Recovering Evangelicals

“I found my way out of Young Earth Creationism because I tried to prove Young Earth Creationism … and failed.” These are the words of our guest today. But it’s a well-worn confession, made by many before him who walked the same beaten path. Renowned historian Dr. Ronald Numbers identifies a recurring theme in the story of the Young Earth Creationist movement. For over a century, that movement has struggled to identify a champion with solid scientific credentials combined with the empassioned conviction to champion the YECist cause. Over and over again, young men would go to university vowing to get the degree that would qualify them to disprove the theories of evolution and the Big Bang, and defend a six-day Creation and Noah’s Flood. Over and over again, they would come back a few years later, much less sure of their convictions, often questioning the foundation of their Fundamentalist belief system, many even having given up Christian faith entirely. Another one bites the dust. Our guest today fits that pattern completely. As a teen, David MacMillan interacted closely with the “scientists” at Answers-in-Genesis, consulting them about scientific questions he was pursuing, learning how they developed their arguments, publishing a few articles of his own, becoming familiarized with “how the sausage is made” at AiG. Then he went to university to get the scientific degree that would catapult him into the YECist Big League. The end result is predictable … and entirely consistent with that theme that Ron Numbers described. Just the same, David gives a rare insider’s look into the poster child organization that is synonymous with Young Earth Creationism. He sheds valuable light on their motives, strategies, qualifications, and claims. He also tells a great story of finding a new form of Christian faith, one which is far deeper, and textured, and colorful … and convincing … than the veneer of belief he grew up with and gave up. Tell us what you think, and share this with a friend. Ronald Numbers. “The Creationists: from Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design.” Harvard University Press, 2006. If you want to play this episode later on your device, look for Recovering Evangelicals in the iTunes Store, Podbean, Spotify, GooglePodcasts, or GooglePlayMusic. If you want to help grow this pod-cast, please like and share with a friend. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find me on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

When we read a paper1 published a couple years ago by last week’s guest — Dr. Chris Barrigar — we felt his idea was a perfect book-end to our recent discussions about Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design. We’ve often referred to an image of God rolling certain ingredients — thermodynamics; entropy; quantum mechanics; biological evolution — into a cosmic egg and setting that on the stage of the pre-universe … and watched with delight as that exploded into the universe we see now in front of us. Our guest now adds more detail to that image: those ingredients might have also included randomness, probability, order, predictability, determinism, massively large numbers, dynamic complexity, and chaos theory. And in the process, he tells us he’s found the meaning and purpose of the universe itself: it’s been front-end loaded (the cosmic egg above) to create agape-capable beings like ourselves. We’ll warn the listeners in advance though: this could be the most intellectually challenging episode we’ve done so far. We’ll be putting some of the most recent advances in science, philosophy, and theology on the table. We still believe you’ll be able to keep up with the discussion, but you’ll need to stay focused! Let us know what you think, and share this with a friend. Barrigar, C., “God’s Agape/Probability design for the universe.” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 70(3):161-174, 2018. If you want to play this episode later on your device, look for Recovering Evangelicals in the iTunes Store, Podbean, Spotify, GooglePodcasts, or GooglePlayMusic. If you want to help grow this pod-cast, please like and share with a friend. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find me on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

After exploring one end of the spectrum of Creationist beliefs (Young Earth; Intelligent Design), we now move to the other end. This week, we talk to Dr. Chris Barrigar an Anglican pastor from Montreal, Quebec, who’s proposed an idea by which God might have front-loaded the intrinsic properties of the primal cosmic egg in such a way that it would not only explode into the universe we now inhabit, but would inevitably produce “agape-capable beings”. But in setting the stage for his scientific idea, we heard him tell a personal story that was equally worth exploring. He became a Christian in his teen years, when his parents brought home their born-again experience. In university, he pursued a very broad liberal arts degree and a couple career paths before submitting to a call to full-time Christian ministry. But after several years in Bible seminary and time spent in India, he found he had to reject his previous Christian faith. It wasn’t science that did him in: it was encounters with the Christian church itself, and with other world religions and philosophies. His journey took him from Fundamentalist Christianity, to liberal Christianity, to other world religions, and finally even atheism, but none of these seemed to satisfy him. They weren’t “intellectually and emotionally honest”. Yet he still felt there was something more. (Anything you might be able to relate to?) He wondered whether there was something else … something he might have missed the first time around through all those different corners of the theological/philosophical maze. In finding that answer inside the broad Christian tradition, he also discovered the meaning of the universe. Again, as with all of our previous guests, we believe there’s much to learn from his experiences. So we decided to first present his journey through faith and worldview (this week) before hearing about his provocative new idea on Emergent Creationism (next week). If you want to play this episode later on your device, look for Recovering Evangelicals in the iTunes Store, Podbean, Spotify, GooglePodcasts, or GooglePlayMusic. If you want to help grow this pod-cast, please like and share with a friend. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find me on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

Right now, Covid-19 is turning the world up-side-down. Our social systems … education systems … industries … economies … everything has been shut down. Healthcare is straining. And we’re scrambling for answers to how to deal with this thing. Many don’t know that we actually ran into Covid’s brother just less than 20 years ago, and it showed us the Covid family playbook. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome — or SARS — would have done tremendous damage if it didn’t burn itself out so quickly. But Covid-19 is now coming out with the exact same playbook and weaponry. And humanity put that information in a box in the attic and forgot about it! We’ll see that medical scientists found the cave where SARS and its brothers came from … living in fruit bats until they can springboard onto humans … and also learned that they’re evolving there … preparing new disguises and a couple other offensive strategies. And those scientists warned us, two years ago, that SARS Round #2 was getting ready. And now we have Covid-19! We’ll also talk about how humans are helping Covid-19. Through science denial, and rejection of calls from authorities to simply wear face-masks and physically distance, socially isolate, submit to contact-tracing, all in the name of privacy and personal freedoms. We’ll talk about how this naturally leads to the next level of lunacy: conspiracy theories (that Covid-19 is a Franken-bug created in a government lab, or that doctors are using ventilators to kill people) and xenophobia (blaming people of other races, nationalities, or demographic groups). And we’ll look at the faith spin on this. We’ll learn that, contrary to what people of various faiths might want to believe, one large statistical study of 44,000 Covid-related deaths found atheists are least likely to die of Covid! And that this may be a result of people prioritizing religious meetings/practices over government policies and personal safety, or putting too much faith in claiming “promises.” As always, tell us what you think. The conversation is only beginning, and we’re going to start discussing listener’s comments sent to our Facebook and WordPress sites. If you want to play this episode later on your device, look for Recovering Evangelicals in the iTunes Store, Podbean, Spotify, GooglePodcasts, or GooglePlayMusic. If you want to help grow this pod-cast, please like and share with a friend. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find me on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

We all do this: we dismiss verifiable scientific fact because we think we know better, or because we think we’re an outlier case. For some, this looks fairly innocuous. Resorting to medicinal herbs and Gwyneth Paltrow to treat health problems. Thinking that cell phones cause brain cancer … wind turbines cause leukemia … 5G networks cause Covid-19. Believing in the Law of Attraction. For others, it becomes a bit more serious. Seeing gambling as an investment strategy … even as a means to cover large debts … knowing full well that “the house always wins,” but believing that “this time it’ll be different.” Or indulging in unhealthy lifestyles which are known to have negative health consequences, but, again, thinking that we’ll be the exception to the rule. Denying global warming, or the ozone holes at Earth’s poles. The belief that vaccinations cause autism. For yet others, this takes on bizarre dimensions: believing that the earth is flat … or that NASA never put humans on the moon (it was all an elaborate Hollywood stunt). But we Christians put our own unique spin on this deeply human trait. Young Earth Creationism. Denying human evolution, or the genetic basis of homosexuality. And then there’s the well-worn (and quite misunderstood) claim that “Science is always changing, but God’s word remains the same” (we’ll look in detail at that). What’s behind science denial? We’ll look at confirmation bias, pattern recognition, the Dunning-Kruger effect, Ostrich syndrome, intentionally looking for answers where we know they shouldn’t be, and Big Business as driving forces. Why do we do this? To gain control over our lives … peace of mind … simplify our world. Or, in the case of Christians, misunderstand what the Bible is, misinterpret what it says, and unnecessarily exclude other sources of information, insight, and wisdom (science, other Christian traditions, or even other world religions). We’ll also look at how science denial almost inevitably leads to something more serious: conspiracy theories. The belief that medical doctors are agents of government control (again, vaccinations) … that the CIA took down the Twin Towers at 9/11 … that a wide variety of people and governments are the anti-Christ … that there’s a secret society bent on discarding Biblical values. Tell us what you think. If you want to play this episode later on your device, look for Recovering Evangelicals in the iTunes Store, Podbean, Spotify, GooglePodcasts, or GooglePlayMusic. If you want to help grow this pod-cast, please like and share with a friend. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find me on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

Christianity has always existed alongside of science. Some of the greatest Biblical characters were highly educated people (Moses; Daniel; Solomon; Saul of Tarsus). Most of the early Church Fathers were fully schooled in the highest forms of Greek thinking (Irenaeus; Clement; Origen; Augustine). Many leading scientists from the past (Sir Isaac Newton; William Buckland) and the present (Francis Collins; John Lennox; John Polkinghorne) fully embrace their Christian faith. This week, we talk to Dr. Joel Duff, a geneticist, a professor, and an active researcher, who grew up in a Christian home (his father is an Orthodox Presbyterian minister) that always encouraged open inquiry to science. He didn’t sense these two parts of his world to be in conflict. He was fully able to read certain Biblical passages … especially those in Genesis … as metaphor, allegory, and ancient poetry. Instead, it was an encounter with YECism when he was in his twenties that really rocked his theological boat. In fact, his story is a mirror opposite to the one we looked at last week … both were committed believers for more than twenty years, but Paul’s YECist faith was severely challenged by an encounter with science, while Joel’s science-embracing faith was severely challenged by YECism. And the outcome of those encounters are also mirror images: Paul found he had to give up faith because of science, while Joel still found he could harmonize faith with science. In fact, he’s an active blogger who writes on that arena where science and theology overlap: often topics where science denial and Young Earth Creationism run rampant. Once again, we feel there is much to learn from his experience, his example, and his insight. If you want to play this episode later on your device, look for Recovering Evangelicals in the iTunes Store, Podbean, Spotify, GooglePodcasts, or GooglePlayMusic. If you want to help grow this pod-cast, please like and share with a friend. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find me on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

“Throwing out the baby with the bathwater” When modern science conflicts with a Young Earth Creationist worldview, two common responses are either to deny the science (last week’s topic) or reject the faith. This week, we talk to someone who opted for that 2nd coping strategy. But the person we talked to isn’t just another one of the many people who quietly held their faith and then silently drifted away. Paul Enns had been someone who was incredibly active in Christian ministry at all levels, went to Bible College to dig deep into his belief system, memorized most of the New Testament and taught kids to do the same, and devoted most of his waking hours to fully living his Christian faith. And when he made the simple “mistake” of setting out to learn what “those lying scientists” had to say about dinosaurs, he had a road-to-Damascus experience in reverse. He found the scientific evidence for evolution so overwhelming and the YECist counterarguments so flimsy, that he not only rejected his faith, but he became a man-with-a-mission: a YouTube vlogger with almost 200 videos and 46,000 followers. The main target of his new-found ministry is Young Earth Creationism and its leaders. Boyd and I found much to learn from him. Not reasons to give up Christian faith or YECism. Instead, how certain a Christian worldview sets people up for their faith to fail catastrophically. And how the church’s response to the wounded warrior is to let them die and then forget about them. And possibly how a more open attitude to questions and doubts, and a more compassionate response to those who struggle, might lead to a more vibrant faith. We really feel his story is one worth listening to. If you want to play this episode later on your device, look for Recovering Evangelicals in the iTunes Store, Podbean, Spotify, GooglePodcasts, or GooglePlayMusic. If you want to help grow this pod-cast, please like and share with a friend. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find me on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

You may have heard that when an ostrich perceives a threat, it responds by sticking its head in the sand. The implied logic being that it no longer sees the danger, so it no longer feels threatened. “Out of sight, out of mind.” It turns out that this phenomenon isn’t true. It’s a myth! It seems to be our misunderstanding their first response to a distant threat: lay down low with their head and neck stretched out on the ground  — they’re pretty tall birds, so a lower profile might avoid detection. But if that distant threat is foolish enough to make itself an imminent threat, it can quickly find the ostriches opt for plan B: their powerful legs and 4-inch claws can immediately eviscerate the threat. They can even kill a lion!? Nonetheless, that metaphor is in our language. It’s even got a name: “Ostrich Syndrome.” You can look it up in the Urban Dictionary. And defense lawyers have “Ostrich Defense” listed in their playbooks … “my client was completely ignorant of the criminal activities of her associate.” So this is the metaphor we chose for this week’s topic: when certain Young Earth Creationists find modern science contradicts their literal reading of the Bible, especially the book of Genesis, they choose to simply reject the scientific data; which doesn’t make the problem go away, it just means they can hide cozily in their little world. It’s an eye-catching metaphor, and admittedly a provocative one. And what is this podcast series if not provocative? But please know that we don’t mean it in a derogatory way. This week, we wanted to talk to people who feel justified in rejecting science when they think it conflicts with the Bible. But we’re not looking for merely personal opinions here: we want to talk to people who are qualified to judge the scientific data and give strong, scientifically-defensible reasons for why and how they feel they can interpret the data differently than do experts in the field. Using an analogy that came up often in the episode: if we’re a National League baseball team looking for a pitcher, we’re not interested in talking to people who are just arm-chair athletes that have only ever watched baseball on TV … nor are we interested in talking to someone who got as far as college-level tennis. So we scouted around to find anyone who is scientifically qualified (graduate training in science, and works directly in the area of genetics), who holds a Young Earth view, and who is willing to defend that on our podcast. We feel this is a legitimate ask, if we’re going to give a platform to someone who believes Evolution Theory is a failure and needs to be tossed out. The problem is: we were unable to find anyone who fit these criteria. Even after contacting high-profile Young Earth organizations like Answers-in-Genesis and the Creation Research Institute. It seems their advertised promise of “just contact us, we’re happy to talk” is an empty one. Instead, the best we could get from them was “just check out our on-line resources and buy our books.” This is not the way scientists do business. Nor the way that people who sincerely believe they have the truth help honest seekers of the truth. But it is the way that vendors do business. And their business model is a very profitable one: their vast warehouses are busy equipping a vast swathe of the general population to buy into this worldview. Ostriches in training. Again, we’re using that metaphor not to be derogatory, but for the shock value: our motivation is the large numbers of young people who are raised on this anti-science worldview and end up losing their faith because of it. We want holders of this worldview to see that it has no legitimate scientific foundation. And that it brings ridicule to Christianity. And we want them to know that there are valid alternatives for modern Christians: more on that in the next few episodes. Tell us if you think differently. If you want to play this episode later on your device, look for Recovering Evangelicals in the iTunes Store, Podbean, Spotify, GooglePodcasts, or GooglePlayMusic. If you want to help grow this pod-cast, please like and share with a friend. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find me on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

Young Earth Creationism.  “Really?” … you might ask. “Why are we still talking about this?  I mean, how many people still think this way?”  According to polling agencies like Pew and Gallup … “many!” For example, Pew asked two groups of people: “did humans evolve, or have they always existed in their present form?” The first group — 4000 members of a national scientific organization (including professors, high school teachers, engineers, drug sales reps, lab technicians, government officials, lawyers) — largely accepted human evolution. In fact, 98% of them agreed with this. Bear in mind that this group included people of faith (Christian; Muslim; Jewish; Buddhist) as well as atheists. The second group  — 2000 members of the general public  — were less in agreement: only 65% of them accepted evolution. Bear in mind that members of this group may or may not have had scientific training, and may or may not have held a religious belief. When that second group was whittled down to only those who did hold some kind of religious belief, the percentage accepting evolution dropped from 65% down to 52%, and when only the Evangelical Protestants among them were asked, that percentage dropped down even further to only 33%. So, yes, Young Earth Creationism is indeed alive and well today. And pervades 21st century Western society broadly and deeply. In this episode, we explore where that thinking comes from, and how one of their founders claimed that Creation happened on the evening of Oct. 23, 4004 BC, while another one among them “calculated” that it was instead 9:00 am on Sept. 17, 3928 BC. We also look closely at how this thinking sets young people up for a catastrophic failure of their whole belief system when they go to college/university, or enter the workforce. This will set the stage for several follow-up episodes in which we explore three different coping strategies adopted by people when their Young Earth Creationism encounters an alternative scientific explanation for the origin of all things, as told through the eyes and lives of unique individuals. If you want to play this episode later on your device, look for Recovering Evangelicals in the iTunes Store, Podbean, Spotify, GooglePodcasts, or GooglePlayMusic. If you want to help grow this pod-cast, please like and share with a friend. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find me on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page

Are certain cosmological constants “too good to be random or coincidental”? image adapted from Pixabay Apologies to my high school geography teacher. The only thing I seem to remember learning in that class was how to balance pencils on the end of their erasers!? I’d seen street performers turn the art of balancing odd things into an impressive revenue generator … maybe I could make something of it too? I might have taken an entirely different career path if I’d learned how to take that to the next level by turning the pencil around and balancing it on its point, but no one on earth has ever been able to do that. It’s as if earth’s gravity amplifies an imbalance of even a few molecules to instantly topple even the most carefully poised pencil (air currents are not the problem, because astronauts can do it in the space station). Chaos theory and the butterfly effect come into play here: the very smallest initial event gets magnified into an catastrophic system failure. Scientists have learned that many physical constants that dictate the structure and function of our universe seem to be so precisely tuned it’s as if they were like pencils standing on their points. If the ratio of the electromagnetic force and the gravitational force were off by a decimal with thirty two zeroes in front of it, the sun would burn a million times faster … and any life that ever appeared on earth would be immediately vaporized in that intense heat. If the balance between the nuclear and electromagnetic forces holding atomic nuclei together was off by a decimal with dozens of zeroes in front of it, the universe would have either ended up as just one super-gigantic ball of mass like a mega-supersized proton, or as a vastly dispersed cloud of particles that could never form planets or life forms. Those are some pretty finely balanced pencils! And there’s a daunting list of other examples. But is that an argument for design? For a Designer? In this episode, we explore some of the reasons why some answer “yes,” and reasons why some do not. We also look at how some Fine Tuning proponents stretch this idea to absurdity, adding in all kinds of “examples” which … if you think carefully about them … are not examples of the universe being finely-tuned for life, but instead are examples of how life-as-we-know-it is so finely-tuned for this universe. It’s an important distinction. Tell us what you think in the comment box below … If you want to play this or other episodes later on your device, look for Recovering Evangelicals in the iTunes Store, Podbean, Spotify, GooglePodcasts, or GooglePlayMusic. If you want to help grow this pod-cast, please like and share with a friend. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find me on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page