Reader Sigmund, who keeps a weather eye on the BioLogos site, has contributed a guest post about one of the more ludicrous items on that site, which indicts none other than Beelzebub for the spread of naturalism and scientific materialism.
BioLogos reveals the author behind modern theoretical cosmology
by Sigmund
The effort to teach evangelicals the correct way to read the Bible carries on apace.
Mark H. Mann, a theologian from Point Loma Nazarene University, continues his series of posts defending the BioLogos-approved method of integrating religion and scienc, contributing a new installment entitled Let’s Not Surrender Science to the Secular World, Part 6
Not surprisingly, Mann takes the standard apologetic approach of claiming that the Bible is a mixture of literal and poetic writings:
”. . scripture is complex and revealed within a variety of social and historical contexts and using a variety of literary styles. Therefore, in order to understand what God is saying in scripture we must take account of both the context and genre in which a particular passage was revealed.”
Needless to say, Mann doesn’t present a reliable method to distinguish which parts are metaphor and which are literal. Mann instead chooses to contrast the biblical tales of creation and destruction with those of other contemporary or earlier Middle Eastern religions.
“in Gilgamesh, the gods decide to destroy humanity simply because humans have become so numerous that their noise is now bothersome to the gods! How different from the story of Noah in which God brings the flood in judgment against human violence and wickedness (Gen 6:5, 11).”
[JAC: note that almost immediately thereafter, Mann says this:
Moreover, the God revealed in the Bible is a God of love and care for all creation. He desires the well being of all of his creatures (Gen. 1:22; see also Gen. 9:8-12), and especially the humans, whom he provides care for even when they have responded with acts of disobedience and disrespect.
If that’s the case, why did he drown nearly everyone?]
Mann, amazingly, reads the flood story as evidence for the moral goodness of the God of the bible, in contrast to all those other pagan deities!
“There is a moral purpose—the preservation of justice and righteousness in creation—behind the biblical God’s actions that is completely lacking among the gods of the other ancient Near Eastern peoples.”
But allowing allegorical interpretations of the most awkward passages of Genesis (in light of modern scientific discoveries) enables Mann to sidestep many of the most embarrassing interpretations of natural history that the literal approach requires.
“Nor do we have to speculate wildly about the past existence of ice domes in the sky, primal light in the sky before the formation of the sun and moon, or dinosaurs roaming the earth with humans, all for which there is absolutely no credible evidence and which ultimately only serves the purpose of aligning our current understanding of the world with that held by people thousands of years ago who simply could not understand the world as we do because they did not yet have the tools to observe and study it that we now have.”
Well, there’s no credible evidence for the various miracles attributed to Jesus either, but somehow that doesn’t figure into his thinking.
Finally, Mann, perhaps feeling sorry for his evangelical audience, decides to throw them a little red meat, confirming their suspicions about who is really behind the latest scientific ideas about cosmology and the big bang.
“Nor do Christians, using scientific tools, need to buy into Satan’s lie that a universe that appears to function in an orderly, natural way came into being and functions as it does all by itself.”
Yes!! It is indeed the red, pointy-tailed, and hornéd beast who is behind the idea of naturalism!
Well, him and Laurence Krauss.
So, who are the leading cosmologists? Satan Hawking? Beelzebub Greene? Lilith Randall?
Risable!
/@
(In addition to Lucifer Krauss, of course!)
Wow, it’s always Satan that makes it look like the universe is older than the Bible says and other things that make it seem it wasn’t magically brought into existence. Almost like god couldn’t do anything about it. I’m guessing this Satan is more powerful than their god.
Oh, that’s probably something to do with free will…
/@
Chuckle.
So the argument is that our fairy tales are, like, way better than the other fairy tales, and anyway, Satan’s behind the whole field of cosmology. I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
Just go with the eye roll; you’ll feel better and it takes less energy.
But remember, we’re supposed to respect their sincerely held beliefs.
This reminds me…. I must go off an listen to Randy Newman’s Faust again.
“…therefore to understand what god is saying in the scripture…”
Unless I’m very much mistaken, god (for whom there is no evidence)says nothing in any scriptures, these are the words of men for men. As god only speaks to those who seem to have mental health issues, most of whom in modern societies are treated for such conditions the whole thing is a farce. I’m with jerry all the way including free will, we are biological organisms amonst many and must obey the laws of physics.
Wait a second, has anyone ever seen Laurence Krauss and Satan together in the same room?
(Although I suspect for evangelicals that this probably counts! –
http://c3416406.r6.cf0.rackcdn.com/LawrenceKraussRichardDawkinsASU.jpg )
There are two things that leap out at me wrt the source article:
1) He sure likes his italics. Especially to highlight the dog-whistle words random and natural
2) He compares the nearby myths with the Christian “facts” without the obvious question that screams out in my brain; “Just how do you know that your privileged myth is a fact, and not one of the other ones!”
Aarrgghh! In the last paragraph he even says that “We Christians know better. We believe and scripture affirms that God created this good world, that God created its laws, principles, and elements.” They know they are right because God is good, and it is as if the proof is an assumption that the scriptures written independently of any knowledge of god says god would be good, so god must be true.
Why oh why can’t the idea that “the source material for their faith may be bogus” get into their heads? If it could, then we can treat the bible like any other textbook that is both certain and wrong, like ones containing the phlogiston theory of fire, or luminiferous aether?
What nonsense. As everyone who listens to the wonderful Radio 4 series “Old Harry’s Game” knows, in recent years Satan has in fact been working to make humankind behave better in order to ease the terrible overcrowding in hell.
The check-in demons are worked off their hooves.
Point Loma Nazarene University … are you kidding me? It must take more education than I thought to put pamphlets on door knobs.
(And, seriously, I thought you guys already knew that Satan is behind everything that disagrees with religious nuts.)
“(And, seriously, I thought you guys already knew that Satan is behind everything that disagrees with religious nuts.)”
Yes, but BioLogos are meant to be the ‘sophisticated’ version of evangelical Christianity. It was founded by Francis Collins to show that this type of Christianity is compatible with science.
And yet they still believe in the devil!
This is further proof that the WEIT web site will never run out of source material.
The quote from the article:
“Nor do Christians, using scientific tools, need to buy into Satan’s lie that a universe that appears to function in an orderly, natural way came into being and functions as it does all by itself.”
This is so… incredible. Ok, so Satan’s purpose is essentially to drive out of the universe any belief in god. Originally Satan typically tempted people (especially the clergy if he could get them) by showing that Satan could provide whatever people desired, and god could not. This isn’t working as well as it might have in the past, probably due to the invention of credit cards. Anyway, Satan hits upon the ultimate “get god out the universe” plan. Make the universe look like there are no supernatural beings running the show. It’s all natural and automatic. That would certainly remove belief in god, but at the same time there would be no belief in Satan either as both beings are supernatural.
So Satan is on a suicide mission to get rid of god? Is getting rid of god so important to Satan that he would sacrifice his own existence for it? That’s dedication.
or an example of reciprocal altruism on the supernatural level
Apparently Satan is the level headed one while Yahweh is way off in lala land
Reminds me of a SF/fantasy story I read years ago (alas, can’t remeber the name or author) which convincingly retells the crucifixion story with Judas as the Brutus like hero.
Man, BioLogos has seriously gone off the rails and into Fundieville.
The Krauss book comes out in the UK tomorrow!
“in Gilgamesh, the gods decide to destroy humanity simply because humans have become so numerous that their noise is now bothersome to the gods! How different from the story of Noah in which God brings the flood in judgment against human violence and wickedness (Gen 6:5, 11).”
Nice. And they do realize that the story of Noah was taken almost verbatim from the Gilgamesh epic (written some 500-600 years before the bible)!
Besides this same god trashed a city because he felt threatened by a tower.
Can you imagine how many wicked newborns, infants and toddlers were running around then? Not to mention all the evil cows, antelopes and koalas. It’s a good thing Yaweh wasn’t a capricious tyrant like those pagan gods.
Good spot, apb. But Gilgamesh was written around 2,000 BCE; modern scholars think Genesis was written around the 6th or 5th century BCE. About 1,500 years’ delay!
By the way, Gilgamesh is a cracking good read; the shortest epic there is, takes about 2 hours.
Satan is totally real … but Adam and Eve were just metaphorical.
Incredible.
Reminds me of very early church apologists who tried to explain why Jesus’ virgin birth was somehow different, special, and unique when compared with the virgin births reported for a wide range of other deities (and humans).
Seems as if Satan “pre-lied” by planting all of those virgin birth stories prior to the telling of the Jesus story.
No kidding, that’s the argument. All of those other virgin births were clearly false; only Jesus’ counts. Because the devil knew Jesus would be born of a virgin and pre-lied about virgin births … well, too many to count.
Satan was one busy bugger back then. These days, not so much. One would think that a really really cool way for Satan to work to discount Jesus’ virginal origins would be to have a virgin birth a week. Make it normal.
Satan lacks imagination.
“eally really cool way for Satan to work to discount Jesus’ virginal origins would be to have a virgin birth a week. Make it normal.”
In many Catholic schools this is the case.
Yes, Kevin; the idea that the Pagans plagiarised the Jesus miracles before they happened to the ‘Nazarene’ comes from Justin Martyr’s First Apologia, in the second century. He doesn’t ascribe such tricksiness to Satan, whom he only mentions once, but to devils.
The real question is who created Satan?
The answer is, of course, Da Lord, who created everything in the Universe. Thus, Da Lord created Satan to fulfill Da Lord’s purpose of humans discovering modern materialist cosmology. He’s a tricky deity!
Well… one of the main authors of theoretical cosmology was indeed a catholic priest. I suppose that is equivalent to Beelzebub for any good evangelical fundie.
Note the tacit assumption that the earth was here before the sun. (Our earth! It belongs to US! We’re more important than anything else, so of course it had to have been here first.)
Mr. Mann’s posts are not worth commenting on, so I won’t.
“There is a moral purpose—the preservation of justice and righteousness in creation—behind the biblical God’s actions that is completely lacking among the gods of the other ancient Near Eastern peoples.”
What utter nonsense. Where is this “preservation of justice and righteousness in creation” which he jabbers about? How is it absent from all the other narratives from the region? Who are these “Near Eastern” people? The Egyptian myths are full of stories of justice and rebirth/renewal etc. – how convenient of Mann to pretend they do not exist – nor are the Egyptian stories all unique to their culture. As for the ancient stories of Gilgamesh, I’d like to see a more substantial comparison of the stories to those of the bible.
@MadScientist
“I’d like to see a more substantial comparison of the (Gilgamesh) stories to those of the bible.”
“An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic On the Basis of Recently Discovered Texts”
by Jastrow and Clay, 1920, Yale UP.
From Project Gutenberg.
Sorry it’s no more recent, but thorough, it is; and addresses its influence on the Bible passim, albeit from a more etymological, rather than ethical standpoint, even though it does point to differences in theology and Weltanschauung.
The second someone mentions Satan there’s no point paying any more attention to them – unless you can get them to explain how, if Satan exists and is such a powerful manipulator, they can be sure that anything is true? What if Satan wrote the bible? What if Jesus was really Satan in disguise trying to turn people away from the truth faith, Judaism?
Most of the ordinary people that I come into contact with who wear the label ‘Christian’ do not believe and have no faith at all.
Here in the UK it is the aristocracy and upper middle class worthies who bang the drum for faith in God. I am sure that is their wish to bring back the controls that mistakenly believe that fear created. I saw a great joke about Satan recently: If it is Satan who punishes the evil ones then why is God the good guy?
Just a couple of weeks ago, a pastor friend was telling me how scientific religion is, because circumcisions are traditionally performed on the eighth day, which just happens to be the safest. I forgot to mention their scientific understanding of heredity was indicative of their scientific understanding, also. The practice of breeding livestock near either sticks or rocks to get striped or spotted descendants!