My Faith Shouldn’t Be Alive (But It Is, and Here’s Why)
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Today's entry was written by Rachel Held Evans. Rachel Held Evans is a self-described "writer, skeptic, and Christ-follower" from Dayton, Tennessee—home of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. Her first book is a spiritual memoir entitled Evolving in Monkey Town. She enjoys speaking, blogging, traveling, playing poker, and talking theology over coffee.
There’s a great little show on the Discovery Channel that never fails to undo my best laid plans for Saturday afternoons. It’s called “I Shouldn’t Be Alive.” When the title alone isn’t enough to draw me in, it’s only a matter of time before the survivor of a plane crash (or rock slide or shark attack or hiking misadventure) begins recounting in excruciating detail his decision to cut off his own arm with a pocket knife (or eat his dog or drink his urine), rendering me completely useless on the living room couch until I’ve seen that the rescue helicopters have arrived.
We all love survival stories, which is perhaps why I like to compare my own faith journey to one--though with considerably less blood and suspense.
You see, my faith shouldn’t be alive. By all accounts, it should have perished the moment I started asking questions about faith and science. All my life I’d been taught that I had to choose—between believing the Bible and believing my science book, between honoring God and embracing evolution. To accept one was to effectively kill the other, I learned. They couldn’t both survive. They were incompatible.
And yet here I am—a girl who loves Jesus and accepts evolution, alive to tell the tale.
Survival stories usually begin in a dramatic setting, and mine is no different. For most of my life I’ve lived in Dayton, Tennessee, home of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. Located in the buckle of the Bible Belt, Dayton is not the most convenient place to question a literal interpretation of Genesis. Most people here believe that evolution is part of an anti-Christian worldview, and the wounds from getting called “yokels” and “ignorants” by the press during the trial are still being nursed today.
I attended a small Christian college in town named after William Jennings Bryan, where one of the most popular professors at the time was a leading young earth creationist. This professor often told the story of how, as a sophomore in high school, he had dreams of becoming a scientist, but could not reconcile the theory of evolution with the creation account found in the Bible. So one night, he took a pair of scissors and a newly-purchased Bible and began cutting out every verse he believed would have to be removed to believe in evolution. By the time he was finished, he said he couldn’t even lift the Bible without it falling apart. That was when he decided, “Either Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or evolution was true and I must toss out the Bible.”
Having operated within this paradigm for so much of my life, I experienced a major crisis of faith when I encountered the overwhelming scientific evidence in support of evolutionary theory soon after graduating from college.
On the one hand, I felt betrayed. Pastors and teachers had assured me that science supported a 6,000-year-old earth and that only atheists with an agenda against Christianity believed it was older. And yet everything from the fossil record to biodiversity to starlight to DNA seemed to confirm evolutionary theory as sound, with the overwhelming majority scientists affirming it.
On the other hand, I was afraid to accept undeniable truth I’d encountered. I didn’t want to walk away from my faith. I didn’t want to throw out the Bible. I didn’t want to reject God. But everything I’d been told up to that point led me to believe I had to choose. Doubt is difficult to describe to those who have never experienced it. What’s most frightening about it is how one question leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to another, creating a sort of domino effect out of your skepticism and fear. I lay awake for hours at night, struggling with this conflict between my intellectual integrity and my faith. I begged God to “help me in my unbelief,” but His presence seemed to drift farther and farther away with every seemingly irreconcilable conflict between reason and faith.
I thought for sure my faith was a goner.
The first rescue helicopter came in the form of Francis Collins’ “The Language of God.” A friend recommended it, and it was the first time I’d ever read the work of a scientist so passionately committed to both his Christian faith and accepted science. The fact that it was even possible to be a Christian and believe in evolution gave me hope.
In the third chapter, Collins includes a quote from St. Augustine, who—centuries before Darwin made his landmark observations—warned Christians against interpreting the first two chapters of Genesis too strictly. Said Augustine, “In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.”1
That was when I realized that my hyper-literalist interpretation of Genesis 1-2 was going down, and it was taking my faith with it.
I couldn’t let that happen.
So like a survivor cutting off his arm to escape from beneath a boulder, I severed my fundamentalist approach to Scripture. (Okay, so it wasn’t really that dramatic. Let’s just say I spent some time on the BioLogos site, ordered “The Lost World of Genesis One” by John Walton, and managed to survive the faith crisis with my love for God and for the Bible intact.)
So why tell my story?
Because I wasn’t alone out there in the wilderness of doubt, and not everyone’s faith survived. I have friends who walked away from their Christian faith right when their gifts and talents could have served it best. They walked away because they thought being a Christian demanded willful ignorance and fear of truth. They walked away because they felt betrayed by their pastors, parents, and professors. They walked away because they believed the lie that they had to choose.
And that makes me angry sometimes.
It seems like for every survival story, there is a story of loss…which is why I believe the BioLogos Foundation is so important. We’ve got to work together to reverse this trend. We’ve got to send out more rescue helicopters to young people around the country who are desperately holding on to what remains of their faith. These are unnecessary casualties of an unnecessary war, and the simple knowledge that faith and science can coexist can be enough to bring a lost soul back from the brink.
My faith shouldn’t be alive.
But it is, and not a day goes by that I am not grateful for the gift of a second chance.
Rachel's book Evolving in Monkey Town
July 4th 2010
Martin, you are once again offering an apologetic for the lack of God’s measurable presence. This is not the same thing as demonstrating that God does indeed act in the world. But I’d just as soon let this go. It seems that your response to anything I say is a little sermon, but you may notice that I am not debating your theology.
My original challenge involved the observation that faith is attached to a variety of content. You keep explaining that while that may be true, your faith is actually the real truth. Your explain away the lack of objective proof for your claims by reference to free will. Not only is this not a persuasive argument, it is also the argument offered for many of the other non-demonstrable belief systems (which servers to underscore my point). I think after so may recapitulations that I understand your faith claims. So if possible, I am interested in an actual response to my point.
Reply to this commentJuly 5th 2010
Greg, I have answered your point, although you fail to recognize it as the type of answer you are seeking; but I am not willing to play by your ‘rules’ as to what constitutes “objective proof.” If you want ‘reasons to believe,’ pick up a good book on Christian evidences which outlines the evidence for Christ’s resurrection and the many OT prophecies for that were fulfilled in the life of Christ. Read Isaiah 53 and examine the passion narratives in that light. Best of all, read the gospels themselves. Let the words of Jesus penetrate your heart and speak to your soul. But know this—that unless there is within you a willingness to DO the will of God, to ABANDON your intellectual and moral autonomy and self-sufficiency by bowing to a wisdom superior to your own wisdom, you wil remain blind to the compelling force of the evidences you read. You see, God not only gives us proof of His existence; by pentetrating our hearts with His word, convicting us of sin, opening our spiritual eyes to see the beauty of Christ, He strips us of the very ‘criteria of proof’ that we had previously set up for Him to meet. He changes our whole way of thinking, not merely a few thoughts here and there.
Reply to this commentJuly 5th 2010
I’m convinced at this point Greg either doesn’t read my links or merely skims them for possible quote mining. Because nothing in his response even remotely has anything to do with the price of tea in China.
Martin Rizley you may want to read them because I think you would profit from them greatly.
Reply to this commentJuly 5th 2010
“There have been largely two types of critics of the `New Atheism.’ One type grants the empiricism of the atheists and then tries to show that belief in God is consistent with it. This approach gives away the store by removing God from the realm of the knowable. The second also grants the atheists’ empiricism, but argues that it leads to the detection of design[i.e. Paley’s false version] in the universe and thus the existence of God. This approach gives away the store as well, by limiting knowledge to the empirically detectable. Professor Feser offers us a third approach, one that is far more effective in defeating the New Atheism. He provides persuasive arguments that show that God is knowable and that what is knowable is larger than the set of that which is empirically detectable. This is a tour de force that should be in the library of every thinking citizen, believer or unbeliever.”—Francis J. Beckwith, Professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies, Baylor University review of Edward Feser’s book THE LAST SUPERSTITION
Reply to this commentJuly 6th 2010
>In your analogy, you’ve picked two non-overlapping magisteria.
I reply: Only if we confuse theology with philosophy & metaphysics with the supernatural. Classic New Atheist mistake. Thus they are not “non-overlapping magisteria.” that idea still presupposes Scientism which is still false or at best trivially true as shown by Feser’s solid logical argument.
Reply to this commentPlus one needs to know the difference between Philosophical Mechanism in modern science vs Final Causality in the philosophy of Aristotle and know that Aristotle’s metaphysics are in fact true and mere common sense.
July 6th 2010
Martin, I am quite familiar both with the Bible and apologetic literature, and I have had quite a robust faith, spanning decades. I’m sure in the past I’ve said or written words very close to yours.
I am not playing games with you, quite the contrary - the lack of God’s effective activity in the world is both the subject of many stories in the Bible, and significant devotional literature. Mother Teresa’s letters reveal that for over 50 years, she did not feel the presence of God. These days, we have even more problems, in that many of the stories we assumed were historical have been shown to be at best myths. I think faith matters, community matters, our choices matter. So the content of religious belief - what we believe and how and why we believe it is very important indeed. But the matter is not settled by your repeated calls to agree with you.
But that’s OK - you’ve made it clear that you don’t want to talk about it.
Reply to this commentJuly 6th 2010
Ben - You sound very frustrated. I’ll just focus on one simple point. If we can’t manage to have a volley on the narrow issue below, I’ll be happy for you to give up on me!
Your analogy of the microscope and telescope stated that, when looking for a galaxy, you could not see it through a microscope. This certainly sounds like non-overlapping magisteria to me.
If we agree that they are not overlapping, then you would expect the observations in one arena to have an impact on the other. And this is just what we find. When we look through the telescope and see galaxies, we reach certain conclusions that we can then verify with our microscope - for example, in the makeup of a comet we have the opportunity to examine.
This is my point about science - not that I think we can run an experiment and prove God - I’ve never said anything remotely like that - but that we could expect things we believe about God’s interactions in the world to have impacts in this physical world. This is not scientism, nor is it a misuse of science, or a denial of the existence of metaphysics.
We do not see any evidence of the kind of things that metaphysics claims about God’s interactions with the world. Seems like we ought to.
Reply to this commentJuly 6th 2010
Ben, “If we agree that they are not overlapping” above should have been “If we agree that they do overlap”
Reply to this commentJuly 7th 2010
NOMA was a concept invented by Stephen Jay Gould that “science and religion do not glower at each other” also “the magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and why does it work in this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty).“END QUOTE from the wiki
Thus NOMA clearly refers solely to religion[i.e at least Gould’s limited generic understanding of religion]and not philosophy which is broader than religion even if it has religious implications. Plus NOMA is an non-developed philosophical concept about the relation between empirical science & religion invented by a non-philosopher(i.e. Gould). It is not a concept that has ever been defended by philosophical argument in any peer reviewed philosophical journal. It is clearly a practical policy of “live & let live” and it has nothing to do with the philosophical criticism of Scientism or philosophy in general.
Reply to this commentJuly 7th 2010
Also an obvious problem with Gould’s NOMA concept is, if you insist on applying it to philosophy is when we ask the question “Why doesn’t NOMA extend to other branches of science outside of empirical sciences? So there is a “Non-overlapping magisteria” between empirical science and theoretical physics? Psychology? history? Mathimatics? Philosophy of Science? That makes no sense. Also if you had read Feser’s articles you would see that philosophy like all rational inquiery is in itself a science.
Reply to this commentJuly 7th 2010
>“If we agree that they do overlap”
I reply: I’m afraid I can no more agree to Gould’s amateur philosophy then you would agree to an armature theory on genetics put forth by Profesor Feser who has no such formal training.
Nice try, but you haven’t even begun to address the problem with Scientism & the philosophical problems with Naturalism and or reductionist materialism. Your just dodging the issue & not very convincingly. Like I said you are confusing philosophy with religion.
Now you are trying to find a galaxy with a metal detector.
>This is my point about science - not that I think we can run an experiment and prove God - I’ve never said anything remotely like that
I reply: No your point is “If God really existed we should be able to run an empirical experiment & prove He exist which like I have been trying to explain is like trying to find Andromeda under your microscope”. You are dodging the argument.
Reply to this commentJuly 7th 2010
>And this is just what we find. When we look through the telescope and see galaxies, we reach certain conclusions that we can then verify with our microscope - for example, in the makeup of a comet we have the opportunity to examine.
I reply: Yes & pursuant to my analogy if we can have true knowlege about the world threw Philosophy of Science and we have Philosophy of Religion then logically we can examine & compare science & religion via Philosophy which as Feser has shown(& he quotes secular philosophers too this effect) is itself a science that gives us real knowledge about the world and reality.
>I’ll be happy for you to give up on me!
I reply: That you choose to be an Atheist is your affair but a least be an informed Atheist. So far all I’ve seen from you are arguments that are mere boilerplate for one particular brand of fundamentalism & not historic Christianity.
Reply to this commentJuly 7th 2010
With that I grant you the last word Greg Myers & I will resist the temptation to correct any further mistakes in your arguments. I wish you well.
Reply to this commentJuly 8th 2010
Ben, you’ve come so close - but you still won’t just respond to the point.
I never said anything about using science to disprove God. It seems you keep dodging around this point. Is God the Unmoved First Mover? I don’t know - and science cannot tell us. Does any physical process in the world need God to be the Unmoved Mover? No, not so far as we can tell. But I agree, that does not mean that God is not the Unmoved Mover - just that we can’t know, and it does not seem to matter.
However, when we look at the claims of religion in regards to what the world is actually like, the fruits of metaphysics is not confirmed - quite the contrary. You may be right that the philosophy of science and the philosophy of metaphysics can be made to agree (at least to some people) - but again, this may come down to the meaning of words more than the nature of reality.
BTW, I’d like to hear what you have to say about the fact that metaphysics and revelation is not confirmed by science. But if you only wish to insult me some more and repeat yourself, I’ll pass, and graciously accept the last word.
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