Below is his response (with my red letter annotations) followed by links to both the CNN report and Bill Nye's wonderful video. Enjoy!
Memo to CNN and Bill Nye
Dr. James Emery White, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
Monday, September 03, 2012
CNN recently ran an article about the YouTube slam on creationism, “Creationism Is Not
Appropriate for Children,” by Bill Nye – also known as TV’s “Bill Nye the
Science Guy.”
In the video, Nye maintains that the United States has great
capital in scientific knowledge and “when you have a portion of the population
that doesn’t believe in it, it holds everyone back.”
Translation: Creationists don’t believe in science. False. Bill Nye was referring to a general understanding of
science when he spoke of this portion of the population. I’m sorry to say that
If you base your beliefs on an organization that has or still does promulgate
ideas such as:
·
The Sun revolves around
the Earth
·
We are the centre of the
universe
·
The Earth is flat
·
AIDS is bad but condoms
far worse
·
We are born ill and
commanded well
·
Zombies existed back in
the day (as described in the gospel according to Matthew – just after Jesus’ burial)
·
The Earth is only 6000-10
000 years old and was created by something that has no creator itself and has
always existed and always will,
then you don’t have a general
understanding of science, and must simply slack in your concept of reality which is
why, when the world was discovered to revolve around the Sun, christians quickly decided that it was
due to god’s great mysteriousness that he neglected to mention this to you
before and had Christians killing non-believers for opposing such viewpoints
and lesser reasons to boot.
Nye continues: “Your world becomes fantastically complicated
if you don’t believe in evolution.”
Translation: Belief in science means belief in evolution. You’re just putting words in his mouth now. He said “your
world becomes fantastically complicated if you don’t believe in evolution.”,
not “belief in science means belief in evolution.” However, that being said, so
far as my understanding of it goes, it is pretty hard to refute evolution these
days. If you have a compelling argument that has more than one source to back
it up I would be absolutely intrigued to hear it: in all seriousness!
Then CNN chimed in with its own set of conclusions:
“For Christians who read the Genesis account literally, or
authoritatively as they would say, the six days in the account are literal
24-hour periods and leave no room for evolution. Young Earth creationists use
this construct and biblical genealogies to determine the age of the Earth, and
typically come up with 6,000 to 10,000 years.”
Translation: If you take the Bible at face value, and grant
it authority in your life, you have to reject evolution and automatically
become a young-earther. I’ll discuss this more in your
argument below, but the bible does or does not say god created the world in six
days?
If I may be so bold, here’s a memo to both Mr. Nye and CNN
about the confusion that often exists within media and science in regard to the
Christian faith.
Memorandum
To: Bill
Nye and CNN
From: James Emery White (and I would
suspect at least a few million others out of the two billion Christians
currently living on the planet) You say this as though
you speak with incredible authority. I venture to guess that you disagree with
at least a billion of those Christians in one way or another about some
theological aspect depending on your denomination and most likely even within
your denomination. For example, if you were a Catholic, you would be completely
fine with the idea of ritualistic cannibalism, munching on the body and blood
of your own saviour, but someone whose faith is based on the morality of Henry
VIII may have a different take on Jesus in the Church of England – perhaps as
something not quite like a snack.
Re: Caricatures
and Misunderstandings
I have read your recent article on Christians and
creationism, generated by Mr. Nye’s video posting related to creationism on
YouTube. It would seem that there are several misunderstandings, and even
caricatures, about Christianity and creation.
Please consider the following: Cute pull
from Disney’s Bill Nye the Science Guy.
*All Christians are creationists. We believe the
opening line of the Bible that, in the beginning, God created all that is. So there is nothing wrong with the phrase: all Christians are
creationists. By your own account you just admitted that they are. How
God performed His creative work is another matter. For that reason, please do
not equate “creationism” with a particular view of the age of the Earth or the
nature of God’s creative process. Your
understanding of god’s ‘creative process’ is a mix match of English
translations and old Hebrew writings penned by over forty different men (and at
least one woman – though her gospel didn’t make the final cut), so how can you
possibly venture to guess at his ‘creative process’?
*Christians can take the Bible literally, and
authoritatively, without believing in a young Earth and a six 24-hour day
creation. Yes, Genesis speaks of “days,” but it uses a very specific Hebrew
word (“yom”) which can be taken to represent any number of time lengths. From my research the two most common uses of the word ‘yom’
are either the 24hr day or up to a year. So even if each ‘day’ in Genesis was a
year…that would mean that God created the world in six hundred ‘literal 365 day’ years.
That’s still pretty silly. Most biblical scholars would maintain that the
word “day” as used in Genesis was not meant for scientific precision, but as a
literary device. More importantly, to take the Bible literally means to read it
in regard to its genre and in view of authorial intent. So you don’t take the bible literally? Is that what I’m reading? I’m pretty
sure the site you write for states: “We believe that the Bible is God's written
revelation to man and that it is verbally inspired, authoritative, and without
error in the original manuscripts.” I’m pretty sure without error must mean
that you must take it for what it says, no? It would be difficult
to call a “literal” reading of the Genesis account as six literal 24-hour days
when the sun and moon (necessary for 24-hour solar days) were not created until
the fourth day. Not so hard considering the
account was written down by ‘divinely inspired’ people centuries later.
Presumably god told them the time frame, just as he told them about Noah
building a ship only 300cubits in length able to hold two of every creature in
the entire world…which is just a farce obviously. But to take it without error
must mean you must take that notion and swallow it whole.
*You can be a Christian and believe in an old Earth. Whether
you believe God used some form of evolution for His creative process, or
created by immediate fiat – or a mixture of both – the central idea of the
Christian faith is that God was behind it, in it and through it. Some may be
suspending judgment as to whether macro-evolution, particularly in relation to
hominoids, has been sufficiently demonstrated. But whether it becomes
conclusive in their minds or not, God’s creative reputation is far from at
stake. It’s far from at stake because it is far from
the chopping block because it holds no weight because there is no actual
evidence of his creation because the only source of these interesting but
fairly exploded ideas is the bible. Genesis teaches two things: God did
it, and it was good. Whether that creation was by evolution or not, those two
things remain. Three things: he did it in six days and
rested on the seventh (whether or not that’s Saturday or Sunday, that at least
remains).
*You can believe in an original Adam and Eve as part of a
unique creation event while holding to an old Earth and evolution. Not all
Christians would believe this, of course, but for those who call themselves
“theistic evolutionists” this is precisely where they land. God used evolution
as part of His creative process, and then uniquely supplied the breath of life
to an original Adam and Eve as the first human beings with a soul, created to
glorify God and enjoy Him forever. So the perfect
being, god, needed some time to work out his own image when creating humans? That’s
why homo-habilis and austrolapithecus and homo-erectus existed? They were
soulless though and all that matters is that god finally got his image right in
us homo-sapiens, even though he bore us ill and now commands us to be well?
*Christians are not anti-science. The
Christian has nothing to fear from science because we believe the God of the
Bible is the God of creation. All true scientific discoveries simply illuminate
the world God has made. In return, please do not be anti-Christian. If there is nothing to fear in science, from a Christian perspective,
then why do so many rail against the idea of teaching evolution and, in some
cases, even just biology in schools? This is not something I made up. This
happens in Christendom. Why were people burned at the stake or drawn and
quartered for their scientific observations if science poses no threat to
religion?
This may be the most important rejoinder of all.
The role of faith in light of science is often upheld by
scientists by trivializing it, reducing it to the likes of a favorite color, or
preferred style of music. It is often maintained that science and religion deal
with two different kinds of human “experience.” There is the experience which
can be validated as fact (science), and there is the experience that can only
be embraced in faith (religion). So believe what you want about God – that is
your prerogative – just don’t treat it like you would a scientific reality. Well that is pretty sound considering there is no scientific
evidence (never mind fact) to back up the claims touted by Christians. If there
are other sources to corroborate the claims made in the bible, as I said
before, I would be more than happy to see them. I would be ecstatic.
It is to be granted that modern science is based on
empirical evidence and testable explanation. One cannot put God in a test-tube
and determine His existence. But there is more at hand here than science doing
its job, and knowing its limitations in regard to matters of faith.
It is about limiting what religion can say
about science. Well, religion can’t really
say anything useful about science. Or constructive or destructive really. There’s
nothing in any religious text that could speak to anything that Newton, or Einstein,
or Tesla, or Edison, or Copernicus, or Galileo, or any of the great scientists
discovered. Nothing either constructive or destructive because religion is un-falsifiable:
there is nothing scientific about it. We need not limit what religion can say
about science: it cannot even hold a strip of magnesium and a knife to science
let alone a candle.
The working idea is that we can maintain our religious faith
and our scientific discoveries not by seeing both as operating in the
realm of public truth One has verifiable, rigorously
tested evidence, and the other is complete blind trust in something that
completely lacks the former – so it is difficult to have the latter operating
in the realm of public truth, especially when science literally does operate in
the hospitals of public truth daily. – to be jointly engaged and
interpreted accordingly – but by seeing them as separate categories altogether
that should never be allowed to intertwine. If you
have found the connections between faith and reason, then please, by all means
let me see what you have found.
So if you wish to believe in God, fine; just don’t posit
that this God actually exists as Creator, or that He could actually be
pulled out to explain anything. You can posit that
all you want, just don’t shove it down our throats.
But that isn’t good science, and is, in fact, the very thing
Christians are often accused of being: closed-minded. Please explain to me what you
mean by close-minded.
Yes, we may think differently about things. As Harry
Blamires has written, “To think secularly is to think within a frame of
reference bounded by the limits of our life on Earth: it is to keep one’s
calculations rooted in this-worldly criteria. Actually
it is to think within a frame of reference that encompasses the entire universe
which has yet to be fully explained. Science doesn’t pretend that it has found
all of the answers in one single old dusty tome; it actually reasons and thinks
and discovers new things that sometimes find their way into refuting the common
trend in religion, which suddenly changes to accommodate the new findings while
brushing them off with a nod to god’s brilliant mysteriousness.
To think
Christianly is to accept all things with the mind as related, directly or
indirectly, to man’s eternal destiny as the redeemed and chosen child of
God.” If it is to accept all things, there would
not be protests at soldiers’ funerals or signs saying ‘god hates fags’ or a
constant strain against the teaching of something so rooted in evidence as
evolution.
But we can agree on the need to think, and that
includes thinking about the possibility of that which lies beyond the narrow
confines of the empirical method. We can agree to think
and that includes thinking about the possibilities which lay within the wide
expanse of the empirical method.
Like the absence of god.
Like God.
So make your case for evolution, Mr. Nye, and by all means,
CNN, keep reporting on such things. Just make sure you do not caricature the
Christian view on such matters. They needn’t caricature
Christianity. There is far worse to be said about Christianity just by going through
some choice verses in the ultimate truth of the bible. At least they didn’t say
you were willing to slaughter anyone who stood in your way by command of god. At
least they didn’t say you were ready to butcher your son because a voice in
your head told you so. At least they didn’t suggest that you would give your
daughter over to be raped by many men so that you could defend the dignity of one
of your own male friends. At least they called out something that is now, at
present, an issue in the world, thanks to a great many religious people. You
cannot caricature something that already makes itself a cartoonish villain.
Much less Christians themselves. I
suggest you look up the Westboro Baptist Church
James Emery White
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