The lowest common denominator

Part of me is amused, and part of me is distressed at this video. On the one hand I'm not surprised that good 'ol Kirk "Mike Seaver" Cameron is making this video, but I'm saddened by the realization that this argument is actually accepted by a disturbingly large number of people.

It explains why Wolf Blitzer, an otherwise reputable journalist, would waste everyone's time asking Republican presidential candidates if they believed in evolution during a debate last year.

I'm also somewhat amused by this video in response to Kirk. If you can set aside your offense at the plethora of 4-letter words, this woman has some substantive points, particularly when she mentions how Darwin has nothing to do with the big-bang theory.

Ultimately I'm left not really knowing what to think. On the one hand, I don't encounter these issues on a day to day basis, because even the most conservative people in my congregation don't think that science and faith are mutually exclusive (something for which I'm very grateful).

On the other, clearly there is a substantive enough portion of the population with whom this issue still has traction. If it didn't, the Christian-media-industrial-complex wouldn't waste any energy on it because it wouldn't make them any money. And those guys are nothing if not good capitalists.

I hope that the silent majority of rational individuals out there will see the forces using Kirk Cameron as their spokes-puppet for what they are: people who want to scare you into accepting their ideology without questioning. The issue for these people isn't about faith in God or even the authority of the Bible, really. It's about the authority of their interpretation of the Bible. In other words, the authority of them. And that's scary.

I'd like to address one thing Kirk says in the video. He claims that atheism has doubled over the last twenty years. I have no idea if that's true or if he even has any research to back that claim (I suspect he doesn't). But one has to wonder, if atheism (which is not the same thing as non-participation in church) really is on the rise, is Charles Darwin really the culprit?

I say no. Christians have only ourselves to blame for our steadily declining influence in the world. People look at us and perceive us a judgmental, hateful, out of touch with reality, and too obsessed with our own wonderfulness to really care about what real people are going through. And those outside of the church who actually pick up a Bible and read about Jesus only have those suspicions confirmed when they see the horrendous gap between the teachings of Jesus and the practices of those who claim his name.

We can create straw-men out of Charles Darwin and attack them all we like, but our problems are our own fault.

That being said, I hope you'll listen to what Kirk Cameron's puppet masters have to say. I also hope you'll read Charles Darwin for who he is and what he has to say: not as a Nazi or a racist, but as a guy who looked at the world and began to wonder if things aren't more beautifully complex and diverse than we'd previously thought. Darwin is a guy not unlike Copernicus or Galileo before him: someone who dreamed big and was persecuted by the religious authorities of their day, only to see succeeding generations repent of their ancestors' stupidity.

PS- if you're interested in issues of science and the Bible, check out Dr. James McGrath's blog, Exploring our Matrix. He's a first rate biblical scholar who poses challenging questions to all corners of institutional Christianity. You should also check out this great article on Kirk's latest quixotic venture by UCC pastor Chuck Currie.

Discuss!

Thoughts on Lincoln/Darwin Day

Today is the 200th anniversary of the births of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. Call it a nod to the infinite nature of the universe actualizing the one in a million chance that two significant historical figures are born on the same day (OK, "Dumb and Dumber" fans, say it with me: "So you're saying there's a chance!"), call it the result of some cosmic alignment that will result in tons of births nine months from now, call it whatever you like, but these are two significant figures who deserve some consideration.

What strikes me about both Darwin and Lincoln is how they have become such transcendent figures in the years following their deaths that the actual persons get lost in our rush to define their legends. Both men are claimed as icons by those advocating all kinds of different causes, so much so that they have practically become blank screens upon which we project our hopes, fears, ideals, biases, etc.

Charles Darwin has become a superstar from people like Richard Dawkins with agendas that could legitimately be described as "evangelically atheist". Darwin has also become a convenient straw man for those who wish to use him as a via negativa argument for their notions of biblical innerrancy. 

The truth, of course, is somewhere in between. Darwin believed in God, was a member of the Church of England, and is buried in Westminster Abbey; but he did not have any major commitments to the theological controversies of his day, so how much less would he care about the theological controversies of our day where his name so frequently comes up?

Abraham Lincoln is rightly viewed as the "great emancipator", but the fact that he enacted policies that were highly progressive for his day does not necessarily mean that he would support policies that those of us who consider ourselves progressive advocate today. We can't simply say "Lincoln would have agreed on (policy X)" as a factual proof when it's just conjecture. Perhaps it's because of Lincoln's hagiographic portrayal as the paragon of progressive virtue that some scholars have began to push back and show us the "real

Lincoln. Some of these scholars have described him as a "partisan hack" and a "white supremacist", the latter due to the fact that he advocated for the federal government paying to relocate emancipated slaves to a colony in the Caribbean where they could build their own nation. 

The truth is that while Lincoln was certainly progressive for his day, he had to have been relatively centrist or he couldn't have been elected President. His notions about the fundamental superiority of one race over another were hardly uncommon in his day, and they didn't prevent him from seeing African-Americans as human beings and realizing that slavery was a moral wrong.

The debates over the legacies and legends of men like Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln show us lots of things about who we are as a society. One of the important lessons we learn from these debates is that we have to be very careful not to judge people who lived in the mid-nineteenth century by early twenty-first century standards. These men were formed by the times in which they lived, with all their vices and virtues. The fact that each of them in their own way helped to shape the course of history, thus helping define the times we live in, does not obscure the fact that Darwin and Lincoln were men of their time. 

Future generations will no doubt judge us to have been correct about certain things, and unbelievably wrong about others. If we hope to be given a fair hearing by history, then we should set the example and do the same for our own historical giants.

Update: On "The Colbert Report" tonight, Stephen interviewed a scholar who has written a book comparing Lincoln and Darwin as historical figures. I'll catch the replay later and link to the book. It sounded like an interesting read.