Moaning and Complaining
On the Roman Catholic calendar, this Sunday is the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The readings today (1 Kings 19:4–8, Ephesians 4:30–5:2, John 6:41–51) revolve around grumbling and murmuring about our situations before God.
Complain, complain, complain
All three readings start with a similar action: someone (or some group) complaining about their situation:
- In the first reading, after a day of wandering the desert Elijah prays for death, telling God that he’s had enough: not unlike a sentiment many have when they feel God is testing them.
- In the second reading, Paul is responding to bitter divides in the Church at Ephesus, where sectarian arguments threaten to undermine the community.
- In the Gospel, Jesus responds to the Jews who murmur about his pedigree: questioning his ability to speak for God when they know who his parents are.
Even Captain Picard is disgusted from time to time
We all complain from time to time: sometimes, we just need to cry “uncle!” and feel the need to give up. Father Richard at my parish talked about regularly having liver ball soup at his seminary, to which all the seminarians would grumble and complain about, so they’d all leave the seminary to grab burgers. Perhaps for you, it’s something like that, or going to church regularly, or dealing with coworkers and family, or even a diet.
It’s Not that Bad
But it’s important, as Paul teaches us in the second reading, that we try to avoid this, though: to “live in love” and do away with all the “bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling, [...] along with malice.” Why? Because regardless of what you’re complaining about, God is with you and it could be worse. Elijah, for example, complained after one day of wandering the desert: yet, with God’s help, he was able to walk the desert for 40 more days.
Deacon Greg Souza relayed a great story on doing away with reviling:
The story is told of a priest stationed at a parish in a popular beach resort area. There was a strong community of year round parishioners who served the parish well. However, during the summer months, the number of parishioners would swell with those who had seasonal residences in the area and tourists. One Saturday afternoon, a young man walked into the church for Mass straight off the beach with just a bathing suit on and a towel draped over his shoulder – no shirt, no shoes and his long, dirty blond hair still dripping wet. He walked straight up the center aisle and sat on the floor in front of the first row of pews. Everyone looked at each other, not knowing what to do. The priest was about to send an altar boy over to invite him to at least sit in a pew, when one of the oldest members of the parish got up to approach the young man. Everyone in the church started to tense up as they expected the older man to scold the young man for being inappropriately dressed for Mass. But instead, the older man walked over and sat on the floor next to the younger man. The whole church burst into applause and laughter at what was so obvious a display of the all-embracing love of our heavenly Father.
Even though it makes one cringe when someone doesn’t do things appropriately, it’s important to forgive, forget, and embrace them: because even coming to Mass in a bathing suit is not that bad, and forgivable in the eyes of God.
Have Faith
The Gospel conveys a similar, but different message: in it, Jesus asks the Jews it have faith in him; so that whomever believes in him shall have everlasting life. He asks them to stop murmuring about their doubts and questions, and realize God is speaking to them directly through Jesus. It’s important to realize that, even when we are complaining and questioning our faith in God, He’s always there, ready to help when you get back down from the ledge. It’s only when we stop complaining and listen, as Elijah did, that can God truly help us.
Ask a Catholic: What Day is the Sabbath?
Ask a Catholic is a weekly feature on the Shibboleth where I try to answer a question from you, the reader, on any burning religious question you might have. Check out the Ask a Catholic page for more information.
Moses mit den Gesetzestafeln, Rembrandt (From Wikimedia Commons)
For the first Ask a Catholic post, Shey Smith sent in a question via FriendFeed:
Is it true that the Catholic church acknowledges the biblical Sabbath as the 7th day of the week (Saturday), yet continue to observe it on Sunday? Even though they are the ones who are responsible for changing it?
There are a few different elements to this question, so I’ll try to answer them in part. As a disclaimer, I try to specifically refer to Catholics for things that are chiefly Catholic practices, and to Christians as a larger whole for aspects of my answer that relate to the larger community. It’s not to say that all Christians believe what I say, but that many, if not the majority, do.
1. Do Catholics acknowledge Saturday as the biblical Sabbath?
The answer to that is yes. Paragraph 2169 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church recognizes the “7th day” of the week as the sabbath, as referenced in Exodus:
Six days there are for doing work, but the seventh day is the sabbath of complete rest, sacred to the LORD. (Exodus 31:15)
2. Do Catholics observe the sabbath on Sunday?
The answer to this depends on your definition of “observe”. Colloquially, we tend to use observation with respect to important dates as the more convenient day to recognize them: even though Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is supposed to mark his birth, because his birthday falls on different days in the year, we “observe” it using a scheduled Monday so people can have a three-day weekend. In this case, the observation replaces the original date: all the news reports and public schools center around the Monday instead of the real date.
Catholic observation of the sabbath is a little different: Catholics recognize the sabbath day as the 7th day of the week, and as an important indicator of an irrevocable covenant God made with the Israelites. Sunday is not a replacement day for the sabbath: it’s a different day, the Lord’s day, that combines a couple different concepts and practices:
- Firstly, it allows Catholics to fulfill the moral command of the sabbath (as prescribed by the third commandment): to recognize God’s rest, to do no work, and to keep it holy, and
- Secondly, it allows Catholics to observe “the moral commandment inscribed by nature in the human heart to render to God an outward, visible, public, and regular worship ‘as a sign of his universal beneficence to all.’” (Catechism, paragraph 2176)
Being Put to Death and the Old Law
Generally, the main objection to this is the second part of Exodus 31:15; “Anyone who does work on the sabbath day shall be put to death.” So why do Christians think they get a free pass on this? Christians recognize three different types of laws as prescribed in the Torah:
- Ritual/Ceremonial law: when I read the first few books of the Bible, I was surprised how much of the codified law dealt with ritual and ceremony. This aspect of the law contains things like the practices for ritual cleansing, what the temple’s supposed to look like, who’s allowed in the temple, which tribe should be the priest class, what the priest class can wear, what types of animals are acceptable for sacrifice, and so on. These laws, together with the punishments outlined in the civil law, are the stuff people love to cite when trying to nitpick the Bible. However, this aspect of the law is superseded by God’s new covenant wit man through Jesus.
- Juridicial/Civil law: these laws are ones where God provides a punishment or a resolution (in many cases, death or exile). Laws like putting to death by stoning any fortune-tellers or mediums (Leviticus 20:27), or the restitution amounts for stealing an ox (Exodus 22). Like the ceremonial law, Christians identify this aspect of the law as being superseded by God’s covenant through Jesus, and specifically with Jesus’s sacrifice and subsequent resurrection. Jesus took the heat, as it were, for all the punishments prescribed in the Old Law so that we’d all have eternal life (John 3:16).
- Moral law: this is the red meat; your ten commandments kind of stuff. Moral law is different from the other two in that it’s not prescribatory: that is, it’s a description of moral truths mostly everyone believes in. Murder is wrong, stealing is wrong, helping your neighbor is right, and so on. These laws are timeless, and continue from the Mosiac tradition into the Christian tradition.
With that brief explanation of the law, let’s get back to Exodus 31:15: that the 7th day is the sabbath, that it’s holy, and that anyone who does work on it should be put to death. In this passage, you can see a microcosm of the distinction in the law: the 7th day is the sabbath is part of the ritual law, that it’s holy is part of the moral law, and that anyone who does work on it should be put to death is part of the juridical law. So, because the juridical and ritual aspects of the law are superseded by the new covenant, Christians only focus on one part: that the sabbath day is holy.
The Lord’s Day
So, based on this, Christians do take one day out of the week to observe the holiness of the sabbath day on Sunday, the Lord’s Day. There are still the same prescriptions: you can’t do any work, and you should spend your time worshipping God. But in addition, there are a few more particularly Christian observances:
- Jesus’s resurrection was on a Sunday, the first day of the week, and the Lord’s day is a reminder of that.
- Christians celebrate the Eucharist on Sundays together, as a community.
- Christians use Sunday as a day of outward, visible worship, in addition to inward reflection and meditation.
The Lord’s day is also a day to focus on one’s family and loved ones, as it may be hard to do so during the week.
Wrapping Up
So, while Catholics do explicitly recognize the 7th day as the sabbath day, the covenant between God and man through Jesus supersedes the specifics of its observation. A new day, based on Jesus’s resurrection, was created to not only recognize the holiness of the sabbath day, but to celebrate Jesus and the new Covenant. It’s important to note that it doesn’t mean Christians observe only the parts of the laws they like, but that parts of the laws no longer apply given the Covenant. If God prescribes eternal life for all who believe in Jesus and His resurrection, He can’t very well be punishing people by death, can He?
As a footnote, I tried to be as plain English as possible in this response, but to understand specifically what Catholics believe, as well as several references for that belief, be sure to check out the Catechism’s section on the sabbath.
Anatomy of an Argument
Wednesdays on the Shibboleth are devoted to fundamentals: logic, argumentation, and philosophy. As any good discussion requires basic argumentation skills, every week I’ll devote a blog post to discussing one of those skills. Today, I’m going to start at the very beginning, and cross-post an article I wrote for my personal blog entitled Anatomy of an Argument:
A few months ago, I discussed the value of discussing, not debating, ideas: that we should be focused on a person’s argument, not the person. [I've also] talked a little about a real-world application of a discussion of ideas, and the value of understanding an opposing argument before providing your own. Today, I’m going to go back to basics and discuss what, exactly, constitutes an argument, and how knowing how to spot an argument can help one form one’s own arguments.
What does an argument look like?
I’ve said previously that an argument isn’t a yelling match: it’s a rational justification for an idea. It’s more than that, though: when you make an argument, or you try to understand another person’s argument, you’re looking for three very specific things:
- Identify what the argument is trying to claim, and what facts it provides to support it (Premises and Conclusions),
- Figure out if the claim necessarily comes from the supporting facts (Valid Arguments), and
- Determine if the supporting facts are actually true. (Soundness)
Premises and Conclusions
The first step in understanding an argument is to identify two types of information. Firstly, you provide some information that one ought to take as being true, called premises, and secondly, you provide a conclusion drawn from those premises.
“I can see the Sun: it’s daytime” would be a very simple argument. The statement of fact, that it’s daytime, is dependent on my seeing the Sun being true, and that seeing the Sun does, in fact, indicate that it’s daytime. Another argument might be “I can see the Sun; therefore, the iPhone is a smart phone.”
Valid Arguments: necessity and sufficiency
This second argument is a little strange: the conclusion doesn’t have anything to do with the premise. That’s because the argument is not valid: a valid argument is one where the conclusion necessarily comes from the premises.
Necessarily is the operative word; the iPhone could be a smart phone: my (bad) argument doesn’t preclude that. In order to make good on my argument, I need to provide other premises that would enough to necessitate the conclusion. If I said, for example, “The iPhone can access the internet and do more than just make calls,” that’d be more likely to necessitate the conclusion, “the iPhone is a smart phone.”
On the other hand, the first argument, that because I can see the sun, it’s daytime, is a valid argument. In fact, the premise, “I can see the sun” is sufficient for coming up with the conclusion: based on that fact alone, the conclusion couldn’t possibly be false.
Necessity and sufficiency will play an important role in a later post, where I go into fallacies: for now, they act as a means for differentiating a valid argument from an invalid one.
Soundness
The final thing to identify in an argument is its soundness. A sound argument is a valid argument that also consists of true premises. Consider the valid argument from above: “I can see the Sun, therefore it’s daytime.” That’s a valid argument: but what if I’m lying, and I can’t actually see the sun? Then the argument isn’t sound. It doesn’t necessarily mean the conclusion is false: it could be a cloudy day, after all. Note that the argument must be valid: “I can see the Sun; therefore the iPhone is a smart phone” could never be sound, even if the premise were true.
Wrapping Up
The three steps outlined are important: in fact, all arguments can be parsed with these three steps alone (obviously, each step has its own methods and tricks for completing them, more on that in later posts). Besides providing a foundation for understanding an argument, every bad argument can be defeated with at least one of the steps: either the argument doesn’t provide reasons for a conclusion, the conclusion doesn’t necessarily follow from the reasons provided, the reasons provided are simply false, or a combination of the three.
Homework
Try looking at a few claims people make to you, take a look at a TV spot: what is the conclusion, and what are the premises? Do the premises necessitate the conclusion? Are the premises sufficient for coming up with the conclusion, or do they need more? Are the premises actually true?
Back to Basics: The Trilemma
The Sermon on the Mount by Gustave Doré (from Wikimedia)
Liar, lunatic, or Lord. If you’ve ever held the belief (or knew someone who has) that Jesus might’ve been a great philosophical teacher, but he wasn’t actually God per se, someone might’ve introduced this argument to you. Popularized by C.S. Lewis, it goes something like this:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)
In this argument, you have only three choices when considering Jesus:
- Either Jesus’s teachings, taken as a whole, were right, thus He’s Lord, or
- Jesus believed he was right, but was in fact wrong (i.e. he was delusional), thus he’s a lunatic, or
- Jesus knew he was wrong, yet taught what he taught anyway, thus he’s a liar.
The first basic objection to the trilemma is one based on popular selective understanding of the New Testament: Jesus just talked a lot about loving your neighbor, forgiveness, pacifism, and all that good stuff. If that’s all He talked about, sure: He doesn’t necessarily need to be God incarnate, and was just like a Jewish Ghandi or something.
Jesus Himself bought into the “God Stuff”
The problem is, our only source for Jesus’s work, the Bible, has Him saying Himself that He was, in fact God. A quick Google search will give you more passages you can shake a stick at regarding His claims to divinity. Take, for instance, Jesus in the Gospel According to John:
So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you 12 and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me. But you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” (John 10:24-30)
Moreover, Jesus’s ministry, that is His entire project, hinges on Him claiming divine authority. I’ll discuss it in another blog post, but one of the major tenet’s of Jesus’s teachings, the forgiveness and absolution of sins, only works if He’s God (or acting on God’s behalf). You at least have to take that He claimed divinity as part of His argument, and it needs to be addressed in any counter-argument.
A Straw Man
This is where the more sophisticated arguments come in. Both Daniel Howard-Snyder (PDF) and Jim Perry give great overviews of many of the possible objections to the Trilemma. I encourage reading both of their papers, but here’s a basic rundown of the objections:
- It’s not clear when (or if) Jesus meant anything he said literally, thus his claims to divinity are suspect
- We don’t know if Jesus really said what people claim he said in the Gospels, so who’s to say he didn’t say something different?
- If he did mean his claims literally, it could be that they are a noble lie: a way to get unsophisticated people to buy into a moral framework that he believed to be right
To be clear: these are all perfectly valid objections to the validity of Jesus’s teachings as portrayed in the Bible, and need to be addressed when making a rational claim to the authority of the Bible. However, the first two points are a straw man: the original argument wasn’t whether the Bible was accurate, it’s whether or not, given the validity of Jesus’s teachings sans the divinity part make him a respectable moral teacher. That is, can one be justified by saying “I think Jesus was a great moral teacher, but I don’t think he was God”?
When someone makes the claim that Jesus was a great moral teacher, they have exactly one source to base that on: the Gospels. All other works are based on those original papers. If you’re going to assume part of it’s true, you need a separate justification to show that the parts you don’t like are not true of Jesus. Why are some of what he says accurate portrayals of him, and other parts not? It’s arbitrary.
The Noble Lie
The third point, that perhaps Jesus meant the divine portions as a noble lie, to make his moral program more palatable to the masses. As Jim Perry puts it:
Another, separate, possibility is that of the “noble lie.” Jesus may have felt that his teachings on behavior were so important as to validate falsely claiming special authority from (or at an extreme, as) God in order to persuade people to follow them. There is historical precedent for the idea that “the people” need the backing of supernatural authority to behave morally. Jesus could have believed in all sincerity that following his teachings would lead people into the Kingdom of God and/or eternal life, and said what he thought necessary to get people to follow him. In doing so, to the extent that such a lie was against those teachings, he may have thought he was forfeiting his own eternal security. Greater love hath no man… [While this last detail wanders quite far down a specific path of speculation, it makes at least as much sense as McDowell's argument that it would be "unspeakably evil" to lie about promising salvation]. On this view Jesus would have been a liar, but nobly motivated, and no demon.
There’s the arbitrary argument: that, why would this portion of his teachings be a noble lie, but not the less controversial parts? But that’s weak. More pressingly, it doesn’t fit given the narrative: the purpose of a noble lie is to convince people quickly and effectively. But, as Jim Perry explains, most people didn’t take Jesus seriously during His lifetime. The “noble lie”, as it were, didn’t work. So why did Jesus insist on it, and why was it transferred after his death? If Jesus was taking a tack that was merely a way to help him communicate his message effectively, it seems he would’ve given it up after a while.
Former President George W. Bush
Instead, in order to justify the noble lie argument, it seems you need to assume Jesus was thinking long term: that even though it didn’t work for three years, it’d totally work in 50 years, and that he somehow was convinced of that in a way that was far short of divine revelation. In short, was Jesus the George W. Bush of his time?
Wrapping Up
To keep the noble lie defense up, you have to start assuming a lot of things, both about Jesus’s motivation, his disciple’s motivation, and the long term (that exceeded everyone’s lifetimes) strategy of those people. It’s a lot to overload into source material that doesn’t explicitly state that’s what happened. In this case, Occam’s razor seems to be apt: one ought not introduces entities without necessity. Is it necessary to assume that Jesus wasn’t divine, or is it only useful to keep alive the possibility that he was a great moral teacher, but not really God?
New Feature: Ask a Catholic
One of the major projects of this blog is to start a discussion about the faith, especially in helping people understand what it means to have faith. I’ve learned some things as I rediscovered my faith over the years, and I’d like to help others who may be going through a similar journey by sharing the little information I know. So, I’d like to make a regular thing where we can get the nagging questions on the table and hopefully fostering a discussion.
So on every Friday, I’ll try to answer a question from you, the reader, to the best of my ability. I’ll do as much research as I can: finding the relevant passages, and other commentaries on the subject. We can then talk about those questions in the comments and hopefully each week we can leave with more answers than questions.
So, leave a question in the comments or email me at mark@theshibboleth.com. I’ll be as discrete as you want me to be: if you want to be anonymous, just let me know.
Caveats, Disclaimers, and Notes
I’m just a layperson: I don’t have authoritative answers. I’ll try my best to provide some insight into a question and hopefully start a discussion. It’s also important to note that I’m coming from the perspective of a previously-lapsed Roman Catholic, and there is likely disagreement on subtleties of the faith. I apologize for any misrepresentations or misinterpretations, and I encourage a discussion about that.
I also want to note that, given the purpose of this blog, I’m far more likely to post and answer questions that are asked in good faith. It’s hard to describe what that means, but something to keep in mind is that I’m not open to being converted, so avoid those types of questions.
Because I want to make sure I take the time to answer each question fully after doing some research, I’ll likely only answer one question a week. I’m not sure if this will be popular or not. If it isn’t at first, I’ll try to answer general questions I’ve seen asked before about the faith. If they aren’t interesting to you, be sure to ask your own!
Manna from Heaven
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, La raccolta della manna. (From Wikimedia Commons)
On the Roman Catholic calendar, this Sunday was the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The readings today (Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15, Psalms 78:3-4, 23-24, 25, 54, Ephesians 4:17, 20-24, and John 6:24-35) concerned God’s gift to man: bread, literally to feed our bodies, and spiritually to feed our souls.
Deacon Doug Souza took today’s readings and related it to the father who is tempted to take time away from his family in order to provide for them: an extra job or overtime, for example. Yet as he says, “no amount of material goods can take the place of a father’s loving, attentive prescence at home.” He then talks about God, in that He suffers no such temptation: that no matter how much God provides for us, He’s always by our side because that’s what we need the most.
What interested me the most about today’s readings, however, wasn’t God’s provisions for us, or that He’d always be by my side. It’s important, but a part of the Gospel reading was especially interesting given the project of this blog:
So they said to him, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” So they said to him, “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” So Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” (John 6:28-33)
Here, Jesus’s disciples request their own shibboleth for one who comes in the name of God: they imply that, since in Exodus, God gave bread to the Israelites, that might be a good indicator that a person should be believed in. Jesus explains that only God gives true nourishment, and as He says immediately after:
“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” (John 6:35)
What I find fascinating about this is that the crowd doesn’t necessarily believe in Jesus unquestioningly: in fact, they want to make sure He’s on the level with the God they know. God provided manna from Heaven: will Jesus do the same? Surprisingly, Jesus accepts the contract and makes a pledge, in contrast to other times he’s been challenged. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus gets angry when He’s tested:
Then the Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap him in speech. They sent their disciples to him, with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion, for you do not regard a person’s status. Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” Knowing their malice, Jesus said, “Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?” (Matthew 22:15-18)
Why is it different, here? Prima facie, it seems God answers to those who have a noble intent: the disciples asking Jesus about the bread genuinely want to understand the signs, whereas the Pharisees were merely trying to entrap Him. God knows the minds of all, so Jesus responded accordingly. But going back farther into the Bible, there are two more examples of questioning or testing God: in Genesis, Abraham bargains with God (Genesis 18:16-33) regarding the fate of Sodom and Gommorah, and God responds as if this was normal.
Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat, Job (From Wikimedia Commons)
This seems to back up the case: Abraham was righteous, so God listened and responded pleasantly. But the other example throws a wrench into the works: God’s response to Job (Job 38-40). Like Abraham, Job was righteous (Job 1:1): even if he wasn’t as great as Abraham, he’s at least equal to or better than the disciples in John. So why does God respond so violently? In fact, God responds almost in the same manner Jesus does with the Pharisees: He gets angry, He asks why He’s being questioned, and answers the question with another question.
To add more to the confusion, Job was asking for the same thing the disciples were asking for: a sign that God’s there:
I cry to you, but you do not answer me; you stand off and look at me, then you turn upon me without mercy and with your strong hand you buffet me. You raise me up and drive me before the wind; I am tossed about by the tempest. Indeed I know you will turn me back in death to the destined place of everyone alive. Yet should not a hand be held out to help a wretched man in his calamity? (Job 30:20-24)
So what’s different about the disciples and Job?
The Evolutionists Are Alright
Update: an earlier version of this post stated that Cornelius Hunter acted “as though we’ve never observed evolutionary processes.” This was in error, and is not Hunter’s position.
On his blog Dangerous Idea, Victor Reppert linked to an interesting piece by Cornelius Hunter, where he discusses some problems with evolutionist arguments against special creation. While polemical in style, Hunter raises an interesting defense against one Evolutionist argument. Consider the original argument from Jerry Coyne:
I have little to add to what P.Z. said except to note that the argument from imperfection — i.e., organisms show imperfections of “design” that constitute evidence for evolution — is not a theological argument, but a scientific one. The reason why the recurrent laryngeal nerve, for example, makes a big detour around the aorta before attaching to the larynx is perfectly understandable by evolution (the nerve and artery used to line up, but the artery evolved backwards, constraining the nerve to move with it), but makes no sense under the idea of special creation — unless, that is, you believe that the creator designed things to make them look as if they evolved. No form of creationism/intelligent design can explain these imperfections, but they all, as Dobzhansky said, “make sense in the light of evolution.”
The argument from imperfection is a common evolutionary argument, for good reason: it’s compelling. Why would an all-powerful god create something so… inelegant? Clearly, if he does exist, he’s sleeping at the wheel and has no role to play in evolution. If he has no role to play in evolution, the argument is scientific, or at least secular.
God’s in the Details
Hunter’s response to this is what’s interesting: you can’t argue that you’re not making a theological argument while simultaneously speculating about what God is (that he’s perfect/all-powerful) or what he can or will do (make things elegant and pretty). Evolutionists who make this argument need to presuppose a picture of God that fits their needs: he does things in a specific way that’s incongruous with evolution simpliciter.
Hunter is right to point out this problem: if evolutionists argue that God has no part in evolution (or that you can’t explain evolutionary processes with God), they need to bring God into it. It’s at best hypocritical and at worst circular. But, while the argument from imperfection isn’t a very good one, it’s not the only one, and there are compelling reasons to think evolution isn’t just some wild, kooky, and misguided theory.
Evolution: Not Just a Theory
Wide-throated Yellow Monkey-flower Mimulus brevipes (From Wikipedia)
One of the strongest indicators of evolution is that it has been observed, in the form of speciation: it’s a relatively common occurrence in several types of plants and insects. The TalkOrigins Archive has a few articles containing several examples of them (e.g. here and here), but one such example is of the yellow monkey flower:
At reasonably low concentrations, copper is toxic to many plant species. Several plants have been seen to develop a tolerance to this metal (Macnair 1981). Macnair and Christie (1983) used this to examine the genetic basis of a postmating isolating mechanism in yellow monkey flower. When they crossed plants from the copper tolerant “Copperopolis” population with plants from the nontolerant “Cerig” population, they found that many of the hybrids were inviable. During early growth, just after the four leaf stage, the leaves of many of the hybrids turned yellow and became necrotic. Death followed this. This was seen only in hybrids between the two populations. Through mapping studies, the authors were able to show that the copper tolerance gene and the gene responsible for hybrid inviability were either the same gene or were very tightly linked. These results suggest that reproductive isolation may require changes in only a small number of genes.
There are other examples: maize, ferns, fruit flies, catfish, and on and on.
Two Sides of the Same Coin
It’s important to realize it’s highly unlikely that Evolution and Special Creation are mutually incompatible: presupposing a specific modus operandi of God talks past the Special Creationists, and ignoring observable phenomena provides no recourse for rectifying the arguments of Evolutionists. It’s not for scientists to explain the metaphysics behind phenomena, but merely to observe and report: provide data and accounts to explain the data in an observable way. Likewise, it’s not up for theologians and philosophers to reject scientifically observed phenomena outright: ignoring reality is a road few dare tread.
Why the Shibboleth?
This blog is mainly about religion: specifically, my thoughts on religion. Shibboleth is a Hebrew word taken from the Book of Judges:
The Gileadites took the fords of the Jordan toward Ephraim. When any of the fleeing Ephraimites said, “Let me pass,” the men of Gilead would say to him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he answered, “No!” they would ask him to say “Shibboleth.” If he said “Sibboleth,” not being able to give the proper pronunciation, they would seize him and kill him at the fords of the Jordan. Thus forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell at that time.
A shibboleth is a litmus test: it’s used to determine if truly part of a group they say they belong to. It’s a cool word, but to understand why I chose the name instead of any of the other cool Biblical words, I need to tell a little story:
In the Beginning…
I was born and raised Roman Catholic. My father was unobservant, citing his years in Catholic school as the main impetus. My mother, however, was particularly stubborn about making sure my brother and I went to Church as much as possible and that we attended CCD (a Roman Catholic form of religious education). She also wanted to make sure we went through each of the Holy Sacraments all Roman Catholics go through as children: Reconciliation, First Communion, and Confirmation.
For most of my childhood, I was unquestioning about this process: I believed in God, I was a Catholic, and going to Church and CCD were just part of being a kid. I didn’t understand my friends who didn’t have to go to CCD or worse yet, didn’t believe in God. However, as I got older and entered my teenage years, I started to grow more and more apathetic. By the time I was ready to go through Confirmation, I was having my doubts. My mother, who wanted only the best for me, said I could drop out of Catholicism only after I went through Confirmation. I begrudgingly complied, and left the faith shortly thereafter.
It wasn’t because of any one event: I was a teenager, I thought I knew better, and arguments for atheism were compelling. Looking back, despite years of CCD, I don’t think I ever understood what I was supposed to believing in. I knew all the stories of the Bible, but I didn’t know why I should care or what it meant to be a Christian. It just seemed like a waste of time, and I, as an arrogant teenager, was proud to be able to lord over my friends who still believed how much I knew better than them.
Bob and Nick
It wasn’t for another 5 years before I seriously considered my faith again. I was a Philosophy major, which is a small enough major that you wind up taking the same classes with a core set of people. Within that group, there were two interesting people: Bob and Nick. Both had sharp minds, could argue articulately and cogently, and both were in the hardest analytical classes the college offered. Both were also devoutly Christian. It was paradoxical to me: how could two incredibly smart and rational people be so mistaken about a major part of their life?
The First Shibboleth
Statue of Pier Gerlofs Donia, known for his legendary strength and size and the invention of a famous shibboleth (From Wikipedia)
As the more outgoing of the two, I set out to get to know Bob first. We would walk and talk after class, and even though he was 3 years my senior, he was incredibly receptive to my admittedly primitive arguments about whatever we were talking about in class that day. In one of these walk-and-talks, the topic of Jesus’s credentials came up, and I made a boneheaded comment about how you didn’t need to believe in the Crucifixion to get Jesus’s message: that he was a perfectly interesting philosopher in his own right.
Bob interrupted me and provided me with my first shibboleth: he told me it is impossible to be a follower of Christ if you don’t believe in the Crucifixion and subsequent resurrection. It wasn’t up for debate, and referenced John 3:16.
At this point in my life, all I knew about John 3:16 was that it was on placards crazy people brought to baseball games. When I got back to my dorm, I looked it up. It read:
For God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Based on my background, I understood the premise of the contract God is providing, but I still didn’t understand the full implications of what it meant to truly believe in God just yet. However, for the first time in my life, someone made the distinction between Christians and non-Christians so painfully simple: if you believe God gave us Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins so that we could live forever, you were ostensibly Christian. Otherwise, you weren’t.
The Second Shibboleth
It took a full two more years before I got to know Nick. During that time, I had taken a few classes that analyzed the Bible, and they provided more clues as to what was really going on in it. I learned that Jesus wasn’t just some old version of Ghandi or a washed-out hippy: everything he did had an ulterior motive, and He was as sharp as a tack. I also started to understand how the Old Testament helped frame the New Testament: that you couldn’t just omit the Old Testament and still understand the works of Jesus.
In my junior year of college, I moved in with a few guys off campus. As luck would have it, one of those people was Nick. Nick was a man of many interests, and loved to talk about anything with anyone who’d listen. He was also acutely aware of his surpassing knowledge, and would regularly ask if I knew what he was talking about. I suppose most would find that condescending: to me, I thought it was a great opportunity to get inside the mind of a true believer. He’d explain something, I’d interject, and he’d provide a cogent response to what I said. It was great.
It wasn’t until I met Nick that I knew someone who would explain, in painstaking detail, the theology and motivation behind being a Christian. In this, he provided the second shibboleth. It wasn’t enough to believe certain factoids about the life and times of Jesus: you needed to understand the whole picture; that there were subtleties to belief and faith that most people ignore or take for granted. To base one’s faith on a punch list of facts that you agree or disagree with was like reading the Cliff’s Notes version of the Bible: you get the gist, but you lose the meaning.
In order to help me understand the full meaning of what it was to be a Christian, Nick recommended I read two books by C.S. Lewis: The Four Loves and Mere Christianity. I didn’t think I was ready for a whole book advocating Christianity, so I opted to start with The Four Loves.
The book changed my life. It was as if C.S. Lewis wrote the book specifically for me. He got it: he understood the human condition, he understood what Friendship was, and he understood the problems associated with it. That’s not to say I liked it because I agreed with him: I liked it because he made sense. Throughout the book, he describes four different types of “loves”: affection, or need-based love, Friendship, Eros (romantic love), and divine love, or Charity. It is with the last section that I finally understood the full implications of John 3:16, the passage I looked up years before. It finally clicked.
A New Beginning
Nick eventually graduated, and I found myself in my last year of college feeling compelled to understand Christianity more, and what it meant to be a Christian: the shibboleths of faith. Everything I read and everyone I talked to about it added more and more weight to coming back to the faith. It no longer became a question of whether I’d believe, but how I’d come back. What were the terms? What parts of the faith were still inconsistent with what I believed?
I eventually did read Mere Christianity, where C.S. Lewis expanded on Nick’s teaching: Christianity isn’t something you can turn on and off at cocktail parties. Everything has to be framed within it. When I left college, I read the Bible, cover to cover. It provided the final background to understand the two shibboleths I’ve been given: who God is, where He is coming from, and what He expects of me. Since then, it’s been a slow process to rectify years of bad habits and faulty beliefs.
Afterword
I provide this lengthy exposition to help understand the Shibboleth’s meaning to me, and to provide the background for the motivation behind this blog. I hope to explore other tests of faith and what it really means to believe in God. Hopefully this blog can act as a point of inspiration for and discussion with others who have gone through or are going through a similar struggle of faith. There are no easy paths, and it’s always best to have a friend along the way.