Welcome to Part 8 of my analysis of Jerry Coyne’s book, Faith vs. Fact. We are in the middle of chapter 3: “Why Accommodationism Fails.” Do you want to know what would convince Jerry Coyne of Christianity? Then this is the post for you! Let’s get started.
What Would Convince Coyne of Miracles and Christianity?
Coyne’s big beef is with those syncretistic accommodationists, be they theistic evolutionists like Francis Collins, atheists like Stephen Jay Gould, or actual scientific organizations like The National Academies or The National Science Teachers Association is that they all say that the natural sciences are not in conflict with religion. To put it another way, they all say that the use of methodological naturalism does not conflict with religion. Coyne, though, vehemently objects to this notion based on his own stance of philosophical naturalism and positivism and argues that certain things have not happened in history.
Simply put, Coyne’s argument is as follows: Religion and science are in conflict, because the only reality is that of the natural world. Science is good at studying the natural world, religion isn’t. There is no God, miracles don’t happen, and Jesus didn’t resurrect from the dead because they can’t be proven by the methods of the natural sciences. If science can’t explain it, it’s not real. The only way I would ever believe in the supernatural is if it was natural…and proven by the natural sciences.
We can read his own words: “…if a religious healer could repeatedly regrow missing limbs by saying prayers over the afflicted, and this was documented with reliable evidence and testimony by multiple doctors, I would consider that a miracle, and perhaps evidence for God” (116).
We can consider his comments regarding what would convince him that the Bible was inspired: “It could…have presented information not known to humans when the sacred texts were written. These include statements like, ‘Thou shalt not travel faster than light,’ or ‘Two strands entwined is the secret of life.’ God could also have made his presence known by engraving the Ten Commandments in large letters on the Moon. Unless defined tautologically, then, the supernatural is either in principle or in practice within the realm of science” (118). And: “If…the New Testament contained unequivocal information about DNA, evolution, quantum mechanics, or other scientific phenomena that couldn’t have been known to its authors, it would be hard not to accept some divine inspiration” (119).
We can look at what Coyne says would get him to start considering Christianity: “Suppose that a bright light appeared in the heavens, and, supported by winged angels, a being clad in a white robe and sandals descended onto my campus from the sky, accompanied by a pack of apostles bearing the names given in the Bible. Loud heavenly music, with blaring of trumpets, is heard everywhere. The robed being, who identifies himself as Jesus, repairs to the nearby university hospital and instantly heals many severely afflicted people, including amputees. After a while Jesus and his minions, supported by angels, ascend back into the sky with another chorus of music. The heavens swiftly darken, there are flashes of lightning and peals of thunder, and in an instant the sky is clear. If this were all witnessed by others and documented by video, and if the healings were unexplainable but supported by the testimony from multiple doctors, and if all the apparitions and events conformed to Christian theology—then I’d have to start thinking seriously about the truth of Christianity” (119).
These statements are very illuminating in Coyne’s thinking in many ways. Although a great deal could be said about them, I will limit myself to just a few comments:
(1) Let’s start with the last comment. It is not a serious statement, but rather one that is solely meant to hold up an oversimplistic, childish caricature of Christianity and mock it. And let’s be clear, according to Coyne, he’s saying that he’ll only consider Christianity if God decided to re-enact a Cecille B. DeMille type of film.
(2) And what about the notion that the only way the Bible could be true or inspired would be if the ancient writers wrote down scientific information that has only been discovered in the past century? Not only does such a sentiment betray an ignorance of what the Bible is and what inspiration means, but it hearkens back to my analogy in my first post about the guy so enamored with hockey that he disparages everything else because it isn’t like hockey: “Well, flood first floor with water, let it freeze, then let me and my hockey buddies come in with our hockey gear, and maybe this library will be worthwhile!”
(3) Also, just think of the tautology at play here: Coyne doesn’t believe God or anything supernatural is real, and the only way he would consider it might be real is if it could be proven through the scientific method, which is devoted to observing things in nature. He will only believe in the supernatural if it could be proven to be natural…because nature is all that exists.
(4) Finally, his comments on how he won’t believe things like healings and miracles is a topic in and of itself that requires more than a short paragraph. I will just recommend Craig Keener’s book, Miracles.
Evidence and Eyewitness Testimony
Coyne then claims that the accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection fail historical scrutiny. We must remember, though, Coyne is essentially a Jesus Mythicist, and thus is about as reliable as the “Ancient Aliens” guy. Right off the bat, his claims are going to be suspect. In any case, he gives the standard Mythicist objections. There are many scholarly books that easily refute these claims, but one that has been getting rave reviews is Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
But allow me to just give one example of Coyne’s tortured logic when trying to refute some of the common points made to support the reliability of the crucifixion/resurrection accounts. One of the claims is that the Synoptic Gospels were written merely a few decades after the life of Jesus. By historical standards, to have writings that close to the events about which they write is incredibly close. Coyne the evolutionary biologist, though, thinks he is more of an expert on historical texts than biblical historians, and he argues that is way too late to be considered reliable. Besides, he writes, “But if you see that as convincing evidence, consider the ‘testimonies’ that begin the Book of Mormon. …Unlike the story of Jesus, this is actual eyewitness testimony!” (121).
Let’s just step back and look at this. On one hand, we have the Synoptic Gospels that were written roughly around 70 AD, about 40 years after the life of Jesus. And, as scholars like Bauckham argue, they weren’t made up out of whole cloth in 70 AD, but were rather the result of compiling the stories and teachings of Jesus that the first generation Christians had been sharing for the previous 40 years—and hence, very likely to come from eyewitness testimony. On the other hand, you have handful of “eyewitnesses” who claimed they saw the plates and seer stones from which Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon. They weren’t eyewitnesses to the events in the Book of Mormon. They were eyewitnesses to Joseph Smith showing them some plates and some stones! Surely, any clear-thinking person can see what is illogical in Coyne’s statement.
Adam and Eve
Coyne then turns to another topic the New Atheists and YECists have in common: insisting that the Adam and Eve story was intended to be read as straightforward history and that Adam and Eve were the genetic ancestors of all humanity. Now, let’s play a game: Who Said What? I will give four quotes, and you can guess who said what quote: Jerry Coyne or Ken Ham?
(1) “You can hardly call yourself a Christian without accepting these claims.” “There’s not much wiggle room here.”
(2) “If there were no Adam and Eve, then whence the original sin? And if there was no original sin transmitted to Adam’s descendants, then Jesus’s Crucifixion and Resurrection expiated nothing: it was a solution without a problem. In other words, Jesus died for a metaphor.”
(3) “If there was no Adam and no original sin, why did Jesus need to come and die? Without a literal Genesis, the gospel falls apart.”
(4) “When we deny the existence of Adam and Eve, then how do we explain the origin of sin and death in the world? And if we cannot explain how sin and death came into the world…then what was the purpose of Christ’s death and resurrection? Why was the Atonement even necessary?”
If you’re having a hard time, if you’re thinking, “I can’t tell! They are all so similar!” then my point is made. The New Atheists and YECists both read the Bible in the same way. In fact, both camps often quote people in the other camp to bolster their claims. In Faith vs. Fact, Coyne quotes Albert Mohler; Ham has quoted Richard Dawkins. Both men are essentially saying, “Look! Even that guy agrees with me!” Let me suggest that when you find that Ken Ham and Jerry Coyne agree on how to read a passage of Scripture, chances are that interpretation is wrong. For the record, Coyne said the first two quotes (that odd use of the word “metaphor” should have been the giveaway!) and Ham said the last two quotes.
Theistic Evolution…Bad!
Coyne spends the last 17 pages of the chapter arguing that theistic evolution is bad, and that Darwin himself “never saw a role for God in his theory.” This, of course, is false. Darwin was an agnostic, not an atheist, and, As John Hedley Brooke states in Galileo Goes to Jail, “Although an agnostic late in life, Darwin denied he had ever been an atheist and frequently referred to evolutionary outcomes as the result of laws impressed on the world by a creator” (227).
Most of Coyne’s argument against theistic evolution isn’t really about science, though. It really just a matter of Coyne saying, “I adhere to philosophical naturalism; theistic evolutionists don’t—therefore theistic evolutionism ‘pollutes evolution with creationism.’” He objects to it because it says that God is ultimately behind the process of evolution. Or to put it another way, he says theistic evolution isn’t real science because theistic evolutionists don’t share his philosophical naturalism. That is simply illogical.
Furthermore, the way Coyne describes theistic evolution is suspect. In addition to calling it “creationism,” he describes it as “positing interventions by God” that cannot be scientifically proven. Now, I’m not Francis Collins, but I don’t think that really is an accurate way to describe theistic evolution. It doesn’t claim that God occasionally “tinkers” with the evolutionary process. It says the entire evolutionary process is the creative process by which God creates. That’s a significant difference. To say it is wrong to claim that God “tinkers” with the evolutionary process is pretty much just an updated version of the deistic notion that says God doesn’t “tinker” with the mechanized cosmos once he built it and wound it up like a clock.
Simply put, the very way Coyne is perceiving the cosmos prevents him from understanding what theistic evolution claims. He is still working from an archaic, long-rejected, deistic model of the universe that views the cosmos in mechanized terms. The Christian, and truly biblical, understanding of God’s relation to the world isn’t of some airy, ghost-like being who lets nature and history go on its merry way, only to occasionally step in and “tinker” with things via a “miracle” or “revelation.”
The Christian view is that God is constantly interacting with and at work in creation and history. In terms of creation, God is always creating—it is an on-going process. Yes, evolutionary theory has helped us understand the mysterious creative forces in the natural world a bit better, but it doesn’t, indeed, can’t even address larger issues like the existence (or non-existence) of God.
Coyne calls theistic evolution a “metaphysical add-on to a physical theory” (149). In a strange way, he is sort of right. To say that God is ultimately behind the process of evolution is a metaphysical claim that can’t be “proven” scientifically. But at the same time, Coyne’s own claim of philosophical naturalism also is a metaphysical claim that can’t be proven scientifically. Belief or non-belief in God is an issue that is separate from the scientific theory of evolution. The purpose of theistic evolutionist organizations like BioLogos is really just drive that point home to the modern Evangelical community who has, unfortunately, been led to belief (thanks to organizations like Answers in Genesis and the New Atheist Movement!) that the scientific theory of evolution is the equivalent of atheism, the same thing as philosophical naturalism.
No, it’s not. And that truth is threatening Coyne’s delusion that it is.
More can be said about chapter 3, but it is time to move on to Chapter 4: “Faith Strikes Back.” That chapter will be the focus of my next two posts.
For the “Who said what” game, my guess is that Coyne said number 1 and Ham said 2-4, am I right?
Coyne: 1-2; Ham 3-4. Lol