Recovering Evangelicals

A medical scientist who fully affirms human evolution and common ancestry with the apes shows that science can’t rule out a recent Adam&Eve. There are many who believe in a historical Adam&Eve as recently as six thousand years ago, based on a direct, surface-level reading of the first couple chapters of Genesis. And then there are many others who accept that humans evolved over millions of years from an ancestor we share in common with gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans on the one hand, and Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Naledi on the other hand, as per an abundance of paleontological and genetic evidence. And then there are some who believe both origin stories to be true simultaneously! Whaaaaat!? Dr. Joshua Swamidass, an MD with graduate training in biology and information/computer science, has shown that science does NOT rule out the idea of a recent Adam&Eve, contrary to what many might think. The key to doing this is understanding the subtle and yet profound difference between genetics and genealogy. You see, a scientist will read the genome of an animal …. or a human … and connect it to a genetic Tree of Life that can go back millions of years, showing how a successive accumulation of genetic changes documents the transformation of one species into another, over and over again. Someone else wanting to research their family tree to find out who they might be related to, on the other hand, will go backward through time and dig up the family connections between children, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents …… and so on. Each one of us has two parents, each of whom had two parents, who in turn had two parents … and so on. In other words, the number of ancestors we’re genealogically related to doubles with each generation. If we go back only 50 generations (or roughly one thousand years, assuming that each generation takes 20 years to produce the next generation), we could be genealogically connected to 1,125,899,906,842,624 people (that’s 2 raised to the exponent power of 50). A quadrillion people!? That’s actually more people than were alive a thousand years ago! And now let’s go through that exact same mental exercise, but now moving forward through time. Start with everyone who existed on the face of the earth a thousand years ago, and imagine them coupling up and producing kids. Each time they couple up, they combine two distinct family lineages (excluding those uncomfortable situations where siblings or first cousins produced kids …. iccck!). After several generations, more and more distinct family lineages are brought together: someone might be related to the MacDonald family line through their father, and to the Griswald line through their mother, and the Kennedy family through their grandmother on their dad’s side, and the Garcia-Lopez family through their maternal grandmother, and the Yamaguchi line through some other distant relative ….. you get the idea? By the time we get to the present day, it’s possible that I’m related in this genealogical way to everyone who existed on earth a thousand years ago. And the same would be true for you …. and for everyone else on the face of the earth today. And if one of those couples from a thousand years ago happened to be named “Adam” and “Eve” …… … then we are all related to … and descendants of … Adam and Eve only one thousand years ago. Genealogically speaking. You might want to hear this directly from our guest expert. And of course, it’s hard not to talk about descent from an original couple without getting into several theological issues, beginning with … you guessed it … that cringe-inducing idea of “original sin”. As always, tell us what you think… Find more about Dr. Joshua Swamidass at https://peacefulscience.org/authors/swamidass/ and at https://pathology.wustl.edu/people/joshua-swamidass-md-phd/ To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast a

Our responses to a flurry of comments and questions to two recent episodes: one on Open/Process Theism, and the other comparing theology and science as legitimate avenues in the search for Truth. Two of our recent episodes both evoked a tremendous response from our listeners, in terms of comments left at our two Facebook sites and emails sent directly to us. These two episodes focused on Open and Relational Theism and Process Theism (#90; with Dr. Thomas Jay Oord) and on whether theology and science are equally legitimate avenues in the pursuit of Truth (#91; with Dr. Bethany Solereder). In fact, the response was so great, and the comments so well thought out, that we thought we should devote this episode to unpacking them. A thumbnail sketch of the questions and ideas that our mailbag had us explore includes the following: Open and Process Theism downplay human suffering in the here and now. God knowing all things does not undermine free will. “My God is too big to be reduced to the extent that Open Theism calls for.” “It’s insulting that we say God can’t do something just because we can’t understand it.” Theology just isn’t science, and theologians should not try to treat it as such. Theology does /does not have a mechanism in place to sift out bad ideas (in the way that the Scientific Method works for scientists) “Scientia” (the Latin for science) means knowledge; the word “science” means something different to North Americans than it does to Europeans. the term “Theology” is the study of God, and so discussions about peripheral things like Hell, or slavery, or textual criticism are most certainly not theology. “Science produces models that work and can do amazing things; what amazing thing, or even mundane thing, does theology enable us to accomplish?” “Theologians must use scripture as a foundation for their claims, but it is all too easy to demonstrate that scriptures are the products of humans, not of God.” theology does not help us determine what is more likely to be true; instead it is used to justify what we want to be true. As always, tell us what you think… To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

An amazing story of a journey into an utterly bizarre worldview, and what it took to come back to reality. Do you ever look back on the things that you once believed with conviction, and now shake your head, asking yourself: “How could I have believed that? It’s so obviously not true.  I just don’t think that way anymore.”  And every year, when holidays bring friends and family back together again, you cringe at the conversations and expectations that you know are going to come up, because they still think that way.  Or you watch loved ones slowly fall into a quicksand of strange beliefs, and ask yourself: “How did they fall into that hole?  How can I help them crawl out?” Our guest today can tell you … because he’s been there.  His story is going to leave you speechless. If you think what you once believed is a bit out there, wait till you hear his story. If you think you’ve let go of a lot of baggage, wait till you hear his story. Kerry Noble started off as a young kid with a very ordinary Baptist belief, but in just a few short years, his faith transformed into something so completely different, shocking, and surreal. If I simply told you where he ended up … if I merely showed you the before and after pictures without explaining the steps that got him there … you just wouldn’t believe me. It’s such a dramatic change. And that’s the secret to how it all happened: in the same way that you the listener need time to comprehend each twist in circumstances, logic and common sense, the person going through that mind warping experience needs time to acclimatize with every step into that vortex.  It’s a slow process of being very gradually introduced to slightly stranger ideas and waiting till you’ve embraced that before moving to another idea that’s even stranger yet. Theology by accretion. One small step at a time. Like putting a frog in a pot of cool water and slowly turning up the temperature till it eventually boils to death. Kerry also tells us how he himself was able to give his head a shake and crawl his way out.  It took a few years of thinking his way out of the tangled mess of beliefs he’d acquired.  Deconstruction, and then reconstruction.  I learned a lot from listening to him.  I think you will too. As always, tell us what you think… Find more about Kerry Noble at https://www.facebook.com/KerryNobleCSA To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Luke asks two theologians to convince him that theology is a legitimate avenue for coming up with robust models of our reality Science and theology are both human endeavours seeking to explain our past, our present reality, and possibly also the trajectory of our future. Both build elaborate ideas on the foundation of previous scholars, collect new data, and try to come up with newer or more finessed models to expand our ever-growing body of knowledge about our existence in this universe. To do this, scientists have developed a strategy that seems to work really well: “the scientific method.” Each idea that they form is put through a battery of tests to prove it wrong. Yes, I said that right: many non-scientists think that science is about proving things right, but we scientists know that our job is either about proving something wrong or …. less and less likely to be wrong. Increasing our confidence, but never achieving certainty. We call this “testing the null hypothesis.” We run experiments, and then repeat them. We make sure to build in proper controls in the experimental conditions, and randomize the variables to make sure we’re not manipulating the outcome. And we subject the interpretations of the data to peer review. If there’s disagreement, new experiments are designed … again, to prove the idea is wrong, or less and less likely to be wrong. Theology, on the one hand seems to be equally scholarly and rigorous in its model-building, but … there is no mechanism in place to decide which model(s) are correct. This became so blatantly obvious to Luke when he listened to two highly-trained, well-informed, and skilful theologians discussing the three currently most popular models of hell. The first model is eternal conscious torment in a lake of fire. It seems that a vast majority of non-expert believers seem to hold this view, and almost every non-believer also thinks that this is the universally accepted model of hell among believers (even though they themselves would say there is no hell at all in reality). Scholars, on the other hand, who spend years studying and mulling through this idea, tend to favour either the annihilation view of hell (instant vaporization … no fuss, no muss), or universalism (everybody gets to heaven in the afterlife). Luke watched as both of these theologians agreed that the first model … the one that almost every non-expert (believers and non-believers) accepts as the correct standard model … is clearly wrong, and both gave similar reasons for this rejection. But then the one proceeded to defend the second model while the other defended the third model, and both showed how their opponent was incorrect based on scholarly arguments, the work of previous scholars, and additional “data” (their interpretations of scriptural passages). Ironically, sometimes the same scholarly works and scriptural passages were used to make the completely opposite conclusion! Luke (a scientist) talked to Dr. Bethany Solereder (a theologian) and Scott (the referee?) about how theology works … or sometimes doesn’t work … in the search for “Truth with a capital T.” As always, tell us what you think… Find more about Dr. Bethany Solereder at https://www.theology.ox.ac.uk/people/bethany-sollereder Scott’s recommended video about scientists seriously questioning whether science is also self-deluded in thinking that they have a legitimate handle on “Truth with a capital T” can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xauCQpnbNAM To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

A brief introduction to two forms of theology that are as old as the Bible itself, but have labels that are only a few decades old. One of the biggest problems in Christian theology arises out of the simple belief that God is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful. The problem? … why, then, is there so much evil in the world? This Gordian Knot has killed the faith of many believers, including some of the biggest names in theology and in church ministry. Open Theology and Process Theology seek to solve this problem by challenging the claims that God is all-knowing and all-powerful. They would say that the future is not clear to God, simply because it hasn’t happened yet and all options are on the table (in part because humans have free-will). They would also say that there are things that God cannot do! Not just simply that he can’t create a round square, or a rock too big that even he couldn’t lift; instead, that he can’t stop evil things from happening or intervene in somebody’s circumstances. Most people, especially Evangelicals, would say that this lessens God: God becomes smaller if he isn’t omni-everything. Our guest today would beg to differ. Dr. Thomas Jay Oord has a PhD in Theology, many years experience as a pastor, and now directs a doctoral program at Northwind Theological Seminary and the Center for Open and Relational Theology. He’s also a philosopher, a scholar of multi-disciplinary studies, and author of several books. He first tells his story of coming to realize that his traditional conservative Christian faith had failed him when he came to grapple with some of the bigger questions in life, and shortly thereafter that Open Theology answered those questions. Then he gives us a brief overview of what exactly Open Theology and Process Theology are all about. As always, tell us what you think… Find more about Dr. Oord (Thom) at https://thomasjayoord.com/. Information about the doctoral program that he refers to in the episode can be found at https://www.northwindseminary.org/faculty-bio-pages/single/thomas-j-oord%2C-ph.d To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

An expert gives us his insight into this disturbing, embarrassing … and growing … problem in the 21st century church. Spiritual/clergy abuse has been much in the news as of late. Some of the names that have filled religious and secular news feeds in the past few years include large organizations like the indigenous residential school system in Canada, the Roman Catholic Church, the recent Southern Baptist Convention and Hillsong Church in Australia, as well as individuals such as Jean Vanier, Mark Driscoll, Ravi Zaccharias and Bruxy Cavey. In this episode, we talk to Dan Koch to get an expert’s insight into this problem. Dan has developed a diagnostic tool to help other counsellors screen their clients for past clergy/spiritual abuse, and used that to generate some powerful statistical data and identify some disturbing trends. We also look at how most cases of spiritual abuse produce four parties that have been hurt, each requiring a different response from us. The first two are obvious: the victim, and the abuser. Both need counselling, restoration and restitution, and there may also be legal considerations. The third are often overlooked: the spouse and children of the abuser. Imagine the confusion, sense of betrayal, and embarrassment they feel. And to add insult to injury, they sometimes have to endure shunning from members of the church who should be supporting them. And the fourth group includes the broader community who had previously derived benefit from the ministry of the abuser. They too will experience confusion and a sense of betrayal. But they may also be wrestling with deep questions about what to do with their earlier experiences — before the abuse occurred — with the person who later became the abuser. Do those experiences need to be rejected/forgotten? Are their baptisms, or weddings, salvation experiences, or counselling sessions now invalidated? Will they now need to throw out their copies of any books or music written by that person who later became the abuser? (If your answer to this last question is yes, will you also rip out the book of Psalms from your Bible, given that many of those were written by David … remember his sordid story of essentially raping Bathsheba and then trying to cover that up by orchestrating the murder of her husband Uriah, and then writing Psalm 51). As always, tell us what you think… Find more about Dan Koch at https://www.dankochwords.com/yhp.html. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Our understanding of Hell has been evolving for thousands of years … and we’re the ones making all the changes! Dr. Meghan Henning (Associate Professor of Christian Origins; University of Dayton, OH) gives a scholar’s view on the historical evolution of JudeoChristian thinking about this … “place?” … state? …. concept? For thousands of years,the ancient Hebrew  — people like Abraham and Sarah — thought that everyone who died went to Sheol … a dry, dark, and dismal place that was more like a memory than an existence. They had no concept of a final judgment, no places of reward or punishment. No Heaven, or going to be with God. Sheol could even be experienced while one was still biologically alive! One could choose the way of life or the way of death (by following or rejecting the Law of God), and the outcome of that choice would even affect the quality of one’s life experiences. For the next couple thousand years, the Hebrews began to develop ideas that were emerging in the cultural zeitgeist. Ideas that might have started with the Egyptians, the Zoroastrians, the Assyrians, and Babylonians. Now, the idea of reward and/or punishment in the afterlife was coming into view, although this was more directed at certain groups or categories of people (especially royalty, military leaders, and heroes). The average person couldn’t really expect too much. Then Greek thinking changed everything, including everyone’s understanding of the soul and the afterlife. Both were eternal, and applied to everybody, including commoners. But we’re still a long way off from the Lake of Fire and eternal conscious torment. It was only when the early Christian church flexed its muscles that we see the kind of hell that Dante immortalized in his painting, and that we picture today. Clearly, the concept of “Hell” has evolved … and done so at our hands. Here are three of the best quotes that Meghan gave us: “We have a number of depictions of afterlife spaces in Greek and Roman tradition … Hades is a place that you can visit. You can go on a tour. And that idea of being able to tour Hades has a profound influence on ancient Jewish apocalyptic thought, and on early Christian apocalyptic thought.” “People often ask me: ‘Does Hell exist?’ and the first response that I give is there’s no way to know. That’s just not something we can know because that’s not the question that these texts are asking.” “Be very careful about assuming that human beings can adequately determine a divine system of justice without bringing to it all of our ideas of fairness that are part of our own social contexts. As a group, Christians don’t have a great track record with that. For 2000 years, we have been defining as ‘theologically fair’ Roman systems of torture.” As always, tell us what you think… Find more about Dr. Henning at https://udayton.academia.edu/MeghanHenning. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

A look forward at the ideas and episodes we’ve been working on for this new season. After a four month hiatus, we’ve come back! In this inaugural episode, we briefly re-introduce ourselves to the audience, explain the four month hiatus, talk about our modus operandi, reaffirm the mission or vision of our podcast and our target audience, and give thumbnail sketches of the episodes we’ll start releasing over the next few months, including: the evolution of hell (Meaghan Henning) spiritual abuse, and clergy abuse (Dan Koch) why theology is not like science (Bethany Solereder) Open Theology; Process theology (Thomas Jay Oorde) “The Genealogical Adam” (Joshua Swamidass) getting into, and out of, the vortex of strange beliefs (Kerry W. Noble) the Old Testament slaughter that changed how I read the Bible (Eric Siebert) deconstructing faith in Canada (Peter Schurrman and Angela Bick) Enjoy! To contact Peter and Angela about taking part in their research study (Canadians only), email them at schuurmanandbick@gmail.com To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

A third and final look back at the last 20 episodes: our “Origin and Evolution of …” series. In this final episode of Season 3, we looked back a third time at the “Origin and Evolution of …” series of episodes that we started at the beginning of the year. That series was a deep-dive follow-up to a pair of episodes released a year and a half ago in which Dr. Chris Barrigar unpacked the central hypothesis in his then recently published book … Freedom All the Way Up: God and the Meaning of Life in a Scientific Age. His thesis was that God created the universe with the singular goal or purpose of producing agape-capable beings. In our 20 episode deep-dive, we brought in 17 scholars with PhD degrees in their respective areas of expertise on a spectrum ranging between science and theology/philosophy, the majority of whom call themselves Christians. Judging by our weekly download numbers, our audience (drawn from 31 countries worldwide) seemed to be enjoying the on-going dialogue. They were quite OK with us looking at evolution on many levels  — stellar, planetary, geological, chemical and even biological in general (#63-71) — as reflected in a healthy weekly increase in our download numbers. But there were two particular stages in our 20-episode journey which were a bit too unsettling for some of them. As soon as we began talking about human evolution (#72-78), a very noticeable fraction of our audience ran straight for the exit doors. For them, humans evolving from hominid ancestors that we share with the chimpanzees/gorillas and the Neanderthals/Denisovans, and acquiring a wide range of myth/religion-making cognitive abilities, was just a step too far. We’re guessing these listeners were more on the conservative side of the spectrum of Christian faith. The other very clear drop in our weekly download numbers occurred when we started looking closely at the divinity of Jesus, and Christianity being the one “true myth”, and the Resurrection being the evidence for these audacious claims (#81-85). We’re guessing these listeners were more on the skeptical or even atheistic end of that faith spectrum. We’d be curious to hear your own reflection on the series of episodes. What points or guests stood out for you? What were the positive take-home points? Was anything unsavory for you? We’re also curious about your recommendations for topics, themes and guests as we prepare for Season #4 (tentatively resuming in the Fall). As always, tell us what you think … To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast a

A close look at how this is quite different from mere resuscitation of a dead body, and how it’s the crucial evidence for Christianity being “the true myth.” images by bluegate, congerdesign and Kathysg from Pixabay For millennia, we humans have been making myths: stories of heroes, villains, tests-of-character, conflicts, rescue missions, and more. It’s a distinctly human trait, and the foundation for the many world religions that we’ve constructed. One recurring theme is that of the dying-rising god. In last week’s episode, we looked closely at the claim that “Christianity is the one true myth,” the fulfillment of the deepest yearnings of the human heart, expressed in all those other myths, and distinguished from all of them by a preposterous sign: the resurrection of Jesus. If there’s any truth to that sign, that puts a very powerful spotlight on a very unique story that actually took place on the world-stage, in real-time, in full view for close inspection and rational inquiry! So we had to investigate this claim of the resurrection of Jesus. What kind of evidence is there for it? Are there alternative explanations? Why did so many claim this, even upon the threat of martyrdom, and why do so many believe it today. What are the main skeptical arguments against the claim? A methodical, logical approach says there are only two possible outcomes: it either did not happen, or it did. We started with the first of those two outcomes: why so many people at the scene claimed it happened, when in fact it never did. And we found only two explanations that are popular among skeptics: either those early believers hallucinated it, or they lied about it. And we saw how neither of those explanations are consistent with the historical data at hand. Another possibility would be that they did see a living, breathing Jesus … but there was no resurrection because, in fact, Jesus never died in the first place. Either he recovered from the execution done at the hands of trained and expert executioners, or the living, breathing “Jesus” was in fact an exact twin brother that those early believers and the opponents to their preposterous claim didn’t know about. Once again, neither of those explanations are consistent with the historical data at hand. That leaves only one outcome for us to consider: that Jesus of Nazareth was executed, killed, and … resurrected. As Sherlock Holmes famously said: “When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” One can still choose to reject that claim, but is the underlying reason for doing so more of a philosophical/emotional one than a rational one? Near the end of our discussion, we needed to clarify what we mean by “resurrection.” Is it simply making a dead body start living again? That would sound miraculous at first; a violation of the Laws of Nature. Until one starts to realize that even we humans are already starting to learn how to do that … millions have been brought back to life using CPR, cardio-electric shock, adrenaline infusions, cryopreservation, and more. We’re even starting to use genetics to revive species which went completely extinct a long time ago! But in all those cases, the revived body goes on to grow old, get sick again, and eventually die. This was also what happened to everyone in the Bible who was supposedly brought back to life: Lazarus … Jairus’s daughter … Tabitha/Dorcas … Eutychus … and several others in the Old Testament. Except, some claimed (even at great personal risk), for one other person: Jesus of Nazareth. But their claim wasn’t that Jesus was simply resuscitated. Instead, that he was resurrected. Transformed into something completely different. Into a whole new way of being human. A good analogy for resurrection is the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly, or a tadpole into a frog. If caterpillar’s could speak, they would all shout adamantly that: “Caterpillars just don’t fly! No caterpillar in all of history has ever been able to fly!” And those caterpillars would be right. And yet, so very wrong!? So when skeptics reject the Resurrection on the basis that: “dead bodies don’t just come back to life again … that just doesn’t happen,” they would be mostly right. Usually, that does not happen. And they would be partly wrong: sometimes even we humans can bring people back from the dead, and we’re getting better at it all the time. And … it needs to be said … those skeptics would also be barking up the completely wrong tree: in the case of Jesus, we’re not talking about resuscitation, but about resurrection. I think this topic deserves much more than a casual glance followed by a disgruntled rejection. As always, tell us what you think … To find more about our interview guest Dr. Mike Licona, go to his faculty page and his website. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive