In “Evangelicals Question The Existence Of Adam And Eve” (National Public Radio, August 9, 2011), Barbara Bradley Hagerty translates Christian Darwinism into real world talk:
Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: “That would be against all the genomic evidence that we’ve assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all.”
Venema is a Biologian, that is, a senior fellow at BioLogos Foundation, a group that “tries to reconcile faith and science.” (Which, some say, means “tries to market materialist atheism to gullible Christians, a bit at a time”).
And Venema is part of a growing cadre of Christian scholars who say they want their faith to come into the 21st century. Another one is John Schneider, who taught theology at Calvin College in Michigan until recently. He says it’s time to face facts: There was no historical Adam and Eve, no serpent, no apple, no fall that toppled man from a state of innocence.
They were sure to get round to that, of course. No sin. Always, no sin …
The article assumes something UD News had suspected – that Karl Giberson had to leave Eastern Nazarene because of problems there with his unorthodox views. Never mind, in his own eyes, he’s the new Galileo:
Giberson — who taught physics at Eastern Nazarene College until his views became too uncomfortable in Christian academia — says Protestants who question Adam and Eve are akin to Galileo in the 1600s, who defied Catholic Church doctrine by stating that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa.
And when you know that that’s who you are, even if you have never donee anything whatever of importance in science, what other recommendation do you need?
The money quote is from Venema:
But if you read the Bible as poetry and allegory as well as history, you can see God’s hand in nature — and in evolution.
Of course. It then has equal authority with Huckleberry Finn.