By DARREL FALK - BIOLOGOS
Updated: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:34:00 UTC

Original link
Dear Dr Falk
Certainly, I am happy to suggest that our website people might post your article, and I am copying this letter to them to call it to their attention. But I didn't misunderstand Daniel Harrell's essay. It never for a moment occurred to me that he, or Biologos, could possibly be supporters of Option #1. Of course I understood that he was advocating the marginally less fatuous Option #2. It was Option #2 that I was referring to as 'ridiculous', because it is an attempt to reconcile science with the book of Genesis. Why on Earth would anyone want to reconcile science with Genesis, given that there is no historical reason to suppose that the author of Genesis, a scientifically illiterate scribe writing probably as recently as the 8th century BC, had any knowledge or authority to pronounce on the subject of human origins? I still earnestly hope – and believe – that Francis Collins would disown the article, or at least feel embarrassed by it. If he would not, he is unfit to hold high office in the scientific establishment of the United States.
Yours sincerely
Richard Dawkins

Darrel Falk,
President, The BioLogos Foundation

"Science and the Sacred" frequently features essays from The BioLogos Foundation's leaders and Senior Fellows. Today's entry was written by Darrel Falk. Darrel Falk is a biology professor at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, where he has taught since 1988. He transitioned into Christian higher education 25 years ago and has given numerous talks about the relationship between science and faith at many universities and seminaries. He is the author of Coming to Peace with Science.

This has been an interesting week for The BioLogos Forum. From the atheist camp, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, and P.Z. Myers noticed Daniel Harrell’s essay, "Adam and Eve: Literal or Literary", and had a few choice words for us. From the young earth creationist camp, Pastor John MacArthur’s team (see here and here) at Grace to You responded critically to our series on geological history.

When you’re trying to speak to both of two groups on opposite ends of the spectrum and trying to help each see there is middle ground, the forces tugging from opposite sides can be a little painful. Here are some of the responses we got this week:

From Richard Dawkins:

The Biologos Foundation was founded by Francis Collins, who was also its first President until he was nominated by President Obama to head the National Institutes of Health. It would be nice to think that, when Dr Collins was President of Biologos, an article as ridiculous as this could not have been published. Let us hope at least that, if he sees it and has time to read it, he will be profoundly embarrassed.

Jerry Coyne wrote something similar:

…If you accept apparent age to save the Bible, where does it stop? More important: isn’t BioLogos embarrassed to have this kind of stuff on its website, which purports to accept the findings of science?

On the other side, Philip R. Johnson, Executive Director of Grace to You had the following to say in reference to our critique of some of their young earth propositions:

If BioLogos is willing to throw away so much at the very foundations of our faith and at the very beginning of God's revelation, I can't imagine why they would want to keep up the pretense of being Christians at all. Selectively admiring the Bible's moral teachings is not the same thing as actually believing the Bible.

And Travis Allen, Director of Internet Ministry at Grace to You, offered this:

It’s time for Christians to return to the self-attesting authority of God’s Word and forsake the “vain babblings and oppositions of science, falsely so called.”

At times like this, I think of Kermit the Frog’s song: “It's not that easy being green…When I think it could be nicer being red or yellow or gold / Or something much more colorful like that.”

The problem with being in the middle is that both sides think they understand you, when neither does at all. Take Daniel Harrell’s outstanding essay for example. Those who are regulars at the BioLogos site all know what Harrell was doing in this essay. There are Christians whose very sense of purpose and meaning in life depend upon the historicity of Adam and Eve. For such persons, the non-historical approach of Pete Enns or Alister McGrath simply will not do. And when it comes to a historical Adam and Eve, Harrell lays out our only two options. Option #1 is that Adam and Eve were created with apparent age; Option #2 is (in Harrell’s words) “Adam and Eve exist as first among Homo sapiens, specially chosen by God as representatives for a relationship with him.”
... Continue reading

TAGGED: ACCOMMODATIONISM, COMMENTARY