By JERRY COYNE - WHY EVOLUTION IS TRUE
Updated: Fri, 02 Jul 2010 12:45:03 UTC

Original link
I’m not sure what’s going on at the Templeton-funded accommodationist website BioLogos, but lately they seem to reviving Biblical literalism. First there was the website’s waffling on whether Adam and Eve were real people, and now, as reported by commenter Scott on yesterday’s “Tea Party Jesus” post, BioLogos is retreating from the notion of Genesis as metaphor.

You’d think that, for a website devoted to reconciling faith with the facts of science, the idea of Genesis as inspirational fiction would not be negotiable. If anything is absolutely, rock-bottom true, it’s that life evolved, beginning about 4 billion years ago, and that the creation myth of Genesis can’t be true.

Yes, you’d think that, but it isn’t so. To buttress the idea of a literal Genesis, BioLogos has posted a short video, “The danger of preaching on Genesis by Joel Hunter, a preacher at the oddly named “Northland, a Church Distributed.”

Here’s BioLogos‘s characterization of the piece:

In this video Conversation, Joel Hunter acknowledges the risk that pastors take when preaching on Genesis—and in particular, when they approach it with an attitude of humility, allowing the possibility that the text was not meant to be understood in literal terms.

What?? Humility is bad??? At first I thought that this was a mistake, but it’s not:

Hunter notes that a large number of congregants in our churches today are uncomfortable with the literal narrative of creation in six twenty-four hour days. In fact, many believers are open to the notion that God used alternative means of creation. Those with this viewpoint are not convinced of the all-or-nothing mentality that pervades contemporary evangelicalism, but rather, they see the possibility of evolutionary creation as a testament to God’s abilities.

Hunter emphasizes, however, that one must avoid being dismissive or derisive of those who do hold to a literalist view of Genesis because for some, reconsidering the traditional creation narrative introduces questions to which they are unsure of how to respond. Many with this viewpoint feel that if Genesis can’t be understood in straightforward terms, then we cannot know how to read the story of the Resurrection—as a historical account, or simply as a metaphor? Questions like this have the potential to cause them to wonder if they must now question the whole truth of Scripture.

Without “bullying” literalists into a new scriptural interpretation, we should still provide Christians with the space—and permission—to more completely consider the “fullness” and the “great mystery” of God.

The purpose of the video, it seems, is to tell preachers to be careful when telling their flocks that Genesis might be a metaphor. Why is that “dangerous”? Because it might scare “uneducated” people into questioning other parts of the Bible, like the Resurrection. And we can’t have that! No questioning! “Humility”, once a virtue, is now seen as a problem. And, “bullying”, apparently, means “telling people that Genesis might be metaphorical and not literally true.”
... Continue reading

TAGGED: ACCOMMODATIONISM, CREATIONISM, EVOLUTION, RELIGION