Undeception

From the Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch, pastor of St. Stephen Presbyterian Church in Fort Worth, comes this gem of an op ed (Star-Telegram.com).

The debate over teaching evolution in schools has a lot to do with science, but not biology.

Look instead to archaeology, anthropology, and mostly to literary and historical criticism — the tools modern scholarship uses to interpret the Bible.

The application of scientific method to holy writ has raised doubts about scriptural infallibility. Those who want to teach students “the weaknesses” of evolution hope, like good lawyers, to raise enough doubts that creationism looks credible. They fear that if creationism isn’t credible, then their literal reading of Scripture isn’t credible, either — and neither is their faith.

They’re right. But what’s needed is not faulty science. Believers need a new way to assert the truths of biblical faith without turning off our brains in the process.

Fundamental to the question of origins is the purpose of the Bible. He continues:

Scripture’s area of expertise is revelation — that which can’t be explained in physical terms. Revelation delves into matters of “the spirit,” the invisible, the reality that humans would never completely understand unless it was revealed.

The creation stories of Genesis are a case in point. The authors weren’t interested in describing the literal creation, but in making transcendent points about God, creation and human nature.

You don’t need to be a creationist to believe that God created all things; that God made them good; that God made humanity in God’s image; and that there is something rebellious and egocentric in human nature.

The details of the stories are carefully crafted; every word is fraught with meaning. Jews and Christians study these words carefully. We want to get them right. We believe that these words are inspired; they are the word of God. But these brilliant details are not facts. The fact that humanity evolved, contrary to the biblical creation story, does not make Genesis less true.

Ritsch gives an excellent description on the nature and origin of Scripture, emphasizing the resultant importance of humility in our interpretation.

Like the created order, Scripture didn’t emerge fully formed. Both scholarship and history show that the Bible evolved. The Torah, the first five books of the Bible, is the work of at least four editors over a period of hundreds of years. Likewise, the New Testament represents more than 100 years of writing that was not finalized until almost 300 years after Jesus’ crucifixion.

Our Scriptures evolved through a very human process of reflection and editing, spiced by spirited disagreement. The Bible intentionally comprises differing views and theologies. It was a “big tent” compromise, a “middle ground” encompassing a wide variety of early Christian sects and views, uniting them over a few essential beliefs without expunging the qualities that made each unique. To claim that God was engaged in such an “evolutionary” process is surely a hopeful sign that compromise affirms faith.

Admittedly, Judeo-Christian faith is strongly grounded in history, so factual conflicts can be challenging. That’s why God gave us minds, and why believers assert that we are saved by grace.

There’s room to be wrong — a fact that often gets lost in debates about doctrine. But the essential truths of our faith — the resurrection of Christ for Christians, for instance, or God’s appearance to Moses in the Burning Bush — will never be proved or disproved by scientific method.

This reminds me of Polkinghorne’s sentiments recounted on Steve Martin’s blog: “As a scientist I am often struck by theologians’ persistent fear of getting it wrong. [In science] a willingness to explore ideas which might prove mistaken, or in need of revision, is a necessary price of scientific progress. One would have thought that the intrinsic difficulty in doing theology would encourage a similar intrepidity.”

Make sure you check out Ritsch’s full article.

In case you were wondering why this site was down all day on Tuesday (grrrrr), my .htaccess file keeps crippling the site with a 500 internal server error. This time I didn’t guess that it was my .htaccess again, and it took me all day to have a chance to diagnose and correct it. Won’t take me that long next time. I can only guess that it’s one of my plugins causing the problem, but it’s too intermittent a problem to find the culprit by process of elimination. I tried changing the permissions on the file, so we’ll see how that works. If you’ve got any better suggestions, please deliver — I’m a total noob with this stuff.

The most annoying thing was that I had just published a new post (in case you missed it, check it out) that probably hit everyone’s RSS reader, and so they came to check it out and KERSPLAT. I apologize. And welcome back!

There is no bigger proponent of home education than yours truly. I myself was homeschooled from the fifth grade through graduation. Although a somewhat shy, awkward kid, I somehow turned out completely “socialized” (whatever the crap that means), was accepted to both an undergraduate and multiple graduate programs, and am well on my way to a PhD in an obscure academic field. Most reasons homeschooling is criticized are, in my opinion, absolutely groundless.

One particular critique is generally unfounded and misleading: Christians are sheltering their children from the real world, to the effect that those children will be swept away once they get out from under their parents’ protection. One should ask, “Isn’t sheltering (a.k.a protecting) my child part of my role as a loving parent?” Indeed. I want to shelter my child from playing in the street — doesn’t make me a bad parent. In fact, quite the opposite: it makes me a good parent. Where I would be letting my children down is if I were afraid to tell them the reason I wouldn’t let them play in the road, choosing only to scare them out of any desire to play in the street by saying things like, “The road is evil!” or “The cars are out to get you!” To be sure, for children of younger ages, warnings unaccompanied by a cogent rationale will be sufficient; but when they get older, it will be behoove them on many levels to know exactly why the road is a dangerous place to play, if for no other reason than such lessons might be adapted anywhere and result in children’s ability to plan for their own safety in analogous situations. The right kind of “sheltering” explains to the child what s/he is being sheltered from, why, and what to do about it once the protection is lifted. I am grateful that this is how my parents instructed me. My parents taught me to learn, think, analyze, and evaluate new information on my own. This is the kind of homeschooling I can get behind.

This sort of homeschool methodology is quite popular, but there is either one particular glaring failure to consistently carry it out, or it is not being done properly at least. I have in mind one particular field of study: I know firsthand that one of the primary reasons Christians have for homeschooling their kids is a concern over mainstream science. In other words, parents are afraid that their children will be taught something other than young earth creationism. Now granted, not all homeschoolers are even Christians, so this is not the case across the board. But among Christians who homeschool, this concern is reflected in all the major Christian homeschool curricula. When my wife and I were researching curricula for our children, I only came across one provider whose materials allowed for the possibility of an old earth. The exception was the Sonlight Curriculum, a curriculum development and supply company that counsels parents to look at both young earth and old earth creationist material. From what we saw, all of the material was still thoroughly “creationist” (what is often termed “special creationism”) and therefore critical of evolutionary theory and approving of Intelligent Design, except where incidental mention is made in secular books they offer (such as the excellent Usborne series).

Inasmuch as the “teach to learn” approach is not the case in home and all other types of education, we have an interest in promoting its return. Unfortunately, the abundance of Christians who are homeschooling in order to promote creationism at the expense of mainstream science plays into the critique of homeschooling as “sheltering” children to those children’s detriment. Kids are being taught to live in denial of science as practiced by actual scientists in their fields of study doing actual research. This selective ignorance happens often enough, but as a case in point, I wanted to point out the following recent incident, which is illustrative of an endemic problem within the homeschooling movement.

The Christian Home Educators of Colorado (CHEC) just last year prohibited Sonlight from displaying their materials at a homeschool convention. When he pressed CHEC for an answer why, Sunlight’s co-owner John Holzmann was informed that it was because his company was negligent in protecting families from non-YEC origins positions. Unfortunately, the relative fair-mindedness Sonlight displays on this aspect of the origins question cannot go unpunished among certain groups within the homeschooling community. I like Holzmann’s response:

CHEC, apparently, can’t trust Christian homeschoolers in Colorado to do their own research, read what “the other side” is saying, and/or come to their own conclusions in these matters. CHEC feels the need to protect homeschool families from themselves . . . and from companies like Sonlight that don’t teach origins in quite the way CHEC prefers.

What really bothers me: CHEC’s behavior, in essence, answers my paper–Young-Earth and Old-Earth Creationists: Can We Even Talk to One Another?–in the negative: “No. We can’t. And, to the extent it is up to us, we won’t.”

The moral of the story, implies Holzmann, is that key leadership within the homeschooling movement is in many places too agenda-driven to serve the needs of parents who feel it their prerogative and even responsibility to determine which aspects of important issues their children should be aware of. He issues this warning:

If you’re involved in homeschooling, especially Christian homeschooling, I wonder if your state convention sponsors may be keeping you from hearing the “other side” in debates that concern you?

HT: SpunkyHomeschool

Wow! Heather at Heather’s Hodgepodge has bestowed upon me an award that I accept gratefully. This is an honor coming from Heather, who definitely deserved the award herself.

As with all awards, there are some rules and they are as follows:

* Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass the award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.

* Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author and the name of the blog from whom he/she has received the Award.

* Each Superior Scribbler must display the award on his/her blog, and link to this post, which explains the award.

* Each Blogger who wins the Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List (scroll down). That way, we’ll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives this prestigious honor!

* Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

I hereby bestow the Superior Scribbler Award upon:

1. Josh at The Smoak House. Not only is turnabout fair play, but his current passion, politics, is so well articulated that I just have to give him some props.
2. Mike Beidler at The Creation of an Evolutionist. In breathless anticipation of the next installment of his Lamoureux review…
3. Cliff Martin at Outside the Box. Consider this my vote against the threatened dismantling of his wonderful blog. Veto.
4. Damian at Castle of Nutshells. A very thoughtful and talented young man who runs one heck of a good blog.
5. Gordon Glover at Beyond the Firmament. This is the guy I least expect to respond, given that his blog, being tied to a commercial enterprise, is less suited to this sort of thing than the other guys’. Nevertheless, he deserves it as much as anyone else on my blogroll.

What an…honor(?) to be tagged with the Honest Scrap Meme by one Joshua Cecil Horne at the Smoak House.

Honest Scrap Award

I’ll let Josh tell you about it:

When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it (hence my over-the-top cocky title for this post), including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to said person so everyone knows he or she is real. Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have 7 friends. Show the 7 random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with “Honest Weblog.” Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon. List at least ten honest things about yourself. Then, pass it on!

So without any further ado, here I go…

1. I kinda hate memes a lot. But I also kinda like them a little. I’m a bit uncomfortable with talking about myself so much since people don’t read this site to find out about Steve. But the blog’s been quiet lately, so I welcome the chance to break the silence.
2. I talk a lot about things that are controversial to my evangelical background on this blog. By my reckoning, there’s only one major departure from my base that I haven’t come clean on. Like to know what it is? Sorry, not yet.
3. My most annoying habit: my annoyance at annoying habits. It’s usually my dear wife who gets nagged, although the things that annoy me aren’t unique to her.
4. I am a picky eater. Among the common foods I hate: onions, tomatoes (although I will eat ketchup and tomato sauce in limited quantities), and nuts. I also hate almost anything slimy, but I do love cooked Brussel sprouts.
5. When I was a kid — ok, even when a young teenager, I used to — well, ok, probably even when I got to college (you happy?), I used to pretend my life was fully televised. This began years before The Truman Show, so it was an independently created psychosis.
6. I am a musician. In order of proficiency, my instruments are piano, clarinet, trombone, and bagpipes. Seriously.
7. For the first couple years of my adolescent period, I wanted to be Benny Goodman. That morphed into wanting to be a band teacher; to that end, I memorized the ranges for all kinds of instruments, studied how they were played, etc.
8. When I went to college, I started off as a music major because of the band teacher thing and also because I wanted to learn about composing instrumental music, something I played at all through high school, and less frequently since college. But the college didn’t have such an emphasis, so I had to become an instrumental major; I auditioned for piano, but quickly washed out and became a clarinet major for my second semester. Turns out, that year was wasted, as my sophomore year I switched to Bible and Theology.
9. I served as one of the original officers for my college’s opera club, “Aria da Capo”. I didn’t then, nor do I now, care for opera.
10. Although I can read (with varying proficiency) six dead languages, I still don’t know Latin! Major weakness for an historical linguist, that. However, I’ll be learning Latin along with my children as I start teaching my daughter next year for second grade. Of modern languages, besides English I can only read a bit of modern German, and I speak even less — which is an even more major weakness than no Latin.

In keeping with my general principle for memes, I’m not going to tag anyone specifically. There’s usually poor response among those I tag anyway. Anyone who likes can participate in my comments. Thanks for reading!