Today we added to its significance.

This post marks the day, let’s leave it in silence – we can talk more tomorrow.

The story is very loosely based on a short story by Philip K. Dick. Dick is famous for having written Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the novel that the famous movie Blade Runner was based on (directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford). Other movies based on his short stories include Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck and A Scanner Darkly.

On Philip K. Dick, wikipedia’s first paragraph mentions:

Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered states. In his later works Dick’s thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology.

Dick was born near the end of 1928 and died in 1982. The Adjustment Team was first published in 1954, when he was 25 — this is certainly not one of his later works. Additionally, at 20 pages, there really isn’t much room for anything beyond sharing the basic premise. This premise becomes clear quite early in the movie, so reading the short story first likely doesn’t spoil much. (The original short story is actually in the public domain in some countries, so you can read Adjustment Team on wikimedia commons.)

The movie extrapolates significantly from the original idea, building a love story out of it. On the sci-fi side, I think the movie makes a significant improvement to the “adjustments” mechanism, doing away with the bizarre dogs thing, going for much improved realism, dare I say. What encouraged me to mention it on this blog was the theological themes the movie touches on. These themes are things I would like to discuss, hopefully in a few weeks’ time, so I’ve given you plenty of advance warning:

My posts will be spoiling the entire movie. I’m going to assume readers have either already seen the movie, or aren’t interested in seeing it. And I won’t feel at all bad about doing that: there will be spoiler warnings on the posts themselves, and the movie isn’t all that great anyway. It’s just particularly enticing material for this blog.

If you read the short story first, and haven’t seen the movie yet, I would much enjoy hearing your ideas on how you would build a love story on the premise! (Maybe you can come up with better ideas than contained in the movie.)

If you have already seen the movie though, don’t spoil it for readers that might still want to see it! If you want to discuss spoilers, wait for the spoiling posts I’ve promised. Be informed when they’ve been published by subscribing: follow thinktoomuch.net on twitter, subscribe to this blog’s feed or subscribe via email!

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It’s been slow-going lately, but we will again be picking up the pace (and controversy?) before spring time (southern hemisphere)!

Yesterday was actually this blog’s third birthday. Scary thought that. While I’ve done a lot of grappling on this blog, I have also done a lot of grappling with this blog. I grapple with the vision of what I want it to be, driven by what I would like to express, limited by what I’m actually able to express. I grapple with its sense of value: does it have value, or is a waste of time? Especially when a post just doesn’t come out right.

I think it’s a struggle of faith versus doubt. For this blog to survive and thrive, I need to have some sort of faith in its value and its future. For it to find and keep a good direction, I probably also need to go through periods of doubt during which that faith can be redirected if it’s drifting off course, during which that faith can grow and mature into something more realistic, more practical.

Does it make sense to call this faith? The confidence and trust that this blog has meaning and value? I think so. There are a number of things that I think classify as “faith”, of the kind where I think most people should be able to agree: it is important to have faith — if that’s the word you’re giving to the concept we’re talking about.

At the heart of his theory is a conviction that the primary human drive is not pleasure but the pursuit of what we find meaningful.

It seems absurd to borrow words from a book on surviving Nazi death camps when I’m mostly thinking about my little life of luxury, but I do find myself in agreement with Frankl. Of late, I’ve spent quite some time contemplating where I find meaning in my life, with regards to both work and play, and I will continue spending time on this subject.

Since meaning is so important, the loss of meaning can be particularly traumatic. The things we choose to spend our lives building are the things things whose loss would hurt us the most.

Consider the loss of something with sentimental value only (created meaning, likely from memories), versus the loss of something with utility value only (something that can be replaced). Consider the White Tribe of Africa and its struggles for meaning and identity in a post-apartheid South Africa (closely related to meaning is a sense of identity). Consider the mid-life crisis in which the meaning of the past is rediscovered to be empty in the present, followed by a struggle for finding some meaning for the future. Consider a mother finding meaning in her children’s lives and happiness, in raising them well, grappling with Empty Nest Syndrome when the children move on.

I think a lot of memetic conflict can be viewed in this light, in terms our pursuit of meaning, and when we have some strong sense of meaning, the defence of it against any that threaten to take it away.

I don’t think I said anything profound in this blog post, but it should serve as an adequate introduction to the theme.

• The Sacred Writings of the World’s Great Religions – S. E. Frost, Jr. – published in 1943
• The Philosophy of Nietzsche – Hand-written note suggests it was bought in 1941
• The Basic Teachings of the Great Philosophers – S. E. Frost, Jr. – published in 1942, this is a 1943 reprint

These books were given to my father by his father in the early 70s. I did not really know my grandfather, he passed away when I was practically still a toddler. I hear he was slightly eccentric, but a brilliant man, an artist and writer. Oupa Nel. J Nel van der Merwe. (J was for Jaco, probably from Jacobus.) With Izak Wilhelmus van der Merwe who wrote under the pen name “Boerneef” as his cousin (though I don’t know if they were *first* cousins, and Boerneef could be one generation earlier too), I suspect the Ceres van der Merwe’s have some good artist-type genes.

I don’t know much about my grandfather’s worldview. (Actually, I don’t know much about my father’s either. ) However, he wasn’t one to leave books in a pristine state: I see many margin notes and other writings on blank pages. What intrigues me is how much my own views have in common with my grandfather’s. Or even just my interests… How much of our worldview predispositions are due to our genes? Those combine with our culture, our memes, that we inherit from those around us.

Wrote my grandfather to my father, in the front cover (translation below, with the usual disclaimers about how impossible it is to maintain the same nuances in a translation):

Aan Jac — Vir jou latere lewe, seun. [Lees eers bladsy 94, 150 ens.]

Dié een man het die Wêreld van Denke (filosofie) diep getref. Hy laat my baie aan Salomo se wonderlike boeke in die Bybel dink.

As ‘n mens sy jeug ken kan jy verstaan hoekom hy “kinderagtig” is m.i. i.v.m. die Christus (wat liggaamlik sterk moes gewees het. Dink aan C. se reiniging v.d. Tempel, hoe C. oral geloop het ens.)

N. is verantwoordelik vir die berugte sin: “God is dood.” (Verg. Dolf v N: “Die Son Struikel”) maar m.i. wou hy daarmee die mensdom weer God laat her-”sien”. Van Wyk Louw het ‘n gedig oor N. geskryf. (Sien agter.)

‘n Belangrike, diep, belangrike boek hierdie. Op één stadium van my lewe het dit vir my baie beteken.

But it is not easy going.

Pa   1973

---

Jac, asseblief:–
Lees éérs Ecce Homo, dán Zarathustra

To Jac — For your later life, son. [First read page 94, 150 etc.]

Jac, please:–
First read Ecce Homo, then Zarathustra

As a Ceres Van der Merwe, two generations ago, I reckon he was certainly still Boer in heritage and culture, but being an intellectual, having studied art, philosophy and psychology, and apparently comparative religion, he must have been further removed from our Calvinist heritage than most.

In the back of the “Great Philosophers” book, Nel wrote a bit about his own views of the divine, apparently similar to those of Pascal, Eliot and others. He contrasts his views with the views of the rationalists.

The Eternal begins where our “words” and reasoning ends — that is why I choose Art … music, poetry, painting, etc. It goes down into your guts. J.N.

On the artistic side, somewhat opposed to the “rationalists” (specifically the views of the so-called “Rationalistiese Vereniging van UK” — a society at the “University of Cape Town” I presume) and in contact with our religious heritage and tradition, while also a “liberal” like most intellectuals (which I deduce from his comments on “conservative Cape’s reaction to NP van Wyk Louw’s divorce in the back of the Nietzsche book), his views certainly fascinate me.

I think I inherited enough of the “artistic genes” and found the necessary memes to have a good appreciation for my grandfather’s views. I don’t have any trouble “bridging” to them, I can feel the truth in his views. At the same time, I think I’m standing a bit closer to the “rationalists” than he was: it could have been interesting to have a deeply philosophical conversation about such matters, to see how well I could bridge in the other direction. It all seems to be the flip-side of the same coin to me, the artistic side, is to me all about developing an artist’s appreciation of the human experience of this universe.

And with his margin notes and underlining of passages he considered key, reading these books might serve as a decent alternative to that conversation. It would be both an opportunity to see how much my genetic and general Afrikaner-culture inheritance already shaped my memes and interests in that same direction, and a path for more direct memetic inheritance. My father did not get around to reading these. With a career in engineering, technology and business (electronic media) and a strong interest in science that he imparted to me, I’m not sure how much formal philosophy he ran into. I will read these on my father’s behalf, and I won’t be waiting for my “later life”.

Why is “you have to believe!” so pervasive in our culture? The “you have to believe!” meme appears to be hiding around every corner. Including Wanted, wherein the protagonist had to start believing in his calling.

What makes the act of believing something so important? Might there be some sort of survival benefit for a creature with a tendency to believe? Some argue it could just be a side-effect of having some other beneficial traits. I disagree with that. To get straight to my answer to the question: to me, belief seems an absolutely critical element in the sanity of a self-aware thinking creature. I don’t think such creatures could function without beliefs.

And here I don’t just mean “believe” in the sense that I “believe evolution is true”: since evolution is a scientific theory, my belief in its validity is based on what I know of the science involved. That belief is something that could be investigated empirically, and the belief then proven false. In this particular blog post, I’m talking specifically of beliefs that can not be empirically shown to be correct or incorrect. I’m talking about beliefs that will always remain, no matter how far you dig to try to deconstruct them to things that can be rationally proven or disproven.

I think that due to the nature of self-awareness, the requirements for sanity of a self-aware creature, to have a workable world-view you have to take some irrational (arational?) leaps of faith: belief is fundamental to the survival of a rational mind. Which is not to say there aren’t unwanted side-effects, there are: not believing incorrect things so much, but rather, believing harmful things. (Believing it worthwhile to go on a suicide-bombing mission is tautologically harmful to your survival.)

Law, Life, Morality, Economy

High time to anchor my assertions above with some examples.

Recently I heard the suggestion from someone studying law that for a legal system to be considered moral, ethical, just, requires a belief in free will, whether free will exists or not is a question that need not even be asked. Without axiomatically accepting, believing, in free will, a legal system could be considered immoral, and should be dismantled (assuming we’re trying to be moral/ethical creatures), leading to the collapse of society.

In the case of law, an alternative view is possible though: in a mechanistic view of the universe, the legal system could serve as deterrent in the game wherein outcomes are determined by the balance of costs. So let’s move on:

• The choice to live life, as opposed to simply giving up on it, requires a belief in the value of actually living. Having something to live for, something you believe to be worthwhile.
• Secular enlightenment-style morality is built on beliefs in equality and the golden rule.
• Our economic systems are built on beliefs too: the belief that the rest of humanity is trustworthy enough that these pieces of paper we call “money” will always be assigned some value for trading purposes.

The Gregarious Greater Good

For cooperative societies to function, for gregarious creatures to work together, there needs to be a belief in a cooperative “greater good”. A belief in there being a right and a wrong. There are always opportunities for an individual to commit wrongs where no other member of their group would ever find out. Doing so would benefit the individual, even if it isn’t beneficial to the group. We can talk about group selection and group dynamics ensuring that the number of such individuals acting in self-interest is kept in check, but that’s taking a step back. What about the views of each individual in the group? Those individuals that choose to not act in self-interest?

In animals without rational or self-aware thought, with no sense of individuals in the group, this “belief” could be just instinctual habits driven by genetic predispositions. Selection could ensure instinctive cooperative behaviour. Calling that a “belief” requires semantic flexibility. However, how do such cooperative creatures maintain cooperation once they develop rational self-awareness? If the cooperative culture is maintained, this habitual genetic-predisposition instinct becomes explicit belief in the context of having an active awareness of personal choices and consequences. The belief may also live in the culture’s subconscious, faithfully lived out, internalised by individuals since their toddler years.

The Golden Rule. Equality. Freedom. These are all things we believe in. These thoughts weren’t the first thoughts that came to me during the movie though.

Self-Belief

The thought/reason the movie gave for the importance of belief was more about self-confidence: the protagonist had to believe in his own abilities. And in the group he joined, they had to believe they are working towards a worthwhile goal. It was about “believe in yourself”. I would like to go scour all the great and ancient mythologies for stories about protagonists started with initial doubts they had to overcome in order to reach their full potential.

Much of our contemporary psycho-bla-bla, talk-show-bla-bla or “newage guru”-bla-bla is focused on “believing in your potential”, often expressed in ways that make it sound like icky woo. However, that doesn’t reduce the importance of the basic need — the need I believe lies at the core of our “you must believe!” cultural undertones.

Contrarian Christians might choose to feel uncomfortable with the suggestion “believe in yourself!” — let me illustrate neutrally: if you believe you can’t do maths, you’ll suck at it. If you have no confidence in a race, you won’t be a good athlete. If you have a complete lack of self-esteem, you will typically perform in a way that reflects that: badly. If you believe God hates your guts and wishes you never existed, same thing. If you rather come to the belief that God granted you skill at maths (thus framed in terms of a gift accepted and not in terms of “belief in yourself”), that’s still precisely what I’m talking about in this post, please bear with me and look at the concepts.

There is a flip-side: someone that is too “full of themselves”, arrogant. It depends on what they do in life, arrogance can prove to be an asset in getting certain kinds of jobs done, but can at the same time be damaging to teamwork, relationships, interactions with others… (What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?) And in the middle lies balance.

Take the very same person that’s struggling in a corner somewhere, with self-esteem and the work they’re doing, get them into a place where they believe in their own capabilities, armed with the necessary ambition, and watch them grow and exceed what previously seemed to be their limits. Not so? A positive feedback cycle.

It is of great importance for people to believe that what they do matters.

Irrational!
(with the right understanding of what is considered entirely rational)

Feelings of self-worth are really not rational facts found by a process of scientific inquiry, they are much rather a kind of faith. Such feelings can certainly be empirically reinforced: precisely by starting with an assumption and then seeking evidence to support your presupposition, thus, not science!

I wager such assumptions cannot withstand scientifically rigorous open-minded attempts at falsifying them. Here’s how that would go: “OK, so I have the theory that I’m worth something. To scientifically prove this, I must remain skeptical of that assertion, and try my best to disprove it.” Setting out to prove yourself worthless? Tell me, where does that end?

Note that I am not saying one shouldn’t be inquisitively investigating these things, carefully: it can be a worthwhile search! The results of that journey rather leads to discovery and greater awareness of the axioms on which you build your faith with regards to your place in life and way of life.

Words are defined by the way they are used. Deduce the definitions I’m running with in that way, by looking at the context. Between appreciation of your definitions, my definitions, and the concepts we’re trying to refer to, we can still have some good concept-driven conversations.

And I commit to use my comments below to try to steer discussion in that direction.

Are Cats Evil?

That question is actually too broad, take it more limited in scope: is the way they play with mice evil? …encouraging a mouse to try and run away again, giving them (false?) hope, only to pounce on them moments before they get away, successively wounding them more and more, driving them to exhaustion, torturing them, making them suffer…

Please motivate your answer.

There is not supposed to be a right and wrong answer, this is an opinion question, I consider all answers to be correct. Hence, I don’t consider debate interesting — the interesting part is supposed to be the further exploring of other questions within the light of our chosen answers to this one.

Some discussion took place below. Two comments were dropped on the imported Facebook note, good discussion took place on a Facebook status message.

The first six chapters and the dating techniques they introduce during their investigation (give me a shout if I miss something):

• Chapter 1: The ever-changing calendar the origins and complications of our calendar systems.
• Chapter 2. A hero in a dark age – reconstructing history, in the light of the search for King Arthur.
• Chapter 3. The forged cloth of Turin – radiocarbon dating.
• Chapter 4. The pyramids and the bear’s groin – star-gazing
• Chapter 5. The volcano that shook Europe – pottery (typology), tree-ring dating.
• Chapter 6. The Mandate from Heaven – dendrochronology (advanced tree-ring pattern dating) and some more ice core dating.

Can I suggest we use a consistent style for marking what we are responding to? Based on what we had in the past: @Hugo #14 for replying to Hugo and the 14th comment, when not responding to a comment, just the topic you’re starting a new thread on, e.g.: @Chapter1. This will encourage me to fix the imported old comment threads when I get around to implementing the threaded comment system I’m dreaming about. (No need to be too strict though, e.g. marking unneeded when replying directly to the comment above. Import will have to have human-oversight anyway.)

Like a good thesis or academic paper, the book’s introduction serves to frame the material covered by the book, and explains why it is important. After all, Chris Turney is a published scientist, he knows how to write papers. However, he also writes accessible and entertaining popular science, the kind any literate lay-person can appreciate and understand, no college degree needed! (Read some reviews).

Important!

So what makes this so important? Turney mentions two examples of its importance, two weighty examples: the massive extinction of the world’s fauna and flora, and extreme climatic change. Humans have obtained great power and influence over the environment, our actions might just have some huge consequences we did not expect.

In order to develop some understanding of what the future holds, we need as good an understanding of how our mightily complex planetary ecosystem fits together as we can muster. The only way of gaining such an understanding is to study the past — a past that is, according to the evidence we’ve uncovered, several billion years long. Ignoring what we can know about the past would be irresponsible, would leave us blind with regards to what the future holds, would be an act of refusing to act as stewards for our planet.

The book explains what we know, and more importantly, how we know it.

Controversial!

Turney explains some of the controversies around time, e.g. Chapter 1 covers some of the conflicts around our calendar system. In the introduction he mentions some controversy surrounding a pop song:

If you haven’t read the book yet, see if you can spot it. Let’s play at being pseudo-intellectual-art-critics in the comments below.

For your friendly neighbourhood creationist?

How accessible would this book be for a young earth creationist? (Here I return to my old excessively verbose ways Feel free to skim or skip if you’re not grappling with such questions.)

If they’re interested in the subject matter, it looks to be very accessible. Turney approaches dearly held beliefs with the necessary sensitivity and empathy, even the epilogue on creationism (I’m briefly skipping to the end) sticks to facts and doesn’t ridicule. He remains open-minded as scientists should: he does not get dismissive, he simply requests evidence — “until creationism provides compelling evidence”, second last paragraph. The book serves enough examples of what kind of evidence lead to our current scientific conclusions, and he points at some events that should leave this kind of compelling evidence, if creationism were true.

One thing I did make a note of was a paragraph on page 3, stating:

“The key word we hear with creationism is ‘belief’. No matter how much science proves otherwise, some creationists still choose to believe the world is only 6000 years old. I might believe that the world is flat or that little green men live on Mars; should I get a teaching slot alongside electrostatics and gravity? I hope not.”

I think that’s about the worst it gets. What do you think, does that feel like ridicule? If you know my habits, you know how hyper-sensitive I can get when I’m on the lookout for things that could be negatively perceived — I get absolutely absurd. (And of course, when I’m worked up and “writing with passion, I’m prone to throw out negative words myself.) In and of itself, the sentence in question simply illustrates, clearly, how mere “belief” is inadequate for motivating the teaching of something in science class — for science you do need compelling evidence.

So what’s the potential problem? …the use of stereotypical examples. Stereotypes can be very loaded in someone’s mind: their use can provoke emotions from previous encounters, even if the current context doesn’t rationally justify those emotions flaring. We’re human, you know! For people with a strong in-group/out-group thing going, perceived negativity or ridicule can trigger a reaction of “this book seems biased against us, it is therefore not neutral and its contents cannot be trusted — I should stop reading”.

I think the ideal is really quite simple: give a book like this to a creationist from within the context of a friendship. “Here is a book that explains the science, it illustrates quite well why I believe what I believe. If you would like to understand my views and the views of others better, take a look at it.” By connecting the material to a good friendship, the friendship can lend it some goodwill, provides it with a friendly face, which helps overcome our tendency to interpret material we disagree with in the worst possible light.

Chris Turney’s book does explain, before the paragraph in question, that beliefs are matter of personal choice. He agrees that that is perfectly fine (oh, he’s such a liberal, isn’t he!). He is only taking exception to people trying to force personal beliefs into a science class. Simultaneously, he points out the limitations of science: “No one should claim that science has the answer to life, the universe and everything”. I like! The way this book is put together, I can’t imagine even a fictitious person who I wouldn’t be prepared to lend this book to.

All that said, I remain particularly keen and curious how this book is perceived by young earth creationists. If you’re a young earther (or possibly an until-recently-a-dedicated-young-earther) and you read this book, please come share your thoughts, experiences and feelings with us? Thanks!

Getting your hands on it:

In South Africa, I ordered the paperback version from Loot for R128 (+R20 shipping). If you would like to borrow that copy, I can add you to the waiting list. Otherwise, consider buying your own, to be lent to friends and family. It can’t hurt to have more in circulation!

(Yes, I should impose a word limit on myself. Fewer next time!)

To some, science seems like “the new Authority”, the new self-sustaining system perpetuated by clergy named “scientists” and to be dogmatically obeyed by the rest of us in the pews. (Heh. Not even church is like that, assuming you choose a nice progressive community.) The problem is “science” is pigeonholed into something it isn’t, and this is helped by the fact that it has such a handy pre-existing label. Develop a pigeonholed understanding of the label, then the job is done!

So instead of saying “I care too much about science”, I’m going to talk about… “I care too much about understanding reality/creation as best I can”, “I’m too interested in the evidence about the past that surrounds us”, or something similar.

And so my quest for maximizing understandability continues down the road of ever-increasing verbosity. *sigh*.

By decree, we decided on Bones, Rocks and Stars by Chris Turney. I propose we start with this book on 13 July. Hopefully I’m not busy referring to myself in the plural.

It is a thin little book, 180 pages, but I’ll still carve it up into little bits: about 30 pages per blog post, which is two chapters, spread over six blog posts. What time frame this will be, I’m not sure. (Spread over six weeks?) It is my intention to write an intro blog post giving a brief overview of the contents of each section, then we can have discussions in the comments.

If I choose to write “independent” posts about the things we learned, I will do so after we’ve had our discussion. The purpose of such posts would be to have something to point other people to: future visitors of the blog that have not read the book. Such posts should provide a brief overview of the important bits to get people up to speed, but for more in-depth details, they would probably refer to either the book, or to our discussion, or to other useful material we identify. Rewriting the book would be silly. This “distillation into an overview” will certainly be a struggle, maybe our discussion can help hack out the important details.

13 July is a Monday. I’m open to shifting it to another day: would you prefer the end of the week? Publish on Friday mornings? We don’t need to rush the discussion… Whatever we decide in the comment thread below, the next post will be with the expectation that participants have read the introduction and the first two chapters: “The ever-changing calendar” and “A hero in a dark age”.

I’m taking two weeks’ vacation before then. The book will go with me, for the plane, the airport, or other idle moments. Thus, the “deadline” we choose really shouldn’t be making any whooshing sounds on my side…

In this series, I will sketch out my views, not seek some balanced “there are many perspectives, for example, such-and-such”. When I do touch on other views in this series, it will be for the purpose of explaining how it fits into my view.

I’ll try to keep posts short and to the point, after all, details can be explored in conversations in the comments. I’m not going to rush it, it will probably take months. But I’ll try to put out my first post within the next seven days. It will be on the divine.

Below are the strategies I could think of. Note that while Genesis (by names in various languages) forms part of many of the Abrahamic religions’ sacred texts, I am coming from a Christian angle, addressing primarily the Young-Earth Creationist strains.

Hypothesis: Satan Deceives!

Many that subscribe to a strong deity-dualism (namely God and Satan as two supernatural entities duking it out) consider lies as “belonging to Satan”. (Traditions with a more poetic understanding could say the same thing, but without a conscious entity actively bringing about deception, and a non-literal appreciation of the “poetry” in Genesis, will not have a problem anyway.)

So what is the problem with this hypothesis? The evidence contradicting the young earth view is everywhere. It is in the fossil record, in the cosmic background radiation, in our understanding of globular clusters and nuclear physics, in the speed of light, and the distances between galaxies… If all of creation is deceptive in that regard, and all deception is the work of Satan, this seems to indicate Satan is the creator. That would be in direct contradiction to the primary message of Genesis 1, the affirmation of Israel’s God as creator, author of fossils and stars. That is the primary message according to both literal and poetical readings.

(Scholarship indicates [citation needed] Genesis 1 was probably written during Israel’s exile in Babylon. During such times, when a tribe was defeated by another, the tribe’s identity, religion, faith in their deity, typically suffers. In that context, Genesis 1 is a defiant call to maintain tribal unity, religious identity, faith, through radical monotheism.)

Hypothesis: (a) the fossils are just there to Test Ya Faith! *or* (b) fossils et al provide an interesting back story

(a) Um, what’s with this hypothesis? Doesn’t this make God a liar, another thing that is explicitly contradictory with Christian theology? (Who can provide a reference to the verse that says God cannot lie?)

(b) Also known as “Last-Thursdayism”, there is nothing logically inconsistent with believing the world was created as-is last Thursday. The question, though, is why, if the universe has this interesting and consistent 14 billion year back story, should it be treated any differently to something that really is 14 billion years old? If you were created last Thursday with all your memories intact, does that really make any difference to your life, which you would live as though you are many years old?

The Wikipedia page on this, the Omphalos hypothesis, has some very interesting insights. I love controversial Rabbi Natan Slifkin’s response:

God essentially created two conflicting accounts of Creation: one in nature, and one in the Torah. How can it be determined which is the real story, and which is the fake designed to mislead us? One could equally propose that it is nature which presents the real story, and that the Torah was devised by God to test us with a fake history! One has to be able to rely on God’s truthfulness if religion is to function. Or, to put it another way—if God went to enormous lengths to convince us that the world is billions of years old, who are we to disagree?

Strategy: “there is no evidence of an old-earth!”

I’m not calling this one a hypothesis. This is a strategy, a choice for ignorance. For many stuck in conflict, this is actually the strategy I’d propose! If your religion is important to you, if you find real value in your religion, what difference does it make how old the earth is? Could you not choose ignorance, explicitly? Accept that you don’t know, and don’t care, and aren’t interested in discussing it? This may be a controversial statement for me to make, amongst my scientist friends, but there is of course an important side-effect I’m also aiming for: leave the debates and arguments to those that study these things.

Not that many strongly-convicted evangelicals would take me up on that offer, since they often perceive science as a threat to their belief system and detrimental to their evangelising. Of course, there is an opposite argument using the same rationale. Quoting the church father, St Augustine, whose theology laid foundations used by most Christians today, explained it as follows:

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.

– De Genesi ad literam 1:19–20, Chapt. 19 [AD 408]

(Taken from Wikipedia, here’s another translation.)

The much uglier version of the “choosing ignorance” path, in my opinion, is where the ignorance is outsourced to authority figures (like Adam blaming Eve for the apple ). This is the business model on which creationist organisations and websites like Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International (now creation.com, used to be creationontheweb.com) operate: they use “claims of authority” to win the trust of those with a strong authoritarian style of deciding what to believe. Deferring to authority lets you “escape” responsibility… Is it that much harder to simply say “I don’t know” and leave it be?

Alternatively, take the non-literal stance on Genesis 1-11

This makes most sense to me. (Naturally, I don’t read Genesis literally, that much should be clear. ) Of course, if the only thing that keeps you “believing” is the lack of acceptance of evolutionary theory, you will starting on a path to de-conversion. (Is it worthwhile to believe in a God that only exists on condition that evolution is impossible? Is that your God?) However, don’t let the Christian fundies or the atheists fool you, de-conversion is most certainly not your only choice!

You could read up on Theistic evolution. You could buy e.g. The Bible, Rocks and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth, a book by evangelicals, maybe after reading the wonderful review on Exploring Our Matrix. Or you could go for some free ebooks by an online evangelical community — (1-4, 5).

Have an interesting conversation!

And feel free to ask! If you need some help or conversations to help you embrace more science in your worldview, I have a couple more references up my sleeve which I’ll customise to your needs as best I can, there are more “theistic evolutionists” hanging out here, and there’s my little network of friends, pastors and theologians that I could consult for advice on your behalf. We also have humanists, with varying amounts of secularity, if you find yourself or your worldview drowning in all the new info and need to chat to some people to help you find something to hold onto while the dust settles. (Dust and water, mixing my metaphors here? )

(There’s even one or two “Real Live PhD Scientists” that occasionally take part in discussions, to the detriment of their research!… because they also have a passion for education, for sharing knowledge. Of course, that doesn’t make them the authority figures to be obeyed, it just makes them the knowledgeable bunch that know what’s cutting: within their fields of study, they’re experts on the evidence and the tentative conclusions drawn from that evidence, by the process known as science…)

Additionally, I (we) will be starting our first attempt at a thinktoomuch.net book club in July. I (we) will be reading (and blogging and commenting on) Bones, Rocks and Stars: The Science of When Things Happened — this is much thinner than “The Bible, Rocks and Time”, but sticks to science and doesn’t cover Christian theological concerns.

[TED Talk - Jonathan Haidt]

Ben-Jammin also shared two links that are related to this video. For those that prefer text (hello bandwidth starved South Africa, amongst others):

Edge: MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF RELIGION: A Talk with Jonathan Haidt

and then a more scholarly paper, in pdf format (which was written in MS Word, how immoral! ):

When morality opposes justice:
Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize

I have not read the first link, other than scanning over it to let my eye catch a snippet where Haidt even dares to take on The Philosopher Himself , and I haven’t read the scholarly paper either — the TED talk was sufficient for encouraging the writing this post, and could be sufficient for sparking some discussion on whether the threat of hell is of use to humanity. Other discussions related to the material are also more than welcome.