Am I the Enemy?

A while back, I mentioned that I’d stumbled across an outline (pdf format) from a presentation by geologist Keith Miller, over at the Kansas Citizens for Science website. I wrote about his interesting observation that intelligent design essentially reduces God to a testable hypothesis

He also has a quote from Phillip Johnson that’s worth pointing out and discussing. Good old Phil is a UC Berkley lawyer and often referred to as the father of the intelligent design movement. Perhaps one of his most famous books is Darwin on Trial, where he, lawyer Johnson, grills Darwin on a witness stand, and shows evolution is a worthless theory.

Keith’s outline contains this jewel of a Phillip Johnson quote about people like me, Christians who would dare choose science as an enterprise.

You often find the greatest enemies of Christ in the church, even in high positions. There is a kind of person who may be sincere in a way, but is doubleminded - who goes into the church in order to save it from itself, by bringing it into concert with evolutionary naturalism, for example. These are dangerous people - they are more dangerous than an outside atheist like Richard Dawkins, who at least flies his own flag. So I am not impressed that somebody says that he is a Christian of a traditional sort and believes that evolution is our creator. This is, at the very least, a person whose mind is going in two directions. Such people often do a great deal of damage within the church.

Before I go into a discussion of Phil’s beautiful way of dealing with dissenting fellow believers, I want to point out what happens when the shoe’s on the other foot and he gets criticism from Christians of the young earth type…

When I’m reported as agreeing that the earth is 4.6 billion years old or whatever, I always correct that. We say, ‘No, I don’t take a position on that. That’s a separate issue and we should not discuss that now. It’s not an issue that’s ripe to be discussed. We should discuss that only after we’ve made the breakthrough on the Darwinian mechanism.’ And then, to my young-earth friends I say, ‘We can have a real good discussion or argument if you please on this subject. And we’ll have it in a much better frame of mind for having had the experience of working together on the initial breakthrough. And of course then the world will look different because if the scientific leadership has been that wrong about the creation mechanism, it’s possible that they could be wrong about something else too.’ [source]

First of all, I find Johnson’s stance on the age of the earth to be spineless… Come on, does he have an opinion or not? It seems practically impossible for a thinking person to not have an opinion, one way or the other. And that opinion will necessarily mean that some people don’t like what you think. If you come out in a favor of an old earth, and align yourself with every field of science that studies the subject, those Christians who think the age of the earth is of great importance for the kingdom of God will come out against you. They’ll even say some bad things about you…

If, on the other hand you say “the earth is young, you can’t read the bible any other way”, you’ll have more than a few Christians in disagreement with you, not to mention 99.99% of those that study the subject with the tools of science. The bright side is that the young earthers will be quite happy you’ve joined their camp.

Johnson’s solution to this? “No, I don’t take a position on that.” How convenient. I’m sure if Christians and scientists never took a position on anything, we’d solve a lot of conflict. On the other hand, I’m not sure how much work we’d get done.

But here’s the funny thing. Johnson’s second quote is in response to Christians doing to him, what he’s doing to other Christians… Young earth creationist types are bringing scorn upon Johnson for not holding positions they feel are of tantamount importance. In fact, there are quite a few young earth creationists that dislike intelligent design because in their view, it’s too compromising to science. Johnson says (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Hey, let’s focus on the things we agree on. Surely we all hate evolution right? When the evilutionists are defeated, we can have a grand old time talking about the age of the earth.”

So Johnson views evolution as an apostasy. But let’s not forget that different religious groups have problems with more than just evolution. In fact, let’s dream up an imaginary young earth creationist (we’ll call him Henry), and let’s rewrite that first quote of Johnson’s, as Henry might have said it.

You often find the greatest enemies of Christ in the church, even in high positions. There is a kind of person who may be sincere in a way, but is doubleminded - who goes into the church in order to save it from itself, by bringing it into concert with geology and heliocentrism, for example. These are dangerous people - they are more dangerous than an outside force like Satan, who at least flies his own flag. So I am not impressed that somebody says that he is a Christian of a traditional sort and believes that geology creates rocks. This is, at the very least, a person whose mind is going in two directions. Such people often do a great deal of damage within the church.

Johnson’s arguments are really no different than this. They’re just aimed at another area of science he finds more objectionable. Now there are a whole lot Christians that would never dare withhold fellowship from a person because he thinks the earth is old or that the earth revolves around the sun, instead of the other way around. Yet Johnson is advocating just this. He’s taking a person that may be sincere in every regard, a person who comes to the church seeking the fellowship of believers, for the common purpose of worshiping and glorifying God, and saying they don’t belong in the church. In fact, he even goes the step further of saying he prefers atheists over us.

This kind of hate is not the way of the church. I don’t go to church because everybody agrees with me on every issue. No such church exists. I can fellowship just fine with a person who doesn’t believe evolution happens. Similarily, I do not ask whether a person agrees with scientists understanding of gravity, geology, or our solar system’s arrangement before deciding whether they are worthy of my church or indeed any church.

I certainly believe there are healthy ways to understand science within the context of the church and that there are unhealthy ways to understand science. I make no apologies or feel no regret for discussing the issue when the opportunity comes up. (Obviously we all have a few apologies to make if we force an issue in a spirit of divisiveness.) Just like we need Godly businessmen in the church that won’t put the almighty dollar in place of the Almighty, just like we need Godly parents that love their children, so too we need Godly scientists who look at the world around them with joy and humility. Frankly, what we don’t need are lawyers like Phillip Johnson telling us that people like me are “going in two directions” and that we’re “dangerous.”