09AR14-30

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AR 14:30 - Christian Scholar's Review on Evolutionary Creationism

In this issue:

AMERICAN RELIGION - the ever-growing influence of Latino faith

ETHICS - atheist book persuasively defends "Morality Without God"

ORIGINS - why "Christians should have no hesitation in accepting evolution"

+ Evangelical Quarterly review roasts the Hugh Ross book, Who Was Adam?

Apologia Report 14:30

August 6, 2009

AMERICAN RELIGION

"Separated Brothers" (no byline) -- "Some 68% of Hispanics in America are still Catholic, according to the Pew Research Centre ... and their absolute number, thanks to immigration and higher birth rates, continues to increase. But about 15% are now born-again evangelicals, who are fast gaining 'market share,' as Gaston Espinosa, a professor of religion at Claremont McKenna College, puts it. He estimates that about 3.9m Latino Catholics have converted, and that 'for every one who comes back to the Catholic church, four leave it.'

"The main reason, he thinks, is ethnic identity. Evangelical services are not only in Spanish, as many Catholic sermons are nowadays, but are performed by Latinos rather than Irish or Polish-American priests, with the cadences, rhythms, innuendos and flow familiar from the mother country.

"... Latino evangelicals as a political force are distinct from white evangelicals. Many of the whites have veered hard right, hating abortion and gay marriage and reliably voting Republican, though less so very recently. Latinos tend to be even more pro-life and traditional marriage than whites.... [P]ragmatism makes them believe in government services and the taxes that pay for them, and of course in immigrant rights. As voters ... Latino evangelicals are therefore the quintessential independents, up for grabs by either party.

"But it may be American Catholicism that changes the most. About a third of American Catholics are Latino now, and their share is growing. Their influence is not only physical and linguistic, with more of them turning up at church. They are also different Catholics, with more than half describing themselves as 'charismatics', according to the Pew report. ...

"Latino charismatics see themselves as a renewal movement within Catholicism, as it converges with other churches. And in general all churchgoing Latinos tend to see themselves as renewing Christianity in America. That makes them a powerful force as demographic changes turn America ever more Hispanic, and increasingly different from secular Europe." Economist, Jul 18 '09, p31.

ETHICS

Morality Without God? by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong [1] -- reviewer Ray Olson reports that Sinnott-Armstrong, a Dartmouth professor in philosophy and legal studies, "was once an Evangelical Christian subscriber to biblical inerrancy, and it is to his former fellow believers that he explicitly addresses his argument that belief in God is unnecessary - indeed, invidious - to morality. In common language and with common sense, he disputes evangelicals' contentions that atheists can have no moral sense, that morality must degenerate in secular societies, and that morality doesn't matter to atheists and secularists. [The previous points fail to acknowledge Christian apologetics approaches which agree that moral standards exist even within atheism. The point of contention in this area is more often about the source of said moral standards rather than their reality. - RV] Morality, he holds, depends on concepts of harm; that which harms oneself or others is wrong. Harm-based morality surpasses morality based on divine commands, for as the Bible demonstrates, God changes his mind, contradicts himself, and plays favorites so much that obeying his commands often harms others. Furthermore, the threat of damnation is iffy enough, given God's capriciousness, to be less deterrent of evil than are despising harm and striving not to inflict it. Intending to increase cooperation among believers and atheists, Sinnott-Armstrong chastises both for insulting one another and asks those in both camps to defend their opposite numbers from religiously, or irreligiously, motivated attacks. Invaluable popular philosophy." Booklist, Jul '09, p11. [5]

The similarly brief review in Publishers Weekly reads: "With a conversational and commonsensical tone, Sinnott-Armstrong defends nonbelief from accusations of immorality, both at the individual and the societal level by considering surveys and statistics on homicide, discrimination and charity, among other categories. He establishes a moral framework rooted in avoiding harm-opposed to a theistic morality whereby questions of right and wrong are decided by God's 'divine command,' a moral account he derides for its inability to provide an 'independent moral standard.' In his call for sincere dialogue with theists, Sinnott-Armstrong provides a welcome relief from the apoplectic excesses of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, while also addressing objections to homosexuality and evolution frequently raised by evangelical Christians. Nonetheless, the oft-stated modesty of his aim to show merely that atheists and agnostics can be moral, coupled with a loose and ill-defined notion of harm, leaves the reader with an account of morality that coheres with the universal disapprobation of such horrors as murder and rape, but provides little demonstration of its applicability to the grayer areas of moral conundrums." Publishers Weekly, Jul '09, n.p. [8]

Sinnott-Armstrong and Christian scholar William Lane Craig collaborated to publish the book, God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist. [2]

ORIGINS

Evolutionary Creationism, by Denis O. Lamoureux [3] -- the title phrase is the expression that Lamoureux prefers over the more common label, "theistic evolution," explains reviewer Robert A. Larmer. Lamoureux's "goal in this book is to demonstrate that Christians in general and conservative Christians in particular should have no hesitation in accepting evolution as a potentially complete scientific account of the origin and development of biological life." Larmer finds the book quite persuasive, though he has significant criticisms.

"One of Lamoureux's central themes - perhaps the central theme - is that it is a mistake to interpret Genesis 1-11 as revealing scientific and historical truth concerning origins and human history." Lamoureux refers to this position as "scientific and historical concordism." However, Larmer objects to Lamoureux's "unquestioned assumption that the only reason Christians question evolution is their commitment to a hermeneutically naive scientific and historical concordism in interpreting the early chapters of Genesis. ... This assumption is unfortunate for several reasons.

"It ignores the fact that not all Christians question evolution on the basis of a scientific and historical concordist reading of Genesis 1-11. ... It also has the unfortunate tendency to focus discussion on psychological motives rather than actual arguments. ... Further, demonstrating the inadequacies of a rival position does not confirm one's own position automatically.

"... Lamoureux is far too dismissive of gap arguments." He depends on "familiar but naive charges. If the progress of science can conceivably close gaps, then it can conceivably emphasize their existence. Thus, for example, our increased knowledge has made it harder, not easier, to account for the origin of life purely in terms of the operation of natural causes. It is simply not the case that the gaps in our understanding of biological or cosmic origins 'have always been closed or filled by the growing body of scientific knowledge. Neither is it the case that taking seriously the claim that gaps in attempted naturalistic accounts of the origin and development of life are due to God's interventive activity would destroy science. ... Also unfortunate in this context is Lamoureux's suggestion that a world in which God intervenes in the process of life's origin and development is somehow deficient. Such a suggestion seems analogous to suggesting that an aquarium is deficient if it cannot generate fish." Christian Scholar's Review, 38:4 - 2009, pp485-488. [6]

Note: Apparently the book's title has been changed to Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution. (An amazon.com search for "Evolutionary Creationism" results in three different books, but none by Lamoureux.)

Who Was Adam?: A Creation Model Approach to the Origin of Man, by Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross [4] -- John Wilks expresses complete disappointment in his review. Early on he explains that "Rana and Ross advocate a model of origins that attempts to mould together Genesis (and other biblical texts) together with scientific findings. By focusing on human origins (rather than cosmological origins) they side-step the questions of issues such as the length of a day in a literally interpreted chapter 1 of data from Genesis....

"My key issue ... lies with the difference between science and pseudo-science. The authors, and the 'Reasons to Believe' group they are part of [www.reasons.org], are keen to establish a way in which the creation (rather than evolution) of humanity could be demonstrated on a scientific basis. This is a laudable aim. Unfortunately, what they have produced is pseudo-science.

"Pseudo-science presents a test or experiment that is couched in scientific terms but which ultimately could not be tested by any sort of scientific test. ...

"Their hermeneutics of scripture and of science leaves much to be desired, and they leave me frustrated and disappointed. When they claimed that human development was timed to coincide with the period of the greatest number of solar eclipses in order that scientific development in the West would occur, I despaired. This book cannot be recommended at all." Evangelical Quarterly, 54:2 - 2009, pp188-189. [7]

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Sources, Monographs:

1 - Morality Without God? by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Oxford Univ Prs, 2009, hardcover, 192 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/lqhkcl>

2 - God?: A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist, by William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Oxford Univ Prs, 2004, paperback, 176 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/mukhz2>

3 - Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution, by Denis O. Lamoureux (Wipf & Stock, 2008, paperback, 493 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/l494tz>

4 - Who Was Adam?: A Creation Model Approach to the Origin of Man by Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross (NavPress, 2005, hardcover, 299 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/lcvmm9>

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