was a boon to me at my age that I didn't come from a denomination that insisted solely on literal interpretation of the Bible. I could never accept an entirely literal interpretation as all I saw were contradictions as well. Even with the blessing of science by my church however, for the longest time, I still saw contradictions, much like you. I couldn't appreciate the Bible nor its spiritual teaching as the Roman Catholic Church says it is the sole disseminator of truth and there is no personal interpretation. Well, in sanctifying that I could think for myself in science but not in spiritual matters, those tenets basically killed my spirituality and I became agnostic in high school through my 20s. In my 20s, I prayed to God sometimes, and He always took care of me, but I was just that, a kinda-Christian.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago when I had a spiritual incident that set me wondering, but not searching. Then another nudge later last year to start searching, and my searching finally led me to the place I should have started, the Bible, more importantly, the New Testament. As a Roman Catholic they never tell you to read the Bible on your own, which I finally did for the first time in my late 20s, innocent as a child and with spiritual eyes as directed by Jesus Christ. As I read and came to the end of the New Testament, I could not stop the shaking in my hands and heart as I finally realized that there are NO contradictions between God and Science.

ED: I'm glad it was easy for you. It was however, a bit more difficult for Christian civilization and Christian theologians and scholars as a whole to come to terms with such advances in knowledge as heliocentricity, the age of the earth, and evolution.

I found the spiritual truth of the Bible and Jesus Christ for myself. I now see that God created the Earth and Universe, and all the natural laws and mathematical principles that rule over it all. Science and mathematics are so perfect that only the perfect God could have created them. You can't have such perfect order and logic and beauty in the Universe without there being a God! Impossible.

ED: I agree there's beauty and life in this deadly cosmos, but I also see that everything dies, life is fleeting, and everything is not beautiful. Have you read my online piece, "Why We Believe in a Designer" Also, some kinds of life simply go extinct. Nobody really realized the fact of extinction until after the 1700s. Even in Thomas Jefferson's day, when faced with some of the early discoveries of large boned mammals in the earth, like mammoth bones in North America, Jefferson and other deists simply assumed that such creatures still roamed the earth some where because the Creator had an "equal" eye on everything, and created it for various purposes. Jefferson is quoted as saying, "Oh yes, I heard from an Indian in the north that they still see such creatures roaming about (mammoths)." But he was wrong. And in fact, most species go extinct never to be seen again. We know of 16 species of ancient elephantine species that did so, even before human beings began forming civilizations. The question of the purpose of such massive extinctions, as well as the problem of the deaths of a very high percentage of all of the young produced in each generation by any and all species, remains a question for deists, gnostics, etc.

He also created a world that wonderously enough, provided the clues that would present themselves millions and billions of years later, when a species arose (out of that miraculous process that God created, called evolution) that was capable of receiving the Spirit and Intelligence of God, which is Humankind, who are His children, created in His image and likeness. Humankind, in God's image, is Spiritual and Intelligent enough, having been gifted from God Himself, that we can ponder who we are, where we come from, where we are going, what we can create, what we can achieve. We are the only ones who can dicipher the message that God so wonderously ensured through evolution, fossilization, mathematics, astronomy, etc. that would be waiting for us to discover and tell the story of the Earth, Universe, and how we came to be physically, and spiritually.

That is the truth of God, and that's how I know God exists. Once I realized the above, 18 hours later, as a thief in the night as said by Jesus Christ, I was baptised of the Holy Spirit, in God's presence where time and space did not exist (God is eternal and unchanging, the One True God of All in All that always was and will always be, communing with Him, I have never known such Love, Compassion, Eternity, I still cannot fully comprehend it in my normal consciousness) and renewed in Life, Light, Spirit, Wisdom and Love of God, and the Kingdom of God that came to be within me, again as said by Jesus Christ. I now know I was given this gift precisely because I understood the spiritual truth of the Bible and God for myself. I know myself, and I know everyone has a spark of the divine within them, they just have to realize that, and trust me, war would end immediately. Now I know that Science and God do not contradict each other, and that there are NO contradictions in the Bible once you can see the spiritual truth, that we are God's children, on the Way described and personified by Jesus Christ, back the Light, back to God our Father, whence we came. Every scientific discovery is in fact, an ultimate glory of God and His creation, and the immensely amazing, completely incomprehensible wonder of the order and beauty of it all.

ED: I was baptized in the holy spirit as well, if you want to call it that. The precise description of what I experienced is found in my testimony, "If it wasn't for agnosticism, I wouldn't know what to believe." But being "baptized in the holy spirit" doesn't mean my questions have been answered as you seem to imply they have been for you.

That is why God and Science can, and in fact do, live together in harmony, and complement each other. It's not Evolution vs. Creation, but Evolution AND Creation, that's how it always was, and that's how it always will be. The sad thing that people don't realize, is that Science is a proof that God exists, and God is a proof of the validity of Science. This is the truth, from a fellow science-nut, and also now, a God-nut, since truly, in spiritual truth, there are no contradictions when you understand the Bible and the use of allegory in uncovering that truth. Literal intrepretation doesn't give the whole story, literal and figurative interpretation in spiritual truth, as promoted by the Roman Catholic Church, and Gnostic Christianity, do.
Sincerely,
Christine S.

ED: We are both sincere. And I don't think it matters too much whether we are right or wrong on such metaphysical matters. I doubt either of us can see as clearly behind the metaphysical curtain as we'd both like to be able to do. And I doubt that any infinite intelligent being is going to condemn people to eternities of hell for not agreeing on what lies behind that curtain.

Leaving the Fold and Young Earth Creationism

Webmaster note:
This article was originally written on Aug 9, 2002, as a follow up to Ed's testimony (located here) about his intellectual journey from beliefs in a young earth creation and his struggles leaving the fold.

I held onto my young-earth beliefs just as everyone who is comfortable with their beliefs holds onto them, making allowances and qualifications for micro-evolution of course, and other allowances and qualifications, until finally (after having read collections of well-focused questions by the likes of Robert Moore and others) my YEC "died the death of a thousand qualifications."

You can add many qualifications and sub-qualifications within any general framework of belief. That's why it is so difficult to "argue" a person into switching their general frameworks.

Another way of putting it is to say that people avoid change until the pain of remaining the same is greater than the pain of changing. In my case it was painful drawing away from the fold but even more painful trying to accommodate a host of new data and new questions to fit within my old framework. It grew painful to even introduce myself as a young-earth creationist when I could no longer believe in young-earth creationism. I say "young-earth creationism," but my doubts were far from limited to that subject. Having studied Genesis 1 and 2 in the light of how ancient near easterners in Moses's day would have understood it, the Bible appeared to contain verses perfectly attuned to prescientific notions of cosmology, and far more easily recognized as reflections of ancient prescientific ideas in general, than as "accommodations" in an old-earth creationist sense. (Even concordism died the death of thousands of little bits of info I learned about Genesis 1 and 2.) I was challenged by Will Bagley to read books about the sincere spiritualities of people of other faiths, and so I read books like THE INNER EYE OF LOVE by a Jesuit in Japan who compared Buddhist karnua/compassion with Christian agape, and who compared praying to Christ for salvation to praying to Amida Buddha for salvation (Pure Land Buddhism). There were others I also read at that time, suggested by Will. This was all after college when I was trying to win Will and Bob back into the fold. Bob was Robert M. Price, who challenged me to study N.T. prophecies drawn from the O.T. and check what each O.T. verse originally said and compare that with what the N.T. authors said they said. He also challenged me to study Jesus's apocalyptic predictions.

Such challenges compelled me to qualify my beliefs further and further: For instance, I realized that some people of other faiths and their awareness of love and goodness were more like my own than I cared to admit. And more and more prophecies seemed typological instead of dead on. And I tried to argue in a host of ways that Jesus's apocalyptic predictions referred to anything but a near apocalyptic prediction of the world's final judgment. During my last few years in the fold I tried more moderate forms of evangelicalism and Christian liberalism (like the works of Robert F. Capon, HUNTING THE DIVINE FOX, THE PARABLES OF JUDGMENT, etc. Capon wrote in a very Chestertonian style and even admitted Chesterton's direct influence --His works had been suggested to me by a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary whom I met in the library there by chance one day yet who discussed religion with me a bit while he was busy at the copier, copying some pages from Capon in fact! I read some of them and was amused and curious enough to read more. Amazing what chance meetings can lead to.) But I grew increasingly suspicious of the alleged perfect unity of Old and New Testaments, and of the alleged unity of the Bible with science, and of the precise meaning of Jesus's predictions, and of the apocalyptic genre and of the hellish destination of "unbelievers," and of other specifically Christian matters. The faith that had once come so easy to me as a sophomore in high school had undergone change, it got stretched by new ideas and never fully regained its original shape.

Ed Babinski: But I'll take things one paragraph at a time for now. I responded earlier that as a young-earth creationist I knew of the "so-called" evidence for evolution, but I had read Morris, Gish, Weston-Smith, ICR Impact articles, CRSQ articles, Bible-Science Newsletter, Evolution Protest Movement pamphlets, and I had answers ready for each and every "difficulty" (just like Kent Hovind does today).

It seems to me that you are as much a reality-denying fundamentalist now as you were then. The only essential difference is that you have swung from one reality-denying extreme to the other.

Calling me a "reality-denying fundamentalist" is not an argument. It just means you've met someone who denies your particular view of reality and likes to debate it, just as you do. I have always loved ideas, debating them with others or with myself. From my perspective you are making claims to having found surer answers than me. So who remains a smidge nearer to still being a "fundamentalist?" I wonder. You've got answers about God, the Bible's infallibility, how to be saved, and believe also that every tapeworm, every exploding bee's penis, and every asteroid impact, fits in with a perfect Designer, somehow. Maybe you even admit you don't know how, in which case you choose to concentrate instead on the marvels of bacterial flagellum, and dream sweet I.D. dreams each night. That reminds me of how well I slept at night too as a young-earth creationist, concentrating and marvelling over things I had read in Wysong's book about polystrate tree fossils disproving the existence of geologic time; or about human and dino footprints found side by side; and a host of other things that I felt were so obviously and undeniably true that I was certain old-earthers had no answers for any of them, and never would. This was before the web, before young-earth creationism made it all the way to a U.S. Supreme Court case in 1987. (My college years were 1974-1979), before evolutionists were even writing books questioning "scientific creationism" as Morris called it. Before Creation/Evolution Journal. A lot would be written by evolutionists just prior to and following that U.S. Supreme Court case in 1987.

But in the case of "Young-earth propaganda" it takes two to tango, i.e. the "propaganda"-isers and the "propaganda"-ees.

Yes, I actively feasted on young-earth literature. Not until I had read Robert Moore's special issue of Creation/Evolution Journal, "The Impossible Voyage of Noah's Flood" -- after college -- did I begin feasting on articles that directly quoted and replied to the arguments of Morris, Gish, et al. That's when it became a matter of "debate" in my mind. Here were people citing the very authors I held most authoritative and asking them questions I had not previously considered, even introducing some new data I was previously unacquainted with. That's when it became a matter of "debate" -- when I encountered the works of people directly debating one another. And I've enjoyed debates ever since. Though none of the major debates I have read about has ever solved anything: Douglas Dewar, a biologist and old-earth creationist, debated the famed British biologist Haldane in a series of letters in the 1940s, nothing was solved. (A flat earther also had debated Haldane, and again neither said could get the other to agree on the meaning of the evidence provided by measuring the curve of water in a canal many miles long.) A "Pope of Fundamentalism" in America, Stratton, debated the leading Unitarian Minister, Potter, in Carnegie Hall of all places, in the 1920s and packed the place every night, while they debated the authority of Scripture, the divinity of Christ, etc. and in the end neither side convinced the other of anything. Huxley debated Owen in the late nineteenth century and neither of them ever agreed on the topic of evolution. I've read numerous debates between Farrell Till (a Skeptic and former minister) and various Protestant Bible believing ministers. Neither side has ever convinced the other of anything it seems. They might give in on a little point but quickly discover a way to qualify it or a way to doubt the solidity of the other person's interpretation of that point. There are debates galore between well-known skeptics and well known ministers that you can read on the web at both Christian and Skeptical websites. Kent Hovind the young-earther, sells videos of debates between himself and old-earth creationists, theistic evolutionists and atheistic evolutionists. Yet none of the people whom he has debated in any of his debate videos has ever changed sides that I know of. Still, I have viewed such videos, a lot of them in fact, when I prepared for my own debate with Kent. And he was kind enough to take them back and return my money afterwards as he guaranteed he would if I was not impressed or satisfied enough with them to want to keep them. Most of my knowledge of debates and reading about them came after my own "exit from the fold." And they demonstrate to me that change is not the rule, even after vigorous debate. It's more likely that each side will simply offend the other rather than either side will change. I know of some young-earthers who changed like me. But informed young-earth creationists are naturally a small minority of any population. I know of a lot more fundamentalistic Christians in general who changed like me. I'm not proposing an argument based on testimonies. Testimonies can lead in all directions. That's what you find out reading testimonies. While reading debates you find out that they settle very little and change their participants very little.

And I personally know how difficult my own exit was, and how powerfully my framework of beliefs held me during my last two years of high school and four years of college and several years after that. So when I meet someone else who is as sure of themselves as I am, I no longer hope to change them, I merely hope to be able to communicate with them, share stories of our respective intellectual journeys. Communication, not conversion. If anyone does "convert" it still surprises the heck out of me, like when I sent one young-earther a bunch of articles in my files on the Greenriver formation and he read them, and changed to old earth. It was freaky having been involved in that sort of change. I mean it's another person's life, and they just up and changed and told me I had something to do with it because I was the one who sent them the papers on Greenriver. Then that person proceeded to change from a Christian to a total atheist overnight, and again I was concerned. And he experienced pain and guilt to boot. We talked and he went through further changes, not sure where he is now, having spoken in a while. But he seems to have grown a bit more stable. Maybe the pendulum isn't swinging so far right to left anymore and is coming down somewhere in the middle. I hope so.

The Bible does not teach "no death [i.e. animal death] before the fall", so this is one YEC "views" (perhaps the most basic one) which is not based squarely on the Bible".

So in rejecting this and other YEC un-Biblical teaching, you have `thrown out the baby with the bathwater'.

I'm not going to argue YEC teachings concerning death and the fall, or which Bible verses YECs base their ideas upon. You can study their arguments for yourself in THE TWILIGHT OF EVOLUTION, and, THE GENESIS FLOOD or at the AIG and ICR websites. You can read debates on the subject on the web. And you can write YEC's and convert them in the thousands to "what the Bible says" if it were as easy as you believe it to be. (By the way, I was a sophomore in high school when I first read YEC books handed me by a highly intelligent history teacher whom I respected. What did I know? Or should I ask rather, what's Morris's excuse for continuing to believe what he believes about death and the fall?)

As for citing the old adage, "Throwing out the baby with the bathwater," it proves nothing. It only reiterates something you already think about people who "go to far," which means in this case, further than you.

In the light of what later happened, it would have been better if you had learned to walk before you ran. You are just another case of someone whose rapid growth was not supported by a depth of root and so could not withstand the full light in the real world outside the college hot-house world (Mt 13:5-6; 20-21).

Or to put it another way, you did not heed Jesus' warning but built your "house" upon "sand", without taking the necessary time to lay down adequate "foundations" that could withstand the storms that inevitably come later (Mt 7:26-27).

Another adage? ("Walk before I run.") Everyone has an "explanation" for why other people's beliefs change in ways they find unacceptible. There's a site on the internet in which a Muslim explains (using Scriptures from his faith) "why some Muslims leave the fold." Henry Morris thinks you are the one who has not studied Scriptures to the same "depth" he has. And from my own point of view it presently appears that you have not studied the Bible nor the historical millieu of Gen. 1 and 2 to the same depth that I have. I don't have that early manuscript of mine up on the web, DOES THE BIBLE TEACH SCIENTIFIC CREATIONISM? All I have at the moment are Paul Seeley's articles that I can send you in attachment format if you care to peek at them. They were written years after I had already left the fold, but they discuss many of the same questions I raised in my manuscript. And Paul Seeley remained a Christian, even an evangelical. It would seem that he hasn't studied those additional questions I mentioned above, or perhaps hasn't read the same books on those subjects that I have. He's stuck to examining Biblical cosmology, the Tower of Babel, concordancy theologies, etc. He's a
Christian evolutionist I believe. But he remains firm in his belief in the N.T. being accurate.

In my case, in my earliest years as a Christian, while I read mostly mainstream evangelical Christian books that built up my Christian understanding in a more balanced way. Creation, while important, is not "the weightier matters of the law" (Mt 23:23) that a young would-be Christian should first attend to.

As a young Christian I read mainstream evangelicals too, not simply YEC books. Among the first books I read by mainstream evangelicals were John Stott's BASIC CHRISTIANITY, C. S. Lewis's MERE CHRISTIANITY, Francis Schaeffer's ESCAPE FROM REASON, and a few Andrew Murray books on Christian spirituality, the Blood, etc. I also read lots of Christian testimony books including ones by Richard Wurmbrand (tortured for his faith who today runs Christian Martyrs), Sadhu Sundar Singh (famous Sikh convert to Christianity), BrotherAndrew (who smuggled Bibles into communist Russia).

Quite frankly I still find this "unbelievable". It was in the *1960's* that evolution began being taught in all "B.S. in biology" course in public schools and universities in the USA.

I'll try and make this as clear as possible so even a doubter like you can get a feeling for the historical millieu of my personal intellectual journey. It wasn't until 1987 that American scientists and educators awoke to discover that the question of teaching young-earth creationism in public schools had gone as far as the SUPREME COURT OF THE U.S. Stephen J. Gould spoke on behalf of evolution of course. That case was Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) In a 7-2 Court Decision, the Court invalidated Louisiana's "Creationism Act" because it violated the Establishment Clause. Have you read accounts of it? It was like living through Scopes II over here, and America's educators took action just prior to it and after it.

In the mid 1970s when I began college, it was over ten years BEFORE Edwards v. Agullard, and the Viet Nam draft ended only a year after I entered college. Vietnam was still fresher in everyone's minds than any other particular controversy. Evolution was taken for granted by all my profs, none of whom had even heard of the young-earth creationists I'd been reading. They didn't feel threatened or a need to teach evolution in any great detail. We had to learn the names of all the Phyla along with some classes and orders and distinguishing characteristics of each. And they showed various slides of branches of the tree of life linking them. But the discussion was very generalized and I already knew what Gish had to say about any minor mentions that were made of say, "mammal-like reptiles," etc. Besides which, my first two years were spent in a state community college atmosphere where everything was dumbed down. It was a two-year school, not even a four year college. I got an Associates degree in biology there before going on to Fairleigh Dickenson for my final two years and B.S. degree. It was easy to pass with honors with very little study. I was the only one who went up and spoke to my biology professor after class, questioning him and handing him a copy of THE ORIGIN AND DESTINY OF MAN by Weston-Smith. He took it, but he was not interested in debating or arguing, none of my profs were. Creationism wasn't recognized as, say, a creeping threat to American education by any of my profs during the years 1975-1979. Even profs today at Furman where I work, aren't discussing creationism or I.D. in the lunchroom, they are more interested in their pensions or travels or their own personal lives or sometimes a funny teaching experience or anecdote. Only one biology prof has ever even debated a creationist on campus. (A religious student association brought in the creationist and arranged the debate.) I faced more evolutionary evidence in my courses in anatomy and embryology with Dr. Sebenyi at Fairleigh Dickenson, a private university. But the discussion wasn't linked to a discussion of geology or different types of fossils over time, it was just comparative anatomy/physiology/embryology. So my "Flood geology" explanations never even needed bringing up. An nothing my profs said impressed or challenged me. Even Dr. Sebenyi just told me he wanted me to learn the material, not agree with it. And the books by evolutionary biologists that were to challenge young-earth views only followed the young-earth controversies in the higher court in the U.S., the keystone court case being the Supreme Court's one in 1987, over ten years AFTER I began college. So literature that directly debated Morris's and ICR's "scientific creationist" arguments wasn't in abundance. None of my profs even pointed me to something to read. Even after I had graduated from college in 1979 it wasn't for another 8 years until the U.S. Supreme court case made educators sit up and realize that reports of the death of creationism after the Scopes Trial in the 1920s had been highly exaggerrated to say the least.

My biology profs didn't go on and on about Gaylord Simpson and his books on evolution nor even Dobzhansky and his fruit fly experiments, though I'm sure they were footnoted somewhere in my college texts at that time. Neither would quoting Simpson or Dobzy have altered my views at that time, since Gish quoted them too, and made them look silly. (It wasn't until I started getting suspicious of my own YEC views, a few years after college, after reading Creation/Evolution Journal, that I began to double-check quotations in context and saw for myself what Gish, Morris, et al, were leaving out.)

Neither did my profs have much to say about the latest hominid skull discoveries. They weren't all that spectacular. In fact Zinjanthropus was the major find back then, a robust very apelike Australopithecine with a very thick jaw and very sloping forehead. And Gish assured me that Homo erectus fossils in China were simply those of an ape whom real men had cooked and eaten. And only a tiny homo habilus skull (#1470 I believe) had been found by the time I was ready to graduate from college. In other words, no LUCY, no ancient small footprints in ash of an Australopithecine family walking erect, no Homo erectus skeleton in Africa (which would blow away Gish's clams that Homo erectus fossils in China were misunderstood and it was just another small brained ape).

And not very many early bird fossils at all, in fact I seem to recall Archeopteryx being the only really early bird fossil back then. And Gish argued that Archie was "100%" bird. "It had feathers, it flew! And a few modern birds have teeth and claws, like the Hoatzin and Ostrich (which has claws)!" A bit later some creationists said the opposite, that Archie was 100% reptile and the feather impressions were faked! I gleefully pointed out that either argument could be used to demolish Archie, making him doubly shakey as evidence for evolution. After all, better two arguments against evolution than simply one! (Only later, after my YEC days, did I learn about the full range of skeletal characteristics of Archie that made it so much like ancient reptiles and unlike modern birds. And I realized that even with its feathers, it had many characteristics that would not have made it a very efficient flyer at all. Today I think how silly it was for me to even try to use both of those creationist arguments at once because it should have struck me even then, "Hey wait a minute, if Archeopteryx's fossilized remains could be interpreted as either 100% bird, OR AS, 100% reptile by different creationist authorities, then maybe it did contain some 'transitional' characteristics after all?"

During my college years Gish was also pounding on how ridiculous Cetacean evolution sounded to him, showing slides of a cow jumping into the water and becoming a whale. There were no fossils from Pakistan of Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, Rhodocetus, etc. in my college
days.

The difference is that "Henry Morris" (like Kurt Wise, like "Duane Gish and others of his standing"), is well aware that "his own [YEC] ... side contains difficulties":

"When I visited the Institute for Creation Research towards the end of 1978, it was not difficult to discover some of the reasons why so many people find its message appealing. ... The institute's director is Henry M. Morris, who has a PhD in hydraulic engineering from the University of Minnesota. .... The associate director is Duane T. Gish, who has a PhD in biochemistry from Berkeley. ... Considering that I believe living things have a common origin and have evolved over a long period of time, and Duane Gish doesn't, there turned out to be a surprising amount of shared around between us. ... Duane Gish and others of his standing are well aware of this problem, but in the end they let their faith over-ride it. When I asked him what were the biggest difficulties for creationist science the points in a debate which he felt least comfortable in answering - he answered after a moment's thought that it was the apparently great age of Earth as shown by the fairly recent advances in radiometric dating; and that the the fossil record could be interpreted as showing ecologically complete ages - the age of invertebrates, the age of fishes, the age of reptiles, and so on up to the present. " Hitching F., "The Neck of the Giraffe: Or Where Darwin Went Wrong," Pan: London, 1982, pp.115-121)

But in your case you seem to be saying is that your "belief in young-earth creationism" rendered you unable to even *see* that "own side contained `difficulties'"? And when you did finally see that "own side contained `difficulties'" you, unlike "Henry Morris" gave up not only your "belief in young-earth creationism" but in Christianity itself!

You cited Gish in 1978 as stating that there were difficulties with "recent advances in radiometric dating." I graduated from college in Jan. of 1979, probably just months after that interview and talk of "recent advances." Now show me in any of Gish's books or ICR materials where I could possibly have learned of these "recent advances?" Nearly everything I knew about radiometric dating I had learned from some early ICR monographs, and from Morris's book titled, SCIENTIFIC CREATIONISM [public school edition], or Wysong's young-earth book, or, Weston-Smith's young-earth books. All of them were young-earthers who explained to me the "questionable assumptions" and "problems" with radiometric dating without discussing its accuracies or ways to cross-check results. Gish's forte by the way was not debating the age of the earth, he left that to others at ICR. His forte was stretching the gaps in the fossil record, denying that any truly intermediary forms or characteristics had been found in the fossil record, and also claiming that evolution violated the 2nd law of thermo-d.

I knew about radiometric dating and the supposed succession of ecologically complete ages in the geologic record. But in YEC literature you read about all the questionable assumptions involved in radiometric dating, and you hear about gross errors in radiometric dating and also read about young-earth ecological zonation hypotheses and how the Flood could sometimes pick up whole ecological zones and bury them as it shows in the geological record. And I also heard about polystrate trees, dino-human tracks together, and how evolutionists used fossils to date the strata and vice versa, and I read about unaccountably reversed strata, and other supposed mix ups of the "imaginary geologic column." Did I read about young-earthers dropping like flies and fleeing by the dozens to an old-earth view due to the "recent advances" Gish spoke about? No. And Gish remained a member of ICR his whole life thus far, a place where you sign a statement of belief that says you believe in a six-day old earth and a young creation.

Furthermore, giving up on Flood geology and a young-earth was not an adequate factor in and of itself to make me leave the fold. I studied Genesis 1 and 2, compared modern cosmology and biblical cosmology, Biblical prophecies, Jesus's predictions, and comparative religion. Those factors together with endless letter discussions with past believing friends, over a period of five years of intensive study and reading [this period was after college] precipitated my leaving the fold. It's in my testimony chapter in LEAVING THE FOLD. And that chapter in itself, even with all the footnotes, doesn't cover everything I debated with myself and others prior to leaving the fold. Neither was it easy to leave, not for me. But I could no longer believe what I could no longer believe.

Thanks for this admission! This fits my thesis that you have the ability to "not `understand' ... "difficulties" if they are "contrary to what you wanted to believe".

Your "thesis?" I've grown as weary of trying to further explain/defend myself. It appears to me that you haven't the ability to "get outside yourself" enough to understand the amazing relativity of people's different visions and understandings based on their different beliefs and limited ranges of knowledge. Maybe some day you will. But right now, to you, my entire intellectual journey appears beyond the range of your understanding. You also say I "wanted" to leave the fold. And you will never know how wrong you are until the day comes when you too find you don't see the point in former beliefs you once held and you simply cannot hold them any longer. (So, you "wanted" to accept common descent, didn't you? It's as easy as telling yourself, "I wanna!")

So if you were aware of "old-earth excuses for the Lewis mountain overthrust, etc." then you *were* aware "that your own [YEC] side contained "difficulties":

The major "difficulties" that I saw in the case of the Lewis Mountain formation lay on the side of old-earthers. If you recall, I had limited no courses in geology, and had only read about the Lewis mountain formation in YEC materials where they explained page after page that there were no "good" old-earth ways to make the Lewis Mountain "overthrust" a genuine overthrust, because to all appearances it wasn't an overthrust at all but reversed strata for hundreds of miles. Of course the YECs carefully described to me only those appearances that fit their scheme. None of them ever mentioned "inching" of strata, sliding in tiny waves, or how cooked or how non-cooked the minerals in the top and bottom layers of the reversed strata were, nor did they mention the Rocky Mountains rising behind it and propelling it forward. I learned all of that after college in books that tackled these and other young earth "proofs.

Society, Science and Evolution

LAURIE APPLETON QUESTIONS ED BABINSKI'S ARTICLE:

"Do You Fear What Might Happen If The World Believed In Evolution?"

QUESTION #1

LAURIE: Ed, you began your article by stating:

"Some conservative religious believers fear that teaching evolution breeds immorality and also invites 'God's judgment' to fall upon society as a whole. But what were the morals of society like in the 'good old days' before Darwin? And did the Creator refrain from smiting believers in creationism with horrific diseases? The answer in both cases is, 'No.'"

But isn't it a matter of the relative LEVEL of immorality? After all, Cain murdered his brother Abel, didn't he, and with a small population at that time.

ED: I am happy to discuss different levels of immorality in different cultures and different nations over time. But before we go there, let's point out a few similarities between us that neither of us should take for granted in any discusssion of "immorality." Neither you, nor I, is a barbarian. We each have a philosophy and/or theology, prize reason, and support the benefits that civilization holds over barbarism. Most of the folks who go to church or who belong to freethought organizations are highly interested in ethics and education on a worldwide scale, and do not join such groups in order to become criminals. (In fact self-declared "atheists" apparently comprise a smaller proportion of the American prison populations than they do in society at large.) Our common interests being pointed out, here are a few things worth pondering...

Compared with the rest of the world, America has a very high percentage of regular churchgoers, Protestant, Catholic and Pentecostal evangelists, Christian cable shows, Christians in government, etc. Yet America also continues to suffer relatively higher crime rates and higher numbers of people in prisons, per capita, than any other nation on earth. We also have the highest rate of obesity, and relatively higher rates of teenage pregnancy, and relatively lower average test scores, compared with several other industrialized nations. So what has Christiantiy truly done for America? Maybe we are spending too much time and money on building more churches when we ought to be spending it on children's health (vitamins, minerals, protein), and children's education, during the crucial early years, or on other social programs, such as those other nations do?

Even some heathen nations like Japan (50% of whose populace doesn't even believe in a higher spirit, and the remainder are mostly gentlemanly Buddhists and Shintoists) have lower rates of crime and obesity than the U.S.

And Check out the Czechs:

Atheism in the Czech Republic May 03, 2004 as reported at about.com The Czech Republic appears to be one of the most disbelieving nations in Europe. According to one poll, only 33.6% of Czechs belong to a religion and only 11.7% attend services once a month or more. That's the lowest rate for any country in Europe aside from Estonia. So how does the Czech Republic compare in terms of things like crime to other, more religious nations? Someone at alt.atheism was kind enough to collect some data using NationMaster, posting comparisons between the Czech Republic, Poland (95% Catholic) and America:

Crime: Murder

Czech Republic 0.01 per 1000 people

Poland 0.05 per 1000 people

United States 0.04 per 1000 people

Crime: Rape

Czech Republic 0.04 per 1000 people

Poland 0.06 per 1000 people

United States 0.30 per 1000 people

Crime: Robbery

Czech Republic 0.39 per 1000 people

Poland 1.38 per 1000 people

United States 1.41 per 1000 people

Health: HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate

Czech Republic less than 0.1% (2001 est.)

United States 0.6% (2001 est.)

Poland 0.1% - note: no country specific models provided (2001 est.)

Health: Infant mortality rate

Czech Republic 5.46

Poland 9.17

United States 6.69

Education: Scientific literacy

Czech Republic 511

United States 499

Poland 483

You can visit NationMaster to create your own graphs to compare a variety of things.

And what about Christianity in America? It's just as secular and kitschy as American society in general, with Christian t-shirts, books, records, stadium-filled rallies, Christian theme parks, and apologetics cruises, not to mention bestselling books about promises of growing rich (Prayer of Jabez), as well as Christians voting to divert increasing funds to the military industrial establishment, while Jesus warned that "All who take up the sword shall die by the sword."

Jim Wallis, the Christian editor of Sojourner's magazine and author of God's Politics, asks, "How did the faith of Jesus come to be known as pro-rich, pro-American and pro-war?"

See also the book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience by Ron Sider who details further evidence of Christian worldliness. Sider admits, "Poll after poll by Gallup and Barna show that evangelicals live just like the world... Evangelical Christians and born-again Christians get divorced just as often, if not a little more, than the general population. And Barna has discovered that 90 percent of the born-again Christians who are divorced got divorced after they accepted Christ [The Barna Group, The Barna Update, 'Born Again Adults Less Likely to Co-Habit, Just As Likely to Divorce,' August 6, 2001, http://www.barna.org]... Or take the issue of racism. A Gallup study discovered that when they asked the question. 'Do you object if a black neighbor moves in next door?' the least prejudiced were Catholics and non-evangelicals. The next group, in terms of prejudice, was mainline Protestants. Evangelicals and Southern Baptists were the worst." [Ron Sider speaking in Christianity Today, April, 2005, Vol. 49 Issue 4, "The Evangelical Scandal"]

And what about the BIG picture of "moral and immoral" human behavior over the eons? One scholar has tried to measure that picture after studying archeologist sites from all over the world. See Lawrence H. Keeley's, War Before Civilization (Oxford University Press; 1996), in which Keeley cites archeological evidence to argue that human beings used to kill each other more often in the past than today, percentage-wise.

Keeley's charts of relative mobilization rates and casualty rates among tribes and modern nations are fascinating. He suggests that the terrible Twentieth Century wars would have had a death-rate twenty times higher "if the world's population were still organized into bands, tribes, and chiefdoms": the typical tribal combat casualty rate of .5 percent per year, during the course of the century would translate to "more than 2 billion war deaths."

www.troynovant.com

Keeley also pointed out that a higher percentage of the populace of Europe was killed in the 17th century (during religious-related warfare, when everybody was a creationist and believer in the Apostle's Creed) than during World War 2.

I also read elsewhere that evidence of cannibalism in the human past continues to surface in ancient archeological digs and even has been discovered inside human genes.

So if you take the long view, and agree with Keeley (though I have read some scholars uncertainties concerning Keeley's conclusions), deaths due to intertribal warfare and murder were more prominent in the past than in the present, i.e., percentage-wise per total population. So if "Adam fell," and Keeley's hypothesis is correct, that "fall" may have been "upward" over time, not downward.

QUESTION #2

LAURIE: Ed, You stated in your article:

"Simply rent the DVD, The Gangs of New York, or read the books, Moll Flanders, Tom Jones, Les Miserables, Candide, or just about anything by Charles Dickens to get a taste of the immorality and diseases that ran amuck in the 'good old days.'"

Are you really trying to say that believing in evolutionism might bring about some sort of improvement or are you saying that it will not make ANY change one way or the other?

ED: I am certainly not saying that believing in evolution is as detrimental to society as some young-earth creationists claim it is, laying the blame for nearly every harmful "--ism" they can name, on "evolution." And I also point out that immense wars erupted in Europe in the 17th century, long before Darwin, when everyone was a Bible believing Protestant or Catholic creationist. The problem appears to be humanity's temptation toward getting caught up following alpha male leaders with narrow aggressive ideologies. See my article, "Religion is Not the Problem"

QUESTION #3

LA: Can I ask if you are aware that it was the BELIEF in a Creator that was the underpinning of the "Golden Era of Science?"

An evolutionist of all people has pointed this out. i.e.: "Although we may recognize the frailties of Christian dogma and deplore the unconscionable persecution of thought which is one of the less appetizing aspects of medieval history, we must also observe that in one of those strange permutations of which history yields occasional rare examples, it is the Christian world which finally gave birth in a clear articulate fashion to the experimental method of science itself. Many things undoubtedly went into the amalgam: Greek logic and philosophy, the experimental methods of craftsmen in the arts as opposed to the aristocratic thinker - all these things have been debated. But perhaps the most curious element of them all is the factor dwelt upon by Whitehead - THE SHEER ACT OF FAITH THAT THE UNIVERSE POSSESSED ORDER AND COULD BE INTERPRETED BY RATIONAL MINDS. For Whitehead rightly observes, the philosophy of experimental science was not impressive. It began its discoveries and made use of its method in the faith, not the knowledge, that it was dealing with a rational universe controlled by a Creator who did not act upon whim nor interfere with the forces He has set in operation. The experimental method succeeded beyond men's wildest dreams but the faith that brought it into being owes something to the Christian concept of the nature of God. It is surely one of the curious paradoxes of history that science, which professionally has little to do with faith, owes its origin to an act of faith that the Universe can be rationally interpreted, and that science today is sustained by that assumption."

(Darwin's Century, Dr. Loren Eiseley, 1959, p.62) (A.N. Whitehead, "Science and the Modern World, Mentor Book., 1948, pp 4-17)

ED: The question of "the origin of science" was not what my original paper was focused upon. The question was whether the teaching of evolution necessarily must make mankind more criminal, murderous and war-like. There are even Christian evolutionists whom I cited at the end of my article who answered "no" to that question.

Also, science poses its own peculiar dangers to humanity and the planet, and if in the end we die of too many dangerous and/or polluting inventions that owe their creation to scientific knowledge, what will people say of the invention of science then? It appears to be a double-edged sword. (Not that either of us would relinquish the incredibly interesting knowledge of the cosmos that science has provided, nor relinquish its beneficial aspects in agriculture and medicine, not to mention plumbing and sewer systems. Speaking of plumbing, most agree it was more important than medical science in eliminating huge outbreaks of disease since with plumbing you need not live near a body of water where disease and mosquitoes may breed, nor do you have to go down to that body of water to fill your jug each day, but can receive clean water from the tap.)

But to directly answer your question, above, there are authorities in history other than Loren Eiseley and Whitehead. And such authorities do not agree that science owes its rebirth in the Western world primarily to theism.

One recent book, Aristotle's Children, argues that only after Western man gave up on Platonism and it's "ideal world" concepts, and re-discovered the works of Aristotle's more practical and earthy philosophy, was scientific investigation reborn in Europe. Another new book tells the tale of how the heretical Nestorian church had preserved writings of ancient Hellenic alchemy that were revived and became popular at the time when science was reborn in the West. Newton wrote thousands of pages on alchemy, and many scientists were fascinated by it, since it involved certain formulas, and an emphasis on different types of matter. And so modern day chemistry apparently owes a lot to alchemical ideas that stretch back to Hellenistic days. Other historians have pointed out that farming practices had improved in Europe, and outbreaks of plague were diminishing, and the population of Europe was increasing along with the rise of a prosperous Middle Class, and printing had also been invented. Men were joining and forming societies and had lesiure time and wealth to pursue scientific interests, and publicize such knowledge in mass produced literature.

Moreover, Christianity alone did not create science. Scientific ideas and investigations preceded Christianity and Judaism, and began in ancient Babylonia, Egypt and Greece, and also taught in academies of the Hellenistic world. However, after Christian Roman Emperors ruled Rome, and began battling paganism, Christians closed such academies.

See the works of one of the premier historians of the later half of the Roman Empire, Ramsay MacMullen, Dunham Professor Emeritus of History and Classics at Yale University. He is the author of Christianizing the Roman Empire: A.D. 100-400, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries Corruption and the Decline of Rome (Christianizing Rome didn't keep the corruption out--E.T.B.), all published by Yale University Press.

"MacMullen discusses the shifiting attitude from the rational world view of Pliny, Seneca and Plotinus and the increase in credulity throughout the third and fourth centuries. MacMullen argues that this was a result of changes in the elite as more vulgar and less literate people increased their predominance (and Christianity spread). Whatever the merits of this thesis, MacMullen points out the contempt prominent Christians such as Tertullian, Augustine, Lactantius, Ambrose and John Chrysostom had for ancient philosophy. They denounced Plato and Aristotle by name, and mocked the idea of skeptical study and the scientific attitude. Nor did they stop there. They told stories about appartitions over the battlefield, miraculous cures, the everpresent existence of demons, people raised to life by Christians, and dragons turned to dust by the sign of the cross." pnotley@hotmail.com Amazon.com reviewer

QUOTATIONS FROM

Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries

In the century opened by the Peace of the Church, more Christians died for their faith at the hands of fellow Christians than had died before in all the persecutions.

Institutions of higher learning had been largely destroyed. The [Christian] emperors' attacks had centered on the chief of them, Athens and Alexandria, in the late fourth century and were turned against them again toward the end of the fifth and in 529. ["529 A.D." was the year that the School of Athens was closed by the decree of the Christian Roman Emperor Justinian, the same Justinian who also outlawed sodomy, because, "It is well known that buggery is a principal cause of earthquakes, and so must be prohibited."--E.T.B.]. As to the initiators of the persecution, the [Christian] emperors themselves, a steady decline in their level of cultivation has been noticed. Thus books and philosophy were bound to fade from sight.

After Constantine there existed an empire-wide instrument of education: the church. What bishops, even emperors, made plain, and what could be heard in broader terms from every pulpit, was an agreed upon teaching. Every witness, every listener should know the great danger to his soul in Plato's books, in Aristotle's, in any of the philosophical corpus handed down from the past. The same danger threatened anyone using his mind according to their manner, with analytical intent, ranging widely for the materials of understanding, and independent of divine imparted teachings.

Another factor that arose specifically out of the ongoing conversion of the empire was the doctrine of demonic causation. The belief in the operation of maleficent forces on a large scale had to await Christianity; and it was of course Christianity that was to form the medieval and Byzantine world. Satanic agents were to be seen as the cause not only of wars and rebellions, persecution and heresy, storms at sea and earthquakes on land, but of a host of minor or major personal afflictions. So, in consequence, Christians were forever crossing themselves, whatever new action they set about, and painted crosses on their foreheads too, responding to their leaders' urging them to do so. It would protect them against all evil.

Lastly, No matter what the religious views were of the culture in which scientific investigation first blossomed most heavily, today the pursuit of scientific research is not limited by one's religious beliefs or lack thereof. Scientific research is now a truly universal pursuit, one of the few such universal pursuits in the realm of knowledge that mankind has ever developed.

Ed

Perfect World

I once wrote a short story about someone who made a wish that magically came true. He wanted all the physical dangers and death in the cosmos to vanish. Presto! It did. The earth was henceforth eternal and immortal and ecologically perfect, and everyone could have as many children as they wanted because the planet expanded magnanimously at will to accommodate them. When you gazed up into the sky you didn't see stars, you saw beyond the clouds a reflection of the same earth you were on, because the whole universe curved back in on itself, and when you pointed a telescope overheard and looked up you could even see yourself looking down at yourself through a telescope, because that's how tightly curved the space of the entire cosmos now was. No danger of asteroids or outer space rubble slamming into the planet and destroying life. And you could eat all you wanted and your body would take whatever you ate and produce tiny white pellets that smelled like flowers and came out your anus. When the pellets dropped on soil they fertilized it, but when they were eaten by any species, it ensured that organism's perfect health. So nothing at all could possibly go wrong. Death wasn't an option because someone was always there to feed you a little white pill whenever you broke an arm or got burned. And nobody ever wanted to die, they were all so happy, so nobody tried to destroy themselves irreparably and everyone took care in their mellow environment, which lacked harsh winds and temperatures such that planes never failed in their duty to stay on course and never fell out of the sky.

Then one day the person whose wish had created this world made another wish, he wanted to avoid even verbal arguments and wished everyone believed as he did, and presto! Everyone did. They believed as he did about EVERYTHING--from philosophy and theology, right down to which fashions were the most stylish. In fact, as the days passed he noticed everyone in this perfect cosmos was growing to look more like him. His world truly was perfect, it was HIS world through and through.

But that's when he grew to loathe absolute safety, absolute agreement, absolute perfection, seeing his own reflection in the faces of billions peering at him from the sky above as he peered up at them from his telescope below, hearing his own thoughts constantly echoed back at him, on all sides, forever. Now that he was right, finally, utterly correct, there was no point in discussing new topics with anyone, since everyone lived similar lives, heard the same news, and thought what he thought about every matter. Nor did he encounter in the world of philosophy, art, fashion or song, anything of which he didn't already approve, so, there were no differences, discords, diversity or dangers in the cosmos, nor any surprises. All wishes for health, happiness and eternal life had been fulfilled. Yet he never felt deader inside, and never wanted to live less than at that moment. And naturally everyone else on the planet felt exactly the same way.

He tried wishing away his first and second wishes: 1) to abolish all death and dangers, and 2) to make everyone agree. But nothing changed. Apparently he had only been granted two magical wishes, not three. Soon afterwards, the human beings in that perfect little cosmos all decided to do away with themselves at approximately the same time and by the same suicidal means, leaving no one behind to feed them the little white pills that could have revived them.

E.T.B.

____________________________

Perhaps God or the gods got omni-bored with their omniscience, omnipotence, eternal perfection and power, and decided to take a rest from eternal boredom, and we are the result? We are the part of God that is currently "on vacation," or, "gods on vacation." We are risking, discovering, being SURPRISED, as well as suffering pains and challenges, which is exactly what an omni-bored God or gods would want to experience when they're on vacation.

—Lance E. Lawyer